May Yahoo! die impoverished
It may not seem like a hard decision, but it hurts. I've been a loyal
Flickr user for the past three years, and somewhere between its simple design and sensible offerings it has won my heart. The entirety of my year in Italy I posted photos to Flickr, and it became a source of connection between myself and my friends and mother at home. So it's a matter of sentimental value; and I'm fond of it as one of the few really decent interactive websites I've encountered.
Today I received an email which read:
Dear Old Skool Account-Holding Flickr Member,
On March 15th we'll be discontinuing the old email-based Flickr sign in system. From that point on, everyone will have to use a Yahoo! ID to sign in to Flickr....
You can make the switch at any time in the next few months, from today till the 15th. (After that day, you'll be required to merge before you continue using your account.)
Thanks for your patience and understanding - and even bigger thanks for your continued support of Flickr: if you're reading this, you've been around for a while and that means a lot to us!
Warmest regards,
- The Flickreenos
And now Yahoo! has taken the place of Satan in my mind. I despise Yahoo!, I despise its takeover of Flicker, I despise the fact that it intends to coerce all Flickr members to join Yahoo! by buying out the company and then making our Flickr IDs invalid. This is unforgivably manipulative, but I think it's also the kind of capitalist behavior that dominates our society. Win, conquer, eliminate. Yahoo! wasn't wealthy enough, apparently - but are you ever really wealthy enough in this hyper-competitive society?
So the hard decision that I'm going to have to make is this: will I leave Flickr in order to boycott Yahoo!, or will I stand by Flickr despite the Yahoo! takeover? I hate the idea of my support and (currently) my money going toward Yahoo!, so at the moment I'm leaning toward the former. But the idea of leaving Flickr is really kind of sad. I have till March 15th to decide, though, I guess.
And honestly, can we talk about how obnoxious it is that Yahoo! has an exclamation point in the name? That's so self-glamorizing, and frankly, it's just stupid.
Did I mention?
I'm a second semester senior! And I don't have to go to school tomorrow till 9:20. Psych!
Scholarship HELL
I'm listening to Wolves by Josh Ritter, perching my laptop precariously on my knees as my cat purrs and drools on my hands, and writhes in my lap in search of a friendly pat. I have learned, however, that the best way to interact with her is to ignore all advances - if I pet her, she will be very happy for a few minutes, but then turn suddenly and inexplicably to claw my arm (I have teeth marks still embedded in my arm from this morning)
I spent the day looking for scholarships. Well, actually I've spent the last 24 hours or so just having a ball, and the scholarships bomb was actually only a small part of it. I went to see...... a movie for which I desperately hope I won't be judged, and can I just say in my defense that Kal Penn is REALLY CUTE and he was totally good in White Castle and is totally good in this movie, or would be if it were halfway good. But it's an excellent poke at modern culture in general, I suppose. I'm not even going to say it, though. I'm too embarrassed. So I went to see that with Elise, and we went out to Starbucks afterwards, the one next to the Blockbuster's which I accidentally put out of business. Did I mention that? I had a movie overdue, and so, despising big name corporations, I decided to ignore the notices that arrived persistently every few weeks, reminding me of my $10.81 fee. My logic was that I could pay that fee any time in the future, EVER, and the embarrassment I'd feel then ("You've had this movie out for three years?" "Yeah.... Yeah, I have.") would be my punishment. Not so. We got a very nice letter from Blockbuster's lawyers, stating that they understood that we may have overlooked this fee, and that if we failed to pay it by the end of the month, it would go on my mom's credit record. Did I mention our Blockbuster's card is under her name? So I took a check down to Blockbuster's to finally and embarrassedly pay them back... only to discover that my friendly neighborhood Blockbuster's HAS GONE OUT OF BUSINESS! And I can't help feeling that it's somehow my fault...
