Kendra's 500 Begins!

*FANFARE PLAYS*

WOOOOOT! Can you believe it?? ~Carpe Diem!~ is two years old! It's a toddler! It's speaking in full sentences! Soon it should hit the terrible twos...um...great...

But it's also the 500th Post Celebration!!!

Do you know what this means?????questionmark?

I gotta post 500 of something. I'll spend hours and hours trying to figure out things that would hold your attention and interest you and not seem narcissistic.

And then you won't actually READ all 500 things anyway...>.>

SO.

I got to thinking.

What if I milked this a little? What if I spread my 500 things over the course of a couple of weeks? Give it to you in pieces that wouldn't require you to pull up a chair, grab a cup of coffee, buckle down and stay glued to my blog for an hour and a half?

I figured, that might be nice.

I've put my 500 things into convenient little bundles of 10. I have 50 different categories of awesome, so what if I post, say, 3 a day for a little while?

Yes, I realize this would have been better if I'd had a COUNTDOWN to my 500th post instead of STARTING this at the big five-oh-oh, but hey, good ideas can come better late than never, right? :D

Also, this smaller-bits-at-a-time idea is NOT a result of Kendra waiting until 11:12 at night to think of 500 freaking things.

I hope you're not mad :( I honestly do have 355 things already. Only about 150 to think of.

Anyway, without further adeu, the first 3 categories in Kendra's 500...

*drumroll* (<-- Does that hurt your eyes? 'Cause it hurts my eyes.)


Things I Am
1. Friendly
2. Stubborn
3. Ambitious
4. Persuasive
5. A writer
6. Unique
7. Confusing
8. Complicated
9. A screw-up
10. A Christian

Things I'm Not
11. A jealous person
12. A fake
13. Dull
14. Wishy-washy
15. A touchy-feely person
16. A Justin Bieber fan
17. A Justin Bieber hater
18. Quiet
19. Stupid
20. Normal

I Plan On...
21. Going to Wake Forest
22. Majoring in political science
23. Minoring in philosophy
24. Getting married
25. Having kids
26. Writing
27. Arguing
28. Staying up late
29. Making mistakes
30. Living for God

Hopefully, I'll see you next time, when Kendra's 500 continues!

Blog Birthday?? :O

This is post 499. The next time I post, it'll be in celebration!

But guess what I also realized today? Thursday, the 11th, will be ~Carpe Diem~'s TWO-YEAR-OLD BIRTHDAY! :O

Last year I completely missed my blog's birthday. And I felt horrible. This year, the birthday might be swallowed up in the big 500 post. Unless...

I just put the posts together :) I'm planning to dedicate 100 things to ~Carpe Diem~, and the other 400...you'll have to wait and see!

~Kendra

A Not-Too-Bad-for-a-Monday Day

Hey! Please note THIS post :D It's about a Blog Scavenger Hunt. I think it'll be pretty awesome. We already have seven awesome bloggers who want their blogs to be part of the scavenger hunt!

If you want to be a part of the hunt, but just want to play, not have your blog involved, that's perfectly cool too! Leave a comment anywhere with a question or a comment and I'll add you to the growing list! I'm excited, y'all :)
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Today, I worked mostly on American history, and philosophy. This is the first real history class I've had since elementary school, and it's amazing. The book I'm reading looks like this:
Seriously, that's it. A Patriot's History. It's actually that huge. It starts a little before Columbus discovered America, and delves deep into the details of our history. It's so well documented and researched that even the critics can't say anything against it. I think it should be a history textbook for everyone in the US. It's an amazing history education.

Philosophy is really cool. I loved it more than anything in 9th grade (if you've been following a while, you may remember MY EPIC POST on it), and I love it all over again this year. I think the book we read in 9th grade, Sophie's World was more interesting and explained things MUCH better though. I'm glad I had Sophie's World first, or I might not enjoy this philosophy class very much.

Every week in philosophy class, one of the students has to lead the discussion. Explain the chapter, ask philosophical questions, get the class involved. The catch? The teacher doesn't tell you who's gonna lead the discussion until about 4 seconds before you have to lead it. You just have to be prepared for it every week.

This week, I prepared MAJORLY. I worked on this thing almost all day. Aristotle is my faaaaaaavorite philosopher, and we studied him this week. I want to lead the discussion sooo badly, but I guess we'll just have to see what happens on Wednesday...

~Kendra

Where Did I Go?

