By All Appearances...

Okay, so it looks like I've been so busy that I haven't posted in forever.  It only looks like it.  In reality, I'm completely bored because my schedule is empty and I'm just ignoring you guys.

SAR-caz-im.

I have been so totally rushing around everywhere.  Just a brief peek at my schedule

1. Communicators for Christ Conference by the Institute for Cultural Communicators two weekends ago, which meant I was out of town three packed days.
2. Work, four hours in one day last week and three hours today.
3. Debate...
4. Speeching...
5. Algebra 2...
6. Chemistry...
7. Literature...(Shakespeare, by gum)
8. Uh...it seems like there's something else that I'm forgetting.  That's a bad thing, because two weeks from now I'll remember it but forget to blog about it and you guys will never know.  Oh yeah...
9. NaNoWriMo.  So, I told myself I wouldn't do it this year because I was way too busy.  And then on October 31, I just got this terrible, lonely feeling whenever I thought of a November without writing crazily.  Yeah.  Crazily.  Craz-IL-y.  CRAZ-il-y.  Craz-il-Y!

I don't have anything profound to say, except even during all the rushing-ness, I have really been happy.  Which is good.  Nobody likes a grumpy, busy Izori.  Everybody likes a cheerful, busy Izori, and Izori likes a cheerful, non-busy Izori.

Bye-bye,

Izori.  IZ-or-i.  Iz-OR-i.  Iz--- okay, I'll stop now. 

Junior Year

Yeah, I'm in 11th grade. I'm a little shocked that high school is going by this quickly. It seems like I'm still recovering from my freshman year. And now all of a sudden I'm a junior.

I guess we humans are so surprised at the passing of time that every single expression of the feeling is cliche. I can't say "wow, it's going by so fast" because that's what everyone says. "It seems like yesterday" is really accurate, but all the meaning is completely worn out of it. I guess something more original would be "I feel like I'm reading the book that Lucy found in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis, the one where you can't turn the pages back to look over what you just read". And even that's unoriginal, because I'm calling on Lewis to describe it for me. Man, I guess I'm just an unoriginal gal today.

So...today was my first official day in 11th grade. Technically, I started last week, but now I'm actually putting myself on a school schedule (i.e. I get up at 7:00 am instead of 8:00 am). As of now, just after lunch, I'm not as busy as I thought I would be. I wrote down the hours per week I would do school work and then divided it by 5, and I figured out I had 7-10 hours of school work a day, depending on whether or not I had papers due. Uh, I guess I over-calculated. Now that I'm actually in the thick of things, I'm not as overwhelmed as I had originally anticipated. Which is good. Very good.

I am very suspicious that once school really gets going I will have less and less time to blog. So I'm squeezing one post in today. Adios!

School Year Resolutions

To be honest, the school year's start seems to have more of a sense of change and beginning than the calendar year's start. I mean, on January 1st, the only thing that changes is the year. When school kicks in, your entire life kicks into a whole new mode. And that's why I tend to make School Year Resolutions. I actually have a lifestyle change with which I need to align myself (horrors of horrors...I almost wrote "a lifestyle change that I need to align myself with", but luckily I caught that preposition at the end. Winston Churchill would have been ashamed).

I love writing lists. Therefore, I am going to put my resolutions in a list, which is the commonly accepted format for resolutions.

1. Don't regularly stay up any later than 10:00 pm
2. Get into the habit of regular devotions
3. Get responsibilities done as soon as I can, not as late as I can
4. If I can't find time to study, then I also shouldn't find time to watch baseball or hockey
5. Perform some form of exercise every other day (yoga, running)
6. Prefer fruit to sugary snacks
7. If my schedule's too tight, I need to skimp on free-time, not schoolwork

A lot of those resolutions are more like reminders, and I think all of them were ones I needed to acknowledge last year.

I find my brain power is greatly reduced if I keep on getting to bed late. I actually found that out this summer in a debate mini-camp with my public speaking group. Let me tell you, I went to bed early that night because I didn't want a repeat of the bleariness and brain-fog (which, dare I add, does not help in debate).

I'm sure that by reading through my blog you have discovered I am a worrier, a stresser, and an anxiety-er. I find that regular devotions really help me get my focus back on the eternal. I'm a big-picture type of person, and I think best when I have a broad view, so when I'm busy pondering God rather than the messy details of my life I become less frustrated.

For #3 on the list, I'm actually not a huge procrastinator. However, I have become wonderfully talented at making excuses...

