A normal day, I suppose.

Today was one of those days that feels special but it really isn't, it's just settling back into normal routines after a little bit of a blip in routine.

It was a pretty average day but my eyeliner applied beautifully so I started the day in a good albeit frivolous mood. School went somewhat normally but I kept running around in attempts to find my English teacher so I could sign off on my World lit paper to be sent away.

My law class was in the gym due to exams occurring in our usual space and the bleachers weren't built for anyone to sit on for even close to an hour. I seem to inherently hate being in gyms for any reason- a sort of PTSD from a childhood of being forced to have gym class four days a week with intensely competitive kids who lived and breathed for peewee hockey.

My shift at work was pretty normal. I had some good conversations with some regulars, especially as my good mood persisted and I gave some drinks on the house. One of our regulars has a giant collection of free Starbucks coupons that expire on Friday and during my shift, he came in twice and made a round of strangers in the store to spread a few of the 50+ coupons he has remaining. Our manager will probably pissed by the amount of drinks that went unpaid for tonight. I suppose it's my small revenge for her ordering t-shirts for us with a half naked siren on them. My conservative upbringing didn't prepare me to serve coffee wearing a shirt portraying a mythical creature with very human, very exposed boobs.

It's only Monday but it feels like a Thursday and I'm really not prepared for this week.
Hearts,
Julianne

Sundays, fun days.

I'm adjusting to working Sunday afternoons. At first I hated it because since we close at 5:30pm instead of 9:30pm like usual and everything feels slightly disconcerting. It doesn't help that there are huge rushes in the early afternoon of everyone, their five kids and their elderly parents. However, it's usually dead by 4pm. Sundays have gotten better with the introduction of Missy and I's "#dancethewhiteaway" closing parties. As soon as there's no one left in the store, she tells me sad/hilarious stories about her love life and we find a good playlist (aka not the 'Josh Groban's greatest hits' one) to dance and sing along to unashamedly while closing. Today, I mopped to a playlist featuring "Rehab" and "Put Your Records On." I also make bad puns while she tells me I'm the worst person. Life can be taken slightly less seriously on Sunday afternoons.

My job is kind of nice when I'm not colossally stressed about school. The food service industry is kind of cute.
Hearts,
Julianne

The unfamiliar feeling of not being tense.

Today after handing in my World lit paper*, finishing and sending away my admissions essay for King's and finally doing my practice IB English oral commentary, I felt something I haven't felt in a while: room to breathe. I've been struggling under a constant avalanche of work since the start of the year and it feels good to finally see something come to a conclusion. Especially so many things in one day, the same day that I get over my cold. I'm not wading through stress, mental strain and self doubt for a change.

Tomorrow, I have things to do but then I have the evening off. I can curl up and do things that aren't school related. I'm determined to create a napping playlist for a time in the distant future when the opportunity arises to take a nap. That probably won't happen for a while because work has robbed me of my ideal Sunday afternoon nap slot.

One week until March break! My family is going to NYC for a few days and damn I'm excited. I've been to London, Amsterdam, Nairobi and Reykjavik but not NYC a mere 10 hours drive away. I really really like cities and in three years the only big city I've been to is Boston.

* World Literature is an IB paper that was started in October and has since endured two thoroughly criticized drafts before the final copy that finally gets sent away for real marking. It's such a infamously grueling paper that when we hand in the final copy our teacher gives us a high five and a timbit. It isn't easy to get an IB teacher to 'a high five and timbits' levels of sympathy.
Hearts,
-J-

