I know why I'm sick now

So I finally got to the doctor's last night, and discovered that I have a sinus infection and an ear infection.  Well, that explains a lot!  So anyway, I'm on antibiotics now and though I still feel like I'm living in a balloon and I've finished off not one, but two boxes of kleenex, I feel much better.

I'm going to bag groceries at Cub Foods today, yet another band fundraiser.

My cousin proposed to his high school sweetheart this week!  At Disneyworld!!! (they live in Florida)  It's so sweet!  See it here.

Anyway, I'll probably be cutting up a lot of t shirts this christmas break... I'll post pictures.

gtg- got to get the house clean for Christmas!

Merry Christmas
-Haili

Remember the reason for the season, and as I figured out as a young girl: J comes before S, even in the alphabet (J as in Jesus, S as in Santa, if you didn't know, which you probably did...)

I am soooo sick... yuk

yeah, so I have this super nasty cold right now and my ear is all stuffed up and congested and I've blown my nose so many times it's raw from all the kleenex.  I know what they're talking about in the Puffs commercials now... I feel like I've swallowed a bucket of nails and they've lodged in my throat, and my head is throbbing...

I had to play french horn in my band concert last night in this condition... I made it through the first 4 songs all right, but the last one, The Great Locomotive Chase (listen to a recording here) which happened to be my favorite, I barely made it through.  My dad thankfully zoomed the camera away from my face because even he could see I was having trouble.

We also were wearing these t shirts at that point that said "Band Rules" on the front, and "Brass Drools" on the back, since we say the back row of our band (the brass section) is a "splash zone" It had a picture of one of our trombone players who is moving away on it, and we surprised him by wearing the shirts under our concert clothes (black sweaters are great at hiding t shirts... this one won't stay normal for long, I can guarantee that.  Just give me a pair of scissors.... mwhahaha)

Well, on a happier note, I'm officially done with college for the semester, have gotten my books for next semester (and am such a nerd I'm already reading them... just the stage and screen ones though).  I'm taking Intro to creative Writing for Stage and Screen (how convenient, Script Frenzy is next semester...hmm), Small Group Communications, Astronomy, Intro to world music, and relationships, marriage, and the family... should be interesting.

Anyway, I should get going so I can sleep this cold off... see ya'll and have a merry Christmas! (and pray it snows here... there HAS to be snow on Christmas!!!)

Shamelessly Quoting Tangled

So, I'm sorry it's been a while.  I'm officially seventeen now.  And I have a funny story to tell you.

So, as my family and I were sitting around the table, finishing up lunch on my birthday, my dad says that it's my birthday and that I'm seventeen.  To which my little brother Lee says something to this extent (bear in mind that he was completely serious) "But I thought your birthday was last year?"

To which I couldn't help responding, "That's the funny thing about birthdays.  They're kind of an annual thing!"
My sister, Elli, is obsessed with Tangled, so this was pretty funny, being that the whole family practically has the whole movie memorized.

Then just tonight, I was messing around with roll of wrapping paper, hitting my birthday balloon with it and having way too much fun doing it.  I managed to hit Elli by accident and she said, "wrapping paper is a dangerous weapon."

to which I shamelessly replied, "Wrapping paper - who knew, right?"

Yeah... I'll write more later.

Hasta luego,
Haili

my life isn't terribly exciting at the moment

anyway, I guess that's kind of a lie.  It's kind of exciting.  Yesterday, we had to evacuate the college where I go to school (I'm PSEO) because of a bomb threat.  So I sat in the Performing Arts Center for 45 minutes while they brought in the dogs and everything.

The semester is over!!!! YAY!
Now I just have finals... *sigh*

anyway, on a more positive note, it's my birthday tomorrow!  I'm going out to eat with my family at Old Country Buffet, hopefully going to Joann's to get some music fabric so I can entertain myself this winter break (I'm going to try and make a quilt for my bedroom... which I should be cleaning right now... oops)

We're having a Midnight Truffle blizzard cake from Dairy Queen.  I'm excited, though I had a flash back to CakeWrecks when I asked the girl who took my order (I think she's named Emily- that's what she wrote on the order form) for "Happy Birthday Haili" to be written in purple and she wrote down "Happy Birthday Haili (purple)"
Hopefully my cake says "Happy Birthday Haili," with no (purple)

Thanks to Rebecca who reminded me how much I love midnight truffle blizzards and reminded me that there are better blizzards than Oreo Cheesequake.
Chocolate coma, here I come!

