Talking With Josh

Today was the last of three matches in three day's time. Needless to say, I'm pretty much exhausted. I lost both singles and doubles today, but I'm okay with it. I actually like stopped caring in the middle and I think I made the other team mad, but it's okay because i was having a crappy tennis day anyways. But finally after the longest, ugliest match I've ever played, I got to come home. After talking with my mom about some life issues, I got a text from my friend asking for a blog idea. And then it hit me, OH MY GOSH! I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH BLOGS YET!. Yea, just like that too in case you were wondering haha.

Almost as soon as I got on Blogger, I got on Facebook as well. After becoming a fan of a few random things, I started talking to one of my friends who's gone off to college. And we start talking about how much homework we have but that we don't want to start because we'd rather talk to each other. Once I told him that my homework was to finish up my blogs for English, he told me to blog about talking to him, so here I am. Usually our conversations are extremely deep with the rare, "hey" and the unique "what's up?". But it's okay because we're really cool. He tells me that college is not what it's made out to be, and I tell him, well, to suck it up! But other than that, we're just good friends who have this need to vent on the other via chat. It's always kinda cool because I'll be online and the little box will come up with a "hey kay" to which I must respond "hey josh". I know, we're probably the two most creative people in the entire world, but we're still pretty darn amazing. Anyhoo, I think that's enough blogging/venting/pondering for one month. Stay tuned next time to read about something probably slightly more exciting.

Gotta Love Disney

So I have this thing with Disney movies: I'd rather watch them than almost any other movies. I'm not so sure why, but they just seem to have more wholesome story lines most of the time, and there's usually no perverted jokes blantantly in the script. But one of the cool things about the older ones especially, is the extreme talent in the animation. I was watching Sleeping Beauty the other day and granted, it's not very good by today's standards, but when it first debuted in 1959, it was pretty incredible. The expressions on their faces, the music with the drawings, and just everything else was just so cool. I mean, dont get me wrong, technology and animation have come a long way since then, but there's just something about that old time style that really gets me. The music was composed just for the movie, each character's voice was hand picked and beautiful, and it really got the message out to the audience. I don't know, I guess sometimes I wish that the quality of the older movies continued in the newer ones. Oh well, I believe that Disney will always hold a special place in my heart for creating classics like Bambi, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella.

Gone with the....Sharpie?

My brother is in seventh grade at the middle school and has this crazy teacher. She made them watch Gone with the Wind and do a huge project with it: 2 songs that dealt with one of the themes from the book, 2 newspaper articles that dealt with a theme, and then a recreation of some part of the movie. Although she gave them a few weeks to do it, she continually handed out daily homework to complete. Naturally, my brother procrastinated until Sunday night before it was due.

This brings us to the fact that my brother wanted to recreate the scene where the little girl dies after her horse fails to make the jump. Of course, they wanted to use my old Barbies and play horses. Well, for some reason, 99.99% of Barbies are blonde. The little girl's hair was a dark brown nearing on black. Instead of doing the normal thing and making people stretch their imaginations, my brother as well as father told me that I was to color the doll's hair black with....a sharpie. Yea. So I sat there with my awesome sharpie and started giving the Barbie a color job. A few problems with this arrangement:

1. Barbies have thick, long hair in like a bajillion layers. So after you color the top, it looks like she's an emo Barbie with a reverse peek-a-boo hairstyle
2. After holding and twisting the doll so many times, the sharpie eventually winds up on hands where it then proceeds to stain any other objects the fingers touch, such as couch, clothes and random body parts of the Barbie.
3. When sharpie gets on a Barbie's face, spit doesn't wash it off so well.
4. Since spit doesn't work, acetone/nail polish remover is the next choice. Too bad it takes ALL of the paint off the doll's face.
5. Barbie winds up with no eyebrows, so then a brown eye pencil is needed to sketch a couple right above her blue eyes

So basically, I spent most of my Sunday giving Barbie a color job. Despite a couple of problems she actually looked really good and you would never be able to tell that she was actually blonde. Maybe that's a new career choice for me!

Match of Wills

Finally, tennis season has started (officially). This week we have three matches in three days, and I'm absolutely exhausted. In the first match against Owensboro, we lost our doubles match, but I pulled out an 8-6 win against the coach's daughter. Then yesterday we went to Hancock County where I won my singles 8-3, and was really excited about that. But the awesome part of yesterday, came from the loss in doubles.

I'm not sure if many people know this about me, but I'm an extremely competitive person. Like really. So as Samantha and I were playing our doubles match, the girls across the net were continuing to smash us and it just really was getting on my nerves. So I start serving a game and announce the score as 30 all, and the chick on the other team said, in the snootiest way possible, "Are you sure? It's 15-40." So then I was really angry, we were losing 0-4 and she was getting all mad because the score I had was different than hers. But I held my ground and we finished the game. As we went to switch sides, she walked up to the net and snarled, "You were wrong about that score, it was 15-40." Of course I had to retaliate (though it wasn't a very good one), "Oh look you won the game anyways, it's not like it matters now." We lost that set 1-6.

