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kikyo_sama
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Name: Tracy
Country: United States
Birthday: 11/4/1991
Gender: Female
Interests: I like to taste all sorts of delicious foods. I like to read all sorts of books, except really bad ones or tedious ones like Shakespeare plays. I like to play games! I like to express myself. I like to put random knowledge to use. I like looking for things that I want and finding them. I like saying things just to get a rise out of people. I like a lot of things, really.
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  wontonprincess7
AIM:  aznxprincess114
AIM:  wantonwonton389
Member Since:
4/28/2003
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| ACF Fall 2009 in 5:
1. SHIT I can't believe I forgot to write this two days ago, but uh...I was busy celebrating Halloween with all my buds. Speaking of Halloween...it was Halloween! LOL. So I was dressed as Thing 1 this year (Katie was Thing 2) and walked around and almost every round someone would ask me where Thing 2 was or tell me how awesome it was. =] Makes me happy. There were a few other pretty cool costumes, too, and there was a guy making balloon dogs for people! I never asked him for one, but I feel like I should have. =/ Having a tournament on Halloween is a pretty awesome thing to do...and I hope this can happen again sometime while I can still participate (grad school, y'all)! And I really like having the tournament here, because I only had to wake up late and then run to Harper, which is 3 minutes from my dorm LOL. Nice.
2. I thought the set was all right, with a few weird questions that made me wonder if there had been proper editing done. And I'm not talking about the repeats (like that one architect dude came up twice in the same packet or something). I'm talking about that creature thing that only asked about one and that one science one that was bad because the answer was just wrong. -_- What the lame, right? I really hate it when things like this happen...so slapdash. I know editing is hard, but how bad can it be that you can't prevent the same toss up from occurring multiple times in one packet? Or, you know, a school forgetting that their B and C teams had played their packet in practice. That was pretty good, too...lolol.
3. So us freshmen were divided into three teams of three people each instead of the planned two teams because of some weird bracketing issues (the bracketing was really weird on the overall lol) and that was...not really conducive to us doing well? LOL. George, Mike, and I were on Chicago C and as expected did pretty abysmally. Like. Middle of the field. LOL. Also, we had the misfortune of being placed into the bracket with all of the Illinois teams, so it was pretty painful being raped three times in one day (first by Mike Sorice, then by Ike, and finally later on by Trygve)...although they were all very nice in doing it. They're super nice people! But yeah...lol. We did so much worse than the A/B teams (Jakub/Kyle/Watson and Mike/Matthew/Sam) who got 7th and 5th respectively as compared to our 15th. LOL. I mean there were a couple of games we definitely should have won but our bonus conversion was pretty abysmal. It was literally 10 one game (I think we bageled so many bonuses it was just...lol).
4. Vain as I am, I have to look at my own individual stats. LOL. I did okay on a few tossups and mostly ended up messing up things that I should know but don't. Like. I need to get some balls so I can buzz in earlier when I actually know things instead of just being the golden chicken. Thanks to the whole two-man team situation, George and I as always, we both ended up posting 40 ppg. Which was great, you know. LOL. Maybe I wasn't as miserably useless to David's fantasy quiz bowl team, although I was just an alternate anyway. I'm not worthy of being even last pick on anyone's team! Not even a Chicago player's! Although hilariously I do merit some ridiculous gossip from quiz bowl boys on the internet. I can't lie though; I find the whole creeper thing totally amusing. Hahhahah. Let's see how many times I can commit quizcestuous acts in the next few years, yeah?
