MadelineAwesome

We have some japanese students visiting from Kanagawa. They are really fun and really making me miss my time in Japan.

the family i stayed with was wonderful. Mom and Dad and Yuki, Yui and Yota. We went to this fabulous dance festival in the middle of toyota city and danced all night to the same song over and over again. It remains one of my favorites. I should make one of these Japanese kids listen to it. Oiden. google it. it was amazing. whatever. there is yota. eating an apple dipped in red hard candy. weird.

spring break is over. it felt just like a long weekend. i am sad. but word on the street (meaning Chen-who-is-sitting-next-to-me-in-class’s word) is that we only have two full weeks of school till we start having lots and lots of days off. we have the 23rd and 24th off. thats wednesday and thursday. maybe i will go on a road trip and take friday off and then come home at some point during the weekend.

road trip suggestions? i had been planning on going to Lawrence, KS, but i’m open to other options. let me know.

i am excited for april for a lot of reasons. i gave adrian a list, but i dont really remember most of it. so i’ll just trust that i am going to have a decent april.

still suped up about this scanner. i had a good time last night digging through a big box of pictures and finding the best pictures to upload to the intarwubz. here are a bunch with some explanations.

best year book picture i’ve ever taken i think. good sweater, good hair, decent smile. totally good. totally 6th grade.

in third grade my family went to Italy for spring break. here are some pictures:

the flickr caption on this one is “lollipop[e]s” i so clever.

little white speck in middle of all the commotion is pope john paul. holla. he is my favorite pope.

hey JP. sup?

this is in ireland. land of my father. actually, land of my great grandfather. he was born in the upstairs of this pub. (picture circa 6th grade/2001)

this is a picture of two girls completely psyched about getting their hair done for their first communion. (1998/2nd grade)

communion hairrr.

my gramma loves me.

dear american girl, you can make checks payable to ME.

so my backyard used to be a jungle. i love log. (circa 1995)

CUTEST TINKERBELL EVER. dont even try and refute that. (circa 1995)

before moving to the Chi, we lived in Burnsville, Minnesota. It snowed. that is not my house in the background. that is the babysitters house across the street.

uncle steve and aunt julie got married. These are all the cousins. before steve and julie had kids. i think i am going to use this picture as our facebook groups default. good idea madeline. and yes, my cousins and i have a facebook group.

first day of kindergarten.

my brother is an Ultra-Artist.

hey/hay/hei is for horses. i wish i still had that shirt.

my dad got my mom a scanner like 2 or 3 years ago and we never opened it. yesterday i was sitting in this dirty ass room feeling ambitious so i cleared off the desk and rearranged all the machines and got rid of all the unnecessary crap. I opened the scanner box and set it all up. Now this desk has some nice feng shui. or something. Nice centered monitor with speakers on either side, phone, printer, scanner. and there is still room for me to stash some crap while i work on computer shiz.

basically, i have wanted a working scanner for quite some time. i even forgot we had this scanner sitting around. so i scanned a few things today. rest assured that embarassing and/or cute pictures of me as a child are to come. for now:

image 1 includes my receipt from reckless records last week and a completely overworked to do list of school assignments. to break it down for you: first i listed all my classes chronologically and wrote down the stuff i needed to do in them. then i ranked all of the assignments in order of importance AKA how poorly i’m doing in that class. then finally i took the time to remind myself of the location of all the materials i need to do this assignment. here is an update. this is from march 6th and to date i have completed two of these. i really need to get down to business.

image two includes a mix CD that my friend Adrian made for my friend Emanuel but i had to be the courier service for. too bad i intercepted it and i took the liberty of putting this on my itunes before forwarding it to eman. i actually still havent given it to him. its sitting right here. and i even saw him today. oops. i’ll get it to you eventually. it also contains a bobby pin, and a Madeline who is completely psyched to be having her picture taken some day in Kindergarten in her velour dress. holla.

ideally, all i’ll have after this is one more post saying that all the other schools accepted me and then one about me stressing about where to go. and then a final decision post. whatever. i hope so. probably not. i am not a superstar for USC and NYU. i just really want to get into syracuse…

–Adrian and i are totally on the same page:

here is the aforementioned pie chart.

