it's party time.

it's grad party season. this means that GPS systems get a good workout, senior pictures are distributed, and everybody eats too much.

i'm not sure how to feel about grad party season.

i was so excited for my graduation party, i began to plan it in my head my freshman year of high school. that was in 2006. i graduated in 2010. i was a bit early, i think.

i did the actual paper planning in april. we set a date, we set a time, i made a gigantic list of people to invite, and i made a facebook event. and of course, i made a theme: chocolate desserts.

i honestly spent three hours dipping chocolate covered strawberries.

my cousin jessica and i spent most of the day decorating my garage with orange streamers and occasionally adding in some alma colors. mostly the alma colors were inside. my mother and i set up the dining room table with pictures of me and my accomplishments over the years, along with a little display of my musical hobbies. while setting up my cello, i knocked a peg and my A string suddenly became an F string.

i had high expectations for my grad party, just as i do with everything in my life.

it was decently ruined by a terrific tornado.

the tornado decided to come about halfway through the party and it brought along a nice big thunderstorm with severe winds and pouring rain. everybody who was planning on coming to my party later retreated back into their houses and did not venture to mine to eat chocolate covered strawberries. i was not too upset by the latter, because i have a weakness for chocolate covered strawberries. this meant more for me.


my brother and i before the tornado hit. :)



the week BEFORE my graduation party, the sunday after graduation, i went to nineteen graduation parties. sunday, june thirteenth, 2010, was the busiest, my-stomach-has-never-been-this-full-est day of my life.

i hooked up ethel, my dad's GPS, onto the windshield. i had a very long piece of paper in my glove compartment that had a list of all the grad parties i needed to go to, equipped with addesses to input into ethel, along with the party times. from there i ordered them so i could make it to everybody's during their respected hours. then i gave my mother a kiss, put on some extra deoderant, and set out.

i only went to nineteen out of the twenty-three grad parties that i was invited to. i ate all day. some of the parties were ridiculously fun, and others were extremely awkward. monte's had to be the worst; it was me, him, and his large gigantic black family. after his i went to my best friend jacob's graduation party, and i felt so terrible that i couldn't stay for more than an hour. he was number nine on my list, and it was already three thirty, so i had to get moving.

i ran into my parents at four of the nineteen grad parties, and i frequently saw the same people who would then ask me, "where did you come from?" and reply with, "oh i was there about an hour ago."

grad party season is milling around town, eating food, congratulating your friends, and seeing your other ones every where you go to eat yet more food.

going to those nineteen grad parties was intensely stressful. savannah lives in the middle of nowhere, but luckily, courtney lived decently out in that direction. brittany lived on the complete other side of town, and i could not find a place to park by adriana's house. at dylan's i happened on a bunch of people i went to middle school with and they decided that they didn't need to catch up with me and ask how high school had been, so i hovered on the backyard with some egg salad nervously.

on the day of june thirteenth, i had never eaten that much food in my entire life, and i had driven over a hundred miles and spent half a tank of gas just driving around fort wayne to eat more food and see more friends.

this year i have a few grad parties to frequent. there are about three that i'm actually interested in going to and two that i am truly excited for. i am pretty sure i was only invited to four.

i'm not depressed by this fact. grad parties are fun, and they're free food, and they have fun friends, but i don't think i could stand another day like june 13th, 2010. i'm much happier going to four grad parties spaced out throughout the month of june and having a nice feeling that i have kept my sanity.

i enjoy my sanity. i hope your enjoy yours, too.

so i'm coming to the conclusion that grad party season just is. it's fun, it's exciting, it's filling. it's also annoying, gas guzzling, and if you're the type of person who needs to get gifts, it's expensive.

grad party season is, at its best, simply grad party season.

here's a strike.

this is my tenth blog in my very own 'blog every day in june' challenge.

i have my "this is my blog folder" folder open. i have the one document in that folder open. it's labeled "this is my blog idea sheet."

