The Nap From Another Dimension

ok that was really weird...
i went to sleep at 3:30 to take a nap.. my mom knew i was going to sleep. i woke up once around 4 and once around 5 when people called, but went straight back to sleep after each call. i woke up at 6:30 and it's all dark. nobody's come in and closed the blinds (my family is really really into this) or turned on a bedside light... nobodys come into my room at all for 3 hours, and i've been asleep 3 hours. what???
ok, maybe it doesnt sound so weird, but it is! in my house, anyway. i'm usually lucky if i get an hour nap in without being interrupted by a billion people.
i wake up freezing cold. so i got up, turned on my light, closed the blinds, and wandered out into the rest of the house. my mom's gone, my sister's not home. confused. the whole house is freezing, and my stepdad's in the living room talking on the phone and watching tv. no dinner is cooking.
so i return to my room, put on my bathrobe to try and fend off the cold, and sit down to type this.



before i went to sleep i watched the 'gravedigger' music video.. so i went to sleep and woke up with it playing in my head. i've also had 'the zephyr song' by red hot chilli peppers stuck in my head all day, and it was in my dreams, along with gravedigger. i actually ended up rewriting the words to the zephyr song in my dream and singing them constantly. my dreams were very weird but seemed to be repetative and follow some theme. i know i dreamed about doing calculus, making a really good meal with somebody, getting driven to school, singing with a band of strangers, and getting up from my nap and driving my mom and sister to dinner. (food featured prominently, and i felt hungry very often in my dream and when i woke up.. but i'm not hungry now). i also had clips where i was at a house that doesnt exist, but in the dream was placed diagonal across the creek behind my house from me (on what is really butler's land). it was on a huge hill, and because it'd been really cold lately kids were sliding down the vertical slope of the icy grass. i was with my dad and english family, and we went to the bottom of the hill and watched the kids, then proceeded to an icy lake where i almost fell in numerous times while trying to take a picture with my cameraphone.

so yea.. that was my nap. definitely the strangest nap i've ever taken. i'm kind of scared to go out and see if my mom's.. er.. there yet... i feel very out of the loop and lost as to what's happening with my family. whoo.... i need to cut down on the drugs... ; P

I Sold My Soul to HOSA... Again

SOoooo... i spent my weekend in Waco with da HOSA crew from Lamar and Martin, as well as about a thousand other HOSA kids from 'Area 5,' the area our HOSA chapter is in.

School trips are fun. i mean, they're supposed to be. orchestra trips, etc, being with your friends. And hosa is cool, but it really, really needs to take a few tips from band/orchestra. on the band/orchestra trips they know taht the worst thing you can do is leave a bunch of kids sitting around with nothing to do cuz something happened. they know how to keep in touch with each other and quickly make plans and keep things on schedule, making sure that kids never have a second thought to think about boredom. well, for the most part.

anyway, hosa is just a little off from this desired path.

we were supposed to depart at 7:00 on friday morning. we departed at 7:30. this was just people being late and stuff, common for hosa. anwyay, we got to the hotel on time at 9am, so all was good. the hotel didnt have any rooms ready, so we sat in the lobby till 10:30 entertaining ourselves while mrs le and key register us at the competition until, three rooms became ready and we were supposed to leave for lunch, at the same time. so we dump our bags en masse in three rooms and take off to eat. we go to a fancy italian buffet place, where i eat a plate of pure carbs. i find out later we were charged 11$ for this meal... that wasnt worth 11$ at all.

so then we go to some big maison building to watch the opening ceremony. it starts at 1 or something, and lasts a good hour and a half. it's boring as all hell, consisting of us being told, 'you're the future, you're ugly, dont drop out.' which, of course, rekindled my desire for life and renewed my scholastic energy. yeeeaaa..... the end was funny, though, because some girl gets up and reminds us of the social we're all required to attend that night at the ratty high school where this competition is being held. she says what sounds suspicously like, 'there'll be food, booze, and lots of games!' and we laugh.

