the quiz says i'm a good kid, but apparently not

written at 1:14 a.m. on 04.10.04

Ok, the sky is still intact, but that may be the only thing. This past week has been so extremely chaotic, it's almost not funny. However, I'm sure if I dig around hard enough, I'll find a laugh or two hiding amongst the stress and torment of high school drama.

First, I found this to be too hilarious to pass up. A quiz about how wretched I really am, according to good ole Dante.

The Dante's Inferno Test has sent you to Purgatory!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

So, back to the drama. One of the most vexful things about this week was that Diaryland was broken. Ok, so that's not completely true (Dante frowns), but it was very annoying, nonetheless. I was without access to Diaryland ever since my last entry, hence the huge gap in updates there. (Two weeks without an entry! Can you believe it?)

The only weird thing that happened last week was when Guy (ex-Bob the Snail) asked Allison to Formal (my school's version of prom, minus the dancing). It's weird because things have been really awkward and tense between the two of us, and I don't want things to be awkward at Formal, since I'm planning on sitting with Allison. Yeah, but that whole situation has been hashed out to death with too many people already.

Oh, but, I guess that leads me to my next minor disaster. I'm now stuck without a date to Formal. Ok, Shannon and I are planning on going together again, but I think we would both enjoy having male dates instead. Of course, this depends on the male, too. Fortunately, most of the people I don't like would never ask me anyway. I'm trying not to let myself get desperate, since I really don't care about this whole thing, but people like my mom make that hard. She's constantly making jokes about who should take me and asking me if I'm going with anyone and yada yada yada. Maybe she feels like she's failed in raising me properly if I'm not surrounded by guys. Eh.

For the sake of my mom's sanity, I'll pretend I'm desperate for a minute. "Oh my gosh, like, if, like, anyone out there wants to, like, take me to, like, formal, like, let me know, like, ok?"

Oh, the other thing that happened last week was Allison's birthday party. That was good fun. I played card games until my fingers bled, and it was a blast. Allison's sister even bought her cigars, and watching Allison attempt to smoke one was definitely a big highlight of the evening.

Speaking of cigars...

I actually have a real transition this time! Whoo-hoo!

I have a story about cigars. However, I must rewind the story a little bit. There goes the good transition. Down the drain... Like the little water tornado things I used to make in the bathtub when I was little.

Let's start this story.. on last Saturday, the day after Allison's party. I was asked almost a month ago to be an accompanist (sp?) at the my school's first recital. The recital was open to all ages, from kindergarten through high school. The lady who asked me (Mrs. B, the elementary music teacher) offered $25 and hour. I of course pounced on the offer while trying to remain calm at the same time. "Sweet!! Twenty-five doll.. err.. Yes, I think I should be able to do that."

The first practice for said recital was Saturday. Twenty bucks in the pocket. (I think she forgot that she told me twenty-five, but I wasn't about to complain.) Mrs. B had given me all the music about two weeks prior to this first rehearsal. I hadn't even looked at it, but things went pretty smoothly. Fortunately for me, sight-reading is the one thing that comes naturally to me, so even when I'm not prepared, I can fake it pretty well. Plus, the Saturday rehearsal was only for one group of students, a trio, including Mrs. B's daughter.

Ok, here's where the situation starts getting tricky. Mrs. B was going to sing a piece. She decided to change her piece. This is Saturday. The recital was on Thursday. Less than a week. I had a momentary flash of panic.

Fast forward to Monday. Guy, the very same ex-Bob from earlier in the entry, decided to change songs on me. I hadn't looked at his first song yet, so I guess it didn't make much of a difference, except that the piece that he chose was fairly difficult in the piano department. He didn't get the music to me until the Monday night rehearsal. Ally didn't give me her music until then either. So, the three hardest pieces were given to me less than a week before the performance. None of these people were available for practice ever. I ended up squishing in practices during lunch and other class periods, since they are involved in play practice after school, and I had to work Tuesday and Wednesday night. Gasp.

To make a long story short, I was stressed the whole week about the recital.

The recital ended up going really well. I received a few comments that it was like "The Rachel Show," since I accompanied eight out of the twenty-some performers of the night. Oh well.

This is getting really long and boring. I'm sorry.