...such as, wasting a couple hours watching sports. 'Nuff said.

Ah, now here's an interesting topic. Exercise. I love running, but it takes so long to get ready, get out, run, come back, shower, and get my mind on track again. Yoga is much more do-able in a tight schedule, I find. I can do it for fifteen minutes in jeans and a t-shirt and then go back to my work.

Um...I was going to offer more commentary/footnotes/long-windedness on my list, but it's about time to get a-move on in the real world. Oh well. Be happy I actually posted something.

And I'm Back!

We're back on the air, folks.  Sorry for the inadvertent delay.  In the face of technical quandries, we had to push back the return date by a tad.

Okay, so I totally forgot. 

In my defense, I have been very busy.  I just love reading back on my posts in the spring and seeing that I was looking forward to the summer being a time of relaxation and refreshment.  Oh, I'm so funny and I don't even mean to be. 

I made some changes to the blog.  Basically, all I changed was the title and the layout. 

Hopefully, I will have something more profound to impart upon you at a later time. 

Announcement

Blog under construction!  I'm making it inaccessible for the general public for a couple of days for renovation.  I'll be back!

Lightning-y

We've been getting thunderstorms every night--very impressive thunderstorms.  Just last week, we had this terrific show of lightning.  Here's a comparison that's applicable to the recent holiday: if you've ever been to a firework show (put on by professionals), recall the grand finale when a bazillion fireworks go off rapid-fire.  Imagine that, but with lightning, and over the span of about half an hour.  Yep.  That's what the sky looked like a couple nights ago.  There was literally no space between lightning eruptions, and it was really impressive but kinda scary.  I've never been afraid of lightning/thunder, but it had also started to get pretty windy, so I turned on my radio to listen to the weather report and they were all like, "Um, we suggest you unplug all your valuable electrically operated items and continue to listen to us on a battery-operated radio..."  Hmmm, if the weather man sounds concerned...

And then, of course, the very next day it was announced that "our emergency call system is down county-wide, so if you have an emergency the typical 911 call won't get you anywhere..."  O.O 

But, anyhoo.  We actually didn't lose power...at all...compared to my grandma, who was without power for several days.  I hear that many still don't have power, as well.  After, like, 5 or 6 days without AC in this kind of heat...yikes. 

Here's another interesting tid-bit: I think I might have broken my arm. 

You know me.  If I do anything at all dramatic, it will always be in an anti-climatic, comedic fashion.  LONG LIVE THE KLUTZ!!  Ahem.  So no, I didn't get flung off a galloping bronco or anything like that.  I...

...well, I...uh...opened a...door.  And my arm...uh...started to hurt.

Okay, I didn't just open a door.  This door happened to be incredibly hard to open, to the point where it becomes necessary to jerk the door back and forth and ram your body against it to open the thing.  And as I opened it, my left arm hit against the door-post.  Which kinda hurt.  However, it mainly felt more like when you bang your shin, and it does really, really hurt but then it fades.  So, I mainly said 'owch!', rubbed my arm, and then continued with life. 

However, after it still continued to hurt and started to swell a wee bit, I got a little concerned and sought professional advice immediately.  Okay...I googled 'how to identify a broken arm'.  I read through the symptoms, and was concerned to find some part of the description fit. 

Now, before you start lecturing me about how 'a broken bone is a medical emergency and you need to go to a doctor and have it x-rayed', let me put things in perspective.  Yes, my arm hurt, and yes the info that I came up with definitely hit on some aspects of my injury, but not all of them fit.  I still have very good range of motion with that arm (for cryin' out loud, I'm typing at my normal rate without pain!).  While my arm hurts, it's not a splintering, tear-jerking pain.  It only hurts if I move it very energetically, just like it would if I only bruised it when I hit the door post.  Now, if I had bones sticking out of my skin and couldn't move my fingers...yes, to the doctor's we would go.  But pain and a little bit of swelling can also fit very well under a bruise...which is expected if I whack a limb against a door post.    

All that to say, I may not have a broken arm.  Which would be really sweet, because I've never broken a bone before and I'd like to leave that record intact, thank you very much.   However, we're taking precautions with ice and such, and x-rays if we must (just so y'all don't worry). 

So.  Such is life.   

Happy Independence Day!!!

Ahhhhhh...what a great country!  I <3 USA!

Wow, I did not think I was capable of using such blatant texting language as above.  Scary.