My friend's eighteenth birthday was last week, so her parents took us to Kenny Chesney's Flip Flop summer tour at Quest Field. It was the longest concert I've ever gone to, but it was one of the best ones so far. First was Pat Green. Since I've never been much of a fan of him (in all honesty, I really don't think he's that good), he was probably my least favorite of the five artists there. He didn't sing too many songs, so he was only onstage for about 20-25 minutes. I'm not saying he was bad or anything though.

Next up was Sara Evans, who I was really excited to see live since I didn't get to go see her last summer when she came. Overall I think she was my favorite, mainly because she was one of the first country artists I became a fan of. Plus she interacted with the crowd more than anybody else did, so that was really cool.

After Sara was Sugarland, another group I absolutely love. Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush perform so well together and were really fun to watch. Of the four opening acts, I think their set was definitely the coolest. Their backdrop was a picture of an animated roller coaster and then there were Christmas light type things draped across it in the background. That's probably a terrible description though.

Fourth was Brooks & Dunn. Despite the fact that I've never really been a huge fan of them, I really enjoyed them. Their entire performance was done on the catwalk, which allowed them to interact with the fans.

Finally, about 5 hours into the show, Kenny Chesney was finally up. He had this stage thing about half way across Quest Field where he performed his opening song, Beer in Mexico. I was kind of surprised that he started with that song, I was convinced that he'd start with Summertime. Can't complain though, he still sang it, plus all my other favorite songs by him.

So that's just a brief summary of the concert, probably doesn't explain a whole lot, but then again explaining things isn't really a strong point of mine.

Tonight my family went and saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It was pretty good for the most part, except for the fact that they cut out way more than they should have. The stuff that was in the movie was amazing, I absolutely loved the way they did the Department of Mysteries. And Luna and Umbridge were absolutely brilliant.

So that's pretty much it for the time being, if anything remotely exciting happens, I'll post and bore you guys some more. lol

Summer started for me about two weeks ago and you have no idea how big of a relief that was. I survived the hardest academic year of high school without completely going insane (close call though). By the end of it I was so brain dead that I definitely had a serious case of junioritus.

So for once, my journal entries won't be completely about school. This last week I helped out at my church's day camp. My mom, brother, sister, and I helped out with the skits and ice cream, which is generally the kids' favorite activity, so it's pretty easy. I have to admit though, since this was my fifth year volunteering, I am a bit sick of it. Oh well, even after five years, the amount of ice cream toppings kids can pile into a small plastic bowl will never cease to amaze me. It's pretty gross how much stuff those kids can get piled on their ice cream. You wonder why we even give them ice cream to begin with. Also, I don't think I've ever seen so many bottles of chocolate sauce in my life.

So that's all I've really done so far, but for once my summer break won't be completely uneventful like it normally is. One of my best friend's 18th birthdays is on Thursday, so on Saturday we're going to a concert to see Kenny Chesney, Brooks & Dunn, Sara Evans, Sugarland, and Pat Green. It's going to be awesome, you have no idea how excited I am.

At the end of July one of my cousins is getting married in Montana, so my family's planning on taking a two week driving trip. The whole driving part I'm not particularly looking forward to all that much, I'm just really excited because I'm really into photography, so hopefully I'll be able to get some really good pictures that aren't within a short distance from my house. That got really old really fast.

Other than that, that's pretty much all that I'm doing. I'll probably be hanging out with friends as much as possible. When I'm not doing that, I'll most likely be sitting around the house enjoying the fact that I can do absolutely nothing and not feel guilty about it.

It seems so weird to me that this is the last normal summer I'll have. Since I'll be a senior next year, this is really the last normal summer break. Most likely I'll have a job next summer and will also be doing all the stuff necessary to get ready for college, whatever that may be. Even though about halfway through the school year this year, I was just like "I'm done, I want to get out", it's going to be so weird to actually be heading off to college. The school I go to is K-12 and I've gone to it since Kindergarten. Even though I'm so ready to get out, it's going to be so weird knowing that this is the last year that our class is going to be together after all these years. These are the people I've grown up with, even though most of the people that have been there forever drive me crazy, it's just strange knowing this is the last time our class will ever be together.

