Hello John, Thanksgiving, and AUs!

Hey world!

I had a full conversation with my new bishop for the first time a little over an hour ago, so that's cool.

I guess one of the biggest things this week is the fact that it was Thanksgiving last Thursday. That means not only a lot of food, but Thanksgiving Break. I tried to not relax too much and get some work done, but it wasn't as much as I was hoping for. (See, I still had quite a bit to do regarding the BYU application's essay questions, and I found out that my last paper for English was due a week earlier than I thought. I'm still wondering if I'll have everything ready for the app's priority deadline, though now I'm wondering if it'd be okay to just wait till the regular deadline... As for the paper, I'm gonna have to dedicate a whole lot of school-time the next few days in order to get it done.)

As per tradition, we ate at Grandma and Grandpa's house at around 3 PM. Cam and Ash were there, along with their mom (my aunt), but no one else from the family showed up. It was still fun, though. (Besides eating, I also got to do turkey coloring pages with them and my sis, and my little cousins showed me how the Poptropica app worked. I got a little mad when I thought you had to make a new account for the app, but then found that you could import the name and appearance of one of your old Poptropica avatars, at least. I'd forgotten what some of mine looked like, so that was neat. I thought it was amusing that all of them still had braces.)

Though I still got pretty full, I was proud of myself for not overdoing it as much as I have in past years... but then we went to Brorange's house, and they offered us more food there. (Broranges didn't get to have Thanksgiving off at his work, so he wasn't there. Mrrrr.) I tried to eat as little as possible, but... with so much food in front of me, I couldn't resist getting a little bit more of something every once in a while.

When we'd finally made it back home, we watched what I believe was called Hearthstone Asylum? *goes to check on Google* Oh, it's actually Stonehearst Asylum. I was pretty dang close, though!

It's based off of "The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether", one of my favorite Poe short stories, so the moment I realized that (it was just a minute before the opening credits said it was based on Poe), I knew it had to be a good movie, and it was. Besides being a really good adaptation of the short story while still having a lot of unique aspects, I was also pleased to see more done for the female character (I think her name was Emily in the movie). I think something that had mildly confused/bothered me in the original story is that the narrator expresses an interest in one of the female patients, but then nothing actually happens with her after that... it kinda made it feel pointless that he mentioned her at all. In Stonehearst, though, she has a much bigger role, and it makes much more sense for her to be there, so I liked that. Love Poe, but ya gotta give respect to the people who make their own good work through Poe. Yes, such people exist.

The day after, we had John over for dinner. He absolutely loves my mom's cooking, and he seems to really enjoy hanging out with us. (He didn't have a prosthetic leg this time, but apparently they're making a new one for him, so he was stuck with just crutches.) I felt a little bad that my dad, as usual, dominated every conversation, and sometimes John would start saying something but then my dad would interrupt, as he always does. I feel your pain, John.

I just so happened to be wearing a Popeye shirt (which I don't wear often, due to it being white), and when he noticed, he went into a small rant about how horrible the plot and characters in Popeye are. Though he was rooting for me getting rid of the shirt, I only promised I wouldn't wear it in public. (I mean, it's a perfectly good shirt!) And, well, since I like to keep promises, I'm actually gonna do that, even though he wasn't entirely serious about that. (Even if his request wasn't serious, though, his despise for the sailor-man is very real.)

He hung out on the couch with my dad for quite a while after we ate, and I just stuck around, paying attention when I was intrigued by their conversation. I had the distinct desire to make something for him, like a doodle on a sticky note or something, but I took a while of just staring at paper, deciding what to do. Since I couldn't think of what, exactly, he'd like drawing-wise, I instead folded up a little origami crane. (Apparently, that's my default present to people, like my mom and teachers?) I gave it to him just when he was about to leave, and he seemed to appreciate the sentiment.

Since I still had a pen with me, I proceeded to try just doodling whatever came to mind for myself. It... didn't work out as well as I was hoping. I kinda had a bunch of ideas all at once, and so it's all rather mismatched. (I was too lazy to edit these pics at all. Sorry 'bout that.)

