Ashley Black Read This

Hey Ash. Just in case I die young (or just while facebook is still around), look on pg. 80 of my Harry Potter journal. Also, I'll want orange flowers, people to sing Beatles songs at my funeral, and you can have my iPod if I still have it. That is all.

Aliens at High School Churches

I better post before it gets any later and I forget what even happened this week. What if I just stopped posting altogether? I bet all of you would just break down and cry.

Sunday was fun, I got to give a talk! It was on charity, and everyone told me I did a good job, but that's probably because that's what people are supposed to say. Even if someone gives a downright terrible talk, you must tell them they did an excellent job. Dad kept on making faces at me while I was sitting up there which is always fun. I do like giving talks, I don't see why people freak out so much. You go up there, say what you need to, amen, and go sit down. And it doesn't matter if it was terrible, because by the next week no one will remember it anyway.

On Monday, my dad, sisters, and I went to see the Princess and the Frog. Or at least we tried to. We accidentally went into the wrong theater. We were expecting the Princess and the Frog, when all of a sudden a bunch of green alien people come on the screen. I thought it was just a commercial, but they started doing the beginning credits while showing the happy little green people going around town, smiling, laughing, and introducing their lives. I was horrified, I did not want to watch some stupid cartoon about aliens for the next two hours. I've never even heard of the movie before. Emma even whispered to my dad when it first started "I didn't know they had kubo." Help me. We ended up staying to watch it since we were already there, and it actually wasn't too bad. I kind of liked it. The beginning was just really cheesy and stupid, especially to someone who's never even heard of it before. It is called Planet 51, and it's about these green people who live there and freak out because an alien (human) comes to their planet. I did end up liking it, it was pretty funny.

Tuesday was spiffing. I got this piano song off of youtube called Haze and it's just a song some kid made up, but I absolutely love it. There isn't any sheet music though since the kid just made it up, so I put it on my ipod, and I got out my blank music book thing, and I just listened to the song and wrote down the notes. I was proud of myself because I found out the key and time signature and wrote it all down and made it work just by listening to it, and now I play it a lot because it's so cool. I don't know if what I did is even allowed, but it's not like the guy will find out, and I did put the title and his name at the top of the piece. I spent most of Tuesday on the piano.

I had mutual on Wednesday, and we did "Fear Factor". We were put into three teams, and we had five different stations, each for ten minutes. The first one I did, we had to find 7 scriptures in 10 minutes saying "if ye are mormon, ye shall not fear" or something like that. We only found like three. The next station, we had to do sit-ups, two at a time, for two minutes straight. We had to see which group would get the most sit-ups. I was the first girl to do sit-ups, and I did 90 in two minutes. At first I was disappointed I only did 90, until all the rest of the girls didn't get over 80. Then I felt pretty proud, and even more when some boys couldn't do as much as me. (The next day, my stomach was sore) The next event thing, we had to eat gross food. We had McDonald's french fries, hamburgers, root beer, and baby formula all blended together which we had to drink. I took one sip and had to cover my mouth to keep from throwing up. It was so sick, I think it was just the root beer that made it so deadly. It also depended on the person, some people thought it wasn't too bad, and others were gagging. It was the grossest thing I've ever had. The next thing my group did, was we had a person stand in the middle, and then everyone sits in a circle around them with their knees bent and the feet in the middle and pressed up against the standing person. The person standing (which was me the first time) then crosses their hands on their shoulders, locks their knees, and falls back. You have to stay stiff, and as you fall, the people sitting push on you and they pretty much just push you back and forth like a rag doll until someone drops you. I didn't really want to do it, because it was a bit awkward being a girl, but it was fun. The last station, we just made paper airplanes and tried to see how many we could fly onto a box on the floor. After we were done, we were informed that we were all winners and we got creamies.

