The Things This Week Has Taught Me:

Tags

knitting, exams, Sherlock, cold, anti-social, veggie tales

• Exempting an exam is so so so so completely worth it when you can smile at your other friends with a little smirk. Not to mention one less exam to study for.
• Knitting makes everything better. I would suggest that right before exam day everyone learn to knit, so we can blanket the school in fuzzy soft happiness. Knitting soothes, so I knit during exams, in between exams, during lunch and when I should have been studying for exams. It was completely worth it.
• Hanging out with the IB kids and exchanging pickup lines is probably one of the most fulfilling ways to spend a lunch hour when you should really be studying.
• Equally fulfilling is coloring with crayons and a veggie tales coloring book with the IB kids during lunch when you should really be studying.
• When your Social Studies teacher, instead of telling you that you mysteriously missed some work (even though you were there for it, and have been working your butt off in that class) just decides to lower your grade average from a ninety something to a eighty five keep your patience and wait until you can vent with your over achieving friends who can commiserate.
• When you finish your exams and realize you have a seven day weekend the feeling of bliss is just a bit overwhelming.
• When you start your seven day weekend and realize that you actually are going to have a social life this break instead of hiding out in your room with  your best friend the internet the entire time the feeling of ‘why the hell am I not being anti social as per the norm, this is weird if enjoyable’ is just a bit overwhelming.
• When you wake up two days into your seven day weekend and realize your nose is full of grossness and your voice sounds like a cross between batman and gollum less the cool the feeling of ‘words I can’t say on my blog because my dearly beloved relatives read it’ is just a bit overwhelming.
• Sherlock is amazing amazing amazing amazing and holy the first episode in the new season was a just a little bit amazing.
• Baking gingerbread, no matter the time of year, will lead me to the steep and slippery slope of singing Christmas Carols out of season.

I think Sherlock has the right idea.

Kaelen.

 

 

Nerf-Derf

Tags

EXAAAMS, exams, hair, knitting, OH DEAR GOD EXAMS, Sherlock, uptown adventuring, youtube

Today was started off ignoring my little sister throwing a temper tantrum two feet away from my tired carcass as I desperately tried to sleep in. I feel that getting up at nine was hardly a fair compromise. (The feeling you get when your siblings have to go to school and you don’t almost makes up for the tantrums. Almost, but not quite.)

After copious amounts of youtube intake I actually did two things on my weekend list: Reviewed math. (An entire afternoon’s worth of studying. I even oddly enjoyed factoring complex trimonials, which I never would have  thought possible when I was learning them.), and cleaned my room. Not beautifully spotless, but good enough. (anybody want to place a bet on how long it will stay in that condition?)

To sum up my weekend plans:

• Study for exams.
• Review for exams .
• Cram for exams.
• Be annoyed by the ever increasing length of my hair. When I first cut my hair I wasn’t planning on keeping it short, but now that it’s reached the unpleasant shaggy almost-a-bob stage I can’t wait to get my hair cut.

• Adventure uptown. (I really doubt that adventuring uptown counts as a hobby, but if it did I would probably be considered quite adept at it.)
• Finally watch the new season of Sherlock. Gleeful squeeing optional.
• Knit something with the pretty yarn that Miss Murgles aka Mozart Nerd gave me for my birthday.

Is there anything you are particularly looking forward to this weekend? Or dreading? Or just feel positively one hundred percent evenly neutral about?

~Kaelen

A Very School-ish Post

Tags

exams, niners, random picture of an airplane, school

Sooooo….it’s currently four minutes after one in the morning and I’m skipping school tomorrow (Not because I’m rebellious, because school tomorrow is only for those who could use tutorials or are writing their ELPA’s.), which means that I can sleep in in the morning. And what better to do with my time than blog post?

I have no idea how this blog post is going to turn out though, seeing as today is now technically tomorrow (Also, my blog is probably going to lie about the time I publish this post. I don’t know why it tends to be a couple hours off, it’s just mean like that.), so hopefully this post is semi-coherent to people not drunk on the sweet nectar of exhaustion.

