I Return; Tired, Sunburned, and Eager To Blog!

Hello blogging universe!

How are you all? Enjoying summer, I guess? I'm at my grandparent's house at the moment, and thus finally blessed with Internet access. We only got here a few hours ago, after a stop-and-start six and a half hour drive from Essex, and was then forced to sit through a two-hour discussion on the American education system, like they expect me to know anything about it, from my grandmother. But at least I'm here.

"The Festival"--That is, V Festival-- was yesterday and Saturday. Sorry to brag, but it sort of was really cool....I came away with a sunburned head, beer in my hair, and aching legs but it was so worth it. But I'll be sure to tell you all about that in the next few days. It is way too much to talk about in one post, for a start, and also I'm really tired right now! But, if you're interested, I can talk about the few other things I've done while I've been here...

As far as people go, it's been pretty interesting catching up. I got to see my an aunt and one of my cousins a few days ago, which was really nice. They live way up in the north of England(Lucky them, no sarcasm intended!). When you live with an accent as stereotypical as mine, a Leeds accent can be nearly unreal! My best friend didn't want to see me because she seems to think avoiding people is fun, though I did bump in to her at a local maze and didn't really say much. I saw my three other better friends, though, and they hadn't really changed too much at all, surprisingly, other than a friend's obsession with Lady GaGa, and another friend now sporting a bit of eyeliner. We also spent a few days with a few really good friends who used to go to the same school I did. We randomly met them in Pizza hut on the 2nd day, and their mother has been insisting we come round everyday since! We also went to the first day of V with them, which was cool.

We went to this really cool local pool at one point. For someone who can't swim for their life, I think public pools are surprisingly fun. This one had rapids and slides and everything. And we went to a zoo fairly close by there another day for my sister's birthday, and I simultaneously discovered my extreme distaste for zoos in general. Come on, they're just animals, and we all now that it's all about the young ones!

We got to eat out one of the evenings too, at a faux 50s New York pizza place. Being utterly surrounded by Yankees merchandise is now such a bizarre circumstance for me! It was nice there, though.

On Tuesday we went to Lego Land which sort of is but still sort of isn't as babyish as it sounds, but who cares anyway? The lines there were really huge, plus the first ride we went on was only partly working, and the last one had a fifteen minute delay! But that payed off. Sorry to sound as teenage as possible, but there was a really cute guy in line! A girl in my homeroom once came in after April vacation and told as a story of meeting a "hottie", while in, I think it was, Spain. At the time I was thinking "Um, okay...", and then I discovered the wonders of random holiday boys. <3 Anyway... On Thursday we went into London. It's a nice place to go if you're just visiting, I wouldn't want to live there though. On my request we got to see Abbey Road which was cool until I was nearly killed by a taxi while doing the swinging-arm cross walk thing. And the studio looked nice, despite all the graffiti, very little of which was at all Beatles-related. And the British museum was nice. I got to see the Magna Carta(Signed by King John in 1215, the first written document to say that the even the monarchy must abide to the law, later becoming one of the most famous documents in British history), some of Galileo's early writings, the first book made in England, and a bible made around 900 years ago. And the Beatles had their own section. The first draft of Yesterday lyrics, oh my god! And we walked through Regent's park, my mother suddenly transformed herself into a cricket know-it-all as we walked past a stadium of some importance I couldn't care less about(By the way, England won the ashes, hoorah! I'm such a hypocrite!), we walked past Downing Street, went to Trafalgar square, St. Pauls' cathedral, and walked along the Thames.

Must go now, Mock The Week starts in ten minutes, and it's my 2nd to last time to experience some Frankie Boyle hilarity for a year, which is of grave importance. Comment, Cbox, you know it. xD

Off To Essex Today!

Hey,

Today's my last day I'll be able to blog until...Er, August 24th, I think. Today we're going up to Essex, where I used to live. It only takes about two hours to get there. Where we're staying now is basically borderline south-east and south-west of England, and Essex is still south-east. We'll probably end up getting there so amazingly late though as my mother takes forever and a day to pack. The place we're staying is so pretty. It's a little one-story house on a farm. There's a big field behind the house, too, which I can enjoy unlike anywhere in the US because of the stupid mosquito's. And the farm has a dog, which runs around outside. <3

Since it's summer, I have the liberty of being able to talk about what I'm doing and not appear quite as boring, yes? Yes?!

