Some things make you want to sit and think deep thoughts about the nature of humanity.
And some things make you want to dance and shout.
Today, the Women's Advocacy and Relief Club held a charity banquet called Dinner for Darfur to benefit the victims of the Darfurian genocide. (What Genocide?) Using nothing but donated lasagna, plastic tablecloths, an informational video, a hundred tea light candles, our own written speeches and some godlike brownies, we inspired people to listen, ask questions and learn.
We also inspired them to respond. Over a thousand dollars' worth of response--and this from the donation jar alone. Not counting the money raised in ticket sales, in T-shirt sales, and from all the people who gave us a fifty dollar bill for their ten dollar ticket and said, "Keep the change." I expect that the end total will come out to something around two thousand dollars.
Two. Thousand. Dollars. From fifteen girls (and Steve XD) with nothing but a plan, a purpose and plenty of perserverance. (Ugh, I'm sorry. Alliteration is my body's natural response to excitement. The first time I saw Wicked, I think I used up every single 'w' word in the dictionary in a single paragraph.) It's an amazing feeling, a euphoric rush of "I made a difference" that is incomparable to even the greatest high.
I'm far too jazzed up to sleep. I think I'll take a survey; I haven't taken a decent one since I quit Myspace. And I like this one. It's kind of quirky.
1. You got a name? Yes, yes I do, actually. It's Linnéa. (Actually, I normally just spell it L-I-N-N-E-A, sans accent aigu, but as I get older I'm starting to like the accent mark, and am thinking of keeping it around permanently. It's nifty.)
2. What about nicknames? Far too many to keep track of. Naya is most common, Nay and Nay-Nay being the juvenile derivatives used by my younger cousins; my mother calls me Missy Pea or Fred; Alex, Moxley and Dalton call me Fae, and the first two also have been known to call me Fee, Elphie, or Elphaba; Stimson calls me Banana. Alex also has been known to call me Linnaneenaniya, just because it's fun to say.
3. What's your favorite:
Sight? Out of all the sights I have seen, two stand out to me most vividly: the first being a time I went camping with my friend Jessica, and the night sky was laden with twinkling stars and falling ones kept streaking and leaving glittery trails across the blackness--that took my breath away. The second time was actually the exact opposite, looking out at the San Francisco skyline at night at a starless sky that was just as bright, the stars trapped inside thousands of windows and shop signs and car headlights and spotlights. My family, who knows of my obsession with stars, thinks I wouldn't survive in a smoggy city like New York or San Francisco. But what they don't understand is that cities are by no means starless--the city lights are the stars.
Sound? Sirens--like, the kind a police car makes. Now, whenever I tell people this, they all give me strange looks and immediately say, "That's disturbing. Every time you hear a siren, that means someone, somewhere is in trouble." And I say, "No. Every time I hear a siren, that means that help is on the way for that someone, somewhere who's in trouble."
Taste? Apples. I could live the rest of my life on a diet of apples and cinnamon and die a happy woman.
Smell? Cinnamon. :) It's comforting and wonderful.
Thing to touch? Like, pet, or just touch? (God, that sounds dirty--I don't mean it that way, I swear.) Probably my dog...I love that kid. But if you mean like fabric, I like silk and chenille.
Book? Wicked, by Greg Maguire.
Movie? Rent.
Actress? Far too many in this category. Stephanie J. Block will always be my hero, but I also have a high respect for Kristin Chenoweth, Kate Walsh, Kendra Kassebaum, Kathryn Erbe (my goodness, a lot of 'K' names!), Sara Ramirez and Nicole Kidman.
Actor? Adam Pascal. No contest. :) I think, in another life, he was my husband.
Memory? You're asking me to pick one single memory out of my entire life? God, I don't know. There's no way I can choose something like that.
Television show? Grey's Anatomy and Law and Order: Criminal Intent are my current addictions.
Outfit? Oof...probably my Audrey Hepburn outfit. It's like a brown trench coat-slash-dress with a cream undershirt, and I wear it with this cream and brown headband and my knee-length brown lace-up high-heeled boots. (My favorite shoes in the universe.) I have a purse that matches, too. :)
Candy? I have a lot of favorite candies, and I can never pick between them. They're seasonal for the most part, though, so I don't have to. York Peppermint Patties, Swedish Fish, those conversation heart things you get on Valentine's Day, and those Cadbury creme/caramel/chocolate easter eggs.
