I went wedding dress shopping with my mom this afternoon. It was pretty fun - she found a really nice one that looks beautiful on her, and it was on really good sale, so that was good. My sister and I also got our bridesmaid dresses - here's mine and hers is the little girl version. It's really beautiful, I like it a lot. My mom's going to hold red roses to match, while my sister and I hold white roses, and it'll be really pretty.

The best part of the dress shopping, however, was the radio station, which seemed to be tuned to "Bandom" - they played Arms Race, Teenagers, Thnks Fr Th Mmrs, and Misery Business. It was AWESOME. My sister and I just laughed every time a new one came on and sang along happily \o/

I did that career meme, and number 1 was an oceanographer, lol, what? Most of my choices were engineers of some kind, though 8 was a chemist, so hurrah. 7 was a tailor though, which, wtf? Haha.

I LEAVE FOR DUBLIN IN FIVE DAYS. WHAT? WHAT? NO SERIOUSLY. *minorly panicking* I sort of started the packing nonsense. I tried out those vacuum packing bags, and they're not nearly as miraculous as the infomercial makes them out to be, lol. But still, they definitely make things a lot more manageable. I also had to figure out what DVDs I was bringing with me. I decided to take the TV seasons out of their boxes and put them in my big DVD booklet, which makes me sadfaced because the boxes are so pretty, AND they have the episode guides. Sigh. But they're too bulky so, you know. I ended up being able to fit most of the essential stuff in there, though I had to choose just one season of Angel and two of Buffy. My Atlantis DVDs are still with my cousins, who wanted to burn them, which just makes me sad in my face :( But I'll be buying S3 on Tuesday, HURRAH, so that will make up for it.

FIVE. DAYS. *flail*

(The biggest obstacle is leaving my father at the airport. I'm going to cry so hard, I know it, and I'll be in public too.)

Today is an incredibly bizarre day. Let's bullet point!

• I went to bed at 4:30 because I just couldn't stop watching all the VMA videos of our wretched, precious boys. UGH SO MANY HEARTS.
  
• My body then proceeded to wake me up at 9 AM with a horrifically sore throat. That's right, 4.5 hours of sleep. BUT I'M NOT TIRED. It's so bizarre. I drank like a gallon of orange juice and my throat no longer hurts, which is good.
  
• The gynecologist called - pap smear was negative, but urine culture showed a urinary tract infection. My first one! Oh joy! *makes face*
  
• Karyn Convey from the international office at F&M called to tell me that she'd spoken to the Butler people, who run a study abroad program at Trinity (you may recognize the name from the list of study abroad programs that got subpoenaed after the recent New York Times article :P) and THEY HAVE A FREE SPOT IN THEIR HOUSING!!!! She didn't know many details, so I called the Butler person and he got me the specifics, and OH MY GOD this is fucking IDEAL. It's a gorgeous new-ish apartment complex in the heart of Dublin (Click! IT'S GORGEOUS!!!!), a ten minute walk from Trinity. I'd have a double room in a mini-suite with one other double, so three suitemates total. It has a kitchen and a lounge. The price Butler's charging is *so* much less than anything I could get in Dublin (about $1000 a month) and it's this amazing building with fitness facilities and a quiet area away from the bustle of Dublin proper, and it's just. A DREAM COME TRUE. The only drawback (and it's a kind of big one) is that the building doesn't have internet (?!? I do not understand) soooo, you know. However, being so close to Trinity's campus, with its wireless network, I don't think that will be a terrible hardship. It's certainly not worth passing up this opportunity and spending like a million dollars more on something not nearly as awesome. SO. I HAVE A PLACE TO LIVE OMG YAAAAAAAAY.

God that is such an incredible weight off. The main reason I was getting nervous was because of the uncertainty of where I was gonna lay my head. But then this happened! YAYE x A MILLION.

I'm STILL all about the VMA vids. A-MAZ-ING. <3333

It's September 6th in my timezone, so Happy Birthday enoughoflove!!! You are such an incredibly generous, sweet, selfless person - I will never forget how you called me and held up your phone so I could listen to Kane live while I was drunk for the first time in my life, in Nashville, at Wincon. Top 10 experiences of my life? Most definitely. And then you got his autograph for me, and you didn't even know me that well, and I just. It was so incredibly sweet of you. I'm really glad the fandom tides have conspired to give us a common passionate love of those wee Panic! boys, because I have really enjoyed getting to know you better even as we squeed our brains out over those gaymos ;) I know you're going through a tough time right now, but you are so strong and I know you'll make it through this. *hugs tight* I hope you have a good day, sweetie! Ryro offers you a pretty flower - AND his pretty mouth. *g*

Let's see, brief update before I collapse in bed.

