yey

So I have this graphic drawing tablet that I got for Christmas last year, and I've been finally using it. Woo!

...but as it turns out, I spend my time doodling and drawing flatworms in Paint.

(I recognize lyrics from "Storytime" by Nightwish. I don't remember what the rest means.)

AA

For those of you who think Lamby has always been my favorite stuffed animal, let it be known that before Lamby, there was AA.
AA, the small pink bunny with a bowtie (though I insisted she was female), whose name stands for Adventurous Adventurer, who has three older brothers that belong to my three older brothers, who eventually got played with so much that she turned slightly gray, earning her the nickname Gray-Gray. AA, who eventually got played with so much that I--under the influence of my brothers' urging--gave her to my mother for safekeeping some years ago, lest her head fall off with too much affectionate attention.
Being the immature fifteen-year-old that I am, imagine my delight when I found this in the bathroom a few nights past.

(The note says: "Nina, SURPRISE! Mommy wants me to take a spring break from the (cup)boarding school...How I missed you! <3 <3 <3 <3 AA)

There was a joyful reunion.

They used to be best friends, you know.

AA IS SO CUTE

(And another joyful reunion)

Typical Conversations #11 and #12

DAN: (screeches from bathroom) There's a spider in here!!
MOM: Haha. Did you hear that? He has to deal with a spider.
DAD: Let's see what he does.
ME: (yelling from other room) SQUISH IT WITH YOUR FINGERS.
DAN: (another screech, louder)

Silence.

DAN: (coming out of bathroom) I emerge victorious.

~•~

STEVIE: Can I have a knife?
ME: Here.
STEVIE: Thanks. I was just thinking, like, I have this pork chop and no knife...
ME: You could have just torn at it with your teeth.
MOM: Yeah, just hold it in your hands and go nawnawnawr. Like eating a squirrel.

what my mother makes in her free time

DFESA 3 - Ellie Goulding

I discovered this awesome lady a little while ago (last summer?) when one of my brothers started playing "Lights," and I was immediately hooked by the sound and style. Heh, I guess you could say that my musical tastes are kind of really influenced by my brothers.

Brief Description: 
Ellie (Elena) Goulding is a 25-year-old singer-songwriter from England whose debut album came out in 2010. That album, Lights, was No.1 on the UK Albums chart shortly after its release. Her style has been described as electro-folk-pop. She works with another musician/composer/DJ called Starsmith who acts as her producer. It's pretty cool. That's all I have to say.

What I like about this artist:
"[It's] pop, but a bit more emotional," Goulding once said of her music. Yes. Emotion. Dripping everywhere from her delicate, almost fragile voice. Piano. Electro-stuff. Drumbeats that hit me deep inside. (I don't know what exactly that means. It feels strange. It's hard to describe. I like it, though.) Lyrics that take a bit of effort to figure out. It's a lethal combination for me. I love it ALL.

Some of my favorite songs:

 "Lights" - Of course I have to include this one. It's still my absolute favorite.

"The Writer" - I sing the chorus of this song over and over, all the time.

"Home" - Addicted to the drums here.

"Black and Gold" - I think this one's a cover, but I love the way she sings it.

Did you use Google Translate?

 Directions for a practice activity in my Chinese course:

"Watches each kind of clothes. The description of the clothes writes after listening to the recording."


Yes. I can do that. 

OMELET

Nathan and I made omelets for ourselves on Wednesday.
Ingredients: eggs, "Mexican Blend" shredded cheese, diced barbeque chicken, and some green salad stuff we found in the fridge.
Seems like it should have gone well, right?

It turns out we are not that great at the whole cooking part.

Had too much salt (mine)

Had no salt at all (Nathan's)

---

However, despite the, uh, less-than-perfect presentation and salt discrepancy, they ended up tasting pretty good.

DFESA 2 - Nightwish

Nathan introduced me to this band a few years ago, and I've liked them ever since. Nightwish is probably responsible for giving me the taste for metal that I have. (Understandably, this confounds my mother and delights Nathan. "You're such a metal-head like me," he told me today.)