So it started with the legs, then the bottom of the dress, then the top, then the arms, then the head. Basically, the reverse of my usual order. I'd started with thinking both of how I wanted to draw a pose similar to the copy of May Chang I did in the FMA manga a few years ago (though it's also like a typical Powerpuff Girls pose) and I wanted to draw a girl with a white dress paired with white shoes and black tights. (Girls usually have white tights instead of black and black shoes instead of white, so I wanted to try the reverse.) Since May and the PPG have similar shoes, that kinda just happened. But then, I started thinking that I wanted to do a hi-lo dress instead of the cupcake dress I originally intended, and then I accidentally started doing a woman's figure when I moved up instead of just a girl's, and so suddenly she was older, and then... yeah, stuff like that. Now, it looks kinda like a futuristic Chinese woman who also likes shoes and hair accessories for little girls. In my opinion, anyway.

(I don't even want to talk about what I folded back so you wouldn't be able to see it. *shudder*)

Seeing as that ship crashed and burned, I tried again on the other side, going a little closer to my original intention of reverse-color scheme for a typical girl character. (I was mainly thinking of the Vocaloid Mayu while drawing this.) It went much better, though proportions and stuff are a bit off.

I then tried a side-view for the same girl, and things again went okay-ish, but then her face came out way wrong. Like, it looked like it was for the Wicked Witch of the West. NO.

I then decided to crop out everything but her face... And by the time I'd done that, I realized it would've made more sense to instead just use one picture but black out the face or something instead of what I actually did. Oh, I'm an idiot.

Ignore the black scribbling in front of her neck. That was my attempt to make it look better. Didn't help much.

Besides the horrendous things I did to her poor face, I really only needed to have the legs a bit further back. The proportions are pretty decent, so.

The day after that (yesterday), I had a KF class (my mom had my patches sewn onto my uniform during that, so my uniform's finally complete!), and we later went to a Korean restaurant for sushi. (The wait was long, but the sushi was pretty good.) In between both those things, however, I kinda felt like looking up Wesley Weston fancomics (Wes was mentioned last week), but then a short chain of events led me to instead discovering a Gravity Falls AU called "Transcendence". When I realized just how complicated it was, I wasn't sure I'd have the patience for it; once I found the summary and character bios, though, it became much easier to figure it all out. And now I know I'm gonna spend, like, at least a week going through the entire Transcendence Tumblr page. It is indeed very complicated and more different from canon than any other AU I've found, but it is so far a very cool AU. It's got a lot of feels, but also quite a bit of small headcanons within that are cute and funny. I don't even mind the OCs! Who knows? Maybe I'll find the inspiration to write for the Transcendence!AU myself...

Throughout the week, I'd been keeping "Don't Know How it Goes" by Julian Smith stuck in my head, especially when doing homework, but a few days ago I instead thought of "Just Give Me a Reason" by P!nk and Nate Russ (or whatever his name is), and so I've also been thinking of that "music video" thing I'd come up with for that song a few years ago. I actually remember my ideas very well, but I've mentally been making tiny tweaks to the "choreography". I think I should try to write out everything that happens so that I can't lose any of it when I'm older. Just cuz I remember it now doesn't mean I will in a few years.

Darkrai recommended me to watch a certain Youtuber (8-BitRyan) play Hello Neighbor. I didn't think I'd get hooked, but.. I think I am. For that game, at least. Man, I thought I escaped the "Let's Play" addiction years ago! Hello Neighbor is an absolutely fascinating game, though, so at least it makes more sense for me to be like "I must know what happens next!!!"

It took a while for me to realize, but it's a very pleasant surprise that 8-BitRyan barely swears, and hasn't made any dirty jokes, unlike just about all the most famous Youtubers that I watched a lot back in 8th and 9th grade. He's still funny, but it's the kind of funny I approve much better.

I still keep getting jump-scared, though. Ooooooh, all the jump-scares.

I skipped the first half of the week, so I guess I'll return to that now.

I believe it was on Monday(?) that we realized there were still a few Icelandic foods that my sis had brought with her that we hadn't tried yet. Two of those things were dry fish and pickled shark. The first was a bit weird (and so difficult to eat!), and the second was pretty gross. Just... eugh.

I finally did the Physics presentation... As usual, I could feel myself shaking while talking. I ended up talking really fast because I had a lot of information I wanted to dump, but not the time to do it. Nonetheless, I think our presentation went okay. Man, that was terrifying.

Last thing is that, in Young Women's today... one of the leaders was talking about depression and stuff. She told us how her mom has depression, and how her own YW leaders were very caring, and both of those made me think of how my sis was back in Alabama, and that Sunday after she had left... Though I didn't really get to exactly tell her why, I went to hug her after the class, and we were standing there hugging for, like, 5 whole minutes. I needed the hug, and I felt like she needed it too. She was very heartbroken and teary-eyed she told us about her mom, which I could understand much better than just a few years ago.

