but I am drinking cocoa out of a travel mug. SHHHHHHHHHH

Lots of plans being made in my family this week. My mom is freaking out because she's getting too stressed about them all, but I'm pretty sure they'll turn out fine. She also wants to see if she can get Andy onto formula and/or solid foods and all that beforehand, though I don't know how well that'll turn out since he tried formula last week and hated it. (He likes ice cream and yogurt though, so...) More on those plans once they're finalized.

OH AND I parallel parked yesterday. First time in four years of driving that I've actually had to do it (aside from drivers ed which doesn't really count). Wasn't particularly fun and I had to do it twice to get it right, but since I didn't hit anyone's car I feel it was a SUCCESS.

ho hum I should finish up my excel and accounting classes before next month and send in my housing application for the spring

Visit with my grandparents went well; they stayed for a few days and then drove down to Florida. Last I heard, we're meeting with them for lunch on Saturday, as they drive back up to New York. GOLDEN CORRALL YAYYYY

Also, Rebekah and Leah and I are going to dye our hair weird colors for halloween, though Leah's the only one who's actually dressing up. Should be a fun time, even though my hair will probably end up a really dark teal because I have dark hair. Oh well.

Oh, and I am ACTUALLY BEING PRODUCTIVE and doing my online homework with no due dates. I did three assignments for my Excel class today! This is only because my sister registered my laptop with her school's wifi, so when I drive her to school I take my computer up to the library and do homework. Or watch shows and movies and write blog posts. YEAH THAT'S THE TICKET

Lastly, I took all the kiddoes (except Sarah and Andy) to see Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, and we took up a whole row and we were the only ones in the theater and we were super loud and yelled to each other until a man and his daughter came in 15 minutes into the movie and we had to shut up. Afterwards when they had left again, we stuck our hands in front of the projector and made shadow puppets, then went up and put our faces by the screen and sat in the front row and all got headaches. It was AWESOME. (Sidenote: the movie was fantastic as well, everyone go see it)

THAT HAS BEEN MY LIFE FOR THE PAST TWO WEEKS OR SO

So the disgusting eye drops worked and I got my contacts back wooooooo

The doctor told me to use this new contact solution though, which is peroxide-based instead of saline-based, so I get to put my contacts in this weird case which is transparent plastic and you get to see the whole thing bubble like a can of pop that's just been shaken. IT'S AWESOME.

In other news, my grandparents are coming on Saurday. My mom called my aunt and she was all "OH YEAH MY PARENTS ARE LEAVING FOR MARY'S ON MONDAY AND THEY'LL BE AT YOUR PLACE BY THE END OF THE WEEK ELL OH ELL" and so yeah. Excitement! (OH BUT I HAVE TO GO TO SAM'S CLUB OR WALMART OR SOMEWHERE WHOOPS TOO BAD I MISS CLEAING THE HOUSE)

And also my computer is being crap and keeps giving me the bsod and crashing ALL THE TIME and I am super mad about this whole thing. At least it's still under warranty and I have my external hard drive so I can back everything up. uuuuughghghghg

Anecdote of the day: so, I'm not sure if I mentioned it, (but I think I did,) but I was having this weird problem with my eye where I couldn't put my contacts in or they'd get bloodshot and really irritated. I went to the doctor and he was all 'oh it's a virus, leave your contacts out for like 5 days' so I said okay, waited, and my eyes were still being ridiculous. As such, I've been wearing glasses again for like two weeks now. They're really cheap and the arms pinch my head, but at least I can see. So anyway, I say to Mom, CAN WE PLEASE GO TO THE OPTOMETRIST BECAUSE THIS IS GETTING RIDICULOUS, and we went on Monday. He looks at my eye and flips my lids (which feels crazy and my eyes watered afterwards for about 5 minutes) and says that I have some kind of lipid or protein buildup under my eyelids and it irritated the glands or something... in any case, it's common with contacts, and he gave me a prescription for eye drops that would fix it.

So I put these drops in my eyes 3 times a day, right? This is the ridiculous thing:

THEY HAVE AN AFTERTASTE

No, seriously. An aftertaste. In my mouth. And it's really, really gross.

And that is my story of the eye drops that you taste. The end.



in other news: I got a PS2 multitap and two controllers for my brothers which came in the mail today, so now we can play 4 PLAYER TIMESPLITTERS YEEEAH so that's fun. Also I have been drawing all sorts of random stuff, the second most ridiculous of which is here. So that's a good time.

