Hmm. I seem to be made of fail.

Number of days left in April: 13

Number of words left in NaNoWriAp: 37,589

Number of AP Tests in less than one month: 5

Well, don't I just fail?

And now for the failure cherry on the top of our sundae of suck: so, last night I was going to get my little sister, and I was running barefoot across the lawn. It was really dark, and I smashed through what I think was probably this huge pile of sticks we have in our yard.

And it hurt.

Anyway I got back inside and my foot was bleeding like craaazy and it appears that I have managed to stab multiple holes in the bottom of my left foot. I can't walk on it, which means that I couldn't go to the mall today to get my shoes for prom... which is next Saturday. Joy.

On a happier note, I'm 17 now! Wooooo! It was my birthday on the 10th. For some reason I didn't blog. I also didn't blog the next Sunday (Easter! yay!), although I intended to because I wanted to upload the pictures of the awesome Star Wars Easter eggs that I made (I had this whole awesome Darth Vader/Yoda egg fight). I'd put those up now, except I can't find the cord for my camera. Coming Soon?

Oh yeah and I got a Twitter. http://www.twitter.com/StaciCooper

Agony Agony DIE DIE DIE

Three months into NaNoWriYe, my entire lower right arm is about to FALL OFF. It's killing me. My wrist hurts the most, but it goes right down to my fingertips. AUGH!

At first I thought it had something to do with my burn - about a week ago I was making this pineapple upside down cake and I dropped it while I was taking it out of the oven and smashed my arm against the top of the oven trying to catch it. Second degree burns from pineapple upside down cake - I know. Anyway the burn has been bothering me, and it was hurting yesterday, so when my arm, like, exploded today I thought the burn had something to do with it.

Anyway now I think it has something to do with the insane amounts of typing that I've been doing. Sigh. Spectacular.

The man-whore is back

So remember how I wrote that essay a while back about Hedda Gabler? The one where I couldn't think of another word for "philanderer" and was seriously considering writing "man-whore"?

Yeah, that essay's back.

So for English class we have to do this literary criticism paper, and rather than writing a whole new essay just so we can insert litcrit, my teacher's letting us revise an old paper. And I was like... um, I don't remember any essays I've written. Like, all year. They were not exactly memorable pieces of work.

But I do remember the whole man-whore thing, even though I didn't really remember the rest of the essay. So I picked that one on a whim and I have spent the last HOUR sticking bits of literary criticism in and trying to smooth it all out so that they don't look tacked on (which they are). And yes, an hour is nothing when it comes to essay writing, but this is boring as poo. And I really want to just stop and go read some more of Corrupting Dr. Nice, and I can't, because this is due tomorrow and I WANT TO KILL HEDDA GABLER EXCEPT I CAN'T BECAUSE a) SHE'S FICTIONAL AND b) SHE ALREADY COMMITTED SUICIDE.

And I still can't think of another term for philanderer. 'Womanizer' is the best I've got, but now I've got the Britney Spears song stuck in my head, and that is not helping my mood.

Find a happy place.

Life, and more importantly, SNOW

Holy crap, I am so HAPPY right now!

Reasons that Staci is happy:

• Today it SNOWED. Six inches of snow, which (for somebody living in North Carolina) might as well be a blizzard. I haven't seen this much snow in what seems like forever.
• Because it snowed, school was cancelled today.
• I just found out that school is being cancelled tomorrow, too.
• I have almost 32,000 words in my January nanowrimo, which I'm pretty sure isn't technically on schedule - but now that I don't have school tomorrow, I'll be able to write like crazy.
• And did I mention that my current nanowrimo pwns the world?
• I finished the first seven books for the book challenge and am almost done with numero ocho. Go me!
• Today Danielle and I filmed a movie entitled "The Abominable Snow Dog Strikes - AGAIN!" in which I star as a really, really stupid hiker who almost gets eaten by a villainous snow dog (but escapes to a hiking lodge just in time). This is a very, very awesome movie.
• Speaking of Ceilidh, this is the first time she's ever seen the snow and she freaking LOVES it. There are very few things in the world cuter than puppies seeing snow for the first time.
• I sort of crocheted a square. Almost. I still think I need to get Marshall to show me what I'm doing wrong (because there is no way I am doing this right), but it was better than all of my other attempts.
• I went to Michaels and I bought a huge bag of BUTTONS! For some reason, I really like buttons.
• I started working on the Man Scarf (long story) again, and it's getting pretty long (although Ceilidh did tangle up the skein of yarn, and it took me six hours to untangle it, causing a mental breakdown so big that I missed Owen's (that's Marshall's brother) play and suffered a massive "Staci you are so stupid" guilt trip. However, I am DEFINITELY going this weekend).
• Because there was no school today, I got to stay home and watch the presidential inauguration, which was awesome. And then we made an Obama cake. And it was a really, really good cake.
• IT - IS - SNOWING!