5. WHERE ARE THE CUTE BOYS? The cutest ones the entire day were HIGH SCHOOL kids and you know what? I'm not a pedophile! (Really, I'm not.) So in spite of the danger I face in having this xanga be discovered by people from the quiz bowl community, I'm going to write shit here. Shantanu is so cute with his sun bear (who by the way met Knut and bonded over being awesome bears), Craig(?) from Illinois is pretty cute in a hipstery way, I would definitely tap that one piece of sweet Catholic ass (just kidding, obviously if only for the fact that I anatomically CANNOT "tap" anything), I kind of want to pat Marnold's head and belly (his hair looks soft), and there's nobody legitimately cute. How will I find the Seth Teitler to my Selene Koo? (Just kidding, because I'll never be as godly as she is! They read for us one round and it was AMAZINGGGGG. SELENE KOO AND SETH TEITLER. Man, they're cool people.) I'm just going to have to sloot around a bigger tournament (ICT shall I cram ass for you?) or something.
I love how these things are usually only 60% about quiz bowl. And then I get tangential. But oh! Oh! Illinois Open in two weeks! That will be exciting, and potentially mortifying if Rob Carson mentions anything about anything to me. But with my creeper luck, he will and then Bernadette will throw me dirty looks, probably. I'm looking forward to quiz bowl tonight and I really hope Katie D. likes it so I can have a female companion. LOL.
ALSO update on Halloween...
After the tournament...was awesome! Wendt party = eating nice food, wrapping Vida the Hobo in toilet paper, watching Lemon get carried off to Crown house and exacting her revenge, taking pictures with the Scoobies and the rest of the gang, playing mahjong, royally embarrassing myself*, freezing to death in capris at night in the quad playing sardines, girl talk, fatass party with two pints of Ben & Jerry's, and moreee. If only for the fact that I never get any homework done on weekends, I love college and Saturdays. =] I should also probably mention that I went on a date the night before and probably forfeited a couple of tossups in the day just for not studying but hanging out with a dude, not that I think that whole ordeal merits mention here yet since this Xanga is mostly for amusement.
Speaking of...I should get to the royal embarrassment! YEAH. So what happened was on the way to the quad for sardines, I ran past Shantanu while yelling "PENIS!" (we were playing the 500 Days of Summer penis game) and then as I passed him he said, "Hi, Tracy" full of amusement and I froze in the middle of the street and turned around slowly only to awkwardly say, "Hi!" <pause> "Bye!" and then run away. I yelled back, "I don't normally do that!" but I'm not sure he heard. He was still drinking there with his friends.
This is only made better by the fact that George (who was running right in head of me) saw him and didn't warn me...and that my roommate Katie saw him way ahead (I was lagging behind the group saying hi to Emily) and turned around at the moment I yelled "PENIS!" next to him so she could watch me embarrass myself (she said to me later, "I knew you were going to do something stupid") as only Tracy can do! YEAH! Yelling penis next to the person I admire most on campus! YEAHHHH!! It probably did not help at all that I was wearing bright red from head to knee. Oh, God. After that happened I wanted to kill myself for 15 minutes.
All right, it's time for me to get some work done now, so I'll see you later, Xanga...maybe in a couple of days when I turn old on Wednesday! WHOO!
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| I feel as though I should make more obligatory entries in here now that I've actually begun college, so in spite of it being 2:25 AM on a Sunday night and my being rather behind on homework, I've decided that I do want to make a short post here now that I may expand tomorrow (probably not, but maybe maybe keep my options open).
School is sooo busy in Chicago. They're not kidding when they say there's grade deflation here. It's a bad misconception that this is where fun goes to die (unless your definition of fun is a shit ton of frat parties; but there's plenty of parties to go to if you look for them), but there really is a lot of work. Ah, hello to the next four years of my life. I barely have enough time for RSOs (mostly just quiz bowl and tutoring to be honest) and the weekends go by too quickly! I wish there were more down time where I didn't feel the intensive nagging feeling of needing to do more work (not that I even listen to it). I waste too much time on trying to keep up with shows and facebook. Ugh.