During school on Thursday, the 9th graders got to go to Viewmont High School to take a tour and have the teachers talk to us. We left at about 8:45 from the school. I could tell the people at the high school didn't like us. Whenever our senior tour guides saw one of their friends, they would say "Ohhhh having fun with the 9th graders?" sarcastically and then giggle at their own cleverness at using sarcasm to make fun of freshman. I felt like I was 5, because they gave us name tags so we know our name, bus, tour, and teacher. We were in an art class learning about their program, when the bell rang right when we were about to leave. The senior tour guides wouldn't let us into the hall at first, and then they made us walk in a line right up against the wall so we won't get lost and the scary high school students won't trample us. I thought they were going to have us hold hands and sing the ABC's next. I saw my sister and her boyfriend there, so I felt cool knowing juniors. Yay me. We got back to school during lunch, and when I got back there I felt like I was in elementary school all over again. High school made Junior high seem more crappy than it already is and really small. And all of the sevvies look like they're in 4th grade. I wonder if we look like that to the high school kids.

Today, nothing too exciting happened. I just hung out with Sammy Facer, Riley Smith, and Ben Fisher after school (after accidentally falling asleep for three and a half hours :D) while seven kids under the age of 12 caused mayhem at my house. I told the kids would get physical if they came downstairs and bugged us. The only person I let downstairs for more than 30 seconds was Chelsie, because she's almost twelve and she's the most mature, and because I just plain like her.

Anyway, that was my spectacular week. I hope you guys like the new background and music. I tried not to choose annoying songs or backgrounds. There was one that was amazing, but I thought it would distract you from reading more. And it just makes it hard to read. Goodbye everyone, have a spiffing day.

Singing While Dancing at School

Okay my last couple of days have been crazy-ish, enjoy.

On Tuesday night, I went to the the annual special needs Valentine's dance for mutual. It's so much fun, the special needs people are so fun to dance with and also all of the youth in our ward have tons of fun just dancing and not caring what other people think. The only guy in my ward that I danced with this time was Mike Fifer, the other slow dances I danced with special needs guys, it was spiffing. There was this one lady there that just loved to get in front of everyone and dance, and I swear she knows every song known to man. She also had a boyfriend that she was showing off to all of the girls, she was awesome. I had such a delightful night!

The next day, Wednesday, was solo and ensemble day, which if you guys don't know about, too bad because I don't want to explain it again. Anyway, during school I had a field trip to Empire, which is a Chinese food restaurant. Us Chinese kids got to go which was dandy and we all felt cool because we ate with chopsticks and ordered in Chinese. Right after school I had to go to piano lessons. Right before, I was practicing my solo a ton, but I was freaking out because my voice kept on cracking, and I was mad because it doesn't usually crack, but then I remembered that I was sick last week and I had a sore throat. I freaked out and drank tons of water and had cough drops. I went to piano lessons for 45 minutes, and then my sister Ashley drove me to my school. She was so busy talking to me that she accidentally got on the wrong high way, so I was freaking out a little inside because I didn't want to be late and I had to pee really bad, but we eventually got off and I made it to the school in time. I went in to the band room and sang my solo for the judge, and my voice didn't crack which was a miracle. I was confident and I thought I did a great job. Twenty minutes later, I went in again for my ensemble. We sang "Oh Dear What Can the Matter Be", and it was just four of us girls. I thought we did a pretty good job, but not the best we could've done.

Right afterward, my friend Heather's mom who is my Young Womens leader, took me to the church and from there, the Bountiful temple. We were there for a couple of hours, and I was able to read a lot from the Book of Mormon while waiting which was good because I'm way behind in seminary. On the way home, we saw a huge house off the side of the road, so I had my YW leader, Kristen, turn around so we could look at it. It looked like a hotel and I was very jealous, even though two minutes before I was saying if I was rich I wouldn't buy a really big house. I changed my mind. It was a fun but busy day, and I was exhausted when I got home.

Today, I found out that I didn't make districts for solo and ensemble, but I did get a 1- which was the same I got last year and really good since the highest score you can get is either a 1 or 1+. My friend, Heather, made it to districts though. My ensemble got a 2+. I also got back my math test, and the class average for the test was 75%. I really think it's the teacher's fault, because we have smart people in my class (well obviously since it's an honors math class). Math is just hard this year, and I want to throw up when I think that I'll be in pre-calculus next year. Gross. Math definitely isn't my forte this year, well actually it never is, it's usually my mezzo forte or something, so this year it's like my pianissimo... Ok never mind. I thought I should get extra credit in seminary though, because we had to make math equations and make like prayer + faith = testimony except for trickier, and I did logarithms, so I felt smart. It was fun explaining it to the class, because no one but like four people who are in Algebra 2 with me got it, and they told me I explain better than Mr. Free. Sweet. In musical theater, we started learning some songs for the musical "Bye Bye Birdie", and soon I will probably hate those songs, and even now they are stuck in my head.

