My Bestest Friend: Mary Rosalyn Taylor

My very best amigo, Mary Rosalyn, is turning 15! And in tradition, when someone I love has a birthday, here's a list of all the things I like about Mary Rosalyn:

• She plays the piano beautifully and with elegance
• She has a great relationship with her family members
• She has a very good taste in fashion
• She loves the outdoors, and all of God's beautiful creations
• She has figured out a lot of things that most people have never figured out in their entire lifetime
• She is much more deep than the average 15 year old
• She is a great Christian
• She can whoop some tail in basketball, being an awesome "big girl"
• She is a devoted Gator fan, no matter what happens to them
• She has collegiate level aspirations in softball
• She was one of the very few girls who knew what they were doing and showed it during the powder puff game
• She has a super cool fort/tree house/wooden wonderland
• She is a very ambitious person
• She is incredibly intelligent
• She loves the 80's
• She has a good taste in music
• She is an excellent trumpeteer
• She is a great athlete
• She willingly runs with me
• She is different than most
• She wants people around her to make the right choices
• She is very determined in academics
• She has great morals
• She is not a hoochie
• She is beautiful
• She likes to tell me about her life
• She is one of the only people left who has remained "a good kid"
• She does not use profanity
• She hits up Goodwill on Mondays! 
• She works very hard at practice
• She does what is asked of her and more
• She lets me know when I'm about to make a stupid decision
• She has no urge to have a cell phone
• She has excellent self control
• She is one of the few people who understand me
• She has never done anything immoral
• She goes about doing good things for others
• She has one of those great minds who think about ideas, rather than events or people (Eleanor Roosevelt quote)
• She and I have a great respect for Coach Wilson, the grooviest old man around
• She is hilarious
• She can spell like a beast
• She is insane
• She cares about her health
• She doesn't eat crap food
• She sees through the "superficial poo"
• She is a wonderful friend

I hope you have an amazing 15th birthday! Love you, MRT!

Good Ole Nat Geo!

National Geographic is amazing. This month's is super cool, and rather interesting. Me and a friend plan to ditch our careers, forget everyone (only kidding), and carve out a cave in the cliffs below to live in forever. Full article here.

I have a hard time believing this is a real place and this picture is not some wonderful painting, but either way, I'm gonna live there forever once I get married. Yes, family should visit. Often. 

I also enjoyed this article. Reindeer really do fly, I'm sure of it.

Updation

I know I have really neglected my blog, and my love for blogging. But it happens that I have a super busy life and the limited time I get at home (about 30-60 min not spent sleeping) is reserved for eating, showering, and talking to my family. This is because band is soul-sucking. Anyhoo, I need to catch up either way. So school is pretty great, I'm not learning much though thanks to several terrible teachers hired this year. But I still enjoy my time, I still get to write a lot in English (wrote all about zorbing the other day) and I absolutely love Engineering. For the past week or so we've been drawing and sketching (like isometric and perspective sketching) and I always look forward to that class. Unfortunately, I'm still in dadgum Chorus, but it's getting better, well more like it can be worse. We worked on the song below a little this week, which is strictly acapella . 

I've been having an absolutely fantastic time at basketball workouts, we've been playing Ultimate Frisbee, Flag Football, Capture the Flag, Soccer and all kinds of fun stuff for conditioning since we can't really start real practice yet. Ultimate Frisbee is easily the funnest game ever, I would advise everyone to learn how to and go try to play it sometime. It's awesome! 

Soon, I will post a video or two of the halftime show, but for now, it's got to get a lot better. We preformed the entire show for the first time last night and it was alright. I really enjoy being on the drum line, and not to be braggy or anything but I play the hardest/loudest and have been told that I have "girl power" with my bass drum. I have also been told that all the other guys on the drum line are weenies. But you didn't hear that from me, this is what I am told. :)

More updates to come soon, Florida State (ranked #5) is playing Oklahoma (#1) today and it's a mega huge game!

