Ciao...Almost

What I was going to do today:  Have the Friday the 13th Party I've wanted to have since I was twelve.

What I'm actually doing today:  Going to visit the college that I don't want to love but am probably going to end up going to.

Yup. I'm off to Furman University in South Carolina today. And tomorrow?

I'm going to Italy.

I know it's terrible, but I kind of...don't want to go :( My life is insanely busy and actually GOOD right now. I can't even explain how much I don't want to leave it at this time. But I have to. For two weeks.

And it'll probably be amazing. Just please keep our safety in your thoughts and prayers, because as the day draws near...the worrywart in me is starting to panic XD

~Stephanie

Fragments, I Suppose {III}

Hey, I'm Stephanie.

I love to wear heels, and not only can I walk in them, I can dance in them. On one foot. On a hill.

I just bought black nail polish, something I've been wanting for a while now.

Hot Topic is my new favorite store.

Guess what I found the other day? Batman underwear. {Sonja! Hot Topic and Spencer's XD}

Green was my favorite color when I was little. It changed to blue once when I was twelve, but now it's back to green.

I almost cried watching my dance teacher perform the other day. I'm supposed to dance in my life. I know that.

I've discovered another {super}hero that I adore: the Green Lantern.

Right now it feels like I have about five dictionaries on my chest. When I figure out why it's so hard to breathe, I'll probably blog about it.

I talked to my dad the other day in the car. It was two-hour ride; we didn't have anything else to do. The conversation was heavy and weird and left me more to sort out than ever before.

I spend a lot of time wishing I lived somewhere else. A different time, a different world. But at the same time, I'm mostly happy just where I am.

I wonder if Hal Jordan would go out with me?

I have terrible fingernails, and it bothers me because I care the most about my nails of almost anyone I know.

I will never, ever use my good looks {HAAAAAAA} or femininity to get what I want. Seeing girls do that actually makes me nauseous.

I don't have a problem with bikinis, but my parents think I should. I haven't sorted this out yet.

My iPod Nano is almost full. This is shocking and distressing.

I hate Taylor Swift. But the more I pay attention to her lyrics and not the tune, style, or weird mermaid chick singing, the harder it gets.

I love the way Audrey Hepburn talks.

I hate Blogger's new look. I clicked it completely by mistake, and since it was going to switch to it anyway, there's no turning back.

Cucumbers, carrots, bananas and green peppers make my throat itch. It's terrible.

It annoys me when teenagers say they'll be with someone forever. You HOPE you will. You WANT to be. Even saying you'll LOVE them forever is better. But to say with 100% certainty that you will be with someone forever? Tell me that's not naive. With a straight face.

I had the opportunity to be excused from a school assignment today. I decided to do it anyway.

Have you ever heard THIS song? If you haven't, you're missing out. I love.

~Stephanie

Fragments I
Fragments II

The Evolution of a Stephanie

So, the other day I was...

Actually wait. How DID I get this idea?

I can't remember. But I got to thinking about what a strange, dysfunctional little kid I was. I had the best family life ever and great friends, so I should have been fine, but holy mother of cows. I think back to my eleven-year-old self and wonder how in God's name I had any friends at all.

But then I was like, "Well, maybe you weren't as bad as you think." So that got me curious, and ended in me rummaging through my chest of journals when I should have been doing history research. I found this almost-ugly brown flowered journal that I used from 2004-2007 and started reading. And guess what?

I was every bit as bad as I feared.

I wanted a goat named Steve and wrote several heart-wrenching entries about how "I WOULD SO FIND MY STEVE ONE DAY!"

I cried into my dog's fur for an hour when our news anchor died. Guys, imagine what I would have been like if something legitimately tragic had happened to me?

I panicked because I had to drink caffeinated Coca-Cola at 4pm for a girl's science fair project. "If I get cafine that late in the afternoon it'll keep me up all night and that would be bad 'cause the next day is church and I'll be awfully tired! I HATE being up at night!!!! Esp. from cafine! :((((((((((((" Take. A. Chill. Pill.

I had a headache once, and told my journal I wished I were dead.

