My Life...not so great right now

So... the end of senior year is fast approaching, and with it, the obligatory ritual that is prom.

Now, you've seen me obsess about prom several times in the past... I mean, just look at all of these posts.  I got the gold tiara I liked so much and a beautiful yellow dress.
See?

 
It's perfect.  Everything's perfect.

So why do all the prom pictures on facebook make me cry?  Why does the very thought of prom make me depressed?

I don't have a date.

See, when I started high school and everyone was starting to date, I was fine with not having a boyfriend, as long as I could find a guy who liked me enough to take me to my senior prom, even if it was only as friends.  And I didn't worry too much because I had this really good guy friend from church.  For privacy reasons, let's call him J. I've known J since 7th grade, and I asked him to go to my high school's semiformal together in 10th grade and he did.  He saved me from this creepy senior guy who was trying to be with me even though the aforementioned creepy senior had brought a date with him.

Anyway, that was fun and all, and at the beginning of April at his birthday party, I was kind of scoping out the girls invited to see if he was dating or liked any of them to try and decide if I should ask him to prom, or if he was going to ask me. One of our mutual friends, a girl who I will refer to as A, couldn't make it to the party, but her younger brother could.  When A's dad came to pick up A's brother, he wished J a happy birthday, and J wished him a happy birthday as well.  Apparently A's dad and J had the same birthday.  As A's dad left, J turned to one of his guy friends and told him quietly that "that's the dad of the girl I really like."

I was sitting right there on the couch and heard the whole thing.  Then J turned to me and said, "Wouldn't it be weird to have the same birthday as your father-in-law?"
"Yeah, it would," I answered, trying not give away my true feelings.

I mean, it's not a big deal, right?  We weren't dating or anything.  I didn't have a huge crush on him, just a little one.  And I know that J and A are perfect for each other and I'm happy for them.  They live closer together, and they've grown up together in homeschool.  I'm just the oddball from church.  I'm just kicking myself for not seeing it sooner.

Anyway, there goes that.  I'm pretty sure that there are no boys that even acknowledge the fact that I exist, and I kept seeing first all these statuses of people asking each other to prom, and now the pictures are coming.  Every boy that I even hoped would see me has a date and their pictures are up.  I sat here bawling as I looked at them, watching all of my hope fly away.  (I also have my period, which is probably contributing to the emotional roller coaster).

None of my friends have dates, and I have a whole group of people I know who are going stag to prom.  Why is having a date such a big deal to me?  Because I'm a hopeless romantic.

My parents were going to buy me a wrist corsage, and I kind of was hoping that my dad would be able to present it to me and escort me to prom.  He's never taken me on those Daddy-daughter dates you hear about, and having him be my escort would be almost as good as having a real date. (that's how desperate I am, guys). But I found out today that he won't even be around to send me off to prom.  Yet he spent the entire weekend this weekend doing the daddy-daughter skate in my sister's skating show, just like he has every year.

Just because I'm too fat and clumsy to skate or dance doesn't mean I haven't dreamed of doing one of those daddy-daughter things. It didn't help that the song they skated to was "Cinderella". They skipped the middle verse, but I can't hear the song without thinking of that second verse:

She says he's a nice guy

That I'd be impressed

She wants to know if I approve of the dress

She says, "Dad, the prom is just one week away,

and I need to practice my dancing

Oh please, Daddy, please?"

And then I start bawling. 

In other news, I have carpal tunnel syndrome.  So that's why my hands have been killing me for the past three years.  Finally a doctor who realized that something was wrong with me and there was a reason behind my pain.  It sucks, though.  Oh, and when I was at the doctors and they weighed me, I found out that I've gained 20 pounds in the past four months.  Now I'm 170 pounds and still 4'9".  My ideal weight, according to my height, is no more than 110-115.  So not only do I have all this other crap, now I feel fat and ugly on top of it all. 

Now that I've gotten you all depressed, I'll tell you the good news: I got a scholarship today.  It's $500 from the Circles of Claddagh, and Concordia will match up to $400 of that, so I'll end up with $900, which should cover my new computer. Yay!

~Haili

Pictures from Living Stations

My good friend Amanda took pictures from Stations!

Cody, me, and baby Oliver, who we finally got to be Baby Jesus

Bouncing Oliver- he loved to bounce!