The Yearling

I finally finished The Yearling the other day, for my summer reading. It was a really great book, and very interesting if you love the outdoors. One of my plans over the summer was to become more attached to nature, and this definitely helped. It was an amazing book that was based on the beautiful scenery of central Florida and a little boy's views on all parts of life and his journey towards manhood. One of my favorite parts was when Jody and his dad Penny were hunting and happened to be at the perfect time and place to watch the whooping cranes dance right as the sun was going down. It tells about how they caught the beautiful birds doing what's natural to them, and they felt very honored to witness such things. Here's some of my favorite quotes from the book:

"Women ran in breeds, like dogs. Two women could say the same words and the meaning would not be the same, as the bark of two dogs, one menacing and the other friendly." (When Jody was around a very nice lady, very different from his mother.)

"Women were alright when the cooked good things to eat. The rest of the time they did nothing but make trouble." (I totally agree with this, but I wish I could tell Jody that he will quickly get over it, and the girls his age would quickly change to very nice people.)

Who'll Stop the Rain?

Recently, I've been spending a good deal of time at Nanny's house. Never a boring place, always plenty to eat, you never have to be invited, I just show up whenever I want. But anyhoo, today [Tasty Tuesday] we ate the most delicious okra and tomatoes, honey cornbread, shelled peas, and red velvet cake. It's the best cooking I ever have, at Nanny's. Afterward, Randi and Rhett and I played hide and go seek [on Rhett's request] which is also a great deal of fun. But, one of the even bigger highlights of today: I found the following albums while plundering through Daddy's desk in his old room. 

[The Rollings Stones album was Stinky Fingers, but there's no need to post the album art here.]

To say the least, I was overjoyed by these findings. I respect Dad a little bit more, knowing that he listened to great music. And I have more perspective when listening to this music, I can think how this is what he jammed to in his car with his friends or on the tailgate in a crowd of "cool guy" kind of people. And it's great to see him nod and say "that was my junior year, right there" whenever I listen to Bad Moon Rising. 

Wausau, FL

Today was Wausau's world-famous Possum Festival. Pretty epic and rather interesting, if I must say so. Kacey and I ran the 5K this morning. It was smoldering hot and the road was very hilly, but I finished first place in my age group and got a tiny trophy! Woo! 5Ks are just great and really fun, everyone should try them out! Also, along with the race, I've been seeing this ad in a lot of places, and it's a very big motivator for me. Man, working out is so great...


Here's a good jam for ya! [And you'll be fine if you don't watch the video, it's pretty odd...]

My Lovely Randi Jolene

Yesterday was my wonderful niece, Randi's 5th birthday. She happens to be my favorite 5-year-old niece. It being her birthday, I'd like to make another list on why I love her [like I did with Kacey and Alyssa]. I have absolutely no idea why I can't find a decent picture of her, seeing that all of our pictures consist of kids.

I love Randi Jo because:

• Randi is VERY silly
• Randi helps out with her mom around the house
• Randi loves to cook with me
• Randi loves her family so much, and lets them know she does on a regular basis
• Randi is very smart
• Randi is a grateful person
• Randi doesn't judge, she accepts you for who you are
• Randi and I have so much fun together, no matter what we're doing
• Randi has very creative names to call people [for example: poo poo dunder head]
• Randi loves discovering
• Randi wants to know more and more, and asks as much questions as she can
• Randi draws pictures for me
• Randi is very kind to everyone
• Randi thinks her and I are twin sisters and wants it to be like that for forever
• Randi likes to read
• Randi enjoys nature
• Randi will play in the rain
• Randi has good taste in music [at an early age, she likes Coldplay and the Beatles]
• Randi plays the piano
• Randi is a pretty good dancer
• Randi isn't prissy
• Randi loves all animals
• Randi will pick up gross things, such as bugs and lizards
• Randi always makes me feel great
• Randi appreciates the smallest and simplest things
• Randi always wants to tell me about her life
• Randi has given my betta fish the coolest name in the world: Poopchuck
• Randi wants to help with everything
• Randi loves to entertain
• Randi loves having her entire family together
• Randi is the coolest little girl I know, and I wont ever be able to list every sigle thing I like about her, she's just the greatest