ok so, BACKSTORY TIME.

( you can skip it if you want...question below )

have any of you ever read Carrots and Celery because OMG HOLY SHIT.

HOLY SHIT.

so i was making this post just to ask if people had read it because its awesome and i want to discuss it BUT SHE HAS BEEN UPDATING IT AGAIN?!?! (IT WAS COMPLETE BUT THERE WERE PROMISED SEQUELS THAT DIDN'T COME AND OMG WHAT??!?1?!)

I am so happy i decided to post about this?!?!!? i literally discovered she was updating in the middle of writing this post when i went to look up the url so i could link to the story.

so it's REALLY long, but it's fabulous and i highly recommend it, especially so i can discuss it with someone, because i have never been able to and ive always really wanted to, but nifty doesn't have the kind of community lj/fanfic does. so yeah READ IT.

::goes to read the....OMG NINE NEW CHAPTERS?!?!::

AGHHHH.

OMG.

I JUST got the car back from the dealership yesterday because it had a broken window AND WHAT HAPPENS TODAY?!?!?!?!

I get in an accident. Which is itself horrifying. AGH. I had the boys in the car, as well, but thank god everyone was ok, actually the boys were more than ok, their response to me freaking out was "why are you crying? that was fun..." oh, children. it was really a pretty minor accident but still pretty much the last thing anyone ever wants to do is get in a car accident with someone else's car. what happened was, in Germany people at your right have the right of way, so if you are driving straight and you approach an intersection and someone is at the right you have to let them go first which is SO not how it works in the us. if you are going straight YOU have the right of way, which i think makes a lot more sense but whatever. i'm usually pretty good at paying attention to this rule on main roads, but we were right on our street and of course i got complacent and didn't see this car at all. JNDFAJKEBGL. and now i am crying again....

ugh, the family was really great about it and thank the lord i have car insurance, but of course i am super embarrassed and i want my mommy.

Ok, so my host family's housekeeper is totally bonkers. Mike has a dentist appointment today and since I have to take Max to Tennis I am supposed to drop Mike off at his mom's office right after school and she is going to take him. He has to sit at her office for an hour and a half though so he wanted to bring his nintendo DS but he could not find it. I spent all day yesterday looking for it. It was REALLY weird that it was missing because they aren't allowed to play with it during the week unless they have a doctor's appointment or something like that and so it usually just remains in it's spot on top of the fireplace from Monday-Friday but it wasn't there. The boys have never tried to play behind my back either so it really was a total mystery where it was. So, I told Nicole I would ask the housekeeper, as I had guessed she moved it to clean or something. The housekeeper shows up like an hour late and I ask her where it is and she says it's at her house?!?! WTH?!?! She doesn't really speak English so I couldn't really ask WHY it was at her house but that's really, really, really weird and now I have no idea what Mikey is going to do for an hour, and he can pretty petulant when he doesn't get his way so...I'm really glad it's not my problem at this point, haha.

This isn't the only weird thing this woman does. She always cooks something for us for lunch which is sweet I guess but technically she isn't supposed to be eating the food. I am allowed to because that's part of the au pair contract and I live here and stuff, but she always is like "No speak to Niki, no tell Niki!" So it bothers me in two levels -- 1) I don't like the secrecy, especially when I'M not doing anything wrong and 2) She makes me eat what she cooks and I mot of the time would have much preferred to make something myself.

Further, she always checks with me what time Nicole left for work so she can lie about what time she got here without getting in trouble. So she gets here late, spends half the time she is here outside smoking and/or cooking and so then guess what happens? she runs out of time. So she always comes upstairs and gives me chores to do! Pretty much the only thing I have to do is keep my room/bathroom clean, nothing else, but the other day she made me come downstairs and vacuum the playroom (I did it because I thought maybe I hadn't realized that it was part of my job but when Nicole got home I off handedly was like "Just to be sure, do you need me to do anything like vacuum/dust the boys room? or just make sure they straighten up?" and she was like "no no, of course not! you just make sure the boys don't leave anything on the floor so Nina can clean it" yes so NINA CAN CLEAN IT.

I feel like she is swindling this family but she has been around WAYYYY longer than me so I can't really say anything. I think the DS thing might cause some raised eyebrows on Nicole's part though. I really can't fathom why she would take it to her house?

