J'arrivais avec le printemps . . .

It's Spring!  Hallelujah!  Well, almost.  The first day of Spring is either today or tomorrow, and I'm too lazy to go see which.  Gosh, my life is so difficult.  Some interesting stuff has happened in the past month since I last wrote. For one thing, it's now official that Lauren and I will be looking to sublet an apartment together this summer.  So if anyone from Truman reads this (which is rather unlikely, but still) and you're looking to find someone to sublet your place or you know someone who is, shoot me a message on Facebook.  Pretty please?  The prospect of living totally on our own is slightly scary (very slightly, mind you), but I'm excited.  It shall be fun n' all that junk.

And the other bit of news?  In May Kat and I are going to Indianapolis to see Megadeth!!  We're beyond excited.  It's actually kind of funny (not really) how it came about.  We saw on Megadeth's website that they'll be coming about three hours from us near St. Louis, but that it'll be a festival with a ton of other bands we've never heard of and don't care about.  It just seemed like a waste of money.  Then Kat mentioned that she had seen that they were coming fairly close but not in a festival, so we decided to check their site again.  The closest they would come to us was in Indianapolis, which is about five hours away from Hannibal, and guess what . . . they're the only headliner!  The opening act will be Lacuna Coil, which is insanely awesome, because we love them, too.  There was a whole bunch of insanity while Kat talked to her mom and all that about getting tickets, but in the end we got them!  We'll be in the second row of the balcony, which isn't bad - especially since there's no way we want to be crushed in the "pit of doom."

Can't wait!!

Déjà ?

It's Sunday.  The weekend is almost over.  It has so far been spent making breakfast for dinner, playing every Nintendo 64 game I own, and writing.  Now it will consist of homework, homework, and more homework.  At least one of these assignments is writing.  However I seem to be unable to write anything if the product is assigned or expected of me.  For instance, if Lauren and Kat are waiting to read a story I'm writing and keep reminding me of it, I'm likely to get writer's block because I can't seem to work under pressure.  (This is VERY bad for the aspiring author.)  Likewise, I can't write if the story has been assigned to me.  Not only that, but I don't really care for the premise of my story; I'm just going along with it because it's all I could think of.

Last week was hell.  Did I mention that?  Because it was.  Actually, I wrote that two weeks ago was hell.  But now last week was, too.  Why?  Because I was preparing for my next speech in Public Speaking, which was supposed to be ceremonial/commemorative.  I gave it on Ellen DeGeneres just 'cause I love her so much.  It went better than the introductory speech, the grade for which I will not share.  But I apparently got a B on my impromptu speech, which is extremely surprising due to the fact that I sucked.  But I guess the chick who graded it was merciful.  Thank God, because she's grading my ceremonial speech, too.  (My professor seems to rarely grade or attend anything.  He didn't attend any of the speeches this week, and he's only ever there when there's not a speech due to debate tournaments.  You'd think he could have scheduled the speeches better.)

On Friday we decided to unwind by going to Lauren's house and cooking dinner for the three of us.  We were intending to do that last Sunday, but Lauren injured herself by running the front door over her toe . . . it wasn't pretty.  Anyway, so we rainchecked it to this Friday.  I made the sausage, Kat made bacon, and Lauren made French toast.  We also had our own little side dishes of scrambled eggs for Lauren, toast and peanut butter for Kat, and an egg sammich for me.  (This consists of tearing a hole in the center of bread and cracking an egg into it as you fry it -- it's delicious.)  The evening was quite fun.

Since Friday morning, I've had a migraine.  We originally thought it was just a bad headache, but after looking up symptoms of migraines and seeing that I had just about every single one, we shifted focus.  Also, the regular pain relievers didn't work.  So I was finally able to go to Hy-Vee yesterday afternoon and get some dope (teehee) specifically to get rid of migraines.  And it worked somewhat in that it just kind of dulled the pain.  I can only take one every twenty-four hours, and as we're going on Day 3 of Hell, I had to take another dose this morning.  Shoot me peeze?