And very special thanks to my friend Mia for the early birthday present!  I've already written in that gorgeous journal (purple - my favorite color!  However did you guess?  I wonder if my purple coat, purple gloves and scarf, and purple and silver tennis shoes had anything to do with it... hmmm)
thank you! :D

I'm doing a terrible job of listening to myself when I tell myself no.

No, Haili, you cannot go and waste time on TVtropes.org even though they're very interesting.
No, Haili, you cannot read your novel.
  or Ellyn's
  or Elli's,
  or James Dashner's
  or Chris Baty's
  or ANYBODY'S, for that matter
No, Haili, you cannot go on a youtube karaoke session
No, Haili, you cannot watch Lee play Gus's skateboard game on the computer
No, Haili, you cannot practice "By the Limpid Stream"
  I don't care if you have lessons tomorrow and still don't have it memorized.  And I don't care that you need to practice
No, Haili, you may not fill out that Advanced Character Questionnaire for Calista.  I don't care how many good ideas you've come up with for her.  You have to wait until August when you can do Camp NaNo.
No, Haili you cannot ignore the fact that you need to make dinner
No, Haili, ignoring your paper will not make it go away.
Do you want to have to stay up late tonight?  You're sick, remember?

I don't remember.  But... 
Don't deny it, Haili.  Get the paper done and I'll stop nagging you.
Fine! 
Off to the stupid logical fallacy full land of my boring paper about genetic engineering and blah blah blah...
*sigh*
sorry peoples, I broke my promise...

I hate my paper

Okay, so I'm really really sick of this stupid term paper. It's about genetic engineering and it's totally ineffective. It's supposed to be an argumentative research paper, but I keep finding myself arguing the opposite point!!!!! I just need to settle down and wrap my mind around it… and maybe get some cheesecake. I don't know. I need to stop avoiding it because it's not going to just go away. I'm really distracted now………. Hence why I am blogging… *sigh*

I promise my next blog post will be less complainy and more interesting… really I do. I just really don't want to do this right now but I have no choice.

Qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm

That's my new word qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm

I'm leaving now. Adios

Hasta luego

Haili Alegria (my Spanish name)

Sorry for the random spontaneous Spanish.

sooo... nothing much exciting- Big surprise, I know

It is officially December 5th, and my life is now average.
I made my cheesecake yesterday.  It was pretty much an all- day project.  Cutting up the apples took forever... and then it had to cook for an hour, cool an hour in the oven, and spend quite a lot of time in the fridge cooling down.  The middle wasn't quite cooked and is a little mushy, but it tastes really good.

I spent a lot of time reading out loud yesterday, and now I have no voice.  Kinda stinks.  I also have a cold and my head hurts and I'm exhausted because I stayed up until 10:30 last night reading "PART THE SECOND: KEIDREIY" to Elli.
I didn't even hear my alarm go off at 5:45 this morning.  I got woke up by the snooze.  Okay, so a little trivia about my room.  I share it with Elli, and I have a lofted bed.  I have a little square alarm clock thing on a shelf above my head.  When I rotate it, it goes from showing the time, to the temp, my alarm, and a timer.  It's pretty cool.  So, anyway, I usually set my timer for 5 minutes and use that as my snooze, because I usually rotate it to where the timer is when I turn it to turn my alarm off.
Apparently, I turned off my alarm without realizing it because it was the snooze that woke me...

I have to go work on my paper now, so until later peoples!

-Haili

I'm contagious!

So, one of my little brothers (not the singing one) came in my room last night and asked me if he could write a story and get a book published like me and Elli.  Let's call him... Lee.  He came up with this story idea titled "Get Lost!" about this kid getting kidnapped, escaping, but then going the complete opposite way from home as he tries to go home.  This character, Luckas Tarrington (I helped come up with the name) has the worst sense of direction ever which is really funny since Lee has the best sense of direction.  Like one time, we were going to my dad's mom's house for Christmas, and my dad accidentally turned to go toward my mom's mom's cabin, and Lee was the one who caught the mistake.  At like, age 4.  I'm not kidding.  When I drive him around, I still confirm with him that we're on the right road.

So anyway, now I've gotten my brother and my sister into writing, and my other brother (the singing one... let's call him Gus) asked me about this writing club I started last year and if we really were going to do it.  So now Gus is writing a story about a kid named Matthew who loses his skateboard.

