And there's reason to believe, maybe this year will be better than the last . . .
So it has been a while since I've made a real update. And you know what that means--it's going to be a long one. Sorry. =P
Um so first off I have to talk about Christmas. Basically I just want to remember what I got everyone. We divided the kids up so Angela, Emily and I each bought only three presents. I bought Emily the game Apples to Apples, and I bought Theresa a book that she can write and illustrate herself and then send away and get an actual published copy back. I thought both of those presents were very cool. :) I ordered Michael these things that are like sea monkeys but cooler because they are from the dinosaurs' time period and they get bigger. But they didn't get here in time because the shipping company accidentally sent me a moon instead. So, what Michael really wanted anyway was a lobster. So in desperation, I bought him one.
It was really funny when he opened it up, he jumped really bad. =D He was like, "Is it alive????" I took its bands off and we put it in the bathtub to let it swim around a bit. We also tried to feed it a hot dog. It wasn't too excited. The next day it was about dead so we cooked it and Michael *had* said before that he would eat his lobster when it died, but when it actually happened I guess he was too attached to it, because he couldn't bring himself to do it. It ended up as very expensive cat food. =P
His real present made it to Colby finally, I'll give it to him soon.
In other news it's been good to be back at Colby. I had fun with friends over break, it was good to see Kristin and Evan Bell again, and I worked a lot at Irving and got to see a lot of people there I hadn't seen in a while. Chris and I and Gavin hung out a bit too, oh and Justin and I went to visit John Jones and his brother and some of their friends. That was fun, too. Chris and I spent New Years Eve at Ryan's house with his family and Megan. I really like Megan, she should visit more often.
But again it was nice to be back, but this month is just flying by, mostly because I am insanely busy. The first night I was back to campus Chris and Sarah came to visit me, which was good because I missed Sarah SO bad and I didn't get to see her at all over break. We were going to watch a movie but it didn't work out so we played a game Sarah got for Christmas with Greg. Then that weekend the whole crew from Orono came and spent the night. That was a lot of crazy fun. We played lots of Cranium, and Greg brought over Apples to Apples, and we all played the Great Delmuti a few times. We also made a late night run into town for foods and were all packed in my car which was amusing. :) And slightly illegal I guess. We all slept in the quad because Stella and Jo were nice enough to let us invade--it would have been very crowded in my room. Also that night Nate and Jen and PJ and I all took a walk in the woods in the dark. That was really fun although it was really muddy and slippery. We also explored campus a lot and Nate and PJ stole some comes and put them on the chapel. =P Geoff and Ryan waited for us in the quad. I hope they didn't scare people too much. ;) Nate read us a Lovecraft story for a bedtime story.
Oh another wonderful event happened . . . it FINALLY actually snowed for real! ABOUT TIME!!!! I am very happy, there is about three inches of snow on the ground now, but it's been nice and sunny too and blinding. Which is a good thing if you ask me; I think it is beautiful.
Greg and I have decided to make countries for fun. Well a whole world really. I am very excited, it is like what I used to do when I was little. We decided to make an archipelago and we are going to invent all the animals and fishes as well as the actual land and physical features, and then we can make people. I want to actually make like a catalogue of all the different species that discusses their natural habitats and diets, and everything, like an encyclopedia. Maybe the plants, too. And we'll have to make a food chain map. And then we can make people and make up histories for them, and write legends for them . . . I am really excited about this. It will take a long time though, so far we've only plotted out where the individual islands will go and decided which was was north and south, and what direction the tectonic plates beneath our islands are going. Oh we aren't drawing all of the world yet either, just the archipelago, and the people have no knowledge of anything beyond these islands for whatever reason, we'll decide that later, that way later we can always add more to the world later. But I sort of doubt we'll ever do much because it will be so time consuming. But I hope it gets to that point. We'll have to make up their
governments and religions and everything. AND we'll have all sorts of people living in
all sorts of places, and that means they'll need all sorts of homes. =D Some of them
will live in a city carved out of a cliff, I think I remember learning about some native
Americans who did that when I was in elementary school, I've always thought that was the
coolest thing ever. We are working on that more tonight, although I told him I wanted to work right after supper, but now I have a group project thing I have to do first, bah. It better not take long or I'll be really grouchy.
Also I'm playing broomball! YAY! I'm on a team with Jeff and Courtney and Adrian, Laura and Becca. And a few other people I can't remember the names of. We have not won a game yet, but we tied once. We have another game Wednesday; I am very excited. I'm doing better already than the first game, I think I will not be bad by the end of the season. Last game Becca brought face paint so we all painted our faces for war. Some people painted half their faces orange (our team color) and Laura painted another pair of eyes above my real eyes to make me look intimidating. That really got me pumped, we should do that every game.
