Back to Basics

Please allow me to get into my Phantom side again.

The Broadway sequel to The Phantom of the Opera is coming up very soon! Wish I could be there for the March debut in the West End, but since I can't teleport myself to London...

The cast recording for the sequel, "Love Never Dies," is available for pre-order and I fell in absolute love maybe two months ago with the song "Till I Hear You Sing" sung by Ramin Karimloo, who played the Phantom in London and will be the Phantom for the sequel. I was lucky enough to bump into the new, official music video for it and fell in love all over again:

(Even if you don't give a damn about musicals, give this one a listen. He's a complete natural, and if I'm correct, had practically zero voice lessons. This is also one of those songs where you don't need to know the backstory in order to understand the song.) 



The setting of the sequel is around 1880-1890, if I'm right. I have no idea why it's all modernized for the video, but it's still amazing. Little Miss Beautiful Woman in the vid is Sierra Boggess, who plays the Phantom's love interest and also originated the role of Ariel in Broadway's The Little Mermaid. There's something a little off about Ramin Karimloo's movements--maybe he's more used to being onstage compared to camera closeups--but I just love this video.

Dear, Sweet God...

I have no idea if I'm atheist or not. 

I have a lot to talk about, but because of time restraints I have to keep it short, or as short as possible. I'm just going to let it all out without checking for flow or coherency, so sorry if some parts are confusing.

First of all, my scheduling for next year's classes. I'm going to be a senior next year and I can't take early dismissal because since my mom works in my school and she drives me, one of us will be stranded at school. So I asked my guidance counselor how many electives I could take next year. Her reply was that as long as I had enough credits to graduate, I can take as many as I want. 

Cool! I thought. So in her office, I handed over my scheduling form, with the following courses selected:

Creative Writing I and II
Concert Choir
AP Music Theory
Fashion/Clothing I and II
Lunch
Gym/Health
Statistics
English 12 Honors (Senior Seminar)

(Something like that. I hadn't decided for sure on a lot of them and I think I'm missing a couple of my original choices. But because I don't have my scheduling form with me at the moment...)

My counselor scans over my form really quickly and the first thing she says is, "It seems like you're going from taking a good number of Honors and advanced courses to taking a lot of easy ones. And colleges don't like that."

I think my mouth dropped open a little at her words. What she was saying made sense, but my change from harder to easier courses was completely unintentional. After all, I was trying to take a lot of electives. Of course they would be easier! That wasn't necessarily my fault!!


The problem is, I have a dilemma. Senior year is supposed to be easy, a nice long break from the stress of junior year. But the student in me is calling to me to take Spanish 6 AP, AP Chem, either AP Statistics or Precalculus...etc...


My counselor printed out my tentative schedule for next year with a bunch of classes that if I had a choice, I seriously would not consider taking. It's all about being practical: since I'm going into the liberal arts, visual/performing arts....it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to take AP Chem and Precalc (although my teacher has told me I'll do great in it) when I'm not going to use it in my adult life. I'm pretty darn sure that I'll change some of those classes.


So it all boils down to having a harder senior year and taking several honors and AP courses to be more easily accepted into college, or taking classes that I ACTUALLY WANT TO TAKE and getting awesome grades, but putting more stuff on the edge. 


Secondly, school. School was closed for the third time this year. Unfortunately, we have only two snow days built into the calender, so it means that if school is closed a third time, a fourth time, etc., they will shorten our spring break. So as of right now, our spring break is already one day shorter.


The other problem is, this seriously hurts the school musical. Although I said earlier that this year's musical is relatively un-amazing, I still want it to be a moderate to big success and I think that it's finally coming together after so many weeks. But because we had a delayed opening yesterday, we couldn't hold a preview for VES students and so lost a lot of potential audience members that way. School previews for the high school and Upper Middle School were supposed to be today, but because school's closed, we were able to hold ZERO PREVIEWS for the musical this year. And since our first performance of the musical is tonight, obviously that was canceled too.  What on earth...?!?

It's just really terrible timing on Nature's part. I was counting on having a full day of school tomorrow so that the cast and crew of the musical could stay in the MPAC all day and theoretically skip out on homework. But if our debut performance is postponed to Sunday afternoon like our director hinted at, I only have today to do about 3 days' worth of homework.


Why did they even close school? We had maybe 4 inches of snow. Wet snow, but still relatively easy to clean up. I know the hardest-hit area was around Pennsylvania and a lot of our teachers live there, but for the sake of keeping all of spring break, they shouldn't have called a third snow day! One year they had around 2-3 inches of snow and they closed school, but when we got 8 inches later that year, they only called a delayed opening. 


Just goes to show how messed up people and weather can be at times....