The gynecologist day was THE DAY FROM HELL. I went to where my mom said the gynecologist's was, only to find they had moved - to across the street from my house. Yup. Great sense of humor, life.

However, today was lovely to make up for it! I went to the bank and worked out how I'm going to transfer my money to Ireland. Then I went SHOPPING at Kohl's (which totally owns me, I fucking love that store) and spent a mere 85 bucks on four tops (two of which are hoodie type things, uh. yeah.), a pair of pants, and a NEWSBOY CAP which is the most adorable thing in the whole world and I'm passionately in love with it. It looks a loooot like Ryan's, and um. YAY! Pictures will be forthcoming.

Also, my new charger arrived ALREADY! I got the email that it was shipped LAST NIGHT, and it arrived at my dad's house today! ROCK ON, APPLE. Way to redeem yourself. I HAVE MY LAPTOP BACK YAAAAAY. So I had to drive to my dad's to pick it up so I'd have the charger when I go down to Lancaster to visit my friends at college tomorrow.

My mom let me borrow her Saab.

Let me just say that MCR is a fucking amazing soundtrack for ripping down a twisty two lane highway at night at 110 MPH. Seriously. That car? Holy shit. You guys might not know this, but I have a thing for cars, in that get-a-tingle-down-low when I hear a particularly growly one kind of way. And this car has a turbo on the accelerator that um. Um. Kind of destroys me just a little bit. Ohgod. Um. I'll stop before I embarass myself any more. *weak flail*

And with that I bid thee bonne nuit. *flees*

I'm laptopless AGAIN! Not on life, fer srs. It's that stupid charger - it started smelling like hot metal, and the plastic around the edges of the tear was getting browned and even smoking a little, um. So I went into the Apple Store to try to get a replacement. Good news: they'll supposedly give me a new one for free, because the problem wasn't my fault \o/ Bad news: they didn't have one in stock *mope* I have to call Apple Care and get one sent to me. Sigh! LIFE HARD.

Here, have a meme! This seems like a cool way to get some snippets of info about my dear flisties:

HI! You can call me ________. I'm from ______ and my current obsessions include __________. I'm sure I friended you because ________ but it could be because _________.

Fill it out, please! :D

I LOVE THIS SONG. *rocks out*

Did I manage to miss some shiny new bandom canon, or did we just have a slow day?

I don't quite understand why bandom is looked at with such disdain by so many people. Never before have I felt so supremely judged simply for taking part in a specific fandom. I don't see this one as any different from any of my others - in fact, it's kind of Jsquared to the nth power. And I thought we were all gay friendly around here? So what is it about boys acting somewhat feminine that freaks people out? I just don't understand it. Does the music somehow not come up to some obscure standards? Are they too young? What is it that makes this fandom the subject of so much persecution? I've never been reluctant to post about a fannish obsession of mine before, and I kind of hate it.

This is just another set of boys. Another set of boys who love each other a lot, a lot a lot, and aren't afraid to show it. Another set of boys to write beautiful, funny, heartbreaking, gorgeous stories about, stories that reach out and touch you. Another set of boys to ogle and drool over and giggle at and flail about every time there's a new picture of them completely ignoring the concept of personal space. It's just more boys. So why does fandom at large make me feel ashamed?

I just had to get that out of my system. Moving on!

I did a lot of shopping today, and it was fun! My mom's fiance got me a $30 gift certificate to Borders, so I went and shop shop shopped, it was so much fun! I ended up with quite the haul:

• "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace - This author came to give a talk at my school last year, and oh, he was wonderful. I read one of his short stories before he came and he's so FUNNY! Incisively brilliant, too. This is his long novel and it was at a really good price so I couldn't resist.
  
• "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman - I've been wanting to read this one for a long time. I loved lyra_wing's Supernatural AU based on this, so I bet I'm going to love the book too.
  
• "Invisible Monsters" by Chuck Palahniuk - Damn you Ryan Ross! I probably won't like it, but who knows.
  
• Sci Fi magazine, with Katee Sackhoff on the cover (KATEE! ♥) and containing the fall TV preview.