Okay, Friday we went to a zoo around here(Around here meaning a couple of hours away). I decided to do my really pathetic habit of taking several pictures of each and every animal, nearly all of them blurry, to "capture the moment" even though it's not like it's my last time to go to a zoo or anything. The weather was so nice that day -- Most of the weather's been pretty on-and-off around here, but it was rather busy. Considering nearly everyone there was a mother with a baby, I felt sort of out of place. I also felt pretty sick of bumping into push chairs and hearing screaming in the "Please Be quiet; Nervous Animals" sections. And, I got unnecessarily annoyed with my sister as I normally do it zoos because she takes too long. You look for the animal, you find it, you look at the animal, then if it's doing anything interesting which it probably isn't you keep looking, if it isn't you keep on walking. You don't stay for ten minutes hoping you'll see young offspring doing something adorable! But, it was still fun, and I got a cool wooden lizard painted with the African-style colored dots on.

On Saturday we were supposed to go on a picnic with a couple of my mom's school friends. I'm guessing you know how boring it can be when parents get talking about "the good old days", right(To be fair I'm already talking about my "good old days"!)? It started raining so we ended up eating at one of the friend's houses. Their family is one of those old-fashioned, traditional, somewhat up-tight families, which is basically the dictionary definition of exactly what my family isn't. I remember being four or five years old and going there for the first time, and being creeped out by the hundreds of old portraits, but of course I'm over that now. The parents talked for a few hours about high school, Bruce Springsteen, and many weird and questionably "random" things in between. I was expecting to be sent away with the friend's daughter, a year older than me, which considering I barely know her would be the most awkward thing in the world. I'm so glad that didn't happen.

Yesterday we got to go see our grandparents for a bit, and later go rowing. That was really fun. But me and my sister had one oar each and my stroke was a lot stronger so we kept drifting to the left and bumping into people, but lots of people were doing that so it wasn't too bad. And I got ice cream. Cookies and cream, yum. <3

I heard Paparazzi, Lady GaGa's most recent single, and admittedly I quite like it, even if Lady GaGa is an "Expensive hooker" as a YouTube comment put it. That's what most singers are these days, it seems. It was the only song in the fifteen or twenty songs in the Top 40 countdown I liked(Yes, I did listen to it, for once!). I think I'm gonna get The Fame when I'm back in the US. Of course I could get it sooner but I don't think my mom or dad would be too impressed by the idea of disco sticks and such. See, I'm trying not to make a huge flippin' deal out of this music!

Also, I finished A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain yesterday. I'd got my head around the language, and did enjoy it. Even though the character was really pretentious and annoying, he was witty. I'll talk more about it some time.

Gotta go pack now because I left it way too late. I'll probably be able to CBox occasionally at friend's houses. I'll let you guys in on the summer excitement when I can.

Bye! <3

Shamelessly Stealing

Today I use an idea that was in no way my idea. Credit goes to http://www.hayleyghoover.blogspot.com/ . The chances of her reading this are nearly impossible but I hope I'm allowed to use this anyway.

The Sexy/Unsexy List


Stuff That Is Sexy At The Moment

- Andrew VanWynGarden
- Giant home-made cookies
- This video, even if the points made are somewhat weak




- Blur's song "Song 2"
- Playing tennis with my mom
- My sister's friend's totally adorable dog!
- Canned lemonade
- The Vitamin String Quartet's tribute to The Killers
- Song parodies!
- Lists
- Unnecessary repetition of letters
- Countdowns(Harry Potter comes out in...three hours, 26 minutes!)

And The Unsexy

- Boredom
- My sister
- Mosquito bites
- Delusional Parasitosis
- The drunk high-schoolers who seem to be partying across the road
- My iPod--I'm so amazingly bored with every song I own
- iTunes--It's so amazingly frozen right now
- Phobias in general
- The girls in the Seven Things music video. There are girls who are, like, twelve years old...
- Curry
- Blogging when it's too late....

Enough of that. I shouldnt've started blogging now. Do you guys like it when I do long posts about my day, or would you rather I did more like this? I don't mind, either way. I'm so bored. I've been bored all day. My sister and her friend were in the room with the TV in and I avoid them. They're annoying. They were making a cat condo for the non-existent cat we seem to own. The good thing is we somehow ended up dog-sitting for them("Come drop your children, animals, and whatever else you happen to own off at my house! We feed them, entertain them, and even buy them stuff! It's free, and no matter what, my mother simply cannot say no!). The only person in this house who's good with animals is my dad, and with him at work he's useless(Other than the moment the dog ate a possibly-poisoned ant). My sister may love dogs but she's terrible with them. So my mom was stressed for most of the day, I was bored, my sister was mad at my mom for interfering so much, and thus the friend must have no doubt felt very awakward. The only one who posibly enjoyed themself today was the dog.

byeee xD

And My Plan Is Shattered(And Confusing Nothingess)

I didn't blog yesterday, and thus my 'Blog Every Day During The Summer When Possible' plan is shattered. It was gonna happen. I don't know why I thought that was a good idea. I don't wanna spend 30 minutes to write the same things here every day. And more than that, no one wants to read it. Who wants to read my blog normally, for that matter?





