THAT IS SO COOL!!!

...is something I find myself saying a lot these days, concerning my high school. The boarding school I went to has undergone massive changes in the past few years, and the newest cool thing is what I received in the mail today:

NMH has a new address as of July 1, 2007!
Northfield Mount Hermon School
One Lamplighter Way
Mount Hermon, MA 01354

HOW COOL IS THAT? "One Lamplighter Way" is sooo much cooler than "206 Main Street." OMG. I am once again jealous of the peeps going there now. They are going to get the greatest arts building ever built by mankind soon, which is what I have been most jealous about recently. It's gonna house visual arts, music, and dance together under one building with state-of-the-art acoustics and floors and exhibit halls and whatnot. Some benefactor donated 10 million or something... what was the number? It was the largest ever.

(Yup, I guess now everyone realizes that the emblem is a "lamplighter".)

reading, singing

I forgot there was a different book I wanted to read, so I ended up checking that one out instead. It is Nausea by Sartre. We'll see how it goes.

And, currently singing "Poor Wandering One" from Gilbert & Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance. I need to figure out acting in musical theater.

Just have to tout someone's horn

Why Avril Lavigne was destined to be a star (live acoustic performance of Nobody's Home):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66MFvu4-VaA
Live performance of When You're Gone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8oWY_0dMk8
(love what she does at 3:14.)

So good, so so so good. And so pretty! As V.Li and I (professional unbiased critics) conclude, Avril is the best live performer (ever).

There's just something about watching her sing, an awe that that sound is coming out of this person and that wavy mesmerizing vampire mouth.

Very shaky

Me singing Innocence by Avril Lavigne. Well, I pretty much belt all of the verses (not chorus), which is really hard for me and is why I'm verging on cracking all the time. I think I do the last chorus best. The bridge sucks! This is one of my least favorite bridges of any Avril song (bridges are definitely a staple of Avril songs), but I love the song overall.

EDITED to add: OK I've made this video private again so sorry it can't be viewed anymore.

to read

Just want to say that I finished East of Eden last week, and it was life-changing. It had a most important, touching, and profound message. But I cannot see myself ever reading it through again due to the length, writing style that was somehow harsh, and not-pretty plot. I've decided not to read Cannery Row, because I want to preserve East of Eden purely in my mind and not distort it with another book by the same author (like you know how authors tend to write about the same subjects over and over again).

So, probably gonna read Cloud Atlas, as recommended by my brother, mostly because of its name (heh). I can just see someone looking at the clouds, like maybe from a "Laputa, Castle in the Sky," with quill and parchment, drawing an atlas of clouds.

Pics from weekend

Arr, as expected, I suddenly went from bored to much self-induced busyness. Other than business, now I'm working on a very large cross-stitch project and doing my youtube singing videos. Argh, it would've been better if these ideas weren't put in my head at the same time. I found out about a website that lets you create cross-stitch patterns for free with an image. I just couldn't resist. It's pretty fun seeing how your patterns would turn out. Here's the link.

Oh and today I walked by Gap again and went in to see if the dress I wanted was further reduced, and it was! So I got it.

We didn't follow the arrow HAHAHA...


Florence's graduation reception. Second year in a row we attended someone's graduation from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

How to Kill 2 Hours

I have been very bored in the past few days. Actually, bored out of my mind. I know, I'll be missing this relaxation when I get busy again. But right now I haven't been busy with work, don't have much social life, don't really have any craftsy projects in the works, and (again) lacking in the area of media entertainment...

Anyway. Very bored. Drove to downtown Evanston. Fed an hour into the meter. Found the origami book I wanted but decided I don't want it. Got distracted by Gap's "biggest sale" (or something) on the way to Dunkin' Donuts. Tried on dresses. Revelation! I do not fit Gap's size 0 dresses?! Wanted one of them (size 4) but it was only discounted by $10. Must pass. Looked at watch. Egads! Must feed meter. Walked back to meter to feed another hour. Walked back to Dunkin' Donuts. Used coupon. The owner/manager is mean but is only mean to me. I've only been there a few times but have tried things to see if they make him not mean but doesn't work. Now he hates me more because I use coupons HA! Got my small iced coffee in hazelnut flavor (they were out of chocolate flavor. Or maybe he just says that to me.). Went to Barnes & Noble and browsed. I love Hokusai prints. Checked to see if the magazine that's gonna have my origami stuff in it is out yet (it's not). Oh well.

Then I went home and listed about 10 books on ebay--which is the most boring, tedious, mind-numbing thing ever.

Library Adventures

My voice teacher has been demanding that I listen to and watch loads of opera. So I finally got my butt to the Evanston Public Library yesterday to check out some CDs, since the NU library does not lend out recordings. It never occurred to me that the public library would have things I would want that a university library doesn't have. I am very excited about this. There's an origami book I wanted to get that they have.

Well, the thing about the EPL, it has an AMAZING sculpture in the stairwell:

From far away it looks like a head, but up close it is a complex mobile of tiny metal objects:

This is the artists' website.

Fruity Oaty Bar!

I've been meaning to get a new apron, since my old one is gross even on the inside. I ended up making this one today:

It's from the Fruity Oaty Bar advertisement in Serenity!! It's an iron-on transfer. I got the idea from a post on craftster.org, so not entirely original. I didn't sew the apron, I bought it at an art store, which is why it's an artist apron and not chef's apron. Also had to buy a new color cartridge, since the one in my printer was obviously out of red. And bought the transfer paper. This just goes to show how much more it costs to make stuff than to buy it at Wal-Mart. I haven't had a high success rate with iron-on transfers in the past, so I made sure I followed the instructions and read tutorials, and YES, SUCCESS! I love it.

You can see the ad in the context of the movie here, although the aspect ratio is wrong in the video, which is really annoying, since I love this scene:

Tuesday thoughts

I want to quit. Singing sucks. Except I love it. And hate it. And can't be without it. I don't need to study it. But when I do I learn. Ack.

Oprah announced her new Book Club book today: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. I read this book about 2 years ago, and it was amazing. Well it did win the Pulitzer Prize. Even Oprah said she is slow in adding this book to the Club since she just got around to reading it. However, I really have no feelings left for Middlesex or most other novels for that matter since I read the one book that I most strenuously recommend, called The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, another Pulitzer-Prize winner... unless you are one of my friends who has an aversion to books with over 600 pages (I think Middlesex is also 600 pages). It is my hands-down favorite.

Right now I am reading East of Eden (coincidentally, it's called "the book that brought back Oprah's Book Club" or something). It was recommended by Stephen Hui. And I don't get many book recommendations so I run with what I've got. The thing about it is the writing's not beautiful, in my opinion. And I don't think I want to read anymore family epics for a while. However, it's pretty riveting, and I'm not done yet... it's a 650-pager. I checked out the book from the NU library, and it's a recently-published (doesn't look like it's been checked out before, non-disgusting) collection of Steinbeck books, so I plan to also read Cannery Row before returning it.

And confession time... I have been very bad. Nothing's on TV, absolutely nothing (um well except reruns, fluff and filler). So we have been re-watching Firefly episodes, and I am crazy infatuated with every character. Also, we rented Slither last weekend--I know, I'm so bad. But Nathan Fillion! And Elizabeth Banks (except we call her Steak Dinner--I guess it's pretty impossible to guess why. Guess right and you get a gold star)!