Summer forecast

I always expect summer to be way more awesome than it is. I picture lazy days floating on a river/ lake, strumming a guitar by a fire, writing in my journal in a garden or in a tree or something... cheesy stuff like that. Instead, I am stuck at home a lot, since I can't drive myself yet, in the frigid icebox of my home when my dad gets his hands on the air conditioning, and the either really nice and breezy oasis or stifingly hot and sticky sauna of my home when my mom gets HER hands on the air conditioning (depending on the weather). But this summer, I am actually doing some interesting things. Ish. Interesting things-ish. Enough to keep it from being a total waste. So I thought I share those with you, because I know I'm just fascinating like that. Cough.




Learn the acoustic guitar.
Quite a summery thing to do, is it not? After around.... four years of desperate longing, I FINALLY got a guitar for my recent birthday, though I just got it a few days ago. I just really want to be able to play and sing my favorite songs, and if the heavens open up and the Muses pour their sugar on me, maybe write some EXTREMELY simple music. But obviously the Muses have used all their sweet sweet sugar up on Conor Oberst.
I bought a "Teach Youself Guitar!" book (yayyyyy! Woo! I hate that freaking exclamation point in the title) at the bookstore, and it's good, plenty of chords and whatnot. But it's weird... I'm halfway decent at piano, I taught myself on a toy keyboard for about two years until I finally got real lessons, and then I had enough skills to skip a whole level. I've since had to stop lessons due to bloody school and volleyball and every other stupid thing I'm involved in, but I play constantly, and I love illegally procuring sheet music online. Woooooot. But anyway, my point was that I ridiculously expect myself to already be playing songs on the guitar, forgetting that it's taken me several years to get good at the piano. So I'm just randomly strumming chords, kind of lost... I need the structure of a lesson, but obviously lessons aren't happening, so I'll just have to find some online. But that's a good summer project for me. And then me and my friend who has also just started tea ching herself guitar can go stand on a street corner and play obscure songs to up our indie (and street) cred, and people can throw pennies in our cases if they are sweet and yell obscene things like "Get off the fucking sidewalk!" at us if they are just plain awesome. Because we would suck so badly.



rockmantica

Paint
Painting is like a tranquilizer for me. It calms me to near meditation state, and this summer I'd love to do a little tranquilizing (I always felt bad for those animals in the gorilla movies that got tranquilized. :( ]. I specifically was thinking of either some cool drippy, Jackson Pollock-style piece, or the cover of She & Him's album, which is awesome.



plasticTHERAPY

Read my summer reading books.
Sure, I'll voraciously devour many other books, but I put those in my "Reading is Sexy" sidebar [see left if you are as of yet unfamiliar]. For summer reading (which always pissed me off for this reason: Summer reading is to keep kids reading during the summer, their brains going, blah blah. Then why give summer reading to HONORS kids, who WOULD be reading on their own ANYWAY?) I have to read "Hiroshima" which doesn't sound half bad, and my favorite book EVER (next to Harry Potter), To Kill A Mockingbird. On TKAM, I have to write poems from the point of few of several characters, which should be...interesting and will most likely result in my rhyming "Finch" and "in a cinch." The deal with TKAM, though, is that I read it in early 2007, so I kind of feel protective of it, even though millions and millions of people before me have read it and named it as their favorite book. I always get weird and stuck-up and want people to know that I read it before we had t o for a grade, since there are some kids in my class who don't read for fun and just obsess over grades. (And I'm still first in my class, so SUCK IT. Sorry, had to put that in there. That took so many stressed nights and hard work that I feel like it's ok to brag a little.)
I also hereby declare that I WILL NOT leave my summer reading until the last two weeks of August.


Picture for this subject unavailable, due to total lack of any sort of creativity associated with it.
AP History work
For some insane reason unbeknownst to me, I am taking AP US History next year. Well, I do like history. And I have a crapload of reading and outlining to do this summer. Yay.



Xmoncharmant (NOT MY ROOM)

Clean my room
My room’s been cluttered and really dusty for at least a year, and I always TRY to clean it, but something else in my room captures my attention. Just for a weekend or a few days, I need to buckle down and just CLEAN. I still have my American girls in my room, for Pete’s sake. As nostalgic as they make me, maybe my starting-to-be-pretty-cool room isn’t the best place. Ooh. I’ll post pictures of my favorite stuff in my room when it’s all clean and pretty and camera ready.


Now for things such as trips and concerts:



He doesn’t really have that much hair anymore. [not from deviant art.]

See Billy Joel in concert
That's right, my friends, I dig the Piano Man, and I will be seeing him in concert in early July, and it should be AMAZING. I just love his music, even though it might be "old people music" or whatever. (Old music is better, anyway.) And to top off my super awesomeness (not) I am going with my sister, parents, and grandparents. I honestly love spending time with my grandparents. They are honestly the raddest grandparents ever in an un-rad way, like how I had to teach my grandpa how to click a mouse and he wears those flat Irish caps all the time and always cuts himself shaving.
But back to Billy. This will be my first real "concert" (sad, I know. When I can drive... I'll be at every concert within 100 miles of my town.), since I don't count Warped Tour last year. I'm really excited though, I mean, COME ON. It's Billy Joel. He's a classic. If he plays "Vienna," I might cry, because that's honestly what I do, and if he plays "We Didn't Start the Fire," I fully intend to shout along to the part that Dwight sang on that one episode of The Office:

Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television, North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn MonROE!


(Uhh.. I forgot a picture for this one and don't have time to find one. Enjoy this picture of Jim Sturgess I had on my computer already instead.)


Yum.

