hi, i'm an 11 year old nerd.

i am the biggest nerd ever. but, if you didn't know that, you really don't know me well enough to be reading this. and face it, that picture on my front page establishes that if you were looking for some hot girl's blog to be reading --- you've stumbled across the wrong one. anyway, i shouldn't have to apologize to you, my readers, for my nerdiness. you're all already intimately aware of it.

that being said, here is the nerd chronicle for today. i went to barnes and nobles** (yes, there is an s!!! it's just invisible on the sign) and pulled out every college survival guide they had. i don't know, lately, i've just been thinking how i really, really, really want to make the most out of these next four years. i don't want to have any regrets. not, that i do now -- but still. so i sat down, notepad in hand and started to make a list of rules for myself next year. stuff like, i will study two hours for every hour i am in class. and i will make a 4.0 my first quarter. i will run four days a week .... etc etc etc. yea, it sounds nerdy, but a funny thing happened this year that made me believe in the power of lists.

my mom was rooting through old papers looking for awards to plaster the house with prior to the first of my many grad parties. and she found this old list that our school had made us make on the last day of eighth grade. it was one of those stupid, welcome to your future type exercises, designed to make us feel as if our lives were undergoing serious upheaval, as opposed to just switching schools. regardless, being the idealistic child i was, i obediently filled in 20 goals for high school. including things like, become an officer of key club, get involved in x amount of activities, rack up x hours of community service, get a good gpa, make certain test scores, get into the following colleges, and so on and so forth. i mean, i suppose they were standard goals of any high achieving student going into high school. the funny thing is, that even though i thrust that list into a pile of paper the next day and forgot all about -- when i looked at it, four years later -- i had accomplish all of my goals save one or two. i never consciously thought about them as goals, they just sort of materialized on their own. that wouldn't be remarkable, except i never was as successful in high school as i thought i could be, i wasn't even close to disciplined enough. but i suppose, an underlying reason was because i never dreamed big enough. i accomplished, in the end, only what i had dared to dream i would accomplish, nothing more. that, is the power of lists - i suppose. as such, i'm drafting one for college.

on other notes at barnes and nobles, i was also hit on by a 12 year old and his compatriots who thought i was ELEVEN. ELEVEN freaking years old. how horrible! admittedly, i was wearing ::collective gasp:: jeans and a tee shirt, so i wasn't dolled up or anything. but, still. that's horrendous for someone who is just a few months shy of her nineteenth birthday. and i'm not even that short anymore! i grew! @ my physical i measure 5'0.75''! YAY! i broke the five foot barrier. i suppose it's possible i was just craning my neck... since i was ... a little. but i'm going to choose to believe it's the growth pills i ordered offline. lol. thank god nothing weird happened to me from them. ;). regardless, that was a terribly amusing encounter. i sort of just pulled my driver's license out and dangled it in front of their noses when the guy asked me for my number. when did 12 year olds get that brash anyways?!?! i don't seem to remember us asking for people's numbers?!? maybe i was just a nerd (still am). and even if i did give him my number, what was he going to do with it?!?! call me up and ask if i wanted his mom to drive us to a movie?!?! gawd.

today, i also managed to have another serenaesque moment, this one in regards to the US Postal Service. i have decided that the mail hates me. it always takes an inordinately long amount of time for my packages to get places. or, as in this case, they end up at the wrong places. this is where my quirkiness pays off though. i get this huge thrill out of addressing envelopes. sometimes when i'm sticking a card in with a gift, i'll still address the envelope as if it were being sent through the mail on it's own. i sent lucy a package two weeks ago, and she just got a phone call from this lady on the other side of town saying that she had mistakenly been delivered lucy's fed ex package. the woman had opened up the package and seen lucy's name and address on the letter inside. so she found her number in the phone book and called lucy to inform her that she had her package. ...i wonder what happened to the address on the box itself.. anyway, lucy's getting her gift thanks to my weird obsession with addressing everything possible. i love, love, love the way these WEIRD things happen to me. i just know ashish is laughing at me. right. now.

tommorow's my grand tour de force of evanston on bike with kristen. i am soooo psyched. on that note, i should probably call it a night. ps: i am mailing everyone letters and cookies this month. leave an address!