Having to blog every day is almost as annoying as mosquitoes in the summer(Have you seen that Family Guy sketch?). Well, mosquitoes at the moment. Somehow my parents don't consider fixing the mosquito nets so there are no holes to be a top priority so we do have a problem with them. Clearly more importantly, we go out and look at lights and fireplaces and paint colors. That's what we did today. Due to a series of, er, unfortunate events, my sister's best friend and her younger brother had to come round yesterday, and stay the night. I feel I should do the part here of describing how mind-bogglingly annoying they were today, that's what most would do in this situation. But they're actually really easy to deal with. That's good because they have to come around here a lot at the moment.





Yesterday(Flicking between topics here, at this moment, sorry) me and my mom went into town on the hunt for the Mark Twain book I must read. The book store had just about every else he'd ever written. We found my sister's book, though, and now we've ordered the book I need which will hopefully arrive by Wednesday, and if not I'm screwed as far as the possibility of finishing it by September 3rd goes. I'm a slow reader, I know. My sister had spent the afternoon at her other best friend's summer house in New Hampshire, so there was a long couple of hours between picking up the previously mentioned friend and her brother and my sister coming home. I was in a sort of "Should I be entertaining them somehow until my sister gets back?" dilemma. She eventually came back, with half a pizza and three baby mice. They'd found them around their house--They were trying to get rid of the mice via poison, and the babies were all that were left. So they stayed the night, one dead by morning, the other by the afternoon, the third by the evening. They can't survive without their mother, really. They need her for warmth, and mouse milk(Have you ever milked a mouse? It's something I intend to do before I die) instead of the cow milk we were giving them. I got to hold one of them, but now all I can think of is the possibility I caught fleas or some sort of mouse disease .



My sister's friend left early this morning for a synchronised swimming thing. I woke up by the pleasant sound of my dad ripping up the carpets outside my bedroom, and spent the morning in my room, basically. In the afternoon we went out, as I'd said, shopping for stuff around our home. we decided on the light my parents want in their bedroom, among other things. Then we got ice cream--My dad's usual reward for an afternoon spent shopping. The thing with having an accent no one understands is the misunderstandings that come with them can be quite interesting. Unless this place's serving sizing were jaw-droppingly large, the guy must have thought my dad had said something other than the "Small" that he had asked for. I should've brought my camera and taken photos. Damn.

After we came home(And after I washed out the remains of mint chocolate chip ice cream dripped over my hands and wind-swept through my hair) my friend's 2nd friend--The one who gave her the mice--Came over. We had a mouse funeral and under the idea that the friend was upset over the mice, her and her younger sister got to stay. We washed the mouse's old cage and played a rule-less game of badminton(Unfortunately, I got stuck on the team with the youngest child under the idea my age might make me somehow better than everyone else. It doesn't work like that, at least for me). They left at about six. Then at about seven the mother of the first child(Who due to said circumstances had been away from the children for 24 hours) came and had dinner with us. Like parents do, they discussed the Tour De France, the weather, and most things in between. They did talk a lot about school since my sister and her daughter are starting middle school in September. It's weird, when I think about 6th grade...I always think "My sister seems too young for that". I think from being the oldest I just imagine my sister as younger than she is. I can't imagine her doing current events, doing her homework in homeroom, staying up all night finishing(Or, more commonly, starting) projects, or going to dances, or gossiping about the latest dating gossip. Though it's gonna happen. It's weird. Anyway, my mother has some sort of idea that I shall be taking the bus next year, too. It's stupid, yes, but I've always been driven to school by my mom. And now when she stays up all night listening to the songs I bought on iTunes and she's tired by the morning, she thinks she can just send me on the bus. Hm. I don't wake up early, for a start. And, I don't like the idea of sitting on a bumpy bus surrounded by so many annoying middle schoolers, even if it's not for very long. I guess as an 8th grader it's better than being a 6th grader and being slightly intimidated at first, but I just know I'd be up at the front with the little shorties anyway. There'll be a lot more discussion from that with my mother in the near future.

Well, that was ten times as long as it needed to be. Back to nothing. Bye!