i had a lot of fun writing that list. i figured it would be extremely helpful, because i have to come up with thirty blogs, and before that, i was blogging maybe once or twice a month. i would need ideas on slow days. like today.

once i blog about something on this list, i strike it off. i've struck off quite a few things. eventually i'll just delete them and add new things to blog about, but for now, it's nice to see what i've done and what i still have left to do.

one of the bulleted things on this list is "making this list."

the one under it is "trying to blog every day."

i feel like i've already accomplished both of these things in my blog today, wouldn't you agree?

i felt highly organized when i made that blog folder labeled "this is my blog folder." the folder under that is "yo hablo espanol", and that's where my online spanish homework goes. i tell myself that i'm an organized person. i have a need to be organized, a terrible yearning need, but here's the problem: i'm just not organized.

all through my freshman year of college, my roommate and i swore that we would keep our room clean. we both listed ourselves as messy when we filled out housing forms, and we got paired together through that, similar interests, and being signed up for collegiate swimming. we kept each other clean, but that did not mean organized. my bookshelf held up my bunked bed, and i had all of my books in order, followed by the folders, and then by the notebooks on that bookshelf.

for a week.

after that, i dumped everything, including my bag, on my pod chair that set next to my bookshelf. i had brought up that chair to alma (it's normally my computer chair) for sitting and reading my english homework. but it became a dumping ground for all my schoolwork. then it was a dumping ground for clothes. soon i had a gigantic pile of books, folders, notebooks, mismatching socks, jeans, and bras. i did, however, clean the chair off at least twice a month when it became too unbearable. i kept the rest of the room relatively clean. again, i have this need to be organized. but i don't have the power to actual be organized.

so when i made the blogging folder, i felt like a badass.

i knew that i was definitely going to need to find things to blog about for days like these. luckily enough, my june has been decently exciting and busy, so i've had things to blog about. my day today has certainly been exciting; i've been approached by a creepy man with a ponytail and a fanny pack at the park, i've been locked out of my friend's house, i've gone grocery shopping, i went to work and a work meeting, i bought really expensive coffee, i filled up the rental car with e85 terrific fuel, i returned the rental car, and then i went and got my actual car. i've had a very productive day, even though i still have spanish homework to do in the next seven hours. and it'll take me a while.

but all that stuff i did is stuff that i tweet, not stuff that i blog.

i honestly tried to blog ten minutes ago about how doing all of these things, especially the stuff dealing with my car, made me feel really adult and cool because i'm financially dependent on my parents. it just didn't work.

so i reverted to my list. that's why i made it, right?

when i post this blog, i get to strike off "making this list." because that's what i just blogged about.

repetition: i just blogged about making a list of things to blog about.

i'm not sure if this is pathetic or entirely excellent and creative. it's probably neither because i'm not really sure who reads these and judges them. as the writer, i certainly can't judge them.

while trying to post this, i accidentally clicked on the statistics of my blog. someone from australia has read one of my blogs. i'm not sure if i'm flattered or a little bit afraid.

so it's day ten of my blog every day in june (go!) challenge, and i've blogged about making a list of things to blog about. i hope, maybe, that i'm slightly innovative.

terrific is terrific.

i go through phases where i use specific words or phrases. all the time.

you've done it too. i think we all do it.

for a while, i said PSYCHO! a lot. and then it was SCORE! and then SWEETNESS! and now i say EPIC! just like everyone else. i really think that we overuse the word epic. and when this happens, it begins to lose meaning.

saying "i love you" lost its meaning forever ago. and that makes me ridiculously sad.

but this isn't about saying i love you. this is about how suddenly we've forgotten about the word terrific.

terrific is a terrific word.

english is BY FAR the most verbose language ever constructed. we have so many words that 47,156 of them are considered obsolete like that cell phone you got last year. that's 47,000 words that nobody uses at all. we have so many useless words that nearly everything has a synonym. this is pointless for everyone except poets. english is the best language for poetry because there are so many words to choose from to get the right feel, the right rhyme, the right connotation.

