We just discovered something really cool around here. Miss B. can play Ingrid Michaelson’s songs on piano by ear! Ingrid has really simple and repetitive arrangements, which makes them easy to decipher. (They still sound really pretty though. Simple does not mean it doesn’t sound good! It basically means she plays piano like how a guitar is usually used, just for chords. So all Miss B. has to figure out is what chords she is playing in what pattern and it’s usually the same for the entire song.) I am SOOOOOOOO excited. I don’t play piano but now I want to learn, considering I can’t sing. Sam refuses to sing the lyrics which I think is mean. I think she is just doing it to spite Miss B. though, just to get a reaction. Hopefully!!
She can play “The Chain” and “Sort Of”. When she was trying to figure out “Sort Of” some random guy came up and decided to play this intense arrangement by ear… but Miss B.’s accompaniment was correct. Um, score. Piano hogs are annoying.
So – “Sort-Of”, an example of how Ingrid’s new songs are mastered and basically how she can’t play piano. But, she’s still amazing and that makes it way easier for us. You can hear the notes really well in this video.
OMG LEISH. My favorite disease… MB asked me for a weird favorite so of course I had to bring this one up! Leishmaniasis is kind-of awesome because I can pronounce the name and recognize it and it’s rare AND a tropical medicine diease so doubly awesome. Don’t look it up if you get squeamish.
Soundtrack? The Weepies. Something Sam and I actually agree on. Sam loves folk, and I love weird indie stuff, especially weird lyrics.
If you haven’t been following the Confusing Clues Mini-Album series, here are the links to the prequel, and parts 1 and 2. We are taking pics of parts 3 and 4 today. Yes, the confusing clues are FINALLY answered! Oh, I can’t tell you? Say what?!
So over the past week or so, Miss B. has been learning more about how to use her camera, which is pretty exciting for us. I think our pictures have been decent, but we always had a lighting issue. Miss B. figured out some solutions to that problem: she adjusted the White Balance on her camera so it photographs according to the kind of light we have in our room, she played around with the Fill Light adjuster on Picasa, and most importantly, she was able to figure out a way to use some boxes to steady the camera while it is on the non-flash mode (before, the box shaking had been an issue, but perhaps the ones she used are more sturdy).
Here are our portraits! Personally, in mine, I have to say my hair looks a little messed up, but I just got back from skating practice so you can’t blame me!
Honestly Ingrid… what else throws apples?! I love this line from Ingrid Michaelson’s new song, “Locked Up” off her new album. Okay, it’s not really new to me because Miss B. heard Ingrid play it at her concert last year and showed us a youtube video of the song, but this was its first release. It’s one of my favorites. Miss B. got the CD with some of her friends on iTunes (they split it). It was really exciting; usually we don’t get music the week it’s released.
This week has been… not too great. Well, actually just today. Last night I felt like I was coming down with a cold or something, or maybe my allergies were acting up. It’s definitely a cold. I feel MISERABLE. I went to skating practice because I didn’t have a fever, and Sam totally chewed me out for it. I know my body, okay? I know when I can and can’t skate. I skated fine. I’m used to skating under any condition. It’s basically like if you would be able to go to school or not. I would definitely be able to go to school (thankfully, we have a 3-day weekend) but I wouldn’t feel great. Same with skating, although I guess I can see how you are supposed to rest and not do physical activity. I just conveniently forget that. I’ve never gotten pneumonia in my life, Samantha! Then Piper freaked out because she thought I had swine flu. Which, I don’t. There’s a difference between the way a cold and the flu feels, and plus with the flu you have a fever, which I don’t.
Okay, normally this wouldn’t bother me, but I guess the laying around and contemplating made me even more annoyed. Em and I did have a good game of checkers, though. She won.
And I got another weird letter from Lindsay! What the heck?! This one said “Look to the western sky!” which Sam said was a Wicked reference. I’ve only seen the show once so I didn’t get that right away. Neither of us could think of anything that would mean, though. I don’t know if I like this club thing. All the secrecy/mystery is kind-of fun but frustrating too!
Sorry this sounded negative if it did. I imagine once I feel better, I may be more inclined to be positive. And are we there yet?
Here’s the album of me surrounded by tissue world: Checkers!
Yay, me.
Also, Ingrid’s new album has “The Chain” on it. Again. Just thought I would let you know since everyone in Ingrid-world seems to be obsessed with that song for no reason. She explained in one of the videos that it is a canon, which does explain why it’s so attractive. Still, I’m more obsessed with other songs.
