My Grand Plan for Conquering the World

I stayed home from school today because I'm sick with some kind of nasty cold. Staying home sick always gives me time to think (which can be dangerous), and today I compiled a master plan for my future. Really it just incorporates a bunch of my interests and things I find myself daydreaming about frequently.

I know I'm going to sound a little bit conceited right now, but I have good taste in music. I can prove it too. I just watched Garden State this week and I had almost every single song from the soundtrack on my iPod even though I had never heard the soundtrack before. And they are pretty obscure songs too, definitely not mainstream radio material. Also, I am always finding that the songs I listen to and download appear in the tv shows and movies I watch about 3 months after I download them. So, Step 1 in my plan: Have my own record company. I would get to listen to music all the time (which I love to do), sign the people I like, and make sure people hired me to do movie and tv show soundtracks. When I get bored, I like to come up with names for bands too, so this would be a good outlet for all the ones I will have invented by then.

Once upon a time (more like...last year), I tried to become a model for this agency in Portland that recruited me one time when I was at Lloyd Center. It didn't work out so well considering I needed to shave two inches off my hips to meet their criteria. I tried to do it, but it was kind of gross when my shoulders started poking out more and I realized I was trying to be somebody who I'm not. Anyways. I think it would be cool to own a modeling agency that hired models who were beautiful, even if they aren't the perfect size.

Perhaps the reason I couldn't make it as a model is because I love to cook. Someday, I would love to have my own restaurant. I would get to choose what goes on the menu and keep up with all the latest trends in gourmet cooking. Plus it would taste delicious too because it would be my restaurant.

Since I will be insanely rich from all of my businesses, I would have the money to start my own line of gowns. I love shopping for, trying on, buying, and wearing formal dresses. Sometimes, I find myself designing the perfect dress in my head. I'm pretty sure I could design a whole line of perfect dresses too. And I could have the beautiful people from my modeling agency model them for me. There you go.

Now you know what I daydream about. Pretty nice future I have set up for myself, huh? Don't worry. When I'm famous, I'll still remember you read my blog.

Corvallis Culinary Week = Kelly Eats A Lot Week

I feel like all I've been doing this week is cooking and eating really good food.

This week was Corvallis Culinary Week, which was totally awesome. If you didn't take advantage of it, shame on you. (Actually, I meant to tell you about it earlier this week, but couldn't make it happen.) I think it was eight or nine different restaurants in Corvallis that participated in it. Each of the restaurants offered a chef's specialty dinner for ten dollars. I went to Iovino's and Strega for dinner on a couple different nights. Both dinners were excellent too. I think Iovino's was my favorite though.

I'm also taking advanced foods right now (which I might have already mentioned) and this week one of my classmates put on a cooking competition at our school as her senior project. It was a black box competition which is basically where you're just given tonos of ingredients and no recipe and you have to make something delicious, creative, and make it look really appealing too. My group made a stuffed salmon, fried rice, and asparagus for our entree. Our dessert was an almond meringue garnished with kiwi and strawberry slices, dark chocolate shavings, and brie cheese. Ours was delicious and beautiful, but we missed winning second place by just one point.

To top off my scrumptious week, I worked at a church retreat this weekend, cooking for about 50 people. I flipped soooo many pancakes.

I realized that a lot of my blog entries have food pictures on them, or are about food. But hey, I like to cook. It's one of my favorite hobbies. I like to eat good food too. Also, one of my hobbies. But now that I think about it, my blog probably just makes me look like I'm obsessed with food. I'm not, I promise.

Inaguration day!

Happy Inauguration Day! In case you are completely secluded from the world, Barack Obama is now the 44th president of the United States. I watched his inauguration today at school during my senior social studies class. We had a bit of an inauguration party, complete with Dixie cups of sparkling cider to toast our new president.

I thought Obama gave a really great speech. It wasn't long and dragged out and it addressed some important points, while filling us all with that hope he campaigned about. As everyone knows, this elections is groundbreaking on many levels. I was sick of all the election hype and I'm glad to finally see our new president as a reality. Let's just hope he can deliver on all those things he promised.

In my English class, we compared Obama's inauguration speech to Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech. We watched them both on a projector and had the texts to read along with too. If you've never listened to MLK's speech the whole way through, you should. It's amazing. I got goosebumps from it. Obama's couldn't exactly compete with that one, but it was still great, in my opinion.

Also, the Bible he was sworn in on was huge.

(Photo credit: Scorpions and Centaurs, "Obama's speech...")

my new favorite kind of shopping.

This weekend I was up in Portland for a big soccer showcase tournament. It went pretty well for me and my team. We won 2 and tied 2 of our 4 games. It was a little wierd for me though because I was playing with a new club team (to me) and I was adjusting to the new position I'm at. But it was fun and there was some good soccer.

In between games, I got the chance to relax with a little therapeutic shopping. Usually, shopping means walking around for hours and trying a million different things on, but not this time. Oh, no. I was furniture shopping!

A couple weeks ago (I think?), the icemaker in the refrigerator at my house decided it would break and leak water all under the kitchen and living room floors. We ended up ripping out the carpet in the family room and the wood floor in the kitchen buckled a little bit from the water. Sooo... we're redecorating the living room.

We went to a lot of furniture stores throughout the weekend. I developed a bit of a routine too. I would look around the store to find the most comfortable looking couch or chair and then I would just park it. Sometimes, to the humor of the sales people, I would bring in my blanket and fall asleep, or bring in my book and read for while. My excuse was, "How am I going to know this couch works, if I don't test it out right?". Really, I just wanted to sleep. Which I did a few times.