Alrighty, that's all! (All of this was written on Sunday except for the last few paragraphs, so pretend I posted this yesterday.) Wish me luck on everything I still have to work on, please! Bye!

ACT Scores, Westons, and the Ol' Dancin'/KF Razzle-Dazzle

Hello world!

Sooo I got my new ACT score on Monday~ I'd been at school, working on one of my school projects (YAAAY stress!), and decided to take a break to check my emails. (At least, I'm assuming that's what happened at the moment, seeing as that is a regular occurrence.) To my pleasant surprise, I got an email from ACT that my new score was in. I logged into ACT, and took a deep breath before clicking on my October results. I was so anxious, because I thought that I might've not gotten a better score, and the money, effort, and stress over that test wouldn't have been worth it. Dude, I even closed my eyes as the page loaded. Once I opened them back up, I'm pretty sure I forgot how to breathe for a second.

It was a 34.

Already, the 31 was impressive, but this is insanely good! Even my math score went up by 2 points, when I was absolutely sure that was the one I messed up! And I got a perfect score of 36 on Reading!

As for the Writing Test, it gave me an 8. Apparently, it is out of 10 points, so that was also pretty dang decent. Oh, if only I could put that instead of having to do essay responses all over again for my college application.

I guess I should mention now that I agreed to apply for BYU, and so began my application on Friday. Though I expected some essay questions, I assumed they would be short. The ones I actually have to respond are not super long, but it's still longer, and I'm gonna have to take a while to make good responses for these. Unfortunately, I don't know if I really have enough time to make responses that I'll be totally happy with by the time I have to submit the whole thing, seeing as I only have till the end of this month, and I have a lot of schoolwork to do! *really annoyed groan*

Anyway, back to when I saw my score. I basically stared at my screen for a full 5 minutes as I processed the fact that that was a flippin' 34 and that flippin' 34 was mine. I have no idea how I pulled that off, man. I was shaking for a while from the shock and relief and happiness. Mostly the shock.

I didn't even tell anyone about my score for, like 15 minutes. I instead- wait for it- pulled out my mandarin oranges from my lunch and ate both as I continued to stare at the screen and freak out. Because, of course, that is a normal reaction.

Once those were done, I finally got up to tell my teacher, who, of course, hugged me for, like, another 5 minutes. Then I finally got around to sending texts to my parents. (Wait, I might've sent the text to my mom right before going to my teacher... Whatever, you get the point.) (The teacher actually sent a Facebook message to my sis, but that apparently never went through. Weirdness.)

My dad had already wanted to go eat out on that day, but my parents then decided to treat the eating out as a celebration of my new ACT score. We ate at a Chinese restaurant we'd never gone to before, and it turned out to be very delicious! Something cool about it was that they serve dim sum at all times (when all other dim sum places only do it for breakfast/lunch hours, and likely only on the weekends). Rather than the usual of going around with the different food items on carts, they just let you order the items you want on the little paper. They take a while to give you your food, but my dad was perfectly happy with that, since it meant they were making everything on the spot for us.

Ironically, one of our fortune cookies said, "If you succeed the first time, try something harder."

Okay, so last week, the lady who my sis was going to work under in Spain basically said "I don't want you anymore". (Thanks, lady.) Seeing as she wasn't going to have an actual job to look forward to, she decided to just come back here after her time in Iceland, which had been her original plan with her Icelandic vacation anyways. She arrived late on Monday. She was looking a lot better than when she had returned from China, but she was still clearly tired. She was very happy to hear that we left some pho (which my mom tried making at home for the first time the day before, and it came out quite tasty) for her, plus we'd bought some extra BBQ pork buns at the dim sum place for her. (Pork buns are always our favorite dim sum item, no matter which restaurant.)

The day after, she was in the mood for Crown Burger, so we got overstuffed on burgers, fries, and shake. ...And then I went to KF. That was not a very good idea.

On Wednesday, there was a special event at BYU- a banquet put together by its math department for high school students and their math teachers. Basically, if the teachers at the school thought you were a really good math student, they nominated you to go. A school could have up to 5 nominated students, and I just so happened to be one of them.

