Yesterday Bryn ran a half-marathon and I took photos of her, but I must develop them first. I was very proud of her. She made running a half-marathon look easy. The race was held on Alameda Island which I have never been to, but it seemed quite nice. Lots of empty used car lots.

I also washed Dad's car because the colour spectrum of bug guts on the windshield was one previously uncatalogued by man. Truly, an intense array of color. It's been nice out.

Half Marathon!

I finished my first half marathon today in 2 hours and 6 minutes! A half marathon is 13.2 miles.

It was awesome sauce! My shoulders are so cramped but luckily my sister is here to pinch them.

I leaped in front of every camera man along the way. The best part was sprinting to the finish with a big crowd cheering for me. 

Free goodies from the race: a champagne glass(with See Jane Run logo) filled with chocolates, LOTS of chocolate, a t-shirt, energy pills/bars/drinks, free massages, and champagne, but I didn't get any champagne.

Then I sat in a cold bath and took two naps. And now I'm getting ready to break my vegetarianism-something I do very rarely.

Yesterday I convinced Dad to buy me sugar-free popsicles, which felt like a small but poignant triumph over adversity, even though it wasn't.

Jasmine and I also drove home from Ashland yesterday. It was a long drive and we wanted to kill lots of bad drivers. Because there are seven hours between Ashland and home, we had the opportunity to make up some good car games. Here are two:
1) Every time you see a US Xpress Enterprise truck, Vulcan high-five everyone in the car and use the time to make many dumb Star Trek jokes.

2) Every time you see a "Yes on 8!" bumper sticker, you must immediately tell the gayest story possible. Ideally this story includes themes such as: gay marriage, gay babies, gay love, gay families, and homosexuals not ruining the sanctity of marriage/the Californian constitution.

Yesterday I fell off a foot bridge but I think it is going to scar anyway. Rubbish. Jasmine and Sereena and some of her friends and I made cupcakes last night as well.

The day before. . .we made brownies!

Purple Lovers

There are certain people in the world who label themselves as purple lovers. My mom's friend Kyle is one of them. That's why I made these fabulous purple tie-dye shirts for her!

Other purple lovers: My mom, Lynn, Cindy 

=D

Yesterday Jasmine and I drove up to Oregon with Sereena to see her house in Ashland. It was about a seven hour drive not including necessary stops for sandwiches and milkshakes.

I am taking lots of photos so Bryn and Lynn can see Sereena's house!

I Miss Camden!

Today is Memorial Day and I miss Camden.

I ran 10 miles this morning and realized that cheering for people is all about yelling louder than they are breathing.

Yesterday was my friend's birthday. I don't know how we entertained ourselves for more than 6 hours in a park. My guess: it was the bubbles. And dancing helps.

I am going to be taking more pictures to make this blog more exciting!

Yesterday I introduced my dad to fmylife and MLIA after he heard me cackling over the mediocrity of life. Then we went for a very long walk and argued about church politics.

I am going to Oregon today for the rest of the week.

Ella: okay why are you going to oregon, that is not a place you go
Camden: i am going to oregon to see my friend that lives there
Ella: UGH YOU HORRIBLE CHILD

So there's that. I don't know if I will update frequently.

Yesterday I walked my friend's dog for her because she went to etd Pop which is a electronic music festival or a very, very big rave. Rave culture seemed very interesting when she was explaining the concept of candy kids (she is not one) but I think I am better off with walking dogs.

Yesterday I watched a lot of television which was odd for me because I don't actually have much patience for television. Narrative tv shows go too slowly and then there are cliffhangers, and reality tv is just sort of uncomfortable most of the time. Yesterday I was trying to catch up with Bones. My friends gave up on me however, and made me watch the finale before I was fully caught up.

Bryn and Lynn and I went to the Creamery with Jasmine and Joanna too.

Today I really did nothing in class.

I ate a heath milkshake, french fries, and french toast for my afternoon snack and I'm still digesting it.

Later, I went to see the production of Young Americans that my friend Daniella partly wrote and costume designed. The song writing was especially impressive! The play was a display of the development of rock music through monologues that were both funny and sad.

I've forgotten how to sleep.

Yesterday my sister woke me up early because she was singing Kelly Clarks real loud over her breakfast.

She also had a band concert. It was an excellent concert - everyone performed very well. It was the last concert of the year. Also, it was her last band concert at Paly ever, and as is tradition in the band, the senior band geeks geek out and dress up and doing all sorts of silly things. The theme this year was video game characters, so she dressed up as Princess Daisy while her friend was Princess Peach.



I also went to my friend Joanna's house and we watched Star Trek: The Voyage Home. I liked that it ended in a pool party in the middle of the San Francisco Bay.

Yesterday my friend Jasmine and I saw the new Star Trek movie with my father and a friend of his. It was the funniest movie I have seen all year. In general, Jasmine and I are terrible people to see movies with. But when you add variables like space, explosions, sexual tension, people who look good, or sexually tense people who look good, in space, causing explosions, I think we become unbearable. I giggled through the whole movie and I think my father regretted bringing us.

We also got bagels and milkshakes earlier in the day and I told her about my Baltimore friends, who I think she thinks are sort of weird. But I'm only mentioning this because I want to start an East Coast/West Coast gang rivalry.

Yesterday my dad and I went grocery shopping which is how Bryn was able to eat her bowl of cereal on the kitchen floor while I made her pull apart Christmas poppers. Bryn explained to me on Sunday that no one in our family knows how to shop for a number other than one or four so that is why there is never any food in the house when I come home.

