chaos, fake love notes, flipping light switches, and spongy dinosaurs

I shall assume it's safe to say that sometimes, all of us will find that we have wandered into chaos unknowingly. That's obvious. Whether it be that there's too much work cut out for us, we said something irrationally stupid, or whatever. But for me, it almost always involves procrastination.

I really need to stop complaining about my endless list of problems.

One thing I am simply annoyed with is that many people, or more specifically, many teenagers and young people, feel they need to adhere to a certain group, or conform to a stereotype, in the ways that they dress, act, talk, etc. "Acceptance" is something valued by the general public, it seems. Yet it's just part of human nature... I'm sure I'm not the only one who it annoys. If you truly like something, wear it. Don't wear it because everyone else is. I do not know how many times I can repeat myself to certain people. It's something that will never be changed, though.

My band, Nameless Elegy, is coming along pretty well, other than that we have problems with the bassist and drumset situations. And maybe the singer. I don't know. I've been working on all the "nerdy stuff," apparently. As in, website, finances, etc. I'm just great at those kind of things. It's probably a good idea to go ahead and get your foundations set out before you really start a big project like this, because then, it's less likely to collapse. It actually is quite astounding to me how many words I understand, yet infrequently use in everyday conversation. It really helps when reading contracts and the like. Not that we're signed (yet), but for just reading the terms and conditions, for stuff like our website hosting service. Of course, it will really be instrumental if we get signed, though. I've wrote some guitar riffs I really like, I got another guitar (which is not exactly the best brand or model of guitar, but better than my other one. yet it's not bad at all), maybe buying a new amp/pedals/other guitar stuff soon, and, yeah.

I feel excruciatingly inarticulate right now.

This morning, we confirmed another techie/tour support. The conversation went something like this:
Me: Hey, Frances, can you confirm that you'll be one of our techies/tour support?
Frances: Yeah, definitely, as long as I don't have to fix computers or something.
Me: Well pretty much all you have to do is flip light switches, and...
*Cate starts cracking up at this point, then we all realize how imbecilic that sounded and start laughing.*
Me: ...and tell us how much money we have to buy food with.
Frances: 'NO, YOU CAN'T HAVE MONEY TO BUY FOOD. IT'S ALL MINE...'

Friday was the last day of school before winter break. It snowed and they let us out of school an hour early. It didn't stick to the ground, though. I hugged most of my friends and told them I loved them, because it just started snowing a few minutes before we left, and we haven't seen snow in almost two years. Winter is my favorite season.

Since it was the last day of school before break, one of my best friends, Cassidy, and I had to mess up something. Thursday, a good friend of mine gave me those little sponge capsule things that expand in water. I don't know what she was thinking, knowing me. First, we put one of those in a toilet, and walked away. Later, one of my friends on the bus told me she saw a dinosaur sponge in the toilet, and that everyone found it hilarious. Another one of my friends heard this and thought it was the best idea ever. I think we should do that again at the end of the year, but get three packs of spongy dinosaurs or something. Everyone always does something ridiculous, usually fifty times worse than that. All week, we'd been cutting out little paper hearts that said various phrases along the lines of "Happy Holidays! I love you." "Merry Christmas! Ohyeah! P.S. - Ur hot." [Cassidy said that "sounded wrong."] "Happy New Year. You're awesome!" written in different colors and handwriting. We had time to stick about ten of them in our friends' lockers, and we have about ten left. The day we get back, assuredly. What's awesome about this is that our friends have a bunch of holiday and joke love notes, yet they have absolutely no idea who they're from. Yes, I am aware that we're very bad and mature kids. But we didn't want to get suspended the day before winter break. Or really ever.

Love,
Izzy

If you see odd-looking kids with a giant cd/cassette player/radio thing from the mid-90s, lettuce, a plastic jackolantern, and a collection of other random objects, dancing in the middle of the street, that's probably my friends and I. I'm the one with the weirdly-colored-orangey-brown hair (that was an accident at summer camp involving hair-highlighting stuff which you're not really supposed to use if you have black hair because it turns your hair orange. It used to be bright orange, but then my mom dyed it to look more natural and the dye faded some.) and a bunch of books on math, psychology, and other random stuff. And probably an instrument case.

I don't know why, but I just had to say that. Recent occurrences. Yay for condensing the past few weeks into four sentences!

I guess it's safe to say that my band is getting off the ground. To me, it's extremely strange to think that we could actually get somewhere with it, as in, record an album and play shows. (And we are planning for both of those things next year.) Yet, a possibility. The idea of a band has been circulating around my group of friends and I for maybe, three years now. Honestly, it doesn't even seem real. We've been having problems getting a bassist and a guy singer, but we're almost sure we've found our bassist. The singer, however, is not exactly secured. We've been trying to find a guy to sing, because Audrey (sitarist/drummer) said that she envisioned a guy singing some of the songs, and a girl singing others. (Which would probably end up being me.) The following is what would most likely happen with the lineup when Audrey was playing sitar. Somehow, it seems as if it would miraculously work out. (Because, obviously, you can't play drums at the same time. As far as I know, she hasn't grown two more arms.) The bassist, who coincidentally plays drums, would be the drummer. Then the guy singer, who coincidentally plays bass, would also be the bassist. And I will be playing guitar, no matter what odd lineup situations we configure.

Hoping to tour next year. As in, play some shows fairly close by. No further away than an hour, most likely. We all have to start somewhere, and some of us have parents, and other various hindrances, including school, location, etc.

I still can't believe it's happening, though. So I don't have to bore you with updates for this band, you can follow along here, because updates will be posted much more frequently there. I don't know how many times I've said this, but I'm really excited about what this could become. I have no ambitions of us being famous or something, but, to me, making a record and playing shows with a halfway-decent band is something to be proud of.

love,
Izzy