An Update on My Life

Hello again, everyone! I hope you're having a great New Year's Eve, and that you have fun plans for tonight! Today I'm going to give you an update on some stuff in my life (I know, so interesting), which will hopefully be a bit of an excuse explanation for my recent radio silence.

1. School: I am really liking high school now, even though I kind of hate one of my classes. Nothing particularly interesting has been happening lately, unless you actually go to my school, though. It's mostly just been me drowning in homework, mostly for science, and, oddly, English. One cool thing I'm doing is making a French cooking show, which is my big project for, you guessed it, French. We're doing a cooking unit, so everyone has to make a video in the style of a cooking show showing how to make an actual French dish. Pretty cool, no? OK, on to more interesting things...
2. Extracurriculars: Marching band sadly ended on November 8, so I have nothing to do.... Obviously, I'm kidding! Winter guard started a week after that, so I've ridiculously busy with that. Our practices were from 7-10 on Tuesdays and Fridays, and 9-4 on Saturdays, until a week or two ago. Then we split into JV and Varsity (I'm a rookie, so I'm on JV) and now I'll be practicing 7-10 Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. So don't expect any kind of brilliant writing during the week! (That is, if you get anything at all...) I'm really excited about the stuff I get to do in our show but I'll probably do a whole post on that some other time.
3. Fandoms: I'm so behind on Doctor Who, since I still haven't finished Series 7.2, so I haven't seen the 50th or the Christmas special. But I'll catch up eventually! (Spring break, anyone?) I'm anxiously awaiting January 19, and also considering sneaking on to a plane to England so I can watch Sherlock on Wednesday. On an unrelated note, I will be hiding in a safe, nonspoilery section of the Internet until the 19th. I'm slowly working my way through Supernatural, and I'm now just a few episodes away from Season 7. I'll get there eventually, although it would help if I just didn't get any science homework until February.....
4. Other Stuff: I got all of John Green's books for Christmas, and I have to admit, I kind of freaked out. I read TFiOS in two hours on Christmas, and I started AAoK last night. I don't have a problem, I swear.

I hope that didn't bore you too much, and kudos to you if you actually read it all! Hopefully I'll be back with another post soon, but no promises, right?

A Very Stripy Wreath

*Note: This post was written AGES ago, sometime in November I think, and I never got around to finishing and posting it. I'm trying to get back on track after a crazy month, so I thought I should start by finally showing you guys this.*

First, I would like to express my amazement that "stripy" is a word. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog post.

Hello, everyone! I hope you enjoyed your week! Today I'm going to be telling you about a project I did most of a couple weekends ago (I actually have no idea, it might have been last week). It's sort of a Christmas present for my mom, but I'll probably give it to her early, so she can use it this year. Here's what the finished product looks like:

I basically used this tutorial from Occasionally Crafty, but as you can see, the original looks a lot better. Oh well. Mine has..... character? My strips were smaller, which may have had something to do with it.....

Basically, I just spent an hour or two back-watching all of Nerdy and Quirky's videos (she's really good, go check her out) and cutting all these strips.

In the end, I had a huge pile of white, red, green, and forest green strips to use. As you can see, I tried to keep the wreath base on the bag at all times, because I didn't feel like having to vacuum up styrofoam bits when I was done.

Then, I started laying out all the strips like this:

And then I finished.

Now let me tell you, this was a bad way to do it. Although the strips did stay on pretty well when I flipped it over, it was a pain to try to fold them all over, then trim them, then pin them.... Let's just say that if you do this, you should not follow my example. Find someone else to follow, preferably someone who knows what they're doing.

So that's it, all I did after that was add some ribbon to hang it, then give it to my mom. She liked it a lot more than I was expecting, which was nice, and it's still hanging on our front door (on the inside, she didn't want to risk the weather).

I hope you had a great holiday season, and that your new year is awesome, too! I'm not sure if I'll post before then, but if not, happy 2014!

Sign Here, Please!

Hello everyone! I'm having another crazy week (shocker), so today is going to be sort of random. Today, I am going to be talking about pens.

Yeah, you read that right. I'm going to spend this entire post discussing a writing utensil. Deal with it. First, ten facts you may not have known about pens (with some slightly sarcastic commentary):

1. The idea for the ballpoint pen was patented on October 30, 1888 by John Loudon.
2. 100 people die every year by choking on a ballpoint pen. (Here's a hint: don't put pens in your mouth!)
3. 125 ballpoint pens are sold every second.
4. 95% of the time someone gets a new pen, the first word they write is their name. (Especially if they're in school; we have to write our names on EVERYTHING!)
5. Each pen writes an average of 45,000 words (or at least they would, if we didn't always lose them).
6. The first ballpoint pen was invented by Laszio Biro in 1938.
7. People used quill pens to write for over 1000 years. (Now it's just wizards.)
8. Quill pens usually had to be replaced after about a week. (That's about the rate most people today lose regular pens!)
9. Most quill pens are made from goose feathers.
10. The pens the president of the United States uses to sign bills are never used again. (I have a suggestion for solving the deficit problem.....)

