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?!
… and it’s awesome. I recommend you listen to all of these songs.
So I Tried a Little Freddy
1. Grace Kelly by Mika
2. How Lucky We Are by Meiko
3. The Remedy (I Won’t Worry) by Jason Mraz
4. Raindrops from the Sun (Hey Hey Hey) by Imani Coppola
5. Fidelity by Regina Spektor
6. Better by Regina Spektor
7. Everything by Michael Buble
8. Answer by Sarah McLachlan
9. Boys with Girlfriends by Meiko
10. Mercy by Duffy
11. They Can’t Take That Away From Me by Frank Sinatra
12. On the Radio by Regina Spektor
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.
I have a new favorite outfit. Too bad it’s Nicki’s!!
I wore it for my photoshoot for LMPT Round 4, “About Me”. It looks pretty cute for a ski outfit, don’t you think? It makes me miss winter at home. Ski mountains in Nebraska are uh…not happening.
I was almost going to use this picture, but it didn’t have the skis.
I thought it would be cool to make a little “backstage” post about my LMPT Round 3 photo because it was quite complicated. The theme for this round was Line.
First I thought I’d use one of my favorite songs, “Answer” by Sarah McLachlan. So we set up a “photo shoot” and got to work. I put on this dress because I thought it would be cool to kind-of be part of the background.
Then we put down a line, of course…
Next we spelled out my favorite LINE from the song, get it, haha…
But as you can tell, it didn’t really read the way we thought it would. MB thought she could photograph it so it was kind-of on a down-angle and you’d read the words going towards me, but when she uploaded the photos she had to admit they didn’t read correctly. So we switched it, and this was going to be my entry photo…
It looks pretty with the color editing we did, but I wasn’t totally satisfied. If you look at the “WILL” we couldn’t get the second “L” to lay correctly, and some of the letters are so light-colored that you can’t really see them. Plus, my expression isn’t the greatest. Still, we were going to go with this photo until we noticed it looked like I was walking on the line, which is kind-of why I picked this particular shot to be my entry. (PS: I got that by leaning against a doll stand – bet you can’t see it!) Miss B. said something to her mom about this and she just said we should go all-the-way Johnny Cash.
Of course. Iconic and simple. I think part of the issue I had with this shoot is that it was a little complicated. Samantha started going NUTS because she’s obsessed with Johnny Cash. So I figured I’d try to model it after that famous pose he has…you know, this one that was immortalized in the Walk the Line movie poster:
Here’s a picture of me goofing off on set. I kinda like it!
This was my pose…
But for the final transformation, we had to make it all ’50s…very real Johnny Cash.
Do you like it? Which one do you like better? I love that I still used music as my inspiration, and still used a song LINE (“Because you’re mine…I walk the line” – duh!). I didn’t think of this originally because, well, I’m not Samantha, but I’m totally in love with it. What do you think?
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.
I’m not sure if I’m allowed to share my picture yet, or give very many details, but I spent a good part of the evening reliving a part of my life I’m rather proud of, but probably wouldn’t want to relive. Although I was nervous at first, it was actually pretty fun. Why am I doing this? MB let me enter Little Miss Playthings! The theme for the first shoot is “Heroes”. (The theme for the second week is “Clothing”, and I already have that one done too. I finished it yesterday.) When MB saw that, she remembered this online debate on the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition website. Their theme this year was “Heroes” too, and a bunch of people said that none of the people featured on the show were really heroes because they didn’t give up their lives for anyone else. MB was really mad when she saw that, and then she remembered how people have always called her their “inspiration” just like the people on the show. It annoys her. And me, because people have called me that too. And “Hero”. And I suppose Harper has been called too, but we’re not getting along well. Although I’d like to be her friend, we just have so much in common that sometimes I don’t want to confront it.
So I took my shoot, in the way people have referred to me as a “hero”. And I doubt I qualify, but I hope people understand what the shot is about. MB and I hate that point of view because we both are like, we haven’t DONE anything. But if people want to be inspired, fine, I guess… I just hope people don’t misinterpret the photo! If I may say so myself, we did good!
So I got a new dress, Hope implied that I was spoiled (no contest there, really), Hope decided she liked the dress better on her, Hope claimed the dress. Pretty typical story around here.
On another note, I am continually amazed at the religious allusions in 80s/90s pop-rock, such as U2, Peter Gabriel, etc. Most recently, I discovered “With or Without You” has this whole allusion to Jesus being crucified. Even though I’m usually lukewarm on my religion, I really connected to this one. (Sam has been begging me to do something about the “lukewarm” thing, but whatever.)
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].