So anyway, Elise and I were hanging in the Starbucks next door when in came two friends, quite out of the blue - so we adjourned to a larger corner table and stayed till Starbucks asked us to leave so they could please go home (at about 11:30). Elise and I headed over to another Blockbuster's (so much less convenient!), picked up The Goonies and returned to my house to watch Sean Astin appreciatively. It was a perfect sort of sleepover, where we talked for an hour or two after turning out the lights, and fell asleep rather simultaneously... and woke up (reluctantly) at more or less the same time, unusual for us as I'm an early riser and Elise is the Queen of Sleep. After parting ways for a grand five hours, we met up again to get groceries for a delicious and fun dinner at a friend's house. It's a dinner party we have every now and again, with seven of us, and it's absolutely brilliant. The company is so phenomenal, and the food is always great. Last time the other girls cooked; this time Elise and I helped. I made spinach gnocchi in three-cheese sauce, though it technically ended up being two-cheese because we forgot to put Parmesan on top; it had Fontina and Gorgonzola, and was excellent, if I do say so myself! I actually didn't think it was that great because of my total aversion to cheese, but the gnocchi were light and fluffy and there was just the right amount of spinach to balance out the flavor of sheer carbs that pasta exudes. And at least a few others liked it, so hurrah! A success. I'll post up the recipe sometime. It's one of the Italian recipes I picked up at my cooking class in Italy.
It was in those five hours between hanging out with Elise that I looked at scholarships, and those were definitely the most depressing five hours of my weekend so far. Pretty much all the scholarships seem to ask for people who "show leadership" or are intensively dedicated to community service (I tutor every week at Hillsides, which I guess counts.... but I feel like the scholarships are looking for someone who actively pursues community service at every turn) or are a minority. So after feeling really bad about my ability to be a leader (I AM A SHEEP. Baaaa.), and the fact that I only dedicate an hour per week to community service and haven't gone to Union Station in months because I always end up being tied up at the last minute, and the fact that I am the following VERY WHITE minorities: Irish, Scottish, German, Polish, Ukrainian, and Viking; after all that negative energy regarding my identity and the feeling that I don't try hard enough, or am not unfortunate enough, I said "Screw this!" and had an epiphany. I googled writing scholarships, and BABY, I am going to try and win one of those copious writing contests! Because that is something I love to do, I would actually be happy taking part in such a scholarship, plus it would feel more like a project than an extension of college apps. And hey, I've just started a cool new story! Who knows where it'll go.... but it could feed a contest that wins me college money!
One of the scholarships that rather irked me was an essay about having a parent die, and the psychological repercussions. It's funded by Life Insurance. There's just something about that that seems to define the awful level of competition in scholarships nowadays. Even something really awful, like a parent dying, becomes competitive - "how much money can I earn for my assessment of that awful experience?"
Blagh! The cat has drooled on the mousepad. How typical. But meanwhile it is definitely time for me to go to bed. I'm getting up early tomorrow!
Labels: college, writing
A Scrabble game masterpiece
A lovely game of Scrabble between Elise, Cel, Marisa and myself which gradually progressed from rule-abiding to creatively enhanced, with debatably non-existent words.
I dreamt that I was at St Andrews already last night, picking classes, and it was exciting!
I can't wait...
Labels: St Andrews
Boo-yah!
I have officially completed finals, and GOD IT FEELS GREAT. Calc and English were on Wednesday; as always I abhor English finals simply because I hate analyzing literature under a time limit, especially because I'm already a little skeptical of the whole analyzing-literature thing anyway. I mean, I love it on a larger scale - reading a book and discussing the metaphors and connections, but on a test I feel like you can really only spend time analyzing the minutiae. "That semicolon represents the speaker's disjointed, hurried thought process..." I mean, seriously. There's only so much syntax analysis that I can endure, especially hurriedly. But nevertheless it was alright, and then Calc.... wow, if anyone's read
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (which you MUST, if you have not, because it's sheer brilliance), I felt like I'd just drunk a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, which I believe he describes "is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick." After coming out of the Calculus final I was quite unable to process thoughts, images, sentences... I felt like my brain had been beaten senseless with a lemon.
The weird thing is that I rather enjoyed the Calculus final.