Next week is midterms.  NOOOO.  Oh, well.  Then we get a week-long break.

Week of hell.

I am so glad last week is over, although these feelings are sobered by the fact that the new week is starting tomorrow.  Despite this horrid happening, it's been a fun weekend.  Lauren and I spent the day downtown, and we attempted to watch the episode of Glee we missed, but that failed.  So we didn't.  Gooood times.  Now she's out doing homework-y things, and since I don't have those this weekend (darn), I'm here all by my lonesome since Kat is in Hannibal.  I'm ALONE.  I'll try to survive.

But yeah.  Last week was hell.  I had my first test of the semester (Linguistics), an impromptu speech, a slideshow project to work on in French, plus a short story due in Creative Writing.  It might not sound like a lot, but it was.  So there.  This past week I also started exercising every other day, going to the rec center in an attempt to get back in shape and lose the weight I've gained since I started school.  (Simple math here: stress = food.)  We'll see how that goes.  I need to go again today, but the dorm is in desperate need of cleaning.  Hmmm.  I'm not sure which I hate more: exercise or cleaning.

In other news, the three of us saw Woman in Black last weekend.  Lauren and Kat were scared, I was not.  It was a good movie otherwise, though.  Daniel Radcliffe still doesn't do much acting, though.  But I didn't keep expecting him to shout about his scar hurting, so that's good news.  Problem with scary movies is that I don't get scared.  At all.  I'll jump once or twice, but that's about it.  I can always tell when something scary is going to happen, so it doesn't get me.  The only movie that ever scared me was The Ring.  I refuse to ever watch that again.  I prefer psychological stuff like Secret Window.  This might be because I don't believe any sort of evil spirits can linger on earth after they die, whereas I believe someone can go insane and start killing people.  So give me stuff like Secret Window and Shutter Island, and I'm good.

So what's on the agenda for this upcoming week?  I have no idea.  Lauren and I are in the French play again, but luckily I don't have the lead role.  And no monologues!  YAY!  Although I do play a servant again.  Her name is Marie, and I share the role with someone else, and I'm fine with that.  Lauren's role is completely reversed from last time, as she now plays a little girl named Berthe.  She rocks at it.  It's amusing.

More noodles.

French is hard WHAT?

My last post was a bit more serious than is my tendency.  It was not my objective to offend, neither to shock nor make anyone care, really.  The point was to rid any sort of facade I might have had in which people thought I was something I am not.  I needed to be honest, and that's all.  I've had some positive reactions and some negative ones, but that's okay and to be expected.

Anyway, moving on.  The second semester of my freshman year of college is in full swing.  We've been back for two weeks now.  Already I can tell this semester will be better than last, even with the horrors of Public Speaking. (My first speech was on Thursday -- don't ask.)  I really like Linguistics and Creative Writing.  The shocking part? French is actually hard now!  I know, right?  I seemed to sail through the class semester, but now it's been upped about thirty notches.  It's mainly vocabulary, at which I suck.  It'll just require a lot of studying and flashcards.  Who knew there'd actually be work with a French major?  Weird, right?  I'm also officially a Computer Science minor.  Cool, huh?

What else is new?  Nothing, really.  Lauren and Kat are in Hannibal for the weekend, so I'm chilling out at the dorm by myself.  I'm scheduled to have a sleepover with a friend of mine tomorrow, though, so that'll be fun.  And the incessant stalking from Domino's has come in handy, as I bought a pizza really cheap.  'Tis cool, you know.  Yeah, obviously not that much interesting stuff has happened recently except the semester starting.  I watched Sleeping Beauty and The Parent Trap (Lindsay Lohan version) tonight out of pure boredom.  I might watch something else.  Who knows?

Noodles.

A bit of honesty.