It was actually pretty cool. The dinner wasn't super fancy, but still good. While we finished up eating, they started some presentations: first, one about the programs and stuff you can do if you study math at BYU; second, one about different applications of math, like animation; third, one where the guy was basically saying "What cool stuff can you actually do with a math degree?" There was a really cool demonstration where, just as there are paths from one point to another you could do that would take the least amount of time (1D lines on 2D planes), there were minimal areas (2D) in 3D spaces, which he demonstrated by holding up an open cube (no faces on it, only vertices and edges) and similar shapes and dipping them into bubble solution. The bubble film acted as the areas, and the results were really cool and interesting. I sure hope I remember that trick!

After these presentations, they had students go up (called by school) to take a picture with a big Y and then receive a certificate. They also gave us some BYU Math shirts and other little goodies on our way out.

Though it's too late to add this to my U of U application, I can at least have it on my BYU app. That, coupled with my ACT score(s) and my time in math camp, should hopefully give me a decent chance to come in for science.

I'm still iffy about studying just math, but it's generally not as horrible as people think, and math nerds are awesome human beings!

This is completely unrelated to anything, but I just wanna keep this as if it's actually vital information. Throughout the week, I was reading a Danny Phantom fic from an old FFN friend. I made two fantastic discoveries due to that.

1. This was an AU, in which Danny is actually a ghost when the accident happens, so it's basically the reverse of the original story. (This is my second time reading a fic with this sort of AU, and I absolutely love both.) This Danny had died in 1897, so a lot of things are new for him. One of my favorite things about this AU Danny, though, is that he occasionally uses really outdated slang (like "schmuck"). I was curious as to whether the slang he uses was actually accurate for his own time period, so I looked it up. Turns out it was all indeed correct- some slang is really old, whether we still use it or not. I recognized quite a bit of it, so it was shocking to realize they had said the same things as we say now over a hundred years ago! And then, of course, some of the slang that I hadn't heard of before was sometimes hilarious. I think I'll do a more thorough research on old slang in the near future and start using some of it to see if it catches on (with my friends, at least).

2. There is a fan-made character named Wes Weston that's practically canon in DP, and I had no idea until the author asked if we wanted him in the story. (Apparently, the reviewers had said no.) I looked him up, and found an article that gave quite a bit of detail as to his character and how he came to be. This whole thing is really fascinating! (Oddly enough, there was apparently more romantic stuff about his dad than himself... As far as I understood, at least.) I should also see if there's some good fics that include him and any other fanart and fancomics about him that were not already shown in the article.

So, two more reasons to be happy that I read a fic besides the story itself!

On Thursday, I did a lot more stuff at church than usual... Before the usual YW activity, one of the sister missionaries had hosted a tiny makeup class, and- since I was the only one that didn't really care about seeing her do the makeup- I volunteered to be the model. (At least it turned out they had brought some makeup wipes, so I was able to get everything off. I guess I tried a little too hard, though, since I think a bit of the stuff on the wipe got in my eye. *sweatdrop*) The actual YW activity was heart-attacking the old YW president's door (our presidency was changed last Sunday). Then after that was my mom's dance class.

Something that's making me really happy about the dance class is that everyone is having a ton of fun. Even though some people are having a harder time figuring out how to do the moves, they're still laughing and carefree and enjoying themselves. It feels like everyone is truly letting go of everything that is stressing them out or pulling them down, at least for a moment.

It's because of stuff like this that makes it frustrating when so many people don't want to dance.

I think all that's left to talk about is the stuff from yesterday.

I had another special KF class on Saturday. This one was about being able to withstand very hard blows, basically by tensing as many of your muscles as possible at the same time. The form itself is not all that short, but exhausting because of the tensing and the stuff you do with your breath. The last bit of the form, though, is when you let go of the tension and scream as you do some movements as fast as possible. (New philosophy: It is much better to scream with others than scream alone.)

That, though tiring, I could handle decently. However, people then started getting wooden boards broken over different parts of their bodies (thigh, back, ribs, arm, and throat). Even though I was seeing that no one got really hurt, it was still scary to watch. The only person, I guess, was one kid that went into a pseudo-seizure because of the stress/anxiety of the board hitting his back.

Yeah... I, um, kinda started crying a bit once the teacher directly asked me if I wanted to take a turn after that kid went down.

Lately, it feels like I'm crying a lot, and for reasons that people can't understand completely... and often ones I myself can't entirely comprehend, either.

I felt like such a wimp for basically being the only person who didn't do it, but I couldn't bring myself to participate in that. I was just too terrified. At least no one forced me into it anyways, and my dad didn't get mad at me when he realized how upset I was. He was like, "You know how to do the technique, and that's what matters to me. The board-breaking's just for show."