Ah! Happiness!

(However, I did just realize that there are more posts labeled "Nanowrimo" than there are posts labeled "life" on this blog. This is both entertaining and in some, sad way, a little bit pathetic.)

Freedom is fleeting

Things that happened today:

1. It ocurred to me that Ghostbusters is totally my favorite movie. I marathon-watched both.
2. I realized that I watched an entire season of House in two days, and that makes me both awesome and exceedingly pathetic.
3. I finished my second book for the Book Challenge, proving my total nerdom.
4. I hit the 9,000 word mark in my NaNoWriMo.
5. I decided that I really, really do not want to go to school tomorrow.

Seriously. Do not want.

DO NOT WANT!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Oh my gosh, it's 2009!

MY New Year's Resolution this year is to do a NaNoWriMo every other month, because I'm awesome. Well, actually it's more because I'm not awesome--it seems like lately, I only seriously write in November. For the rest of the year I write short stories and poetry and attempt to work on my long term project, but I don't really get very far.

So this year is going to be a crazy, kick-butt jump start to my writing. That means about an hour ago, January nanowrimo started for me. My word count is currently 0.

But that's okay, because just a couple months ago I wrote a whole nano in 12 days, and I've got 31 to do it this time. All is well in 2009!

Plus the Book Challenge is starting today. I was reading this book called "A Drop of Scarlet" by Jemiah Jefferson, and I needed to finish it before the New Year or else it would cut into Book Challenge time, so I spent a lot of time yesterday finishing. It was sort of dreadful--it's written in first person, but like every single chapter it changes POV and it's confusing as crap. Once the POV was a schizophrenic guy (THAT was crazy). Anyway, this is what I got from the book:

Vampires are promiscuous. Oh my, they are. They also swear a lot. Then this one vampire, who was also a scientist, created a drug that works on vampires, and then all the vampires got high. This made the vampires MORE promiscuous, and also way more violent. Then I think some of the vampires committed suicide, but it was really weird and I'm not sure what was going on. And then they got high again. And were promiscuous and violent.

It was one of those books that consists of lots and lots of tense conversations and almost-fights, and a few scrabbles here and there, but nothing really satisfying. At least, not up until the very end. The last, like, two chapters were really good. But for a couple hundred pages I was wading through immensely complicated backstory--and with the story being narrated from a million different POVS, that was really hard. I think this might have been a sequel to something, because authors just don't make backstory that confusing otherwise.

Oh well. Out with 2008 and in with 2009--I'm putting "A Drop of Scarlet" back on the shelf and exchanging it for "Looking for Alaska" by John Green, which promises brilliance and pure, unfiltered awesome. I can practically see the awesome oozing out of the pages while it sits on my bookshelf.

Happy New Year, everybody!

I am a bad, bad person

So, I have no excuse for not posting in ages, because a lot of stuff has been happening.

First, my cousin Lee came to visit. I haven't seen him in almost a decade, and now he's married with a baby on the way--the last time I saw him, he was a teenager and I was, like, seven. It was totally weird. But anyway, he's hilarious. The whole family watched The Village--it was his first time seeing it and he talked through the whole thing, so he got all confused (it's one of those movies you have to watch carefully). He latched onto the first twist and just started making wild theories about old people the whole time. We haven't let him live it down.