A point form list of things 2.0

• I'm adjusting to life after the yearbook crunch. Lunch hours are a thing and during class I actually work on that class.
• I wasn't joking when I said yearbook owned my soul for a few weeks because the last two weeks are a blur and I don't think I've socialized more than twice. I pass people in the hallways and I feel reunited with them. My face is significantly less frazzled.
• I'm procrastinating from revising my World Literature paper for IB for the last time. I need to make it more thorough while cutting 156 words and this process is going to maim me to some degree.
• It doesn't help that I have a sinus headache from not being able to breathe through my nose. My entire body hurts from coughing and sneezing my way through the past few days.
• I'm currently witnessing my youth leader live tweet youth group because I'm too sick to go tonight.
• I haven't been to the library for a really long time and that makes me sad. I also need to check out some books on the Hitler Youth for a history project. 
• I really want to go to bed but this damned essay and it's only 8. I can probably make it through at least two paragraphs tonight.
• I want to go to the coffee house tomorrow because funny things happen. I also want to convince Alan to do stupid things in front of an audience. Last one I got him to read this poem in front of several dozen people as I consider it my revenge upon him for being a bitch ass hoe sometimes. I'm awful.
• I voted for myself today for my school's Chamber of Representatives, which is student council's fancy way of making people feel obligated to show up to meetings so they can have the required number of people to vote on finances. I don't know why I volunteered to be nominated but I think it was mostly me trying to prove to myself that I can get democratically elected for something. Narcissistic asshole FTW. But I guess I'll care and stuff.  
• My law class on a good day contains about five intelligent beings. The teacher is fantastic but his classes unfortunately attract a disproportionately large amount of burnouts. I get 'randomly' selected often when he needs someone to state an intelligent opinion. The class makes me feel above average for a change- a perk of taking some non-IB courses. Again, my ego benefits. 

Hearts,
-J-

A point form list of things.

• The other section editor and I made our yearbook deadline and both the student editors and faculty supervisors told me they were pleasantly surprised that we pulled through. Considering making my life motto "Keep people's expectations of you low so that you can pleasantly surprise them." 
• Yearbook being over means that I have free lunch hours again and that is an unfamiliar concept to me.
• Being sick is awful. Being sick with a list of six or seven things you need to do within the week is especially awful.
• As my English teacher suggested, The Newsroom is a very well written and well done show and I feel like it contributes some value to my sick day even though I feel up to nothing.
• At least the one person who was able to took my shift tonight so I don't have to go through the stages of apathy, exhaustion, losing my voice and generally not feeling in a cheerful service job mood.
• The only reason I considered not calling into work was because a ton of yogurt is expiring tonight and I was going to snag it up for packed lunches.
• My grandmother finished my prom dress and it's pretty classy. My grandmother is the only reason I've ever willingly acquired any domestic skills. What a boss.
• I should knit something because I haven't for a really long time.
• Last week Maegan and I decided that we really want to go to the Montreal Jazz festival this summer. Because adventuring 900km via bus for the purposes of jazz and Montreal sounds like the best notable summer thing. I figure that I need to do one thing this summer that's notable other than baristaing part time with intermittent panic attacks about the future.

Hearts, -J-

New ventures.

Guys, firstly I want to say that I'm not abandoning you and I'll keep updating here.

But I'm starting a new blog more dedicated to creative writing.

I started this blog when I was 14 and therefore I have three and a half years of material behind me. There's a lot of things I want to post that I feel don't fit with the general template I've set up for myself. That's why I'm starting this guy. But regular programming will continue here.

Right here. You should totes follow it and see whatever direction it takes as I see whatever direction it takes.

(And the title of it is a reference to a line in One Day More from Les Mis because I'm going through a phase and it struck me as a good blog title.)
Hearts,
-J-

Birthday.

Yesterday, my birthday was a good day despite that I had bunches of yearbook stuff to do (I like yearbook, I really do, but I've had to do most of my section in the space of five days). I still got to hang out with some lovely people at Tatyana's, got serenaded in five part harmony in the hallway after school, ate pad thai and got gifted a fake bonsai tree. That's a pretty fulfilling day.

Will had this weird moment yesterday where he just stared at me for a few minutes and told me how old I was and I kept getting gradually more defensive. Though I must say that this is the first age that I've turned where I feel legitimately older than the previous age. I can also now legally purchase fireworks (I have to use this power sometime in the near future), drink in Quebec (because I party so hard, you know), vote, and get a credit card (in my case, solely for buying books on amazon). Not going to lie, the fireworks one is most exciting.

