Dear Blog...

We've been together for a good two years now. I think that is a good achievement for a relationship between a girl and her blog. We've been through a lot together, but we need to talk.

You see, things change. I have been through a lot in the past two years including going to a new school, making new friends, saying goodbye to things, and dealing with a lot of things that change a person's character, personality, and the way they look at everything.

Throughout all of this, you've been waiting. You've always been there, every time I neglected you, every time I needed someone to vent to, and I thank you immensely for that.

But something has got to give.

What I'm saying is...I'm moving on. I have made a new blog in which I shall record things about future-two-years me.

This does not in any way mean that I don't appreciate you or that you will be lost forever. You can just hang out like I know you love doing and you'll be sort of a history book of my later middle school years. I mean, hey! You were there for my Twilight phase! That's something you should be proud to report ;)!

Thank you so much for hanging out with me. I really appreciate you, because, y'know, you were my first blog!

Well, I guess I'll see you some time soon.

Love always,

Rachel

For anyone who is interested:

That new blog I was talking about, you can check it out here.

I haven't posted anything yet but I plan to within the next day.

The content will be the similar random meaningful musings that were part of the last bit of this blog. Go over if you want and check it out if you want.

Thanks!

Thinking Out Loud

You know, I think I have officially given the up the catch-up game on here and even when I don't post for months, you're getting a post as if this were a weekly blog.
Time for some random musings that I have been thinking about in the recent weeks.

1) I went to see Les Miserables at the Hippodrome in Baltimore City a few weeks ago, and ever since, it has been HAUNTING ME! I loved it and it has been all I think about lately! Every chance my mind gets it has to fill the empty spaces with verses of "A Little Fall of Rain;" fantasies of playing Eponine; and comparisons of the Original Broadway cast Marius, the Marius at the show I saw, and Nick Jonas who sang the part at the 25th anniversary concert. It is extremely difficult to describe how thinking about it makes me feel. I think while talking about it with mom I used the word "tingly." Maybe it makes me feel tingly...

2) While contemplating this evening what I might write in a blog post, I was thinking about letting this blog spread its wings and fly (that was a phrase used in place of an ugly word I didn't want to use: abandon). My first post on this blog was in 2009. Stuff has changed in two years, and I was thinking about making my blogging habits a little more complex. I mentioned in jest a weekly blog earlier, but I think that might be the way I'm going. I would just need to think about something to blog about each week, a theme, a shtick.
I quite like writing letters.
I quite like writing about situations I encounter.
...hmmm...Something to ponder further.

3) I suddenly had the desire to make a documentary the other.
I think it would be about band. I like band a lot. I don't know if I've mentioned it before but I really like band. I can't think of any other subjects to base a documentary on.
*This thought ends vaguely...*not ashamed**

4) After seeing Les Mis, I kind of want to be an actress. Just seeing how talented the actors in Les Mis were just made me even more passionate about musical theatre. Plus my voice teacher is amazing and always uplifting and is so wonderful about saying the right things. I've had a dry spell when it comes to being in shows in the past few years, and she told me a couple weeks ago, "Your time will come." And on top of that, she just makes me feel so good about myself and about my talent and about everything. She really helps instill a belief in myself. I am blessed to have her in my life.


I think four is enough for now.
I enjoy coming back here every once in a while to say hey and talk about stuff that anyone could read without me caring.
Thanks for listening!

Word.

I reread that last post I made a few days ago and maybe I just need to put a few months between posts so I can make each of them good quality posts. I read it and I thought, "That's a good post, I think." Maybe all the time between july and now was just simmering all of the creativity inside me to make that post.
Or maybe I should shut up and post more often.

Tonight I spent the evening at my friend Brent's house, hanging out with a few of our buddies and eating chocolate covered whatever-you-could-find-s and making each other laugh. When thinking about what to make this post on, I figured I should just write about my friends.