Brief Description:
Nightwish is a Finnish/Swedish metal band that's about as old as I am, having debuted on New Year's Eve of 1996. It's gone through a progression from folkish-ambient mood music with metal elements to more exclusively metal to metal with a bit of orchestral sound. Nightwish has had two lead singers. The first was Tarja Turunen, who has this powerful classical voice that can be kind of scary sometimes, but she was dismissed in 2005 and replaced with Anette Olzon, who has a good-but-not-so-powerful voice. That switch of main vocalists naturally influenced their style, so the metal is a little lighter in their recent work.

What I like about this artist:
Nightwish is headbang-worthy. I don't really headbang, but I enjoy music that makes me want to. Metal stuff kind of has a weight that other music doesn't have (maybe that's why they call it "metal"?), and when all that weight is thrown on top of songs that have very little melodic variation and lots of screaming, I don't like it so much. However, when that weight is put into songs that have very singable melodies and lyrics that I can hear--as Nightwish usually does--I tend to like it. (*Note: There are exceptions to this. Occasionally I like songs that are completely screaming and growling and really heavy metal, but I haven't exactly figured out why I like them.) I quite enjoy the imagery in Nightwish's lyrics too: phrases like "the dark rain from her eyes" and "land of the daybreak" and "into a child-man's heart."
PLUS THEY DO ORCHESTRAL VERSIONS OF THEIR SONGS AND I LOVE ORCHESTRAS.   

Some of my favorite songs:

 

 "Nemo" - One of the first I ever heard. (Tarja's the vocalist here)

 "Creek Mary's Blood" - Instrumental orchestral version. It's very long :P

"Eva" - This is one of their prettiest songs--and very tame. (Anette sings here)

"Storytime" - From Nightwish's most recent album, called Imaginaerum. It's kind of creepy :D

Typical Conversation #10

NATHAN: Hey Nina, Dragonforce is coming out with a new album.
ME: What's Dragonforce?
NATHAN: Brt-nan-na-na-na-brt-na-nan-ba-ba-nan-na-nan-na-na--
ME: Ohhhhhhh.

*facepalm*

Tinkly music.

DAN: (on the phone)  What? Oh, that's just my sister's stuffed lamb. It has a button...you press it and it, like, sings...

A pause.

DAN: No, my sister's fifteen. 

I'm left alone...

WITH TWO MEN TO TAKE CARE OF. Well, just one now, but that's beside the point.

Mommy and Jeremy left for Boston early on Saturday morning, and until today, both my dad and Nathan were home--which meant that I had to be domestic and clean the house and cook for them and stuff.
I'm not very domestic naturally. I will confess that it felt (feels) odd to me. Mom is the kind of mom who does everything while hardly talking about it, and Jeremy is the sensitive brother who takes care of almost everything else that Mom might have missed. So...I'm the spoiled youngest child who usually just sort of sits there and expects to be served. Most of the time, I take initiative to do something if I'm absolutely sure that no one else might just maybe in the near future do it instead of me. Otherwise, I only do stuff that I'm explicitly told to.
Bad, I know. I have to change that mentality. (Pray for me in this area. My family will love you.)
However inexperienced I may be, this weekend went pretty well. We ate a lot of leftovers, but there was some successful cooking involved. The kitchen hasn't caught on fire. In fact, it's quite clean right now, because I was provided with this nice little checklist of daily chores that I have dutifully followed. Never mind that I lost it on Saturday afternoon and freaked out for a few hours before Nathan found it again.
I've even done laundry by myself, which I never do, which is kind of pathetic. If you feel inclined to scoff at me right now, feel free. 
But besides all that, my brother and father make great company. Dad has watched like four different documentaries in this weekend alone: something on Yellowstone, something about Martin Luther, something about the history of jazz, and another one that I forget. It may actually have been a movie. I watched some of them with him. That was fun.
Nathan and I went out to practice frisbee on Saturday, when the ground was soaking wet. Lovely. He made me practice lay-out catches (I CAN'T DO THEM RIGHT), then practice sprinting, then practice long, accurate throws. That was fun too.
Other than those highlights, we mostly wandered around the house, occasionally bothering each other.

We also had brownies and ice cream.

"Davina," says Nathan, "I want you to scoop the ice cream with this."

↓

That didn't work out so well...

We also watched two episodes of 24: Season 2.
I like it.


Unfortunately, I'm really alone this afternoon, as Nathan is back in the city, and Dad's at work. Fortunately, Kelly is coming here in less than an hour to break my loneliness.

Well, I should probably go put in another load of laundry. Bye.