I've finally gotten the huge list of tutorials completely done. I did not create any of the listed tutorials, all of them are tutorials I've found, mostly from here. I hope you find this list helpful :)

( And here are the tutorials... )

I'm currently working on creating another table with a bunch of icon coloring tutorials that I've found. I haven't added in the links yet, but I've got all the icons themselves added.

( Click to view the preview! )

I'm happy to say that I finally have a new layout up. Thanks to premade_ljs for the template.

The header picture is one I took back in early April. I added effects to it, since the original coloring isn't the best.

Also, expect a huge icon update within the next couple of days. I've been on a bit of an icon spree lately, so I've been making tons. I'm also planning on creating another list of icon tutorials that I have in my memories, similar to this one that I did last summer.

It's been a loooong time since I last posted icons here. There was a gorgeous new Emma Watson photoshoot, so I just had to icon it. Here are 78 new icons.

Preview:


( Enjoy! )

Go from this: to this:

Using PS CS2 (uses Curves and Levels)


( Follow me... )

I just got home from my spring break trip with my church to Mexico. I went down not knowing anybody except for two of the leaders, but I've gotten to know a bunch of new people and helping out people in need pretty much makes an experience like this rewarding regardless of the circumstances. I think I'll go ahead and cover pretty much everything that went on throughout the week.

Our group flew down to San Diego last Friday night. When we got to the airport, we met up with several of the leaders who had flown down earlier. Our group was really small, 15 people total, so we left the airport pretty quickly and headed for the border to enter Tijuana. After crossing the border we headed to the orphanage where we were staying for the week and arrived there a little before midnight.

The next day was our first day at our site. When we got there, the brother of the family we built for had hired someone to help us level the land with a bulldozer to build the foundation for the house, so we didn't really do anything that morning. After lunch we started getting the land completely flat. The land we were trying to level out was a combination of rock and clay, so it was really tough and tiring. I probably shouldn't be complaining, since I didn't do nearly as much work as the guys did, since they were using the picks to break up the rock.

A family that one of our leaders had helped build for several years earlier invited us to dinner that night at their house. That was such an awesome experience, especially since it was a birthday party for one of their kids. This was definitely one of the major benefits of having such a small group. By the way, I'll probably comment on the small size of our group frequently, since the group leaving tomorrow for the second week has about 150 people. Having dinner with the family was probably a once in a lifetime experience and I definitely won't ever forget it.

On Sunday, we finished the leveling of our work site and poured the cement for the foundation. All the shoveling involved was really tiring, especially since I'm so out of shape, but we ended up getting the entire foundation done in about half a day. We didn't think we'd be able to do it, but we ended up staying two hours later than we normally would and managed to get the amount of cement we had cover the entire foundation, something we didn't expect at all.

Fortunately the two most diffcult days had passed, so on Monday the work got quite a bit less physically demanding. We got all the walls built within about 2 1/2 hours and then we got the house all put together after lunch. That day the siding was also painted, so we discovered that our house was going to be the color yellow that the lines on the street are painted. That color never did end up growing on me. Anyways, once all the walls were put up and the painted siding had been put up, I got to go sit on the top of one of the walls of the house to help put the ridgebeam up for the roof. I was really nervous when I was up there kuz I'm slightly afraid of heights, I had no idea how I was going to get down afterwords (we got up there by climbing up the fire blocking, the short pieces of wood that attach the pieces of wood in the walls together) and I kept thinking I was gonna fall off. Fortunately I didn't kill myself getting down, but that was the last roof related thing I did on the house.

That night our group went out for dinner at a taco truck. I think the tacos we got there were the best ones I've ever had. Another benefit of having a small group.

