From May 2003 to November 2007, this journal has been friends only. But you know what? It's not that big of a deal for me anymore. So we'll call it "friends mostly". Personal stuff and stuff related to my job will still be friends only (but honestly, I add anyone who wouldn't be affected by what I say under a filter) but fandom stuff will be not quite as private. So please, add if you want!

Also, I do fly my nerd flag pretty high: ( pokemon i need )

I am totally willing to do tradebacks for anything not starred. I'm not picky. :-)

chel on wheels: hahaha omg omg omg i just found a shiny bibarel
chel on wheels: i am tempted to not catch it
ShimmerRot: omg
ShimmerRot: by accident?
chel on wheels: yes! it's a christmas miracle!
ShimmerRot: catch it
chel on wheels: it's a little pathetic. i can only catch lame shinies
chel on wheels: OMG
chel on wheels: so i went to catch it
chel on wheels: forgetting that i ONLY HAVE LEVEL ONE COMBEE WITH ME
chel on wheels: I AM DEAD, ALYSSA. A SHINY BIBAREL DID ME IN
ShimmerRot: omg
ShimmerRot: i am in shock
chel on wheels: i am more in shock
ShimmerRot: i'm in extra-shock
chel on wheels: OMG I DROPPED MONEY IN THE PANIC SINCE WHEN DOES THIS HAPPEN
ShimmerRot: hahaha what
chel on wheels: it said "chele dropped 2400 in the panic!"
ShimmerRot: omg i thought you meant real money wut
chel on wheels: hahahahaha
chel on wheels: wut
ShimmerRot: i cannot believe you found a shiny bibarel... AND LOST IT.
chel on wheels: i am pretty heartbroken
ShimmerRot: THOUGH THE BETTER INQUIRY IS WHY YOU ARE BABY COMBEE ONLY
chel on wheels: haha cos i was breeding combee
chel on wheels: and they were hatching
chel on wheels: plus baby combee are the new gold, obvs
ShimmerRot: hahaha
ShimmerRot: aw baby combee accessories
chel on wheels: oh god, this situation will be my nightmare for the year
ShimmerRot: hahaha
ShimmerRot: it shall be called The Baby Combee Debacle.
chel on wheels: baby combee were my undoing
ShimmerRot: oh baby combee. so cute, so weak.

i was not at the empires cd release show because i was at TRUE COLORS OMG. it was so much more amazing than i expected it to be.

( lots of ramblings about the true colors tour )

all in all, amazing! i'm really glad i went. my only regret was only bringing $25, because the tegan and sara shirt i wanted was $35. expensive, i know, but a very sweet drawing of the girls playing in the sand on a butter yellow tee. aww.

new summer shows are not coming soon enough, so i'm watching big brother uk. haha.

i finished professor layton in two days, thanks to my whole family helping out with a few puzzles.

mac and urban decay cost the same amount of money, apparently. so maybe i'll branch out to buy more mac. mmm brightly colored eyeshadow.

i am being commissioned to paint a living room mural for $200. pretty sweet for a day or two's work.

summit hill is hiring an art teacher. you bet i'm applying.

florida was fantastic; i'm sure i'll have some photos soon. but in the meantime, life-changing decision time!

i think i'm going to finally bite the bullet and start roller skating again. i was big on it when i was younger, though i never really got into the mechanics of skating and the proper way to do so. i guess the best place to start is the tinley roller rink? haha. it's so old and sort of smelly, but i went there as a kid all the time.

so, uh, long story short, i'm going to train up to try out for the windy city rollers. for those of you who do not hear me talk about it all the time in my real life, that's the chicago flat track roller derby team. that's right, i am finally chasing my dream of becoming a rollergirl!

i called my mom to tell her today, and she was silently freaking out. her first question was, "so... are you not going to be a teacher anymore?" and i laughed, but reassured her that i still would be a teacher and that roller derby will not be paying me a red cent. in fact, i'll have dues to pay. because of my current money situation, i can't buy any of my equipment yet (argh) but hopefully i'll have a teaching job in the fall. then i can start dropping a disgusting amount of dough on $300 speed skates, trips downtown, and tons of safety equipment. woohoo, sounds like a plan!

also, i guess i should go to windy city rollers games every month. eek, exciting and scary!