I am officially brain-dead.

I know I've been through this before, and in fact, in previous years it's been worse, but being stuck in the same building for thirteen hours straight (six of them in a 6,000 ft^2 space--relatively small, but don't trust me with figuring out area) is pretty darn trying. And trying to do your homework in 75% darkness isn't so hot either. How do the others manage?

Well, this might as well be the time where I spill my chill about the annual musical. Hopefully without boring my readers to death. The musical is "Once Upon A Mattress", which is based on The Princess and the Pea. You know, the one with the princess who had full-fledged insomnia and got bruises from a little green sphere under her bed? That's the one. At best, the musical is mediocre, I'm sad to say. Like my chorus teacher said, only the very best in talent can really make it memorable. With many amazingly gifted seniors leaving last year and the year before, our cast doesn't quite have the same punch. And it seems to consist of a ton of freshmen and seniors who did the musical...just because. Not necessarily because they wanted to give their all....only just because.

So that adds up to a lot of side talk, our level of accomplishment squashed and a frustrated (and therefore scary) choir teacher to deal with. Not cool all around. 

But we still have potential. We're not all composed of untalented losers. And we've got some magic for y'all. So come get some! This Friday and Saturday, we will bring you back to 1392. 

First few days back...

So it turns out that the first day back from our 6-day weekend wasn't utterly terrible...

Lab report for Biology Honors: 
Thank goodness my friend was right. My teacher accepted this today. I was terrified that I was supposed to email it to him over the break, because I didn't. The system in my school is that for every day that an assignment is late, you lose 10% of maximum points off your grade. Example: your 100-point project is 1 day late, so now the maximum you can get is a 90%. Thankfully, that didn't happen.


History project:  
My teacher assigned an oral-history project...basically a long-term project that features an interview...for historical periods and events from the 1960's to the 1980's. The only problem is, because both my parents are naturalized US citizens, it's very difficult for me to find an adult to interview. I eventually found one person who offered to try, but wasn't sure she could be a great choice for this because she wouldn't be able to give the most in-depth answers. So I was a nervous wreck and I talked to my teacher today, feeling like an ashamed little dog who couldn't find the ball her owner threw, telling him that I had big problems finding someone....and then he said not to stress out about it. Which surprised me a lot, because this project is a pretty big deal. Anyhoo, I took a last shot and freaked out to my lunch table, being so stressed out it wasn't funny anymore. As luck would have it, one of my friends offered to ask her parents if they could help me with the project, and I just got their enthusiastic okay via my friend's Facebook. Sweet!!!!! I'm on my merry way. Topic: the Civil Rights Movement, my favorite historical period in America.

Socratic Seminar on Walden in English: 
This wasn't as bad as I feared. Like I mentioned before, a Socratic Seminar is basically a graded discussion in class on a certain work. This time, it was regular ol' brain-draining Walden. I somehow became the leader of the seminar in our group of 6 people, and was a little nervous at the prospect of 25 other people sitting in a circle staring at you and your little group, who are in the center. But it went pretty darn well; not perfect, but pretty good.

Oh, great. Here we go again.

I feel that I have all these massive gaps in my schoolwork that are frightening me...I can't really go into detail because it would literally traumatize me too much, but long story short, I hope I don't find myself in loads of trouble tomorrow in school for accidentally missing deadlines on stuff that was supposed to be due on Wednesday (our first snow day) or something like that. 

I still have to do Walden. Not just read around 50 pages, but do journal entries AND answer questions AND be prepared for a Socratic Seminar (essentially a graded discussion) tomorrow. I am SO screwed. 

Feel free to yell at me, anybody. I'm such an idiot for an English Honors student, especially with a teacher that is short, dramatic and secretly scares everybody. I know I shouldn't have left it until the last day, especially because I COULD HAVE watched Avatar today....

Got Cameron's ID?

I've changed my name for this blog to one that I created several months ago. I am now officially Amorailuv. I may or may not go back to my original one....we'll see.

Where did I get Amorailuv from, you ask? It's a combination of the word "love" in three languages: Spanish ("amor"), Chinese ("ai"), and English (a slanged-up spelling of "love"). I came up with this maybe a year and a half ago, but I never did anything big with it, until now.

But anyhoo, back to the purpose of this entry.

My family had a discussion (or rather, me and my brother were educating my mom) about 3-D movies and the difference between regular 3-D movies and I-Max 3-D movies. My brother's also been wanting to watch Avatar for a long time, and I'm faintly curious about it also...

Yes, I know. We're a weird family because none of us have seen Avatar.

Yet.

Depending on several factors, we might hop over to a nearby cinema to watch it tomorrow. Assuming that my homework is done. Which it probably won't be. =(

Ah, well. Worth seeing, anyone? Opinions? Feel free to spam up the comments section!