I think it must be that my dad was a mathematician and I've inherited the "math gene", or perhaps it's just because he taught me math so young (I could do Algebra in 3rd grade!), but I LOVE MATH! I think it's brilliantly exciting, and there's nothing vague and interpretative about it. In Calculus, I've felt like everything I've ever learned, all those boring pointless equations I've been taught for the past eight years, has all been leading up to now. Everything comes together in Calculus! And if everything has come together in Calculus, then everything really came together on the Calculus final. I'm pretty sure we've never had any problems quite that complex in class - they seemed to be compilations of everything hard we'd done so far this year, and it took pretty much all my brain power and concentration to work through them. Hence the feeling that my brain had been beaten with something powerfully citrus-y. But I solved them, I'm sure - so despite the fact that I was running into walls I had that "runner's euphoria" that you feel when you've finished a hard race and not given up. It felt great!
Going into the English final after that was kind of a joke, however. I really hope my English teacher won't judge my essays, because I'm pretty sure they made no sense.
Thursday was Latin and US History, an "easy" day - that is, more relaxed. Latin was fine, though I hadn't studied much. Honestly, I didn't study intensively for any of my first four finals. Every night leading up to Friday I dedicated to Biology. AP Bio with the brilliant Dr. Tromp, the final I feared more than anything else. And it paid off! Of course I didn't get a 90% (ha, probably way less), but she's grading it AP style, which means that 65% and up is an A. Sweet! 104 multiple choice questions and two essays, and I actually felt prepared and, what's more, knowledgeable! Knowledgeable on a hard subject such as Biology is ALWAYS good.
And then I slept. I watched Psych with Elise, the one exception to my no-television rule of 2007 (which so far is going well, and feels great! When I used to watch TV too much I always felt stupid and wished for an excuse to just get up and walk away - an excuse other than homework. But this resolution is the perfect excuse, and I've been reading more, writing more.... maybe not doing homework more, but HEY. I'm a second-semester senior, y'all, and what? Homework? Hahaha.).
So yeah. I survived Finals week much to my delight and surprise. A week ago all I felt was a pit of terror in my stomach going into finals, and that resilient and undesired thought in the back of my mind, "if I broke my leg, would I still have to take finals?" But I did not break my leg, and I went into finals reluctantly and fearfully, and I LIVED!
Have a good week, everybody!
Real Weather Alert!
It's snowing in St Andrews!
Labels: weather
Small world!
So it turns out that my boss's sister worked at the day care I used to go to, across the street from Caltech. The day care is called CEC (Child Educational Center) and defined the better part of my childhood. While my dad worked at Caltech I would run around and do arts and crafts and play at the park a block away with CEC; on the best days during the summer we even got to walk two blocks (a substantial journey to a kid) to the Caltech pool where we'd swim and run along the edge of the pool despite numerous warnings from the lifeguard. Once, I recall, I forgot my swimsuit, and my friend Thea offered me her clothes, saying she didn't mind if I got them wet; well, it was a tie-dyed shirt, and in the pool the dye started to come out, and the lifeguard marched over to stand above me on the edge of the pool with a formidable air, asking me to please get out.
But glorious sunny days at the pool aside, WHAT A COINCIDENCE! I was standing at the register, about an hour and a half into my shift, when my boss's sister came in with her friend; she gave my boss a bubbly greeting and then turned to introduce herself to me. With a pause, she asked, "What's your name?" I told her, and when she repeated it slowly, I added "Same as the street - Holly." "And how old are you now?" she asked. "I'm 17," I answered, wondering why that mattered (that pesky nervous voice in the back of my mind wondered for a split second if she was going to call me on the fact that I haven't got a work permit). "Wow," she said, "I knew you looked familiar. I worked at CEC when you were there, Holly."
Wow, indeed! I racked my brain for memories, and only remembered Diana, the other woman who worked there - and the only thing I remember about her is a rather awful story she once told us kids, of a time when she was wearing gold hoop earrings and some rotten passerby literally ripped one out of her ear. To this day I still have a terrible fear of wearing hoops because of that story.... But for all that I try, I cannot conjure up Elmida -that's her name- in my memory! But she remembered me, she remembered my parents, and -this one's the clincher- she remembered the time that Thea Wade broke out.