Tuesday was mainly roofing day, but I already mentioned that I didn't do any of that. That day I mainly helped out with some of the smaller things that needed to be done, like adding more nails to hold on the trim and nailing plywood onto the middle wall inside of the house. I'm definitely better at hammering than I was a week ago.

Wednesday we added all the finishing touches to the house and finished a day early, which was really cool, since that rarely happens. We left to go back to the orphanage a few hours early, and it was nice to be able to relax for awhile.

Yesterday we left the orphanage and headed back over the border to Coranado (by San Diego) to hang out at the beach for a few hours. For dinner that night we went out and got pizza. I think the pizzas we got were probably the biggest ones I've ever seen. 28 inch pizzas are HUGE. After dinner we went back to the church where we were staying for the night and talked for awhile.

This morning we packed up and headed for the airport. Unfortunately our flight ended up getting delayed, so we ended up sitting around in the airport for six hours. I don't want to go to another airport for quite awhile after that.

So that's just a really quick overview of all the stuff I've done over the last week. I'm definitley planning on going next year. All the hard work that went into building the house was worth it in every way.

Another long time with no update, sorry about that. It's not that I've really been very busy lately, I just haven't felt like updating.

Anyways, my new classes at school started almost a month ago. It's hard to believe that a month from now we'll be done with the third quarter. This year has been flying by before my very eyes. It's weird to now be able to say that I graduate next year. It's snuck up on my so fast. I'm excited at the prospect of starting college and starting a new chapter in my life, but I know I'll be wishing I was back where I am now once I finally get there. We'll see what ends up happening as life goes on, since I have no idea what to expect.

I took the SAT almost a month ago and got the results back about a week ago. I got a 1690, which is the highest score I've gotten so far (after taking 4 practice tests), but I still feel like I could do better. The thing is, I'm a bit torn as to whether or not I should take it again. My overall score isn't that high, but my scores in the reading and math sections are above what the need to be to get into the college I'm interested in. On the other hand, I feel like it might be good to take it again, to see if I can score higher. I just really don't want to have to study for it again.

I had my usual birthday sleepover last night with a few of my friends. It was weird having so few of us there since two people couldn't come and one had to leave early, but it still was really fun. We went and saw Because I Said So, which was really funny. It was nice to be able to see a good chick flick for a change. My actual birthday is on Monday, and one of my friends is taking me out to lunch, so I'm pretty excited about that. That's pretty much it as far as that goes.

I'm pretty sure that's all I felt I should post, but hopefully I'll feel like updating again soon. By the way, I've changed my screen name, now it's xCountryIsLove. IM me if you want, kuz I don't have a whole lot of people I talk to.

I know I haven't updated in forever, despite the fact that for once quite a bit has been going on. To keep this entry from becoming even more dull then usual, I'll just skim over everything that's gone on since my last entry.

The week after Thanksgiving we had the first snow of the year, which was really surprising since it hardly snows at all in this part of Washington, let alone in November. We ended up getting two days off of school and two two hour delays that week, which was really nice since I desperately needed a longer break from schoolwork and everything.

Homecoming was last week on the last day of school before break. My school's homecoming is really different from most schools, it's not really a dance. There's a theme, this year's being Arabian Nights/Aladdin, and each class does a song/skit and the Homecoming court walks down these steps and stands in front of the school for a few minutes, while their previously recorded voice tape is played. Pretty exciting, I know (sarcasm). Fortunately this year was a little better because one of my friends was our class's princess.

I'm still on Christmas break, which has been for the most part has been pretty relaxing. I've gotten to spend a lot of time with my cousins, which has been really nice, especially since two of them came up from Oregon for a few days and we actually got to spend quite a bit of time with them. Christmas day itself was really fun, I got most of the stuff I wanted (except for the digital camera, but I wasn't really that hopeful anyways) and everybody came over to my house for Christmas day. It was kinda uneventful for awhile, but then me and my cousin decided to start a game of Apples to Apples, which ended up lasting at least 2 1/2 hours with about 12 people. Let's just say I probably won't be playing that game again for a looooong time.

