Well, we met the new band director yesterday. His name is Mr. Miller, and he seems completely alarmed by us. Which, of course, I completely understand. We are slightly terrifying, especially when we're all together. And we've all been a collective unit for so long, and we all know each other so well, that at this point, we all just say whatever we feel like to each other. And we laugh at each other for no apparent reason.

He seems nice enough though. And he's not gonna try to make us into a dancing band. He said he's not really gonna try to change much this first year either, which is good. And I think he'll kinda work with us so that we really have a good senior year. He'll be fun I think. And he wants us to be good, so I don't think he's gonna take us back to where we were my 8th grade year, which is good. It should be an ok change for us, and I don't think we're gonna get screwed over entirely.

It seems so weird to me though, that he'll never really know our stories. He'll never really know the stories of the senior class. And when we talk at the band banquet, at least half of our stories, he's not going to have been around for. He'll never know how attached I am to Danny. He's not gonna realize that my support for band is gone this year, with both Danny and Mandy having graduated. It just seems so odd that he'll never really know any of those things.

I might switch my schedule around for fall quarter so I can be in band everyday. I could switch sociology for descriptive drawing. Of course, I'll probably fail my drawing class, but I need it to get into the next photography sequence, so I've gotta take it sometime this year. Kevin, my advisor or whatever, would so laugh at me. I've had a schedule change every quarter at the university so far. Why should this year be any different? Oh great, I just found out that they changed the times of one of my classes, which makes it make even more sense for me to change my schedule. Lovely, well, at least that settles that.

I got to work register last night at Wendy's! For the entire four hours that I was there! I was so excited. I got there, and Kevin was just like "Malerie, why don't you and Brittany do front register?" And I'm going...uhh...ok...this should be good. Yeah, I think everyone in that restaurant, including me, had a good laugh at my expense. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. But, by the end of my shift, I pretty much knew what I was doing. Which is exciting, because the next time one of the managers wants to know what I know how to do aside from sandwiches, I can be all "Well, I know how to do register." Yeah, I'm definitely happiest when Kevin is there, because he'll actually put me on something other than sandwiches.

I had a dream last night about two different guys that I haven't thought about for a while. One was a guy from 4-H camp, who is kinda cute, totally not my type, and already has a girlfriend. And, I didn't really pay a whole lot of attention to him this year, except to notice that he's got a nice butt. *rolls eyes at self* The other guy was a guy who was in our band but moved a couple years ago, and he would have graduated a year ago anyway. His name is Sven, and I mean, he was so freaking hot, but I never would have actually dated him. He flirted with all of us girls, and most of the guys (Danny included) hated him. But yeah, I had a dream about both of them last night. Weird.

Wee, the seniors get to meet the new band director tomorrow! Hooray for being a senior! I'm so excited. At least it'll give me something to think about while I'm at work for the four hours afterwards. On a Friday night. *grumbles* Danny says they asked him if he wanted to work during the day or evening, but they never asked me. So yeah, if they try to schedule me for all evenings again, I'm gonna hafta tell them they can't do that. It interferes with the rest of my life. Especially if they make me work evenings on weekends. It's just not gonna happen like that.

Started a new project today on SC. SC is smallcritters.com, a small critter breeding sim that I have been addicted to for at least a couple of years now. I've always been a mouse breeder on there, and my mice lines are starting to do really well, and I've never actually had the discipline to stick with a line long enough for it to start doing well, but I actually have this time, and I'm really proud of myself. So, today I decided that it was time for a new project to go along side my thriving mice. So I got four gerbils from the petstore to start out with. Hey, if anyone from SC is on here, leave me a message or something!

I actually met a couple interesting people online today. One of bunchball.com and one through IMVU, the new instant messenger I downloaded today. I didn't think I would like IMVU very much, but I really like it so far. It's a really good way to meet new people, because it actually has a thing that will randomly pair you up with someone to talk to.

Ok, I need to go to bed before my eyes bug out too much more. I like, seriously cannot focus in on anything. Yay me. Night all.

Well, I just transplanted about 14 zinnias. That was great fun. I just kinda turned the pot they were in over and out they and all the dirt surrounding them came. I thought it would be easy to transplant them from there, but no, it wasn't really. Their roots were everywhere! I mean like, they were tangled up in each other, and they refused to come out of the dirt. I really hope I didn't kill all of them in the transplanting. It only took maybe half an hour, but just from that my legs and back both hurt. Who knew that gardening was so painful? Of course, if my flowers actually decide to bloom at some point, it will totally be worth all the effort. I'm still not entirely sure what possessed me to start gardening. All I know is that once I started, I couldn't stop, and now I've got my own little garden in my back yard.

