Back to to the old drawing board . . . literally.

As much as I'm ashamed to admit it, I've been kind of . . . well . . . bored these past couple of weeks. I needed something that I could do non-stop for hours and never get bored, something that I love to do . . . I tried to think of it, but I just couldn't figure it out . . .

Then it hit me. I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner.

Drawing. Hel-lo . . . Drawing is my life. I can do it non-stop for hours, and never get bored, and it's something that I love to do. So, hanging on to the slimmest of chances that someone who reads this blog cares even the tiniest bit about what I've been doing all day, here it is:

So many of my very favorite things all collected into one piece of art: drawing, playing the piano, and little children. Like it?

No way.

I can think of 3 general reasons why someone might say the words "no way":

A) Something really awesome just happened. I'm going to The Olive Garden with my sister this Friday. No way!

B) You are refusing to do what someone wants you to do. "Hey, I dare you to go and ask your neighbor for a roll of toilet paper." "No way!"

C) You are someone from the 80's and you say "no way" after you hear anything remotely interesting. "Dude, look, there's a cat stuck in that tree." "Dude, no way." "Dude, you're shoe's untied." "Oh, no way, dude, thanks." You get the picture.

This week I think I've said, "No way," about a 100 times for all 3 of these reasons.

The story goes like this. There's a piano in our garage that I play on all the time (even though we have a baby grand piano in our living room and another piano in the garage as well). I love it. This is going to sound weird, but when you play on a piano as much as I play on this piano in our garage you get . . . kind of attatched to it. So Mom and I had a genius idea.

We move the piano up to my room, and paint it! Genius, right?

One problem.

The piano actually belongs to my uncle Paul. It's been at my grandpa's house for a while, and before we got our grand piano and our other piano moved into our house, we had to use Paul's piano. So it's been at our house for about a year.

I realized that, technically, in order to paint the piano, I had to own it. So my dad called called Paul up on the phone for me.

Me: Hey, Paul.
Uncle Paul: Hey, Nicole, how's it going?
Me: Good, good. Say, I really like your piano. And I was wondering if I could buy it from you?
Uncle Paul: Absolutely. Hmmm . . . How much you got?
Me: Well . . . (gets quieter) . . . ten bucks.
Brief pause.
Uncle Paul: Tell you what. You don't have to pay me any money. Here's what you gotta do: send me a video of you playing a song on my piano.

No way! This was going to be a piece of cake.

Uncle Paul: Wait, hang on. The song you've got to play has to be a rock song by an all-guy's rock band, AND . . . (pauses dramatically). . . you have to spike your hair straight up while you play it. Straight up.

No way. No way, am I doing that. No. Way.

I handed the phone to Dad, absolutely speechless. I begged Dad to talk him out of it. There had to be some other way I would get this piano. But this is my dad we're talking about. He said the magic words, "Okay, deal!" And he hung up the phone.

No way.

Oh, yes way, Nicole. You want this piano. And you are going to do anything you have to do to get it.

So now I am in the process of making a video of me playing some songs on Paul's piano, dressed up in some pretty awesome costumes, and not caring a bit about how weird I look. (Formal dresses and moustaches do not go well together.)

So what do people from the 80's have to do with any of this? That, my friends, is a surprise. Trust me, I will have a big, long post about it soon enough. Stay tuned.

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A School Year of Memories

     What an awesome school year. I've made so many wonderful friends, my teachers are amazing people who have taught me so much, and the experiences I've had at this school were beyond memorable.
     I now know plenty of information that I just know I'm going to need sometime in my future career. I know that the Kwakiutl Indian tribe rubbed fish oil on their clothes during the winter, Albert Einstein played in a quartet when he moved to Princeton, New Jersey in 1940, I learned that Neils Bohr recieved a coded message on a piece of microfilm hidden in a key when he was in Denmark during WWII, I've watched just about every Richard Feynman video on YouTube there is about physics, and I've seen watermelons and cantaloupes shot from a catapult being operated by a man in with a fake British accent. Yup. This was a great year.
     If it wasn't for this school, there is no way I would be the person I am now.

     The last day was . . . well . . . the only way I can describe it is bitter-sweet. I couldn't have made it through the year without all the great people I've met, and now I won't get to see them for a whole three months. We celebrated the end of the year by eating pizza and Twinkies and laughing our heads off at nothing at all.

     1:00 came, and I couldn't stop giving everybody hugs and telling them how much I'd miss them and how they'd better email me every day. I received a friendly farewell slap-on-the-face from Kaity (don't ask), and nobody needs to know that I cried right along with Jasmine when we said goodbye to everyone.

    

     But, even though I will miss everybody terribly, I think I'm ready for summer. Now only one question remains unanswered:

WHY IN THE WORLD IS IT RAINING OUTSIDE?!