derby love

I went to the Brown Derbies Second Annual Best Family Weekend Concert Ever tonight. I always forget how much I like a cappella. It's like watching Glee happen in real life.

Lex: Girl, I've been in love with you ever since you first beat me at beer pong. When you sunk that last shot, I thought, damn, I've got to get a piece of that. And when you beat me two more times, in a row, and made me question my masculinity, well, I had to have you anyways. So this song is dedicated to you.



(Start that 45 seconds in or something)

Val, this kid is a catch.
Those two are great and I don't care who knows it.

Love always,
Clara

italy in stop motion

Also, girls at a park.
I miss you guys a ton.

True story: Today I have a billion things to do and all of them are making me want to hyperventilate. I just came back to my computer and thought, "I have simply not been making enough lists." Erika has influenced me in so many ways.

Also, the other day I ate a Magnum Gold(?!). Now that Michelle can confirm that they exist, you guys need to find some pronto.

Love always,
Clara

faces

'

So if I've creepily filmed your face in the last year or so, this is why. If I haven't creepily filmed your face in the last year or so, you've been in the wrong place at the wrong time (or the right place at the right time, depending on your opinions of privacy issues. Also there's the possibility that you actively prevented me from filming your face, in which case, you're lame.)
Enjoy, guys.
If you're not in the bunch that I saw last night, then I miss you terribly. If I saw you last night... oh hey. What a night.

Love always,
Clara

england?

I firmly believe that one should learn something new every day.
It's sad that I literally only now have begun to understand the below.



Love always,
Clara

i'm going to be an aunt!

This is not news, but exciting nonetheless.
I had dinner with my sister and brother-in-law tonight, and she looks like she's ready to pop. Actually, she looks like she's hiding a basketball under her shirt. A basketball that is ready to pop, which is a severely overinflated basketball.

I saw baby Ava's nursery, and it is absolutely adorable, and quite tasteful. There's plenty of pink, but most of the solid furniture is a dark-stained wood. Not so frilly, but very charming.

Apparently mom has been sending them clothes for five year olds. Too soon, mom, too soon.

Anyway, I'm in a baby mood, so here are some youtube videos that Steph and Trey insisted that I watch at dinner. Very worth it.





Word on the street has it that I used to laugh like that one when I was very small. Plausible.

Love always,
Clara

this is how thomas feels about sunglasses

I went to school today. By that I mean ISB, naturally. I don't even go there anymore, but I'm never sure I quite attended last year either.

I'd forgotten what the place was really like, to be honest. And then today I stepped inside C building and it all came rushing back and I thought, "Wow, I was here for a whole year and this was my school."

It was a very strange thought.

I turned up because the kids told me to, and because I wanted to see Mr. Tom. I did see Mr. Tom, and I hung out with the kids for a while, so it was a good day.

I've taken to calling them "the kids" because

1. They're still in high school which makes me laugh-out-loud.
2. No other names have really stuck.

We all watched some cool videos on youtube. I feel like they spend a fair amount of time watching cool videos on youtube. This one is my favorite:

Sometimes I think I am far too sophisticated to be entertained by random nonsense, and then I encounter random nonsense and I am very much entertained, and then I remember that I'm not actually sophisticated.

Love always,

Clara

gorgeous

Thomas just sent me a whole facebook-message-ful of music, and John was showing me some cool stuff yesterday. That does it. I'm now wandering around the internet, downloading songs as I please.

In that process I stumbled upon this video, which you should watch, because it's absolutely beautiful. The song may not appeal to all tastes, but I personally am a fan, maybe mostly because I'm going to imagine this video every time I see it now.

Curs In The Weeds - Horse Feathers

Pursuit of Happiness (Kid Cudi cover) - Barbara

Time To Pretend (MGMT cover) - Jonsi

Rome (Neighbors and Devendra Banhart remix) - Phoenix

Hold You - Wale

Quitters Raga - Gold Panda

You Started - Ou Est Le Swimming Pool

Blueberry - Late Of The Pier

Love Lust - King Charles

Citizen - Broken Bells

Mean - Taylor Swift

I get so lost when I'm looking for music. It's always such a wandering odyssey. Like, if Odysseus wasn't even sure he wanted to go home, and figured he might as well stop by some other islands first to see if anything cool was going on.