And then, omg, CHRISTMAS! It was epic! My sisters and I have this tradition where we all sleep in my room on Christmas Eve, and, more importantly, we steal some kind of kitchen appliance (weird as that sounds). Last year we stole the toaster and made toast on Christmas morning, but this year we decided to step it up a notch. We initiated Operation Hungry Squirrel (as named by my sister Danielle), in which, over the course of three days, we stole everything we needed to make homemade waffles and hot chocolate on Christmas morning. Seriously.

We even fed my mom a fake story about stealing the tea kettle, so she wouldn't know what we were up to. Then we stole an ancient coffee maker and used it to boil water for the hot chocolate. We stole a waffle baker. We stole all the ingredients. We even took mugs and real plates (we were going to use paper plates, but then we figured that if we were going to do this, we had better do it RIGHT). For some reason I got put in charge of most of the thievery, and the only thing I didn't steal was the waffle baker, which my little sister Kelsey smuggled upstairs in a pillow. We even stole a lunchbox full of ice and stuck a water bottle full of milk in it for the hot chocolate.

So at 2:00 on Christmas morning we made waffles and hot chocolate on my bedroom floor. We had stolen some bananas to go with it, and some candy canes and a bar of chocolate. My parents think we're crazy, but it was epic.

And then for Christmas I got a grand total of fifty six books--so many that I got a bookshelf as one of my other presents. Now I have like my own personal library in my room (I already had a lot of books to start with)--with two full bookshelves. I had to rearrange the furniture to fit everything in. And I got a camera, which I'll be using for the MAD podcast's up-and-coming vlogs (starting January 5th), and a new headset (which actually works) for recording. Oh, and in another podcast reference, I got the Prince Caspian movie (our first episode was about Prince Caspian).

Annnd we got a Wii. Omg, we got a Wii.

Hooooly crap that thing is fun. I can't tell you how long I've played the James Bond game. It is fantastic.

And Wii baseball is suprisingly fun. I went on the Mii creator thing and created, like, the coolest baseball team ever. I'm there, of course (my Mii looks disturbingly like me--it's freaky), but then I made the coolest dream team ever. I've got Harry Potter, Cher, Ghengis Khan, Oprah, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin and (my personal favorite) Mick Jagger. It is absolutely bizarre how spot on the Mick Jagger Mii is.

So anyway I played Wii baseball for hours, and I have no muscle tone whatsoever in my arms, so I am in horrifying pain right now, which kind of sucks. However, I have like a bajillion books to read, so that makes things a LOT better. I actually just put down "Harry, A History" by Melissa Anelli (which is really, really good by the way). And I already finished "Intensity" be Dean Koontz (oh Dean Koontz, why art thou so made of win?) and "Legwork" by Katy Munger (a well written mystery, but I guessed the ending waaay early).

Problem is, I have so many books I want to read, but I'm trying to make myself wait until the New Year to read some of them, so that I can count them for the Book Challenge. But with the entire collected works of John Green sitting there on my bookshelf, and a new Terry Pratchett book, and Anonymous Rex by Eric Garcia, which is about a crime-fighting velociraptor (not even kidding), it's REALLY FREAKING HARD.

Gaaaah. Must wait. Must wait.

Today is awesome

...for several reasons.

Undeniably number one:

OMG I JUST WON NANOWRIMO!

I mean, technically I won it like fifteen days ago when I finished my first fifty thousand words, so I should qualify that statement by saying that I just EPIC WON NaNoWriMo. That's right - the final word count comes out to 101,041 words, and I finished two complete novels, all within thirty days.

ONE HUNDRED AND ONE THOUSAND WORDS.

Pwn!

Other reasons why today is awesome:

It's St. Andrew's Day! Woohoo! Let us party!

It's the first Sunday of Advent, which is my favorite time in the Church year. Yaay!

December starts TOMORROW! Which means that Christmas is coming! Which means that Christmas Break is coming! Which means that the NEW YEAR is coming - and I am so excited about 2009 that it's just ridiculous. More on that later.

And I will just never get tired of saying that I wrote ONE HUNDRED AND ONE THOUSAND AND FORTY ONE WORDS in thirty days. And it wasn't even that bad - I took plenty of days off and, frankly, I've had a harder time doing my fifty thousand word ones in past years.