Today I've been snowed in all day. Apparently the driving conditions are awful because visibility is bad and snow is only building up in huge drifts here and there. Work was cancelled so I got to spend the day on tumblr and watching Gilmore Girls. I should probably do some of my ever present schoolwork, too.
Hearts,
-J-

At least life's quirks amuse me.

(Photography class is forcing me to take decent pictures)

Sometimes, I feel like my life is a series of jokes played on me by fate just to make me a little uncomfortable.

 So, there's this guy who was in my math class last semester. He sat in the back row and was one of the few kids to actually take that class seriously, considering that he's already graduated and is upgrading his diploma. I've never actually talked to him but I run into him outside of school at least four times a week consistently for several months. When I had Co-op, I often found him at the uptown library when I was there and on the bus on the days when I was on the East side. I also run into him in completely random parts of the city every now and then. Around November, I realized that I am more or less accidentally stalking this poor boy and found it hilarious, and then it just didn't stop. We sort of uncomfortably co-exist in a completely unspoken, unacknowledged state while going on our own little ways. 

Today I was in the guidance office to write on a list where I want my transcript to be sent. I skimmed the list out of curiosity to see if anyone else is applying to King's and there are legitimately  only two people other than me (out of a class of over 200): my friend Hannah and this guy. I saw his name on that list and I was in awe of this ridiculousness. Not only this, but I saw his last name and something clicked and now I'm 99.9% sure that he's the son of my infamously batshit crazy, apathetic, painfully sarcastic physics teacher Mr. Kelly (to whom I was compared to twice in the last week and, to quote Will,"The more I think about it, the more it's extremely true").

Fate may or may not be sentencing me to four more years of awkward co-existence, especially at such a small school. We can be background characters in each other's lives. Either that or, according to my friends, we'll have to get married because this could be the beginning of a reasonable rom-com plot.

Maybe if I talked to him at some point, or even made eye contact with him, it might make everything a little less strange.
Hearts,
-J-

Things accomplished this weekend:

• Working 12 hours.
• Ripping off the bottom of my cheap work shoes and having to make them last two more shifts.
• Nearly half of my admission essay.
• Two free evenings of people assuming I was high. 
• Putting peeps in a Starbucks employee microwave just to see what would happen.
• Running errands for my friend who was working at said Starbucks, which meant picking up Dead Space 2 and Apple Jacks.
• Determining that on a scale rating singleness from 1 to the Pope, I land somewhere between 8 and 9.
• Going to see Warm Bodies with hopes it would be super awful, but turns out it's just unpretentiously committed to mediocrity. 
• Sitting in Tim Hortons with my movie buddies and were really loud and reminisced about last year's musical, Miss Saigon, so the words 'prostitute,' 'hoe' and 'whore' were being thrown around often. There was also one guy who falls under the archetype of 'lone stoner clad in drug rugs who hangs around with mostly non-stoners and thinks he's really profound, i.e. "You have to put love into brownies *thoughtful pause* but sometimes I put in hate instead." and "Do you guys ever think about cups?"'
• Making decent food because I had a brief moment of time where I could. I'm so sick of pasta and ramen.
• So many jokes about the Superbowl among people who care little about sports. "Superbowl? That chess, right?" We think we're funny.

Hearts,
-J-

Livin' it up

When I turn 18 on Friday, the only thing that I want to do then that I can't do now is get a credit card so I can buy books from amazon. I like to live it up.

 I suppose I can vote now but there's not another federal election scheduled until I'm 20. However, there is a provincial election scheduled for late next year but I'm not likely to be living in the province at that point. Not to mention that I'm pretty apathetic about the politics of a province with a whopping 2.24% of Canada's population that is consistently shitty no matter who runs it. I heard someone joke that the best thing people do in this province is drive through it and I don't disagree. Oh, and then there's municipal elections, but those are even further away and actually a hopeless case at this present moment.

Back from that tangent, I guess I thought 18 was going to be a better age but in reality it's looking to be nearly as arbitrary a number as 17. Fun fun. 
Hearts,
-J-