PS: Happy Valentine's Day! It took me an entry from my friend's blog to remind me I should put that in today's post. 

Gah.

It's really strange that I should be feeling meh and kind of annoyed today, since I'm still in the thick of the long weekend and should be all happy-go-lucky. We had a 6-day weekend suddenly compared to the original 4-day weekend, so why on earth am I like this? I really don't know, but I can come up with a few:

 I never paid much attention to computer and hardware requirements for new computer games and programs, but I read something about how the game I ordered can't run (smoothly) on computer with more than ______MB of RAM, so now I'm kind of antsy about whether I can even play this thing when it arrives. I figure that if any problems crop up, I can just ask my brother, who's a genius when it comes to the techy part of computers. It's also another reminder for me to comb through all my programs and delete the ones that I don't need, because the more stuff you have on a computer, the slower it will run.

I sincerely cannot believe my English Honors teacher assigned us Walden. I normally love reading and don't mind reading classics as long as I understand what's happening, but Walden is pretty much impossible to read. Henry David Thoreau takes literally thirty pages to emphasize the same thing over and over in different ways, until you're so tangled up in his two-page paragraphs that you can't make any sense of what he's saying anymore. And plus, you know how Chinese New Year is tomorrow? Someone high-up in authority sends out an email to all the teachers annually around this time reminding them to "be sensitive" to people celebrating Chinese New Year; meaning, try to give everyone less homework around this time. 

Unfortunately, my teacher apparently doesn't care about that at all (despite the fact that she's adopted a Chinese boy). She assigned the second (and last, thank God) reading assignment from Walden to be due right after this long weekend....this coming Tuesday. Schmancy-fantastico...I'm going to be reading Walden--repetitive, tongue-twisting, brain-dehydrating Walden--during Chinese New Year.  


On the upside--I listened to this song again and I've forgotten how good it is. The only complaint I have is that the singer's vibrato is so fast it's actually distracting, but otherwise, it's excellent! 

PS: This will sound random unless you play the vid, but do not hate overweight or obese people. Especially this girl. She will blow your mind to bits with her singing. If you're a hater, I hope your mind stays like that, because you'd deserve it.
 

In a nutshell:

• Metal is a subgenre of rock music.
• Symphonic metal is a subgenre of metal music and makes more use of melody and keyboards, hence the symphony-ness.  
• Metal music, for the most part, should not be feared. It's slightly heavier, a little angstier at times (think Linkin Park), but that's all there is to it. 
• Elaboration: Not all metal is screaming and growling. Not all metal is Drano-voice screeching that makes your ears bleed. There are some famous musicians and bands from the non-pop/rock scene that belong to the metal genre and churn out very successful albums.

Fast update

Hey all,

Sorry I haven't updated this in a while. I've been really busy with some stuff, ie. midterm exams, long-term projects...things like that. Sometimes I dislike school for taking up practically all my free time. 

Anyway, the Snow Fairy has arrived twice in one week, bringing maybe a foot and a half of combined snow to my neighborhood......and my school district relented! They've closed school for two days, which, by the way, has NEVER happened before.

Well, scratch that. I meant to say, my school district hasn't closed school for two days in a row in at least a decade. Anyway, that 2-day break combined with the President's Day weekend makes for very happy students and teachers alike. Poor teachers, though....they still have Staff Development on Friday and have to go back to school.

Yours Truly is in the school musical again, her fourth one. This time it's "Once Upon A Mattress," which is a retelling of "The Princess and the Pea". It's......a little cheesy, maybe a little mediocre, but not terrible. The problem is, with a lot of great seniors gone from last year who can't take the stage and with lots of cancelled rehearsals from the snow, this year I have a feeling it isn't going to be great. We're at least several days behind schedule and one gets the impression that we're very, very rushed trying to throw it together in the last few weeks before opening night. I'm not quite feeling the musical, compared to the last two or three years.

Over the past few weeks my iPod earbuds and the headphones I've been using for my computer have gone a little haywire, so I had to get new ones...and I have officially fallen in love with Skull Candy products. I just love them: they have bold colors and really cool designs. So now I'm proudly sporting new earbuds for my iPod, and my new headphones just came today:

Please don't tell me that I'm a rich freak who loves showing off expensive brands, since Skull Candy tends to lean towards more wallet-draining territory. I got them both from Amazon, which has much lower prices than Skull Candy's original given one.

Have to get back to work on my Biology lab report, because I'm 99.99% positive my teacher still wants it emailed to him, regardless of whether we have school today or not. 1 1/2 hours left and I need help on 3 of the questions! Eep!