Love always,
Clara

tswift, freud, and new songs

I've been meaning to download some more Mates of State (and what little Oh Land I can find. Apparently her new EP comes out next month, so I'm way ahead of the curve. What else is new?)

Anyway, just buying a few new songs is not how I work. So here's the lastest batch.

Apologies - Grace Potter & The Nocturnals

Rambling Man - Laura Marling

The Box - Johnny Flynn

Brown Trout Blues - Johnny Flynn

Inni mer syngur vitleysingur - Sigur Ros

Infinity - The xx

Sun of a Gun - Oh Land

True Love Will Find You In the End - Mates of State

My Only Offer - Mates of State

In the process, I stumbled upon this music video. I'll be real here: it gave me chills [OMG! TAYLOR SWIFT! LOVE! BOYS! OMG!]. At the same time though, it's incredibly cheesy and sort of weirded me out.

And then I figured out why.

It's so freudian. Like, he would have a field day with Taylor. She lacks the love of her father, so she seeks a surrogate in a guy her age, and then has some sons.

Maybe I'm taking my MCM class too seriously. I've been seeing sexual imagery everywhere these days. Do y'all realize how phallic the SciLi is? Do you have any idea?

Maybe I'm just a freak. That's always an option.

Love always,

Clara

red vs. blue

Today was red blue day. We (blue, of course) dominated.

I was about to make some snarky comment about how we always dominate and then I realized this was the first time we've won in like, 4 years.

So maybe it wouldn't be justified.

Blogging about red blue day reminded me of vlogging about red blue day and so I'm going to embarrass myself

Feel free to check out the comments on that beauty... they're priceless.

Speaking of random flashbacks, Daphna and I just had this conversation on facebook-

Daphna

i was going through random old things and apparently you said this at some point in time: "Oh I have a hilarious story about Hannah Montana and nihilism and my friend's brother by the way."

Me

hahahahahahaha
i think i remember what that was about
no joke. beginning of sophomore year.

It had to do with John Gee, High School Musical 2, and the fact that I'd just come home from existentialist camp.

I feel like I'm catching this nostalgia bug that's been going around. Justifiably so.

Tomorrow is the last day of school as I know it.

Yikes.

There's always Phil to take my mind off things. He does so by engaging me in fascinating discussions about the purpose of organized religion.

Phil

god invented confession so christians could run around and have wild orgies with midgets and animals and not feel bad about it

Me

I see, I see

Love always,

Clara

oh, potomac kids.

Merritt: Sorry about my brother.

Me: Oh, don't worry about it. I was there when your mom was pregnant with this kid.

Wyatt: Really?

Me: Yep! The world did exist before you were born, hard as that is to believe.

Wyatt: Well it must have been awful...

Me: Spoken like a true Potomac student.

Keep in mind, this kid is ten. Maybe.

The rest of the senior project presentations were today. It was phenomenal. I was going to say, who knew Potomac kids were so talented? and then I realize that oh, wait, we all did.

I love our hubris though. I really do.

Senior project presentations, in general, were pretty great. Or, at least, they led to some pretty awesome quotes with minimal context:

Matthew (having worked on a vineyard): I'll be there this summer. I know none of us are of age but.... If any of you guys want to come out and... have a glass of water... it's a great place for a glass of water.

Brian did his project on squash training. It seems he basically worked out and stretched and ate all the time. Cool? (Athleticism in other people will never cease to astound me)

Taylor: Was that like, fun?

Brian: Well, I mean, sitting on the foam roller for like, an hour got boring after a while...

David: You mean the massage was the not fun part?!

My thoughts exactly, David.

Some of the people in my group blogged about their projects! If you want to see the stunning diversity in senior projects, check out these links (and a video!)-

Taylor's Blog

Cat and Amelia's Blog

My Book Blog

Love always,

Clara

viv and I singing again

Raymond.

That is all.

Love always,

Clara

prom!

Last night! Prom! T'was fun.

The dinner beforehand was hysterical though.

Jessica: My sister told me good luck before I left. I was like, "for what?" and she said "You know, so you don't embarrass yourself."