(Source for #1-4, source for #5 and 6, source for #7-10)

So now you know some useless things about pens! I used to be pretty anti-pen, since as a kid they were always associated with wrong answers (teachers corrected tests and such with pens), and I always though they were just messy. However, I am not allowed to write in pencil in science class, so I'm starting to get used to them, and I'm starting to like them a lot more. I especially like that I never have to sharpen them.... And also they come in pretty colors. 

This is probably one of the strangest posts I've ever written, and I have written some weird stuff. What do you think of pens? Have any interesting facts about them, or another writing utensil? Let me know in the comments! (And hopefully I'll have a less strange post sometime soon!)

Thoughts on Allegiant (Some Spoilers)

Hello everyone! I'm still off from school today, so I'm going to try to write a bunch of blog posts so I have some for when I'm busy. Last night I stayed up kind of late finishing Allegiant by Veronica Roth, so I'm going to talk about that right now.


Just a warning, I will be talking about spoilery things in this discussion. For the most part, I won't be using names, but if you're ultra-sensitive to spoilers (like me), you should probably read the book before you read this.


My best friend is completely obsessed with Divergent, and she got Allegiant the day it came out. She read it in a week, then asked me if I wanted to borrow it, with the warning that it was kind of a let-down after the first two. She also made a point of saying she hated the ending. I had also read some negative reviews online, and I think that gave me the advantage of lower expectations.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. There were times I laughed out loud, times I was on the edge of my metaphorical seat, and times that I cried. A lot. There were a lot of big ideas and emotions in this book, some of which I will discuss further below. I also thought it was interesting to be able to see the story from Tobias's point of view as well. Since there was so much involving Evelyn and Marcus, I think it was important to know what their son was thinking. (And also towards the end it was obvious why we really needed two story lines.) The one thing I didn't like was that some parts were a little overly predictable (especially to my friend).

So if you've read Divergent and Insurgent, you know that they both have a lot of death in them. It makes sense, seeing as they take place during war/rebellions/chaos. That trend is continued in this book, with the death of a significant(ish) character fairly early on, culminating with the deaths of two main characters towards the end. Of course, it's never fun when characters you like die, but I think the deaths were dealt with very well, and that they obviously weren't just random Veronica Roth Was Feeling Sadistic deaths. They each had a meaning, and that is the kind of death that I can handle and even sometimes enjoy reading about. (Sometimes. Like I said, I cried a lot last night, and I'm not really over it yet.)

There were a few other things that stood out to me while I was reading. First, the relationship between Tris and Tobias. I remember telling my friend (when I was at about page 50) that I was happy that they were obviously still in love, even if they had had some issues with honesty and trust in the past. As the story progressed, I think that remained the case, all the way to the end. Sure, they fought sometimes, sure, there was a major problem (again), but I really liked what Tris said about Tobias making her sharper. It wasn't a "boy saves girl" relationship, it was a "boy and girl make each other better" relationship, and I think that's the only kind of relationship worth having.

Another thing that I really got into was the relationship between Tris and Caleb. I have an older brother, and while he didn't betray my entire community or lead me to my execution, I was still able to relate to a lot of the emotions that Tris was feeling towards him. (I'm going to be honest here, most of my tears were during the last conversation between Tris and Caleb.) Tris was right, that wasn't why Caleb was doing it, and it just gave me a lot to think about.

Finally, I want to talk about some of the morals in the book. I thought the whole GD vs GP argument was very interesting, especially since, in one sense, I would be our society's equivalent of GP. I'm white, and that gives me a very basic advantage over people who aren't. I have always found this annoying and wrong, but it's still true. Hopefully other people that read Allegiant will be able to draw similar parallels and will see that in some ways, the prejudices in our society are just as ridiculous as the prejudices in theirs.

Whew! That's all I'm going to say about Allegiant, but I could probably write pages about it. I think I would give this book a 5 out of 5 for writing quality, and a 4 out of 5 for plot. It was an awesome book, and I would definitely recommend it! (Unless you haven't read the first two. You should read those first.)

Congratulations for making it the end of this extremely long post! Now I have a few questions for you, so leave your answers down in comments. Have you read Allegiant yet? If so, what did you think? Also, do you cry often when you read? If so, does that make you think the book is better or worse?

A Saturday Thing?

Hmm, maybe I'll just try to post every Saturday, as that seems to be working out right now! :)

My week was...... kind of weird. I don't actually remember most of the stuff that happened, which probably has something to do with, oh right, I'm going to States today! Ahh!!! It's sort of totally consuming me...