I’m going to be very, very honest with those few who happen to read this.  There’s something that’s been building up inside me that needs to finally be said.  You may choose to judge me, you may decide to remove me from your friends list on Facebook.  If that be the case, so be it.  I will not beg on my knees for you to stay, because I will not change who I am to gain someone else’s favor.  If you’d rather, go ahead and skip this whole thing.  But it needs to be done.

I was a raised a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  To those who don’t know, we are nicknamed Mormons.  Growing up, I received a lot of questions and grief from my peers curious and judgmental of my religion.  I defended it even though I wasn’t quite positive what exactly I was defending.  I followed and obeyed the religion without question because it was what I had done all my life.  It was only fairly recently, as in a few years, that I began to open my eyes a little wider and step out of the box in which I had been sheltered my whole life.

As a Mormon, I cannot drink coffee or tea.  I’m fine with this, since I hate both with a zealous passion.  (Although pour a whole bunch of sweetener and milk in the former until it’s practically no longer coffee, and I’m good to go.)  I cannot drink alcohol.  I cannot smoke.  I cannot have pre-marital sex.  I cannot wear tops that do not cover my shoulders or bottoms that do not reach my knees.  I cannot listen to, read, or watch explicit material.  Goodbye Megadeth, Titanic, and The Simpsons.  I won’t lie and say I’ve always been a perfectly devout Mormon.  I was raised by people who weren’t perfectly devout.  My dad watched The Simpsons and played the game Diablo, and so did I.  I listen to the explicit versions of Enimen’s songs, I don’t close my eyes during the nude scene of Titanic, and I am a big fan of dirty jokes.  Am I going to Hell for it?  No.  But despite this, I still encased myself in the protective Mormon bubble.

It wasn’t until I got older that I began questioning things and wondering.  I knew I would never be like the picture-perfect girls my age who were, well, perfect.  I believe I was worldly enough to wonder.  I grew up in California; God knows you can’t be that sheltered there.  You’ve got homosexuals bumping into homophobics on the corner where there’s a drug dealer and a prostitute.  C’est la vie.  I met people who weren’t, gasp, wholesome.  I came to love these people, who were good people despite the fact that they weren’t Mormons.  (It can happen, you know.)

To go to the Mormon temple, you are interviewed.  In one such interview, I was asked if I support things the Church is against.  I said “no,” but I later realized this is wrong.  Why?  Because I would, without a second thought, march down the middle of the street with a rainbow gay pride flag held high above my head.  There are people I love who are supposedly considered abominations.  People who apparently choose to be hated, and ridiculed, and judged.  My own family.  How could I stand aside and support the religion that calls my loved ones unnatural and abominations?

It was once suggested to me that homosexuality is merely a weakness that God has given to people so that they might learn to overcome it.  This is wrong.  It is those with sickening prejudice against those who are different from them who have the weakness they must overcome.  There are those who live with fear and hate in their hearts, who scorn and judge others for things that do not concern them.  These are the people who will ascend to paradise?  There is a Mormon primary (children’s) song called I’m Trying to Be Like Jesus.  Jesus loves everyone.  He sits with the whores and the lepers, and yet we, as his people, condemn them.  Some of the greatest people you will ever meet are gay.  Some of the worst are straight.  Who is going to heaven?  God tells us not to judge others, right?  But by assuming that what one does is a sin, that is judging.  Who are you to tell me that I’m a sinner?  It is none of your business.  Worry about yourself.  I am not asking you to talk to everyone, to approve of everyone, to like everyone.  Just accept them as human beings and then step aside.  It is not your job to decide who’s going to earn their wings.

I am far, far from perfect.  I miss being Mormon, but if the Church does not allow me to be part of it while fully and loudly supporting those I love, then I cannot be part of that religion.  I will not believe in condemning others’ souls in favor of my own.  (Besides, I personally feel that Heaven will be extremely boring without all the amazing non-Mormons I know and love.)  I do not turn my back on the Church, nor do I reject it.  I merely stand aside.  This may not concern you at all, but it needed to be said.  I needed to be honest with myself and those I love.  By following God’s commandments and loving one another and my neighbor, I am a Christian.  The knowledge of this is enough for me.