Adjusting has actually been fairly easy and uneventful in spite of a bit on initial apprehension during o-week and I'm finding there's a lot of nice and cool people to meet here.  Roomie, floormates, housemates, other people. It's great! Hahaha. The weather is kind of abysmal (but I'm getting used to it...) and the dorm food gets to be kind of repetitive but we eat out once a week or so. And there's always hitting up the c-shop downstairs for sushi or something...lol. I really miss home and friends though, when I allow myself to think of missing Asian food and the luxuries and comfort we have to leave behind. It's making me a more affectionate person when I do indeed make the time to talk to people, though my messaging statuses are always RED/AWAY nowadays. Trying not to let myself be seduced into chatting!
All right, it's 2:33 AM now and I have a 10:30 lecture tomorrow to go to...so I'm going to hit the hay now. Bye, Xanga (and my one or two consistent readers).
ALSO...UNLIMITED TEXTING IS MAKING ME BAD. I feel like I have to take advantage of it because I have it. Ughh. Text me if we haven't talked in a while! (Then again, the only person I know who absolutely will read this entry is already going to text me...so maybe this is a little pointless.)
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| EFT in 5:
1. WHOOOAAAA first college tournament ever?! (Well, first one where I was actually in college...lol.) It was a lot of fun, and the traveling makes it a little different from what we're used to, I guess. Not that UIUC is even much farther from Chicago than San Diego is from Arcadia. LOL. It's really about a half hour difference, but an awesome half hour difference that leads into overnight stays! (Except that means I haven't done any homework in days. OOPS. Guess who's staying in tomorrow to work on shit?!)
2. Oh my dear lord. Co-ed rooming can get really freaking awkward. Really. Really really. I am not lying, dear God. I mean, sharing a bed with Margo isn't the weird part...it was how we couldn't stop our awkward laughter (and I mean couldn't) when we were supposed to sleep in the same room as Watson Ladd, who was also visibly uncomfortable with the idea of staying in a room with two chicks, even though we did decide to let him have a bed. So awkward. I couldn't stay in that room, even. God I felt so bad later when I realized I'd left Margo alone with him, but I was too busy playing cards and looking terrified in Room 124. Oops.
3. College tournaments are simply not as well run as high school tournaments are...because we're really not as afraid of people being unwilling to come back. LOL. I mean, it's definitely not the fault of any moderator for catching SWINE FLU (seriously) and being unable to come and infect us while reading, but starting late and stuff is never great. Great modding though, and efficient handling of protests and difficulties. The Anderson Officiator Deluxe with the 20 buzzers is ridiculous though, and resulted in first round SLAPBOWL. Which is especially bad against a buzzer because then nobody can tell who slapped or buzzed first (oh, playoffs). Also, this set was good bordering on terrible. LOL. It's always great when the moderators have to stop in the middle of a bonus to think about what articles are extraneous before they can continue reading. Or, you know, when the same bonus pops up in different packets. Whoo!
4. Chicago is no joke. 1-2-3, though we sort of messed things up by losing too much in the morning and getting placed in the second bracket. And although I've yet to see the sacred band, just witnessing the grace of his holiness Shantanu is kind of like...omgwtfnoway. You know, so eloquently phrased and all. I think at one game he scored 160 points on 17 correct TUs and 2 negs...meaning that he buzzed on 19/20 tossups in a single round. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL. Man, I love this guy. He watches Gossip Girl (out of worship for Chuck, no less) and dresses like it, too. Although I have to admit he does go a little over the top. Overpatterning...! Not that I'm some kind of fashionista guru or anything, so it's not like I can pass judgment on anything of the sort. Anyway, the final ended up with him dominating a game, almost by himself. Jimmy and Matt are both clearly good players, but it's like people don't really exist around his Holiness. Ridiculous. And this is the guy who wanted to play as Chicago D for the fun of it...because he'd never tried it before. "Was it everything you thought it would be?" "It was everything...and more!"