but other than that, english is just teeming with pointless words.

i have this fear that the word terrific is on its way to becoming obsolete word number 47,157. nothing is terrific anymore. things are awesome, great, cool, epic, baller (where the hell did we come up with that one?), tight, sweet, real, fresh, sick, legit, and kickass.

nobody says, "hey, i just played this super cool game. it was terrific."

i personally think that terrific is a terrific adjective. it's terrific enough that it has three definitions according to this guy.

that's merriam webster, by the way.
1. extraordinarily great or intense. doesn't that sound better than 'epic' to you?
2. extremely wonderful. that sounds better than 'nice' when talking about your vacation spot.
3. causing terror; terrifying. i think it's cooler to say, 'that was terrific' instead of 'oh my god i was so scared i shit my pants.' it's probably more adult, as well.

terrific originates from the latin word terrificus way back in the 1660's. the latin definition is to frighten or to be frightened, but somehow, we adapted it to mean excellent and remarkable in 1888. i'm not entirely sure how we accomplished this. but then again i'm not entirely sure how or why english is the most spoken language in the world because english just doesn't make sense.

i'm not really sure why i'm hung up on the word terrific. it's possible that i am because it's a terrific word and it hasn't been lowered yet. "i love you" has been lowered with so many other words, like good, great, epic, awesome, cool, and pretty.

when words get lowered in meaning like that, it just makes me sad.

i'm not expecting obsolete words like roinish (that means scabby) to come back any time soon, but it would be nice if someone said terrific instead of epic every once in a while.

i'm terrific, you're terrific, we're terrific, they're terrific.

terrific is terrific.

a typical morning.

it's one thirty in the afternoon and it's already been one of the days.

strictly speaking, my day isn't even half over. i feel like this isn't a good sign.

every night before i go to sleep, i take three prescription pills; an anti-inflammatory, a muscle relaxant, and a gigantic scary pill for nerve pain. they knock me out in about fifteen minutes, which is exciting because falling asleep has always been an issue for me, but unfortunately, they don't keep me asleep.

even more unfortunately, every time i wake up in the middle of the night, because of these pills, i am absolutely CONVINCED that i have not slept before waking up.

according to my drug-addled brain, last night i went to bed at midnight (which is true). i then went to bed at two, then at four thirty, then at six thirty. the six thirty one was very terrifying because my alarm was set for six forty-four.

i feel like i need to devote at least eight hours to sleep with these pills, because when my alarm went off at six forty-four, i was incredibly confused. after i put on my swim suit and my work shirt and found my back brace, i scarfed down a bowl of stale lucky charms. after that, i tried to put my poptarts in the fridge. i must have really been confused, but obviously not confused enough to tweet about it before i left for work.

my job is so much fun i'd do it for free. it's also stressful enough that i wish i would get paid three times as much as i do. for three hours a day (two in the morning, one in the evening) i am responsible for the welfare of children ages four to eighteen. i am their swim team coach.

fort wayne is in the middle of a heatwave. for early june, it should not be ninety-seven with one hundred percent humidity. that's saved for band camp in july. maybe this year band camp week traded weeks with "this week is emily's first full week of work and classes". i wouldn't be surprised if that's what's happened. so for two hours, while i was instructing my fifteen year olds and my ten year olds, i was incredibly hot. i looked for excuses to strip off my unbearably hot back brace and dip into the pool, but i couldn't find a good enough one. i ran out of time with the little kids, and it's just awkward getting in with a bunch of high schoolers who probably don't respect you as much as they should.

when practice ended at nine twenty-five, i had about two minutes to get my butt moving to mi clase de espanol en IPFW. i had not showered. i was starving. my hair was a hot mess and pulled back in a sloppy half pony tail, and i was wearing a swim suit and a sweaty t-shirt. an incredibly sweaty t-shirt.