Then this weekend was the most fun ever! Claire, Amanda, Greg, Tom, another girl who's name I forget and I all made a team for the Red-Eye Cinema project!!!! So starting at 10:00am Saturday morning teams got together to create a movie that was due at 10:00 Sunday morning. Each team got a genre, a place on campus that had to be included in the final project and three random lines from other movies that had to be incorporated. Our genre was Film Noir. I got to be the Femme Fatale! =D I was very excited. (I also don't know if that's how you spell that.)
We spent a long time writing the script and getting/making props and costumes. Then we
started filming. The first scene was amazing, we did a scene from the middle of the
script where the detective (Tom) talks to a sketchy guy (Greg) from the mob to get information in the Colby Coffeehouse. We took it from a lot of different angles and we brought lots of lights and made it look all dark and shadowy. It was really awesome--much sketchier than the Coffeehouse really looks. :) Also Greg. . . he did rather a good job at being really creepy . . . it was a little scary. ;)
Then we did an outdoor scene where the detective goes and talks to the mob leader. This
scene was outdoors and by that time it was late at night and FREEZING cold. This scene
took two hours to film and we were all freezing to death. Poor Claire who was the leader
of the mob couldn't even wear a coat the entire time, and she also had to pretend she was
smoking a cigarette which was disgusting. Hahaha, we're all such dorks it made us all
proud because none of us could figure out how to open the stupid pack of cigarettes and
we had a hard time getting them out and stuff, haha. But again, we worked really hard,
and payed attention to camera angles and lighting and everything. It was a huge pain,
but we were confident it looked really awesome, or would once we edited all the parts
together. We then took an hour break because most of us could no longer feel various
parts of our body, and we were all rather concerned about Claire--I can't imagine not
being able to wear a coat at all.
Finally we decided to do the other scenes, like the first scene where the murder actually
happens. We had chocolate syrup to do blood since it was black and white and that's what
they used in Psycho. :) But when we got there, Claire tried to get the video camera to
play back what we'd recorded and it wouldn't. We went to the lab and put the tape on the
computer and discovered that although we had the coffeehouse scene (which DID look pretty
awesome as expected) we had NOTHING after that. We have no idea what happened. But
everything we did after that was completely wasted. It was pretty depressing. We waited
until the check in point at midnight to see if we could borrow another team's camera
(ours also refused to record anything at all after that) if any of them were done the
filming part yet. One team was finished, but their camera used a different kind of film
and so we'd have to drive all the way to Augusta to buy another tape to put in it because
everything in Waterville was closed by that time. And we figured by the time we did that
and got back, and rewrote the script so we didn't have to do the mob scene over again (we
needed a lot of extras for the scene we lost and there was no way we could do it again)
we wouldn't have time to finish. So we called it a night. It was really very depressing
because it was going to be so awesome. We're still going to do it just for ourselves
because we all loved our script so much. I hope we actually do it. I'll be really sad
if we never get around to doing it later.
But I want to tell you about our movie since you can't see it. It was really great.
So basically it opens and you see a man get murdered. You see everything in silhouettes,
so you know he gets murdered but you don't know who it was by. It was me. =D I murdered my uncle by poisoning him and then I drag him into the bathroom and slit his wrists in the
bathtub so the police will think it is a suicide. Then I write up a fake will. He owned
a really important newspaper, and I make him leave the newspaper to me in his will. Then
I hide the will in a locked box in some train station, but you don't see that either.
Then I go to the Private Investigator, Tom, all upset because my uncle died and I need
him to find my uncle's will. That way he won't know I made the will because I make it
like I have no idea where it is. I give him a box of things I found in my uncle's
office, including the suicide note, a key that goes to the box the will is in, and a
threatening note from the mob as well as other useless things.
So the PI doesn't know that it was a murder yet, but the threatening note from the mob
makes him suspicious. So he goes to talk to the mob leader and get what information he
can. Our mob is all women. They look really great. :) The PI walks in on them
throwing a man into the trunk of a car. The man they are throwing in says, "Please! We
won't breathe a word!"
And Claire the mob boss says, "YOU won't breathe nothin, not even air." (That was one of
our required lines.)
And as she says this she's been looking in a compact mirror doing her hair, smoking a
cigarette, but as she says the last lines she snaps it shut and the mob members throwing
him in slam the trunk.
The PI walks over and asks, "How many can you fit in there?"