5. This wouldn't be a Tracy-in-5 sequence without some sort of ridiculous outside commentary about BOYS. So here it is: the pool is even worse in college quiz bowl! Which, I suppose, is to be expected. We noticed while attempting to play MBK (hence..."attempting") and noticed that not many men are too good looking at a college qb tournament. GREAT! My standards are already lowering thanks to the effects of my growing sense of ChicagoVision (it's like ALL white guys are starting to look good to me). Really...really...really terrible lowering of standards. Gosh. I even commented on it while we were in the room of a mod and he laughed because he knew it to be true. Yayyyyyyyy. I guess now I'm even LESS picky. Fantastic!
Anyhow, I'm crazy tired now and I think I'd really like to sleep. SLEEEEEEP. It's been so long since I last had to think for an entire length of 10 hours in a row. So now the exhaustion is setting in...I even slept for 2 hours on the car ride back. <3 Okay, now I'm really falling unconscious. AH!
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| Honestly, I just want to curl up and sleep for 12 hours. It isn't that I don't like college or anything; everyday is really exciting and there's just so much to do, but the process of making new friends, especially having to befriend a bunch of white people (which I'm frankly not used to) is just kind of daunting. And I'm not enjoying it very much. There's so much "meeting people" awkwardness involved and barely anyone actually clicks...we all just sort of become acquaintances. There's always a few people who mesh well, but the thing is, since houses are organized at random, I think that they really aren't conducive to the creation of giant masses of people who get along splendidly. Which, I suppose, is to be expected when there are 60 freshmen alone.
I think it'll be easier once classes start and we can all bond over the pain of our hum or sosci sequences, or in my case honors calculus (how the hell did I get placed into that, right?) and general chemistry. It's rather ironic, that I should look forward to the beginning of classes when everyone knows that o-week is supposed to be the most fun anyone ever has in Chicago. Well, knows, who knows? I guess that depends on whether or not I'm enjoying my classes, but I think I'll like Readings in World Literature if I get it, and Mind, too. Calc/chem ehhhhhhh but maybe, maybe I'll just suddenly turn out to like it.
O-week, though, is really fun in the sheer amount of crazy activities. We had Sex Signals today and it was just the most ridiculous thing ever. Love it. LOL. I guess the jerks who had to make weird comments in the middle of it ended up adding to the atmosphere and we all laughed like crazy. There were some really good moments, and it was really well done given that despite the gravity of the topics at hand, we all still managed to enjoy ourselves in a (mostly) mature manner. The pick up lines from the audience convince me, however, that there will be limited sex going on among these young coeds.
On a side note, I am still completely obsessed with Phoenix. They played 1901 during one of the short intermissions tonight in Off-Off and I got so excited. God, Thomas Mars. My dream man! Looking at pictures of him kissing pregnant Sofia Coppola makes me sad...what a cougar! 
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| Macaron Quest<333333333333333333333333333333333333333
Phoenix/Metric<3333333333333333333333333333333333333333
Today was a good day.
So we (Jarita/George) started off around noon and drove around going to find LA's best macarons. Beginning at Euro Pane, where we surprisingly ran into Anson outside the Rite-Aid (we bought safety pins for weird tank top) and I swore to God it was Anson outside...and lo and behold it was. So we got sandwiches at Euro Pane, and of course a macaron. Unfortunately there was only strawberry, but it was still good. We made nice chit-chat and moderately racist (yet not) comments. Hot damn that tuna sandwich was good. LOL.
Then we really headed into the CITY. After picking up Harrison, we went to Jin Patisserie where we sampled all 10 macaron flavors. Have to say in retrospect it was not as good as it's supposed to be...and not that great at all. Really interesting Asian flavors though. Then we tried to go to Boule except it's been closed for a while...bitches...and ended up skipping it to go to Paulette, which was as expected, very good. I particularly enjoyed the violet cassis. Yum yums. And the lady was soooo cool since she gave us 3 free macs to try (and we only bought 6...so that was super awesome). La Provence after was really good, too, but more cookie-ish...like commercial than the others, although it was the only place we managed to get sea salt caramel. Last up was La Maison du Pain, which was so nice since they still sold us macs after they were closed...and then gave us two free baguettes! I mean they were going to toss them anyway, but still...<3 Except for the breadspin. LOLOL.
