My eyes and nose are all puffy. We were supposed to go see "Ghost Rider" tonight but first Adam was being all :( and then they decided not to run the shuttles because we're under a tornado watch, or warning, whichever is worse. I can never remember. I'm just waiting for that "WRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH DYING CAT NOISE WRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" to wake us up tonight.

I should be working on my research paper, but I have no idea what I'm arguing/presenting yet. It's supposed to be on TS Eliot's "The Wasteland" but otherwise I have no idea.

Why the heck does iTunes have "bones" and "stacked" and "the OC" but not "House"? I mean, are they STUPID or something? Everyone watches house. :P

BECAUSE I FORGOT LAST NIGHT.

HOUSE AND WILSON. TOTALLY ON A DATE. OMG YES YES YES THEY TOTALLY WERE GOING ON A FREAKIN' DATE. AND HOUSE MESSING WITH CUDDY'S DATE AND CUDDY BEING ALL :( WHEN HER GUY LEFT AND HOUSE "...YOU'RE NOT WEARING A BRA"

AND THEN LIKE CHASE AND CAMERON. "So I think maybe we should have sex."
"...um, that makes sense." AND CHASE'S SEXY, SEXY HAT AND YOU COULD SEE HIS NECK AND THIS IS A NEW FIXTURE IN EVERY EPISODE NOW OR I WILL KIDNAP HUGH LAURIE AND GIVE HIM TO VICTORIA TO BE HER SEX SLAVE (MIGHT DO THAT ANYWAY... ONLY BE MY SEX SLAVE. WHATEVER.) FLAIL FLAIL FLAIL

and let's totally ignore how sad it is that I'm fixated on fictional characters' love lives while I sit alone-ish on valentine's day. I am wearing my sparkly green headband and nothing can get me down.

I fail at life and wit. However, I am currently writing a totally cracktastic CSI/James Bond AU crossover in which Greg fills the role of Bond Babe. Yes, really. No, I don't know what goes on in my mind either. FLAIL.

Besides becoming re-addicted to my first second third love, CSI (as you may have guessed from the above), I have rapidly become obsessed with house. HOW CAN EVERYONE ON THAT SHOW BE SO PRETTY AND DAMAGED AND *SPAZ SPAZ FLAIL*??? Really. Combining those things after a day-long shared folder raid, my roommate and I have come up with the injoke "IT'S NEVER LUPUS... because I'm Grissom."

Additionally we have concluded that the Lady Heather episodes are very wrong because even with my penchant for old(er) men, Grissom having sex is just.wrong. adfjkkl;

This entry brought to you by creme soda and s'mores poptarts.

AVATAR. ONE MONTH MORE AND YOU SHALL RETURN!





I need Chase icons.

It's official, January sucks. This month I have:

-Missed our first inner-dorm visitation
-Found out that, at the end of February, my best friend in the world is moving 400 miles away (from pascagoula. I haven't mapquest'd from columbus yet)
-Gotten into a major wreck that totalled on of my family's vans
-Along with the rest of the school, got smacked on the hand and totally broken by the loss of internet.
-Started listening to Linkin Park AND Nickleback. (THIS IS CLEARLY THE WORST ITEM ON THE LIST AS IT INDICATES I HAVE LOST MY EVERLOVING MIND. AND POSSIBLY MY TASTE. ><) My roommate seems to think that Eminem is next; she's wrong. Very, very wrong.

The wreck, while it didn't seriously hurt anyone, shook me up pretty bad. It was Friday before last, my Aunt Brenda was driving with me in the passenger seat and Grandma in the back. We were on our way home from Columbus, on this little two-lane part of '57 (actually it was State Line Road, which is a detour off '57 so you don't have to drive through Leakesville). There's no light, nobody around, and one minute we're talking and then we turn a corner and I see headlights.

"He's in our lane," I say, totally stating the very obvious.
"We're going to wreck," Says Aunt Brenda, because obvious-stating appears to be an inherited trait.