Let me tell you, furniture shopping is wonderful. If you ever need to seriously relax, pretend like you want to buy a couch and just go lay on a bunch of different ones at a store. Ethan Allan is my favorite. Plus, the sales people will bring you cute little Ethan Allan water bottles if you stay there long enough. I think I might be sad when we are all done buying furniture.

my near-death experience.

I know I exaggerate about a lot of things, but this time I promise I'm not. Last night, I almost got into a very serious car accident. Here's the story:

I was on my way home from Albany on Hwy. 20 during rush hour. I was following this big truck that turned off onto a road on the right side of the highway. There was another car on that road waiting to turn left onto the highway. While the truck was turning, the car didn't look left to see if anyone (me) was coming and pulled out into the lane I was driving in, blocking it completely. I was going at least 50 mph (the speed limit) and had no time to slow down. I had to swerve into the turn refuge on my right quickly and then I overcorrected to avoid hitting oncoming traffic. I lost control of the car and started fishtailing really badly. I ended up doing a 360 degree turn across both lanes of traffic and off the highway into a field. I wasn't hurt and my car wasn't hurt which is miraculous, in my opinion.

The worst part about this experience is that nobody stopped. Not even one. Not even whoever almost killed me, who must have known that they caused me to lose control of the car. I felt like I was living out Jesus's parable of the Good Samaritan. I think I could have flipped my car and been lying there dead and nobody would have stopped.

This showed me exactly how stupid our society is. We're always too busy, or too tired, or just don't care enough to help somebody in need. The real truth is that we don't love each other enough. If someone needs help and you can help them, you should.

Also, don't pull out into traffic without looking both ways. It's bad news.

I got in!

I got accepted into University of Missouri's pre-journalism program too. Just thought you should know. I'm excited.

the reed sea.

My friend Michael Finn is in a band that released their EP this week. They're called The Reed Sea. I think this is pretty great for several reasons. First, I think it's amazing that someone has enough musical talent to put together an album while they're in high school. Second, their music is actually really good!

Of course, their music is my type of music: indie rockish with good lyrics. But even if this isn't your kind of thing, you should still check them out. They put out four songs that you can listen to on http://www.myspace.com/thereedsea . Also, if you like it, you can take advantage of the free downloads at http://www.thereedsea.com/ .

I got my first acceptance letter this week! Once again, I feel very accomplished. I will admit I actually let out an audible squeal of excitement when I opened it. As you may have guessed from the photo, I got into the University of Missouri. I also was awarded a $4,000 per year academic scholarship. I applied for their journalism school too, but I haven't heard if I got in or not yet.

I still don't know where I want to go to school yet. I have applied/am applying to: University of Oregon, University of Missouri, Gonzaga University, Whitworth University, and Linfield College. I want to study journalism, but I want a school with enough academic diversity that if I change my mind, I will still be able to get a good education.

I can't really decide if I want to go to a big school or a small one. That's why I'm applying to some of both. I also don't know if I could handle going out of state for money reasons and also the homesickness.

Add in the question of whether or not I want to play soccer in college and you've got the amount of confusion I'm feeling right now. However, I'm not too worried about it. Maybe I should be. I feel like God has always taken care of me in the past though, and I need to just trust him with my future too.

it's stuck.

Last night I downloaded this really great song and it is stuck in my head for good, I think. That may be due to the fact that I have been listening to it on repeat since I downloaded it, but, eh, who knows? Don't worry though, I'm happy with it on repeat on my iPod and in my mind.

The song is Electric Feel by MGMT. It's amazing. I was going to put up the music video, but it happens to be rather ridiculous, like most music videos these days. I'm pretty sure those peaked in what? the 70's? Ah well, you should definitely listen to the song though. And if you feel like a laugh, watch the video. I didn't watch the whole thing, but it did involve a strange jungly/Amazon setting and really bad dance moves. The photo should give you a little preview of the music video.

(Photo credit: Heidi Heidi Heidi, "boysboysboys"

pictures! finally...

Okay, so the two top photos are from the Holiday Bowl. They had a really awesome half-time show with fireworks going off all around the stadium and like a million high school kids and marching bands playing. It was intense. And then some ashes from the fireworks fell on my hair and I was really afraid it was going to catch on fire.

The other pictures are from my time with my cousins in Bakersfield. We invented a new game that involves throwing, kicking, punching, heading, or whatever else, a beach ball at each other. It was a little violent at times, mostly when tickling and tackling got involved, but we all survived and had a great time while we were at it.

Oh yeah! I forgot to wish you a happy new year. Happy New Year! 2009 is going to be good. I can feel it.

you missed me. admit it.

I'm sorry I haven't written for a while. I guess I got a little carried away with the whole vacation business and let myself be a little lazy. But in my defense, I was in California visiting family and that kept me pretty busy.

So what have I been up to? I went to the Holiday Bowl in San Diego. It was pretty awesome, especially since the Ducks won. I spent time with both sides of my family which I enjoy immensely. I think cousins might just be the best thing in the world. Aunts, uncles, and close friends are awesome too.

I have been spending a lot of time with my older brother and sister who are both home for the break. My brother came home from law school in Santa Clara, California. My sister just got home from studying in Spain for three months, so it's been great to hang out with her again. My life is not as great when I don't get to talk to her much.

When I got home, and on the drive home, I read two novels for my AP English class and did calculus like crazy. I read "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe and "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad.

I know I've been promising to put some pictures up, but I'm at school right now and this computer won't take the memory card from my camera. Not to worry though. I'm going to make up for skipping out on blogging. In fact, I'm gonna blog the crap outta you guys. You just wait...