That's it, I'm tired and I've got to survive one more day of school so I should probably go let my body regenerate or charge or whatever it does while you sleep. Goodnight, you all make my dark days brighter.

Musical Theater

I'm doing terrible at posting on this frequently. This is only like my third or fourth post of the new decade.

I guess I'll start with musical theater tryouts. The dance tryouts were last Monday. During musical theater (7th period), our choreographer, Melanie, came and taught everyone a cute dance to a song from the musical ("Bye Bye Birdie") called "One Last Kiss". It was pretty simple, but it took her a while to teach us because there were so many of us and it's impossible for teenagers to shut up for ten seconds. I was freaking out because I had a voice lesson at 3:45 and we were still learning the dance after school ended. When we started actually dancing in front of Ms. Swallow and Melanie for our tryouts, I made sure I was in the first group. I didn't do too well of job, but I really didn't care. I grabbed my stuff and ran out of the school. I got to my voice lesson exactly on time. I learned to sing a song called "I'm Not at all in Love" from "The Pajama Game".

I practiced the song and the skit for tryouts a lot, and I had my little sister, Hannah, help me because the girl I was trying out for is really hyper and weird. Hannah was very helpful.

On Wednesday during school, I had my tryout. Ms. Swallow just put everyone in the old drama room to watch "Bye Bye Birdie" while she had people come in one at a time for tryouts. I went in there, and refused to have myself look scared, and I told myself there is no reason to since I've sung in front of Swallow many times. I smiled, did my song and skit as best as I could even though I felt a bit ridiculous, and I was pretty confident about myself.

Later that day, Mom made me go shopping with her, and I started to feel sick. My head hurt and my whole body ached. I thought it was just because I was shopping, since I hate shopping and it tends to make me feel sick. I felt terrible, but I don't think my mom exactly believed me because I was complaining about shopping, and that usually isn't a good reason to be sick. I was excited when I got home, because I accidentally left my phone home, and when I checked my messages, my friend had left me a text saying "Congratulations, you made call backs." I flipped out. It wasn't because of the fact that I thought I would actually get a main part, but it was more because I was so happy that she would consider me for a part, and thought I did a good job, good enough that she would want me to have a lead part. It was exciting, since I never make anything and am terrible at everything I try.

The next day, I started to get ready for school in the morning and was starting to feel a little better, but by the time I was putting on make up I was dying. I could barely stand up and was putting on my make up as fast as I could in front of the mirror so I could quickly sit down. Finally, I gave in and decided to stay home from school. I pretty much just slept, or tried to. I woke up so many times, and I kept on having mini spaz attacks or something while sleeping which I think had to do with my dreams (my dreams were pretty fun though :D). I kept on freaking out and thinking that I was going to sleep too late and miss 7th period for call backs. Eventually, I woke up and then had Mom drive me to school. I went to 7th period, and Swallow just had everyone who had call backs sit in the front, and she gave us scripts and had us act out different sections for her in front of the class and after school too. I thought I did a good job, but not good enough to make a part. I think I would have been great for the part, but there were just people who worked better and could do it better than me. I was pretty much able to guess who would get which part.

The next day I went to school because I didn't know if they needed me in musical theater or not. It was miserable, I was freezing and aching and everyone told me I looked stoned. They didn't need me in musical theater after all, and they posted the cast list later after school. It only had the ten main characters, there are still tons of other smaller parts that I want to try out for. I'm actually glad I didn't get a main part because of lacrosse. There are so many other parts and I'm really excited.

Today, I went to lacrosse and was so happy because they changed our location from an old church parking lot to a nice field at an elementary school. We actually played a lot of lacrosse today instead of just practicing cradeling or catching, it was fun.

Now, I'm super excited for tomorrow, because it's the Special Needs dance for mutual!! It's an annual thing, and we get to dress up and go to a dance and dance with our wardies and special needs people and it's so awesome. It's a bit weird sometimes because some of the older special needs guys I dance with just grab my waist really tightly while we dance, so it's a little weird dancing, but it's still loads of fun and I love it. I will certainly post about that next time.

Goodnight everyone, you all make my dark days brighter.