Today was the last ‘official’ day of the semester. We have tomorrow, which as I have explained, doesn’t really count, the weekend, and then exams. Am I very nervous for my very first very real, very live exams? Yep. I’ll survive though (probably).

I chose to exempt my English exam (probably a good idea seeing as I’ve never really learned how to write a commentary, and learning on the fly when I have two hours to make up about twenty five percent of my mark doesn’t seem like something a smart person would do.), which means I have to do Social studies (I enjoy history to the point of stupidly doing more work than I really should for this class. I’m either going to come prepared for this class and completely pass this exam or I’m going to come cockily thinking that I actually have some idea what I’m doing and have my *rear end* handed to me on a silver platter.), Math (A class I’m enjoying, strangely enough. Also, the same two possible futures that apply to social studies apply to my math exam.) and Science. (The exam I should really review the most for, yet have been putting off reviewing since if I have to review something I’d rather it be math or social studies.)

The class I’m going to mourn the loss of the most is my English class. I loved my teacher, found my classmates cool, and (for the most part) enjoyed the subjects. (Romeo and Juliet- well…I enjoyed studying the play. Just wanted to smack the horny adolescent crybaby main characters in the face.). This coming semester both social studies and English get funneled into what everybody considers to be a useless class, cultural foundations. I don’t get to keep either of my teachers from English or Social Studies, which makes me sad since they’re both pretty cool.

The class I am absolutely positively one hundred percent and without a single faint little old doubt wonderfully excited to say goodbye to would be science. Fun Fact for you: at my school we don’t have grade nine science. Grade nine students just skip over their science and move on straight to grade ten science. Which means that if you are a grade ten transfer student you get to do all grade ten courses- except you have to spend your first semester in a grade nine science class. I love grade nines. Many of my dear friends are grade nines. But the niners in my science class (especially the boys) were probably some of the most racist, sexist, dirty-minded,homophobic and all around lazy people I have had the horror of meeting.This coming semester I will be doing biology eleven (except…wait for it…it’s biology for tenth graders!) next semester, and I. Am. So. Happy!

(I do realize that writing all this down makes me sound like a complete snob who sticks her nose up at everyone and everything. I would like to assure you that this is fairly untrue, and in day to day life I am a more or less decent person. I just really dislike that class, and as my blog you get to feel the pain of my venting. Please feel free to browse through the venting if you’d rather.)

On another note, I realized today that for someone who self-professes to be extremely un-musical I’m sort of (although not entirely) proving myself wrong. I’ve been teaching myself guitar over the last couple of months (with…interesting, if not necessarily melodic, results.) and as of today I’ve joined my school choir. The long story short behind me joining choir would probably go a little like this:

• A bunch of my friends told me to join choir.
• I decided to follow their and advice and to try to join choir for the coming semester.
• My friends got me into choir today without telling me.
• I was randomly told, “Oh, hey, you’re in choir now! You should come to practice after school today!”
• So I came, had a good time despite the fact I didn’t really know what I was doing, and am really happy I’m a part of it!

I’m afraid I really don’t have anything else to say to you. But seeing as it’s nearly two in the morning that may be for the good.

Goodnight? Good morning?

Kaelen.

Soup?

Tags

exams, Iact, random, school, stress

My dear friends, small children, and assorted limbs,

I do apologize that I have been using bullet point format so much lately. I promise that I will write a nice blog post with paragraphs and everything one of these days. But it is not this day. (points if you get the reference.)

And so. My addiction  love for the humble bullet point shall be expressed, as I love to write in list format, and even more so I love to not write in english proper as work of school makes me tired of this whole writing proper doodle ma thingy.

Now then…

• Exams exams exams, GAH! I think I might just have a little bitty bit of freak out induced panic type thing that is all pent up inside and is going to pop sometime soon in a very noisy mess of Kaelen Stress. Hopefully no bystanders will be injured.
• However, I kind of have a tendency to stress out over things a riduclouss amount. Like the other day where I had a mini freak out about University, except the mini freak out was spread out over a 24 hour space. (yeah. I’m fifteen. Grade ten. I’m stressing over uni. This is a perfectly valid fear.)
• On the non stressful side of things, I have I-act for the first time in exactly a month today! Very happy about that! Approximately half an hour until I get to go play happy improv games in a room full of people who I may or may not know.
• And now ’tis time to go eat soup.