Let's do some more fast-forwarding. Post-recital, I went with a group of eight other high school kids to Chili's. There, I watched Guy drink half of a bowl of Ranch (Ally always gets both Salsa and Ranch with her chips), and I learned that Matt accidentally killed his friend's cat once. That's a funny story I'll have to tell some other time.

Anyway, after Chili's, Shannon, Guy, Dane, Katie, and I went to go buy cigars. Yes, yes, I know it sounds like we're being posers off of Allison. Oh well. I'm trying not to think about that.

After spending a good fifteen minutes driving around town looking for somewhere that sold cigars, we wound up at some random gas station. Why it took us so long to think of going to a gas station for drugs is beyond me. Anyway, buying the cigars was nerve-wracking for me, so I made Shannon and Dane come in with me. Shannon was the only other eighteen-year-old, and Dane was the only one who knew which kind to buy. After spending wayyy too much time picking out cigars, Katie (the only sophomore in the group) announced that she needed to go home. Shannon and I piled in my car with Katie and dropped her off, while Dane and Guy followed us around mindlessly.

After dropping off Katie, a new dilemma arose. Where the heck do people go to smoke cigars? Dane and Guy couldn't legally smoke them, so we couldn't get caught. My parents would kill me if they knew, so I couldn't get caught. Shannon had no idea how her parents would react, so she was in the same boat. We finally decided to drive over to the closest parking lot that we knew was safe and empty.. our school.

Well, it wasn't empty after all. The other kids from Chili's were there, trying to figure out where to go next. The smokers-to-be waited for them to leave, since they were all underclassmen, and we didn't want to corrupt their minds.

Just as we were getting ready to light up, a bunch of cars pulled by, and we realized that maybe standing out in the middle of a parking lot that is in full view of the nearby road wasn't the best plan after all. We moved our cars to the school's back parking lot and got out of view of just about everything.

The smoking was fun, legal, non-hazardous, and very relaxing. Of course, it would have been a lot more relaxing if we weren't "paranoid" about Dane and Guy winding up in jail.

The story doesn't end there, though. After dropping off Shannon, I was totally prepared to drive the speed limit on the way home. One risk a night is more than enough for me.

Of course, it's a forty minute drive home from Shannon's house, and the entire drive is on one huge highway-ish road. The average speed limit is about 55mph, though it slows down to 45mph in one busy section of one town.

I'm five minutes into this excursion when who should pull up next to me at a red light? If you guessed a car full of four drop-dead-gorgeous-high-school-or-college-aged-ready-to-race guys, you're absolutely right! Behind door number one, you get a telepathic "Good job, sucker" message directly from your host, Rachel!

Anyway, I wound up racing them more than half the way home. Our average speed was 100mph. Yeah. Needless to say, there were times when we were side by side, and I would glance over and enjoy the approving nods I got from the passengers. When I came up to a slow car and was forced to get behind this vehicle-full-of-goodness, I was greeted with a thumbs-up from one of the guys in the backseat. I'll admit that it felt good to get their approval and admiration. How I wound up in Purgatory in Dante's opinion is a mystery that I can't solve. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that questions never asked anything about speeding.

Oh yeah, as I was enjoying this self-esteem high, I noticed all of a sudden that this other car started slowing down after I passed them up. I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw flashing lights. No, I was not passing out, there was a police car. Long story short.. it got them. Nobody got me. I slowed down and drove the speed limit the rest of the way home, my heart beating WAY over the speed limit the entire time.

So, that's my long, semi-interesting tale of what's been going on for the past two weeks. My heart has started beating rapidly again after reliving the memory of the cop car thing again. I'll definitely be driving at or under the speed limit for a while. "For a while" meaning until I next get challenged by a handsome young fellow or two or three or four. I should have invited all of them to be my Formal dates. I'm guessing that they're not going to want to fork over $40 bucks after they pay off their ticket though.

Dang, I can't believe I didn't get pulled over.

Be still, my beating heart.

Anyway, I had a lot more to say, but being that it's one in the morning, and I'm supposed to be waking up at seven thirty, I'm gonna chop this nonsense short and get some beauty rest... after I yell at Ripway about my Diaryland pictures not showing up. Grr. THE END.

WAIT! I'm not done. One more quiz.