After it was all concert love. LOVEEEE. I really like the Greek Theatre as a venue because it's outside so the air is SO fresh and not filled with the smell of sweat (although you could really smell people hitting the ganja) and the weather was so perfect. Cold until you really get hyped, and then just cool enough to keep you from feeling like a sweaty pig. The thing is I was just so jealous of those people down in the pit while I was up sitting in the seats. I HATED THEM when they DIDN'T DANCE AT ALL to Metric, which opened after this group called the...Soft...something... I forgot. It's sort of understandable though, since they weren't headliners...so it's not the crowd's fault or anything, and I think George and I were in the clear minority of people who were sort of more there for Metric than for Phoenix.
All in all, there were around 5 songs off Fantasies and a couple of old ones (Dead Disco, Empty, other stuff I can't recall) and it was good. I really liked how Emily introduced Stadium Love: "We have a lot of love, for this city, for this crowd. We have enough love to keep this dress from falling down all show." LOL. And seriously...she was hot. No joke. SO hot. In a sparkly black strapless dress and four-inch fuck-me black heels...and when she does the shifty thing between her legs and juggling her shoulders like she does in the video for Gimme Sympathy...oh man. And when she stood at the very edge of the stage and bent backwards and hovered over the audience for a few seconds...OH MAN. OHHHH MAN. And she even touched the hands of people in the pit. SO JEALOUS. God how does she dance in those heels while playing the keyboard? Why is she so unbelievably hot? She's like on my list of super hot bitches...near the top. It's too bad they only played 8ish songs.  The thing is, it was really not their concert, so it couldn't be helped that the vibe wasn't there when they were playing. I just...wished I could have been down there MOSHING. Except uh, it turns out I have a bunch of random ass bruises, even though only the ones on my foot and hip are really noticeable. They've sort of bruised nicely...like the one on my hip is really blue now LOL...so maybe I wasn't in any condition to mosh anyhow.
Between the sets we went to look at shirts again, but the only one I wanted was a $25 wife beater...and I would have only really wanted it if it were a $25 shirt instead. WTF so expensive. The shirts weren't awesome enough for me to want to splurge that much, but there was an okay Wolfgang Amadeux Phoenix one. The problem I think is that band shirts are kind of obnoxious to wear, especially if you just have 20 and wear them all the time. I mean, I don't have any, but it in theory would be. Still. Also, at the time, I wasn't sure if I wanted a Phoenix one badly at all...I mean...Phoenix was a like but not a love. But after my indecision/raging, we just went back quietly to our seats.
And then here come the headliners: PHOENIX. I really have to say, great showmanship. The band was really alive (they didn't seem to be high!) and had a ton of energy, combined with pretty good lighting. It was wonderful and the audience, which was huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge cheered so loudly from the first when they opened with Lisztomania and everyone stood the entire time. Wonderful. Except those gosh darn people in the pit who I'm so jealous of don't even go crazy.....they just kind of raise their arms a lot.....they don't even MOSH. What a WASTE, you know? If you're doing to dish out a lot of money to get into the pit which is right in front of the stage, since there's no divide or anything, you may as well go CRAZY. Actually, come to think of it, I think one of the times Thomas disappeared, he was in the audience and climbed back onstage later...but I don't remember him crowd surfing or anything, so I'm not sure what happened. I think some cords might have gotten tangled under since he grabbed a really long reddish string when he got back up. Random.
