Anyway, I've been promising pictures for a while, so here goes...some fun memories from recent months displayed in all their photo-tacular glory. Pictures! Joy!
In November I got a Nintendo Gamecube. This is it before I took it out of the box.
More Gamecube! Now with awesome out-of-the-box action! It's so shiny and silvery...
In December I went to my first dance. I went to get ready at Katie Judd's house, because getting ready with other people is always better. This is a picture of Mrs. Judd doing Katie's hair.
After we were all ready, the group headed over to Elizabeth Rossmiller's house to meet up before heading over to Tad's Chicken and Dumplings for dinner. This is Josh...yay!
Ahh the group we went with...I really wish I knew everyone's names...
This is Jenell and Me! (Jenell is the gorgeous one standing next to me!)
Our "official" group picture. I think it turned out really nice. Don't ya just love my dress!?
After the dance our group headed back to Liz's house for a little post-dance fun. *wink*...ok...we watched the Little Mermaid...
Eric, Jennie, and Katie! Three of my favorite people ever!
Awwww...(Sadie in a ball = cute factor 10)
There's nothin' like cuddlin' up with those you love. (Sadie + Allie cuddling on my bed = cute factor 20)
When Nathan came home for Christmas break, he spent time hanging out with old friends. (Nathan + Rick + Scotty cuddled up on the couch = cuteness factor 50)
A picture from long ago, taken at my Grandma's house. Yes, that's me and Nathan. (Little Nathan + Little Lynsey cuddled up in chair = cuteness factor 100^infinity)
More recently (as in last Monday), I participated in a vocal solo contest for high schoolers. I sang two songs, Sebben Crudele and Bel Piacere, both in Italian. The judge really seemed to like my voice when she was working with me after I sang, but I had no idea how much...
The judge gave me a 97 out of 100, which translated into 1+ (to get a 1 means "A truly outstanding performance with very few technical errors and exemplifying musical expression..." But the true icing on the cake was how my score compared to the other people from my school who competed...I got the highest score of all of them. Some people forgot words, or were sick, or had mean judges, or just plain had a bad singing day, and I ended up with the highest score! It's very exciting, but kinda sad, because the real competition doesn't start until next Saturday. The 26th is the day they decide who goes to state. I hope I make it!
Even more more recently (as in yesterday), I was exposed to one of the most disgusting and repulsive things I have ever encountered. It was 1st period, Mr. Beaman's class. We were discussing progressivism and the various things it accomplished. Coming in at accomplishment #13, along with other social legislation, was the 1906 passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act, brought on by the uproar created by Upton Sinclair's book, The Jungle. To really understand the increased standards that this book incited, we read excerpts from The Jungle.
There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white--it would be dosed with borax and glycerine, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption. There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one...
Now, obviously this book is practically a century old, so you may be saying to yourself, "Self, why is Lynsey freaking out about things that happened in meat processing plants almost a century?" Well, the answer is that the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act don't prohibit the presence of such undesirable items as nails or rat feces in our food, they limit it. Just think about that; it's absolutely disgusting. It's revelations like this that push a girl to the brink of a vegetarian diet. Excuse me whilst I go throw up...
And now, the most recently (as in this very morning), I went on a very fun/sad field trip. All of the students in Mr. Beaman's history classes (including AP U.S. History and the regular history classes) were invited to a field trip at the Portland Expo Center commemorating the internment of West Coast Japanese-American's by the U.S. Government. Since we were all to meet at the Expo Center MAX stop at 10:00 A.M., I went online to figured out how long it would take to ride the MAX from Gresham Station to our destination. Sadly, it turned out we had to leave early....like...by 8:30 in the morning. Since I was giving the intrepid Jared Nishikawa a ride to the MAX in exchange for super karate-awesome protection against MAX psychos, this meant I had to leave the house before 8:00 in the morning on a Saturday. But aside from this unfortunate reality, good times were had by all. We only got lost twice-ish, and had fun making fun of the name of the store "Dress Barn", pondering the real meaning of the word "mart", and trying to figure out why every announcement over the MAX intercom was repeated in Spanish except "the doors are closing" (I decided it's because the Tri-Met secretly hates Spanish-speaking MAX patrons and wants them to be crushed by the MAX doors when they least expect it.) So, though the only people who actually showed up to the trip were myself, Jared, Courtney Hucke, and Mr. Beaman (Sad isn't it? ), good times were had by all.
So, will that tide you guys over for a while?
