Old News

Oh by the way I'm in college now.

The whole high school thing actually worked out ok.  I wore the weird dress thing, didn't trip, said some words, got a diploma, took a million pictures with my family, and left.

I didn't cry, though.

The summer went by entirely too quickly.  It took me much longer to pack than I thought it would.  Organizing isn't exactly my strong point.  I decided that small boxes would be the best way to make my craft/art supplies contained and accessible in my new room.

I did not think that it would take up that much space.  I was so wrong.
Also, it's hard to categorize such things.

"well, yeah, this drawer should have all of the fabric and glass and balsa wood and also buttons and tissue paper and...  they all go together, of course."

Essentially, even when it feels organized to me, it doesn't look that way to anyone else.


After a series of summer adventures, I drove the rest of the way to college with one of my friends.
Then commenced the week-long gauntlet of ice-breaker and team-building activities.  Most of these were actually not that bad.  The worst ones are when you have to say facts about yourself.  That's when I go blank.

It's so difficult.  This is where you actually have a chance to affect what others think about you solely based on what you think they should know.  And this is where I panic.  I usually end up saying something really weird and not that important.  Which I guess really is all anyone needs in order to actually know me.

The daunting trials of orientation week paled quickly in comparison to actually starting classes.  Writing this is a form of advanced procrastination.  I need to study for an exam now.  What is life.

-Kelly L.

Robotics

It's been a while but this is something that has taken up most of my time for the past two months.

I am a captain of my school's FIRST Robotics team, team 4845.  You can see more about our team here: lionsrobotics4845

This is our team's second year, and we have made a lot of progress from where we started.

We had 6 weeks to build a robot to compete in FRC Aerial Assist:   http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc/2014-game

 

Our competition is at the DECC in Duluth on March 6-8. 

-Kelly L.

ps. I also had a birthday a little bit ago and I am now as old as the movie, Titanic.

stairs

Just practicing some editing stuff, don't mind me...


-Kelly L.

Collage

To all those concerned, this is what I've been up to lately.

I'm currently obsessed with multimedia collages, we'll see how long this lasts.

These are the ones I have made in the last few weeks.

Materials used: just kidding, that would take too long to list.

Now, in addition to the paint that is on all my clothes, there is glue. Lots of glue.
Worth it.

Update: another thing that's been taking up my time lately would be the misspelling of collage.  I've been working on college applications.  Ew.  Scholarship applications are even worse. 
(If any of the teachers who are writing me recommendations are reading this: If you don't tell them how obnoxious I am, I won't write bad things about your classes on my blog.  Deal?)

-Kelly L.

This is a filler.

I haven't written anything in a while, because... (this is the part where I got distracted and started scrolling through pinterest for 7 mins) ... I've been busy, of course.

The volleyball season was pretty time-consuming, and it just ended on (opens up Calendar) Monday, Oct. 21.  Highlights of the season were the few wins we had, our loss against Cook County in which we played incredibly well as a team, some of the bus rides, a spontaneous after-game ice cream run with friends, and evaluating other teams' warm-up playlists. (checks Facebook involuntarily)

side note: I'm a senior so this was my last volleyball season.  I started in eight grade so here, look at these pictures.  It's like those old pictures recreated years later, except there's only five years difference, which hasn't accounted for much.  If this were a 'spot the differences' game, there would be about 3:

1. Change of jerseys (because I switched schools)
2. The braces (hallelujah)
3. Wait never mind: there's just two.

 

(checks email even though I can see that the number of messages in my inbox hasn't changed since I started writing)

Besides volleyball, robotics has finally started up again.  At this point we're just meeting Monday mornings at 6:00.  We have about 6 or so new team members at this point.  I think this season will be a great experience for everyone who has decided to commit to it, and I can't wait to see what we will accomplish.

(checks twitter)

In other news, basketball is starting soon!  We had our first team meeting with (2/3 of) the coaches, and we just need a few more players to have both varsity and JV teams.  (makes a list of players to see how close we are. One maybe two players away) If we don't get enough people, we'll just have a varsity team.  Which isn't the best because everyone will get less playing time and we won't have all of the games that were originally on the schedule.  Needless to say I really hope we have more girls join the team.  Either way I think we will still have a fun season.