BAM! A big king-cab truck takes the front left side paneling totally off. It like crushed the bumper, took off the wheel, shattered the window and took the outside of the door off, destroyed the column that held the driver's belt in place. Had it been a few inches over, it would have killed Aunt Brenda. Luckily we were all fine, albeit cold for an hour and a half while we waited for her son to drive from Lucedale (is that how it's spelled? hell if I know) to pick us up. My mom says I'm only allowed to come home for extended now. DX

As for the internet thing, that's a story for when it isn't roomcheck time.

yeah changed the layout to one of the premade s2 ones. If only the really awesomescause ones weren't paid only! *tears* And I can't remember how to change the name of the journal... fudge.

Winter Formal was Saturday, it was fun; picspam when film is developed. Now I just have to survive MY VERY FIRST FINALS AT MSMS.... whaaaaah.

Yeah so now I'm hanging out in my room, alone, while everyone else either goes to the basketball game or the play. I'm feeling a little anti-social and panic-y today, okay?! ><

Today's trip to the library was pretty much a total bust. I confirmed some of the info the librarian had told me, and found out a little bit more about TN (who's freakin' journal I have), but otherwise everything I found was a bust. I got really excited because I found a newspaper reference for Sarah Tabb (main person) but then it turned out just to be her name in a loooong list of others who were paid small amounts of money from the city council's treasury. It just said 'do' for reason why. D:

So now I'm just working on a doll and avoiding my paper, finals, homework, etc.

This is a bit of a self-indulgent entry: a year plus afterward I am finally writing a bit on Hurricane Katrina. Why? Because on Jimmy Buffet's new album, "Take the Weather With You," he sang a song dedicated to the victims -- I hate that word, by the way. Victims people who've been murdered or raped ... something that happened to ME doesn't seem like it should have VICTIMS -- and it pretty much captured what was necessary to do, to survive. We had to move on.

After the storm hit I wrote here about the immediate circumstances of my family and friends but I've never really dealt with any kind of grief over the subject. That's because I don't have any, not really -- the circumstances were too overwhelming for me to feel anything, even after nearly fifteen months. The number of people that died, the sheer unfairness and tragedy and fear that the even caused will never really be real to me because in those first few days I worked so hard to block it all out.

I slept a lot, prayed a lot, and cried a lot while we waited it out in Pensacola -- near enough for there to be strong winds and rain but not near enough to experience the terror of being in the middle of it as some of my friend were. I remember little things, like the pattern of the hotel's comforter and what my Nana was wearing and the fact that my baby cousin was sick. We stayed in a room with this huge window that covered a whole wall side-to-side and across the street from it was a place where they kept cinder blocks, piles of them big enough that the adults in our family were worried for our safety should the winds kick up more than they did. A power converter blew above the window and we were afraid it would cause a fire -- as it was, it knocked out the power and forced my mother to flee to the hospital with my two special-needs brothers, who could not handle the heat. The entire time, as the weather worsened in Florida we all knew that it was worse in Pascagoula where my father had stayed with every other police officer. Luckily his phone company was the only one whose towers stayed up consistently, and we could talk to him though the sound was spotty and it was hard to get through the clogged lines. The Pascagoula Police Department remained active throughout the storm, unlike every other department in the area. When their generators flooded, they dragged a motorcycle upstairs to use it's radio for dispatch. We talked to my dad a lot on the phone, teased him about how much he loved eating MRE's (he being one of the few people on earth who "knew how good they were" before the storm) and how he was getting to swim so much while we were trapped inside. We took a deep breath and moved on.

After the winds died down a bit we moved from the hotel to a friend of a friend's, a house on an army base with a generator. The first night we stayed, there were over forty people in a four bedroom house; that number dwindled down as the weeks passed. The big screen TV in the living room stayed on the news constantly, filled with images (mostly of New Orleans, to everyone's annoyance). We watched as they recovered bodies, as they condemned black "looters" and praised white "scavengers," as account after tragic account played over and over. We all became over-saturated with the black horror of the situation, repeated endlessly with no facts about anyone we knew. Eventually dad located all of the family that had remained in Pascagoula, including my stubborn grandmother. I don't know how many times I tried to call my best friend; I forced my father to ride by her house and check several times until we finally reached her. We all breathed out when we knew family was safe, and looked toward fixing everything now broken.