Ugh. I already started crying again just thinking about me crying before. I really wish that wouldn't happen.

In the late afternoon, there was the ward's Thankgiving party. My feelings are mixed about it, but in general they lean towards the bad end of the feelings spectrum. My dad was in charge of the dance music for the party, but for the most part, people refused to dance. We had to resort to frickin' line dances, and some people didn't even know the line dances! (Since I knew all of them, though, I ended up being in all of them in the hopes that it would help draw more people in to dance. I don't think it worked very well.) People were so weird about the dancing, too. For at least most of the songs, at least one person was recording with their phone, and everyone applauded at the end. I just... what???

Well, ain't it great that, now, everyone thinks I love line dances when I don't? (The only one I truly enjoy is the one called "Cha Cha Slide", and I kinda like "Cupid Shuffle"?)

Ugh. Not my favorite ward party. At all.

Okay, I think that's everything. Wish me luck on everything, yet again. I think I'm supposed to present my physics project with my group this week! *so scare, much terrify*

Four-Winged Pigeons and Sucky Elections

Hey world.

I'm assuming practically everyone in the entire world that has access to the internet knows that Donald Trump indeed got elected to be the next president of the United States.

So, SO badly, I want to be nice to the people who voted for him, but this is testing my ability to love others no matter what. I was really upset this whole week because of this. Dude, I cried on Wednesday. I'm unable to comprehend how so many people don't understand how scary all this is to us. Dude, I'm not an illegal immigrant, nor are my parents or my sister, but I still feel like something bad is going to happen to us by his hand.

I'm a female, a (half-)Mexican, and a Mormon. I wasn't old enough to vote in this election, but if I was, I wouldn't have voted for him.

Those are 4 kinds of people that he and/or his followers have shown animosity to.

Even though I was born here and am half-white, are they going to do something to me and my family? Are they going to punish me because I exist? Is anyone even going to help us, if this happens?

This is what scares us- the fact that not only are people being hostile to different kinds of groups, and are being just as sexist, racist, etc. as Trump himself, but so many people see this going on and don't care. It practically feels like a betrayal, especially since we have seen relatives and old friends that support Trump or think that it's pointless to "whine about not getting our way". (I'm not kidding, someone seriously said that.)

Excuse me?

I am not part of the anti-Trump protests, and can't agree with them if they get violent, but this isn't pointless. This isn't frickin' whining. Families will be torn apart; the economy will go down the toilet; so many more people won't be able to walk down the street without being physically or verbally attacked. The equality that people have fought for in this country for, what, over a century? That is already being destroyed.

As far as I can tell, Trump is a bad person. One who makes others become bad people too. And the ones who aren't straight-up bad people are led away by their own ignorance. Just with his campaign, he's made the country regress who knows how many years. If he makes it to the moment he officially replaces Obama (which he'll likely achieve, even with all the backlash and protesting), the Trump Regime will only make things worse.

Like I said, this has really made it so much harder to keep a positive disposition about everything, and it really sucks. I don't like feeling like this.

And I don't like fearing my own country's leader. He's probably gonna act a lot more like a dictator than a president. He already emulates Hitler, after all.

All I can think to do at the moment is try to remember what I'd sent Carter the night he texted that Trump was about to win. I was only half-asleep and incapable of anger, but I was still able to feel pure shame and disappointment.

Me: ... I'd been praying that the least-worst candidate would win and ruin our country the least, though I admitted I was pretty sure Trump wouldn't be that person.

But, well, since he's basically won... I dunno, maybe it's a sign that Clinton would've been worse, somehow. Or maybe in the near future, we'll realize that just about the worst thing we think can happen to this country happens, and in the end everything was okay. At this point, that's what I can hope for- that this is just to prove that what we think is the very bottom isn't after all.

That's about as close as I ever got to being optimistic. Well, besides hoping that he was seriously just making all of it up to get the presidency and doesn't follow through with absolutely anything he'd promised.

*deep sigh*

This is a very depressing topic, and I've already talked about it with a bunch of people throughout the week, so I'll change to what else happened.

We had a cardiologist appointment, where I did the dreaded exercise test. (That test seriously sucks, in case you ever wondered. I never even liked treadmills in the first place...) The doctor officially decided that there wasn't anything actually wrong with me (would've been nice if you said so the first time around, Doc), and was even hesitant to give a doctor's note, which is required for me to turn in exercise logs instead of take normal PE at school. At a normal school, I guess I'd be less of a poo about it, but it's much more of an inconvenience if I do it here- plus, I already finished them, dude- so I really needed it. He did, though he was still kinda iffy about the whole thing.