What an odd post this has been. Random much? Ah well, love you too.

Kaelen.

“Idle Meanderings Of A Wannabe Optimist”

Tags

coffee house, hipster kids, homework, Iact, physics

(post title sardonically generated by: this generator right over here)

My weekend is going to/has so far consist(ed) of:

• Iact coffee house last night. Beautiful time. I have a bunch of talented friends, and they have talented friends, and their friends friends are talented. And when all these people preform together they make this little explosion of talent under the impressively high roof of the  Sanctuary Theater. Happens every month, costs five bucks, is a thing you should check out if you live in the saint john area and like to listen to hipster kids sing.
• Semi-cleaning my room so that I once again have something resembling habitable. I’m not a hoarder- I just find the sentimental meaning in objects from two years ago! I’ve discovered that the Petshop Boys make for very good cleaning music. (same goes for the Smiths)

• Finding out that I need to teach myself physics over the weekend, in addition to my social studies homework. It’s nearly one in the afternoon on Saturday and I still haven’t’ started.

Shall we darlings?

Kaelen.

Let me ‘splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

Tags

birthday, christmas break, doctor hoo t-shirt, doctor who, fifteenth birthday, pink eye

How did my first ever real live christmas break/fifteenth birthday go you ask?

Why, (more-or-less) fanfreakingtabulous, thanks for asking!

An example of a birthday spent well.

My birthday, I will admit, I was not something I was looking forward to especially, but once it actually happened I had a good time. The morning was a mix between the realization that I should help clean my extremely messy house and helping to clean my extremely messy house. The afternoon I spent with my friends walking around uptown (basically if somebody ever asks me what I want to do with my spare time the answer is “Let’s go adventure uptown!!”) and at my (clean!) house watching such things as Tim Burton’s big fish (I’ve professed my love for that movie on this blog before.)and playing truth or dare. (which is how I learned that I apparently have nice legs. Hey, I’m not going to complain!)

As for christmas break, it started off well, and got boring after approximately six days. I spent most of my break as an anti-social hermit, hiding out in my room with my best friend the internet. By the end of it I was quite ready to go back to school. Which I was supposed to do today- but seeing as I woke up yesterday with an eye infection (Why hello there pink eye! I thought you were supposed to be an elementary school type of thing?) today was a ‘laze in bed with my extremely unflattering-but-cozy-flannel-yellow-penguin-pajama-bottoms-and-mismatched-shirt’ type of day There may have been some watching of certain Disney acapella mashups. (there always is.)

Good points of Christmas Break:

• Going to see Tintin, which I dressed up for (I make one fine European reporter), for which there is sadly no photographic evidence.
• Adventuring! around uptown (and, yes, you pronounce the exclamation point.) two days in a row.
• Certain acapella disney mashup videos, such as this one:

• And this (not acapella, but most certainly disney mashup) one:

• Clarification that, yes, my life is awesome.
• Actually living out my childhood dream of buying over-the-top amounts of candy at one time in one place. (Long story short, you have to spend gift certificates for Freak Lunchbox at one time. Ten dollars worth of bulk candy is a lot of bulk candy.) The sad side to this story is that being forced to buy ton of candy is not as fun at it would seem to a nine year old me, and since I apparently have no self control the candy was eaten in two days-ish. The sugar crash was terrible.
• Sleeping over at Mozart Nerd‘s house.
• The relief of wearing glasses after over a week of them sitting sadly forgotten at Mozart Nerd’s house. There is a reason the optometrist’s tell you not to wear your contacts all the time.
• The youth group new years fun time out thingy. Despite the fact that it was held at the Elders hall in Macey’s Bay (or perhaps because of?) it was a good time!
• Receiving THIS tee-shirt as a birthday gift from THIS lovely aunt.
• And, while we’re on the matter of doctor who, the doctor who christmas special. Not as good as a new season, but a nice taste nonetheless.

Good evening chickadees!

Kaelen.

Time to play ‘random fact catchup’. Now with extra bullet points!