Ok, so I started writing that before I left, but then project and other craziness, so I'm finishing it now. (First I just want to say that I'm in my school's marching band, and we had our biggest competition of the season today. This should make more sense now.) I just got back from IHOP, which is a thing our band does after each competition. Since it was our last competition today, more people were there than have ever been, and we were all in very good moods. Why, you ask? Because at States today, we got..... straight 1s!! (For those of you that aren't music geeks, that means we got the highest score in every category: music, visuals, and overall effect.) That's right, seven different judges thought we were superior (the official name for a 1)! I am so excited, I don't even know how to put it into words, but believe me, it's an amazing feeling!

As I mentioned above, I had a little project craziness this morning, but now it's turned in (my science class does everything online, so we can have weird due dates and times) and I am free! Well, not quite, since our second quarter project is to get it ready to enter into the contest we're doing them for, but I am free for now! Since it's a four day weekend (remember to vote if you're eligible!) I am looking forward to sleeping a ton, catching up on Doctor Who, and reading Allegiant, which my best friend was kind enough to let me borrow. (She's just a little totally and completely obsessed with the Divergent series, and although she did say Allegiant was a bit of a disappointment, I am really enjoying it so far.)

Enjoy your long weekend if you have one, and I will talk to you soon!

This is Awkward

Hi everyone! So, this is a little awkward. You remember that time, over a month ago, when I thought I was going to have time to post here regularly? That was so adorable. As it turns out, high school is crazy, and busy, and a little hard, especially if you're in an advanced math and science program and you have five times as much homework as all of the other freshmen. And I am, and I do. Possibly even more, I'm not really sure.

Right now, my main source of freaking out is marching band. (That's mostly because we have our last normal competition today, before we go to States. Once that's over, it'll go back to science.) I sort of have a lot do before I leave, which is why I'm spending time on the Internet. That's just my kind of logic! We should do really well, but I'm a little worried that I'm going to mess up the visuals, and I still need to get my Spirit Buddy stuff ready, and I think he doesn't even like the stuff he's been giving me, and yeah. I'm a little stressed. But I've been coming up with reasons that none of that matters.... so I should be fine.

The other thing that is occupying my mind is this haunted house thing I did last night. You should know I do not like scary things, but one of my friends invited me, and I have no life outside band, so I said yes. I don't think I have ever been so scared in my entire life! I was with four other people (plus D's mom and little brothers), and I literally spent the entire time clutching R, which was okay, because she was clutching me back. It was terrifying, but a ton of fun!

I really do need to go get ready now, but fair warning, this may be the only post for a while. Again. Stay neeky!

I Lost THE GAME

First of all, I'd like to welcome you to Tales of a Teenage Neek! I don't really know how this is going to go, but basically, I'm just going to talk about my life and stuff that happens, and hopefully some people will read it and enjoy it. (Well, ideally, a lot of people will read this and enjoy it, but baby steps.)

If you're reading this, you're probably thinking, "Who is this person that wants me to read about their presumably boring life?" (Or more likely, "What the heck is a neek?") First, me. I am a 14 year old girl living in a sort of average-ish town. (By that I mean I only know about a third of the people that live on my street, and even less of the people in my neighborhood, but I don't live in a city. Actually, I don't even live in a town. I just looked up the official term for where I live, and according to Wikipedia, it's a census-designated place.)

That's sort of the basics of me, Kelsey. (Right, by the way, my name is Kelsey. You could have figured that out if you looked at the bottom of this post, or the stuff right before the parentheses, but I'm telling you now anyway.) However, there are some other things that you should be warned about know about me. So here's a list:

1. As the title of this blog suggests, I am a huge neek. And I'm okay with it, hence why I'm telling the entire Internet. (Funny(ish) story: Earlier today, I was trying to come up with a name for this, and I was trying to figure out if I should call myself a geek or a nerd. I ended up deciding that I'm not really more of one than the other, so I wanted to combine them. I picked neek, then I googled it to make sure it wasn't something weird or dirty, and I discovered that it's actually a thing. It has an entry at Urban Dictionary and everything. Which definitely means it's legit.)
2. This is not the first blog I've had. I started a blog called Sudsy Jellyfish about two years ago, and I sort of sporadically updated it until early July of this year. I decided I wanted a change of pace, and I wanted to change what I blog about, so this happened. Don't worry, there's really nothing important on there, so unless you like the things in #3, there's not really any reason to go there.
3. I do things. Yeah. Shocker. More specifically, I knit, crochet, sew (hand and machine), cross stitch, and other assorted little crafty things. I also read a ton, and write, and enjoy the strange world that is the Internet. 
4. I lost the game. And now you have, too. If you're confused, go watch this video. Then watch all the rest of their videos (which I am in the process of doing), and become a huge nerdfighter and your life will be so much better. Seriously.

So now you know a little bit about me, and hopefully you'll stick around for more of the craziness that is me! Tomorrow is my first day of high school (gack!) so I don't know how much I'll be posting this week, but maybe tomorrow I'll have some interesting high school thing to talk about. I'm going to go double-check my backpack now (again).