Now that Christmas is over, I have to start thinking about schoolwork again uggh, particularly the SAT, which I take January 27. It seems so much closer on this side of Christmas, and now there's less than month to go. I'm just going to go ahead and say it: I'm extremely nervous. January is going to be soooo stressful for me it's not even funny. I think I'm trying to cram too much in, but I really want to do well. I've been studying for like three days straight and I'm already sick of it. If I have to see another vocab card I might just go crazy. And to top all of it off, I still have 65 pages of a book to close read (write notes in the margins/highlight). Also, since I'm really into Spanish and we won't get through the whole book before the semester's over, I'm going to try to learn a few chapters on my own. We'll see if that happens. I can only hope next semester will be easier...despite the fact that I'll have three core classes. Fortunately I'll be done with English though.

Anyways, enough venting about school. I've got a whole bunch of icons to post and I'm planning on making several more for BCF as well, hopefully I'll get those added tonight.

So I got through my week of stress as I vented about in my last entry as well as midterms week this week, which was particularly stressful. Five tests in two days is freaking insane! Oh well, I know I've gotten my grades on two of them and I did really well.

Ok enough about school, it seems like that's all I talk about on this thing. My friend and I went over to Central last weekend and I'm pretty much sold. It's pretty much got everything I'd want in a college. Plus the location is great-not real close to home, but close enough to come home for a weekend visit. Ok, I'll stop going on about that, I'm sure it's probably incredibly boring.

So my Spanish teacher wants us to do something Spanish-related outside of class that's not homework. I've finally been able to find an artist that I really like whose music actually sounds pretty similar to pop music and doesn't sound totally Latin. The artist is Belinda, if anyone knows any other Spanish artists/groups that have a similar popish/rockish sound, please tell me.

I've started watching that new show, Heroes, and I've become totally addicted. I missed the first couple episodes, so I'm still trying to figure everything out, but it's sooo good. There's a bunch of different characters all with a different story, so it's kind of hard to follow at first, but once you figure out who everyone is/what everyone can to, it gets easier. So of course with a new show, I always have to make some kind of graphic(s) with it. Here's my first one:
http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/6061/heroes1wb0.jpg

I'm also in the process of making a bunch of icons too, so I'll post those as soon as I'm done with the batch :)

Again, not a whole lot's been happening with my life, but I might as well make an update anyways.

I'm finally beginning to understand why junior year's the hardest. I'm really really stressed out right now, with the PSAT on Wednesday, a Bible test on Tuesday, and our first in-class essay for English on Monday. Fortunately we had yesterday off, so I just let myself have a day off without any school work, but now I've gotta get back into it. I'm just hoping I'll be able to get through this year without going completely crazy and keeping my grades up. I've been thinkng about college a ton now that I'm over halfway done with high school. I know where I want to go, and I'm pretty sure I can get in (since from what I've heard, my first choice is often a safety school for others), but I'm still really worried that I won't. The main reason for this is kuz I want to major in graphic design and stay instate. This basically leaves me with three colleges: Central, UW, and Gonzaga. Central's my top choice, but UW is my second. One of our family friend's actually majored in graphic design at UW, but he says that it's really hard to get into-a class of 25 with about 400 applicants. I just wonder if I'm good enough. The problem is, graphic design is really the only place that I could see myself going into a career, so I'd be in trouble if I didn't get in.

Anyways, enough about college. Other than school related stuff, I finally got a reply from Emma Watson from when I sent her the birthday project I did with my site back in April. I'm really not that big a fan of hers nearly as much as I was, but it's still cool, even though it's not authentic (I'm probably just used to it though...the only other autographs I have are from Carrie Underwood, and hers are always authentic). I'll have to try other people.

Anyways, I think that's about it, I'll probably post again after I get through this week...if I don't go insane first.

