This Morning At The White House...

At 9 o'clock this morning, my alarm rang, alerting me that it was indeed time to get up. Today I was going on a private tour of the West Wing. This is the wing of the White House that contains the press briefing room and the Oval Office. My dad's friend's husband does technology stuff for the government so he was able to give us a tour. The first bit was kinda boring. We toured a really big building (which I cannot remember the name of) where most government employees work. The most exciting part of that was getting little boxes of M&M's that are available to the president when he flies on Air Force One. The M&M's are red, white, and blue :) Finally we went to the West Wing, which is surprisingly small. It was packed with Secret Service agents because the president was in a meeting. Which as cool as it sounds, was not so cool because we couldn't go into any of the cool rooms. We wandered around for a little while. We kept checking to see if the Oval Office was empty and on our second loop around we heard Obama talking to someone else in the conference! Which may not seem like much, but trust me, it was pretty exciting. After taking some pictures in front of the West Wing, we wandered into the press briefing room. This is the room where all the reporters go when the president announces something. You may have seen it on TV. It is way smaller than it appears on TV. There are probably 100 chairs; all of which are labeled with the name of a magazine, newspaper, news channel, or radio station. So whenever a newspaper or radio station sends in a representative, they know where to sit. I sat in the Washington Post chair. My mom sat in the NPR chair. Looking out the window, our Mr. Hunt (0ur guide) noticed the snipers walking around, which apparently means that the president is going to move locations fairly soon. Our loitering was paying off! We walked back to the hallway with the doors that opened into the famous Rose Garden. There's a walkway from the door where we were standing to another door that leads to the main part of the White House. Mr. Hunt said that the president would probably walk down the corridoor if he was going into the White House. We waited for about 10 more min. As the time elapsed, about 10 different secret service agents walked down the corridoor in golf clothes, talking about golf. Well it is sunday! Then finally we saw the Obama walk down the walkway. He turned and waved to us. He was like 20 feet away! It was basicly the most awesome thing ever.

Music Review: The Sounds

At most concerts you go to there will be a few opening bands that you've never heard of. Some are good. Some suck. Most of the time you're not really paying attention. You're buying merch, or you're texting, or you're trying to find the people you were gonna meet up with. But once in a while you hear a band that really captures your attention.
Two sundays ago, I was at the No Doubt/Paramore concert at Nissan Pavilion. This band that I'd never heard of came on to play. They said their name was The Sounds and that they were from Sweden. They took off playing and suddenly, you were swept up in their edgy, 80's punk, disco sound. The lead singer's (Maja Ivarsson) smoky, slightly caustic voice really makes their music interesting. Her powerful, but easily understood lyrics really suck you in and once you get them trapped in your head, you're doomed. Even with their slightly dark sound, the keyboard adds just enough pop to make you want to get up and dance.
If you like alternative European bands like Franz Ferdinand, definetly check out The Sounds new album- Crossing The Rubicon.
Here's the link to my favorite song by them, "Painted By Numbers"

Excellent Quotes From the Day Before the Greatest Day Ever

Today I'm going to see No Doubt and Paramore with my friend Elena at Nissan Pavilion. And It's going to be the best day ever. She slept over last night so it was technically the day before the greatest day ever. Anywho we watched Harry Potter and got kinda tired and these are some of the quotes from our bizarre evening:

"It's ridonculous!" ~Elena
"Latex+Midget= Goblin" ~Allison
"I wish there was a piano on my shoulder." ~Elena
"Is there a rental movie graveyard?" ~Allison

MYSTERY SOLVED: WHY SHAMPOO IS CALLED SHAMPOO

Haven't you always wondered why shampoo was called shampoo? It's such an odd word. Well folks, I've solved the mystery. Recently, I began reading the novel Born Confused by Tanuja Desai Hidier. It's an excellent book to read if your feeling philosophical. It doesn't have much action or drama persay, but it makes excellent points about culture, religion, relationships with people, and just life in general. If you get the chance, read it.

Anywho, in one part of the book, they mention where the word "shampoo" derived from. Shampoo was comes from the Hindi word champee, meaning "massage". It makes sense!

German has been fun this year. I have a remarkably small class of only 8 people. We've all developed our "german personalities" which we use to make fun of each other. For example, Matt always forgets the "verb second rule." Eric is nicknamed "interrupting eric". Adrian is also known as Herr Schmetterlich (Mr. Butterfly). Alex is "Mr. German". I just tend to annoy the crap out of everyone by shushing them constantly. What can I say... I hate it when people interrupt! It makes Herr Sipe angry....

The Disasterous Dance Performance

Friday was the second of three recitals we do every year for my dance studio. Usually after the first one, everything goes smoothly because all the kinks have been worked out. That's what you'd think. WRONG! It was impressive how many things did not happen they way the should have. I will now list them.
1. A dancer changed into the wrong costume and then was late getting on stage because she had to change into the correct one in about 3 seconds

2. My headpiece fell off

3. Charlotte's headpiece fell off

4. Our lead dancer messed up (although she did it very smoothly and covered it up nicely)

5. They raised the curtain while my teacher was running across the stage

6. A piece of scenery was knocked over

7. The techies forgot to turn on the stage lights before they ran the music so during one of the dances, everyone ran out in complete darkness

8.Alexa's costume came undone on stage LOL.

I'm sure there's one of two more, I've simply forgotten them. Despite all this we enjoyed ourselves and managed to laugh about it. Needless to say, our third performance was perfect. Damn that giant checklist in the sky (I'm referring to my theory that there is a giant checklist in the sky of things that can go wrong in any situation. When all the things are checked off, nothing can go wrong anymore. Now you don't necessarily want anything to go wrong. Things just do.)