So since I have now infected all of my siblings with NaNoWriMo, I have decided to make NaStoWriWe, National Story Writing Week, to take place over the winter break.  It'll be so fun.

Oh, yeah, and Lee came up with the best title for my novel.  Instead of Written in the Stars which is already a song, he suggested Beyond the Stars.  Which is awesome, but there's already a story about an astronaut by the same name, so I might have to tweak it a bit.  It's awesome!  Love Beyond the Stars maybe?

let me know what you think!
 and I shall be posting bloopers of my attempts to sing "Defying Gravity" on youtube soon... should be funny!

NO! Not my title!!!

oh no!  I just googled "Written in the Stars" and it's like this rap song!  NOOO!!!
So, here are my options: let me know what you think:

• Fire and Dreams
• Let Go
• Let Me Go
• Never Give Up
• Secret of Our World
• A Little Place Called Keidreiy
• Ilori

I shall do my best to explain the idea of my plot in a paragraph.  Here goes:

Halyn has always been the invisible girl in Cast Haven, Minnesota, so when the boy she's had a crush on since 6th grade starts noticing her, she's delighted.  He's really nice and even invites her to join his band Kafele.  He calls her Ilori, his treasure.  Then Halyn's dad comes back.  He abandoned Halyn and her mom for another woman when Halyn was only 3.  He comes back and tells her that she is worthless, fat, and ugly, completely destroying any sense of self - confidence she has worked so hard to achieve. Esteban comes over to see why she missed practice, and they end up getting kidnapped by a shapeshifting ball of fire known as a Caelestis.  They are taken to Keidreiy, a place full of wonders and insane creatures, that they are to be king and queen of.  But when Halyn is forced to go back to Earth, ... 

I really can't do this!!!!!! I'm terrible at this stuff!
anyway...
ugg

 

I have officially titled my book!!!

Okay, so today I decided on a title.  Please welcome to the world of NaNoWriMo noveling, Written in the Stars.  By me.  I am also trying out a new software called Celtx which I'm super excited about.  It's for novels and plays and screenplays.  I'll be taking an online class at my college called "Intro to Creative Writing for Stage and Screen" next semester, so this might come in handy... especially if I do Script Frenzy... which I'm still debating.  But I definitely can't wait until next November for NaNo again, so I'll see you at Camp NaNo!  (Yes, the story of Calista cannot wait until November.  I've decided she's blind, so the new title is "Beauty is Blind" should be interesting since I love first person...hmm)
I printed out a copy of my manuscript today- all 134 pages of it.  Single spaced, back to back.  It's still huge.  It's awesome.  I started editing and found a few mistakes.  Word drives me nuts because it's all like didn't' when I type didnt' which is annoying because of the autocorrect... so I've got to fix that...

Okay, moving on.  Happy December!  My birthday is 8 days away!  YAY!  Anyway, last year my little brother and I did a duet of "When Christmas Comes to Town" from The Polar Express.  I'm going to try to embed the youtube here.  However, should this fail to work, here's the link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FGE_Cm3IcA

Anyway, consider this your early Christmas present.  I'm working on a few videos now that NaNo is over and I'll be posting stuff on my youtube of me singing in preparation for the auditions for the musical in February.  Which is the Enchantment of Beauty and the Beast... my favorite fairy tale, if you can't tell...

okay... I'm going to go and practice "There's been a Change in Me"  so that I can post it as soon as possible.
:D

Already looking forward to next NaNo.... *sigh*

Okay, I'm really sad that NaNoWriMo is officially over... I mean, I'm not, because now I can actually do my homework and clean my room... but noveling was so much fun!  Way more fun than working on my term paper for English... which is what I should be doing now...

My favorite part of my novel is this: (Narrator has been missing for two years and now his family thinks he is dead and he's at his own funeral)

            We came in the musician’s door and went up to the choir loft.  I used to do praise and worship for mass and youth group, so I knew this area pretty well.  There were all these pictures of me from two years ago up on the altar with a lot of candles and flowers.  I cannot even begin to describe how surreal it is to be at your own funeral – even if it really is more of a memorial service.

            “Eternal rest grant unto him, Oh Lord,” our priest, Father Timothy, intoned.

            “And let perpetual light shine upon him,” the congregation responded.