My sixteenth birthday came and went, and while it was nothing like what I had expected and hoped for I will never forget the birthday party thrown for me by my family and attended by people I had only known for a week. I hadn't expected a party at all -- and there we were, living two hours from home, after one of the worst national disasters in the US hit our home and we were all eating birthday cake and laughing. People have birthday parties, we had a birthday party, it was moving on.

After a month, we came back to Jackson County but not the Coast; instead, our family stayed with my Uncle James and Aunt Cathy. Despite happily having no children of their own, they opened their home to six of us loud rambunctious heathens and we all got along well for the most part. My mother shielded us from the destruction back home, mostly, and I had been back a week before I actually got to see town -- it's something I'll never forget, choking back tears and looking away as my siblings pointed out each new fantastic site of twisted buildings or roofs without houses or homes with nothing but supports left standing. If I live forever, I'll never understand the fascination people had with driving around the passable roads, staring at the battered remains south of highway 90, especially down the beach where there was very little but foundations. It makes me sick sitting here typing it and yet I know many who wasted valuable gas to cruise around and rubberneck other peoples' disasters. Anything to take their minds off their own troubles, I suppose.

After three months of living in the north of the county with our relatives, we moved back home into FEMA-supplied trailers. It was good that I had grown used to cramped quarters and zero privacy in Florida, because the space in those trailers are very limited despite the fact that our family received a bigger one than most. Despite the fact that they became the butt of every joke for quiet a while -- it got old, fast -- the trailers were nothing to complain about because we could have been living in TENTS, in the cold weather and later grueling spring and summer of Mississippi. Everyone, living in tent or trailer or the top floor of their house, learned to deal though -- or else they left, as my parents strongly contemplated. The kids of Pascagoula struggled desperately to catch up while accommodating students from New Orleans and other coastal places that funneled into our relatively-undamaged.

Slowly, as schools opened back up and business returned things swung back to normal and there didn't seem to be this big gaping hole where reality should be. We put back together lives, new and different and maybe not as great as they once were but they were LIVES, we were still LIVING, and we were grateful through all the teasing whining and catty fights over the most comfortable shelf-bed. We breathed in, breathed out, and moved on because it was the only thing we could do.

( Breath In, Breath Out, Move On (lyrics) )

1. YOUR SPY NAME: (middle name and current street name)
Rebekah Larchmont

2. YOUR MOVIE STAR NAME: (grandfather/grandmother on your dad's side, your favorite candy)
Jackie Tootsie Roll (...WTF)

3. YOUR RAP NAME (first initial of first name, first three or four letters of your last name)
H CUNN

4. YOUR GAMER TAG: (a favorite color, a favorite animal)
Orange Lion

5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (aunt's name, city where you were born)
Brenda Pascagoula

6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (first 3 letters of your last name, last 3 letters of mother's maiden name, first 3 letters of your pet's name)
Cun Dav Sop (sounds sorta dirty 0______o)

7. JEDI NAME: (middle name spelled backwards, your favorite character's last name spelled backwards)
Hakeber Akkos (Whoa, I kind of like that one)

8. PORN STAR NAME: (first pet's name, the street you grew up on)
Banana Freirson (...whut. I would so not watch that. XD)

9. SUPERHERO NAME: ("The", your favorite color, the automobile your dad drives)
The Orange Chevy (sounds more like my CARS name.)

10. YOUR ACTION HERO NAME: (first name of the main character in the last film you watched, last food you ate)
Hercules Pecans (would so get beat up at school, yo. *I* would steal his lunch money. NOTE TO SELF: Stop with the disney overdose!)

Herman melville, die in a fire.

Tales. Is. Eating. My. Life. Plus I have English and Shakespeare papers due on the same day (next Tuesday), and UE one is on something I haven't even read. To think I left my friends and a place in the top ten for this. But don't let me whine, I love it. Why? Because it's NERD SCHOOL.

I've been keeping my fannishness... shall we say on the down-low? since I got here. Reinventing myself and all that. Anyways, in art class I'm painting an avatar T-shirt with the Blue Spirit on it. I lied and said it was a Kabuki theater mask; apparently several students in the other classes have pointed out what it was an asked if I could paint THEM one. Then yesterday in foundations we were talking about what we were thinking about... and emily said "kakashi!" I may or may not have cheered; there were definitely others clapping. NERD SCHOOL, man. Less than three.

