So hey guys. I've actually been able to do some reasonable art lately! And a bit of photography too, that needs to get a quick run through Photoshop or paint.net before I submit it, because my camera has verrrrrrryyyy low megapixels (like...10 or something, haha) and its pictures need a little bit of prettying up before they go public. Haha. Anyway. I'm going absolutely nuts trying to finish my entry for =silverglass19's adoptables contest. I know I have until like, the 29th of August, but I draw things slowly. Very slowly, because it's at my own pace. That's like, three weeks to do it, but I just can't be sure if I can finish it in time D: -stressout-

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DA.
^{Just had to throw that in there.}

Today was kind of gross, ha. I woke up at like, 12:30 or something because my DAD called twice and woke me up from my uber pleasant/cool dreams that I couldn't fall back to sleep into. Mannn. That always happens. The first one was that I was like... "apprenticing" under Dr. Wilson (if you watch House, M.D., you know what I'm talking about) because Dr. House was too... "advanced". ELL OH ELL (had to throw that in too). And that was pretty cool. Until somehow after my dad called the first time I woke up i went back to sleep and was poofed into another dream where I was doing this talent show or whatever at the high school in my town, and I was with three other people that I knew in the dream but I have no clue who they were in real life. And we were dressed like Katy Perry and Lady Gaga on ice skates and dancing/skating to music (I think it was supposed to be Lady Gaga, but it was just some song that was just made up for the dream that was supposedly by her) and everyone loved us before and I was like amazing at this skating (which was somehow done on stage, by the way, with no ice) even though I never had experience skating and when we were done I jumped off the stage with the other two girls that were with me and somehow, my clothes were normal, and I went to sit next to my friend Allison to watch the rest of the show, and somehow the guy that I like was sitting right next to her and he was like, "Come on, sit over here" and I was like "Okaythen" so I just sat in the middle between them and JUST as something good was about to happen...

RING RING.
My dad calls again.
I wish dreams were real.

On the subject of dreams, do you dream lucidly? As in, you're dreaming and then all of a sudden you realize "Hey, this is a dream!" and then you can control what you dream from then on. They say it's very rare to be able to learn and master how to do that, but I was reading more about it and I was kind of amazed, because I've known that I was dreaming and been doing that since... I could remember dreams, so probably since I was about seven or eight. Amazing stuff.

Three days until school orientation. Which, technically, is a full day of school, since they're idiots and decided to prolong everything into a giant orgy of stupid. I mean, yeah, it might have been okay to just introduce a few key things on the orientation, but to go all out with waking up at 6:00 and going to school at 7:30 and having lunch sometime and leaving at 2:30... that's a bit outrageous to me. We're just going to be sitting there doing nothing and feeling awkward, like freshman are supposed to do. And something else that makes me mad is their new scheduling process, JUST for freshman. Sounds good, but it SUCKS. Basically, everything relies on your math class. If you get B- in your math class all year for eighth grade, you move up. Not a B- average, As & Bs all year. Which is reasonable, I guess. In fact, I know it's reasonable, I just don't want to admit it. Ha. But if you screw over all your classes, you have to redo the class AND depending on what level you're at in your other classes, you won't move up either. So for my scenario, I had Algebra (the first half of the book, since you finish the second half in highschool unless you start Algebra in 7th grade) and suck at it. It confuses me. But I could do it, probably, it would just be a great big stressball. I had normal science, like everyone else, and normal social studies (though at first I had enriched but they had to change my schedule around) and enriched Language Arts (I excel at English). But I don't get AP English because my math is suckish. Plus, my teacher was a... er... -insertprofanityhere-. She totally expected me to get things that I didn't understand and would get frustrated if I kept asking questions. Once, I went to ask her a question about a certain formula and how it would work if I plugged these certain numbers in that the problem was asking for (I think the formula was "y₂-y₁= (x₂-x₁)" or something like that). See, I've always been weak in math. I just get so confused. I overthink it or underthink it. And plus, I'm not very organized, so that is just the icing on the cake. But anyway, I ask her about it and she doesn't even look at the problem and goes, "Well isn't that what the formula says?" And she starts going on this rant about how I have sucky grades. It's like... HELLO? I'm TRYING to get better grades but every time I try, you've got to be a -insertprofanityhere-. And it doesn't help that she nags us every day about Core 40 and standardized state testing and grades and random crap like that. She's just boring and hormonal. But in highschool freshmen scheduling this year, they're doing "blocks", like in middle school. Which is LAME. There are three. One is "Achievement", which is for people who need extra help (or people who just don't give a crap and get Ds and Fs all year") and they go for ICE CREAM every week or something like that. It's like... WHO should really be getting rewarded? The mostly idiot people (some actually have a hard time, though) who don't even care about their lives, or ADVANCED placement kids? That just makes me angry. Ughh. Anyway, there's also like... "Excellence" and some other one, I can't remember which is which, but one is just normal classes (non advanced) and the other block is AP classes. So since I bombed math, I'll have to go to the normal block instead of having a mix of different classes, including AP English. I mean, it'd probably be good if I redid my math class of Algebra, I get that. I came from a totally different set of teachers (because the teachers I got in 8th grade "looped" with their kids, so they had them for two years) and my new block had learned LOTS of different things and different ways of learning them, so I got confused in Math. And another thing I bombed was Science, which totally ties in with the Math. If you're not doing well in math but want biology, but aren't doing good in science either, you WON'T get biology. At all. So that kind of ticks me off. Everyone is against the system, even parents and teachers. </rant>

On a lighter note, even though this'll be the sucky part of the year, I'm getting Drama and German, which is good, and I'm wanting to apply myself this year. Really, show people what I can do.

As a quick side note, I've been a deviant nearly two years ^^ Well, a year and a half, but that's still impressive for me. Usually I leave sites without caring because I have more important things to worry about. With dA, there's no pressure to do anything, it's just sharing art. Which I like. Which is probably the secret to its longevity. So I'll ask you this, as a closing statement. What do you think I should draw next, after my contest entry and wip drawing are done? Just looking for suggestions, nothing official.

Lindsay.