The Things We Do for Ice Cream

Not my family, but the situation is similar.

So this weekend (actually, yesterday) I walked twelve miles to get ice cream. Sounds crazy, huh? Not if you're part of my family.
Allow me to explain.
My family is very attuned to the outdoors, if you know what I mean. My mom grew up tent camping with her family, and she loved it. Nothing like sleeping outside, getting back to the basics. My dad grew up going trailer camping with his family. Pretty similar, only you're not as close to the "basics" as you are when you're tent camping. So it only made sense that my parents would want to take their kids camping when they were old enough.
Wait. Scratch that. Not even "when they were old enough". Try, "as soon as they were born". I think my first camping trip occurred when I was at the ripe old age of ten months. And my little brother went while he was still considered an infant.
So yes, my family likes the outdoors. Therefore, it was only natural that my brothers both join scouts. After all, boy scouts and the outdoors are practically synonymous. With two brothers in boy scouts, sometimes my life can feel like it's all about boy scouts. Even though I'm not a scout! My dad's kind of a leader in my brothers' troop, and my mom is always pushing them to get things done, do this badge, work on that one, so sometimes dinnertime conversation can be singly exclusive of yours truly.
But I digress.
For boy scouts, my brothers had to earn the hiking merit badge. For those of you who don't know what hiking is, here's a shorthand (though admittedly biased) definition: lots and lots of painful walking. Ten mile hikes were the smallest hikes on there. Then there were fifteens, and finally, the killer twenty. I must admit, I felt like I could truly do these without much difficulty at first -- after all, what did everyone do two thousand years ago. I conveniently forgot that much has changed for the human race physically since Jesus walked the earth -- in other words, that sitting on our butts has made walking long distances a surprisingly painful.
So that was many of my summer weekends for about two years. Tons of fun. Blisters, aching muscles, pulled muscles -- the whole gang was there. And since it's my little brother's turn to get through the badge, my parents decided to prepare the whole family for that. Fml.
Oh well. At least I got ice cream :D

Official Blog Theme-Song

When I first started a blog here -- two days ago -- I had no idea what I was doing. In fact, it took me a few hours just to come up with a url that hadn't been taken already. Sad, right?

Anyways, I didn't understand that when it asked me to name my blog, it didn't mean name my first post. :( What can I say? I was kind of tired when I started this; it was a homework assignment. So that's how this blog ended up being named "Introducing Me :)" (Gotta add the smiley face.)

There's a song that actually goes with the title -- it's named the same thing. No, it wasn't really going through my head when I wrote out the title two days ago, but it was as soon after I read what I wrote, and it starts every time I look at the title. You'd think this was annoying, but it isn't. Not yet. I've only listened to the song a couple of times through so far. But I kind of like it. As a song. Not necessarily the movie it's from.

Now I know you're all dying to hear it, so here it is, the youtube link to it. I christen it my official blog theme-song. If there is such a thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqAQfKIJ0Tg

WARNING: Jonas Brothers haters -- stay away from this song.

Math :(

School's starting again. Yep, it's that time of year. Doesn't it just get you so excited to think that we have to be back in school, struggling to balance interests, extracurriculars, and school work, trying to maintain our GPAs to keep up with the competition, and getting used to new friends -- or no friends, as the case may be?
Okay, so probably most people rank the whole friends thing higher than the GPA thing, but that's just me. I'm a nerd. Surprise, surprise! I hope I didn't shock anyone too badly.
Yes, my GPA is very important to me, especially since I'm towards the higher end of the scale as far as that goes, if we're crunching numbers. And the one thing that gives me the most trouble, puts me in the most jeopardy, gives me the most stress headaches, is that tiny, four-letter word for trouble: math.
It's not that I'm not good at math or something. I get As in math, generally. The trouble is, I'm struggling in math more than I am in other subjects. Which makes it my problem area.
And the worst part, the thing I'm most nervous about this school year, is that I have not one, but two challenging math classes that I have to take on if I'm going to keep up with my GPA and all those 5.0 classes.
So I'm taking Algebra II, which is known for it's difficulty. Fortunately, I've taken Algebra I twice, so maybe it won't be as hard as everyone says for me. And I'm taking Geometry, which I may or may not hate by the end of the year. It's one of those classes where you either love it or you want it banned from all schools, everywhere. I'm more of a visual person, so I was hoping that would make a difference, because Geometry is a lot of shapes and stuff like that. Who knows? Maybe I'll be lucky.
Oh, I'm also taking Chemistry. I guess I was brain-dead when I picked out my classes last year.