Yay! So essentially I'm set on reading material for the next, oh, year. I've been reading so slowly lately, sigh.

I also took my sister to Staples for her school supplies, and then to various clothing stores for school clothes. I got myself some cute long sleeved things for Ireland, including a couple hooded tops because hoods = love. Even if they're not quite hoodies *g* So that was a fun afternoon, just us girls!

( Decaydance Fest SQUEE, move along if you don't give a damn )

Well that's certainly enough out of me, so shutting up now.

Just arrived home after a 14 hour car trip from Michigan to Connecticut! *flops* Should have taken 11 hours, but multiple obstacles were encountered on the way. Endless rain, just hard enough to be dangerous and miserable; at least four major accidents that we either saw the aftermath of, heard of, or saw emergency vehicles heading towards, and this is just in our proximity along >600 miles of road; a very crowded rest stop for lunch; two extended traffic jams, one of which lasted an entire hour and was caused by one of aforementioned accidents; three 10 mile sections of road squished down to one lane due to paving; a crowded Perkins for dinner due to everyone being starving after aforementioned traffic jam; and a brother so obnoxious I wanted to strangle him and had to resort to headphones. The last perhaps did not extend the length of the drive, but it certainly made it FEEL longer :P

All things considered, however, this pales in comparison to the time a few years back that the same drive took us 20 hours due to a fucking insane blizzard that stopped us dead for hours at a time. Yeah. That was less than fun.

However, I am now home safe, in my verreh own bed, wearing my ridonkulously adorable "Penguins! at the Disco" t-shirt and sort of flailing around trying to catch up with the internets in some way. I will make a post with actual content.... soon!

Hey guys, guess what - I'm TWENTY! :O

Heehee. Night!

Trinity sent me a HUGE email full of SO MUCH INFORMATION, oh my god! Finally! I just spent like half an hour reading the whole thing and taking important notes - like, by the way, I need to get a European Health Insurance Card! Here! Before I leave! There's so many things to take care of, but at the same time it sounds like there's a great support system in place and I won't be left dangling at any point. Something else I found out is that I AM allowed to work, up to 20 hours a week, which is great because I might need to, to supplement my funds.

Another fun tidbit of information is that I need to register with the Garda National Immigration Bureau within a month of arriving, and this requires a 100 Euro fee and a minimum 1000 Euro balance in an Irish bank account! Yikes!

They also apparently JUST finished a $16 million sports facility, complete with Martial Arts center, a climbing wall, Mind & Body center, in addition to all the normal weights and fitness stuff. SWEET! They offer all kinds of classes too, which I'm really hoping to take advantage of.

In summary: I AM SO FREAKING EXCITED. No really. I can't contain myself any longer! *flails crazily* This is going to be the most amazing year ever, holy crap :D

I was just looking at my profile and I noticed... I have exactly 300 people friended! Whee! And coincidentally enough, this is exactly my 1,400th post! That's... a lot of babbling *g*

I'll take this moment to say how much I appreciate all of you. I've found such an incredible community here, and met some of my best friends in the whole world, and I'm so grateful for everything LJ has brought to me. Even amidst all the kerfluffle (which I have completely mixed feelings on, sigh) my love for LJ, and the people I know here, is boundless. I love you all! *hugs tight*

Completely unrelatedly, my 5 year old cousin is currently watching Power Rangers, and it's pretty much hilarious. This seems to be some kind of turning point episode, so they've been recapping some history, and they showed the original Power Rangers that I watched when I was a kid. Tommy was sooooo hot, guys, and I adored Kimberly! *g* I am very amused.

Update on my real life shenanigans! I spent Wednesday with my friend Rob and we had an AWESOME time. He lives on the Jersey shore, way down on the south tip (Cape May and Stone Harbor, for anyone who knows the area) and the beaches down there are so nice. We had a 95 degree day and we went KAYAKING IN THE OCEAN \o/ It was so much FUN. I was kind of scared at first, but I sucked it up and paddled out there like a pro, hee. I got flipped several times by the waves, but I managed to catch some fun rides! The most fun was just kinda goofin around out there, the kayaks were so fun to be in and it was such a gorgeous day to be in the ocean. My biceps are still feeling it, hee, and I've got purple bruises all over my shins from the boat bumping into them, but it was totally worth it. We had a blast.