i commenced to grab my clean clothes from my swim bag, high tail it to my rental car, and strip in the back. lucky for me, i parked by some bushes and i was even cool enough to back into my parking spot. my rental car's windows are also conveniently tinted far more than my regular car's are. unfortunately, it was about a hundred and ten degrees in my car, i was rushed, and already sweaty.

i drove to IPFW with a serious lead foot, my air conditioning on full blast, trying to ignore the fact that my bangs were so sweaty they weren't even bangs and i had sweat rolling down my back, my arms, and my legs. i thought i was gross when i went to work without showering. now i was absolutely disgusting.

halfway to IPFW i was cool enough that i wasn't covered in sweat. i was being followed by a very persistent cop who didn't use his turn signal the entire way. considering my extra lead foot (i already speed more than i should) i'm surprised he didn't pull me over. by the time i pulled into the parking lot and located my shoes (under the back seat), i knew that i was going to blog about my morning.

spanish class, which i will probably blog about later (with or without affection, i am not sure yet) is two and a half hours long. i sat there for the first hour dying of hunger and thirst which i finally quenched with a rice krispie treat and a drinking fountain (i am too cheap to walk to higher grounds). the second hour, after getting about eighty new vocabulary words, i worried needlessly about how horrible my hair looked and how bad i probably smelled. jordan, who sits next to me, probably would've told me if i smelled, so i'm really hoping that i didn't.

when i was driving home, i realized that after only two days, i'd gotten used to the evil chevy rental car. this made me hate it even more.

like i said, my day isn't even half over. i've worked, gone to class, thankfully showered and eaten lunch, and now blogged. but in an hour i leave for physical therapy. on the way home, i have thirty dollars worth of photos to pick up at walgreens. after THAT i get to cook dinner, do my spanish homework, and alas, go to work again.

i am not going to lie.

this honestly sounds like a fun, ideal summer. i'm excited for it.

television television.

this blog is supposed to be about what happens when a girl spends her entire childhood with five television channels. before she leaves for college at the tender age of nineteen, her grandfather gives her a small flatscreen television. she sets it up in her dorm room, and suddenly... she has cable.

because you are a smart human being, you guessed that that girl is me.

television has never held much for me. when i was little my mother and i used to watch dharma and greg, and since it left the air, i really have to say that there are no good sitcoms left. how i met your mother and the big bang theory are decent, but not decent enough for me to watch them every week. i miss the days of dharma and greg, frasier, and eight simple rules.

after swim practice, every thursday, my entire family would watch survivor. we're one of those families that's stuck with it from season one to season twenty-two. and we can't wait for season twenty-three. this is the first and best of reality TV.

other than that, we don't watch much television. when we moved in june of 2007, my father didn't connect our only television until november. and we didn't notice.

on monday nights my mother and i watch chuck. i have an extremely unhealthy relationship with chuck, probably because it was the first true one hour television show that i've ever seen. i'm in love with zachary levi and i'm way more in love with his character. my best friend jacob got me into watching chuck, and i've devoted my monday nights to it for four seasons. i own three of these four seasons (i can't wait until the fourth one comes out!) and i watch them frequently. on monday nights at eight, my television is on NBC and you better not try to talk to me, because i will eat you.

then, quite suddenly, i had cable. monday nights were still chuck nights, but then... after chuck was over, i had seventy-six channels to surf. there were so many ridiculous possibilities! there were entire channels devoted to the environment, to animals, to CAKES. and i found that i didn't watch any other channels except the five i grew up with.

then came criminal minds.

jacob (the boyfriend, not the best friend) and i were channel surfing while sitting on my bed one evening and there was a decent looking drama that i paused at. there was a very handsome, tall skinny geeky kid in a waiting room anxiously tapping his foot and i asked jacob what show this was. and he laughs and says, oh, this is criminal minds.