Hey :)

Well, I'm back. I mean, I'm still being this weird, happy person, but I'm feeling a little more like myself, too XD

My writing style has gone extremely south lately. I used to be fun to read, I think. I used to say things in creative ways that would make me chuckle. I used to feel like words were my best weapon, my own little minions to express exactly what I wished.

I don't feel that way anymore, and it really bothers me.

What happened to the girl who said at least mildly interesting things like:

"School is killing me. Or more like hacking me to death with a bloody ax." (October 11: "...Hi."

and

"FIRST AND A HALF (because 'second' sounds too late)!" (September 8: Imagination and Irritation)

and

"Just keep me in your thoughts...and hopefully tonight will keep itself in my thoughts, too..." (August 15: My Life, the Psycho Mystery Story?!)

What happened to the girl who said she liked the moon better than the sun?
What happened to the girl who found out that blue inspired creativity and thus painted her room that color?
What happened to the girl who convinced her grandpa that she drank lemon juice for snack?
What happened to the girl who planned to read "Paradise Lost" over Christmas break?

~~~~~~~
Hours later:

Whatever. I'm too tired to work on this any more. And it's not even yesterday anymore. It's 12:02. So, I missed Friday anyway. Fail.

*sigh* Sorry. Never mind.

~Kendra

[Insert Title Here]

Advice Day!

"Having fun is easy; it's knowing when to stop that's hard." ~Kendra Logan
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Well, today kind of sucked. But it's better now, so I'm going to focus on the positive. I finished writing the 1AC for debate, which was great. It had really been weighing down on me, having to worry about getting it done. Now all that's left, I guess, is to see what happens. *sigh*

I really hope I don't lose! That would be sad. Maybe this is petty, but I have never, ever lost a debate in my whole life, and I want that streak to continue for as long as possible, lol! XD

I talked to my Brain Half yesterday, so that made things a little better. We're still in perfect mental sync, lols! Just kidding. Ish.

Tonight I have play practice at 7pm, soccer practice at 8pm, and this PSAT meeting at my house at 7pm...er, hmm...

Yeah, I can't do it all, obviously, which sucks. I tend to attack things with kind of a Superwoman attitude, and then when I can't do it all, I get frustrated with myself. *sigh* Oh well. Tonight, I'm just gonna shoot for play practice. Soccer is nothing different than usual, but play practice is something new and un-missable every time. The PSAT meeting is mostly for parents. So, I guess it's a no-brainer.

Writing has been HAHAHAHA-Writing-That's-A-Good-One lately. I've barely had time to breathe much less write :-/

I'm not in a bad mood right now, but I don't have much to say because everything I've done or thought all day has been purely academic.

And now my mother is pestering me about cleaning up downstairs even though I've said about thirty times in the last five minutes that I'll do it in JUST A SECOND. Geez.

Okay, now I AM in a bad mood -.-

Whatever. So much for today. Do you want me to stop posting for a couple of days until I can stop being so negative?

P.S. I got my signature fixed. Yay.

Nothing...

First things first: Thanks to Sam Probert for following! Followers are the best.

Today was pretty good! Woke up at like ten, didn't eat breakfast, did stuff on the computer, at lunch, watched the end of the Disney movie "Cow Belles", got back on the computer, wrote something on Carpe Noctem (which turned out to be pretty lame), ate delicious dinner, figured out how to fix what was wrong with Blogger, talked to some people on gmail, and now I'm typing this with my throat feeling like it's swelling up -_- It did this yesterday at the pool, earlier today, and again now. It really freaked me out the first time, but now that I know I'm not dying, it's just annoying.

Basically, nothing happened today.

We're going to watch "Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl" tonight, which should be awesome.

Uhm...

Wow, that's it. I'll just post my mega-lame Carpe Noctem thought and stop wasting your time:
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One thing that really drives me crazy about today's culture is how quick we are to take things in. Or, to put it bluntly, how gullible everyone has become.

Appealing to authority: a logical fallacy when someone believes something just because so-and-so says.

Example: "Leaves DO SO turn purple when they fall off; my big brother says so!"

Everywhere you look, people are shouting out theories and guesses and sometimes even just LIES, and their audience is taking it in like it's proven fact.

Um, sorry, but for something to be "proven fact", it has to be PROVEN first.Think about all the stuff we Americans are taking in by the minute.

Tabloid gossip.

Global warming.

Evolution.

There are more, but those are the ones that come to mind, and that I'm going to try to focus on.