What I didn't understand was that, apparently, my results were a teensy bit above average for them. I lasted a minute-ish longer on the treadmill than usual. Does that seriously count people who are healthy? I can remember so many times in PE and self-defense club that I lagged behind most people. Though I can agree that I do better than people who have lung issues or heart issues or whatever, I don't think I'm at the average. They need to clarify what the heck that was even supposed to mean, cuz I refuse to believe what they seemed to be telling me.

Well, whatever the case, I got to finally turn in my PE stuff. I'm gonna check if my GPA's still good, and hope that I can get around to the rest of my Financial Lit assignments before the semester ends.

For the first time, I went to KF on Wednesday, rather than Tuesday or Saturday. Suddenly, some people I'd never seen before were there. Even more sudden, there were a lot more people than I was used to. More than the previous Saturday, and a whole family had been taking a trial run then. (Most of the family was here again.) It was fun, but also kinda uncomfortable to me. I liked having less people before, even if one of the reasons is only that there's more space for everyone to practice when it's not cramped. I'm hoping that my usual times haven't suddenly gotten so cramped either.

On Friday, my mom and I went to my aunt's house for three more episodes of Hasta que te conocí, which is the name of the series about Juan Gabriel. I think we're near the end now!

You know how I mentioned crying earlier because of Trump? (More specifically, I told my mom I wanted to say much of what I actually wrote earlier in this post directly to Trump's Facebook page, but she told me not to, fearing that doing that would make me one of the first targets, if he or his followers ever wanted to go searching for people to target. That made me cry.) Yeah... I sort of cried later, partly to do with him again. Really, I think it was kinda more like three things.

One is just the stress I've been dealing with. I only got but a short reprieve from my heavy to-do list last month. I've been getting less sleep, and my eyes and/or head hurt a lot more often than they used to. The fact that it was harder to focus in school because of a certain president-elect certainly didn't help matters.

Two was that I was feeling pretty indecisive about where else to apply besides the U. That's yet another stress in and of itself.

Third was... well... as you might've noticed, I wasn't only upset about the Trump situation itself, but how it was making me think, feel, and act. I was a lot more bitter than usual, as much as I tried to not be. I was not able to think about how good people are, only thinking about the bad. Even worse, when I realized this, I started thinking that Trump might've been turning me into a bad person, too, or making me more like how I used to be in 8th grade. (How I would be on Facebook, FFN, etc. was often not very pretty.) While there was a lot of things I liked about 8th grade, that was one aspect of my personality that I'd tried to leave behind in the past. To feel like it's crawling back into me is terrifying.

I told my mom this stuff when I was about to go to bed, making me cry all over again con enjundia, and she seemed rather shocked by the third one. If she'd been on Facebook years earlier, though, she surely would've understood what I meant. (Speaking of, I don't think I've hidden those old posts on my timeline yet. I really need to, cuz I'm just so ashamed of that.) When she got over it, she said that I was still better than that, because I was actively trying to not be mean. I still don't think that's enough. I'm not going to be happy with being bitter, whether I'm fighting it or not.

By the time my dad came around, all I could come up with to explain my crying to him was that I just couldn't relax lately, and I've kinda been beating myself up a bit.

At least we resolved a little more the second reason today, and I'm gonna be praying even more than usual to be calmer and be able to get everything I need (and want) to get done without exploding.

(The people who said senior year was the best and most chill look like total liars to me right now.)

At least something really cool happened this week, considering how sucky things usually were. Yesterday, I went to Science Day at the U!

The first class/workshop/whatever was some undergrads telling us about how they got to where they were now, how they got to do research, and what they were researching. They told us about serpentinization, how plants and animals chemically defend themselves (the manchineel tree,  "manzanilla de la muerte", employs at least three different ways intended to savagely kill caterpillars), and some stuff about mutating worms.

The second was about studying animal genetics- specifically, pigeons. Trust me, it was a lot cooler than it sounds. (I was also happy to hear that the people in animal genetics helped those in human genetics with their findings and technology, and vice versa, so I could help advance more than one kind of genetics no matter where I ended up working.) I found out some fun facts about pigeons, learned a bit of how they study genetics in actual labs (I mean, that's what I intend to do, so SCORE!), and actually feel like I might have found a lab I'd want to be part of, when/if I go to this university.