**Took a break to watch a YouTube video and realized it quarter after 12. **

My friends have interesting senses of humor. My main group whom I hang out with a lot at gatherings and dinner parties usually entertains themselves by making fun of Eric.
Eric is a tall, fluffy-haired goofball who makes a lot of funny faces and silly gestures that are easily mockable. I guess everyone sees him as an easy target, and frequently I feel like we should take it easy on him, but it's like that train in that movie that came out recently, Unstoppable. Yeah.
Eric is a really great kid and I have no idea why people make fun of him and not maybe me, or I don't know, anyone else in our group. I guess it's because he's just a silly goose.
The main person who fuels the taunting of Eric is Jake. Now that I think about it, it's quite comical because Jake who is around five feet and a few inches tall, most often makes fun of Eric, who towers over him at six feet and three inches. Talk about pick on someone your own size. :D But that's just not how Jake rolls. Eric is easy to beat in free style rap throwdowns (though in some kodak moments Eric's rhymes are pretty fly) and is easily pwnd by Jake's expansive ability to memorize complicated Call of Duty (COD) technicalities.
Jake is a master of many useless talents including, solving Rubik's cubes, making duct-tape wallets, beat boxing, and making percussion beats and rhythms with retractable pens. He always gets excited when he finds a new hobby that he can make Eric look like an idiot with. :D
Jake's useless talent of finger skate boarding is shared by Sydney. Sydney is a small funny person who enjoys chocolate to the point that it makes her extremely outwardly hyperactive. She joins in on Jake's antics and doesn't give up when attempting to land a clean kick flip with her finger board over the net on Jonathan's ping-pong table.
Jonathan, like many enjoys making fun of Eric by making fat jokes (and I'll let you know, Eric is NOT fat at all), talking as if he had a mental illness to him, and "kicking him in the nads." Jonathan is usually the one to encourage a game of "Zombie" whenever we are together. Jennie and I usually stay inside, sit on the stoop and watch as our friends run buy chasing after each other, or help Brent with whatever extensive project he has lined up. Brent is a very ambitious guy who would go further than making a scale replica of his house out of ginger bread, icing, and melted jolly rancher stained glass windows. If you're in Brent's group for any creative school project, you'll definately get a good grade for originality or creativity.
Then, I guess that leaves me and Jennie. We are quite similar people who enjoy melting and swooning over Ben Folds music. Jennie just has a very squeaky laugh which we all giggle at from time to time whenever her laughing fits send her into the next room and into a corner in the fetal position. ;) Overall, she's a good buddy to all of us.
By these descriptions, one should certainly understand the dynamic of our group of friends. Whatever we are doing, all we ever want is to enjoy a good laugh.
At Eric.

Though I have others whom I hang out with, those groups don't have the same perfect mix of completely different personalities that blend together just to have a fun time and make fun of each other.

So this is me, saying hi.
Thanks for listening.

This Wagon Has Three Wheels

Hey remember when I had a blog?
oh wait...
Yes, I know I haven't posted on my blog in an extrememly long time. I'm not going to play catch-up and tell you what has been happening since the last time I posted. I just had ideas for a blog post tonight, so I figured this to be the opportune moment.

Just a quick fun fact before I get started:
I currently, for the first time in a very long time, have no videos in my YouTube subscription box at all. I finally caught up after a few weeks of Christmas bustle.

So, on to the inspiring scenario that I experienced tonight.
My friend, Rachel goes to a different school than I do, so we often talk on the phone, and even more now that we are on break. I called her this evening around 9:00 and caught her right in the middle of Face-time-ing with her boyfriend VIA her iPod/his iPhone. So because Rachel likes to create funny situations, she promptly stuck the phone and her iPod together so we could ALL talk to each other. This was fun at first because I have never talked to her boyfriend before tonight.
It was fun, until Rachel starts muting the phone on my end to say something flirty and lovey-dovey to him leaving me to listen to silence and/or giggles and replies of "Oh nothing" upon the return of the phone from mute.
Also, once her boyfriend stopped Face-time-ing and called Rachel on the phone, I became the secondary conversation. The phone was put on mute more often and funny exhcanges were going down between the two and I would wonder aloud what they were talking about. I was answered by more giggles and fruitless replies.
Finally, I left them to their conversation and went to clean out my formerly address subscription box.
That wagon had three wheels. Can u guess which one I was?
I may sound whiny, but that's just because I was kind of annoyed at the time. I've reflected on this situation since and I've realized that I should accept it because that's just how my best namesake is. I may have been irritated when I was frequently ignored but I just got over it with the help of the thought that I am happy for her. She has a romantic companion who she is happy with and I should be and am glad that she's happy.
One of my other friends described this emotional acceptance as "The Rachel Bond." It's how she is and it may make us mad and it may make us feel bad about ourselves because of the put-aside feeling, but we get over it because we have The Bond and we can't break it.
I'm content with the bond as long as it lets me forgive and forget in situations like these.