Green: still only UIllinois–sukkaz
Purple: University of Puget Sound, Illinois State University, University of Iowa, University of Kansas, Indiana University Bloomington
Yellow/Orange/Whatever i called it in the last post: University of Southern California, New York University, Syracuse University

in other news: spring break is alright. summer will be better.

today my pal jackie and i dyed selected portions of my red locks blonde. pictures to come.

i like cake just as much as the next person, but its got to be done right. just a smidge of frosting because otherwise it tastes like you have a mouth full of lard and no one wants that. okay, lots of people want that hence the success of grocery store cakes and buttercream cupcakes smothered in frosting. i wish someone would make some cupcakes that werent a hot mess of sugar and cream and use the frosting in ratio more similar to that of a cinnamon bun. WHO NEEDS ALL OF THIS?

when i was a kid everyone would bring in cupcakes drowning in frosting for their birthdays. i would always scrape most of it off onto a plate or a napkin only to be hounded by some sugar-addicted 8 year old asking if i was going to eat that frosting or if they could have it. I recall even sometimes trading someone my frosting for their cake.

i would rather just eat a third of a graham cracker pie crust like i did today. if i ever get famous to the point where i say i like something and i suddenly get lots of mail with that in it, i want that thing to be graham cracker pie crusts. those and cotton candy.

here is a picture of me right now***.

***actually, this picture is a few months old and i dont have actual though bubbles floating around me now nor did i then.

ugh. dear colleges, plz send me letters. I need to make some life changing decisions and i would love to have more than a month to do so. here is a pie chart.

GREEN= UIUC–jerkz.
PURPLE= Illinois State, Iowa, Kansas and Indiana Bloomington
ORANGE= USC, NYU, Syracuse and the University of Puget Sound

in other news– Obama is advertising on Dictionary.com. gold. pure gold.

it is 5:42 right now. I looked outside and it is hella bright outside. I was like ‘woah. it really must be getting to spring. But then I remembered about day light savings.

today my friend Gaurav was like ‘hey. wanna make a flyer for the BABT show on saturday?’ so i pushed aside the homework that i was not doing anyways and made this. it pretty much is inspired by my new favorite domesticated animal. the blue russian cat. they are the tightest mofos in the cat kingdom*.

here is the flyer. coming to a myspace page near you.

*i have a solo project now. its called Madeline and The Big Cat Family. its ironic because its just me.

do you know i have a band? have i ever talked about it? i mention danny cohen sometimes on here. he is the other half of the band. you can buy us on itunes, amazon, and eMusic. Search for it. Vague Babies.

also: if you live in lawrence, Kansas, or near there, you should go to this show. BABT are my friendlies and they rule.

i knit. not well, but i knit. I basically knit things that are rectangular. Scarves…and well. scarves. but i happen to like scarves and so do my friends. So it works out. I dont even really do fancy scarves. I sometimes insert a stripe, but i think i do it the wrong way. whatever. it works for me. But i think knitting is a good way to pass time and do something productive during time that would generally be unproductive. When i am on the train or in a car (and not driving) or watching TV or listening to a lecture in class knitting is awesome. Once you get the point where you can do it mindlessly its just a matter of muscle memory and your hands just do it. I just gave away one of these aforementioned rectangular projects to a friend of mine. Bradford Cox of Atlas Sound. He’s a good guy. He really like this scarf. I gave it to him and he was like “YOU MADE THIS!? This is so cool! Its so 1993! I LOVE 1993!” the perfect reaction. anyways. he went on to say how he wished he knew how to knit and that he used to do cross stitching projects when he was a kid.

here is the scarf i made for him.

here is the show. it was hot on stage.

and if the picture alone isnt doing it for you: here is a video from the show that some guy took.

he is from georgia where it like doesnt get cold so i hope its at least scarf weather for the rest of his tour…