Orchestra isn't the biggest time-consuming activity, but it still counts for something.  We had our first concert of the year last Saturday (checks calendar again) the 19th.  It was a Halloween concert, (the secular, it burns! 0_0  )  but it was alright.  We played music from Pirates of the Caribbean and Phantom of the Opera. (looks up how to properly write the titles of films, etc.)

Yeah, I think that's just about it.
Oh wait no, I also go to school, that's kind of a big deal.
And I've been working on college applications. (ADSDFGKJSAJHJFSLDJBAHF----send help)

-Kelly L.

This One Time In High School...

• Our volleyball coach said in part of an inspirational "play your best now; you can't do this later" speech that in ten years we would all have jobs and kids.  Sorry Coach, no guarantees.  There are a lot of variables there that I cannot control.
• I went to school camp, aka the "High School Retreat," which means being stuck with all of the other little chilluns who I see every weekday, but on the weekend.  That of course makes it a much better bonding experience.  Normal weekends away from school are certainly not to maintain our sanity, that would be a ridiculous concept.  It's really a good thing we have school camp.  I might not be friends with the people who were already my friends if we didn't.  It also helped me stay acquaintances with my acquaintances, and even "who exactly is that?" with my "who exactly is thats?"
• The Student Government Association decided to let me be their secretary this year.  No one else wanted to be, but still, they could have voted me down.  This means I get to take notes and not be considered a nerd--oh wait, still a nerd.  but a sanctioned nerd.
• (speaking of which) On the way to a Junior Rotarian meeting, we were told that it would be a good idea to take notes.  My friends said they didn't bring notebooks. "It's ok, I have three."  Let's just say I also had enough pens for everyone in the 8-passenger vehicle.

-Kelly L.

Life is Crazy

This post will bring an end to the unintentional summer hiatus of my blog.

I started school on Tuesday, Sept. 3.  It was not fun.  I am really looking forward to this school year being over.

On Saturday, August. 31,  my mom and I were in MI visiting my grandparents.  I may not have mentioned this on the blog yet, but in May my grandma was diagnosed with a brain tumor.  They had said a few weeks ago that she only had about a month or so left.

So we were going to visit, and my mom wanted me to help work on a slideshow for the funeral.  I hadn't added funeral slideshow making to my repertoire of skills yet, and I really was not looking forward to doing so.  It's a much more emotionally difficult task than usual slideshows.  Nothing I wanted to ever have a reason to try.

That morning, I was getting ready for church, and decided to wear makeup.  I usually don't bother with mascara, but for some reason I did that day.  The moment I brushed it onto my left eyelashes, I immediately regretted it.  I thought of how I was supposed to work on that slideshow after church, and decided it was a bad day for mascara as I followed through and brushed it onto my right eye's lashes.

Sunday, Sept. 1 was the last day we got to be with grandma.  It really seems unbelievable.

I went to school the next two days in a bit of a daze, skipped the third day and most of the fourth day of school to go to the funeral.

It's been a week, and every day has been a terrible day for mascara.

I miss you.

-Kelly L.

two more weeks

My hair is drying as I write this. 
Two days ago I let my hair dry under the sun of South America.
I miss Ecuador.  I miss the friends I made there.  I had an amazing time being there, and it ended too quickly.  In a few hours, I'll get on a plane and leave again.
America, you have nice water.  I'll miss that, but see you later.

-Kelly L.

1000 pageviews!

After I had been blogging here for a little while, I set a goal for myself to reach 1,000 pageviews.
Yesterday I reached that goal, 36 posts later.   **does some vague mathematics... who needs accuracy??-- it's summer**   That's kind of close to 30 views on everything I write.  If I subtract the views from my parents, that's probably more like 3 views on everything. 

So, dear 3 readers, thank you.

I hope you want to keep reading and see more of my future adventures?

Unless things go drastically wrong, I should be going to Ecuador tomorrow.  The plan is that I'll get back in two weeks, and then leave the next day for some more places.