Title: Making the Band
Author: crumbfreebread
Pairing(s): Albus/Scorpius
Summary: Scorpius starts a band to steal Albus’ ladies. He gets other stuff (like a headache) instead.
Rating: PG
Warning(s): Hmmm, I’m not sure if this needs to be warned for or not, but this story is kind of ridiculous.
Word Count: ~4500
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author's Notes: This was written for the_ass_fest. The recipient was serenityrages and I focused mostly on her prompt of musician!Scorpius. Enjoy!

( Making the Band )

SOOOO...

Remember back in the day when I went all rambly and was like "Mayhaps I'll take a year off from school and move to Germany."

Well, that is where I am right now. Wiesbaden, Germany. My new home.

It's all crazy amazing and better than I thought. My original plan had been to find work in a hostel or something like that but that got nixed because of complications such as visas and my parents wanting me to have health insurance (which is sensible I suppose, since I have the immune system of an infant and I tend to run a 103 degree fever and up about every three months for no. apparent. reason. (Actually, I take that back. There is a reason. And that reason is: College is a filthy place.))

So, yeah, I'm an au pair to two lovely, adorable, stubborn-as-hell boys named Max and Mike. I won't write too much about them just now because I've already been told by several people that I talk about them wayyy too much, so I am sure they will come up in future entries.

This is the event that is going to color my entries for some time, I'm guessing, so I am giving you all fair warning. Perhaps you'll enjoy it.

Goodnight!

the following songs have incredibly similar beginnings. it confuses and amuses me.

peace frog by the doors & sheep go to heaven by cake

straight to hell by the clash & paper planes by m.i.a.

drive by incubus & pieces of me by ashlee simpson

like, i know that happens sometimes in music. and a lot of times it's intentional (i'm not sure if that's the case with any of these, but they definitely aren't direct samples). i just find these particular combinations to be kind of hilarious.

today frobear and i were eating at california pizza kitchen and there was a lull in our conversation (the bread had come out and we were starving!!! we both take food very seriously...) and so i was eavesdropping on the table next to me which was a mom and her two sons and she was trying to make conversation with them. the older one (about 10) was kinda quiet and the younger (about 6) was crazy and all over the place and could not sit still for even a moment. once she had gotten the younger boy occupied with crayons she turned to the older one and asked him if he liked any girls yet and he, of course, got all embarrassed and shy and squirmy and i totally felt for the kid, but then! then, the mom was all "well what about boys? do you like boys" and he pretty much died right then and there. i felt soooooooooo bad for him, and also for my future children because i am totallyyyyyyyy going to do the same thing. as the mom had said right after she asked him and he had looked at her like she was about to get a punch in the face -- "well, it's just better to get it out of the way."


lol.

My Dad owns a car wash and he has owned this car wash for 19 years. When he first opened the business his friend introduced him to an artist which he later commissioned to create the logo that we still currently use. My Dad was fairly friendly with the guy and he gave my Dad a few pieces of his art to hang in the car wash. Sadly, four years after they met the artist passed away.

Today my Dad gets called to the front desk by the cashier saying someone wants to speak to him. He heads up and sees a 20 year old girl staring at the three paintings. He introduces himself and it turns out the girl is the artists daughter. My dad is a very friendly guy and he knows a lot of his customers really well so he thought it was odd they hadn't met before and he said so to her and she explained:

She hadn't come into the wash knowing her dad had done work for them nor looking to get her car washed. She had been lost and she planned on going in to ask for directions. She had been waiting to approach the cashier when she noticed her father's signature on the paintings hanging on the wall. This is when she asked to speak to my dad.

My dad thought this was absolutely amazing (rightly so!) and they continued to chat for some time. Through out the conversation my dad discovered that after her dad had passed away, her mother had left and she was raised by someone else (my dad didn't press for too many details) but she didn't have anything of her father's, and had never seen his artwork.

At this point my dad of course offered her any painting she would like and also to get her in contact with some of the other people he knows who had commissioned work from her dad. She then asked to speak to my dad in private and then asked him for a hug. :)

15 years after her father passed away and the day before father's day and she finally gets to see her dad's artwork.

Yeah :D:D:D.