  That's the end of the happy pictures...

The Fourth Station

Me doing a bunch of crying

"And though I do not understand/why all this has to be" Me asking God, "Why?"

Me, Jesus, and Mary Magdalene at the cross

"Where are all your loved ones?  Oh, they left us all alone." As John comes up behind me

"John and I stand side by side/and it seems so cold." One of my favorite pictures-actually my facebook profile picture

 The hardest part of being Mary is this scene below, the Thirteenth Station-Jesus is taken down from the cross.  A lot of girls don't put their name in for Mary simply because they can't do this scene.

Me, Andrew (Jesus) Elliot (John) in the back, and Michael (as the soldier who has a change of heart)

  They've just taken him down from the cross.  This scene is also known as the Pieta Scene.

A drawing of Michelangelo's Pieta, what this scene is based off of.

More pictures of the Pieta scene

Me cradling him.

This Pieta scene goes on for about five or ten minutes,but it seems like hours.  It's intense.

I will have a video up shortly.  Comment or send me a message with your email and I will share a google doc of it with you.

Living Stations and Disney Medleys

Almost a year ago, I posted this snippet:

We picked parts for my church's passion play on Sunday.  It's called the Living Stations of the Cross.  I'm a junior this year, so I was hoping for a good part, like Mary Magdelene, Pilate's wife, or Mary, wife of Clopas, or Mary, mother of John... or even a flash back Mary (we have a LOT of Marys) but I look nothing like the girl who got the part of Mary, my friend Heather.  She'll love it that she can hold the baby Jesus at the beginning (we start with the presentation in the temple- there's a flashback when Jesus dies and two girls stand with a baby doll and the kid who played 12 year old Jesus... I can't do the 12 year old Jesus flashback- I'm 4'9" and not only is my friend like 6 ft tall, but the kid playing 12 year old Jesus is taller than me...yeah, I'd look real motherly.)  So anyway, I was hoping for a part where I get to do a lot of crying, since according to Elli, I'm really really good at fake crying (who knew?)

Yeah.  I'm a serving girl.  I get a towel chucked at my face (if I'm lucky) and I stand there with a straight face.This should be interesting

Well guess what?  It's that time of year again!  Living Stations.  And I am a senior, which means I'm guaranteed a good part.

But before I get into the goodies of this year, I wanted to comment on my disappointment with last year.  My freshman year I was a weeping woman.  When I was a sophomore, I was the first girl to play the newly added part of the prophetess Anna (see presentation in the temple above).  My junior year I was a servant girl.  Not big parts at all.  As a weeping woman, I went up to Jesus during the 8th station and cried.  As Anna, I basically knelt and prayed, and watched Mary and Joseph leave with the baby.  As a servant girl, I gave a cup to Pilate to drink out of.  That's it.  But that's not to say that I didn't have a very big part.  Every year (and I've been doing this since 6th grade-I was in the crowd) I've come up with a story.
Freshman Year: I was Leehi, a pregnant weeping woman.  Here's my backstory.
Sophomore Year: Anna, the prophetess.  When we fastforwarded 33 years, I changed my headscarf and took of the creepy grey braid wig and became Anna's granddaughter by the same name, also gifted with prophecy.  I knew what was going to happen.  I'd seen it coming, but kept it to myself.  I was dreading the inevitable. I had a story written for it, but I never typed it.  I don't know where it is.
Junior Year: Terentia Octavia Camilla of Rome, aka Lira. I actually looked up how Romans were named so I could get an accurate name.  I wanted to switch the cup I held out for a lyre we had from when we did the David skits for VBS.  They never let me, but I kept Lira as my nickname.  I was a simple Roman girl who could care less what could happen to a Hebrew "Messiah."  But a miracle changed my heart.  You can read Lira's story here.

Well this year, I dropped my name in the hat for Mary Magdalene, because I love her story, and Mary, because, as a senior, I could, and why not?  (How we pick parts: you get two pieces of paper, write your name on them, and put them in the bowl for the character(s) you want.  The leaders then pray [so do you out while you watch last year's show on DVD] and pick one out of the bowl)

Guess what?  I'm Mary.  The Mary.  Yeah.  I'm praying the rosary on my way to school now...praying that I do her justice.  I'm not worried about the acting, but I should get my prayer life together if I'll be portraying the mother of God.  And ironically, this is the first "lead" role I've ever gotten in my life.  I'm so excited and so happy.  I was totally not expecting to be Mary AT ALL.