I'm printing off my nano as I speak... It's going to take forever, it's over two hundred pages. The first one, I mean - the second one is over two hundred pages too, and together they're more like five hundred, but the second nano is sucktacular and I'm not even going to bother printing it. The first one pwns, though.

Oh, and Marshall and I were going to get together to bake cookies if I managed to write all one hundred thousand words (my goal). So, Marshall, it looks like it's cookie-baking time.

Hooray!

Proof that I love my family

So it's Thanksgiving break, and every year on Thanksgiving my dad's side of the family meets for Thanksgiving dinner at my grandparent's house in Florida. This is cool - it's fun, it's great to see everyone, and of course the food is fantastic.

But here's the thing - this year we couldn't afford to stay in a hotel for more than one night, but there isn't enough room in my grandparent's house to room us. So the plan became this: Thanksgiving morning, starting at about 5 AM, we would get in the car and drive the many many miles to Florida. We would stay for dinner, spend the night in the hotel, and then drive back on Friday morning.

Now, I love my family. My grandparents are some of the coolest people in the world, and my cousin had recently had a baby, so of course we wanted to see her (her name is Genevieve, which I happen to think is insanely cute). But driving all the way to Florida for dinner is a pretty daunting idea. Which is why the fact that we DID go proves the extent of our love. And of course, I actually tend to enjoy long car rides, so I guess it wasn't too bad - my sisters and I got along pretty well, all things considered.

Several other things, however, went wrong with this trip.

On the way there, our back right tire, like, exploded. I don't mean "flat tire", I mean "EXPLODED TIRE". And we had just bought this tire like a month ago! We were driving along the road when all of a sudden we started hearing this weird sound from the back of the car. We might have thought it was the tire, but we had just bought it, so we were like "It can't be the tire". And then all of a sudden we heard like this ear splitting metallic screeching noise and SMOKE started billowing out to the side of the car.

So we pulled over to the side of the road and got out of the car - keep in mind that it was like, freezing outside - and we see that the tire had... erupted. It was horrifying. I wish I had pictures. And there were all these black marks over the side of the car, and smoke going everywhere.

So then we couldn't find the spare tire on the stupid van (apparently it's actually under the van, which is weird) and it was freezing cold and we were somewhere in the middle of South Carolina and we still had miles to go before we reached Florida. Everyone was taking this surprisingly well, probably out of shock. Finally a cop pulled over to help, and he and my dad put on the spare tire (once we found it).

But then we couldn't find a place to get a new tire anywhere, because they were all closed because it was Thanksgiving. And you aren't supposed to drive that far on a spare tire, but we didn't know what else to do so we ended up driving the entire rest of the way on it, and we just went really slow. So of course we showed up kind of late.

The actual Thanksgiving dinner was good and everything, and things were looking up because my grandma gave me like ten books she found when she was clearing out her bookshelves and we actually managed to find a place to get new tires.

But the next morning I woke up feeling awful. I mean, really, really sick. And we were in the car for hours and hours driving home and it was all bumpy and I felt really hot, even though apparently the temperature was normal, and it was just generally horrendous because I was STUCK in the car.

Plus, remember that root canal I got a while ago? Well, the day before Thanksgiving I got sort of phase two of the root canal, where they like fill it up or something, and it hurt like poo. But I took dangerous amounts of Advil and so I was feeling fine on the way there, but, bizarrely, on Friday my jaw was in pain again.

And then I figured out that the stupid root canal was to blame for everything (except the tire), because it was because I had taken so much Advil that I got sick, because Advil upsets my stomach. And my jaw hurt after Thanksgiving because - and I cannot believe how uncool this is - because of how much I was smiling during Thanksgiving! I was fine as long as I was resting my jaw (my tooth never hurt much, but I have jaw problems and whenever I go to the dentist it screws with my jaw, doubly so after something like a root canal where your mouth has to be open for hours) but I was smiling so much the day before that it hurt a whole lot.

And then I got really mad, because it is just ridiculously unfair that I should be in pain for having smiled too much.