That was actually a pretty funny story. Thea's mother was a professor at Caltech, just across the street, and one summer when Thea was bored of the activites that CEC had to offer she decided to run away across the street to find her mother. (I should point out that the street between Caltech and CEC, Del Mar, is pretty busy). Thea developed a very elaborate plan, which began with her breaking out of one of the back windows... which she did. She used a pair of those blunt, plastic-handled scissors you'll find in any preschool, and quite literally cut open the screen, and climbed out. I had promised to go with her but chickened out at the last moment; so I remained behind, the sole witness to Thea's escapade. As it turned out, she just went next door and played with the neighbor's dogs for an hour or two, and I think she eventually came back of her own accord. But it prompted a sit-down talk about respecting school property (ie, window screens), and personal safety (ie crossing a busy street) for all of us, and Thea was closely watched thereafter. Not so exciting an ending as such antics deserve, I know... I always sort of wished she'd been able to successfully reach Caltech and her mother just for hilarity's sake.
But yeah! Small world, that I'd be working for Elmida's family ten years later! It was also sort of wonderful to be able to say, "Hey, do you remember the time that Thea Wade broke out of the window?"
Extreme Weather!
AAAH! The wind is insane right now! I'm sitting in the living room with my mom, and we're both being lazy and reading (well, she's reading and I'm being lazy), and every few seconds we both perk our heads to listen as a huge new gust of wind roars past the house, literally rattling the window panes and making the house creak and resettle on its old foundation. And with each new gust we both laugh rather helplessly at the sheer ferocity of the wind. Funny, it's pretty much our most extreme weather of the year, and it's just as unnerving, I think, as any other sort of storm could be. Occasionally the lights flicker as a power line falters, or the cold begins to seep around the doors. With particularly strong gusts I can feel the air from the nearest doorway, which has somehow wormed its way in through the cracks.
So here we are, cozy but unsettled, listening to our house stand up courageously to the wind.
Labels: weather
Spiteful feline
Labels: my kitty
Now for the fun part
So the search begins. Scholarships. I feel an inexplicable aversion to the entire process, but I'm sure it's no more than I felt with regard to college apps, and I've finished those with no glitches. There's something that I can't quite put my finger on, though, that seems manipulative about the whole thing. I have money for all four years of college thanks to the college fund that my dad left me, and maybe it will even prove enough to start me on grad school - so why should I try to get various organizations to give me more money? What about all the people who actually need that money? My mom reminds me that I'll want money for travel and my own purposes, but it seems wrong to get scholarship money that will eventually just pay for trips... I'd rather work hard in a job that means something to me and get the money by my own means, not just because of my GPA and SATs and an essay that doesn't necessarily show who I am.
At the same time, I feel like I owe it to my mother to apply for some scholarships, because that means she'll have to pay less up front before I'm 18 and can access the college money my dad left me. It's my mom who's encouraging me to apply for scholarships, and while it seems like a hateful, unfair process I know I'll be glad to get some money in the end. And my mom will be glad, and anything that can keep her from worrying about my future is always a bonus.
Labels: college
New Camera, Old Cat
The other day Marisa was petting her, and after a while she snapped at Marisa's hand; when I reached out to pet her she made a great show of sniffing my hand and, when she'd decided that I was indeed the right person, she purred and rubbed her head against my fingers. Quite effectively rebuffing any and all foreign contact, it would seem.
As for the new camera, it's a Canon Rebel XT and I love it more than I ever thought I could. It's silent and professional and has just enough weight to convey a sense of importance; and it takes stunning pictures, it allows for much more experimentation with focusing and lighting, what with completely manual setting; and in my dad's photo bag is a long-unused Canon telephoto lens which clicks beautifully into place when I swap it with the 18-55 mm lens that came with my camera. It's pretty much almost worth the obscene amount of money that it cost, and anyway I wouldn't be parted with it now, even after one day of being able to hold it and use it.
Labels: my kitty, photography
Back to my Scottish Roots, most certainly!
I feel excited and impatient and nervous and eager... I feel happier than I ever expected, just so honestly content and delighted and surprised to have been accepted by St Andrews. So now the big decision - to withdraw my other applications? I have applied to Reed, Macalester, Swarthmore and Middlebury, and at the moment I don't want to be at a single one so long as St Andrews is another option. They're excellent schools, and half of me wants to let the applications finish just to see if I could get in. After all, I wrote a kind of goofy essay for the Common App, and my ego wants to know if the wittiness made for a good and acceptable application.