4. Okay, now least favorite.
Sight? Blood. I cannot, for the life of me, handle the sight of blood.
Sound? You know when someone picks something out from under their fingernail with the back of their other fingernail? My friends have learned by now not to do that around me, because it makes me crazy. I'm also not fond of the sound of metal on metal or fingernails scratching paper.
Taste? I hate fish. :(
Smell? You know those pictures I posted a while back of those beautiful white trees? They make the most putrid smell. It smells to me like rotting chlorine, and it makes me sick to my stomach...but it doesn't seem to bother anyone else. *shrugs*
Thing to touch? Velour/cheap velvet. The real stuff is nice, but crushed velvet or cheap crappy velvet or that disgusting velour crap make me shudder.
Book? How does one acquire a least favorite book? Normal people just stop reading if they don't like a book. (I, however, am one of those compulsive people that must finish a book if they pick it up.) But I don't think I really have a *least* favorite book. Maybe Gulliver's Travels.
Movie? I'm not a compulsive movie-watcher. I have no problem stopping in the middle of a movie. The last bad one I saw was Date Movie.
Actress? Well now that's not very nice. I don't dislike anyone to the point of naming them my least favorite.
Actor? Ditto from above.
Memory? Ugh, my worst memory...the second half of freshman year in its entirety. =/
Television show? Any strand of CSI makes me want to throw something at the television.
Outfit? I don't have a least favorite outfit...if I didn't like it, I wouldn't wear it. XD
Candy? Anything with nuts. I'm mildly allergic, and I hate them anyway.
4. Did you decorate your bedroom/apartment/house/dorm room? How did you decorate it? Ha, yes I did decorate it thank you! I'm very fond of it. It's got a black/magenta/turquoise/white color scheme, with this great white bedspread covered in black curliques and little turquoise birds. The walls are half white, then a thin strip of black, and a thicker strip of hot pink, and then the rest is turquoise (you can see it in the background of this picture). And I've got frames all around the room with my coveted Playbill collection and ticket stubs, and my closet doors are a collage in-progress of pictures of everything I love, and a black and white still of Broadway at night over my bed...it's pretty much the most amazing room ever.
5. Are you religious? Noooo. Not at all. Born, raised and likely will die an atheist--but I find religion absolutely fascinating. I admire people who have enough in them to accept and have faith in something that they are unable to prove the existence of--sometimes I too wish that I was not so cynical and able to accept something like that on faith alone. But the fact remains that I am not. =/
6. Are you happy with the way you look? I could stand to lose a few around the waist, but who couldn't? Yes, over all I am comfortable with the way I look. Minute complaints like the size of my feet and the relative darkness of my eyebrows when compared with my hair do cloud my self-image, but only slightly. And there are definitely some things I'd like to get done that I know I'm not allowed to. I want to dye my hair auburn, and pierce my navel. And get my eyebrows waxed in a better shape (right now, my mom won't let me wax them...I'm just allowed to pluck them, and I can't for the life of me figure out a shape on my own).
7. What are your plans for the future? (Going to college? Getting married? Starting a family?...) Oh, I'm definitely going to college. I'm going to finish up my credits, then once I graduate high school I'll probably stick around here for another year, just slumming it and taking filler classes (because I'll only be seventeen, and I'd like to be eighteen if I'm going to go cross-country into a different city, because even if I have been waiting all my life to be there, it's still a dangerous place). Then, if I can make it into NYU, I'd like to attend that college (or another in NYC) and enter both journalism and theatre programs, and spend my life in a small but cute studio with a dog, a steady boyfriend and a job as a theatre critic/writer for Playbill magazine. No, I do not plan on getting married; ritualized possession makes me uncomfortable. No, I do not plan on having children; it is a noble calling, but I am not responsible enough to be a mother. (If I were to have children, though, I'd want two little girls: Kadence Jane and Casey Marie. [Thinking about changing the middle names...the 'Jane' is a nod to my two best friends and I, who, when contemplating why Stephanie J. Block kept the J in her name, realized that a middle initial of 'J' sounds good with almost any name in the world. And practically nothing sounds good with 'Casey', so Marie is the only thing I could find that fit.]