In other news, why I've not blogged in forevers:


We'll be performing it February 8th.  And my laptop's dying, which means I should go to sleep.  G'night.

Compositions

Wow... I'm super busy and haven't blogged in FOREVER!

Well, quick updates:
-I now have a pen name: Michaila Curtis.  Like me on Facebook if you haven't already, please!
-I'm currently failing NaNoWriMo.  As much as Calista wanted to come out of my head, her story wasn't fully developed.  That, and my life is insane.  Remind me later to tell you about car troubles.

I'm composing stuff!  Trying to figure out what songs and pieces to send in for a composition scholarship, so I shall post those that I have on Noteflight here: (beware, many of them are works-in-progress)

My latest project: Rain's Dream/Rain Dreaming/Storm Children:


"Princess at Heart" from my musical Twice Upon a Time
"Please" (just a start...need to finish notating)
"Perfect Mystery/Under the Stars" love themes from Twice Upon a Time (just melodies)
"A Day in the Life" from Twice Upon a Time (just look at the end part...first part makes me cringe)  Yeah, so that's about it.  I still have "Changes," a piano piece, "Chasing Mountains," a horn duet, and "The Promise," a clarinet/violin (part can be played by either), flute, and piano trio that need to be entered into Noteflight and/or re-notated.  I also have a guitar piece called "Daydreams"...need to remember to do that.

Surprise and my Mind is a Crazy and Strange Place

I auditioned for the community college's play with a cast of 11 for extra credit and managed to land a part- I'm the Little Nun in House of Blue Leaves.  It's a weird play-very weird, but still.

Wow.  Okay.  Still getting used to the idea.  I did NOT think in a million years that I would get a part.  This is a massive change from the last play I was in, where I was excited about it a year and a half before auditions.  Just came to school Monday- oh, there's auditions today.  I get extra credit for my theater class if I audition- eh, what they hey?  Let's give it a shot.

Yeah.  I'm going to be insane.  I've got a massive history presentation worth 20% of my grade due in 2 weeks.  My topic is Archaic Greece.  My focus, I'm hoping, will be comparing the Greek myths of Herakles to the Disney movie Hercules.  *crosses fingers*  I agonized over this focus peoples, AGONIZED.
If all else fails:
-The Strange and Puzzling History of the Greek Gods and Goddesses- they did some pretty odd stuff.  Athena came out of Zeus's head, literally.  Like Zeus had a headache, had someone chop his head open with an ax and Athena (or Athene) came out.  NO JOKE.

-Comparing myths to fairy tales- Cupid and Psyche to East of the Sun West of the Moon, Pandora's box to Bluebeard...but will I get 10 minutes out of this?  Would also require massive reading of fairy tales and myths and time that I do not have.

-Comparing myths to their modern counterparts-Herakles/Hercules is a specific example of this, but I thought of using Percy Jackson and the like-problem?  Haven't read Percy Jackson.

-Greek constellations and the stories behind them. Problem?  Most constellations are known by their Roman names...

Idea this morning:
Retelling the bible story of Esther, in high school, with a mafia gang.
X is the "king" of a "mafia" thing that hates a certain group of people and wants to kill them.  When X catches his girl cheating on him, he chooses Star, a quiet beautiful girl (much like Belle) rather forcefully to be his new girl.  She is part of this group he hates, and spends most of her time hanging out with her cousin Morrie. X's right hand man, Ham (? name) hates Morrie and they're big enemies.  X grows to really love Star, and she grows to tolerate him.  Ham decides that he's had enough of these people their gang hates and decides that they should get rid of them once and for all.  Now it's up to Star to save her people.
What if Star's people were like fairies or something like that? 0.0  I'll have to mull over that for a while.

My mind is a crazy and strange place..."don't judge my crazy!  I don't judge yours!"

Something Random This Way Comes

http://www.christianfictionbookreviews.org/2012/09/300-kindle-shopping-spree_5.html

Yep.

Anything else I need to say?