so my grandmother ended up having a heart attack after all. two days ago, she went into the hospital (kicking and screaming) because my grandfather couldn't wake her up and when she did wake up, she was incoherent. he just thought she had a chemical imbalance of some sort. it turned out that ninety percent of her arteries were clogged. ninety percent! she had open-heart surgery earlier today, which she refused for a while because the woman is extremely afraid of doctors. my dad had to drive to the hospital (third day calling off work) to convince her to do the operation. the main issue was apparently that she does not care about the people she would leave behind if she dies. she feels that if it's her time to go, then she will. no one should worry about her. because, of course, my grandfather is just going to be able to move on if she dies. argh.

she also told the doctor that she's been smoking since she was sixteen. so that's fifty one years of smoking. woah. i'm shocked she's lasted this long.

there was mpreg in the house today! alyssa's mickey mouse platy, gizmo, gave birth today. gizmo is, as far as the pet store owners know, a male. i mean, obviously he is a she after all. but haha what an amusing surprise for a few seconds. they seem to have been all born stillborn though, which was really tragic to see, actually. she's got the fry in a breeding cage-net-thing right now though, because apparently liveborn babies may be stunned rather than dead or something of the sort. i am definitely not knowledgeable on fish breeding.

i now own all episodes of the mighty boosh. still trying to get my sister to like the show. she's mostly watching it because she knows i want her to like it. haha.

florida in less than a week!

i just added the john lennon monster-size box set to my rhapsody library. the best parts are all of the snippets of home recordings.

baby!sean: "yeaaaaaah! i like it very loud!"
john: "well that's how i like it too."
baby!sean: "want to make it more louder?"
john: "i can't... i can't make it any louder than it is."

yoko: "1973, we didn't have this house yet. that's why we bought this house."
baby!sean: "oh."
john: "two years before you were born."
baby!sean: "oh. and i wasn't coming with you to find this house?"
john: "no, you weren't born yet. you were still in the sky."
baby!sean: "oh. and when i came back down here, what did i ride in on?"
john: "a little... a little cardboard box with a little blanket in it. a little teeny tiny sean in a teeny tiny cardboard box that used to have apples in it."
baby!sean: "i've never heard of an... apple box!"
john: "oh, a little cardboard box like there'd been groceries in it, but there was you instead of the groceries."

baby!sean: "do you need anybody? i need somebody to love. do you need anybody? i need somebody to love. that's my favorite song!"
john: "very good."
baby!sean: "who was singing i need somebody to love? you?"
john: "ah, ringo. with paul and i singing with him."
yoko: "what was the song? paul?"
john: "ah, what would you thi... um. what's it called? i forgot it all."
baby!sean: "what would you think if i sang in a song?"
john: "if i sang out of tune. ... oh! a little help from my friends. that's what it's called."

... but i am lazy, and properly updating with some of my news requires me to walk downstairs, grab my dash, and upload photos from it on to photobucket. so i will update at a later time about a certain student in my painting class who was my FIRST BANDOM REFERENCE PIECE OF STUDENT ART OMG I LOL'D.

speaking of bandom-art that my students are creating, my photoshop class is making posters to promote change. i gave them a list of websites to look up world issues, such as one.org and the website for the go green initiative. one site i suggested was the site for to write love on her arms. i have one girl who is making a poster for twloha and put a huge photo of beckett smack dab in the middle of the poster. her friend peeked over at the poster and said, "that's a cute photo... who is that?" and i held in a chuckle because neither girl actually knows who he is, and i suspect neither of them are aware that he is, in fact, a dude. haha.

i had my last coordinator meeting today! he came in, flipped through my assignments (which i was pretty upset about because i worked extremely hard on them and he wouldn't have known it if i had just written "god i hate teaching these kids they are monsters" over and over again) and said, "well, you're graduating." so that's good. when he first showed up, one of the students i've got a good rapport with sidled up to me and whispered, "hey... you want me to mess this guy up for you?" i told him that my coordinator is responsible for my grade, so he needs to be kept in one piece. my students are pretty awesome.

so my cousin jesse is being published. his book is apparently a tell-all about our family, but not MY part of the family, just his part. it sounds strange, i know. so anyways, he asked me to paint the cover art! i just e-mailed the hi-res images to him tonight, so hopefully it's what he's looking for.

if anyone is interested, the images are up over at inspirashun


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Now playing: The Hoosiers - Goodbye Mr A
http://foxytunes.com/artist/the+hoosiers/track/goodbye+mr+a

there is an art teacher job opening in wilmette. do i step up to the next level of bandom dorkiness and apply for the job? haha i'm not sure.

(base salary is $40,500! oh cook county, i love your crazy teacher salaries.)

so i ended up getting a different betsey johnson purse than i originally planned.