"Six. Seven if you're not particular about keeping them whole."
"Spacious."
"You got somethin' to say, or you want to join them?"
So then the PI asks her what she knows about my uncle. She tries to deny knowing
anything, but he presents the threatening letter made out of newspaper cut out letters.
The mob boss says, "Anyone can write a letter."
The PI replies, "True. But this is in *your* handwriting." =D
So she thinks that's clever and admits they were "leaning on him" but she insists that
they had nothing to do with his death. Oh this isn't important anymore, but so you know,
that letter was basically what we had to make it believable that people in the story
would believe that he had committed suicide since he was getting threats and stuff.
The detective then adds that it is odd that the will is missing. The mob boss is like,
"What would we want with a newspaper tycoon's will?"
"Power of the Press? The tribune hasn't been particularly good to your family lately.
Perhaps a change in ownership?"
"I can see the headlines now: 'Mob family controls formerly critical newspaper after
owner's unexpected death.' We prefer subtlety." And then one of the other members
clonks the PI on the head.
So this is funny because then we planned on at the end of the movie, after the credits
and stuff, we'd have another scene where you see a newspaper with the same headline. =D
So they get the paper after all. There was another scene we planned to have at the end
of the film just as a joke. We decided our company name was Klondike Productions. And
there is a scene in the movie where the PI goes to the student post office which is
really someplace much sketchier, and he uses the key to open a box and get the will out.
So in our final spoof scene we were going to have him open the box and pull out a
Klondike Bar and the voice over would say "What would *you* do for a Klondike Bar?"
So the rest of it was mostly just plot stuff, but in the end, so you know, the PI figures
out I killed my uncle because the will smells like my perfume and I should never have
been in contact with it. So he comes to have dinner with me and he uses the same poison
I used on my uncle to poison me! He explains to me over dinner how he figured things out
and I finally confess that I did it and offer that we run away together. And then he
tells me that he couldn't trust me and so he's taken matters into his own hands. And I
feel the poison setting in, and he does the exact same thing to me--makes it look like I
committed suicide in the bathtub and stuff, and then he does the exact same thing where
he takes the key to a different PI because it was really the perfect crime except for the
perfume. :) And people would think I committed suicide in my grief.
Okay that's probably long enough for now although I have more stories. It's been an epic couple of weeks, really. Hopefully I'll write again sooner so my next post won't be a novel. :)
Um so first off I have to talk about Christmas. Basically I just want to remember what I got everyone. We divided the kids up so Angela, Emily and I each bought only three presents. I bought Emily the game Apples to Apples, and I bought Theresa a book that she can write and illustrate herself and then send away and get an actual published copy back. I thought both of those presents were very cool. :) I ordered Michael these things that are like sea monkeys but cooler because they are from the dinosaurs' time period and they get bigger. But they didn't get here in time because the shipping company accidentally sent me a moon instead. So, what Michael really wanted anyway was a lobster. So in desperation, I bought him one.
It was really funny when he opened it up, he jumped really bad. =D He was like, "Is it alive????" I took its bands off and we put it in the bathtub to let it swim around a bit. We also tried to feed it a hot dog. It wasn't too excited. The next day it was about dead so we cooked it and Michael *had* said before that he would eat his lobster when it died, but when it actually happened I guess he was too attached to it, because he couldn't bring himself to do it. It ended up as very expensive cat food. =P
His real present made it to Colby finally, I'll give it to him soon.
In other news it's been good to be back at Colby. I had fun with friends over break, it was good to see Kristin and Evan Bell again, and I worked a lot at Irving and got to see a lot of people there I hadn't seen in a while. Chris and I and Gavin hung out a bit too, oh and Justin and I went to visit John Jones and his brother and some of their friends. That was fun, too. Chris and I spent New Years Eve at Ryan's house with his family and Megan. I really like Megan, she should visit more often.
But again it was nice to be back, but this month is just flying by, mostly because I am insanely busy. The first night I was back to campus Chris and Sarah came to visit me, which was good because I missed Sarah SO bad and I didn't get to see her at all over break. We were going to watch a movie but it didn't work out so we played a game Sarah got for Christmas with Greg. Then that weekend the whole crew from Orono came and spent the night. That was a lot of crazy fun. We played lots of Cranium, and Greg brought over Apples to Apples, and we all played the Great Delmuti a few times. We also made a late night run into town for foods and were all packed in my car which was amusing. :) And slightly illegal I guess. We all slept in the quad because Stella and Jo were nice enough to let us invade--it would have been very crowded in my room. Also that night Nate and Jen and PJ and I all took a walk in the woods in the dark. That was really fun although it was really muddy and slippery. We also explored campus a lot and Nate and PJ stole some comes and put them on the chapel. =P Geoff and Ryan waited for us in the quad. I hope they didn't scare people too much. ;) Nate read us a Lovecraft story for a bedtime story.