Tags

2012, bullet points, cabaret music, dream, new years eve, predicting the future, random

As usual, when I’m off the computer and away from the internet I have all sorts of beautiful ideas for blog posts. Really, if I was to post every single idea that went through my head I would have a well rounded, frequently updated blog. Actually, I lie, I would have a odd, updated annoyingly often with short posts that only give you random scraps of mostly useless information blog.

At any rate, this is a  lead in to me using bullet points in a last ditch effort to categorize my thought process in some way, manner, or form.

Here we go.

• I’m coming to the conclusion that I can predict the future through my dreams. Not all the time mind you, but my dreams have been freakishly similar to my life for a couple weeks. A good example would be the appearance of coffee houses, kings square,hanging out with a couple different friends, frequenting the library, and discussing specific subjects with specific people, all of these things which
• These things have all taken place in my life over the last  couple of weeks.
• I feel vaguely professor Xavier-esque.
• That being said, I really hope the whole ‘dreams predicting my future’ thing wears off, because other wise I’m going to sink on the titanic, have my bus stop moved onto a dock, swim in three foot deep water to an island, have my mother attempt to marry me off and  be weirded  out by a pug dog playing video games back stage at the Imperial (the back stage of the Imperial having mysteriously sunk underground.).
• In case you can’t tell, I tend to have odd dreams.
• I’ve been really digging the cabaret genre of music lately. (not the bad-techno and overplayed lady gaga type of cabaret, the top hat, violin and belly dancing kind.)

• It’s New Year’s Eve today. Which I’m perfectly fine with(ignoring the whole thing about the world ending in less than a year.). 2011, on the whole, I really didn’t care for you overmuch. Don’t let the door hit you on your way out!
• I haven’t really thought of any New Year’s resolutions, although if I did they would probably be quite similar to last year’s: to become more peaceful, more creative and to spend more time on the things that matter. If I could add one thing it would probably be to have more patience. (and, yes, I know what a dangerous thing that is to request.)
• Speaking of patience, I’m spending this new year’s eve with my youth group for an allnighter. I’m a little hesitant over it, but having never tried one before I feel I might as well.
• Also on the news front, it’s going to be my birthday in a week. I suppose I could really quit writing that every New Year’s Eve. You guys have probably guessed by now that my birthday is on the same day every year. Funnily enough it tends to work like that.
• Had a sleepover with Mozart Nerd the other day. We knit, we watched movies (we both can lip sync along to the entirety of the Princess Bride) and we ate lots of chocolate. I’d call that a successful sleepover.

I do believe that I’ve more or less caught this blog up. In a random manner, true, but I think that’s what people have come to expect of the majority of my blog posts.

Happy New Years!

Kaelen.

A Noob’s Thoughts on Cabaret. (And A Few Other Things.)

Tags

Cabaret, cinderella, hyperbole, list of pointers for highschool dances, pink guitar, school dances

I already posted my thoughts on the wonderful performance that was Cinderella, but I found a few more pictures from the audience’s view (Yes, it is frowned upon to bring cameras into the theater….shhh.) which I wanted to share here.

The Imperial Theater is such a beautiful place.

The lighting and the camera combined to wash out the guitar, which is a pity, seeing as in person it was a bright baby pink.

Now, for my thoughts on Cabaret. I had been warned ahead of time that attending would probably scar me and cause me to run screaming to my homeschooled roots, never to return.

Well. Maybe that’s veering a bit into hyperbole.

To sum up, as a previously homeschooled girl with absolutely no experience in the world of school dances, this was most certainly jumping off the deep end into the dangerous waters of writhing hormonal crowds. For the first hour I didn’t enjoy myself at all, and had to keep reverting my eyes from…people. And what the people were doing. The last two hours I enjoyed myself for bits of it, after I let go of my dignity and accepted the fact that my friends and I were going to be the small group dancing without touching, in the middle of grinding couples (And threesomes. And foursomes. There was probably even a fivesome started at some point, but by then it was all sort of blurring).

I’ll go again next year.

Next year I will bring blinders.