I can't promise more posts more often, but I'll know that whenever I want to, I can come to this little blog and say hi.
Thanks for listening.

I Don't Promote Giving Up But...

...I do not find myself making a blog post about travelling across the country every day. Sorry I know you really enjoyed that first post :D.

The other day while driving in the car, I took advantage of the pleasant scenery and the several hours of uneventful traversing by making notes about a potential plot line for a story. I added notes about the characters, changed a few names and wrotelittle memos to myself about improvements. I really think that if anyone else were to read these notes that they would be completely lost and confused. I used some bazaare references that I knew that I would understand, bit may not make sense to anyone else. This could be an advantage for me though. This could potentially a novel to be developed. I never know how far I can take my creativity and I may surprise myself by actually finishing it! I probably won't finish it but here's to hoping. Cheers!

We are staying in Rapid City, South Dakota for a couple of days now and I am really liking the town. There are many Native American-style shops and restaraunts. I bought a nice buffalo nickel necklace at this place called the Sioux Trading Post. They had hundreds of fascinating knick-knacks like this insanely beautiful jewelry and amazing skin paintings.

On our way here we droce through the badlands. They were pretty badass. There were giant hills and cliffs made out of what looked like sandstone. We got some pretty good pictures of them. It was a refreshing change to see rolling hills and cliffs along the side of the road instead of flat farms with the occasional bale of hay and unnecessary amount of billboards for tourist attractions like the Corn Palace ane Senore Wiener's restaraunt.

I will write more about Mt. Rushmore later. The lights are out in the room and I feel my eyes bugging out of their sockeys. Great mental picture I know.
It seems, that you cupcakes are becoming more of imaginary friends than readers. But you still get shout outs! I hope you had a great Fourth of July!

Au revoir!

Truckin': Day 1

Today at 6:30 A.M. me family and I left our home and headed for Illinois.
Our bags were packed and we were ready for our vacation farther west.

My dad made write the time; number of miles on the car; toll, gas, and meal prices; and restaraunts.

I can't really talk about everything in detail (early morning tomorrow).
It was quiet in our car for most of the morning. My mom and my brother slept. I mostly listened to my iPod and stared out the window at the highway wizzing by (I listened to about 6 episodes of Smartmouths).

While looking out of the window, I noticed several peculiar things. I first observed road signs with whimsically amusing names of towns. I then noticed a boat at a gas station that had a very large innertube that had the name "Big Bertha" on which I photographed with my phone. The next was extremely disturbing and made me feel uncomfortable. Obviously there were many large tanker trucks on the turnpikes we were driving on. However, one truck in particular had crude and offensive prases painted on the back by its driver (I assume by the driver). The phrases include things like "flash me," and "show me your hooters." My mom shook her head and the pervert truck driver made a face that I don't really know how to describe. But it was very disturbing.

At one of the rest stops we went to, there were these sections called "Travel Emporium.:" These sections were hardly emporiums. They had things like brochures, sunglasses, lighters, cooling cups, and...lamps with tigers and bears' faces on them? I thought that was completely useless to travellers. How can u imagine a person driving down the parkway, forgetting their tiger lamp and rushing to exit and go to the Travel Emporium! You can see how rediculous it is.

Well, School of Rock just came on TV so, you know, I have to go watch it.
I can't promise a post everyday on our trip but I hope to update a lot!
See ya later, you cupcakes!