However, Marisa's words were harsh: "Is your pride," she asked me, "worth another person's place?"
I hope not! It seems so harmless to leave my applications open, and yet if everyone were to do that it would skew the odds awfully. Everyone does do that already -that is, apply to eleventeen schools "just in case"- and that is the reason that the application process has become such a competition now, for which people are clamoring for a solution.
I know that I'm going to St Andrews. I have no good reason to wait for my other applications, except -as Marisa said- for my pride, and that is utterly unnecessary. So I think I will take a bold step, and withdraw my applications over the next few weeks (I'll take my time because my mother seems quite adverse to the idea of me doing that). There's something refreshing about knowing where I want to go, feeling so certain and excited about this choice.
Labels: college, St Andrews
The second time I've ever cried for happiness
I woke up at five this morning with a pit of nervousness in my stomach. Turning over, I tried to go back to sleep, jolting awake again every few minutes. By the time my alarm went off at 6:45 I was wide awake, and I rolled stiffly out of bed with an immediacy not present on most school mornings. I dressed and put in my lucky parrot earrings, though I wouldn't have to leave the house for another half hour. You see, I was about to find out about college.
It's the University of St Andrews, in Scotland, which makes the time difference eight hours; when I called at seven am it was three in the afternoon for them. I dialed the call first on my phone card, and was informed that I had only three minutes remaining - too few, I decided, to hear my fate. Dialing the international number straight into my home phone, I sat with bated breath - and was informed I would need a credit card to make the call. So I picked up my phone card again, hoping desperately that I would be able to make the call in a mere three minutes or less.
It rang once. It rang again. An automated British voice answered, listing options in a tired voice. "Stay on the line to speak to an admissions officer," the voice concluded, and the line went silent for what seemed interminably long. My digital clock silently ticked from 6:57 to 6:58. Finally, after what seemed far too long, an admissions officer picked up the phone, and with relief I told her my name, asking after the status of my application. Precisely then, the Sprint voice said cheerfully, "You have two minutes remaining." On the other end, the woman for whom I'd been spelling my name said, "I'm sorry, could you spell it again? I think we've got a bad connection." Trying to think calm thoughts, I spelled it out again M-C-K-E-L-V-E-Y... "Wait just a moment," she replied. "I'll find your file." I looked at the digital clock, which now said 6:59. I felt vaguely frantic. "I'm going to hand you over to someone else," the woman told me, coming back on the line, and I instantly felt foolish for having attempted to make the call on just three minutes. Of course there wouldn't be enough time.
"Hello," said a familiar voice cheerfully. The woman to whom I spoke last month, the same woman who told me to call back on January 10th. "Holly, right? Your name sounds familiar." I began to remind her that it was because I'd called a month ago, asking after my application, but was interrupted by the Sprint voice. "You have one minute remaining," it told me, and I bit the inside of my cheek frantically. Just tell me! I thought, panicked, trying as hard as I could to communicate telepathically, to somehow make the process go faster, make my file more easily accessible, something. "Well, Holly," she said after an endless moment during which I could practically hear the seconds ticking away, "you were made an offer yesterday, and your packet has been sent out this morning."
And that's how I was accepted to college in less than three minutes. I hung up the phone after copious "thank you's" on my part and a cheerful "Bye now!" from the admissions officer, and burst into tears. After a moment I felt rather silly, because the only other member of the family who was there to observe my goings-on was the cat, who regarded me rather superciliously; in front of her unblinking stare my emotional response began to feel silly, and so I sniffled into a kleenex for a moment, dried my eyes, and ran into my mother's room, with a huge "I got in!"
And it's a wonderful feeling. I'm into my first choice school, I'm soon to be a second semester senior, and I haven't a care in the world. And I got balloons!
Labels: college, St Andrews
Resolutions
This year, 2007, I will read more; eat more healthily; stop watching television altogether; start papers and lengthy assignments
early rather than the night before; follow the news more diligently; meet new people; be enthusiastic and eager and always curious; be tactful; be understanding; write more; appreciate little joys; put aside time to take beautiful photographs; travel; discover the hidden wonderful niches in Pasadena and Altadena, where I live; spend more time out of doors; try never to be self-pitying; fall in love.
