Day 55: Emily the Strange is one supremely awesome girl

Yesterday morning, I woke up at Sailor Moon Fan Who Is Epic At Drawing's house. She was still asleep, so I took a couple of pics of her sleeping, then went to the kitchen table. I cut myself an apple and started to read the book.

And OH MY FLIPPING LORD is it amazing! At first it was intriguing, then it was very interesting, and then halfway through the book something exciting and dramatic happened - only we have no idea exactly what that exciting and dramatic thing is. Some parts of the book make you wonder if she's dreaming or if it's real, but then you read it again to make sure and yup it's real. So here are thirteen things included in the book:

1. Amnesia
2. A dress with infinitely large internal pockets
3. A ridiculously small beige town called Blackrock
4. Four black cats with mysteriously hidden collars
5. Doppelgangers
6. Letters from a dead woman who appears to be able to predict the future
7. A secret doorway leading to somewhere dark with black lava that burns you but leaves you unharmed
8. A very high-stakes game of Calamity Poker
9. An amazing van that is epic beyond belief
10. Amnesia... again?!?!
11. A legitimately psychic nine-year-old
12. A centuries-old family feud
13. Lots of lists of thirteen

It is FANTASTICALLY good. I can't wait to get my paws on the next books in the series - library, you are gonna get OWNED! I seriously recommend this series to anyone sitting at home, bored out of their minds, with nothing better to do than click the refresh button while hoping for my blog to have a new post appear. It's EXCELLENT.

Day 18: High school coffee houses are pretty awesome

Yes, yes, I am fully aware that this is a day late. Yesterday I was volunteering at the Symphony book sale again. I saw a few people I know again, which was cool - Asian Guy Who Is His Girlfriend's Slave, My Genius Cousin In University (seriously. She's scarily smart. She works in the freakin' Syncratron. If you don't know what that is, Google it. If that's how it's spelled. XD), and Colombian Rice Eater, who I actually reminded to come. Apparently his mom has been meaning to come for years but always forgot, so I did her a big favour by reminding Colombian Rice Eater, I guess. XD He got piano music and a book about the physics of Christmas. Awesome, eh? :D

I got a few books myself. Another few on sewing stuffed animals and dolls, one mini-book thing about 20 pages long that basically laughs at us ladies and our (minor!) obsessions with Shoes, Chocs, Bags, and Frocks. It's actually pretty clever. XD The last book, which shall remain shrouded in mystery until I post a blog entry about it, is called Dancing with Cats. OMG it is SO AWESOME. Seriously.

AW CRAP OFF TOPIC. ANYWAYS. On Thursday night I was at this coffee-house-type-thing at my school, only the tables weren't set up like a coffee house, they were all facing this one corner for the performances. No tables. SAD. Oh well, I GOT CHEESECAKE!!!! :D MINE miiiiine MIIIIIINE mine MINE

Some of the performances weren't THAT great - this one guy supposedly composed his own guitar piece, but I couldn't hear any notes at all the electric guitar's... Reverb? Echo? Whatever. His SHIZ was all set so high I couldn't make out any notes at all. It all kind of blended together. BLAH. However, the hosts were pretty good - the dude created a kind of character for himself, with a bowtie and a really nerdy voice (reminiscent of Singing Actor And SGU Fan's character in the One Acts). A few of the acts were REALLY awesome - Freakishly Smart Person's Singing Older Brother (who, I have discovered, has an absolutely MAGNIFICENT voice) sang this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNsmF9JTpuI Trust me, he did WAY better. SO SEDUCTIVE OMG. <3 Then there was a show choir that sang "525 600 Minutes" (from RENT) and another cool song. They were SO GOOD. One of my friends, let's call him Quiet Smart Guy With Hidden Talents, just did somethin' funky to his ankle and is on crutches, but he hobbled around like a champ and was in THREE different groups, including a saxaphone quartet with Freakishly Smart Person, who also played the piano for the show choir. GOD DAMMIT. HOW MANY THINGS CAN THIS DUDE DO? He also plays the violin. I FEEL SO USELESS NOW. There were some really good singers as well, including this one girl who has a truly epic voice and sang "Perfect" (by Hedly. derp) without any music at all, but then close to the end forgot what came next and whispered "Oh shit!" in shock, but we all immediately cheered for her and clapped because she was so tank.