That One Song

Okay, a lot of people are going to dislike me for saying this, but I find that one song by Carly Rae Jepsen very annoying. I won't even say the title, because it will probably get it going through your head, and I'm not that mean.
I don't really know how to say it, but it's one of those songs with which you have a love/hate relationship, you know? You love it when it first comes out, you're singing along, dancing to it (where no one can see you and possibly be turned to stone), and just really enjoying it. But then everyone else starts singing it, and it gets annoying. Especially when guys think it's funny to start singing it in falsettos, just to annoy/upset people.
Mostly, those songs are the kind of songs that I dislike the most, because they're almost too popular. And sadly, there are a lot of them out there right now. Just listen to a mainstream station on the radio for a half-hour, and I guarantee you'll hear the same song at least twice.

Books for u:

I like reading. Which kind of explains why I like writing so much. The two go hand-in-hand, I'm telling you. But I don't like reading the kind of books that you'd think most girls with my blog style would like to read. No, I have never voluntarily read the Twilight books, and I don't really like romance that much. Much less badly written romance. (Yes, I'm a Twilight "hater".)
But here are some books right now that I think are really awesome and that you should check out (from your local library, of course :P). If you like them, cool. If you don't, then we obviously don't look for the same sort of things in a book.

Lemme tell you about "da region" . . .

If you haven't gotten a chance to take a look at my profile, this is the part where I'm supposed to say that you should. But I'm not going to. Because I don't want you looking at my profile, you nosy people!
Okay. Random spurt of anger aside, if you have happened to glance at my insignificant profile, you'll have noticed that I'm from Hammond, Indiana. Which is basically like saying Theothersideofthespeedbump, USA.
What I mean by that is that Hammond isn't exactly the most exciting place on earth. We don't get a lot of tourists (Who would want to tour here again?) and there's not many places-to-be around here. Heck, this place isn't even a prissy, quiet neighborhood. There are many words you could use to describe the neighborhoods of Hammond, and prissy doesn't even make the list.
The place is kind of run down and all, ever since all the steel mills shut down. A little local history for you: steel mills = jobs, booming industry, flowering city, ect., ect. No steel mills = no jobs, aging city, increased crime rate. And that's Northwest Indiana in a nutshell. Except for the Munster Bubble. But we'll talk about that later.
Anyway, I've never seen myself growing up and moving in right next door to my parents. I don't want to end up here when I'm all grown up and stuff. Oh no, I want to live somewhere much more exotic, exciting, and generally less politically corrupt.
My family takes a lot of huge summer road trips, and throughout the course of these road trips, four states we've passed through have really struck me with their beauty and stayed with me.
The first is North Carolina. Why there? Well, I love the mountains. Weird for me, right, growing up around the flat-lands? But I just love the thousands and thousands of tree-covered slopes whose peaks reach up for the sky, gently brushing any clouds that get in the way. Ah, yes. I love the mountains.
Another state is Arizona. When my family went out West this year, it was the greenest state I saw, and it struck a profound note in me. Can't say I'll be moving out there right after college, but I may make my way there someday. In retirement.
The third state is Pennsylvania. Again, it's about the mountains. And I love the state's history. And there's this one place, near the Pennsylvania/Virginia border that is absolutely exotic.
And the fourth state is Virginia. Do I have to say it's about the mountains again? Well, this time, it actually isn't. It's about the city. Washington D.C., to be exact. I love the history of the city and I especially like how beautiful it is. I may end up going to college there, so that may suffice.
Needless to say, I'll be holding my future mailing address until further notice.

Hidden Talents (Shhhh)

If you haven't noticed, the url for this blog is actually wickedwitchblogg. In case you were wondering about that, I'd just like to say that I played the Wicked Witch of the West in our school's musical last year, the Wizard of Oz. It was a ton of fun, and I don't think I'll ever forget it. You know, the kind of thing you tell to your kids, and they give you looks like they could totally picture you with a green wart and hooked nose.
Suffice to say, I'm part of the drama program at my high school. And I love it. Some of the best experiences of my high school year (I'm only a tenth grader) have taken place in drama club or something related. Acting is one of my passions, one of my talents.
That's one of my displayed talents. But I've got a lot more hidden talents. Oh come on, we all have them! Maybe you're a great turkey charmer, or you make a killer strawberry crumble. And if you think those are weird, then you'll be surprised at how far out mine is.
When I was eleven, I went to the Renaissance Fair, this awesome fair that opens up in the summer, over on the Illinois/Wisconsin border. It's basically a place for all of us fantasy freaks out there, with actual jousting, and all sorts of medieval treats. I even saw a guy walking around with elf-ears! And I gotta admit, they looked pretty realistic.
While I was there, I saw these people selling things called juggling sticks. They're also known as flower sticks and devil sticks, because it's kind of an abstract art. My family and I watched them performing for a while, and that was when my Dad made up his mind to make his own set of juggling sticks, because the ones they were selling were way over-priced.
So I learned how to use juggling sticks through lots of failing and youtube tutorials. It's crazy fun when you get the hang of it, but that can take a lot of practice. It's just something I like to do in the summer when I'm bored out of my skull and I want to make the neighbors re-think their opinion of me. Again.
Here's a video of what I'm talking about:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyJCi2J0u4s