            “May he rest in peace.”

            I couldn’t help it.  I mean, how many times does a guy get to go to his own funeral in his lifetime?  Not many, I’ll tell you that.  I’m sorry.  I pulled a Tom Sawyer.  From my position in the choir loft, I yelled, interrupted the ceremony.  “Hey, guys?”  Everyone turned around and strained to see.  “I’m not dead!”

I'm a dork, but I already know what I'm doing for next NaNoWriMo: The Heart Inside (working title)
a retelling of Beauty and the Beast where "Beauty" (named Calista- "Callie") sees beauty as how we look on the inside.... makes the tale of the Beast much more interesting... just bits and pieces of ideas, but I know Callie is a daddy's girl, and has two older sisters named Aurelia and Briony (sp?) and loves reading.  Like me- minus older sisters...


Speaking of sisters, mine won the YWP NaNo!  She did 6,376 words of a long short story called The Magic Skates.  It's actually really good and follows a nice, simple, easy to follow plot about a girl named Caroline Pattinare who finds a pair of skates that once belonged to a famous skater that make her an amazing skater, but then Kristal steals them... in the middle of a show... It's really cute!

I shall post a summary of my novel later when I actually figure out how to explain my complicated novel in a few paragraphs, and then I will need help naming it... and onto National Novel Editing Month (NaNoEdMo) Just made that up =D

I WON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the title post says it all.
50,119 words later... hehe

The aforementioned promised pictures of stuff

I mentioned before I found a crown that I love that I want to wear for prom, and here's the picture

and the dress

It's WAAAY too expensive, but still... a girl can dream... the roses down the back remind me of beauty and the beast.... *sigh*  but that's the musical we're doing in the spring!!!! SO EXCITED!!!

And the cake:

courtesy of jesicascakes.blogspot.com
my cake is going to look exactly like this

okay... time to stop blogging and start writing

I love my sister... and I'm having a wonderful day

Sooo... I had this plot problem in my story involving twins named Shepherd and Orion.  Orion, aka Rion, had snuck off to fight the bad guy Therottier and never came back, leaving his twin devastated.  I wasn't sure how I was going to fit this in my story, because I didn't want Rion to die, but I didn't want it to be cliche, either.  I was telling my sister this and she said three words to me that changed my life:

"That Maleficus thing"

So Maleficus is the REAL bad guy, not Therottier, and he can shape shift.  He will pretend to be the person closest to your heart and then put himself in danger.  If you save him "person you love" then you have to be his slave forever, it's like a magic spell or something.

So that's what happened to Rion.

My sister was the one to come up with the name Keidreiy as well.  I said, "Give me a name for a kingdom starting with... K."
And she said, "Kidri." (key DREE)  And then I screwed with the spelling and hence Keidreiy was born.
I would die without my little sister.  She's my dose of sanity.  Love ya, Elli!  (not her real name... she didn't want me to use her real name on my blog, so as far as you're concerned, she's Elli)

I am having a wonderful day.  I woke up this morning at 5:30, took a shower, got my hair to behave, had a pumpkin pancake for breakfast, was early, so I went downstairs to check my school email and discovered that my math class was cancelled!!! YAY!!!  (escpecially since I spent the entire weekend doing NaNo and did not do my math homework, so DOUBLE YAY!!!)  I then proceeded to discover that my scarf matched my shirt - (like exactly- it's kinda creepy) and I had chocolate soy milk... (I'm lactose intolerant - I can have milk, but unless I take a lactase pill beforehand, I get sick to my stomach)... and it was really good, which is saying a lot because it's soy milk. 

Oh, and did I mention my word count?  Yeah, that did wonders for my mood this morning: 42,424.  I'm going to make it, people!!!!!

My first 8 hour shift... ugh... OW!

