Longest Best Most Intense Week Ever

So this week is tech week for the festival play. Fondly referred to as H E double hockey sticks (pardon if I've offended everyone), it is the biggest rehearsal week right before the first show. I'm talking at school until ten o'clock, I never seen the sun, and all I can talk about is theater. Sound horrible?

On some level it is horrible, I'm up late every night doing my homework (witness the time of this post) and I don't do any socializing outside of rehearsal...

But at the same time this is the most fun I've ever had! We are a super tight cast, I honestly love everyone! It's fun and exciting and scary and overwhelming all at the same time. Rather than school being the main event of the day, school is that place you go before the real day begins. And it is a long day. But we laugh, we act, we cry, we ice my knees, I get picked up put down, kissed, spun around, laughed at, hugged, sad, happy, excited, scared out of my mind...

So yes, I'm tired, I can't remember the last time I was out of the school before it was dark, and I'd really like to see my friends... but it is so worth it.

Random Musings of a Blocked Writer

The last couple of weeks I've had writer's block. Maybe it's because I've been so busy or because It's not so much that I can't write, as it is that while I can, I just don't feel like it as much. I hate this feeling. But I also know not to push it. It'll come back when it comes back and until then I can write little filler pieces and I can get through my lit homework (wow, that's the second time in two posts I've mentioned lit homework). So enjoy another random compilation, this time of the time-wasters I've been filling my time with!

Facebook... the biggest time waster of 'em all.
Pride and Prejudice... A wonderful book!
Rehearsing... Technically not a time waster- but very intense!
Rereading... All those books you read when you're little are better the second time around.
Bad tv... It's just relaxing at the end of the day.
Thinking... Not doing anything is sometimes the most productive of all.
Doodling... I can't draw, but I wish I could. So I doodle to make up for it.

Thanks for the reminder....

Thank you for reminding me to post here!
I've been crazy busy with this drama festival play (does anyone else make a competition of a high school?) and then I got sick (which I still am) and something just always comes up... But I can delay the lit homework for a little bit to give an update... (these are some general thank yous)
Thank you for change!
I know I already talked about the inauguration but it warms my heart to see some of the changes
President (so great to finally say that) Obama has been making. A couple of days into his presidency my mum was near tears at breakfast because he ordered Guantanamo Bay to be closed
Thank you for reminding me that somethings really do happen like the movies... sort of.
Have you seen Madeline? The live-action version is absolutely adorable. Remember how she has to get her appendix out? Well, today the same thing happened to my friend. Get well soon!
Thank you for reminding me how much I love it here!
A certain homophobic church group is coming to protest my school's Gay-Straight Alliance, Project 10 East. So the student body is holding an anti-protest protest, which the city is completely supportive of!
Thank you for all the spectacular people in my life!
Not a day goes by that I'm not glad to know the people I do!

A Rose By Any Other... hmm.

When my parents lived in NYC before I was born, they read this comic strip by the very funny Lynda Barry. It was called Marlys and centered around a girl named Marlys (mar-LISS) and her friends and family. My dad read it MAR-lees (pronounced as though Marly had a a dog; Marly's dog) and fell in love with the character and the [mispronounced] name. Marlys herself is a spitfire of a girl; she's obnoxious and bossy and eccentric and kind of gets on everyone's nerves. What more could a parent want, right? So when I was born, they decided to name me after that comic strip character but change the spelling to match what my dad thought the name was. Thus, my name was born, and so started a life time of explaining how to pronounce it.
Both my siblings also have out of the ordinary names with more normal middle names. These, my mom says, were given to us so that just in case we wanted something less... weird. While my name is kind of a pain, because about 1 in 10 people say it right the first time (One of my best friends spent a year avoiding saying it because she was scared she'd get it wrong), I would never in a million years think of changing it, not even dropping the s! And if I were to alter something, it would be to give myself a more unique middle name, just so everything would match! My name is a huge part of who I am, it's a story to tell, even when the explanations get tiresome. I always find the "how I got my name" stories interesting. People can shape how I feel about a name too, so names I love simply because of who I associate them with. A rose by any other name would only smell as sweet if we never knew that it had been called a rose!

Obama-Rama!

I promised a piece about names is coming (and also one about hair which I've been dying to do) but today, on my caffeine induced rush, I absolutely have to talk about today's inauguration!

You all probably saw it (and if you didn't go find it online please), so I won't describe it for you. But let me describe the scene in which I saw it in. They crammed a little of 1/4 of my school of 2000 into the auditorium, while the rest huddled around tiny antennaed out dated tvs in homerooms. Now, I fully expected it to be loud and rowdy, as many school functions are; because, well, we ignore guest speakers, a tv projection, even something so momentous would be a sitting duck. But I was so pleasantly surprised! We stood and sat with Washington, we let out our cheers, we went wild with applause, we screamed that we had a black president. And we were quiet. You couldn't have heard a pin drop by any means but we listened.

This inauguration will always mean something to me. But it will mean more because of where I was and the atmosphere I was in. The shared joy and hope made it all the more special.

Coming Soon... To A Screen Near You

(Going for the corny title there)

Snowflake reminded me of a post which I've been dying to do for awhile! Names, names! Having something of a peculiar name myself, I have lots to say on the subject!

However, at the moment, it's snowing, Mamma Mia is playing, The Notebook is waiting, and I had something of a sleep under. All things combined... look for a more coherent post soonish!

Final Thoughts On Finals...

So I am super glad that my semester is almost over. My school runs by a block schedule so, all our classes change halfway through the year and we only take four classes at a time. Huge combo platter, the good, the bad, the ugly. Having fewer subjects at a time is absolutely stellar (the good) . But then, I'm in each class for over an hour, which can get tiring (the bad). And we have to go through the stress of finals and midterms for times total, once now and once in June (the ugly). Okay, well maybe that's not the ugly; it can be a positive. But right now, on the eve of the third day of four days of finals, I'm pretty much done. Today was a half day, which made life a tad easier. But still, I'm dreaming about this upcoming three day no homework weekend! Ah, can't wait! And then we rush right back into school- it's the first day of school without the long relaxing summer and the thrill of "oh did they change over the summer!". Craziness...

And at the same time, we're in crazy rehearsal for the festival play. The festival play is a 40 minute play we put on with just 20 people and 5 weeks; which then gets sent to compete against the rest of the state. It's super fun and super fast.

I'm a little all over the place in this one... But do you schools have drama comps? slash block schedules slash crazy finals?