So I have some online homework due at 12 but I am ignoring it. That's nice.



In other news, this happened:



For some reason, Mom was not particularly appreciative of our combined artistic skills! Come on, Mom. We're learning illustration! Don't be hatin'. (she erased this 15 minutes ago. It was two days worth of work! :( )



Also tomorrow James turns 4. Yay! (Cake!)

Oh homework
how I love thee
except when you must be done
which is always

In closing
die in a fire
like the vestiges of swine flu
amen

like SWINE FLU YEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH

or not

Fun fact: My family has swine flu.

Mom took my 8 year old sister to the doctor today, since even though we've all been sick, she was the one who spiked a 104 fever. The doctor was all, "Oh yeah, she has it." and mom was all, "Has what?" and the doctor nervously goes, "... the... flu..." and so I screamed to Mom when she got home I HAD THE FLU IN FEBRUARY MOM AND I HAVE THIS NOW and mom was all "Yeah I know" and I screamed THIS ISN'T NEARLY AS BAD AS THE REGULAR FLU MOM and she said "Yeah I know"

So the doctors gave us that tamaflu stuff to give to my youngest brothers (except Andy who has it and it is sad because he just looks dazed and not as happy and smiley as ever) and to Sarah who also hasn't gotten it yet, shock, so that should help I hope. Meanwhile I am eating advil and sudafed like candy even though my sudafed isn't really working right now. And those robitussin gel caps that I have left over from when I had the flu, because that horrible 'cough your lungs out whenever you laugh' thing is back which sucks. That's working, though, so I'm good at the moment.

So yeah.

SWINE FLU

So we finally convinced Mom to use the pooled-together money that we've been collecting for AGES to buy a Wii and then Rock Band for my brother's PS2. I'm pretty excited, especially since Rock Band comes with a multi-tap so we can play TimeSplitters as 4 PLAYER MULTIPLAYER

Is it a bad thing that I think it's ridiculously fun to shoot my siblings in the face with a flaregun two flareguns? Even if it's in a game? Probably. Oh well.


In other news, last week ECU said to me, "Hey, remember how you had needed X dollars in order to live on campus and we didn't give it to you so you stayed home? Well, HERE IT IS NOW ELL OH ELL" and I just stared at my computer and said "what" for about 5 minutes before freaking out and throwing my computer at mom to show her. So now I have more than enough money to come back next semester and I am very pleased. However, ECU still needs a better financial aid department.


Lastly, something completely unimportant: this song has been going through my head for 6 days straight. This. Is not a good thing. It's probably the most nonsensical song I have in my whole collection, mostly because it takes itself so seriously. uuuuuuuuuuughghghhg

I feel like I should counter that terrible song with a better one. HERE YOU GO :D :D :D (warning: strong language [THAT MEANS YOU WILL HATE IT, MOM])

SUBJECT LINE UNRELATED

Not much is going on, so here is a a picture of my hair.



You can't really tell the Phoebe-ish ness of it from the picture, but it is. Oh well. Ignore the wrapping paper and piles of stuff behind me; I was upstairs in our fake-kitchen-whatever. We keep random stuff up there like boxes and wrapping paper.



Other things: two of my 5 online classes have no deadlines aside from the last day of class. This. Is a problem. Wait until December and I will be crying. EVEN BETTER: One of them is accounting.

One last other thing: At Nat's suggestion, I got Joe three PS2 games, and today we played TimeSplitters: Future Perfect for about 4 hours. THAT GAME. IS SO FUN. Though frustrating. We were playing the zombie level and I had one gun with no ammo, and ended up pistol whipping zombies for about 20 minutes. Good times.

THIS IS

A CONTEST



That's right, folks, I am having a super special contest of awesome, inspired by Maggie's constant contests! It's pretty simple, so let's get to it.



Color this picture.

THAT'S IT



Okay, let me elaborate a bit. Here are the rules:

1: Color the picture of Zoidberg above, in any way you see fit. Be creative.
2: Have it finished and sent to me in some way by... oh, September 10th or so. That's two weeks.
3: You may enter as many times as you'd like.
4: THERE ARE NO OTHER RULES

As an example, here is one that I printed out and colored with crayons (BECAUSE I AM 19). Obviously this is not in the contest,but it's an idea of how to color it I guess. But really I just wanted to color it with crayons (BECAUSE I AM 19).





NOW COLOR

COLOR LIKE THE WIND