8. The proverbial glass of water: half empty or half full? More than half empty, actually, because the sides of a glass slope downwards, meaning there's a smaller volume of water in the bottom half than there would be in the top half. ;-)
9. Word association is always fun. Type your intial one or two word response to the word provided.
Ocean: Love.
Green: Elphaba.
Lemon: y Fresh Scent.
Steamy: McSteamy Eric Dane.
Restless: Tylenol Cold pills. (Haha. The last couple nights when I've been up, I've taken one. They work better than sleep meds, I tell ya.)
Star: Falling.
Cold: Feet.
Sweet: Syrup.
Hurt: Feet. (Haha. My feet kind of hurt because my shoes gave me blisters.)
Open: Door.
Honey: Honeysuckle.
Elephant: Ivory. (And ivory always makes me think of The King and I, and how I got so mad at the poachers for killing the poor defenseless elephants.)
Stroke: Hospital. (I think like, medical stroke...how depressing.)
Opal: The ring I got from Taylor three years ago, a gorgeous fire opal. It's around here somewhere.
Lips: Lipliner, which I need to get some more of.
Sharp: Broken glass.
Burn: The Candlelight Vigil a while back we had for the victims of the genocide.
Glass: The mysteriously intriguing glassblower's shop in Harmony, California (Population 18).
Dream: Orange gauchos and Dakota Fanning. (A dream Alex had a little while ago.)
Pain: Corsets. (For whatever reason, Elizabeth's line from Pirates of the Caribbean just popped into my head when I read that--"You want to feel pain? Try wearing a corset.")
Shoes: Boots!
Dark: Nightlight.
Skin: Lotion, which I need some of.
Focus: The lack thereof.
Yeah...there's more to the survey, but I don't think I'm going to finish it. I'm probably going to go kick it with the book I'm reading, The Memory Keeper's Daughter. It came very highly recommended, but so far I'm not too fond of it. It seems to me to be filled with fanciful, fluffy nature metaphors that carry no purpose other than to promote a facade of vivid imagery and pretty prose. Honestly, they give no assistance to the reader in picturing the scene--quite the opposite, IMHO. "His voice was filled with tension, like rocks in white water." I don't know about the rest of you, but I think the metaphor actually detracts from the story. And there's a dozen more like that in every chapter. But you know me--I just can't stop reading a book once I've started.
Today, the Women's Advocacy and Relief Club held a charity banquet called Dinner for Darfur to benefit the victims of the Darfurian genocide. (What Genocide?) Using nothing but donated lasagna, plastic tablecloths, an informational video, a hundred tea light candles, our own written speeches and some godlike brownies, we inspired people to listen, ask questions and learn.
We also inspired them to respond. Over a thousand dollars' worth of response--and this from the donation jar alone. Not counting the money raised in ticket sales, in T-shirt sales, and from all the people who gave us a fifty dollar bill for their ten dollar ticket and said, "Keep the change." I expect that the end total will come out to something around two thousand dollars.
Two. Thousand. Dollars. From fifteen girls (and Steve XD) with nothing but a plan, a purpose and plenty of perserverance. (Ugh, I'm sorry. Alliteration is my body's natural response to excitement. The first time I saw Wicked, I think I used up every single 'w' word in the dictionary in a single paragraph.) It's an amazing feeling, a euphoric rush of "I made a difference" that is incomparable to even the greatest high.
I'm far too jazzed up to sleep. I think I'll take a survey; I haven't taken a decent one since I quit Myspace. And I like this one. It's kind of quirky.
1. You got a name? Yes, yes I do, actually. It's Linnéa. (Actually, I normally just spell it L-I-N-N-E-A, sans accent aigu, but as I get older I'm starting to like the accent mark, and am thinking of keeping it around permanently. It's nifty.)
2. What about nicknames? Far too many to keep track of. Naya is most common, Nay and Nay-Nay being the juvenile derivatives used by my younger cousins; my mother calls me Missy Pea or Fred; Alex, Moxley and Dalton call me Fae, and the first two also have been known to call me Fee, Elphie, or Elphaba; Stimson calls me Banana. Alex also has been known to call me Linnaneenaniya, just because it's fun to say.