Me: My sister said good luck too! Although she didn't go that far. I don't know what she meant by it. She was speaking through my father. It was a seance.

Will: She's dead?! What?

Also, the limo ride. That was a blast and a half (on the way to prom. On the way back, it was a car full of vaguely cranky people attempting to power-nap, except Sam).

Did you know that an acronym is only really an acronym if it spells a word? If you pronounce the letters, (e.g. CIA, UPS), it's an initialism. Sam was illustrating that point.

Sam: [seeing "SIEU" on the side of a building] SIEU. That's an initialism. Service industry...

Me: How do you know it's not an acronym? Sieu. Actually, that's not an acronym or an initialism or anything. That's a name.

Sam: No, it stands for service industry something union, I think

Me: Um, Sam, I know that guy. Jon Sieu. He's a friend of my parents and he owns that company. It's an energy firm of some sort, I don't know the details... I knew their offices were in the Dupont area. I guess this is it.

Sam: Really? I'm not sure whether to believe you.

Me: [giggles]

I've become a pathological liar. Also, a kleptomaniac.

I got a whole four and a half hours of sleep last night. It was fantastic. I slept from 6:30 to 11 AM. Then I hung out at Katie's house and tried to revive myself, and then Cath and I had coffee, and then I came back here and hung out in my sweatpants all day. Or, rather, all afternoon/evening, but it felt like the whole day to me.

Now my sleep cycle is crazy weird- it's 9:30 and I feel wide awake (for the first time all day).

Hm.

Love always,

Clara

P.S. The song in that video is a cover of "I Gotta Feeling" by I Am Noxious.

the dastardly deed

Can you figure out why I was lightheaded last night?

Blowing up balloons for four hours tends to do that to a person.

Senior prank '10 (and the first ISBerne senior prank in recent memory) was an epic success. We filled the faculty lounge with balloons, sprayed our names into the field, and sang obnoxious songs over the intercom.

Completely epic.

Today was our last day of school. Or, rather, I'm going to be coming to school next week to do work and deal with yearbook, but no one has classes.

High school classes, in general, are over. Classes, in the sense that I know them, are over.

What a trippy thought.

We had an assembly today; Larissa and Mariam danced, Aksil showed a video, Mehdi gave a speech... He made Mariam stand up and speak as well. She didn't want to, or, rather, she did, but she didn't want to start crying, and she knew that one would lead to the other.

But she got up anyway, and thanked Mr. L for being like a father to the class, and started to cry, which made everyone else want to cry, and we all got up and had a group hug like we were in an after school special or something. It was insane.

I felt bad because I really never got to know Mr. L as well as everyone else did. And I was sad, at the assembly; I'm realizing that I don't actually want to leave. But I want to go home.

I hate living in two places. I like going places. I don't like leaving them. But there's no way to avoid it, except to pretend it isn't happening until the moment you're on the airplane.

Who knew I'd be having these thoughts now. These thoughts belong to August '09.

Except, this time, I know what I'm going to. I know I'm going home. In August '09, I was trying hard to be optimistic about moving, because I had no choice, but honestly I hadn't a clue whether it was going to be good or bad or awesome or scary or what.

This time, I know what's waiting for me. Potomac won't have changed that much since November; I think I can count on that. It didn't change much in the 11 years I was there, no more than I did, although that's not a fair comparison. A person is supposed to change in eleven years. Twelve years.

Between going to Potomac on whatever wednesday afternoon it was, to recite my phone number and look charming and do whatever else it was a five year old needed to do to get into this school, and today, it's been twelve years.

And I'm somewhere else.

I feel like that's fundamentally wrong. Like I'm being disloyal.

But I don't really want to leave.

I don't know how bragging about our awesome senior prank turned into this crazy emotional rant. I think it's that our class really came together last night and today; I felt like I was a part of it, finally, and that's a great feeling, and am I going to have that when I go home? I don't know. I hope so.

Anyway, the balloons were sweet.

Love always,

Clara

new computer!

Hooray!

The as-of-yet-unnamed 15" Macbook Pro was welcomed to the family yesterday, and his (her?) older brother Patrick has been showing him/her the ropes.

They got in a bit of a fight over transferring music, but I think they've mostly worked it out. I had to bribe them.