Oh another wonderful event happened . . . it FINALLY actually snowed for real! ABOUT TIME!!!! I am very happy, there is about three inches of snow on the ground now, but it's been nice and sunny too and blinding. Which is a good thing if you ask me; I think it is beautiful.
Greg and I have decided to make countries for fun. Well a whole world really. I am very excited, it is like what I used to do when I was little. We decided to make an archipelago and we are going to invent all the animals and fishes as well as the actual land and physical features, and then we can make people. I want to actually make like a catalogue of all the different species that discusses their natural habitats and diets, and everything, like an encyclopedia. Maybe the plants, too. And we'll have to make a food chain map. And then we can make people and make up histories for them, and write legends for them . . . I am really excited about this. It will take a long time though, so far we've only plotted out where the individual islands will go and decided which was was north and south, and what direction the tectonic plates beneath our islands are going. Oh we aren't drawing all of the world yet either, just the archipelago, and the people have no knowledge of anything beyond these islands for whatever reason, we'll decide that later, that way later we can always add more to the world later. But I sort of doubt we'll ever do much because it will be so time consuming. But I hope it gets to that point. We'll have to make up their
governments and religions and everything. AND we'll have all sorts of people living in
all sorts of places, and that means they'll need all sorts of homes. =D Some of them
will live in a city carved out of a cliff, I think I remember learning about some native
Americans who did that when I was in elementary school, I've always thought that was the
coolest thing ever. We are working on that more tonight, although I told him I wanted to work right after supper, but now I have a group project thing I have to do first, bah. It better not take long or I'll be really grouchy.
Also I'm playing broomball! YAY! I'm on a team with Jeff and Courtney and Adrian, Laura and Becca. And a few other people I can't remember the names of. We have not won a game yet, but we tied once. We have another game Wednesday; I am very excited. I'm doing better already than the first game, I think I will not be bad by the end of the season. Last game Becca brought face paint so we all painted our faces for war. Some people painted half their faces orange (our team color) and Laura painted another pair of eyes above my real eyes to make me look intimidating. That really got me pumped, we should do that every game.
Then this weekend was the most fun ever! Claire, Amanda, Greg, Tom, another girl who's name I forget and I all made a team for the Red-Eye Cinema project!!!! So starting at 10:00am Saturday morning teams got together to create a movie that was due at 10:00 Sunday morning. Each team got a genre, a place on campus that had to be included in the final project and three random lines from other movies that had to be incorporated. Our genre was Film Noir. I got to be the Femme Fatale! =D I was very excited. (I also don't know if that's how you spell that.)
We spent a long time writing the script and getting/making props and costumes. Then we
started filming. The first scene was amazing, we did a scene from the middle of the
script where the detective (Tom) talks to a sketchy guy (Greg) from the mob to get information in the Colby Coffeehouse. We took it from a lot of different angles and we brought lots of lights and made it look all dark and shadowy. It was really awesome--much sketchier than the Coffeehouse really looks. :) Also Greg. . . he did rather a good job at being really creepy . . . it was a little scary. ;)
Then we did an outdoor scene where the detective goes and talks to the mob leader. This
scene was outdoors and by that time it was late at night and FREEZING cold. This scene
took two hours to film and we were all freezing to death. Poor Claire who was the leader
of the mob couldn't even wear a coat the entire time, and she also had to pretend she was
smoking a cigarette which was disgusting. Hahaha, we're all such dorks it made us all
proud because none of us could figure out how to open the stupid pack of cigarettes and
we had a hard time getting them out and stuff, haha. But again, we worked really hard,
and payed attention to camera angles and lighting and everything. It was a huge pain,
but we were confident it looked really awesome, or would once we edited all the parts
together. We then took an hour break because most of us could no longer feel various
parts of our body, and we were all rather concerned about Claire--I can't imagine not
being able to wear a coat at all.