I had to share.

these are my last few hours as a teenager...i will have successfully passed through them without ever doing any of that illegal teenagery like stuff.

i want to mourn my youth, but that is foolish. i have so much to look forward to :).

So, I've been kind of down lately. Not really sure why, probably because the weather hasn't gotten sufficiently lovely yet and it's making me all blah or something. I feel like everyone around me is also super depressed and it's seriously bringing me down. Everyone I talk to is having an identity crisis and I'm afraid it might be contagious.

Also, I need school to be over immediately. My brain is just so tired.

Pretty much always when I get like this I get a hankering for bad literature. Well, not bad, but I guess a good example would be something like Perks of Being a Wallflower. Not exactly a classic for the ages but definitely enjoyable (at least for me, I know that book can be divisive). I'm just so sick of reading exclusively academic/non-fiction types of books. I want something fluffy I can read really fast. Also, ever since I saw the trailer for the new Chronicles of Narnia I've really wanted to reread those, but they are at home. Hopefully I'll remember to bring some back with me this weekend.

So, my request is for book recommendations. Anything at all, as long as it's not too serious. Probably something in the YA genre or even chick lit. So, yeah, if you've read anything amazing lately...let me know.

Title: The Best Laid Plans
Author: crumbfreebread
Rating: G
Summary: Sharpay has a plan.
Notes: This was written for nevcolleil! It is a re-imagining of some of the events that took place over the summer at Lava Springs.

( ... )

Perhaps many of you have seen this, but if not, it is incredibly adorable. Check it out.

Title: The Difference Between Then and Now
Author: crumbfreebread
Rating: G
Summary: Chad thinks he knows which one is older...
Notes: This was written for kleenexcow! I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you like the way I interpreted your prompt!

( If anyone had asked him... )

Title: May This Be Love
Author: crumbfreebread
Rating: G
Summary: Chad has a decision to make.
Notes: So this was written for slytherin_gypsy! I hope she enjoys it! I was a bit naughty in regards to following her prompt, and this doesn't quite do exactly what she requested...but never fear! It has a companion piece, to be posted...soon! :P Also, this isn't at all my usual style. However, that's exactly what these 100 prompts are for -- experimentation. But, yeah, this is my first hand at trying to write about something serious and not something ridiculous and goofy, so be gentle! Actually, don't be gentle, I want to get better! Oh right, this is unbetad, which is a tragedy because my grammar can get nutty, so if you see anything in desperate need of fixin', feel free to let me know in comments.

( It had been so easy to meet Ryan's parents... )

So, I'm pretty sure my life is about to change in a really big way because I've made a really insanely big decision.

Here it is:

I am going to take the next year off from school and live in Germany.

This is why:

So this past weekend I had a lot of fun in Boston for Harvard's National Model UN conference and so of course I was hanging out with a very international crowd of kids from my school. They all speak at least 2 languages and have lived in at least 2 different countries and I felt so jealous! Normally kids my age rectify this with studying abroad but I am not in the position to do this for several reasons. I am a classics and philosophy double major and fulfilling the requirements for all that including Columbia's extensive core curriculum will take me all 4 years, and you MUST graduate within 8 semesters. The only way I could study abroad is to study in a program that would allow me to get credit toward either of my majors and I have no interest in studying in any of those places, not because they aren't interesting but because they all pale in comparison to my interest in Germany.

I don't really know why I love Germany so much or where the obsession even started, but it's quite a long standing one. And it was cemented 10,000-fold when I finally got to visit there this summer. So while the logistics of this trip are insane and terrifying and somewhat impossible, I am going to try to overcome them and do this. I think the benefits will be exponential.

Now, the first concern, and the one my parents immediately asked when I told them about this desire, is - why am I not waiting until I finish my undergraduate degree? This is totally valid, however, I feel there are several benefits to me doing this now. The first being that I want to be able to study German while at Columbia. The language programs here are quite impressive, especially at the more advanced levels. I've only had the opportunity to study dead languages thus far, and while that has been fun, I don't want to miss out on becoming really fluent on a language that is useful and actually spoken in modern times. So, if I spend a year in Germany my hope is that I would become familiar enough with the language to study it at the 3000 level upon my return.