I also had funny ideas about being grown-up and "normal." When Sarah finally started taking showers {as opposed to baths}, I wrote "It's so cool because we can fight over it {the bathroom} like in the movies!"

However, my thoughts on dating were remarkably well-adjusted for an eleven-year-old. "Tyler B and Megan are in 'love.' Tyler keeps giving her tons of presents. Yesterday it was 2 bucks, a little toy puppy, one of his bracelets and something else I don't remember what. I think he's going to go broke on her and then she's gonna dump him."

And I thought my being cynical was a recent development XD

Even when I got asked out for the first time, I managed to keep my head on relatively straight.

"Oh yeah! Stephanie {last name}, aged 11 years was asked out by Ian T. {last name} on Jan 9, 2006 at home-school during a war!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! {We played war. It was actually rather epic.} I'm not allowed to date yet, though. I'm sort of glad. I got REALLY nervous when he asked me. I could tell he was, too. I told him that I liked him a lot, but I wasn't ready for a relationship yet. He's SO NOT my type, Journal. Something about him is just so sirious! I mean, he does joke, but, somehow he's always sirious. I don't think I could spent the rest of my life with someone like that."

Well played, sixth-grade-Steph. Well played.

But then it all went down hill when I fell in love with this guy named Sam {not the Sam that comments here}. It hit me on July 21, 2006 when I was twelve and launched me into emotional turmoil until I was about sixteen. I only wish I were kidding, guys.

But we all know that what went downhill eventually came back up :) I've reconciled my life without Steve the Goat, can hold it together when a news anchor passes on and simply take ibuprofen for headaches instead of praying for death. As for dating, I remain cynical and clueless, but somehow that doesn't seem to be stopping me.

Life's a funny thing. Remember it.

~Stephanie

Couples I Love to Love

I've addressed the fact that my best friend Cassidy is a romantic {here}. In the same post, I also addressed the fact that I am not. But recently, a question was posed that I had to think about for a long while:

Are there even fictional couples that I love together?

I thought long and hard and decided that Yes. Yes, there are. And here they are.

{Obviously this contains spoilers, but the only ones people might freak out about are the Hunger Games and Betsy series. They're the last two and tiny if you want to skip them. [I'm absolutely religious about not spoiling books for people, so sorry if this seems overboard XD]}

Love Stories/Couples That I Actually Love
1. Rick and Elsie ~ Casablanca
2. Ann and Joe ~ Roman Holiday
3. Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy ~ Pride and Prejudice
4. Hector and Andromache ~ The Iliad
5. Rose and Jack ~ The Titanic

6. Katniss and Peeta ~ the Hunger Games
7. Betsy and Joe ~ the Betsy series

Yup. Out of everything I've ever seen and read, these seven are the ones that "get me."

Cassidy: "I see. And how many of those couples actually end up together?"
Me: "Um...three :3"
Cassidy: *sigh*

~Stephanie

Voices

You can tell a lot about people from the way they talk. Do they have a southern accent? A Yankee accent? Do they use the word "like" as a substitute for breathing?

However, the WAY someone talks isn't the same thing as their voice.

As I {literally} said not to long ago, voices really are important to me. They're one of the first things I notice about someone {along with their eyes}. If you have an annoying voice, I probably won't like you much right away. {Hey, I'm just being honest.} When I marry someone, I'm going to have to love their voice.

I mean, obviously I pay attention to WHAT people say, but I've already talked about that. This post is about the way words sound coming out of your mouth.

And let's face it:  you can have the best idea in the world, but if your voice sounds like you've shoved an eraser up your nose or swallowed a load of cotton, it's not going to be as compelling.

My fascination with voices is actually a little ironic, because my audio processing is sort of terrible. For example, if you come up to me and say, "Stephanie, don't forget the P-R-E-S-E-N-T," it will take me about thirty seconds to figure out what you're spelling at me.

If my math teacher tells me to "Calculate sixteen plus twelve in your head really quick," it will take me even longer. {Of course, that's partly due to the fact that math affects my brain the way the words "incoming atomic bomb" affect most people.}

But nevertheless, I have an immense fascination with voices, and I thought I'd share some famous ones that I love.