This party was actually supposed to happen a few weeks ago, so we’re pretending it did. But it actually just happened today because that’s when MB had time to take pictures of it. (So weird, isn’t it? Like we’re in a reality TV show.) It was a ton of fun. I love parties and meeting people and dressing up and all that jazz. I’m starting to become friends with Kailey Anema. She goes to Johns Hopkins, and she’s not sure if she’s doing pre-vet or pre-med. But what we actually have in common is our love of water. Kailey says she tends to make friends over that. I’m a sailor, while she’s a surfer, but that’s enough to get us started for hours. We’re both very determined, science-minded people too. The party was very strange. I had to leave early because of skating, so I’ll post the whole story tomorrow. And I don’t want to spoil it, but it was just…weird. I felt like I was being evaluated or something, and in a way I think I was. But who knows?
Here are some outtakes that won’t appear in the album. I just had fun with them. Sam spent the entire time doing her hair (since she needs to recurl it, she was trying to get it to “look” curly one more time so we didn’t have to take about an hour to wait for her to curl her hair while we were shooting stuff…). So while she did that, I tried on dresses. I really liked this one of Ivy’s but it was a little fancy for the party, plus it had long sleeves so it’d be more for fall or winter. (It’s kind-of got a weird glow, but ignore that. My hair was not cooperating with the flash at the time.)
Tomorrow Miss B. is going to see My Sister’s Keeper…and she won’t take me! She said if she took me she’d have to take Harper too, and she doesn’t want to bring two dolls. She brought Kit-Kat AND Baby-Ruthie to Kit’s movie! Ugh! She says Harper should go anyway (instead of me!), since it took them forever to convince me to read that book. I didn’t even want to admit I liked it because they kept bugging me about it. But it’s so good! Oh well. I guess I’ll have to see it on DVD…or pretend I’m boycotting Cameron Dias and The Noncanonical Ending like some of Miss B.’s friends are.
You, if you were sensible,
When I tell you the stars flash signals, each one dreadful,
You would not turn and answer me
‘The night is wonderful’
~D.H. Lawrence, “Under the Oak”
As I promised, here is the link to SeeJoanSew’s “How to Curl Nicki’s Hair” album, which Miss B. used to redo Sierra’s hair. And doesn’t she look good!
Here she is before…
And after…
I also took some pictures of our sleepover!
Me and Ivy
Ivy (I LOVE THIS PICTURE OF HER!)
Harper and Sam, who is playing guitar
Sam the rock star
Ivy and Julie
Harper and Sam
Me and Sam
I also created an album, which I’m going to link to on the side. From now on, I’ll put all the pictures I put on my blog in that album, as well as some that didn’t make it in so you can see more pictures of us. Here’s the link.
Sam was happily playing guitar for all of us, until I wanted her to play some Taylor Swift and she insisted some of her songs were too country for her taste
So we’re actually falling-asleep-tired, but I just thought I’d share some exciting news as a “preview” for my next entry. I’ll have pics tomorrow. Miss B. read an online tutorial (I’ll give the link tomorrow too) on how to curl hair, because she has straight hair and doesn’t know how to deal with those of us who have curly hair. So Sierra has been begging to get her hair restyled, but Miss B. didn’t know how to do it until now. She spent about an hour doing it tonight. (Maybe that’s why she’s so tired?!) And Sierra looks amazing!! I have to say, Sierra has been so nice to me since the moment I came here, and she’s just downright fun to be around. Tomorrow I’m going to take my round 3 LMPT picture too (I know I was supposed to stay on top of things and get them done way ahead of time…but we hadn’t got the logistics for this one figured out yet. We still haven’t really got it figured out, but we figure we’ll run with it). At the moment we’re having a sleepover. And yes, Harper is invited. I had to, because she was in the room at the time. She and Miss B. are really close and they seriously have unspoken conversations. Sam is really close to Miss B. too, maybe even more so, but they don’t discuss things in secret in front of other people. They just joke around and pretend to hate each other, which is funny. The secrecy drives me nuts. Anyway, Sierra joined us because she’d been hanging out with Hope, who’s downstairs trying to deal with Baby-Ruthie. Hopefully Emily will help her now that Sierra’s joined us. There isn’t any more room in Miss B.’s room for any more of our sleeping bags unless we don’t want to all face each other, so Sierra’s just going to have to share with someone for now. Also, Sam is playing guitar. She’s actually really good at it. She’s playing a bunch of Meiko stuff, which makes me extremely happy.