after this, i get some down time, cuz the voting delegates have got to go vote for the new area officers. there's only one person running for each office, but in true HOSA style, each person's speech has to be listened to and each vote has to be counted and recounted. so the rest of us go back to the hotel, and i and two of my three roommates (stephanie a and sheila h, the third was kammi, who was a voting delegate, poor girl) headed up to our room, 310. we upacked and i discovered free high speed net and set up my laptop, and we ate some british chocolate and discussed different cultures (stephanie's from spain, sheila's from iran, and i'm from britain) as well as computer stuff (yey!) and obsesity. after a while we go catch ourselves a chaperone and walk to the gas station next door to get candy and junk food. i buy 2lemonsalt (YEY!!!), shocktarts, nerds, and get stephanie to split some wheat thins with me. so far all is goooood.

but alas, at 6 the social time arriveth. we crowd on the bus and go to the school. it's a nasty place, about the size of shack... but smaller. they're charging way too much for food, so we dont buy any (though we're hungry). the chaperone tells us we can leave in 15 minutes, so we sit outside (because there's way too many people in their cafetorium) in the cold, and talk. the critical debate team arrives back from their competition fuming, and we found out nobody's even sure if they're registered. we talk more. the chaperone keeps telling us just a little longer we can leave. the food gets put away. we all get pissed. we're tired, hungry, and cold. at 9:30 the bus arrives. we board, and get to pick up some quick food (wendys by myself for me) in a little group of fast food places before getting back on the bus. i take a nap while we wait for everyone to board again and we drive - yup - back to the school. we sit more, pick up people. and go back to the hotel. arriving at about 11:00. i'm veerrryy tired.

ali comes to stay in our room cuz there's some tension in hers, so we've got 5 girls sharing a room. it takes a while to organise everything and we end up going to sleep at about 2. it doesnt take me very long to fall asleep. i wake up often, every time someone moves (i'm sharing a bed with ali and kammi), and wake up many times in the morning as each of our seperate alarms go off for us to go to our respective competitions. i rise at 6:15 and quickly dress in my business suit and pack (nobody knows if i'll get to come back to the hotel before we leave waco, so my roommates might have to take my stuff down for me). i go to the lobby, eat 1.5 bagels and drink two cups of tea, and take off for the lovely competition at 7:15.

we arrive at about 7:45, and i rush to the extemp writing competition, where we start the test at 8:15 due to people being late. the given topic was something along the lines of 'how do HOSA and the healthcare community work together, and why, and why's it good,' etc. but this year they also gave the option of writing on your own topic. so, due to the convo of the previous day, i wrote about obesity in america. it was good fun. at 8:30 a girl came in to take the test. they're not supposed to let people take the test if they come in late, but they did. she left at 8:45 though, so i wasnt worried. i turned in my paper just a few minutes before time was called at 9:15 and headed down to see if there was any chance of a busload going back to the hotel before the appointed 11:00.

i sat with the critical problem solving team and they told me all about their problems with being registered and stuff. it sucked that they'd been screwed over somehow, and i know it was stressing them out. amazingly, at 10, a busload went back to the hotel, and i got some downtime before we had to check out, which was lovely. then we all boarded the bus, picked up some competitors, and went to El Chico (i think?) to eat. if i it wasnt el chico it was that-type restaurant, you get the idea. i wasnt hungry for mexican, since i'm not texan enough, and so i just had a salad and did my calculus, which made everyone think i was weird. the bus went back and picked up the creative problem solving team and they came and ate. we were there forever.

then we took off to the awards ceremony. but when we got there, we found out it'd been postponded from 1 to 2. WTF!!?!? i was pissed. so i sat on the bus and did more calc. then i took my calc into the awards ceremony at 2 and finally at 2:30 it started. we went through a huge long slide show and watching the officers get replaced via a ceremony that was way too long. finally the awards started. finally it was over. finally we took a long drive home.

on the way home the sun came peeking through the clouds a bit as it set, making the whole world turn yellowish. then a rainbow appeared in the dusky yellow clouds, a complete one, the clearest one i've ever seen. it was amazing, and so pretty. i wished i was out of the bus with a real camera so i could take a picture.