there was a long pause in which i contemplated that name. i'd seen commercials for criminal minds on cbs for a long time during my weekly survivor ritual, but i'd never watched it. it looked too much like CSI for me to be completely comfortable. i'm terrified of CSI. while i contemplated this, jacob contemplated me with complete bewilderment.

and he opened his mouth and said, "you've never seen criminal minds? your hobby is serial killers, and you've never watched criminal minds?"

we watched it. i fell in love.

my obsession has grown as much as my obsession with chuck, and in fact, it might be worse. i only own two of the six seasons, but i have access to all six illegally online and i watch them frequently. i am MADLY in love with dr. spencer reid, and i became so emotionally invested in the show that it frequently makes me cry. i thought only chuck could do that. over my one week spring break, i watched all of season five and what was currently airing of season six. then i began to watch it every wednesday night at nine. and then i discovered channel 23.

channel 23, more officially known as ion television, plays criminal minds from eight until one. every single night except wednesday (to make room for the new episode, they play it from ten until midnight). they play all the episodes in order. suddenly i had a new ritual; chuck at eight on mondays, and then criminal minds the rest of the week.

i figured out exactly what day and what time my favorite episode would air, and i got the popcorn all ready. halfway through the episode, somebody pulled the fire alarm in my dorm building. i pelted in my slippers for my friend bill's room in gelston hall, pounded down his door, and demanded to use his television.

it's safe to say i'm unhealthily addicted.

i'm still not big on television. i figure there are way too many channels out there. i'm not sure why anybody would spend all day watching a channel completely devoted to cake shows.

i grew up with five channels and i'm normal.

at least decently.

here's your new car, have a nice day.

i've been blogging about cars lately. but cars have been a big deal in my life lately. so i blog about them.

on may seventeenth i was headed to the dupont library for a work meeting. the dupont library parking lot is tiny, confined, and there are no pull-through spots. i'm afraid of backing out my car, and i've been driving it for four years now. soooo i decided to troll that teeny little lot to test my skills at backing out.

while i was creeping forward at two miles an hour looking for an open spot, a kid on a permit dressed for a band concert backed into the side of my car.

for about ten seconds i thought it was my fault, said a few choice words, turned down my lion king soundtrack, and contemplated what to do, because i'd just hit a car. after that ten seconds was over and i realized that there was no physical way that i could've hit this car and that he hit had hit me, i shut my car off and was confronted by his worried mother who spoke way too loudly.

she made the police call, made sure i had my insurance information, yelled calmly that it wasn't my fault, lamented loudly that my car had a decent amount of damage on the back passenger door, and wrote down all of her information in the most interesting handwriting i'd ever seen. then she yelled, "well, if you're not hurt, we're late for a concert. call my insurance agent."

i guess yelling is her thing.

and call her insurance agent we did.

after class the next week i took my poor car to the body shop, and they gave me a gigantic estimate- eighteen hundred bucks to fix the doors. fixing those would mean REMOVING both doors and their windows. i was thoroughly convinced that we would have to pay for this, and i was very distraught on the drive home, because this would mean my dad was shelling out four thousand bucks, ON ME, this summer for education and transportion. i was incredibly happy when he told me that the family of the kid who hit me would be paying for the damages. now that lady had something to really yell about.

currently, my car is being fixed. my brother has our thirteen year old minivan (we call it the crimson avenger) up at alma while he studies his creepy spiders, and my dad of course, has his stick shift which hates me and makes me think of that time of the month.

thus, i am left without a car.

after class this morning, enterprise picked me up (their ads are true!) and drove me to their headquarters. after filling out some paperwork and calling my father because i didn't have my auto insurance card on hand, the nice enterprise guy (his name was dale) gave me the keys to a chevy HHR and told me to have a nice day.

in my family, we drive ford vehicles and nothing else. my grandpa was an engineer at ford. we live by the slogan 'built ford tough'. when we have a gathering, you'll know, because there will be at least five ford vehicles decorating the street. chevy is our enemy. and i was just going to have to get over that for a week.