No, not really.  Just spent a bunch of time on facebook when I should've been working on homework.  Been listening to Suessical soundtrack, and Hercules, half-wishing I was a guy so that I could sing "Alone in the Universe" and "Go the Distance" and "Proud of Your Boy" a deleted song from Aladdin.  Is my lack of a Y chromosome going to stop me from singing this song?  No way, Jose.  I've already sung "Proud of Your Girl" and worked on "Alone in the Universe" last night.  Also made up a tune to my friend Myriah's lyrics, "My Soul Has a Song"  She wanted a country song, and I don't listen to a lot of country, but I think I did pretty good.  (Here's a video of me just playing it.  For the 5th time ever.)

Yeah, I screwed up, but it works.  I'm going to have to work on it and get a nicer version up later.  Sound country?

Need to go do homework.  But my goodness, I love my webcam.  So much.

Bye, Haili's out.

REMIND ME LATER: www.writing.com Get your writing reviewed, but you retain copyright- all they can do is show people.  And once you take the writing down, you retain all rights and can publish it and stuff.  And they do novels.  Yay!

Freeware I Cannot Live Without

My parents kept me away from the internet for quite a while.  My brothers entertain themselves with www.coolmath-games.com while I entertained myself on Powerpoint 2003 (and people always complement me on my powerpoints-gee, I wonder why?)

Well, now that I'm older, I've found all sorts of cool things on the internet-including free programs, games, and helpful things.  So I'm going to share my top 10 favorites with you, because I'll want a list of these later when I go to install them all on my new laptop.

1. Noteflight.  Need I say more?  I love this thing.  It's easiest described as Google docs for music composition.  I love it and it's WAY cheaper than Finale.  And easier to use and share music with people.  It has a limited free version, but I'm a happy camper and got the paid version, Crecendo, on sale.  And once you sign up, the first price you pay is the price you pay to renew it.  I got mine for $30 a year, and it's generally $50. Next year when I renew it, I'll get charged $30, even if there's no sale.
2. Gimp.  Essentially, free photoshop.  And it's easier to use.  I've used it for my book cover When the Stars Fall as I mentioned in this post. 
3. Celtx.  I use it mainly for screenplays, since it formats everything nicely, but it sure works great for organizing characters and the like.  Wrote Twice Upon a Time on it.  My only warning is that Celtx ate 5 hours of my work at the end of June for no reason even though I saw it save.  So save often and in several places, and save to the cloud if you can.  (I was working on Elli's laptop, and she didn't get internet access at the time)
4. Audacity.  It's a sound recording program and works well for all the singing videos I do.  I use it for anything where I record, and it can do multiple tracks and different effects.  Can be a bit glitchy, but I think that's just my computer.
5. Dropbox. Yet another way to back up stuff.  And you definitely do NOT want to be losing words during NaNoWriMo, not when you're trying so hard to write them.
6. Spotify- iTunes+a radio.  You can search and listen to any song you want.  It runs through a black version of your iTunes, so the music you already have on your computer can get mixed in with the other music.  It's free, you can listen to whatever you want, but there are ads every now and then.  Still, it's cheaper than buying them on iTunes.  They do have premium memberships that cost money to get rid of the ads, but still.
7. Astrid.  I'm fairly new to this one, but it's a to-do list online.  You can prioritize things, assign other people to do things on the list, share it with others, and it even pops up to remind you that you have stuff due.  It's even a smartphone and iPad app.  A handy thing, but I'm still using the old fashioned mini notebook I keep in my purse.  That way, as soon as an instructor assigns something, I can write it down, prioritize it (I use a grading system- A is highest priority, F is lowest) and write the due date.  I've got lots of colors, so I color code by class and highlight due dates and things I keep forgetting.
8. CCleaner- a lovely thing that helps your computer move faster by cleaning up the junk.
9. Synthasia- a fun guitar hero-esque piano thing.  You can play midis on it and even use your keyboard to play it like a real piano, but that's hard.  There's an option of hooking it up to a midi piano to play, but I don't have that.  It's just nice to see what a song would look like being played.  Plus, it just looks cool.
10. CamStudio- allows you to make a video screenshot.  The video's not the best quality and the audio's wonky, but it works.

I'll probably come up with more, but for now, I say sianara.