First of all, I completely understand why tabloids print such awful stuff about celebrities, and I can also understand why people read them. No problem there. The problem comes when the general public BELIEVES all that junk just because a trashy magazine says so. Puh-leez. Sure it's fun to read, but don't you think the writers of those magazines are going to try to put the worst and juciest spin on things?

That's kind of a minor issue in my book, though. So people believe gossip, okay. It's not a matter of life or death, or even public intelligence. It's just silly and vaguely annoying, but that's about it.

Now come the big two:

Global warming and Evolution.

I already ranted about global warming, so I won't do it again, don't worry. I'm just going to say that to believe in global warming, you're forced to rely on the least accurate and smallest pieces of information. If you ask any earnest scientist, s/he will tell you that as much comotion as people are making about GW, it's not really a problem. The earth naturally runs in cycles like this. In twenty years, we'll probably be going through a "global cooling" scare again.

Yes, AGAIN. That already happened. And now we're into global warming.

And the disgusting thing is, WE STILL BELIEVE IT!

COME ON, people! Global cooling? Global warming? They're just big hoaxes designed to get us all stirred up.

Don't believe me, though. I don't want you to do that.

I want you to go do some research for yourself. I've done mine, you do yours. Don't take stuff from me or even big shot scientists without looking into it a little. A little healthy skepticism never hurt anyone. In fact, it's actually been known to help occasionally. Especially in times like these when selective use of evidence is booming.

Which brings me to my final section of this tirade: Evolution.

*sigh*

If you believe in Evolution (capital "E"), you are going to skip this section, so I'm pretty much wasting my breath. Still, I'm going to try to straighten this out even a little.

First, define terms. This is really important, especially in an Evolution debate, because there are two definitions to Evolution, and I believe in one of them.

evolution: the belief that things change slightly over time to adapt to their surroundings.

Evolution: the belief that life began as an unguided fluke, then species gradually changed and mutated into completely different species.

Take a wild guess which one I believe? :)

There's really so much I could say about Evolution that I could do a whole series on it.

Which is exactly what I'm going to do.

I'm going to close this post, and begin my series on Evolution.

I'm sorry if this wasn't much of a post. I feel like I wasted a good thought. Hope you don't feel that way.
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Endings

I know some of you like to write, so this might resonate with you :)

You know the feeling where you finally have a ending thought up for your character? You smile and think, "Yes! That's perfect!" and inwardly reassure your character that even though they're about to be eaten by six different mosters and have the love of their life threatened with death, the ending to their story is great.

I love to imagine my characters' endings. I make a lot of bad things happen to them, and it kills me, but I know it comes out just right. I mean, who doesn't love that warm, satisfied feeling when you read the last sentence in a book and just smile; everything happened exactly right. Not what you expected, and tons of terror between beginning and end, but everything turned out right.

Sometimes I feel like apologizing to my characters. I want to tell them to hang in there because I have things all worked out. For the best possible ending ever. And the bad guys totally GET IT in the end.

See, that's kind of how God is with us. He has my story (and yours) all thought out, with the ending just right! Bad things happen, but in the end, everything works out in the way it needs to, and the "bad guys" GET IT! Isn't that cool??

I love to think about it like that. I tend to be a huge worrier, so it's really calming to think that God has it all figured out anyway. My story is written, he's just kind of reading it now. He knows what's coming, and he laughs with me, cries with me, and knows that in the end, he's got the very best ending all picked out for me.

It's almost exciting. I mean, don't you love those books that have your stomach churning with anticipation? The main character is caught in a terrible situation, and you just can't imagine how the writer is going to get him out.

My life is a page-turner, and so is yours. Only God knows whats really goin' on, and he can't wait for us to find out, too! I almost picture a little boy jumping up and down saying, "See?? This is my favorite part!! I told you it turned out okay!" Isn't that cool?

So next time you're having a terrible day, or something really bad happens, just remember, God has your story all written, and it ends just right.

Ideas

Wow! Today is absolutely gorgeous! The leaves on the trees are almost "full grown", and the pollen isn't TOO bad. It's also about eighty degrees. Ah, finally. My kind of weather ;) I took my dog and we went for a jog down the trails! She seems about as out of shape as I am ;) I don't know how many miles we went; we just took each trail behind our house twice. It felt great aside from the fact that it was super hot, and it gave me a headache. I dunno why, but exercizing when it's really hot gives me a killer headache. I probably get dehydrated or something.