1. Christian Bale ~ Batman
2. Audrey Hepburn ~ Roman Holiday
3. Heath Ledger ~ A Knight's Tale
4. James Stewart ~ Harvey
5. Joseph Gordon-Levitt ~ Inception
6. Orlando Bloom ~ Pirates of the Caribbean
7. Ian Somerhalder ~ Vampire Diaries
8. Briana Evigan ~ Step Up 2

~Stephanie

Easter

It's weird, having Pandora be over a year old, because now I'm running into holidays that I've already covered, and I'm like, "Well, hm, what'd I say last year?"

Last year, I was doing better than I had been for a while. God was helping me get through my problem and a good bit of personal drama.

This year, I'm slightly freaking out about where to go to college, but my personal life and masochism issues aren't plaguing me so much. Things are actually quite good, albeit terrifying {three more days of being a high-schooler, no big dea--HOLY SH'T, WHAT?}. But does that mean I need God less?

Um. No.

I'm super guilty of living my life that way, though. When times are bad, I run to God. When times get good, I put him on hold. "Yes, God, I know you have plans for me, and I'll be with you in just a minute, okay?"

What if we treated our friends that way?

Ooh. When I thought about it like that, it put things in perspective. Remember Ellie? My best friend who dropped off the face of the planet for about six months? She didn't have personal issues for me to help her with, so she didn't communicate with me at all. It hurt me, made me angry, and just plain wasn't fair. What a one-sided relationship!

Then you have God. He created a beautiful world for us to live in, and wanted us to live happily. But every day we choose to lie, steal, cheat, etc., and the penalty for that is eternal separation from him. But he loved us an amazing amount. So he took a part of himself, tore it from Heaven and flung it down on Earth to pay the price for us instead. God died so that we could live.

And yet I still forget to go to him when times are good.

This Easter, I want to remember that God died for me once and for all; he loves me every day; and he wants a personal connection with me. I'm not just one in a million to God. He would have died for me if I were the only person in the world. Same to you.

This post feels clinical and uninspired as I write it, so I might do a follow-up later. But I just want to say that God wants to be your best friend, your dad, your support, you encouragement, your kick in the ass, whatever you need. Not only do we owe him our attention, but once we give it to him, we'll begin to wonder why we ever thought spending time with him was a sacrifice.

Jesus loves me. Jesus loves you. And he thinks we're all to die for.

Happy Easter, guys.

~Stephanie

Dance Dance

Recently {at least when I'm writing this I am} obsessed with this song. I danced to the Vitamin String Quartet version my sophomore year and loved that. Then I acquired the Fall Out Boy version and fell in love all over again. I think I've listened to it twenty times in two car trips.

So yeah. I'm sharing.

~Stephanie

Words<Voices<Ideas

{For some reason, Blogger would not let me give this post a title.}

This may come as a shock to you, but...

I like words.

I like words a lot.

I like finding the word for EXACTLY what I'm trying to say. Why settle for "inspirational" when what you really mean is "influential"? Not to mention making sure you don't use similar-sounding words interchangeably. "Infinitely" and "infinitesimally" may sound close to each other, but there's a tiny, yet immeasurable, difference between the two.

{Points if you see what I just did there.}

I specialize in the written word. If I have my words planned ahead of time, I'm a good speaker, and I can usually make BS sound fairly convincing. However, I'm always more comfortable expressing my feelings and opinions after I've had time to transfer them to paper {or a screen}.

Historically, written words are invaluable. Just think about the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution. People were voicing those thoughts, but having them in a tangible form ensured their endurance.

But sometimes I think the spoken word--voices--can be a much more important and powerful tool. Martin Luther King's ideas wouldn't have inspired nearly as many people if he'd just handed them out in pamphlets. The same goes for Jesus, Patrick Henry, Ronald Reagan, even Obama. Words themselves are valuable, but the voice conveys a level of passion and inspires a feeling of power that marks on a page never will.

I think rhetoric--the art of vocalizing ideas in an competent and inspiring way--is a dying art. More and more people think reading from a script is okay, ending a speech with, "So...yeah" is acceptable, getting "close enough" to the right word is, well, close enough.