Highlights of 2011

For me, in six hours and thirty minutes, 2011 will officially be over.  And I can brag and say that I'll be in the new year before my friends back in Missouri.  (I'm writing this from Kentucky, where I've been since Tuesday.)  This year has definitely been a whirlwind.  Looking back, it has all revolved around one thing: college.  Each month had something punctuating it, something marking it as memorable, whether it be in January when I sent out applications, in February when I was accepted to Truman, or any other month.  I can easily say that this has been the best year of my life.  Some highlights?

• Being accepted to Truman State University on February 7.
• Raising my ACT score from 24 to 27 in April.
• Starting this blog, of course.
• Moving from Pikeville, Kentucky to Kirksville, Missouri in June.
• Spending a week in New Smyrna Beach, Florida.
• Seeing the final Harry Potter movie.
• Getting my first job at the Classical and Modern Languages/English and Linguistics department.
• Starting college and moving into the dorm.
• Being part of the French play, Dormez, je le veux and receiving the lead role of Justine.
• Meeting all the awesome people I have at Truman.
• Getting red highlights in my hair and chopping most of it off. (Although now I'm growing it back.)
• Seeing Ludo in St. Louis one week and Trans-Siberian Orchestra the next.
• Meeting Al Pitrelli, Andrew Ross, and Angus Clark.
• Meeting Hana Pestle at Truman.
• Spending Christmas with my second family in Missouri.
• Spending the week after Christmas with my first family in Kentucky.

I'd definitely say it's been a good year.  Happy New Year & Bonne Année!

Finally finals

The day has arrived, ladies and gentlemen; today I shall take the first final of my college career.  Despite the fact that finals in general have been going on all week, my first hasn't been until today.  Which exam is this, you ask?  Logic.  My journey with Logic has definitely been an easy one.  I've found it to be a difficult subject, and I required quite a bit of tutoring.  It is, however, rather unfortunate that I'm just now finding it to be not that difficult towards the end of the class when it doesn't matter so much anymore.  But still.  My professor, Dr. Burton, has been amazing.  Honestly, with the combination of professors I've had this semester, there are only two that I've really liked; there's never really been any sort of in-between.  I either really liked them or they scared the living daylights out of me.  If I hadn't been lucky enough to have these two professors, my first semester would probably have been much more brutal than it was, and I probably wouldn't be returning after my visit to Pikeville this month.

So!  What has Ashlee been up to in the past fifteen days?  Last weekend, as a way to de-stress before finals, the lovely roomies and I headed to St. Louis on a rather impromptu trip for a concert.  The band?  Ludo!  They're a somewhat local band that's gotten huge, and they're really, really awesome.  Think of their genre as "nerd rock."  It took place at the Pageant in St. Louis, in an area that would have been really cool to explore if we'd had time.  We spent the majority of the day at the St. Louis Galleria, the best part of which was spent in the newly-opened Disney Store, where I finally got the plushy of Nala from The Lion King, which has been my cute childhood dream.  So I finally got my Nala!  YAY!  Lauren got a plushy of Jack Skellington dressed as Santa Claus from The Nightmare Before Christmas.  She is quite charmed by his wide smile, which is rare on Nightmare merch.  The kicker?  They were only ten dollars each.  At the Disney Store, this is an INSANE price.  Especially for medium-sized stuffed animals.  I literally gaped at the cashier for a moment; I hadn't realized they were on sale.  But yay!

Cute, isn't she?