I finally got the picture from the meet and greet with Carrie! Here it is, I'm on the right:
http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/4249/carriemeetgreet002resizednt9.jpg

Anyways, school's still going pretty good, I haven't totally blown it grade-wise yet (ok, I did get a B- on a test in Bible, but my teacher hardly weights tests at all, so once she adds the next journal into the computer I should be fine again). I'm a bit worried about English though, I'm pretty sure the only reason I've still got a fairly high A in that class is kuz we haven't had an in-class essay yet...so in less than a week I'll probably mess that class up.

Apart from school, there's really not a whole lot I can say. I had my friend Nicole over last week, which was really fun since usually it's a huge challenge for us to hang out (for example, one time it took us from about Christmas until the end of May to hang out-and that was making an attempt just about every weekend). She's coming over again tonight and we're having an all night animated disney movie marathon. It'll be awesome lol.

I think that's pretty much it, I'll post if anything else interesting happens...which probably won't be for awhile by the looks of things.

So I guess I should probably post about the Carrie concert. It was AMAZING!! I'll start out with the meet and greet, since that was first.

Each of the three country radio stations brought about 10-15 people each backstage for a meet and greet. Fortunately I didn't have to use the pictures I printed out, which were all toned pink, since my color printer's running out of ink. Anyways, we waited around for awhile and then they led us out into the hall of the tent (since the stage was outside, everything was in a tent, hopefully you get what I'm talking about) and waited around for about another 10 minutes. Then we finally saw Carrie-she walked down the hall right in front of us into the little room at the end of the tent and the actual meet and greets finally started. I just have to say right now that she is so much prettier in person than she is on tv and in pictures. Anyways, so the line started moving pretty quickly, Carrie was really nice to everybody, even though you didn't really get a chance to talk to her. Finally my friend and I got to the front of the line. Unfortunately, I didn't really get a chance to say anything to her, other than my name and to give her the letter my sister had written her. After she she signed the pictures we had (unfortunately the merchandise booth wasn't open yet, so we couldn't get tourbooks for her to sign), they snapped a picture of us, which they said they'd send in the mail for about a week (hopefully I'll get it on Monday, that'll be the one week point). I'll probably post it here as soon as I get it. Despite my slight disappointment that the meet and greet only lasted about 20 seconds, I'm so happy to have met her. She really is one of the sweetest people ever.

After the meet and greet, my friend and I went out to our seats, which were really good-along the center aisle, 8 rows back. The radio station actually gave me another pair of tickets when I went to go pick up my meet and greet passes, I'm assuming that they forgot they'd already sent me my tickets back in April when I won them. Since we now had two extra tickets, my mom called my dad so he could bring my sister down, since it was too late to really get ahold of a different friend that quickly, since we got the extra tickets about an hour and a half before the concert actually started. The concert itself was amazing, Carrie did absolutely incredible. She did every song on her album, apart from Whenever You Remember plus two Guns'n'Roses songs, it was definitely fun to see a different side of her. I took a ton of pictures, which I've added to my graphics gallery here.

After it ended, my friend and I made our way over to the merchandise booth to get tourbooks. Later I found out from people who were also there that Carrie did end up coming out to sign autographs about a half hour after the concert ended, so I'm a bit disappointed we left before then-I'd wanted to get one of the tourbooks I'd just bought signed for my friend to I'd originally invited who wasn't able to come since she couldn't get down in time. Oh well, next time Carrie comes here, I'll definitely be staying after. I'm so happy I got to have the experience I did, it was definitely worth the five months I'd waited between the time I won the tickets/meet and greets and the actual concert.

Ok now, something other than my review of the Carrie concert, but still Carrie related. It's been awhile since I've done and icon post, so I'm posting a bunch of icons I made for the Carrie Underwood icon challenge at BCF.