The power of the spoken word is tremendously underestimated! This is sad for {at least} two reasons:

1) Because it's an important tool for building a better future and
2) Because people are so starved of powerful speakers, they immediately believe whatever they hear when it's said convincingly.

Yes, voices are important, sometimes more important than written words, but we have to remember to LISTEN TO THE IDEAS BEHIND THE WORDS. We have to be careful. Confident speakers can be tricky. Just because someone speaks well doesn't mean their ideas are honest, practical, honorable, or logical.

What this world needs is some triple threat individuals. People who can write well {understand situations, find perfect words, organize thoughts}; speak well {steady voices, clear eye-contact, inspiring attitudes}; and know how to think {recognize fallacies, respect freedom, reach the goal}.

Begging, crying, whining, picketing and stamping your feet will only get you so far. Become the triple threat that can change the world.

I plan to.

~Stephanie

My Voice XD

~Stephanie

When You Have to Be Home Alone

For me, that sentence suggests freedom and promise and getting things done. However, for a lot of people, Being Home Alone means hours of emptiness and chilling solitude. Not to mention boredom.

But we are going to mention boredom, because that's what this post is about. How NOT to die of boredom when you're forced to face your own company for an extended period of time.

Taken from/inspired by Wiki-How.

1. Turn your radio to a new station.
2. Cook something. Mix. Match. Experiment. Explore.
3. Call a friend. Don't text. Actually call, like with your voice and everything.
4. Make lists. What makes you happy? What are some movies you want to see? What would you do with a million dollars?
4. Do something creative. It doesn't even have to be WORTH something. If you're desperate enough, something really lame becomes amazing. Take a toilet paper tube and decorate it, for sanity's sake.
5. Take a 20 minute nap.

~Stephanie

I'm Robin :D

Which I am very okay with.

Robin 65% The Flash 65% Green Lantern 60% Hulk 55% Superman 50% Catwoman 50% Supergirl 46% Spider-Man 40% Batman 40% Wonder Woman 36% Iron Man 30%

Young and acrobatic. You don't mind stepping aside to give someone else glory.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

~Stephanie

Blogger Pet Peeves Again

Because people annoy me more every day ;P

{Note: if you do any of these things, don't sweat it. I probably don't hate you. These are pet peeves, not Ways to Make It Onto My Hit List.

Hm. THAT would be an interesting post...}

1. People who follow their own blogs. The only possible point to this is boosting your follower count.

2. People who ask you to follow their blog. This probably doesn't bother everyone, but I'm the kind of person who rebels against such suggestions. If your blog is good, it will speak for itself. No spamming necessary.

3. People who use the word "lovely" as a substitute for every other positive adjective. Come on people. Distend your nomenclature.

4. People who constantly refer to how awesome they are. This peeve goes without saying. As should one's awesomeness.

5. People who never respond to comments. I understand being busy, so this doesn't bother me unless it really is NEVER. People are taking time to express their thoughts to you. The least you can do is acknowledge them.

6. People who cannot spell. Now, to a point I totally sympathize. I can't spell either. But when you spell ridiculous "redicalus"...there's a problem.

~Stephanie

Italy

Guess what, guys.

My family is going to Italy. For two weeks.

{I realize that this is April 1st, and so this post will probably not be taken seriously, but it's actually true. I will confirm this fact at a later date, if you wish.}

My dad has never been to Europe, my mom has never been out of the country, and my sister has never been farther than Illinois. This has been one of my parents' dreams basically forever. And now it's finally happening.

I can't wait to be back in Italy. The food, the people, the culture, the history, the ruins, the weather, the water, the mountains...

And I can't wait to show my family stuff! I feel like a tour guide, someone with an inside scoop. It's so weird and awesome how I know things that my parents don't XD

But anyway, we'll be gone from April 14-27, so I'll be taking a Pandora-'cation for those couple of weeks. I'll miss you guys, but I'll have, like, Italian stuff instead, so I'll probably be okay.

Ahaha. I'm so mean.

Ciao :)

~Stephanie