supposed to arrive home at 5:30, we pulled into lamar at 8:30. *sigh* then we all quickly went home. and ate. food. damn good stuff.

the good news is, i got first in extemp writing, so that's really awesome. i'm going to state 1, 2, & 3rd of april.

yup

Tired Em Posts

too tired to write much, but i thought i'd inform all who dont know that i'm going to HOSA area competition tomorrow (leaving at the ungodly time of 6:45am) and will be back on saturday around 5:30ish. i'm takin my laptop so i should have internet friday night, and i'll be on my cell phone sn (frzfre666) i'm sure, cuz we always get stuck somewhere doing nothing. i'm taking lots of snacks to munch on. yummy.
er.... not really sure what else to say. cant remember anything that's happened recently. oh yea. i finished 1984, and it's a very, very good book. but it makes me sad, which makes me not like it. but i swear it's haunting me. gahhh!
oh well. i'm slowly coming out of it now. it's a good book.
i like food.

Peeze?

i'll make a nice long post later, but for now while awaiting my cpr test in hosa,
please buy me this? please?
my 2nd laptop's monitor finally went kaboom but i'd still like to be able to use it (plus i havnt finished transferring files yet..)

oh.. and if anyone knows of a cheaper alternative, let me know (or just a one monitor-two computer kvm switch that's cheaper)

A Snook of Agreement

So I feel pretty bad for not posting for... ages. the magical fourth comment came on my last post and the fact that so long after a post i received another comment has inspired me to post again. or something like that. i'll just say that. also the fact that i had to re-type in my name & address to comment on my own site made me think that perhaps it had been too long.
SO! what do i post about now. i could post about the events from the last week: let's see, in summation i went to school and went home, intermittantly sleeping and eating as required.
i could post about some controversial topic: i am god, and i prove this because i often stare at shiney objects. abortion rights should be decided by a foetus-vote. we should lock bush and saddam in a small room with cameras and make a reality show about it.
...
actually, that last one is a pretty good idea.
i could post about a review of something new out there: big fish made me thirsty. some new game is probably has very lovely graphics. some new piece of hardware is probably the shizzle. some new book is probably bringing tears to eyes across america. etc.

but i'd much rather just post about something really random. like, why do they paint all the tree-trunks white in towns in the caribbean? speaking of caribbean, isnt pirates of the caribbean an awesome movie? i watched some tv last night, and it was pretty cool. i watched 'simpsons,' 'law and order,' and 'csi.' of the three, i enjoyed 'law and order' the most. one of the little things in it was about a male stripper who'd been raped by three women, but of course, nobody believed him, cuz obviously, women dont rape men, right? so that was intresting, because of course, it's very possible for a woman to rape a man, and very possible for three women to rape a man.

so life's been fairly busy lately. i spent the early days of the week slaving away to get college apps in on time cuz i'm a procrastinator extraordinaire. got them all in though, now i've just got scholarships and honor-program things to do. OH JOY.
on a personal aspect, life has been fairly busy lately. oh wait.. that makes it about the same. but then, is there ever a time when it seems i can separate myself from some adventure of the soul/mind/emotions or another? no. i simply thrive too much off of the adveture of it all (*sarcasm*). but right now, i'm pretty happy. in fact, i'm very happy. i'm damn skippy, as some might say.
but there's some other things that are going rather awry. some of my friendships are in a muddle, and i fear some feelings are sour, or are quickly headed in that direction. for this, i'm sad, but unsure of where to head about it. if they'd rather i take my confus-ed, spastic, and rather tetanal self far, far away from them (and i dont really blame them) then i dont want to be making things worse by trying to reconcile. but if a bout of talking, explaining (in vain, i'm sure), and trying to make amends will do good, then i'm up for that, too.
for them having rather acidic feelings towards me i can see why, and understand. but on another little note, i think some may have sharp and pointy feelings towards someone else within my little cirque, which i dont understand or see reason for. i'm not angry, just like.. 'eh? what? huh? did i miss something? ahh!' (which about sums up how i often am). so c'mon peeps, direct the anger at meeee. vent towards the cause. even better, talk to the cause, cuz the cause is confuzzled (which about sums up how i often am).