So it was like... gah. The actual dinner, and seeing all my family, was great. But the whole freezing-cold-South-Carolina-tire-explosion, sickness-while-on-the-road, and terrible jaw pain thing kind of sucked the fun out of it.

Poo.

Awesomeness in all its wonderful forms

It is day three of NaNoWriMo. My current word count is 19,323 and I'm still going strong - I expect another three or four thousand before the day is out. My story pwns in ways that stories rarely pwn.

I am the master of all that is NaNoWriMo.

On another awesome note, today is my mom's birthday! Yaaaay! And I am currently home alone (because Mom and Danielle are going to pick Kelsey up from school) and I'm sitting on the couch with my laptop and Ceilidh is leaning against me, asleep. It is unbearably cute.

Things are going well.

WIN

I got a root canal today.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, wow, Staci, that really sucks. You wouldn't be entirely incorrect for thinking that (I just took another two Advil. Owowowow), but not only was the procedure itself not that bad, there's several factors associated with this root canal that are MADE OF EPIC WIN.

First off I have to say that for something that people make such a big fuss about, a root canal is a freaking snap. I feel a bit ripped off that there weren't at the very least dramatic flashing lights and weird beeping machinery. I mean, they make you wear glasses to keep water from splashing in your eyes and there's this crazy rubber shield thing in your mouth, but aside from looking unfashionable it's not really bad. You don't feel anything. This almost annoyed me (it's like when you get a cut that bleeds a WHOLE LOT, but is in itself really shallow. It's not that you want a huge gash or anything, but for all that trouble you feel like you freaking deserve one) until I realized that the pain comes after the procedure. Only four more hours until I can take more Advil.

Now back to the EPIC WIN.

The first is that I got to leave school early (about halfway through fourth period), and it took so long that school was finished by the time I got out. As luck would have it I didn't miss anything catastrophically huge, so I get all the benefits of NOT being in school without having to worry about making up a bunch of stuff.

The second, however, is what I really want to talk about. My mom, being as awesome and fantabulous as she is, felt sorry for me for having to get a root canal (I'm kind of numb--pardon the pun--to the dentist, but my mom hates them) and so after I got out I went to Barnes and Noble and BOUGHT PAPER TOWNS BY JOHN GREEN!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH I'M SO EXCITED!!!!

I was going to get the book for Christmas, but after hearing John read the prologue on Youtube I FREAKED OUT and decided I needed it now, but I didn't have the money to buy it.... And now, thanks to my root canal, I own it today! I'm refusing to let myself start reading until I'm done with my homework because otherwise I'll never get my work done, but it's really - freaking - hard. I have it downstairs right now, because I need to physically distance myself from it.

I'm almost done with my homework (I just have to finish up Calculus) and then I can read it! YAY!!

*Happy dance*

DFTBA!

Happy Birthday, Marshall!

O - m - g, I wrote this whole post saying Happy Birthday to Marshall because she's turning 17 today, and talking about my awesome Ghostbuster costume that I wore to her party the other day, and I totally FAIL and accidentally deleted it.

FAIL.

So Happy Birthday, Marshall! It's taking me forever to write this stupid post, but happy birthday!

Fantastical!

My mom came home today!

She's been in Scotland the past couple of weeks and it's been mayhem without her. Seriously, nothing has been getting done. Danielle broke the dryer somehow so we haven't done laundry in ages, and I don't know how many days I've forgotten to feed the fish. And we don't have food. We've been living off cereal, pasta salad and cookies for two weeks now. Once I ate three bananas for dinner. I'm really glad Mom's home.

Anyway the fantasticality (definitely a word) doesn't end there. She brought stuff back! I now own a ridiculously cute sweater, unfathomable amounts of Scottish candy (which is waaaaaay better than American candy, by the way) and three new books: the British version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (so now I have all seven books in the American and British versions), the adult version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and - prepare yourself - TERRY PRATCHETT'S BRAND NEW BOOK, "NATION"!!!

I am so excited about this. Terry Pratchett is the freaking man. He's my favorite author and I have been Coveting (with a capital 'C') this book since it came out. I cannot wait to read it!!