When I was in Italy, my Greek teacher asked us if we had ever been in love. One or two people said yes, and the rest of us shrugged and said, "Not yet." So she gave us an assignment, which was to fall in love before leaving Italy. One of my classmates laughed skeptically and asked if falling in love with Italy counted. "Of course it does," she answered passionately. And in the end, Italy is what I fell in love with. The simple joys of being in Italy seduced me and swept me off my feet, so that even seven months later I still think of Italy constantly, miss being there, want to go back. But so long as I can remember every experience vividly, and recall the laughter and the train cars and the pastries and the pasta, then it's still close enough and real enough, and I'm still in love with all of it.
Labels: Italy, Self portrait
New Camera!
I've been taking some pictures with my gorgeous Vivitar film camera, so I can't upload them; I'm getting back into the vibe of working with a manual camera, which is why I'm
really psyched to have JUST ordered the Canon Rebel XT, manual-digital masterpiece! It should get here within the next couple weeks. Sooo, some of the 365-day photos are on the Vivitar, since it takes such gorgeous photos, but soon I'll be back in business with the digital! Psych =)
Also, just to be obnoxious, here's my COUNTDOWN TILL I FIND OUT ABOUT COLLEGE: 7 days!!!
Labels: photography
Happy 2007!
It took me a while to find this photo so I could upload it.... because I was looking for a folder called "New Year's" in the 2006 folder.
It always takes me a while to adjust. I really only got 2006 down last August or so. But woah! 2007! This is the year in which I graduate, the year in which I start college, which means... the rest of my life. Now, I suppose that's something of an overstatement, but I've always felt like life is pretty much divided into the pre-college years and the college & post-college years. Or perhaps more accurately, the live-at-home years, and the post-live-at-home years. Because growing up, of course I've lived at home. College is that huge godzilla-beast on the horizon (the one with the giant anvil that says work! career! all-nighters! caffeine!) that shows up on that day that always seems far far in the future when.... I move out.
I'll be able to come home during the holidays, and stay at home then; it's not to say that once I take my first step out the door into college-land that I can never come back again. But this is really the point, in American society at least, where kids start getting poked fun at if they're still living at home. In Italy, the kids stay at home till they get married in their 30s, and someone who moves out earlier than that is an unappreciative rebel who obviously doesn't love their family and their nonna's delicious home cooking enough. But here if you're still living at home after college, the response is more along the lines of, "Hello? Do you have a LIFE? Why aren't you out there pursuing your life calling and making a good name for career-oriented young women of the 21st century everywhere?"
I actually prefer the American system, though, for all that it's a little less sympathetic to late bloomers. It really pushes kids to get out there and do exciting things, and go far from home, whereas in Italy a lot of people end up living in the same town for their entire life. But it's kind of scary. I kind of feel like I wouldn't actually mind living close to home to go to college - for all of my life my mom's encouraged me to go as far away as I want, to not pick a college based on proximity to home. My mom's moving to Portland next year, though, which means that if I were to go to a college here in LA, close to home, I wouldn't be close to family. Then again I've applied to Reed in Portland, so I could go to school close to my most immediate family - however it wouldn't be close to home, because I've grown up here in Altadena/Pasadena my entire life.
But 2007! Despite the uncertainty and the slight nervousness regarding college, it's exciting! I'm looking forward to everything; I think it'll be an endlessly exciting year. I kicked off January 1st by driving down to Irvine to see my friend Deborah from SYA Italy. It was an hour-long drive which I made in 40 minutes due to exceptionally light traffic, and the first real road trip I've ever taken. It was a tad dull at first, not having anyone to talk to, but after a while I got caught up in how peaceful a morning it was; it really was gorgeous. The picture with this post isn't incredibly clear, but it's of the fog hanging over the freeway, completely filling the valley by Pomona, where I veered off the 210 onto the 57. And of course seeing Deborah was wonderful, and recalled excellent days in Italy; I had lunch with her family, who were all talkative and warm, and offered me as much delicious food as I could possibly eat. A good start to a good year!
So, Happy New Year! Be excellent to each other, dudes...
Labels: 365 days, college