Also, Bryn did not mention in her post that the paper crowns came wrapped in jokes. Here is the best one:

What lives at the bottom of the sea and shakes?
A nervous wreck!

There were jokes in French too. Here was the one we understood:

France: Ca fait dix jours que je n'ai pas dormi.
Luc: Tu dois être très fatiguée?
France: Non, je dor la nuit.

I'm finding that my room has a lot of toys in it. My favorite discoveries so far are the plush Darth Maul and the toy record player.

When I came home from school today I ate a bowl of cereal on the floor of my kitchen while wearing  matching paper crowns with my sister Camden. My sister is collecting toy instruments. 

At school I performed several experimental procedures on my own spit(DNA).

I've been attempting to clean out my room. Yesterday I did my bookshelves. I own too many books, but I don't like giving them away, especially if I had some emotional connection to them at some point in my life. However, I have managed to get rid of enough to actually fit all my books on my bookshelf which is a very weird thing for me. I don't think that has happened since we moved.

I didn't find any of the books I was particularly looking for (Yann Martel where are you. Julia Whitty come home) but I did find three "Complete Works of Shakespeare" and two "Complete Sherlock Holmes." I put one of the Sherlock Holmes collections in the donation box (the gilt one, because I enjoy giving my books a rough time of it and you simply cannot do that with gilt leafed books) and distributed the other two Shakespeare around the house. I don't know why our family has so many Shakespeares and why they all ended up in my room but I do know that the one thing you don't do is mess with copies of Shakespeare so I put one in my mother's room (it had her name on the inside, anyway) and one in the living room (it was gilt leaf copy).

Cleaning out my room is a bizarre thing because I hang onto bizarre things and then forget about them and then they get all piled up and then I'm left wondering why I have so many plastic dinosaurs on my windowsill. I am halfway through a filing cabinet filled with, primarily, mementos (papers! what is my love affair with paper!) of my middle school years. I don't know why I saved any of it. Middle school was a uniquely horrifying experience. Tomorrow I will try to remember to talk about some of this rubbish; there is something very sweet about the britpop cootie catcher I have got in my hand. But there is also something very wrong about this list of boys my friends had crushes on that I, for some reason, saved, even though I apparently had no great contributions. But that is for tomorrow and anyway I'm only halfway through - who knows what horror of youth I'm going find in a minute.

Wow, today I drove to the beach(Pescadero) for senior cut day with some friends and no one died. We found a cave and spent a good 15 minutes singing overtones in it. Wow, so much fun and so much good food. Truly amazing food. Food.

Then  I played with a fantastic jazz band. A Touch Of Brass. They were really something. Could they play or what!? Just fantastic-I'm still blown away. And I had the honor of playing with them. My sister sat through it as well and my mom and dad and my mom's friend Kyle in the stuffy Haymarket theatre with terrible acoustics.

And I am staying up late to finish papers and work on projects because summer has not really started for me yet. I would much rather be doing yoga.

Yesterday I realised I had maybe become an adult when I turned to these two kids in Sunday School who were kicking each other and said "Could you two stop?" They stopped only to look at me with these wonderfully betrayed looks on their faces. Dad taught Sunday School - he made us write poetry about our relationship to God. The responses were more varied and honest than I had expected. Outright denial through anger and uneasiness to celebration.

My sister and I went to the farmers market after church and a man sold us two quiche for four dollars. But I think he had rather we had bought his almond croissants, of which he had many more.

PWC Concert

I loved the Martes of course, but my favorite piece was Cape Breton Lullaby.

Today Camden and I went to church and drew fruit on the wall of the Sunday school room. We're doing a mural of the fruits of the spirit. I also sang in the choir. I also ran 8 miles. Now I am trying to figure out a complicated alarm clock radio-why do they make these so complicated?

Yesterday I took photos of my sister in her prom dress for our grandmother:



We also went to our mother's choral concert. It was a great concert. Mom had commissioned a piece in honor of her twentieth year of singing with the choir. It was received well, which is good because it was a fantastic song. My favorite piece was called "Dona Ubensa" which not only a solo/duet involving my mom but it was a song that the conductor had arranged himself.

The other things I did yesterday included: jetlag, milkshakes with Jasmine and Bryn, going to a pet store with Jasmine and Bryn, going to a comics shop while Jasmine and Bryn made fun of me, going to my dad's writer's group, taking a lot of unnecessary photos of Bryn:



She's standing in front of St. Patrick's Seminary, which is where our mother's concert was held and is one of my most favorite places in the world.

Tie Dye Shirts

I tie-dyed shirts with my friend Lynn. We gave one to Camden when she came home from college-the one with the most colors.

Yesterday I came home on a airplane and summer started officially. My family picked me up from the airport. My father said, "you look thin!" and then he said "do you want to get some Mexican food?" and I thought, "it is good to be home!"

Our family went to get Mexican food in San Jose and then we went to a pet store because we thought there might be kitties there, but instead, there were many birds and one puppy. The cats were hidden in another room. After that, we went to a bookstore and I looked at poetry and my father bought a hardbound copy of Life of Pi by Yann Martel in hopes that this lovely, illustrated version would compel people to return the book to him after they've read it. He bought me The Art of Reading Poetry by Harold Bloom which I am very excited to read. My sister and mother did not buy anything, but my sister is still in school.

Today Bryn and I set up this blog, but today isn't over yet so I won't report on it.