( Click here to see the icons )

Ok, so as you can probably tell, I've switched the themes. I've got the new header made, I just need to figure out how to code the layout, which is what I will either be doing later today, or at least sometime this weekend. I don't think it'll be too hard, I'm pretty good at HTML and CSS, so I can probably figure it out if I work off of a different code. Anyways, here's a link to the new header, what do you guys think?

http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/3920/ljheader1nu1.png

Ok, so this year hasn't gotten hugely stressful yet, but it certainly looks like it's going to be. The teachers are really beginning to start loading us up on homework, especially in English. For example, writing an essay in English is going to take me twice as long, with all the rules that my English teacher decided to introduce us to today (ok, maybe not that much longer, but you get my point). Basically we aren't supposed to do everything I've done for essays in the past. This isn't at all helpful considering most of the essays are in class and we only get one 90 minute block to complete them. We found out yesterday in SAT Prep that we have to memorize 25 words a week, which means I can't laugh at my brother anymore, he only has 15 (but then again, he's got the teacher I mentioned in my last entry, so we'll see what happens). However, for the time being this isn't that big a deal, since all of the ones we've been assigned this week are all of the ones we learned in 9th grade. The bad news is that I only remember a total of about 10 words out of the 225 we were required to memorize. I guess it's a good thing I still have all the flashcards I made, saves me quite a bit of work.

Now, away from school stuff. To all the people on my friends list, I'm really really sorry for not commenting on hardly any of your journals. I know before I started school, I really didn't have any excuse for not doing it, and I feel really bad about that. I promise that I'll do my best to get better about it, since I know it's wrong to expect comments from other people when I don't even comment myself. I do read everyone's entries though, so don't think they aren't being read, even if I don't get a chance to comment on them.

I'm thinking it's time for a header and maybe a new look, I think I'm going to go make a banner right now, I feel like making something that's not a blend request. I'll try and get that up sometime today, hopefully my mom doesn't decide to kick me off of the computer when she gets home, which she probably will. I'll at least post it if I finish it before then, even if I don't have time to get it added. :)

Finally, I'd like to thank Erin for the beautiful new icon :)

I started school last Wednesday and so far it's been pretty good. I like all my classes, so I'm pretty happy about that. Really the only thing I can complain about is not having any friends in my Spanish class, but that hasn't been a huge girl so far. One thing that's become obvious in that class is how much I've forgotten from that class during the six months it's been since I took Spanish 1, so I've had to rememorize a bunch of stuff. Fortunately most of it's coming back to me.

English has always been my worst subject, but it's actually looking like it's not going to be a huge problem this year. It's weird, it seems like the class itself is harder, but in a way it's like that's making me focus on it a lot more than I have in the past. It was never like this freshman year when I had this insane teacher who basically gave everybody a C or lower, no matter how hard you tried (if this tells you anything, one girl in my grade's mom was an english major and she tried one of the paragraphs we had to write and got a C on it).

The first school dance of the year was on Saturday, but it really wasn't that fun. I'd say it's gotten worse every year, I don't know why. Hopefully it'll be better next year, it really can't get any worse. I don't really know why it wasn't that fun, it was probably because the group I went with pretty much broke up after about 5 minutes. A lot of the people with aren't really close friends of mine, so it was really awkward hanging around with them for four hours. I just kind of felt like I didn't fit in, and I probably didn't.

I'm so excited to go see Carrie Monday! I don't think I've mentioned this (unless you saw my post on IDF in like April), but I won tickets to the Carrie concert back in April. When you won, you were entered into a drawing to meet Carrie, and I got those too (and still, 5 months later, I'm still in total shock)! I think that it's finally starting to sink in that I get to meet her.

Ok so I saw this icon on IDF and had to post it here, since it's so true. Livejournal is SO much better than myspace. Myspace sucks.

I got back from Wenatchee on Saturday, a day earlier than originally planned. I think all of us were getting a bit tired of it. I mean, it was fun and all, but after awhile sometimes you just want to come home. For a few days we spent time out on the dock on the lake and a little bit of swimming. I finally got my summer reading done (I'm actually taking a study break right now, reading all the summaries and stuff about it on sparknotes, school doesn't start til tomorrow), I wouldn't allow myself to read anything else (meaning Harry Potter 5 & 6, as those were the only books I brought) until I finished it. We also spent a day in Leavenworth, this cool little German-style town about a half hour away from the cabin. Then one day we went horseback riding, which was fun, but clearly it had been awhile since I last rode, I don't remember being as sore as I was the next morning.

