Today, stuff happened. Nothing monumental or anything. I didn't win the lottery or meet my future husband or anything. But I ate Thai food. Then Trisha's car failed at life and her mom came to put in new brake fluid, which did nothing to solve the problem so she called AAA. Meanwhile, Thai food had been lunch at like 1:30, and it was now 4:30, and Chris demanded my presence at her house. Well, I say that like it was forceful, but she's too cute to be forceful. I guess some people were over there and I HAD said I would go, but I was a little bit stranded. So then we took the car Trisha's mom had come in, which was actually her father's car, and yeah it was complicated but basically the only functional car that Trish is supposed to drive got taken on a road trip by her dad and her brother, so us taking this one was kind of a no-no. She dropped me off at Chris's house and junkfoodage and videogamage ensued. And stickerage!! Oh my god she has soooo many stickers! Sparkly ones, squishy ones, and all of them adorable because they were Japanese. So we put them all over EVERYTHING. Phones, iPods.... My iPod now looks like this:




Oh and at Chris's house I discovered some wonderful items of life. She had a Picchu soap dispenser. A SOAP dispenser! I want one! And a Totoro washcloth hanging up in the bathroom. Send me to Japan, please.

Then I got Rob to drop me off at Trisha's house for our "unbirthday" celebration. My birthday is in 2 weeks, but this will cover it since we won't see each other again before then. So I got birthday presents AND unbirthday presents. AWESOME! And I got her this splitter from the Apple store. It lets you plug in up to 5 pairs of headphones, or a second iPod so you can create mixes, which is one of her favorite things to do. So that was her unbirthday present. She made me a 30-page coloring book using scenes from The Academy Is... Television. It's fantastic. And she crocheted me a purple penguin named Mochi and bought me Japanese candy and a sweet keychain and wallet from Korea. She's so elaborate about birthdays. I'm totally not that cool. I don't have a ton of money OR time on my hands, which makes things difficult. But I shall remember that she deserves an awesome birthday present this year. Something homemade, I think. Like that Anime card I promised her forever ago. All right, way to be a lamesauce friend, Mandii. -_-

My sister and I went to Derby Street so I could buy a book for school and an unbirthday present for Trisha. Then my dad came and met up with us for dinner. On the way home, my dad was ahead of me most of the way. I was glad of this because I hate driving in front of my parents. I feel like they'll judge my driving. He was going kind of fast, and I started to worry that he was testing me, like if I kept up then he'd lecture me about going too fast or something. Finally I lost him at a stop sign and I just sort of let him get ahead. But then I went by this turn-around spot by the side of the road, and he was pulled over in it, waiting for me to go by. I was like ohhhhh shoot. Now he's going to follow me to make sure I don't speed. *Slows down even more.* Then I lost him, and I started to wonder what exactly he thought he was doing.

Turns out he noticed the car behind me tailing me. I didn't, because I'm used to people being that close behind me, since I drive relatively slow for a Massachusetts driver. Well, he started tailing that person so close that the guy pulled over and got out of the car and started yelling at him. My dad was like "Oh yeah? Well YOU were tailgating that person." The guy kept denying it. My dad finally goes, "Look, that's my daughter, all right? And if I have to get out of this car, it will not be pretty. So get in your car, and drive away, and stop tailing people."

Recap of the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival.....

First of all, I clearly suck at driving on the highway. I got lost like 5 times by either not taking the right exit, or taking an exit I wasn't supposed to because instead of just the right lane becoming an off-ramp, TWO lanes turned into the off-ramp. But we still got there really early enough to wait in line in the scorching sun with all the truly individual metal-heads wearing their trip pants and chains. I counted a grand total of ONE scene kid, ONE emo, and a few randoms who looked too normal to even be in attendance.

We finally got in, and someone gave us a line-up of all the bands playing all the stages. First of all, this thing was clearly NOT as big a deal as the Warped Tour. There were only 3 stages, and they rotated the bands so that if you were there, congratualtions, you got to listen to every band play whether you liked them or not! Unfortunately for us, the first seven or eight bands were terrible. We put in our earplugs but honestly it didn't help that much. The volume blew Warped Tour out of the water. I felt worse for Robby because at least I occasionally listen to music that involves screaming, but he can't stand it, and those first 3-4 hours were entirely screaming. We amused ourselves by watching people do pull-ups at the Marines stand and watching about three minutes of BMX biking.

Then we got excited because we heard a melody line, and we went to go watch that band for a little while. I think they were called Black Tide. Then some replicas of Limozeen (or Kiss, according to Robby) played at the next stage, and that was also a fun set. I was surprised to see that the crowds were not as out of control as I had expected. I noticed a really intense pit going on during the very first set, before we had figured out how bad the music was going to be, but even during UnderOath, not much was happening, and my roommate from last year told me their crowds are insane. I was excited to get to see Aaron Gillespie (drummer of UnderOath). He had used tape to write "Pig" on his bass drum (his nickname is Piglet). This made me laugh. The good thing is, I can cross seeing them off my list of things to do before I die. Sadly, I can also tell everyone else I know to cross it off of their lists of things to do before they die, because it was a terrible set. Maybe if you're a fan of that stuff... I really only know like 2 1/2 songs by them, and they didnt play any of those. The other thing we discovered during those few sets, is that Rockstar Energy Drink smells TERRIBLE, especially in large, slightly-warm quantities. Urrrrgghhh.

Dragonforce was nothing special in concert; they basically sounded like their recordings but with less effects on the voice. I mean, the fact that they kept up their relentless pace was impressive, but the show was nothing thrilling. What I really wanted was that thumping bass feel you get in your gut when you're at a show. I had felt it a little bit when Robby cranked their music the day we decided to buy tickets, but the show disappointed me. Maybe because the GA tix i bought were only for the lawn, which is as far away as you can get from the stage. No wonder I couldn't feel the bass.

Surprisingly, Disturbed played the best set of the day. We left halfway through it to miss the traffic, but we got a good taste of it. They really got the crowd going. I didn't know any of their songs, but it was entertaining because they brought the singer out on a stretcher or something like that. The lighting was also very impressive. It meant that even though we were too far away to see the band's faces, which is a rarity for me, it still gave the vibe of being at a show. I would've stayed for the whole set if not for the memory of how bad traffic was getting out of the Warped Tour. There was NO ONE leaving as early as us, probably because everyone went to see Slipknot, the last band to play. I couldn't even FIND the way out because nobody bothered to put up any arrows to direct people out of the parking lot. Dumb.

Today was my last day at work. Robby managed to break a fluorescent lightbulb on his head and we/his dad spilled a ton of ink in this bin. That was all right since we were trashing the ink AND the bin, but I was really worried about Robby's head. I told him that if he falls asleep while we're at Gill's tonight, I'm waking him up every couple hours to ask him things like his phone number and address to make sure he doesn't have a concussion. But he just got mad at me. Gah, boys. Anyway, this will be his first all-nighter, so I hope it turns out to be fun. It's raining now but I'm hoping it'll let up and we can go to the beach or the playground. We're gonna work on our stories, play video games (DDR, GH, or Pokemon Snap), make pizzookie (hopefully! *fat kid at heart*), and pay an early-morning visit to the Dunkies down the street. Should be good times. But schneckle-free: Robby is very fond of his personal bubble.