The "Four-winged pigeons" in the title is because of the discovery they focused on for this class/lecture/whatever. They'd been trying to find the genes responsible for whether pigeons have scales or feathers on their feet, and found that the feathered feet appeared to actually be caused by the normal (scaled) feet gene being overrun by the gene that puts feathers on their wings. Thus, their feet were basically being turned into a second pair of wings.

It sounds totally crazy, but you see the feathers some of these poor pigeons have, and they're literally the exact same as the ones on their wings, and sometimes just as long.

The third was about forensic identification. The subject matter was already pretty interesting, but it was made so much better by the guy that was actually teaching. He was a total jokester, and had a lot of different experiences to tell us about beyond the main information. He made us smile and laugh a lot, even though he was freaking telling us about dead bodies!

At different points in the day, I was pretty sure I spotted two or three kids from my school, but what freaked me out a bit was that I'm pretty dang sure I saw one of my friends from 7th grade. I had no idea what to do!

Look, I already have a hard enough time keeping up with old friends, because once we stop talking, I kinda feel like I should just let them remain part of my past. My friends from 3rd grade and Beka are practically the exceptions- and even then, I rarely send them messages or anything; I only get all hyped up if I get to see them in person.

This was one of the friends that I thought just didn't want to hang out with me anymore. It hurt when I finally accepted that as fact, and I'd therefore decided that I'd basically return the favor.

I somehow didn't ever expect to see her ever again, despite still living relatively close to my old house and school. Yet here I was, seeing her within the 540 kids that attended this event.

I honestly stared at her a bit, trying to figure out whether it was really her. I'm pretty sure she glanced at me, surely feeling my gaze, but I have no idea if she'd actually recognized me or not. The moment still left me shocked and a bit anxious. It didn't even last long, because just a minute later I glanced back around, and she'd disappeared.

Yeah... I'm not sure what to do. Should I be attempting to start up a friendship with her again? Or just pretending it never happened?

Last thing that happened this week was that there was this year's Young Women's in Excellence (or whatever that's actually called). Weirdly enough, they did one event for the young women in the whole stake, rather than each of us doing it within our wards. And instead of having the Young Women coming up to talk about what they'd done throughout the year, then having refreshments, they served us dinner, then gave chocolates to the girls that had done stuff in their Personal Progress. (I wasn't one of them.) Dinner was lasagna.

'Kay, I guess that's everything... Well, besides this pic of the moon. Of course, my phone's camera sucks at taking pictures of the sky, just like any other phone. I did my best to edit it, though, so the second should look cooler. Just a little bit.

PPG for Halloween! MSA and Many Movies!

Hello world!

Halloween was pretty fun at school. I was part of a group costume: the Powerpuff Girls! I was Blossom, my sister was Buttercup, and her friend was Bubbles. We took some pictures together, and actually took a few with a fellow student who is quite tall and had a doctor's/lab coat on. Seeing as we're all pretty short compared to him, he really did look like the Professor.

Few people could really tell I was wearing a costume, despite the bright pink eyeshadow my sis put on me, and the red bow on the top of my head. I've desensitized everyone from being surprised by my dresses, especially the ones from Hot Topic. *sigh* But still, some could tell, and people could definitely tell when we were all standing together.

This reminded me of when I was in 8th grade and made up Buttons, the orange Powerpuff. Her hair was brown, wavy, and in a side part (I raged when I realized that all the PPG have middle parts!). The more embarrassing part is that, since I was into nekos back then... she had cat ears. She needed something on her head, and I obviously couldn't use a bow!

When my sis was saying PPG she thought fit me the best, I was thinking, "Pretty sure Buttons, but she isn't canon, so I can't say that." *sweatdrop* (I found that I talked about Buttons in a post in May 2013. Dang, dude.)

I dunno if I've mentioned a multicultural thing going on at my school? (Probably not.) It was basically the first event done by the Multicultural Student Association, a new club at the school in the process of getting all its permissions to be an official club. I was basically thrown into that by the hand of my sister (as far as I know) without her actually asking if I wanted to, so I have to admit I wasn't very happy about that... A bit hurt, too. I still am, actually.

I had to help them with making their posters and setting things up and (sort of) running one of the tables when the actual event happened on Wednesday. I don't mind it as much now that I know the event was pretty fun and quite a success (though I felt rather grumpy and unwilling to talk afterwards, maybe cuz of all the socializing), but when I ended up stuck with them for the second half of my day on Monday (Halloween!) with their rather last-minute preparing... I wasn't super chipper about the situation.