Miss B.’s brother is on a high-adventure camping trip, and I am missing Venturing like no tomorrow. I spent six months with those girls on a boat, you know?! (On a boat, hahaha.) And I really miss the physical challenge of all the things we did. Sailing is not all smooth sailing, you know. (Don’t ask for Rita’s account of me on the boat – just don’t. Let’s just say we really didn’t get along for most of it, and I don’t know why besides we’ve never really been close and I don’t know what got into us when we decided to be cabinmates.) We did other things besides sailing too, like going backpacking and caving, and MB’s brother backpacked today. I nearly died. I’ve been feeling that way the whole week. I can technically stay in the troop until I’m 21, but it’s not like I’m ever in Maine anymore, and I haven’t found any troops here.
So I’ve been talking to a few girls about taking a mini-camping trip in the backyard and doing some minor hiking. Just something to get the energy back, but really relaxed. I’ve been talking a lot to Julie and Ivy, who are best friends and are really cool. They are really into the seventies, so I have to admit I thought they were weird at first. Ivy is really quiet, and they usually stay by themselves unless Julie is organizing some rally or fundraiser for her latest cause. But once I got to know them, they’ve been really cool. Ivy does gymnastics, and she’s almost as intense about it as I am about skating. (Nobody can be more intense than I am about skating!) And Julie’s just so open about everything and really fun. I was thinking about inviting them and Sam, since I hang out with Sam the most here.
Well, Miss B. basically took me aside and said certain-students-who-shall-not-be-named *cough Harper cough* are Girl Scouts and would be upset if I didn’t invite them. And so would Sam because she knows how much they love camping. I wanted it to be a small campout! If I invite the two people MB mentioned, I have to invite THEIR best friends too. I’m so over that. And what, can Sam not go anywhere without her posse?
Besides, I read those Kit-Kat camping albums. I’m so over luxury camping. They would honestly hate my trip. Cabins? NO WAY!
But no.
I think MB has some secret conspiracy to get me to be friends with Harper. I don’t know why. Yeah, she’s fun, but we have way too much in common. It would be awkward. I don’t want to deal with how much she knows about me already without me even saying anything. And just when I was starting to trust Miss B. a lot. If we end up good friends, it’ll happen on our own time.
And THIS ALBUM is why us being friends might not be the greatest idea. I forgot to post it because, well, it doesn’t really paint me in a good light, and frankly I’m annoyed about that. I have a feeling I said too much in this post, but who really cares anyway? I’m seriously annoyed. MB is refusing to let me have my campout until at least Friday, supposedly because she’s “busy with homework”. Mmm-hmm.
Yes, aren’t we BFFs?!
“Oh, the only way to really know is to really let it go…” – Ingrid’s NEW SINGLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And despite it all, I realize I should just let this go. My mom is always bugging me to “have perspective since you SHOULD considering your history” and maybe spoiled me is finally getting some. Yeah, right. I’m sure another awkward moment will come up and bring this all back again.
Sorry I haven’t updated in awhile, but there is truly nothing going on. Besides skating practice, skating practice, and skating practice. But really, what else is new in life? I have a doctor here too, who is not as cool as Dr. Kolberts but will do for the short times I stay in OH. Who knows if I will even be here next summer, if I’m off doing some internship thing…? Anyway, once we got home and unpacked from our 15-hour drive from good old Omaha, we all changed into casual summer clothes and went downstairs to hang out with some other OWT girls. I have to say, I am getting along really well with most of them. I doubted I would, but they are all really accepting and nice. I really like Kira; she’s going to be a college junior next year and is a ton of fun.
One of us is thinking about entering the Little Miss Playthings Contest this year. We’re not sure who yet. Hope really wants to do it but Sam thinks I should. Honestly I don’t see why – okay, I do think I’m a bit photogenic, but some of the themes seem a little daunting. Like “Lines”. I am not a photographer! And “Heroes” – I don’t really have one. But it would be a ton of fun, so I’m thinking about it. Then again, I don’t want to compete with Hope about it if it comes to that point (but on the other hand, isn’t she like the star of *everything*? She’d totally go off on me about being spoiled if I did this, though…).
I’m hearing some odd things from Baby-Ruthie. They have capes, and they say they’re investigating something that requires sneaking around at night. I don’t really want to know what they’re up to. They just got back from Chicago, so maybe it has something to do with that. Baby has told me she’s pretending to be “Narcissa”. From Harry Potter?! By the way, did you know her real name is Ruby? I didn’t. I don’t see why she goes by Baby when she has such a pretty real name.
To "flutz" is to screw up a lutz, basically, and it's the last thing you'd ever want to do at Nationals, Worlds, or Olympic Trials.
However, I have been known to flutz. Even double-flutz. We shall see.
"Flutzing to Vancouver" is a fictional blog told from the point of view of the character Cate Flannery. It does not represent anyone actually involved with US figure skating. For more information on the OWT Girls visit [here].