Then we went to Hot Topic, which is an interesting tale.  Kat and I like Megadeth, right?  Right.  Their new album, Th1rt3en, was released on November 1st, right?  Right.  So obviously there was a new shirt available at Hot Topic.  (Just one shirt, which is sad.  Metallica had two, which is a surprisingly small number, and Avenged Sevenfold had four.  Sigh.)  Anyway.  We wanted the shirts.  They're male-sized.  Buy one get one half-off.  Kat needs a small and I can get by with either a small or a medium.  Our plan was for us to buy them together so I can get the half-priced one as a way to pay me back for helping her and Lauren buy a pizza way back.  The problem?  They had a medium-sized, a large, and an XL.  No small.  There's no way Kat can get by with a medium.  So, because we're in St. Louis, we decide to hop across town to the other mall, where there's another Hot Topic (as well as a Barnes & Noble, which was another eventual destination of ours).  The problem here?  They had a small and a large; no medium.  SIGH.  So, being the Samaritan that I am, I agreed to get the large despite the fact that I was practically drowning in it?  I wanted the shirt that badly.  And a Megadeth shirt for $10 isn't really something you can pass up.  So, with the plan to shrink it in the wash eventually, we bought it.  And I got my shirt!  YAY!  It really is awesome.  I really love it since it actually has Dave Mustaine on it, unlike the other shirt I have.  WOO!

Our tradition of taking pictures of us in our Megadeth shirts in front of Kat's staircase continues.

After that, we spent a great deal of time in Barnes & Noble.  I didn't get anything, although I was drooling over some "teach yourself Italian" stuff in the foreign language section.  I've come to the conclusion that I can't learn a new language in a classroom setting; the only reason French is working is because I have prior knowledge of it.  I think I have to do the language at my own pace.  Because Russian was harder, it would have been better for me to go slower, while the class was very fast.  So I'd still like to teach myself another language.  (At Hasting's yesterday I found a kit to teach yourself Romanian.  It's the first Romanian language thing I've ever seen.  I wanted it.  Badly.)

Finally, after we'd sufficiently worn ourselves out at the mall, Kat's mom dropped us off at the Pageant where we waited in line with the other minors in the freezing cold.  (We're not minors, technically, but we're still under twenty-one.  Sigh.  ALMOST THERE.)  Once we got in, we found that we would be unable to find seats, so we were forced to join the "pit of doom" as we call it.  We were pressed up against people we didn't know, shunted this way and that, forced behind tall people, and all that fun stuff.  The first opening act, Option//Control, was awesome.  The three of us really want their EP.  The second, Treaty of Paris, was less cool.  It was just boring, and all of their songs blended together and sounded the same.  It was just noise.  Finally, after about two hours of standing, Ludo came on!  They were amazing.  The concert was just plain fun.  It involved dance moves in which they had us hip-thrust, not caring who we're practically humping.  At one point, they had everyone in the mosh pit sit down.  This is a very difficult thing, mind you.  Lauren ended up on my lap while I'm kneeling, with all my weight on my ankles.  The band went to the bar right behind us and led everyone in singing Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Jingle Bells, Silent Night, and We Wish You a Merry Christmas.  It was quite hilarious and fun.  After the show, we had a chance to wait in a long line for expensive merch and to actually meet Ludo, but we were exhausted and just done, so we left.

Fun trip, I say!

And now we're back at Truman, and my first exam is in about two hours.  Am I nervous?  Somewhat.  I've pretty much accepted that, after this, there's nothing I can do.  I've done my best, and we'll just have to see what comes of it.  My French exam is tomorrow at 7:30 in the morning (YIKES!), and my WACT exam is due today at some point.  I'll be busy pretty much all day, but yesterday was fun, filled with Christmas shopping and just chillin' with my bestest friends.

This weekend Kat and I will be going back to St. Louis for another concert; this time it's the Trans-Siberian Orchestra!  Lauren's not really interested in them, so she'll be spending the weekend with her dad in Hannibal.  But it shall be fun!  Yay!  I'm so ready for this semester to be over.  Christmas break shall be spent with Lauren and her family, and then I shall spend a week in Pikeville with my family before coming back with a week to spare before the second semester begins.  Wee!  Optimism is key.

Sail on, little toaster.  Sail on.