( this one is so much better )

it's pretty large, too. most of my purses are clutch-to-hobo sized, so this was a nice change. and now i'll have a purse to use as carry-on when we go to florida next month. woohoo!

i really love leslie hall. you know, the "sweater lady"? she's so weird and completely proud of her weird nerdiness. plus, she's a self-proclaimed midwest diva, which sounds like something i NEED to aspire to be.

anyways! i was looking through my cooperating teacher's old scholastic art magazines and saw an article on leslie! she was still in high school at the time (my cooperating teacher keeps EVERYTHING she thinks she'll possibly use at some point) but she still looked like the leslie i know and love today. she was featured because of her shadowbox pieces, apparently. they were like pre-painted louise nevelson sculptures, sort of. i wanted to take the magazine, but i really want a good letter of recommendation from her, not a letter peppered with accusations of me stealing her materials. haha.

i'm pretty obsessed with wall decals, even if i'm too scared to buy/apply them and probably won't do so until i safely own a house that i know i want to live in for a long time. but! there is an awesome option for a scaredy-cat like me!

autographics! my car is one of these, and i'm trying to figure out which graphics would look best. i really like the poison ivy and the birds, both of which i would probably apply as suggested on the site. they're extremely cheap, too. i'm a little shocked.

i think i should get one/both of my favorite decals, then alyssa could buy the flames for axl. yeaaaaaah. sweet.

just testing out foxytunes's automatic signature feature.

so this post has some content, who else is super-amused that the clandestine store now gives scene haircuts? hahaha.

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Now playing: Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
http://foxytunes.com/artist/neutral+milk+hotel/track/in+the+aeroplane+over+the+sea

pete and ashlee are engaged? i mean, yay for them but sadly, the first thing i thought of was "oh man, right after jeanae wrote that lj entry for pete..."

i am trying really hard to like paramore. i'm just really not into them at all. hayley is supercute and i love the beginning strings to misery business, but after that, i am just not interested. i feel like a bad person somehow.

my sugar gliders are demons. they are flipping out and refusing to go back into their pouch while i try to clean their cage. DEAR SUGGIES YOU ARE OVERDUE FOR A HOUSECLEANING MY ROOM IS STARTING TO SMELL.

one of my students tried to get me to ditch school tomorrow so i could go to the art student conference/show and eat dairy queen with him afterwards. haha.

oh! my mood icon reminded me! a different student asked me if it was weird that he straightens his hair every day and i said "yeah... kind of." and another kid across the room was like, "oh LAME!" and got very offended that i found it weird. then proceeded to paint black tears (I KID YOU NOT - BLACK TEARS) running down the mask he was glazing.

[edit:] also! so i was watching the commercial/teaser for that new vh1 show where people battle it out to become the next new telenovela star (I AM NOT EVEN KIDDING AND I WILL BE WATCHING THAT LIKE IT'S MY JOB) and they apparently "kill off" people who are kicked out instead of just send them on their merry way. they showed this guy's ghostly figure appearing in a mirror and for a split second, I THOUGHT IT WAS RAY TORO. what if he was a telenovela star? well, i guess i would be amused, mostly.

i finally own all of gym class heroes' "...for the kids" album. i've had about half of it for as long as i've been listening to them, but i was never able to find the other half. so woohoo me!

also, i would like frank's opinion of fantasia barrino's hair. trendsetter? somehow, yes, frank is.

and now to put my life in my sister's hands and give my hair a much-needed dye!

[edit:] OH I AM PRETTY DUMB. "happy little trees" is just "to bob ross with love" with a different backing track? i am not sure how happy i am with this.

i'm buying myself a little something for an end-of-student-teaching present, but i'm not sure what i'm going to buy. the options at the moment:

- this shirt. to write love on her arms has such an important message and honestly, i really like the designs on the clothing.

- professor layton and the curious village. i've heard fantastic things and i played with a demo in best buy today. very cute and just the kind of ds game i like.

- these boots, in brown. they just look so comfy.

- this purse, which alyssa told me is still available at loehmann's. i am pretty much a sucker for nautical things.

THOUGHTS?

"i know a sissy emo boy when i see one, and it ain't him." - my sister, on bob bryar

I am so proud of her.

so i'm apparently late to the party (what else is new?) but i just saw jeffrey dean morgan as the comedian for the watchmen movie. awesome? definitely. did i need a good five minutes looking at it to even convince myself it's him in there? yes.

BUT I AM SO EXCITED FOR THIS MOVIE ESPECIALLY RORSCHACH HE IS AMAZING ALWAYS WOO!