Whenever I get back to the land of daily internet usage and computer screens and being inside more than is probably healthy for me, I will share stories with you. 

Have a great time without me, internet!

-Kelly L.

"Can I touch your hair?"

I hear that question a lot.
It's not completely normal, but I'm used to it.  Or what I mean to say is, I'm used to friends and new acquaintances asking me if they can touch my hair.  I may just have weird friends, but then they do  too, because they have me. 

Since my friends are so...quirky... I'm reasonably accustomed to people asking me such questions about my hair.  However, I don't really like when people go ahead and touch my hair without asking.  It may just be vanity, but I'm still not a fan of uncalled-for hair-touching.

On my way to Washington, D. C. last week, I had to walk through one of those security body scanners which make you feel all kinds of violated.  After that, I was gonna keep walking and get my shoes and backpack.  I was feeling awkward after the scan dealio and just wanted to keep going right away---no such luck.  The TSA agent has me stop so she can wait for the scan image to load---I can deal with that.  Then she walks up to me and says she has to touch my hair.  She proceeds to pat down my hair before letting me leave.

Well, that happened.  As I collected my shoes and repacked my flight-friendly 3oz bottles of everything into my carry-on bag, I was thinking about the rules and regulations of airports.  Sure, I'm happy to have my hair searched if it keeps people safe.  But I just don't understand what about that keratinous rat's nest couldn't be seen by their scanner.  I have super-hair.

That is all.

-Kelly L.

fangirling happens

If you know me pretty well, you'd know that I'm a bit of a nat-geo magazine nerd.  You know, one of those crazy people who carefully opens the plastic packaging and flips over the magazine to see the cover without any glare and distortion from the package.  Then I read the geography quiz questions on the insert before I turn the first page.  If someone else in my family starts reading the magazine before I do and opens it differently, it feels like a sacrilege. 

For a while, I really wanted to be a photographer for Nat Geo "when I grew up." A few years ago, the question of what I want to be when I grow up changed to what I wanted to major in, etc.  It got a lot more real-life at that point.  I know that you have to be amazing to actually be a photographer for Nat Geo, and I understand that it's basically an unrealistic goal.  Still, little-kid me still says that's what she wants to do.  So for me it's just, "I wish..."

Even though I probably won't ever work for Nat Geo, I still envy people who do.  Today I had the opportunity to listen to Meghan Reese, a producer who has worked on TV shows for Nat Geo (and other companies).  Since I don't have TV at my house, I'm not really that into National Geographic's TV programming, due to not really having much exposure to it.  But still, hearing her talk about what she does was incredible.

From her presentation and Q&A, she shared what she does as a producer and how she has gotten to where she is in the industry.  She lives the life of a creative, working almost nonstop for months or years at a time, then being off for a few months in between job opportunities.  I really enjoyed hearing her talk and answer all of our questions.  So jealous of her for working for Nat Geo...so jealous.

-Kelly L.

Newseum

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to visit the Newseum in Washington, D.C.  It is a museum that displays the history and evolution of journalism and news media from the books of news in the 1560s to the instantaneous news medias of today.  They had artifacts from important events, and original copies of newspapers and magazines from every time period since the dawn of print news. 

An exhibit that impacted me personally was the room full of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs.  Each of the photos there was an iconic photo from its year, and they were full of so much emotion.   Many of the photographs documented social injustices and awful occurrences that the world needed to know about.  If each of these photographs had been chosen for symbolizing so much, imagine a room full of them.  Everyone in the room was very sobered by what they saw, and many were crying.   It was a real eye-opener for me to see so much of history all at once, in gruesome, unforgiving detail.

The Newseum also had an exhibit on the Berlin Wall.  Videos about it were playing on the walls, people were scurrying around, the room was full of motion, but one thing was static.  Four tall, graffitied, concrete segments of the wall stood lined up on one side of the room.  They helped give an idea of what it would be like to be separated by the wall.  You couldn't see over it, there was only an expanse of wall that was almost impossible to breach.  This segment was from the free side, so that is why they were able to graffiti it.

The Newseum had many other exhibits showing important events in news and the spread of ideas and information.  I am really glad I got to go there.
-Kelly L.