3. What's your favorite:
Sight? Out of all the sights I have seen, two stand out to me most vividly: the first being a time I went camping with my friend Jessica, and the night sky was laden with twinkling stars and falling ones kept streaking and leaving glittery trails across the blackness--that took my breath away. The second time was actually the exact opposite, looking out at the San Francisco skyline at night at a starless sky that was just as bright, the stars trapped inside thousands of windows and shop signs and car headlights and spotlights. My family, who knows of my obsession with stars, thinks I wouldn't survive in a smoggy city like New York or San Francisco. But what they don't understand is that cities are by no means starless--the city lights are the stars.
Sound? Sirens--like, the kind a police car makes. Now, whenever I tell people this, they all give me strange looks and immediately say, "That's disturbing. Every time you hear a siren, that means someone, somewhere is in trouble." And I say, "No. Every time I hear a siren, that means that help is on the way for that someone, somewhere who's in trouble."
Taste? Apples. I could live the rest of my life on a diet of apples and cinnamon and die a happy woman.
Smell? Cinnamon. :) It's comforting and wonderful.
Thing to touch? Like, pet, or just touch? (God, that sounds dirty--I don't mean it that way, I swear.) Probably my dog...I love that kid. But if you mean like fabric, I like silk and chenille.
Book? Wicked, by Greg Maguire.
Movie? Rent.
Actress? Far too many in this category. Stephanie J. Block will always be my hero, but I also have a high respect for Kristin Chenoweth, Kate Walsh, Kendra Kassebaum, Kathryn Erbe (my goodness, a lot of 'K' names!), Sara Ramirez and Nicole Kidman.
Actor? Adam Pascal. No contest. :) I think, in another life, he was my husband.
Memory? You're asking me to pick one single memory out of my entire life? God, I don't know. There's no way I can choose something like that.
Television show? Grey's Anatomy and Law and Order: Criminal Intent are my current addictions.
Outfit? Oof...probably my Audrey Hepburn outfit. It's like a brown trench coat-slash-dress with a cream undershirt, and I wear it with this cream and brown headband and my knee-length brown lace-up high-heeled boots. (My favorite shoes in the universe.) I have a purse that matches, too. :)
Candy? I have a lot of favorite candies, and I can never pick between them. They're seasonal for the most part, though, so I don't have to. York Peppermint Patties, Swedish Fish, those conversation heart things you get on Valentine's Day, and those Cadbury creme/caramel/chocolate easter eggs.
4. Okay, now least favorite.
Sight? Blood. I cannot, for the life of me, handle the sight of blood.
Sound? You know when someone picks something out from under their fingernail with the back of their other fingernail? My friends have learned by now not to do that around me, because it makes me crazy. I'm also not fond of the sound of metal on metal or fingernails scratching paper.
Taste? I hate fish. :(
Smell? You know those pictures I posted a while back of those beautiful white trees? They make the most putrid smell. It smells to me like rotting chlorine, and it makes me sick to my stomach...but it doesn't seem to bother anyone else. *shrugs*
Thing to touch? Velour/cheap velvet. The real stuff is nice, but crushed velvet or cheap crappy velvet or that disgusting velour crap make me shudder.
Book? How does one acquire a least favorite book? Normal people just stop reading if they don't like a book. (I, however, am one of those compulsive people that must finish a book if they pick it up.) But I don't think I really have a *least* favorite book. Maybe Gulliver's Travels.
Movie? I'm not a compulsive movie-watcher. I have no problem stopping in the middle of a movie. The last bad one I saw was Date Movie.
Actress? Well now that's not very nice. I don't dislike anyone to the point of naming them my least favorite.
Actor? Ditto from above.
Memory? Ugh, my worst memory...the second half of freshman year in its entirety. =/
Television show? Any strand of CSI makes me want to throw something at the television.
Outfit? I don't have a least favorite outfit...if I didn't like it, I wouldn't wear it. XD
Candy? Anything with nuts. I'm mildly allergic, and I hate them anyway.
4. Did you decorate your bedroom/apartment/house/dorm room? How did you decorate it? Ha, yes I did decorate it thank you! I'm very fond of it. It's got a black/magenta/turquoise/white color scheme, with this great white bedspread covered in black curliques and little turquoise birds. The walls are half white, then a thin strip of black, and a thicker strip of hot pink, and then the rest is turquoise (you can see it in the background of this picture). And I've got frames all around the room with my coveted Playbill collection and ticket stubs, and my closet doors are a collage in-progress of pictures of everything I love, and a black and white still of Broadway at night over my bed...it's pretty much the most amazing room ever.