whew. so. i have some sun chips. i love sun chips, they're like wheat thins: damn good. but i ate a foot-long meatball subway (figuring out: 'hey, i cant really eat this much') and so i dont really feel so hot. but still they sit, tempting me. damn goodness. i'm waiting till i'm hungry so i can eat them. *prods stomach to digest fast0r*
shouldnt 'ceramics' have a ç on the first c?
i need more lemonsalt. i have only 1/5, maybe even 1/6 of a little plastic thingy left. that's it. i've eaten all 4 other containers. i'm treasuring this last of my magical white powder, which wouldnt fetch nearly as much as crack if i tried to sell it (or produce as nice a feeling when snorted, i'm sure). so if you want to contribute to the 'buy emma lemonsalt' fund, just buy me some lemonsalt. or tell me a gas station where you can find it, as the FBI seem to be making it harder and harder to locate. probably i will have to set up a black market underground smuggling route from mexico. i can enlist the morenos' help.

OH! and i give you The Washlet!!!! (courtesy of OJ)
as you may also note, i've updated the links, which are located along the right-hand side of the aircraft, and may be used as flotation devices in the event of an emergency landing on water.

/*
Loweaugen: sweet jesus! dark chocolate
Loweaugen: and how
Loweaugen: *eats*
*/

in closing i'd like to say i have a really cool new necklace and really wish i had a cool shirt to wear it with. a related topic would be that i am hopefully going to be getting many, many more geeky shirts soon, as that was my chosen christmas present from my mom (along with a medical dictionary).

remember to thank the little girl in your calculator! (only classes <=2004 in hnrs math will get that).

whoops, there i go.

I Lied!

er.. oops. i didnt go back and finish that.. my bad.

air marshals. god. arg! stupid!
seriously.. think about it: guns. pressurized plane cabin at 40,000ft. DO NOT MIX!!!

here i have to quote james bond cuz he's awesome:
Pussy: We'll be landing in 20 minutes. Do you want to play it easy or the hard way...and this isn't a tranquilizer gun!
Bond: Ah Pussy. You know a lot more about planes than guns. That's a Smith & Wesson 45. If you fire at this close range the bullet will pass through me, and the fuselage like a blowtorch through butter. The cabin will depressurize and we'll both be sucked into outer space together. But if that's how you want to enter the United States, you're welcome, as for me, I prefer the easy way!
-- Goldfinger

there's some controversy about whether the plane would implode, explode, tear to pieces, or whatever, and i'm not sure what is true and what isn't, but it is true that the plane would depressurize very fast, and:
"above about 12,200 m (40,000 ft) and a pressurized suit is essential - without it, breathing 100% oxygen is no longer sufficient to support human life, because the partial pressure in the lungs is so low that the body cannot absorb enough of the gas to maintain its functions. " -- BBC News Article
so you see.. the plane wouldnt have to blow up in order for everyone to be doomed.

so i come up with a solution with the assistance of two british articles this winter. the first one was about flight attendants taking training courses in self-defense, like mini martial-arts. it was accompanied by this picture of an air stewardess in her little blue skirt taking down attempting to take down another air strewardess in a little blue skirt. it occurred to me... why are the only ones protecting us stewardesses in knee skirts? my mental picture of a plane full of passengers detachedly watching the flight crew attempt some high-kicks at a group of hijackers is most amusing. would we really all sit there and hope a few well-placed rams with the drink cart will bring the attackers down? i sure as hell hope not. stewardesses' job is to pour us half a glass of coke and smile through gritted teeth while telling us our bag isn't going to fit no matter how hard we push... not to protect us from nice suicidal people. there's more of us passengers than there is of the hijackers.. unless it's really not your day, but you might as well give up then anyway.
so then i read another article i'd like to quote, but i dont have it.. in essese it was a humourous piece that pointed out that there'd be more good guys than bad guys.. so why dont they let us keep our oh-so-deadly toenail clippers and pen-knives so we can unite and fight them off! if they are so deadly it shouldnt be a problem. heh.

