Happy Birthday Alison

I’m not sure if any of you have noticed but some of the tenses in these past couple posts have been a little off. That’s because i’m writing them all ON THE SAME DAY. Sneaky, huh? Well, I wouldn’t usually do this but I haven’t been home since last Friday and since there have been a flurry of activities I figured it would be better to post them all individually as to not confuse anyone. Plus, I really just wanted to be able to use more pictures =]

Anyway, last weekend (saturday to monday night) since my parents were in pittsburgh, I just spent it all at Alison’s house. Then Tuesday (yesterday) was Alison’s 18th birthday so I decided to just hang around longer. And then what’s one more day? I slept over tuesday night too because we wanted to sleep on her sun porch since it was raining. We watched tons of gilmore girls, went to the mall, got our picture taken at the place Alison works, saw Indiana Jones with Alison’s family, ate a delicious cake that Hunter made, played bocce ball and did other random amusing things that I cannot seem to remember at the moment. All of that, of course, did not happen in one day. Last night Alison and I saw Made of Honor with Patrick (who happens to work at the movie theater and can get us free tickets pretty much whenever we want, pretty sweet huh? :) ).

This morning was rather interesting. The rest of Alison’s family got up and left around 7 and we didn’t have to wake up then so when 8 am rolled around we got up (keep in mind we’re freezing here since we accidentally left the windows open and there isn’t heat anyway) and realized the door was locked. Mrs. Mariano ended up having to come home from school and let us in --- oops :)

The Real Deal

(picture courtesy of mr. mariano)

We’re done. FOR REAL. No more graduation rehearsals, white shoes or standing in lines. It’s all over.

This morning started off with breakfast with the Mariano’s (and my family, of course). We went to Eggspectations, a spectacular breakfast place that has anything you could ever want to eat.

Afterwards we came home and had a few hours before it was time to go -- oh yeah, we picked up some cheesecake for later. Graduation was at 4 at Merriwether Post Pavilion (a giant stage place in Columbia that is usually used for bands and other big named people who like to come). It turned out to be a really, really nice day. After hanging around to say talk and goodbye to people we headed home for some sushi and cheesecake! My mom, dad and Sarah are headed off to Pittsburgh for a 3 days long volleyball tournament tonight. Jenny and Kristin are coming over in a little for some movies and shenanigans because I haven’t seen them in forever! (i guess that’s what happens when you leave for college...)

I’m working on putting pictures up in a bit from all of these activities and what not. Be patient please, there are a lot =]

Graduation Rehearsals

Whoever thought that we needed to PRACTICE walking across a stage and shaking someone’s hand is just silly.

For the past three days we have done nothing but stand up, sit down and, yes, even practice shaking hands. This of course is all in preparation for Friday, graduation day and as you can see from the picture, we don’t take this seriously. It’s quite demeaning really. Look guys, we just spent 13 years in your educational system, I think we know how to walk by now. Nevertheless, year after year of graduates parade across the stage to “practice”.

But GUESS WHAT?!

It’s all over tomorrow.

All Things Prom

I went in with almost no hopes, which I guess in a way is a good thing because then anything good that happened was a surprise (as pessimistic as that sounds..). I’m not really big on school dances, but I'm really glad I went. Okay so starting with Friday afternoon. Woke up and went to get my nails done. Left for Alison's around 1. Amanda did my hair and make-up (and Alison's too) which took until 4. Our parents took hundreds of pictures. From there we went to Megan Murphy's house to meet up with the other 21 people in our group. It was kind of raining so we took pictures inside. When the limo bus came we all piled inside and headed down to the Inner Harbor in Balitmore for Dinner. Dinner was pretty excellent as well, had pasta and apple pie :) It was a fixed menu which worked out really well for such a large group. After dinner the bus came and took us over to the hotel. The music was subpar, oh well. At least it was less crowded/gross than homecoming. Prom lasted until midnight at which time we all piled back on the bus and went to AMC at the mall for the after-prom party. Let's just say, they know how to plan a party. There were tables with piles of food from restaurants, 4 movies playing (current movies in theaters), ping pong tables, black jack tables, texas hold 'em, money machines, etc. It was pretty fantastic. Played some ping pong with alison, hunter and chris as well as some card games. Of course I lost because it was like 2 am by that time and I was having trouble counting :P I did win a $10 gift card to maggie moo's and $22 from the money machine thing though. Afterwards I went and found Patrick and we saw Iron Man. Pretty decent movie, I'm not sure I comprehend movies at 3 in the morning though. It was good anyway. By the time the movie was over we had an hour left so we just sat around because I was exhausted. Came home Saturday morning around 5:30 (surprisingly wide awake) and fell asleep until around 8:30. I have NO idea what made me get up at that time but I was awake. Fell back asleep until 11 and the rest of the day was kind of a blur,

Alison came over Saturday night (having only slept 3 hours in the past 30 something) so she was a tad wired ;) Played some piano, watched Center Stage and then had an early bedtime.

Anyway, pictures are up on Facebook if you have it.
If not I’ll be getting them on some other site that is accessible to everyone else in the near future. I’ll post that up when it’s done.