Like I mentioned earlier, I start school tomorrow. I'm definitely ready to start school, but I'm also nervous since this year is the one colleges look at the most when you apply, and I really want to have as many options as possible, even though I already know where I want to go. At least there's a school dance on Saturday, so that's something else to look forward to. I've always found it's the best one. You go in groups and all dress up the same, according to the theme, which is black and white this year. A bunch of us got together on Sunday to work on our outfits. We'll be wearing white shorts with zebra stripes along the bottom of them and black shirts, also with zebra stripes. I also got back about an hour ago from getting my hair done. I got about six inches taken off as well as my layers redone. I got it highlighted too, although I wish I'd gotten a slightly darker shade. The one I got is a bit blonder that I thought it'd be, since the last time I got my hair hightlighted, it was so subtle you could hardly tell they were there. This time is a lot more so, I almost look blonde. Oh well, I'm sure it'll grow on me.

Ok so I do almost nothing all summer and then all of a sudden during the last two and a half weeks I've got quite a few things going on.

Last weekend I went up to my friend's house on Lummi Island for her annual crab feed (this was the first one I'd gone to). It was really nice to see her since she just moved up to her dad's house (she's actually living in her dad's girlfriend's house, which is huge and just down the road, since her dad's house has like one room + a loft) permanently since she was finally able to "get away from her psychotic mother" (her words not mine). Anyways, me and another friend just went up there for the day, which was pretty fun. It probably would've been better though if more people from our school went there, but oh well. It was good seeing her again, since it's the first time I've seen her since I got out of school in June. I won't see her again until the Carrie Underwood concert in September.

On Sunday (or Monday, my mom's not sure which yet) my family's going to my aunt and uncle's cabin for a week in Wenatchee, which is three hours away and the farthest I'll have been all summer (sad but true). I'm really looking forward to that, even though there's probably not a whole lot to do there, it's something different (basically my summer's consisted of staring at a screen all day since June, which is getting pretty old). I'll probably finally finish my summer reading (yes I'm still working on it, fortunately I'm over halfway through the second time).

It's hard to believe that summer's almost over. It's weird, I've done practically nothing, and it's probably gone by way faster than usual. Oh well, I think I'm finally starting to be ready to go back to school. I'm a bit nervous, going into my junior year and all, which is supposed to be the hardest, especially at my school which is a college prep school, so it's a bit more advanced than public school. I don't think it should be too bad though, I got my schedule a few weeks ago. Here's what I've got:

1st Semester:
Spanish II
English 11
SAT Prep Verbal/SAT Prep Math (split block)
Bible 11

2nd Semester:
US History/Government
Honors Algebra II/Trig
Chemistry
Photography

I've only got four classes a day, which is nice, but each class is an hour and a half. Basically it means we're only in the same classes for half the year, but it also means that each school day for us is like two school days for most schools.

A few days ago, I finally installed Limewire on my computer, which is turning out to be a pretty dangerous thing (considering the fact that I downloaded around 40 songs within the first 10 minutes I had it lol). I also downloaded the movie Phantom of the Opera, which I'd wanted to see for quite awhile since we did a bunch of songs from it in choir last year. I really, really enjoyed it and I think it's probably one of my favorite movies. I'll probably by it tonight when I go shopping for school supplies since the quality of the downloaded version is so bad.

I think that's about all for now, I probably won't update again until I get back. I'm pretty sure I get back next Sunday or Monday and then school starts the following Wednesday, so I'll probably have started school by the next time I update, unless it's a tutorial or an icon update.

Go from this: to this:

Using PS CS2, but can be altered. Curves are used.

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