They didn't really inform me nor any of the other helpers as to what was going on, either. They were never like "This is when we were planning to prepare this," or "Oh, do you know what you're gonna do? Please try to have that done by tomorrow," or anything. At all. I'm pretty sure they'd forgotten we existed.

For those reasons, plus maybe a bit of feeling uncomfortable around such loud girls, plus even some other unidentified reason, I have to honestly say I'm not the biggest fan of the club leaders or whatever they should be called... And I feel really bad about it because I'm usually considered so nice and I don't like making a bad impression on people. And, well, I don't want them to be like "She doesn't like us at all", because feeling like someone doesn't like you sucks, no matter how close you are to them. I just am having a hard time figuring out exactly how I feel about them, and I kinda need to do that in order to start letting go of the mild grudge I think I have against them...

It doesn't help that my sis was then saying that I should ask for an official title in the MSA so I could put that on my college applications, but... I didn't have the heart to tell her that I rather dreaded working with those girls longer than I already have. I managed to tell my mom later, though, so now she's not bugging me about officially being part of the club too.

Speaking of college applications, I finally sent one to the U on Friday, with help from my parents. Now I can think of one or two things (mostly math-related) that I wish I put on the application... I think there might be a way to revise the application before the deadline, so I'll check on that and ask my mom and dad if I should add that stuff if I can. But still! It's in, and I don't have to worry about it (that much) anymore!

Earlier that morning (Friday, I mean) was when my sis left for Europe... Now I'm wondering if I've mentioned that either. Okay, I probably have... probably.

*goes to check*

Woah... I don't think I did!

Okay, so she's first visiting Iceland, then maybe Denmark and England (or maybe even some other place- the middle part of her trip isn't set in stone), and then beginning her job in Spain as a private English tutor.

She made it safely to Iceland, and is hopefully enjoying her time so far. (The girl she's staying with posted a picture of them together, and they practically look like identical twins! It is ridiculous how close their appearances are... Yep, an Icelandic stranger looks way more like my sister than I do.

The day before she left, we went to eat at her favorite African restaurant, though we brought along one of her good friends. (He's the one we've gone to some Latin dances with.) I think I liked it more than I used to... And I already liked it quite a bit. It was pretty nice to eat together there, even if Modern Family was being a little loud on the restaurant's TV.

I've gotten most of my English paper done, though I'm still a little worried about it... It seems a little harder to talk about a social issue in a purely informative essay, since that's the kind of thing that you just automatically add your opinion to when talking about it. It was the most interesting topic choice, though, so I stuck with it, and am trying to work out the bias the best I possibly can.

I did my blue belt test in KF yesterday, and passed! It was about as scary as the yellow belt test, except I had to do more. Wooo. Just need to do the required questions for that level and I receive my belt!~

We watched Kung Fu Panda 3 together later that day, which was pretty fun. Apparently, my parents actually liked it! We've actually watched quite a bit of movies this week, actually; my mom likes romcoms, so I ended up watching a few with her (weird, right? Me, watching something romantic? I basically just watched everything but the kisses), plus we found some Dreamworks shorts (including some that were specifically Halloween) based on Shrek, Monsters vs. Aliens, and Megamind (all of which are movies I really wanna watch again soon!). We also watched a few Disney Channel movies (Geek Charming and Princess Protection Program). I ended up seeing quite a bit of stuff I just don't normally watch, huh?

Oh, and duh! My dad and I watched Doctor Strange at the actual movie theater right after my KF class and test! That was a pretty dang cool movie, and some parts are sooo trippy... My dad was saying that it was great that they got Benedict Cumberbatch to play the part, since he's just so darn likable, even when playing a rather arrogant character. (Fun fact: One of the characters is named Wong, and it turned out the actor's name is Benedict Wong! So not only did they use his real name, but he just so happened to have the same first name as the starring actor! That was pretty amusing, especially since Benedict is not a common name at all, as far as I know.) I was mildly frustrated that he was doing an American accent, though, since he has such a nice British accent naturally.

Okay, um... I can't really think of anything else, so I guess I'll end here. Please, whatever you do, DON'T VOTE FOR TRUMP! It's gonna be Election Day in a few days, and we participated in a Nationwide Fast for it so we can know who to elect and stuff. Me, personally... I just want the person least likely to absolutely mess our country up to be the one elected, whoever that is.