But the best part of the whole match was breaking that jerk chicks serve twice! To define the phrase, "break her serve": Usually in a tennis match, the person who is serving has the advantage and wins the game that they serve. Whenever you win the game that your opponent serves, then it is said that you "broke" their serve. Anyways, she was really making me angry because a) she was beating us, b) she was being a snot about it, c) I was not going to let her get away with it. So I was returning a serve and she was at the net, and I absolutely nailed her with the ball. The serve was moderate, so I gathered all the strength I had and hit it as hard as I could at her face. She barely had time to get her racket up, but it was a bad shot and we won the point. While she served she kept choking so it made her mad, but me happy :). Then when I was serving, I missed my first serve so I was going for my second one when I noticed that she had scooted up anticipating an easy ball. So I thought, "Oh you think that's going to help you?" and then I hit my second serve almost as hard as the first, and got her flustered. Then, she served, and usually I need a few seconds to get calm and ready to return the ball so I turned my back on the net. THEN she had the audacity to call the score and start her toss while I was still turned around! I was like really? I'm not ready yet OBVIOUSLY. So I made her wait a few more seconds and she got mad at me. But I mean seriously, the girl was a jerk and I was not going to let her walk all over me.

After the match I started thinking, and I realized something: the match had not been one to see who had the most talent, or who had the best ball control, no. This match was a test of wills, and I had won. So it didn't matter that we'd lost 1-6 3-6, we'd gotten her angry and made her play our game instead of hers. So we had a small victory and took more away than a mere loss.

Ideas Lost

It's so bumming when you cant thing of anything to write about. I love the idea of blogging and spilling my thoughts onto paper (well, onto a website, but paper sounds better), but some stuff I would rather not let in the whole world in on. Like, I could write about some of my deepest darkest secrets, but then they wouldn't be so deep or dark after I let them out. So I guess I'm going to have to continue writing about trifling things.

It seems like I always get my best blogging ideas when I'm out doing something and I have no computer near me to jot them down. Then, after a while once I've finished whatever it is, I've completely forgotten about blogging. After that I usually hop on facebook and talk to some friends until I realize that I have homework that's due first period and convince people to let me get off and get to work and go to bed. So this is how the end of the month creeps up on me and I only have 2 of 10 blogs completed!

Summer Scheduling

So I've been trying to plan out my summer for the past couple of days and my conclusion: I will not have a life. With GSP, Governor's Cup camp, Ace camp, church camp, and my cousin's wedding, there is hardly room left to do, well anything.

I guess most of this depends on the fact of whether I get into GSP or not, which I won't find out for a while. Since it's five weeks long, I would been gone from June 20-July 24, June 26-July 30, or June 27-July 31. My cousin is getting married in South Carolina on August 5th, but my family is going down early. I just learned that we're going down on July 31. So basically, heres how my summer will go.

• June 14-18 Church Camp in Tennesse
• June 20-24 Camp for Academic Team in Missouri
• June 26-July 30 Governor's Scholars Program in Kentucky
• July 31-August 6 Cousin's Wedding in South Carolina
• August 11-First day of School

Can you believe it? If I get into GSP I will literally not have a life. Isn't it sad? Well, anyways, I've been planning this for a while and I've realized that I need to have a blog soon so I don't fail English. I guess I'm just going to be all over the country, and I will hardly be able to get a good tan :(.

Third Wheel Syndrome

So basically, it seems that everywhere I go, I'm the third wheel. I know that sounds really cliche and that you probably don't care, but I just wanted to share this thought. High school, whether everyone will admit it or not, is usually all about finding a boyfriend or girlfriend to prove to the world that you truly are cool, and that there are people out there who like you who are not your mom.

Once you find this person (even though it may only last for a couple of weeks), your whole life seems to be happy and rosy and everything wonderful. Every morning you see them in your classes, talk to them at lunch, and talk on the phone until the wee hours of the morning. Unconciously-or maybe not so unconciously-you leave all of your friends and completely cling to this person.

There is a ton of problems with this, but one major one, or at least the one that I deal with is, being that friend who's hanging out with you that you don't really notice. For instance, I say, "Hey, let's go to the basketball game tonight, " and they say, "Okay, I'll call John and we can all go together." Because that's exactly what I want. You and your boyfriend are going to be talking the entire time to each other and only look at me if you happen to notice that I'm not really into the game. Sorry, but it's just not fun to think that you're going to get to spend time with your friends only to find out that there's someone else coming and you get the boot. :(

So I'm just saying, if anyone was wondering, three is not company. But it's okay, I can make it by myself. I'll be a unicycle!!!!

No More Volleyball

Normally, hearing that phrase would make me sad and almost begin crying, but not anymore. I've decided once and for all that I'm done with volleyball and that I won't play for the school anymore. For the past three years, I've had the priviledge of playing with and developing relationships with a lot of girls that I would never have met or gotten to know if I hadn't played. But now it's over, and I'm kind of happy about it.

I started volleyball as a beginner my freshman year and then played junior varsity my sophomore year. It was a blast and I loved the girls that were on my team, or well, most of the time. Sometimes I would come home crying from practice because they'd been mean to me, but others, especially after tournaments, they were my adopted sisters and we loved each other to death. But this past year, something happened that influence my decision. My parents had been wanting to go to Hawaii for a long time, and they wanted to make sure that we were all old enough to remember the trip, but still young enough to go as a family. Well, the time where all seven of us could come for the lowest price was right before season started, when we were doing two practices a game. I talked to my coaches about it and they realized it was out of my control, but I wasn't going to skip Hawaii for a sport. They said that for a little bit I would play on the JV squad, but then they would move me up after a few games. One problem: they never did. I spent the entire year as the only junior on the JV team. And this year, you've seen my summer schedule, I would be stuck on the JV team forever because I wouldn't make it to one day of conditioning. So, I've decided to let the other senior on the team, have her senior year all to herself. She's devoted her entire life to volleyball and she deserves the chance to celebrate alone. So basically, volleyball's over with and I'm not too sad about it!