Princess Uno

Question: What are our parent’s tax dollars going to?

Answer: Teaching us how to play princess uno!

Yeah, okay so maybe that was not their intention when they first created the public school system but it’s kind of what it’s turning out to be.

Alison slept over last night (yes, it was a school night. no, i did not have any homework). We watched Once (kind of an irish musical i guess?) and gilmore girls and, of course, played Princess Uno! And when we were sitting in stats today with nothing to do-- why not play it again?? Alison claims i’m a failure of an uno player but I promise I’m getting better! I think sometimes I just mix up uno and go-fish... whoops. The rest of the day consisted of a whole lot of nothing; today was the last “official day” of school since we begin finals tomorrow. Painted the senior sign (a board that goes up in the cafeteria every year for the seniors..) during 5th and 6th. Ate ice cream afterschool at the final NHS meeting. I’m currently at Sarah’s volleyball practice being pelted with volleyballs, I guess I should start paying attention so I don’t get clonked in the head.

A Weekend of Celebration

This past weekend was spent in Hawthorne, NJ for a combined celebration of my aunt barb’s birthday, my aunt and uncle’s anniversary and, of course, mother’s day.

We drove up Friday night (a record for the longest time it has taken to get up there: a whopping 6 hours). Stopped in Delaware for dinner at a local pizza place. Saturday morning we woke up and began preparations for the party that night (because what is party without lots of food and christmas lights??) . Saturday night some of my Aunt’s friends from work came (along with our two families) and we had some pretty tasty food! I don’t even think I can remember it all: stuffed mushrooms, asparagus, shrimp, eggplant dip, and pasta from a restaurant called Rocca’s. Not to mention the dessert-- chocolate cake, tortoni (italian cupcake looking deliciousness) and frushi (like sushi but with fruit and for dessert!). Let’s just say there was no shortage of good food. Anyway, Sunday we woke up, hung around in the yard and ate some rhubarb crumbcake (mmmm!). Then we got the idea to go look at some new model houses that were a few minutes away, turns out they weren’t open but that didn’t stop us from looking in the windows! Eric, Sarah and I decided that we would each buy one of the houses and live next door to each other (ignoring the fact that we couldn’t even cough up a million dollars total). They were nice to look at anyway. On the ride home from NJ Sarah has informed me that she has planned out my life and she would not enjoy living next to me because she thinks I’m going to end up with a zoo of children and then make her babysit (haha). Turns out she has not only thought of this but also come up with names for all of my children (i don’t remember any of the names but I was hoping she was joking because they were a tad out there ;) ) I decided I probably won’t be taking her up on her obnoxious name advice in the future but I guess it gave her something to do in the car.

6 AM Dougnuts

Like the title suggests, I had doughnuts at 6 AM this morning. Alison and I have come up with a list of things we wanted to do before I leave for college and one of the things on the list was to get doughnuts from Krispy Kreme right when they opened before school. So we did just that. Seeing as it is located 20 minutes away, Alison decided to sleepover last night so we could get an early start. The alarm went off around 5:15 and we drove over. That place smells amazing.. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many doughnuts in one place. I’m not even that big of fan of doughnuts, they’re okay every once in a while on certain occasions but let me just tell you this was totally worth it. We brought large cups of milk and each got a doughnut (we also got some to bring back for sarah). We ended up getting to school around 6:50 a good 40 minutes before school actually starts so we situated ourselves in the hallway and played a few games of mastermind (for kids, of course, since the pieces are cuter).

Aside from the fact that we don’t do anything in school since we’re down to the final 12 days, a lot of the school is gone this week because of AP testing which reduces work even more. Anyway, in second period we were down to 5 people so Alison and I got the bright idea of bringing in a game. We spent 50 minutes playing A to Z (quite educational, i know). Too bad all classes couldn’t be like that.. by third period I was back to watching Hamlet and “interpreting his madness” through essays. I did spend some time in the darkroom and drawing for a bit though which was good.

Tonight is the chorus concert at school, I haven’t decided if I’m going to go yet. It’s either that or going to the gym so I’ll see which one sounds more appealing when the time comes.

Ketzev

As the year comes to a close, classes seem to become more and more pointless. Of course, none of us feel like working but it doesn’t help that most of the teachers are ready to get rid of us too. Aside from art, where there is always something to do, my day consists mostly of: a) talking to people b)making lists of things i need to do later c) drawing. Quite productive, I know. Not that I don’t like some of the class but I feel that I could be 80 times more productive if I was not holed up in that school all day. But enough of all that, it’s almost over anyway.

Liz’s Ketzev concert last night was FANTASTIC! Ketzev, for those of you who don’t know, is a jewish a cappella group at Johns Hopkins University. I rode down with Liz’s parents and Annelise and we met up with Carolyn, Carolyn’s sister Lisa and their mom. If you ever have a chance to go to an a cappella concert, take my advice and GO! There doesn’t appear to be any videos of them on youtube yet but Liz says they will hopefully be coming soon so perhaps I’ll post a link up here one day.