Today was my tales library day. It's really cold and windy outside here, but it was still a nice walk because I wore my big jacket and gloves. On the way back to campus I stopped at the shell station and got some really good hot chocolate... it was really nice.

Title: Tomorrow Never Comes
Author: sleepy-geeky
Word Count: 100
Warnings: I made myself cry. Slightly cliché.
Challenge: 67 - Things I'll Never Say

(We'll Make it home together, I swear.)

englishtunnel rocks!

Workworkworking on a Hawk Nelson layout. It's gonna be the shiz if I can figure out LJ/CSS imgmapping. And even if I can't, hey, Hawk Nelson, right? Wanted to do Flogging Molly but am lacking in decently-sized pictures.

So yesterday was one of my teahcer's (Dr. C) birthday. this teacher is known for being particularly... well endowed ... in the um "pants region" and a lot of students know it (this is because he wears tight jeans and ... it ... is roughly eye-level from the desks). So for his birthday this guy dressed up as him (in a polo shirt, tight jeans, and tennis shoes) and gave him this huge sausage. It was terrible. But funny. But terrible. I was embarrassed for him, really. His retort? "Tug, I wish I had a cocktail sausage to give you." and he said it with a totally straight face. Love that man.

Other funny happening in class (well, funny to me... no one else in my class understood why I kept snickering): Dr. E cannot stop confusing Hotspur and Falstaff in Henry IV part I. He keeps coming out with "Hotstaff" which besides being funny on an Oliver Wood level, is also funny because it sounds like a pairing smoosh. I knew my gaydar pinged when I saw him, i just didn't know it was because he was a slasher!

MSMS: Like Freud, in a way. And now, to homework!

oh no she just didn't.

I ran downstairs to sign my card (...but really have 30 more minutes, because I was confused). Day before yesterday it rained really hard and I got my feet soaked; converse take a really long time to dry so all I had to wear yesterday were some really uncomfortable platform flipflops that gave me blisters. So I jump in the elevator after these girls who just got back from wal-mart.

When I push the '2' button, they give me this weird look and I'm thinking 'okay, none of your business, but yeah it's kind of lazy-looking' so I say: "blisters. on my feet. hurts like heck to walk up the stairs." This one girl that I really hate sort of sighs and rolls her eyes but I hold my peace. As I'm walking out of the elevator, she goes "You know K's ankle is messed up but she still walks up the stairs" and I'm just like... 'uh uh. she didn't.'

But she did. So I just turn around and tell her it's none of her fooking business and she doesn't own the elevator. So yeah. I'm in trouble with the goth posse now, I guess.

edit: nevermind. she apologized. curses. Now I feel like a total heel for posting about it in my journal.

aarg. So the other day I missed a meeting and got written up level II noncompliance. So this weekend I'm on in-dorm restriction aka redcard. Which means every hour and a half I must march downstairs, sign a card, go back up to my room and STAY THERE ZOMG. It wouldn't be so bad if my friends were here and 'cause I could go hang out in their rooms but everyone picked this weekend to go home. Sadness. *listens to emo music* *annoyed*

on the bright side, I am getting some pixeling done. if I really wanted to get creative I could do homework.

well. i think my birthday is cursed. seriously, last year i was crammed into a tiny house with around fourty people and this year all of three people remembered. Ari didn't even remember. i'm not sure how I feel about that. mostly depressed.

i did get an Avatar dvd, so the day wasn't a total wash.

I don't think I've done like ... any memes in this journal, which makes me a really bad LJer I think. So I ganked this one from Amanda/Mandie (what do you want to be callllled? omg, confused) I did this entirely from songs in my itunes playlist. yes, there is an unhealthy amount of disney music in there.