Finally we decided to do the other scenes, like the first scene where the murder actually
happens. We had chocolate syrup to do blood since it was black and white and that's what
they used in Psycho. :) But when we got there, Claire tried to get the video camera to
play back what we'd recorded and it wouldn't. We went to the lab and put the tape on the
computer and discovered that although we had the coffeehouse scene (which DID look pretty
awesome as expected) we had NOTHING after that. We have no idea what happened. But
everything we did after that was completely wasted. It was pretty depressing. We waited
until the check in point at midnight to see if we could borrow another team's camera
(ours also refused to record anything at all after that) if any of them were done the
filming part yet. One team was finished, but their camera used a different kind of film
and so we'd have to drive all the way to Augusta to buy another tape to put in it because
everything in Waterville was closed by that time. And we figured by the time we did that
and got back, and rewrote the script so we didn't have to do the mob scene over again (we
needed a lot of extras for the scene we lost and there was no way we could do it again)
we wouldn't have time to finish. So we called it a night. It was really very depressing
because it was going to be so awesome. We're still going to do it just for ourselves
because we all loved our script so much. I hope we actually do it. I'll be really sad
if we never get around to doing it later.
But I want to tell you about our movie since you can't see it. It was really great.
So basically it opens and you see a man get murdered. You see everything in silhouettes,
so you know he gets murdered but you don't know who it was by. It was me. =D I murdered my uncle by poisoning him and then I drag him into the bathroom and slit his wrists in the
bathtub so the police will think it is a suicide. Then I write up a fake will. He owned
a really important newspaper, and I make him leave the newspaper to me in his will. Then
I hide the will in a locked box in some train station, but you don't see that either.
Then I go to the Private Investigator, Tom, all upset because my uncle died and I need
him to find my uncle's will. That way he won't know I made the will because I make it
like I have no idea where it is. I give him a box of things I found in my uncle's
office, including the suicide note, a key that goes to the box the will is in, and a
threatening note from the mob as well as other useless things.
So the PI doesn't know that it was a murder yet, but the threatening note from the mob
makes him suspicious. So he goes to talk to the mob leader and get what information he
can. Our mob is all women. They look really great. :) The PI walks in on them
throwing a man into the trunk of a car. The man they are throwing in says, "Please! We
won't breathe a word!"
And Claire the mob boss says, "YOU won't breathe nothin, not even air." (That was one of
our required lines.)
And as she says this she's been looking in a compact mirror doing her hair, smoking a
cigarette, but as she says the last lines she snaps it shut and the mob members throwing
him in slam the trunk.
The PI walks over and asks, "How many can you fit in there?"
"Six. Seven if you're not particular about keeping them whole."
"Spacious."
"You got somethin' to say, or you want to join them?"
So then the PI asks her what she knows about my uncle. She tries to deny knowing
anything, but he presents the threatening letter made out of newspaper cut out letters.
The mob boss says, "Anyone can write a letter."
The PI replies, "True. But this is in *your* handwriting." =D
So she thinks that's clever and admits they were "leaning on him" but she insists that
they had nothing to do with his death. Oh this isn't important anymore, but so you know,
that letter was basically what we had to make it believable that people in the story
would believe that he had committed suicide since he was getting threats and stuff.
The detective then adds that it is odd that the will is missing. The mob boss is like,
"What would we want with a newspaper tycoon's will?"
"Power of the Press? The tribune hasn't been particularly good to your family lately.
Perhaps a change in ownership?"
"I can see the headlines now: 'Mob family controls formerly critical newspaper after
owner's unexpected death.' We prefer subtlety." And then one of the other members
clonks the PI on the head.
So this is funny because then we planned on at the end of the movie, after the credits
and stuff, we'd have another scene where you see a newspaper with the same headline. =D
So they get the paper after all. There was another scene we planned to have at the end
of the film just as a joke. We decided our company name was Klondike Productions. And
there is a scene in the movie where the PI goes to the student post office which is
really someplace much sketchier, and he uses the key to open a box and get the will out.
So in our final spoof scene we were going to have him open the box and pull out a
Klondike Bar and the voice over would say "What would *you* do for a Klondike Bar?"
So the rest of it was mostly just plot stuff, but in the end, so you know, the PI figures
out I killed my uncle because the will smells like my perfume and I should never have
been in contact with it. So he comes to have dinner with me and he uses the same poison
I used on my uncle to poison me! He explains to me over dinner how he figured things out
and I finally confess that I did it and offer that we run away together. And then he
tells me that he couldn't trust me and so he's taken matters into his own hands. And I
feel the poison setting in, and he does the exact same thing to me--makes it look like I
committed suicide in the bathtub and stuff, and then he does the exact same thing where
he takes the key to a different PI because it was really the perfect crime except for the
perfume. :) And people would think I committed suicide in my grief.
Okay that's probably long enough for now although I have more stories. It's been an epic couple of weeks, really. Hopefully I'll write again sooner so my next post won't be a novel. :)