5. Are you religious? Noooo. Not at all. Born, raised and likely will die an atheist--but I find religion absolutely fascinating. I admire people who have enough in them to accept and have faith in something that they are unable to prove the existence of--sometimes I too wish that I was not so cynical and able to accept something like that on faith alone. But the fact remains that I am not. =/
6. Are you happy with the way you look? I could stand to lose a few around the waist, but who couldn't? Yes, over all I am comfortable with the way I look. Minute complaints like the size of my feet and the relative darkness of my eyebrows when compared with my hair do cloud my self-image, but only slightly. And there are definitely some things I'd like to get done that I know I'm not allowed to. I want to dye my hair auburn, and pierce my navel. And get my eyebrows waxed in a better shape (right now, my mom won't let me wax them...I'm just allowed to pluck them, and I can't for the life of me figure out a shape on my own).
7. What are your plans for the future? (Going to college? Getting married? Starting a family?...) Oh, I'm definitely going to college. I'm going to finish up my credits, then once I graduate high school I'll probably stick around here for another year, just slumming it and taking filler classes (because I'll only be seventeen, and I'd like to be eighteen if I'm going to go cross-country into a different city, because even if I have been waiting all my life to be there, it's still a dangerous place). Then, if I can make it into NYU, I'd like to attend that college (or another in NYC) and enter both journalism and theatre programs, and spend my life in a small but cute studio with a dog, a steady boyfriend and a job as a theatre critic/writer for Playbill magazine. No, I do not plan on getting married; ritualized possession makes me uncomfortable. No, I do not plan on having children; it is a noble calling, but I am not responsible enough to be a mother. (If I were to have children, though, I'd want two little girls: Kadence Jane and Casey Marie. [Thinking about changing the middle names...the 'Jane' is a nod to my two best friends and I, who, when contemplating why Stephanie J. Block kept the J in her name, realized that a middle initial of 'J' sounds good with almost any name in the world. And practically nothing sounds good with 'Casey', so Marie is the only thing I could find that fit.]
8. The proverbial glass of water: half empty or half full? More than half empty, actually, because the sides of a glass slope downwards, meaning there's a smaller volume of water in the bottom half than there would be in the top half. ;-)
9. Word association is always fun. Type your intial one or two word response to the word provided.
Ocean: Love.
Green: Elphaba.
Lemon: y Fresh Scent.
Steamy: McSteamy Eric Dane.
Restless: Tylenol Cold pills. (Haha. The last couple nights when I've been up, I've taken one. They work better than sleep meds, I tell ya.)
Star: Falling.
Cold: Feet.
Sweet: Syrup.
Hurt: Feet. (Haha. My feet kind of hurt because my shoes gave me blisters.)
Open: Door.
Honey: Honeysuckle.
Elephant: Ivory. (And ivory always makes me think of The King and I, and how I got so mad at the poachers for killing the poor defenseless elephants.)
Stroke: Hospital. (I think like, medical stroke...how depressing.)
Opal: The ring I got from Taylor three years ago, a gorgeous fire opal. It's around here somewhere.
Lips: Lipliner, which I need to get some more of.
Sharp: Broken glass.
Burn: The Candlelight Vigil a while back we had for the victims of the genocide.
Glass: The mysteriously intriguing glassblower's shop in Harmony, California (Population 18).
Dream: Orange gauchos and Dakota Fanning. (A dream Alex had a little while ago.)
Pain: Corsets. (For whatever reason, Elizabeth's line from Pirates of the Caribbean just popped into my head when I read that--"You want to feel pain? Try wearing a corset.")
Shoes: Boots!
Dark: Nightlight.
Skin: Lotion, which I need some of.
Focus: The lack thereof.
Yeah...there's more to the survey, but I don't think I'm going to finish it. I'm probably going to go kick it with the book I'm reading, The Memory Keeper's Daughter. It came very highly recommended, but so far I'm not too fond of it. It seems to me to be filled with fanciful, fluffy nature metaphors that carry no purpose other than to promote a facade of vivid imagery and pretty prose. Honestly, they give no assistance to the reader in picturing the scene--quite the opposite, IMHO. "His voice was filled with tension, like rocks in white water." I don't know about the rest of you, but I think the metaphor actually detracts from the story. And there's a dozen more like that in every chapter. But you know me--I just can't stop reading a book once I've started.