So now I've got skype back and I've got a disk drive (which I haven't had for months) and I've got super awesome video editing software so what I think I'm going to do is go bowling today, take lots of videos of that, and then make a tribute to ISB music vid, similar in many ways to St. Panther's School for the Insane, which youtube has decided to be a bitch about, which I am posting here.

Anyway, remember that? Good times. And I'm going to make another one. With my super-duper-editing-software.

I'm really excited.

I really should do more work though. Hm. What a predicament.

Love always,

Clara

please, do it for the shopping carts

Your Shopping Cart is empty.
Your Shopping Cart lives to serve. Give it purpose--fill it with books, CDs, videos, DVDs, toys, electronics, and more.

(via Amazon.com)

I've been poking around amazon.com looking for a used flipcam (Changecam/Obamacam broke! It's terrible), but for a lot of things on Amazon you have to put them into your cart before you can see the price. So that's how I got to that screen.

The reason I'm suddenly acutely feeling the loss of the darling Changecam is that I've started vlogging again! Or, it's probably too soon to say whether I'll continue with it, but I vlogged yesterday and enjoyed it!

My new computer, which is coming in a few weeks, will have better video-editing software than Patrick, so I really want to put that to good use. Which is better done with a functional camera.

I'm thinking of naming the new Macbook (pro!) Sandy, in keeping with the Spongebob Squarepants theme. After all, she'll be smarter than Patrick, and she's a squirrel living underwater, much like an American living in Europe, and isn't that a great metaphor for life?

Of course, I can't make this decision until I meet her. Or him. I don't even know the baby's sex and I'm thinking of names.

My god, when I have real children, it's going to be weird.

Anyway, you can see the vloggingness here as well, but yesterday's video was basically a restatement of the ass/arse musings yesterday. So it's a redundant vlog, if you're here already.

Regardless:

Don't worry, blog babies. I will still tend to you daily.

That sounded weird. I think vlogging makes me weirder.

Or not.

Hmmmm.

Sourabh: What does this word mean?

Herr M: Human. You know, like, made out of meat and bones? and mortal?

German class was weird today. Actually, it's always weird.

Love always,
Clara

nostalgia and internet radio

Ironically, this bout of nostalgia has come about because I'm noticing something remarkable. I've begun to feel the same way about ISBerne as I did about Potomac last year. I did not know that was possible and I'm still not sure whether it's allowed.

I miss you guys though.

So here's a flashback.

Mom and I had a hilarious conversation last night. I think she'd had a drink tonight, and she's like me in that one drink is quite enough.

Mom: [says something quite frank that I will not repeat]

Me: Okay, this is where the conversation gets too open. I'm going to bed.

Mom: Goodnight.... DON'T TWITTER THAT!

I've been sorely missing Pandora lately (which doesn't work outside the US) so I've spent the last few days exploring the world of online radio. I'd say my favorite right now is Jelli. It's cool because you can vote for the songs you want to play. But the experience would be better if more people used it. So... spread the word!

One thing though- If you're on a mac, there's a plugin you might have to download, which Safari doesn't tell you about. If it doesn't play, try using Firefox and it'll send you through the process. From there it's pretty straightforward.

Come vote for good music with me!

Love always,
Clara

ski days video!

Song is Giving Up the Gun - Vampire Weekend

Love always,
Clara

vlog vlog vlog

Song: 7/4 (Shoreline) - Broken Social Scene

Basically, I needed cereal and figured, there is a boring way to buy cereal, and there is a fun way to buy cereal. That, and Vivian showed me an awesome vlogger the other day, which has inspired me.

Love always,
Clara

junior retreat flashback moment

I just found this on my computer.
To those who were there- hehehehehe
To those who weren't- This is what my old school was like. That was a group of teachers who made up that story. We at ISB need to bond more over things like stripper names.


Also, jumping rope is fun, although I'm awful at it (because I'm awful at just about anything that requires physical coordination).
And for the record, I get about 20 individual visitors per day. I know that now that I use google analytics. Obsessing over statistics is fun.

It's snowing outside.

Love always,
Clara

Wasting time.

If wasting time were a legitimate profession, I wouldn't need to go to college.

Love always,
Clara