Then we saw Bourne Ultimatum on the BEACH! They had a huge inflatable screen and you just sat in beach chairs on the sand and it was amazing. There was a lovely breeze off the ocean and I played with the sand with my feet the whole time :D And the movie was INCREDIBLE, oh my god. I never had a super strong reaction to the first two (I don't even think I've seen the whole of Supremacy) but this was just GREAT. It felt really human and grounded and I followed it really easily, understanding who everyone was and their motivations and what was going on, and I really appreciated that. Plus? Matt Damon is hot and kicks ass \o/ Win! Yay! Definitely go see it.

THEN we walked around on the boardwalk, rode an old rattling wooden rollercoaster, peeked inside an awesome music poster and tshirt store which was OUT of Panic! posters, thank god, or he would have had to drag me away. There was lots of Fall Out Boy though, and a bit of whimpering on my part, but I managed to stay strong *g*

All in all it was a super fun visit, and I'm so glad I went. He's one of my two best friends at college and I'm really going to miss him while I'm in Ireland. This was like our last hurrah before I jet away! It's a really great memory to have with him though, so yay for that.

Then I came home! Four hours up the Garden State Parkway = about 10 dollars, including the Tappan Zee Bridge toll. I have zero change left, haha. But the drive was fine (if HOT, gah) and now I'm home! With my daddy, yay! My brother is being something of a dick and I already want to strangle him, but whatever, par for the course.

Tomorrow I set out AGAIN. We're driving up to Michigan (10 hour drive!) to chill with various familial types. I'm SO SO excited to see my cousins again, the ones that I lived with last summer. I've missed them! So that's exciting, if a bit overwhelming after all my traveling!

On the fandom side of things, I've just been reading lots of super fun Panic! fic. I don't think they could be any cuter if they TRIED. Oh boys. There's also the adorable virgin fest vids and pics and yep, still super fabulous! ♥ Also, I GOT MY METALLICAR TSHIRT! I ordered it from Glarkware aaages ago and it arrived while I was in Lancaster. It's black and pretty and the Metallicar has one of her headlights busted like in the pilot and it's AWESOME. Yaye!

Well that's enough rambling from me! Off to finish organizing packing, which is SO HARD when things you want are scattered through your own car in boxes and bags *facepalm*

Quoth a friend of a friend: "Irish guys in clubs are EXTREMELY forward, so don't be shocked if you meet someone and three minutes later he's sticking his tongue down your throat (Right, how can you NOT be shocked by that? But making peace with the fact now might at least make it a bit less jarring later)."

HAHAHA. This is simultaneously terrifying, hilarious, and AWESOME. Oh god. *miniflail*

I had a whole post written up about TAI and Panic!'s lyrics in the songs "Black Mamba" and "London Beckoned...", and how they both approach the whole "fuck critics" idea but Panic! pulls it off with so much more pizzaz and awesome, at least in terms of the words, but then I lost it and I don't feel like writing it up again. Suffice to say, I love Ryan Ross's words, they're so original and clever and snarky, and William Beckett is a ridiculous human being whom I love despite myself. I'll just share this, some of my favorite lines from Panic!'s song:

I'm burning and I'm blacking my lungs
Boy you know it feels good with fire back on your tongue
If you talk you better walk you better back your shit up
with more than good hooks while you're all under the gun

Oh Ryan Ross. ILU.

I spent all last night making PANIC! ICONS! Whee! Of course, it kept me up til 3:30 AM, DOH, but dude. So fun. They're all photogenic and adorable and in love with each other! It's extremely conducive to a million icons! This is my favorite one yet, I LOVE THAT PICTURE. *draws pink sparkly hearts* Boooys!

Of course this gives me a problem, because, well, when I make icons I want to upload ALL of them because I love them so much, and I've already got FIFTEEN Panic! icons uploaded as a result, but that means something else has to go! I've got 112 icon slots and want to use 1000. LIFE HARD. I've still got a gazillion SPN icons (I had over 70 at one point! jesus) because there are so many I can't bear to part with, but those have been suffering too. Sigh sigh! *g*

I now have a hebrew_hernia!! We just watched the SGA ep Inferno, because she accidentally skipped it in her S2 watching, and now we're going to watch A Dog's Breakfast! YAY HEWLETTS!!! Then later perhaps we'll watch TAO OF RODNEY or something almost as excellent :D

In honor of Monica's visit, I give you today a dose of CHUCK.

HI CHUCK HI! *beams*