It was something like 7 old songs and 9 songs off of Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (basically everything besides Countdown) and I looooved it. Especially when they finally played Too Young! LOVE that song. And Fences! I mean, I always liked Fences, but it was especially great just for that one line: "She's building castles in LA." YEAAAHHHHHH. I love this city; we get great concerts and everyone knows us and we have awesome weather and it's just awesome. YEEEAAAAHHHHH. I found out tonight that I'm absolutely terrible at identifying songs, but I can sing along with them a lot even if I don't know what they are (I think, but I often mishear Phoenix lyrics in the first place)! YEEEAHHHH. Funky Squaredance was hilarious though because Jarita just looked so confused by how weird it is and she and George stood there looking at each other with these WTF-faces. LOL.
I'm a little in love with Thomas Mars now. Just a little side note. Like...they're dressed so perfectly (French men are really just super fashionable). And he wore this hot hot hot dark blue collared shirt and black pants..with his cuffs rolled up so perfectly...and like...when he dropped down on the stage and lied down with his head right on the edge during one song...and when he does that rocker pose where they sort of do a halfsies lunge with the mic...and when he drags the mic stand around on stage...and when he spins in circles...LOL. Shit, man. He's not even really good looking, too...but when he opens his mouth it's like, according to George, "butter flowing through your lungs." The smooth smooth flow or when he does the thing where it seems like he's talking but in melody, like in Too Young. Shit what a sexy man with sexy voice and sexy songs like If I Ever Feel Better and Fences. I'm really glad I had listened to their discography twice and the new album maybe 20 times. REALLY glad. Singing along at the top of your lungs is fantastic fun. LOVE IT. Well, I really do like all of Wolfgang. The entire album is just really good. Lots of instrumental rocking, but I thought playing all of Love Like a Sunset was kind of like...intense. Both parts?
All in all, I think that Phoenix was even better than AM, even though AM was more "concert-y" in feel/experience. But the general vibe of super happy + clean air was just...really nice? I tried to blow out my voice cheering but it didn't really work and I can still talk. I'm kind of surprised to say, but Phoenix went from 80 to 90 points in my book! (Metric stayed around low 90s, but they'll have time to go up when I see them in concert for real...except my favorite songs are all slow. -_-) Yayyyy Phoenix<3. Thomas Mars<3. Except he's Sofia Coppola's baby daddy...and they've been together for 3 years...and he's impossible to find personal info on online...and is probably around 34 years old since Laurent is... Makes me feel like a grave robber (THANKS MEL, PING). Oh but. Ohhhhh. The only thing that was really weird was when it ended because it was kind of abrupt. I guess real rockers don't actually stay onstage and wave/bow for 5 minutes after they're done with their set. That usually ends up with them feeling like they have to do an encore.
I don't know why French people didn't like Phoenix for so long. I guess it's because they sing exclusively in English and aren't really French in feel (they're probably the least French French band ever) but they're so good! It's a shame that they're only now becoming really popular in their home country, but Wolfgang is giving them serious critical acclaim all over the place. Yayyyyyyy. I'm such a groupie at heart: I can be won over so easily. I totally would've gotten a shirt if it were only just a bit cheaper. Gosh darn.
There's nothing more satisfying than going for grub after, too. And I had my last bit of In&Out before I leave, I think. Mm...animal fries. And then we actually the La Maison du Pain macarons. I think they were especially good because we were all excited and happy and hungry at the time. I probably would have liked Paulette and La Provence better if I hadn't been as sick of the sugar at that point. But back to the quest, I really think Paulette was the "best", but I ended up enjoying the ones from La Maison du Pain best. Man, I love doing foodie research.
I LOVE THIS CITY. AND CONCERTS. AND PHOENIX. AND METRIC. AND COOL PEOPLE. AND NIGHT TIME. AND MUNCHIES. AND. YEAH.
But man, I need to take a shower again. You know, it wasn't as nasty since there wasn't an abundance of anyone else's sweat on me or anything...but singing and jumping for 2 hours just kind of makes you...not really clean. LOL.  But always worth it...! I really want to go to more concerts in future now! Really really a lot! Wahoo!
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