Go to San Diego
My dad goes there a lot for business, and I've already been there, but any chance to get out of my hometown is welcomed with open arms. Oo, but something I didn't do the last time I was there was GO TO DISNEYLAND, which I am doing this time. I can't wait to tap into my inner child and get dizzy riding the teacups and running around Sleeping Beauty's castle (the one in California really is Sleeping Beauty's, Cinderella's is in Florida) whilst humming happy happy tunes of joy.
Plus, in San Diego, my dad plans to take us to some kick-ass ethnic restaurants, and I heart food.
And the icing on the cake is that we're going down to the border, and there's this sign with a mother running, dragging a child, and it means "Watch for illegal immigrants." Isn't that the coolest thing you've ever heard?



Glass fields.
[Yep, that’s totally what it looks like at the end of the day.]

Go to Warped Tour
Warped Tour last was so mind-blowingly fun that I'd love to go again, and now that my friend can drive, she can take us, sans-parents. :O That's where the trouble comes in... I just have to convince my mom to 1) let a new driver drive me to the large city that shall remain unnamed and; 2) convince her to let us spend all day without a parent. Fingers crossed! And while Warped is filled with mostly shitty emo bands, that's what makes it fun, watching how seriously everyone takes themselves. But there are going to be some really good bands there, and some pretty good bands that I would like to see. A list:

All Time Low is a bit whiney but they're fun.
BE YOUR OWN PET!!!!!!!!!!! I nearly wept when I saw that name. They are so not emo that I can't WAIT to see Jemina Pearl in action. Seriously, watch some live videos. She's fie-uuuuuce.
Charlotte Sometimes-- I haven't listened to her, but I hear she's kind of indie-pop, which I can always dig.
Katy Perry would be a blast to see.
I LOVED Relient K back in middle school, so it might be fun to see them, just for nostalgia's sake.
I hear Reel Big Fish are good, I should listen to them...
and finally SAY ANYTHING, whom I love.
So Be Your Own Pet and Say Anything for really good. Two out of like 50. That just shows you Warped Tour's demographic, does it not?

Hahahah the names on this band list are so funny : As I Lay Dying, Every Time I Die, All That Remains. Get over yourself and grow the hell up!



seafairy

Go to New England for a weekend
Oh God, that seems so preppy. "Oh, sorry, I can't, I'll be in New England for the weekend." I should rename myself Muffy or Lila or Harrison (if I was a boy) to fit in. But I think we're going to Cape Cod, and my dad wants to swing by Providence: "We can just check out Brown, would you like that?" Ok, yeah, Dad, when Miley Cyrus says something interesting, THAT'S when I'll get into Brown. Precisley for the reason that my name isn't Muffy or Lila or Harrison, and my last name doesn't begin with a Vander and end with a Bilt. (Did you know Anderson Cooper is a Vanderbilt? That's his mom's maiden name. So he's led a very cushy life, I'm sure. Whatever. He's still the most badass news anchor around, if only for his white/gray hair and squint.




The beautiful scenic vistas of New Jersey. Ahem.

Visit family in New Jersey
While my parents jet off to Yellowstone, they are leaving me for four long days under the rule of my disgustingly unhygienic older brother. But luckily my afore-mentioned grandparents will come to rescue me from his hair-in-the-sink world and bring me and my sister to….. New Jersey for a week.
Not going to lie, I hate New Jersey. I’m sorry, it’s just an opinion, I can see why plenty of people would hate Pennsylvania, but the only good part of New Jersey is my family and the shore. I could go on and on about how it’s all highways and development, but that would be tedious, so I won’t. But going to my grandma’s without my parents is great because my sister and I get the spare bedroom with the TV, and we stay up until the wee hours of the morning watching old Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and The Cosby Show reruns on Nick at Nite. And I get to go to the beach for a day, visit all my cousins, etc. Plus my grandparents are taking us to New York to see the Bodies exhibit, where they, for lack of a better word, “freeze” a bunch of dead bodies is cool positions and you see all the muscles and stuff. It’s going to be morbid and grisly and all around great.




Because it made me laugh.

Band camp
Yes, I’m a band geek. And no, I haven’t seen American Pie, but I’m sure it’s nothing like that, I’ve heard all the, “This one time, at band camp…” jokes and camp is nothing like that. It’s at school every day for two weeks, and while the people who march are outside in the sweltering heat getting burnt, my section, the mallet section who doesn’t march, stays inside the (albeit, un-air-conditioned) band room and pretend to practice when our director walks in and gives us the hairy eyeball but otherwise we eat and get water and Gatorade for the rest of the band and those of us who can play the piano do so, and we cram in last minute summer reading while listening to the rest of the band bitch and moan about how “Pit doesn’t do anything” when they come in for a break. Whatever. At least I don’t play the sousaphone, ok guys?


That is pretty much the extent of my summer. It looks good written down, but in reality I have a lot of boring free weeks to sit around on my ass and blog. Yayyyyyy.

What are you going to be up to this summer?


Juxxo

(Hopefully something a little less dependant on anti-gravity forces than that.)

I had one more picture I wanted to share. I found this really cool (if it can be called that), colorful propaganda poster from WWII. I just found it interesting. I guess if you love art enough even the colors in a propaganda poster interest you, as they do me.




Have a lovely, propaganda-free rest of your day!

Listen to: “You’re So Vain” by Carly Simon. Bah-ZING.

Peace.
a.

P.S. All pictures are credit of the talented people over at deviantart, unless otherwise noted. The propaganda one just came from a google search. I put the name of the artist underneath the picture, in case they some how manage to find me and sue me for copyright infringement or something, because that’s the kind of thing that happens to me.