-- Should probably explain - I'm half-Scottish. My mom met my dad when he was in the Navy and moved to America with him. She was in Scotland the past couple weeks for a wedding in the family and I am insanely jealous that I didn't get to go. I've been to Scotland loads of times but not very recently. It is easily the coolest place on Earth and I refuse to hear anyone say any different.

Ohhh poo

I missed two days of school last week. Generally, I don't approve of missing school days. It's a whole lot of unnecessary makeup work and in the end it's just a lot more trouble than it's worth. But Thursday and Friday of last week, circumstances conspired against me.

See, my mom is in Scotland right now visiting family. That's cool. But my little sister, Kelsey, goes to year-round school and she's tracked out right now, which means someone needs to stay home and watch her. Ordinarily this would be okay - my dad is going to stay home and watch her for most of my mom's trip - but my dad had to go to work Thursday and Friday last week because he was teaching those days (he's an instructor, he works with MRIs). So Kelsey was left at home alone. She's nine.

My older sister is in college and she can't miss any school, apparently. So it fell to Staci to babysit.

It's not the babysitting itself, mind you, that bothers me. Kelsey's pretty cool, most of the time. But I DESPISE missing school, and Thursday and Friday were the two worst days I could miss - I was supposed to take about a bajillion tests/quizzes and turn in a major lab assignment.

What that means is that now I am up to my eyes in makeup work and it's not looking good. I have to make up three tests, two quizzes, a freaking bajillion-question long webquest, and read the entire Scarlet Letter by Friday. That's in addition to all my normal work, and what with two huge anatomy labs and a couple assorted quizzes/assignments, this week has a pretty heavy workload already.

So naturally, rather than actually doing all that work, I decided to blog about it. Sigh. I suppose I had better go get started.

Fall! Fall! Fall!

Yeesssss it's the first day of fall!

I am ridiculously excited about this! Autumn is easily my favorite season - it's so... I don't know. Awesome. I love everything about it. The weather is great - cool but not COLD - there's just a general ATMOSPHERE about it that's frankly awesome. A sort of hot-chocolatedyness. You know?

I love the sort of Halloween, Thanksgiving holidays the best, too. I don't even go trick-or-treating anymore and I still love Halloween to death. Marshall's birthday is around Halloween and she's having a costume party again this year, (YES! My one and only chance to dress up!) and I'm going as Wasp Woman. OH YEAH. She's thinking about not having it be a costume party now, (the dates were changed and now it's a couple weeks before Halloween) but I don't care, I'm going as Wasp Woman either way. (Nerd power!)

...And I mean, come on, what self-respecting American can't love freaking TURKEY DAY?

I can't wait for the leaves to start falling! I'm obsessive when it comes to stepping on them. Once Autumn starts it takes me forever to cross parking lots.

There's something incredibly satisfying about that crunching sound. Yay Fall!

Major pwnage by Clint Eastwood

Ohhhhh my gosh I just watched "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly".

Formerly Clint Eastwood was just an old guy to me.

Now I realize that he is in fact THE MAN.

HOLY crap that's a good movie. I was never really against Westerns, but I can't claim to have been a very big fan. I never considered them particularly intelligent or anything. I was apathetic when it came to them.

Only now do I realize what an idiot I have been. I mean, I'm sure they're not all as good as that, but this at least acertains that they have potential. Whoah that was epic. Clint Eastwood's all like, "There are two kinds of people in this world. Those that have guns, and those that dig."

Also, I will get a poncho like his if it's the last thing I do.

Ohhh man that was awesome. And that music is GENIUS. You can just play the same song over and over throughout the movie and it NEVER GETS OLD.

*Adding to list of favorite movies*

Erm, not cool

So, you might be wondering where I've been the last couple days. Ah, what a good question.

I've been busy being violently ill.

There's this horrible stomach virus going around my school right now, and this weekend both me and my little sister caught it... and - it - sucked. So now I'm sort of drained and vaguely out of it - you know, that weird, post-illness feeling? I haven't been sleeping well, either. Naturally my teachers decide to bombard me with all manner of horrible assignments right about now.

For this reason, this is going to be a super-short blog post. Because I have to go now. I have to go do homework. Veritable mountains of cruel, unforgiving homework.

What have I done to deserve this?!