What I really want are some indoor plants. That's what I wanted in the first place, but then I realized that my zinnias are outdoor plants. *pouts* So now I've got them all outdoors. But I want some indoors. Those are so much easier to take care of. They don't get attacked by bugs indoors. Of course, I have no place in my room for them, because I have no where to set them so they get enough sun, but they're so much more fun indoors. But I guess you have to grow them outdoors, and then just cut them and put them in a jar indoors.

I want some different types of plants too. I mean, I have 8 varieties of zinnias, but I want something different.

This gardening thing is completely freaking Danny out, which I find hilarious. His mom gardens, and anything that I do that she does too, just freaks him out. Because he doesn't really like his mom. She thinks he's so much like her, and he's nothing like her. It's kinda funny to me. But only because I don't like her either. Which is a really long story.

So I've developed this widget/gadget obsession. It started while I was in Florida, so for like 5 days I couldn't actually download anything. Now that I'm home, I've downloaded three different widget-engine type things. Two of them are sidebars though, and those, I have found, massively annoy me. Yeah, I've been slightly obsessive though. I've downloaded the Yahoo! Widget engine (which I actually rather like), the Google gadget sidebar (which I don't like so much, but I haven't used it much yet), and the sidebar that's supposed to be on Windows Vista when it comes out (which I don't like either). And there are still a few more that I may download.

In my search for widgets/gadgets, I found a lot of other interesting things that might be worth trying or downloading. So at the moment, I'm spending most of my computer time filling my computer up with most likely worthless garbage. But, that's me. Besides, I can always delete this stuff later...

I cannot believe that I've spent an entire day cleaning and organizing my room. And it still looks like a complete disaster area. And I still have at least another full day's worth of work to do.

I guess I've had it coming to me though. I mean, when you don't clean like, at all, for an entire year, this is what happens. It catches up to you in the end.

Mom seemed to kinda give up trying to make me keep my room clean this year. Not entirely sure why, but I definitely appreciated it. It made life a lot easier for me. And my room wasn't too horrible. It was a disaster sometimes, yes, but I knew where everything was when I needed it. The problem, though, has become that there is no way to completely clean my room, because so many things just don't have a place in there. So I just decided today that I am bound and determined to get my room organized. I put a bunch of stuff in a tote to keep downstairs. Actually, I filled up three totes with crap, plus I've got some other stuff to take down there too. And we're going to have to buy me some plastic drawer type things for all my papers, which I am yet to have even begun organizing. And I still have no place for all of my photography stuff. But maybe after I do some more cleaning/organizing tomorrow I'll find a place for it. My room just needs a complete make-over to be completely honest.

I have about three weeks to do that, and learn all my music for OVACs, and do my 4-H project...ugh, I just feel so overwhelmed. Like, before I went to Florida, it didn't seem like there was that much to do, but now...ugh, I wish myself luck with this one. Of course, I've pulled off worse, but this will still get interesting very soon.

I noticed today that I am not the only one who finds it quite amusing to use the "spicy pork" tag for random entries. On the "browse" page, it's one of the top things people are "blogging about today." Tee hee. I <3 it. That's fun.

I guess, in a lot of ways, everything is changing. Danny's leaving for college in a couple months (which I'm still basically in denial about, hooray for denial!), we're getting a new band director, all the seniors will be gone and suddenly I'll be a senior, about half of my friends at the university will be gone, and so on and so forth. It just feels like such a fresh start for me. I'll hafta get used to being me without Danny. I'll hafta suddenly adjust to being my own person, and just having fun with my friends. I'll hafta deal with St. Clairsville and band and this hell-hole of a high school without him, and that is gonna...suck. Massively. And I don't know how I'm gonna handle it. I feel like I've almost got to just start over fresh for this final year. I mean, last year, starting at the university was a serious fresh start. Going to a place where you only know maybe a few other people is kinda scary at first. You miss seeing people you know, you miss the familiarity of home, but then you adjust. Things start to get familiar and you miss home less. But I feel like this is a fresh start for me, and if, just for once, I can get my room organized, I feel like that will really help me mentally. I dunno, maybe it won't, but it's worth a try. I need all the help I can get to get through this. Every night before I fall asleep, I pray and ask God for strength to get through this. To get through all these changes that I don't feel like I can handle. I don't think I've ever asked for so much help from God before. Well, I know I haven't, because for a while I thought he was ignoring me, or doing the opposite of what I asked, but he's not. At least, not now. This is probably one of the hardest things I've ever gone through in my life, and I think I'm handling it about as well as I can.