Additionally, once I finish my undergraduate degree I feel like, and this could be a completely unsubstantiated fear, that the pressures to get a job and just move on with my career will be to great to justify living in Germany for any amount of time. Either I will need to be working on internships to help me get into law school or I will already have gotten into one. Also, part of me wants to do this to refocus a little bit. Law school has been my plan since I was 10, and while everyone has always lauded my drive and respected me for knowing what I want and doing everything I can to get it, there have been some reservations on behalf of some of the people who know me best and love me the most. Law is a career you need to commit to 100 percent if you want to be successful, and so I want to be 100 percent sure that I'm ready to go full throttle when the time comes.

This brings me to my last point. Which is that I am ready to admit with a little shame that I am somewhat burned out academically. I have been in school for the past 5 years STRAIGHT. That's right, I have not had a summer off since I worked at a summer camp between 9th and 10th grade of high school. My grades have been slowly declining these past two years and I was very stubborn about admitting why, but now I can admit to that fact I do not enjoy school like I have in the past. This leads me to believe that if I do not take this year off I won't make the most out of my last two years of college. I already feel like I've wasted the first one and a half and it's something that tears me apart and I can't willingly allow it to continue. I feel like stepping away from school for a year will give me perspective (a floaty, vague word, I know) but more concretely it will let me appreciate the opportunity that my undergraduate education really, truly is.

As an added bonus, my younger sister and my best friend for the past 18 years will be able to take part in this experience with me. She is graduating high school this year and is unhappy with her current plans for the future, so when I brought this up to her we both realized we had something really amazing in front of us. As cheesy as it is, we have the chance to make our lives a whole lot more interesting and we will be able to do it together! I can't express how close my sister and I are but let's just say that on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being super cool and 10 being totally fucking awesome) the idea of living in Germany for a year by myself was scoring about a 14 and doing it with Maria makes it about a 754.

This only skims the surface of my thoughts on the whole idea, but I wanted to at least some of them down formally. The next couple of months are going to be crazy getting this all in order, but I am completely thrilled.

so...i'm a second semester sophomore! yippee! my classes are going really well thus far, i have some really amazing professors. there was one professor i was a bit nervous about, as this is one of the reviews he got:

( cut because it's a bit lengthy but the general idea is that he is a pompous asshole. )

yeah. um, terrifying. and he did indeed miss our first class. the head of the department taught us instead and she was an incredibly sweet and intelligent woman, so i was very sad to see her go in favor of a professor who inspired such revulsion.

the review was correct about some things. he showed up 15 minutes late and he does have a british accent. at one point he even accused a girl of being "morally arrogant" and "delusional about her own uniqueness" and as promised it was the most entertaining part of the class. however, i found his lecturing perfectly pleasant, comprehensible and interesting. i definitely took thing away from the lecture that i hadn't gotten from the reading (and i was actually able to employ them almost immediately in my next class). overall, im not dreading that class anymore, which is excellent as its a fairly large lecture and if i dont enjoy it i just wont go and that is just not good at all.

i did observe something mildly amusing during the course of this class, as well. we were discussing "universalizability" which is basically the concept that if i judge a certain choice to be correct in a certain situation then i judge that others ought to make that choice in a similar situation. we had read sartre, who basically finds this notion absurd and the professor asked us to raise our hand if we agreed with sartre and the majority of the class did (on the basis that if you spent a lot of time debating a tough decision and came to one conclusion, intuitively you would understand someone debating the same tough decision and coming to the opposite conclusion). the group that raised their hand included the boy sitting next to me, we shall call him boy a. then he asked who disagreed with sartre, and a few raised their hands, including the boy sitting next to boy a, hereafter known as boy b. boy a and boy b were obviously friends and had been chatting intermittently throughout the class so boy a felt comfortable nudging boy b and giving him a you-are-such-a-meanie face when he chose the "morally arrogant" option of disagreeing with sartre. this was totally hilarious as not five seconds previous boy a had condemned this sort of behavior when he agreed with sartre!

sigh.

i'm going to do my latin homework now. i miss catullus. ovid is no where near as raunchy.

i am officially going to london for new years! and then spending jan. 6th-12th in prague! not only is this a super glamorous way to spend winter break but i still get 20ish days at home for my usual low-class fare of staying up until 4am playing board games, sleeping 'til noon, eating really crap food with frofro, and generally never getting out of my pyjamas. hooray!