but seriously, guns and planes dont mix. if a hijacker appeared on a plane with a gun (since when did they start carrying guns?), he'd be more likely to shoot it if confronted by another guy with a gun. and if either misses everybody gets screwed over. according to what they say all a terrorist'd have to do to bring the plane down is turn on his cell phone and make a call anyway : P.
i vote we all get to keep our pen-knives and nail files, and hold hands and sing kum ba ya before the plane takes off so we all feel 'together' and can defend the plane against the evil terrorists : P.

yar. oh well.

Schwa!

sup yo.
ahh.. so good to hear such a typical em greeting again, eh?
well i'm sittin around waitin to leave for school, listenin for cake, and despairing over the state of my train-wreck room. i got up at 5:30 this morning no prob, since that's like 11:30am to me cuz of lovely jetlag. been going to bed at the horrifically late hour of 10:00pm - oh my! but since that's 4am to me.. it's all good.
So yup, i'm back. xmas.. well.. it was. but i'm happy to be back. i get to drive the car to school today and then drive myself to wherever i'm going doctors-office-wise.
Flight back was all good stuff.. we got an upgrade to... special world traveller.. economy plus or something.. gives you a little more space and reduces flight-attenance reaction time by 2 minutes. all our bags came through and all that good stuff. i'm unpacked, but my stuff is scattered all over, so my room is.. urgh. *shudders* i dont like it when my room is too messy for me. but i dont really see i'll be having too much time to fix it.. i'm busy doing college crap and school stuff. (oo.. alliteration...) let's see... not too much is happening.. i'll prolly be going to my grandparents sometime but it doesnt bother me too much cuz i'll be getting my yet-to-be-gotten xmas presents from my american family. i'm hoping for a tabers medical dictionary.. *drools*. a car was also hoped for but it'd be my dad to get me that methinks so chances of that are nil now.
it's nice and cold here at last.. muahahaha.. i brought it back with me, arent you happy? i'm glad i didnt come back and go into shock because of the temperature change of about 50 degrees.
hm.. well this post will be finished after school, cuz i'm so happy not to have to rush to post about stuff, it's nice to just talk to myself again.. *sigh* kinda like taking a shower here... so much hot water.. and it's all mine... muahahah! no 6 other people to use it up... yey. and no twins banging on the door telling me to come play with them.. and no dad banging on the door telling me i'm being antisocial.. (in the shower..?) i took a super-long shower yesterday morning and enjoyed every minute of it.. which was lots of minutes.
life is lookin pretty up right now.. it wasnt really when i got back, but it is now. i donno, i always have bouts of weirdness right after i come back.. i think it's just the insecurity of being thrown back into this world i'm so behind in, but now i feel again that i can tackle anything, and am settling back down just nicely.
ooo.. i really am so happy just writing to myself.. little bloggy, i didnt know how much i liked you ^.^
ok.. well i'd better go dash around the arlington roads and try to get meself a parking stick for lamar.. so i'll continue this after l'ecole
vive la... er.. stuff!

memo to self, stuff to write about:
air marshalls
beagle/rover
hartlepool

Life Eh?

hello i am alive.
we had a snowstorm the other night, and managed to get locked out of our house.. but libby climbed through the window and let us in. good thing too.. i can see the headlines: 'family of 7 found frozen mere feet away from warmth and safety!' .. hm.. yes..

so we went to allendale for newyears and watched people dance around with lit tar barrels on their heads and then throw the tar barrels on a huge bonfire. we then came home and built snowmen and had snowball fights at 2am.. good fun.

this morning the snow had melted some and it was raining lightly but we did some sledging and that was good.

tonight we set off fireworks... and yep. that is it.

i return the fourth, as said many times before.. so i'll see ya all then.... lovely school and college crap to get back too.. *sigh*

oh well, c'est la vie, eh?
(thats french billy...)