Okay, ow ow ow ow ow ow ow!!!!!  So you know how I was all excited yesterday or very very early this morning to be working at MOA so that I could earn money to go on my band trip to Chicago (I play french horn)... weeelll, let's just say it did not live up to my expectations.
Yes, I knew I'd be working an eight hour shift from 2 to 10, and I knew it would be late, but I thought I'd be working taking tickets or something at Nickolodeon Universe (It will forever be Camp Snoopy to me, I'm sorry) working with the rides or something like that.
Nooo.  My mom and I spent 8 hours wiping tables in the food court.  Wiping tables.  In the food court!  For EIGHT HOURS!!!  Within the first hour, I knew that it was going to be a loooong day.  To say it majorly sucked would be an understatement.  So, next time you're at a mall and you see someone wiping tables in the food court, make sure to be nice to them.  Because that job is painful, I tell you.  Eight hours on your feet.  Wiping the same tables over and over again.  It's not so bad if they're actually dirty, but towards the end of the shift, there was hardly anybody there, and I made a full circut of the court, came back, and the tables I had cleaned were still... wonder of wonders... clean.  I'm sorry.  I'm not going to clean something that is perfectly clean already.  So I grabbed a broom and started sweeping.  I sang songs to myself to keep myself occupied.  That was my entertainment.  That, and the occasional pop spill.  I found a fortune cookie, a dime, two pennies, and a canadian penny on the ground... worth it?  I think not.
ugh... I am so sore and I have to get up early tomorrow to sing in choir so I have to stop blogging and get a few minutes of writing in before I hit the hay... not sure how long I'll last...

until tomorrow
an exhausted
Haili

I'm catching up!!!!

Yes!!!  4,479 words later and I'm 1,918 words a day (doable) away from winning NaNo!  And guess what?  My story is moving along just fine!!!!!!  I've got a lot of places to go!

Okay, I've had an awesomely productive day!!!
Enough exclaimation points, already, miss Haili!!

Good morning world
hope you've had a fun black friday- cuz I spent it writing!  or getting distracted and not writing.

Yeah, in the time I was not writing, I figured out
1. my graduation cake
2. my graduation theme colors (red for both my high school and college of choice CSB SJU)
3. my prom dress color (also red, though my favorite color is purple)
4. the tiara I want to wear to prom
5. how to make andes mint filling a christmas cake I'm making, because there aren't enough birthdays in my family, and my mom always gets a strawberry pie and my sister always wants an ice cream cake, so I don't get to make their cakes
6. that I'm going to make Carmel Apple Cheesecake when I finish my novel

yes, I will post pictures of some of these tomorrow, or later today... whenever

Also, I'm currently listening to Air1 christmas
Do you like to listen to christmas music before Thanksgiving?  Someone got really upset because Air1 posted an online station for Christmas music in early Nov.  I frankly couldn't care.  I was practicing Melody Bober's Angel Medley in June, so it really makes no difference to me whatsoever.

I'll be playing background music at my church next weekend, so I have to practice. 
Anyway, I have to work tomorrow so I need to get to sleep (I'm going to MOA to work at Nickolodeon Universe with my mom to earn money to go to Chicago with my band this spring)

NaNoWriMo Crazy

It's nearly ten o clock at night and I fear that I will never finish my novel.
Here are my "sick cats" or distractions that I have had during the month of November that have drained my poor word count (which by the way is currently 32,630)
1. massive term paper on genetic engineering
2. jump drive dying, taking with it 2,115 words (I know because my word count for the day was negative)
3. plot sinkhole (I escaped it by making my main character fall into a sinkhole in the middle of battle)
4. writer's block (obviously)

So anyway, following my sinkhole and negative word count, I began writing random scenes that didn't happen until much much later just to get my count up.  I changed Casthaven to Cast Haven and all the into's into in to's.  I've added the word 'that' a lot and created a culture that does not use contractions.  But despite all of this I still have 6.2 days to write, according to the NaNo website, 17,370 words.  *sigh*

It's beginning to look hopeless, but I can't give up.  My NaNo novel is called "Never Give Up" so I guess I can't, right?

oh, dear...

Hello World

Hello world and Happy Thanksgiving and welcome to the world of my blog, Music, Keidreiy, and all that Drama.  Well, I guess you've guessed by now that I am a musician, (and you're right- I play piano, french horn, and guitar, and enjoy singing and composing my own music, which may periodically appear on this blog) and I enjoy acting.  You're right.  However,  unless you're one  of my very good friends or Margaret Free, you'll have no clue what Keidreiy means, and that's okay.  Keidreiy is the name of a kingdom in my NaNoWriMo novel.
Speaking of...
NaNo is coming to a close *sigh sigh* and I'm far from my 50,000 word goal (I'm only at 31,000 or so... so what am I doing making a blog?  That's a good question)

So... google NaNo if you don't know what it is because I've got to go work on my novel... NOW!
Must.  write 10K. NOW!