Thursday, June 24, 2010: The Day I met John Green and David Levithan

At the moment shown in the picture, John Green was talking about the shirt I was wearing. It featured him with a mustache with the word "PIZZA" under it. He thanked me for wearing his face on my body. It was funny. :D

Below I am going to go through the entire night in which I met John Green and David Levithan.

So we got the book store and went downstairs to the children's section (LOL). There were already about thirty people there and they had their seats and everything. Grace, Alexa, and I hung out in the back until they told us to sit down. Being stuffed with book lovers the place was extremely hot. I was clutching my copies of Will Grayson, Will Grayson and Paper Towns, sweating like a whore in church, craning over all of the beloved nerds to try and catch a glimpse of the entrance in which the two awesome authors would pass through.

When they finally did come out, I was so happy! I was just really happy to see John in person and not just in internet form. David too! I had only see him on one of John's BlogTv shows. I felt kind of bad because Alexa and Grace couldn't see anything. I offered to switch places with them for a little while but they just kept telling me that it was my moment, and looking back now, that was kind of cheesy and funny. :D. But I appreciated it.

The guys first read a scene from WGWG. Obviously, after finding that David was the character Jane, and John was Will, it was hilarious! The scene involved them sort of "professing their love for each other" but in a high school, young adult fiction way. And of course the scene involved kissing which made it even funnier. They did a great job in making everybody laugh. It was a good time.

Next, they let everyone ask some questions. Some people asked about writing processes, for both individual authors and for their collaboration. It was interesting to hear how they designed this novel (in the shape of an X :D) and how they wrote it and shared it with each other. They asked joking questions about how David's chapters don't have any capital letters ("was your shift key just broken or something?" ~funny nerd girl in front of us). Overall the questions were pretty good. I enjoyed them.

Now we are getting up to the climax of the night. They explained the process in which we were to organize ourselves for lining up to get books signed. No one in our area really heard these instructions so we just stood up and faced the front, inching along every so often as people got their copies signed. I was waiting in the burning, steamy hot line, sweating disgustingly, when I look behind me and BOOM! There was Elysa Montfort from the podcast Smartmouths! I craned around someone to see BAM! Penny Gershman from SM too! Two hosts from my favorite podcast at a signing for my favorite author! This remminded me of their episode where they discussed WGWG with John!

The line began to move and then they were right behind me! I heard them talking with apparently another listener. This made me regret not saying hi. I made up for it with a few @replies on Twitter this morning. Anyway, they are talking about NPR or something and they Penny says, "Could you look out there and see if Greg is there? He's wearing a yellow shirt." In my mind I am thinking, "GASP! A third host from SM!" I eventually saw Elysa talking to Greg Gershman, Penny's husband. This put icing on my nerdy fangirl cake.

About forty-five minutes later, we got about thirty feet away and started planning things we were going to say to them. We were going to tell them about a joke that we planned to put on a t-shirt for John but I guess we all just got a little star-struck and froze up. I'll send him an email later explaining it.

Between then and the time we got to the signing table, David made a rest room break and John anounced it standing on his chair. I took a few stalker, paprazzi pictures of him at this time :D. And then, the hallowed moment!

The women at the book store took our names down on post-its, sticking them on the inside flaps of the books so as to prompt John and David on what to sign on the book. Alexa was appointed to take pictures as we got our books signed. Grace stepped up. John told her that Grace was one of his favorite names! They both signed her book and she stepped aside for me. I gave John my big stack of books and he made a few witty comments about the pizza shirt and about how my copy of Looking For Alaska seemed like it had been read a lot. I told them about how I passed the books on to Grace and Alexa. I thanked them and stepped aside for Alexa. She talked to him about how different it was to see him away from the internet. David made a joke saying, "He really does have legs!" We thanked them more and headed out the back door.

And there is the story of steaming hot book signing lines, internet celebrity sightings, and conversing with great authors.

This night really made me happy and I'm really glad I got the opportunity to meet them and talk to them fort a minute or two.

Sorry this is so long. This post was more for me than for you, cupcakes if you're out there somewhere. I don't want to forget this!
Thanks for reading! Talk to you soon!