 

Now, for the relatives, pictures of what I spent three hours on before going to cab. (Am I the only one who finds it odd that we get all dressed up just to dance to bad techno and avoid the couples attempting clothed procreation?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If I had to make a list of pointers for people about to try out a highschool dance for the first time it might go something like this:

• Don’t make eye contact with the grinding people. It’s awkward.
• High heels are painful. Understand that at some point in the night you will probably have to take a trip to the sidelines and give your feet a break.
• When people walk up to you and ask why you don’t have a date take it in stride as a very odd form of compliment.
• The music will suck. It will suck badly. It will suck loudly. Don’t dance near a speaker.
• Pop dehydrates you, buy water instead.
• Be glad that the people at the coat check gave you your coat nicely after you identified as “That one three feet in front of me”, instead of keeping it because they couldn’t find the tag that matches your stub.

I’m afraid this post hasn’t completely brought you up to speed- I’ll have to have a post chockfull of bullet points and random bits and bobs soon.

Toodles,

Kaelen.

 

Christmas:

It went a little something like this.

I hope that your festivities went well, whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, or a Festivus For The Rest Of Us.

Kaelen.

(I promise that a proper blog post with pictures from certain dances and productions will be up soon. Right now I’m too busy fighting off the urge to crawl into my bear den for a long winter’s nap.)

“It’s the Floating Market, silly. I told you already. It moves…”

Tags

acting, cinderella, I-act, Interaction, photoshoots, random, school

Neverwhere. It was recommended to me  (Does it count as an recommendation if they pick the book off the library shelf and shove it into your arms before directing you to the checkout?) as one of Neil Gaiman’s non-mindscarring books.

***

Wow. The show is over. And although I’m sure I say this at the end of every show it’s only because it’s true; I feel like a large part of my life has suddenly been removed.

Our last showing, this afternoon, was (I thought) our best. I find it kinda ironic though, that you spend all this time perfecting a show until it’s just right, then you preform it a couple of times, and then…bang. It’s over.

And there goes your routine of staying uptown in between school and rehearsal, skipping school, eating lunch at the market with friends, and stealing wifi from various uptown hotsposts.

 

In the other I-act shows I’ve done we had our cast party right a week or so after our show, but this time we had it the evening after our final show, which was a matinee. It was nice to know that you were going to see everyone again in just a few hours, but at the same time I feel that if you have the cast party a week or so later it helps to drag out the ‘play mood’ just a little bit longer. Does that make any sense whatsoever?

Anywho, I spent the time in-between the ending of our show and the beginning of the cast party with my wonderful partner in crime, Julia. We got some present shopping done (‘subtly’ buying our christmas presents for each other in front of each other.), and just generally hung out until we finally walked to I-act only twenty minutes earlier than everybody else. (I’m usually in the group that goes to I-act an hour earlier than we need to, since the I-act building is warm, and they don’t mind if you randomly burst out into Shakespearean monologues there.)

During our hanging uptown time we searched out one of the big Cinderella posters that had been sprinkled around uptown so I could take a picture with one before they were taken down.

As we were standing by the poster so I could dig my Ipod out of my bag of never-terminating-depths a random woman and her kid walked up to us, and said, “Hey, good job on the show last night.”

An extremely simple thing to say, but it made Julia and I feel like rockstar celebrities. (How did she know who we were? Stage Makeup.)

 

Also up there with the random encounters, was the old guy who walked up to me as I was eating a bagel, and started talking to me in french.

Him: “something really cool and french sounding which means is your bagel yummy, and also why am I randomly talking to you, I don’t really know, don’t question it, I’m french, our logic is beyond your brain cell’s capacity.”

Me: “uh…….I don’t speak french.”

Him: “You don’t speak french? Frowny face.”

Me: “Uh…..um….Je parle anglais, j’étudie francais sur ma ordinateur.” (note: really have no clue if this makes any sense or not. Google translate seems to like it, and it made the old dude happy.)

After a minute or two of this he seemed satisfied, and walked happily off.

Dear Random Old French Man: you made me feel slightly bemused, in a good way.

 

Alrighty then, I’m going to go drown my end of show sorrows with Neil Gaiman and copious amounts of the Indelicates.