IN BRIEF: My school is filled with awesome talent, Freakishly Smart Person makes me feel so inferior with his God-like talent in EVERYTHING it's not even amusing, Freakishly Smart Person's Singing Older Brother has a very, VERY sexy voice, and cheesecake is good.

Day 12: I'm volunteering, and it's surprisingly fun (and awesome, of course)

So yesterday, I had to get up at 7:30 in the morning to be somewhere at 9:00. (I guess since I got Friday off, I had to get up as if it was a school day on Saturday. xD) Me and my mother, who I shall call Moomoo (since that's what I call her in real life... seriously! xD), were volunteering at this book sale thing from 9:00 until 1:30 (although we stayed for like... an hour and a half afterwards... because we were looking at books ourselves. xD). It's a fundraiser for the Symphony - actually, it's for the one that we went to go see LAST Saturday. Basically what happens is that people bring a shitload of secondhand books, records, and CDs, which volunteers then sort and sell. We take up this gigantic space in the mall. I've been going since about Grade Four, but this is my first year volunteering. I'm doing it again next Saturday, only we'll be working the "relief shift" - we take over people's jobs so they can have breaks.

Ever since the first year I volunteered, I've always headed straight for the "Handicrafts" section. It's actually pretty funny, because there are all these old ladies clustered around these quilting magazines, and then this punk (and extremely gorgeous, I might add) teenager struts over and starts leafing through the books with a purpose, and a mad gleam in her eye. I look for the sewing books - the ones with patterns and instructions and PRETTY PICTURES OMG on how to make stuffed animals/dolls. Pretty much nobody knows that I like this stuff, but I LOVE making stuffed animals. I have boxes absolutely full of fabric, odd socks, old tights, and sewing supplies stacked up in my room. Honestly, if I decided one day to get rid of it all, half of the stuff lying around in my room would be gone. IT WOULD BE SO CLEAN!!! I even have an entire bookshelf devoted to books I've picked up over the years, almost exclusively from the Symphony book sale, on making these stuffed beastlings.

One of the most fun things about volunteering was seeing the different people looking at books. There were old ladies with fanny packs (which was seriously the first time I have EVER seen anyone wear a fanny pack, not including Freakishly Smart Person's very attractive costume for One Acts), families, little ADORABLE children, and an unsettling number of old ladies picking up VERY steamy-looking romance novels. -_o There was this one guy who bought 3 boxes of books, one at a time, because he's the owner of a second-hand book store. It's actually a rather clever way to stock up for cheap, when you think about it. Also, I saw someone I KNOW picking up books after my shift was done... or rather, he saw me. DUN DUN DUUUUN

So there I was, flipping through the boxes of books under the Handicraft table, when I hear... A VOICE. It said...

"Hey!" OH THE DRAMA! XD So I looked up and who do I see but Singing Actor And SGU Fan! He was holding a few books, and I smiled and said, "Nice shirt!" (We were actually wearing the same one - the t-shirt we got from the musical in the fall. XD) We had a short chat and he showed me the books he had - all rather old-looking, you know the type... plain covers, look leather-bound-ish, gilt print, no pictures. They actually contained several essays that we'd read in English a little while ago, plus a couple pieces written by Hobbes and Locke, two dudes that we were learning about in history a few months ago. If you're buying books that contain things that you've read (or read ABOUT) in school, you know you're doing it right! (Oh, and he offered to buy 1984 off of me if I had it - I didn't - so if any of you are looking to get rid of a copy you own you should give it to him.) I'm actually surprised that he wasn't loading up on cookbooks, as he's a rather big fan of cooking. Oh, and he had a few books on philosophy, including one by Marcus Aurelius. (He was a Roman emperor, once upon a time. xD) OTL Oh sweetie, you're such a nerd... I wonder if he often visits the book sale?

IN BRIEF: Volunteering allows you to see old ladies wearing fanny packs and buying steamy romance novels, and run into people you know in real life, so you should do it.