i didn't realize how old my car was until i slid into the relatively new HHR. my car, which is turning eight this summer, seems new. it looks nice and new. it has its six CD changer. we've taken good care of it. it drives smoothly and wonderfully.

the HHR had a teeny windshield. the dashboard controls were entirely different and upgraded, and it took me forever to find the volume button for the radio. my left ear is clogged and i'm half deaf, so my music needed some pumping up. there was only one slot for a CD, but i was ready for that.

i was, however, NOT ready to hunt for the side mirror control. i sat in the enterprise parking lot trying to find every control; turn signal, side mirror, and the seat slider. i found a curious button in the same area, but it just tilted the seat forward, which threw my back, snug in its back brace, into distress. i couldn't figure out how to move the damn seat forward. luckily, god granted me mysteriously long legs, and i could drive semi-comfortably, until i had to stomp on the brakes for a clueless construction worker who decided that walking in traffic was a good idea.

i got the HHR home in one piece while navigating the terror that is currently lima road. i parked it in the garage without taking off the side mirror. the ugly chevy sits in my garage waiting for me to take it work this evening.

i think it laughs at me.

while it sits in my garage, my beautiful focus is getting fixed up. that's what's going to get me through this week; knowing that on saturday, i can ditch the evil chevy and get back into my beautiful car, and it WILL be beautiful. i just gotta keep telling myself that.

find. ford. zen.

time to change.

when i left for alma, i had this fantastic vision of what i was going to do with my life.

that's right, i was going to be a chemistry teacher.

i thought about all the awesome chemistry classes i was going to take, the fun four hour labs. all the awesome stoichiometry that i would do, all the sweet colored chemicals, all the esthers that smelled like fruit.

then i actually got into these chemistry classes. and something in the back of my brain, in a really thin whine, said, "helllll nah, you ain't doing this."

that whine got bigger. it turned into a voice that said, "emily hollenberg, you might have wanted to be a chemistry teacher, but this just isn't working out because you don't like it NEARLY as much as you thought you did back when were you a senior in high school."

so then i was an english major with a chemistry minor. that sounded absolutely spiffy, because english has always been something i'm good at. i've never had to work hard in an english class a single day in my life. my intro to lit analysis (revising fairy tales) reaffirmed my love of english, even though i did work extremely hard writing a paper about a pedophile which got a ninety percent. dr. von wallmenich doesn't hand out nineties every day and i skipped the entire way back to my door room, clutching that paper in absolutely ecstasy.

halfway into my second chemistry class, organic chem, and about the first day into my four hour chemistry lab, i realized i just needed to ditch chemistry and move on with my life.

so now i'm a spanish minor. i can say "yo hablo espanol" and ask where the bathroom is. so this will work, right?

this decision seems quite practical to me. once i graduate, i plan on moving my butt to phoenix and getting a teaching job there, and arizona has a lot of spanish speakers. i've ALWAYS been good at foreign languages. i took three years of french, slept through the second and third years and managed to scrape an A+ in all three years. i can't speak a word of it now, except maybe to tell you my name and that i'm american. i then took one year of spanish my junior year and managed to get a 107% in that class without doing a single piece of homework.

i'm good at foreign languages. maybe it's because i'm good at english and i'm a grammar nazi.

i've always wanted to be bilingual, and if i can speak and TEACH spanish, that's almost a sure way for me to get hired as teacher. and getting hired as a teacher, especially right now, is ridiculously difficult. sooooo switching to spanish seems like a pretty good option.

this blog was originally intended to be about my summer spanish class, but i've spent more time talking about my decision process, which involved me sitting in the hallway outside of my dorm room crying for my father's forgiveness for dropping chemistry and alerting him that i had a passionate relationship with poetry. i guess this just proves that i'm really terrible at blogging.

hopefully, by the time i've written the thirty blogs for the thirty days of my favorite month, i'll be decent.

i'll save the blog for my actual college summer spanish class for later. maybe after my midterm. which is tomorrow.