My grandma came yesterday, and she is staying until Monday. She and my mom and Lizzy (my 12 year old sister) went shopping at around eleven and got back around three. The three of them could shop in every shopping center within reach and not be sick of it. I go in a store, head straight to my department, pick out the first ten things that I like, buy five of them, and GO HOME, lol!

Now that the "burden" of school is gone, I feel two things: really free, and really lazy/bored. I don't know what to do with my time now. *sigh* This happens every summer. I spend most of the summer not doing anything, and then when school comes back, I think "Dangit, I should have enjoyed summer while it lasted." It's another one of those carpe diem things, I guess. The more I blog, the more the title of this blog seems to be perfect.

Lizzy and my dad are going out on our little sailboat now. I don't like sailboats a ton. They're okay, and it can be really nice and peacful sailing, but in general I'm more of a speed boat kind of person. I love going fast! We have some friends who have a great boat, and they used to take us out like all the time during the summer. Then, they sort of stopped and starting going with other people, and last summer, they didn't take us at all :( Hopefully this year will be different.

I want to make this the best summer ever, but I don't really know how. Getting into shape is definitely a good place to start, I think. Eating right, exercizing, blah blah blah, you know. I recently discovered that I actually LIKE salad after all, so that's cool :D Sorry. Not trying to go all healthy on you. Just saying.

I dunno if anyone has noticed, but I didn't post anything on Carpe Noctem last Saturday. I don't know why exactly. I thought about it, but I just...didn't. Not many people read it (which is okay), so if I want to post something that I really want people to read, maybe I should post it here instead. Maybe I'll make Saturdays "Carpe Noctem Day" or something. (Lol, Seize the Night Day!) I have all these ideas for blogs, but I already have two, so I probably shouldn't. Maybe I'll just have different days for stuff. Like, a super short specialty post ever day, then just a regular post. What do you think?

Ideas for Specialty Posts:
1. Quotes
2. Pictures
3. Word of the Day (Week?)
4. Challenge
5. Poem or Short Story (hmm...I dunno. I might switch this for Name of the Week or something)
6. Bible Verse of the Week (I could do this on Sunday)
7. Carpe Noctem

There, something for every day. Do y'all think this is a good idea?

Spring Hormones

I did yard work today :D Sort of. Not, like, extreme labor or anything, but I did plant flowers and stake out a spot for my vegetable garden. I'm having crazy cravings for growing things lately. I want something to take care of. So I'm going to have a vegetable garden with tomatoes, squash, zucchini, spinach, and possibly some kind of bean or something. I'm excited :D :D

There was a thunderstorm yesterday afternoon!!! :D I LOVE thunder storms. They're so awesome. They're like power and beauty incarnate. So awesome.

My dad was fixing the invisible fence for our dog today. You know, burrying the wire in the woods and stuff. And while he was doing that, his cell phone slipped off its little clip on his belt. He didn't notice until he was finished and his cell phone was missing. He was going to just walk around the woods with another cell phone, calling his phone, and listening for his ringtone, but he was afraid he might not be able to hear it ringing. So, he asked me to come help him listen for it. I grabbed my cell phone and we went to the edge of the woods. I called his phone, and heard it ringing. It was far away. He said he couldn't hear it at all. It was really kind of fun because he had to totally rely on me since he couldn't hear the ringing at all. We did find the phone after a while, and it was about seventy-five feet from where we'd started. It made me feel good that he'd needed me so much :)

I had this awesome dream last night that I was part of a HUGE family. With, like, ten kids. I could only remember two names when I woke up, though, and none of the plot. Darn. It would have made a great story, I remember that much. I might try to pull something together for a story anyway since Creepy is going so crappy (crappily??). Oh, and the two names I remember were Penelope, who was my older sister, and Evangelina, who was my oldest sister's daughter. So, my neice. Weird.

Well, that's all mostly. I helped my mom cook today. Voluntarily. Something is wrong with my hormones or something. I'm all into cooking and taking care of stuff lately. It's kind of freaking me out. 'Cause I'm so not the cooking, house-keeping, planting type. *frown* It's weird. Oh well. I'll let you know if anything really DRASTIC happens. TTYL! CARPE DIEM!

And don't forget to read Carpe Noctem. The topic for this week is...Weird vs. Normal: Does the Problem Even Exist? http://toseizethenight.blogspot.com/2009/04/weird-vs-normal-does-problem-even-exist.html