opening credits: the show -- hawk nelson

waking up: one girl revolution -- superchick

average day: welcome to my life -- simple plan

rainy day: belly of the whale -- newsboys (from the veggie tales movie)

sunny summer day: coconut telegraph -- jimmy buffett

life's good: why should i worry? -- billy joel (from oliver&company)

first kiss: Kiss the Girl -- dunno (from the little mermaid)

falling in love: something there -- dunno (from beauty and the beast)

when you first say "i love you": let me be your wings -- dunno (from disney's thumbelina)

love scene: simple and clean -- utada hikaru (from Kingdom Hearts)

breaking up: it's over -- hawk nelson

getting back together: princess and frogs -- superchick

letting go: if i never knew you -- dunno (from pocohontas)

deep thought: hero -- superchick

confused / losing hope: street urchin -- instrumental (from aladdin)

happy childhood memory: once upon a december -- from anastasia

hanging with friends: the pirates who don't do anything -- veggie tales/various remixes

having fun with friends: cell phone -- reliant k

getting hyper: i've got a lovely bunch of coconuts -- monty python crew

dancing: play that funky music white boy -- KC and the Sunshine Band

working out: i'll make a man out of you -- donny osmond & chorus (from mulan)

mad at ex: backstabber -- disciple

on drugs: somewhere over the rainbow -- judy garland (wizard of oz, duh)

memory with best friend(s): never had a friend like me -- robin williams (from aladdin)

moving away: send me a song -- celtic woman

feeling independent: stand out -- dunno (from a goofy movie)

miss family & home: one particular harbor -- jimmy buffett

feeling complete: true to your heart -- stevie wonder & 98 degrees (from mulan)

ending credits: don't fear the reaper -- blue oyster cult

Hi ho, went home for the first time this weekend & Ari stayed the night. She roped me into a new RP on Gaia... I hate RP'ing on Gaia. But now I'm playing Belle ><

Had yummy chinese for the first time in a MONTH. OMG. It was wonderful, but most importantly it wasn't the 'Rot. I also saw my baby cousin in person for the first time; she still looks like Yoda. This isn't a problem, of course, because all babies look like Yoda.

Steven rode to and from the coast with us... it was awkward. Really awkward. He was really nice in front of my parents (Dad on the way down, Mom&Aunt Brenda on the way up) but I know he's evil. To the core. Evil and Rotten, like a 60 year old nazi apple.

Well, I totally forgot to update once I got here. Not that I've had much time.

Classes are going well, I only have one teacher that I _really don't like_, and that's because of her teaching style (IE: repeating things. Over and over.) The classes I have are: Cell Biology, Painting I (YEY), Foundations of Higher Math (boo), Advanced Topics in Chemistry, University English, US History: Tales from the Crypt*, and Shakespeare (double YEY. Sex an' death, hooboy.)

*Tales is a research project, where we take a person from the historic cemetery here in town and write a paper on their lives. We then take the paper, write a three minute script, act the script in front of the class, and those who are picked get to perform in the cemetery for the pilgrimage! Neato, huh?

I'm making friends okay (better than I usually do, anyway) but I'm worried people will think I'm weird because everyone's suddenly hooked up with everyone else and I haven't. There is a reason for this, but I won't say it because I'm not allowed because SOMEONE SAID SO (GEE THANKS MOM, WHOM I'M MAD AT ANYWAY.) It starts with an 'a' and ends in an 'exual' though.

There is like no time for reading or drawing or lj here. It's super super super busy, run run run all the time. Speaking of which, I've got to run NOW, so guess I'll write more about school later.

Less than 12 hours until M(SMS)-Day. I'm not sure if I'm nervous or happy or sad or what, other than a bit numb. Everything's all packed, so I guess the next journal entry I'll be making will be from the dorm room.

So since I haven't updated my personal journal in a while, I figured I would.

Today was Ari's birthday; we had a lot of fun at her party last night. It was a costume party; she dressed as Zelda and her little brother as Link. Lil' Link looked SO CUTE and her armor (the shoulder pads, the crown, etc) was AMAZING especially since she made it all herself out of cardboard, tinfoil, and gold spray paint! The dress was also handmade and gorgeous.

I went as a geisha -- Aunt Sara did my hair, and she had to TEASE IT to make it stay up in a bun. When the hair came down, I looked like THE THING THAT ESCAPED FROM THE EIGHTIES (rated pg-13 for violence, gore, sequences of terror, and really bad hair). I spent the night with her and this morning I didn't have time to take a shower for church, so I ended up pouring a vase over my hair into the sink -- and I managed to make it look good! LOL

Now I'm home and watching the Miss America pageant on CMT. >> such a loser.