The Unadventures of Tracie

I'm starting a new blog series called "Tracie's Journal." My sophomore and senior year of high school I was required to write in a journal for my honor's and AP English classes. I'm really grateful for this because I am a terrible journaler. Because of this requirement, I have dozens of entries into my thoughts as a teenager. I will be randomly selecting an entry from these journals to post on this here blog. I plan to give commentary on the posts, especially the ones in which important things are written. Here is Journal Entry #10 from my sophomore year of high school (originally spelling and punctuation preserved): 9/23/99 "I care for them all the same way, yet they always grow differently. Just like children." --SeaQuest Today I am not as big as a grouch as I was last time I wrote, I am, however, much, much, MUCH more tired than last time. I'm hungry. I went to work for the second time last night. It was not fun. I stood the enti...

So I remembered once that Austin posted a list 3 years ago of his top ten Christmas movies and thought, you know I should do the same. So here are MY favorite Christmas movies in somewhat ascending order: 1.  The Santa Clause - This is my favorite Christmas movie of all time. This movie is just quintessential Christmas to me. Santa, the holiday spirit, presents, kids, elves, snow, humor. It's got it all. I love how the elfs look like children. It could be that this movie came out when I was still young enough to consider myself a kid (1994) or it could be that it's just that good of a show. I love this description for The Santa Clause I found on the Sun Sentine l 's  list of the Top 25 best Christmas movies : "It's every kid's dream: Dad could be Santa Claus. All he has to do is push the other Santa off his roof. That perfect mix of whimsy and mature laughs made this Tim Allen comedy an annual favorite. Who can forget Allen desperately trying to lose...

I hate the universe sometimes....It so often screws with me. Once again Austin and I are having to say goodbye to friends. Over the last several years we've had many friends move away. Every time it's been hard. Every time tears were shed. Every time I hoped the friendship wouldn't die. This time I really hope we can keep the flame of friendship burning bright. If you would have told me a year and a half ago, I would be sad that Jake and Wendy were moving away, I wouldn't have believed you. We met at book club. It was clear right away that these were interesting people. But there was also some clashing. (Largely due to me hating Kafka. Sorry I'm still not a fan. ;) ) I actually don't remember how or when it happened, but somewhere along the way, instead of seeing differences, I started seeing similarities. We became friends. And now they're some of my favorite people in the whole world. And they're moving. I'm happy they'll get to be wit...

On February 24, 2009, I learned what it felt like to be a Beatles fan on April 10, 1970. This is the day that I learned that Steven Page was leaving the Barenaked Ladies to go solo. The news devastated me. BNL has been my favorite band for about five or so years now. Of course I heard their hit singles during the nineties while growing up. I was familiar with “One Week,” “Pinch Me,” and “If I had a Million Dollars.” I didn’t realize at the time that they were all the same band. It was Heidi who first led me to realize I loved this band. She made me a few mix CDs with various BNL songs on them. When I realized I loved the songs and they were all the same band, I decided to buy their Greatest Hits album. I loved that so much that I bought their first album, Gordon . After that, it was all history as they say. Subsequently I bought and loved the rest of their albums. In 2003 when they released a new album ( Everything to Everyone ) I listened to it obsessively. Then I heard they were comi...

I just finished reading The Neverending Story for the first time. It's much different than the movies (particularly the second one). The first movie ends a little less than halfway through the book portion. Anyway, I really liked the book (though it did seem a little neverending to me). It totally put me in the mood to watch the movies. I LOVE the movies! If you didn't watch The Neverending Story growing up, I'd say your childhood was missing something. (Unless, of course, you weren't a child when it came out. ;) ) The story is one of the most imaginative stories I've ever read/watched. The movie was fascinating, scary, intense, sad, happy, and inspiring. Made you want to wish and dream. The book was the same way. I couldn't believe the imagination of the author. He created so many new and different things that were so creative. Made me wish I were that creative. I really liked the messages in the book as well. I remember watching the movie growing up and thin...

I hate flowery perfume. What I hate even more are women who wear flowery perfume so strongly the smell persists even if they have vacated the room. Ever worse than that is women who wear said perfume in an attempt to cover up the smell of cigarettes. Then I have to deal with overly strong perfume AND smoke. Wonderful. Today’s experience reminded me of my English Honors class in 11th grade with Mrs. Bestor. I would dread every single day that I had the class, and not just because Mrs. Bestor was kind of a jerk. The smell of perfume in her classroom was so strong that it leached out the closed door into the hallway. But that wasn’t the worst part, oh no. Besides the perfume that was so thick you could see the fumes, Mrs. Bestor had to have the temperature stifling hot every day of the year, which made for a toxic combination: extreme heat and overbearing perfume. It was like a torture chamber of the worst kind. I would get headaches and struggle to stay awake, knowing if I fell asleep th...

Does anybody else remember this movie? I remembered it because I started listening to an audio book which involved an FBI training academy. I haven't seen this movie in years, so I don't really remember all that well. I remember I liked it and thought it was funny. It was one of the movies we recorded on VHS and I watched a lot as a kid. (The movie came out in 1988.) I find it even funnier now as this movie would so not be PC in this day and age. (Egads! There are WOMEN in the FBI!!)