Good grief, where did I go...?

So, as many of you recall from my last entry, I graduated this weekend. Okay, enough celebrating, let's get back to business, I say. Actually, I don't feel too well. I had a coughing thing, and then I had a sniffling thing, and then I had a throaty thing, and now I have a head-thing, and a stomach thing. I'm not really contagious, but I feel quite rotten. But don't feel sorry for me, I'm just apologising that this entry isn't going to be very lively, because I don't feel like being lively at the moment.

Disclaimers aside, I can now say I had a wonderful time at the conference. I saw lots of people I know, lots of people I didn't know, and even somebody I did know but didn't know I knew and now I do. Yes, I can go back and change my answer on that survey...I have met someone in person who I beforehand knew online. Her name is Natalie, and on her blog she has a picture of us together as physical proof it did actually happen. The story is, I had felt like washing my hands because I had nothing else better to do (thankfully) before the next session started (Jeff Myers! Yay!). Suddenly I heard my name called. Well, all those two days (this was Friday) it had been happening, because I kept seeing people I knew there. But unlike those people's usual, "Jessica!" or "Wow, good to see you, Jessica!" or (said in a very smooth way) "Jessica, how's it going?" This was more like a hesitant question..."Jessica...? From the blog...?" Well, I thought, I have a blog... As usual, nothing intelligent could go through my head but ANYHOO, I looked up, and this girl about my height said, "Um, I'm Natalie..." and immediately it clicked. I probably said something like, "OHHHHHHH!!!!!" and I'm sure my eyes went very wide with some degree of shock and amazement. We chatted for a second or two, and then I felt like the restroom was getting very crowded, and so I asked her what session she was going to, and she was going to the one on "Guy/Girl Relationships" with Jeff Myers also, so I said I would see her there and took off to try and get good seats.

So we sat together for that session, and then the session after that on Postmodernism, and then she had to go to a birthday party. So I went down stairs and pretended I wasn't looking admirably at the guy with the hair that went swish-swish as he talked animatedly with all the millions of girls surrounding him as I checked my text messages, and then who should call my name from behind me but Andrew, who I had seen around that day and who was always on the other side of the room at the dance the night before so we had not gotten to talk to each other yet. Therefore we took the time to think about what sessions we were going to go to. I wanted to go to the next Jeff Myers one, which I could remember had something to do with Buffoons, so I kept calling it the Buffoon One, and Andrew thought he was supposed to meet his parents at a different one in the Ballroom somewhere in the Marriott, so we walked up there. His parents weren't there but Micah was, so the three of us went back up to the Buffoon One. We were so late we had to sprawl out on the floor and get neck cramps trying to take notes from the slide projector, but it was good anyway. After that, where we finally found some of Andrew's family, we found the rest of them, and then they left for dinner, leaving me all alone. My family had decided to leave me there and go to Cracker Barrel with grandma. About an hour later they came with a salad, which I ate with great relish but thankfully without any actual relish on the salad. After eating we all rushed to the talent show. Turns out my cousins were there, and we sat together and had lots of fun making fun of most of the participants.

Saturday was hectic. I got up and got all ready. I was going to wear my favorite blue jeans, my Swimmer's excuses shirt and my Sketchers and change into my fancy clothes right before the lineup. But NO. Instead, I had to go ahead and wear my v-neck, skirt and heels all day. Good thing was I got a laptop, so happy thoughts sort of blocked out my upset thoughts of being uncomfortable all day. Except that...I had five billion mosquito bites all over my lower legs! So, I ran back down from the room my parents, Marck and Robert shared on the 5th floor back to the room grandma and I shared on the 2nd floor, and was going to put some makeup on my legs to cover it all up (I know, very ridiculous but I felt it had to be done), and as I was about to do that, I realized I hadn't shaved since Wednesday or something, so I dashed into the bathroom, shaved the bottom parts of my legs as quickly as possible, grabbed my liquid makeup and some lotion and ran out, down stairs and into the van where I quickly applied both to my legs in the opposite order that I mentioned them in on the way to the conference. I was very late to the first session, so again I had to sit on the floor...in a skirt. Yay. No more sprawling out for me! Then I saw my cousin Lauren again, and decided to sit with her for the next session. That's when Natalie came in, I waved her over and then, lo and behold, Natalie and Lauren knew each other! Weirdness.

After that session, I was grabbed by mother and herded to the parking deck where I adorned my lovely green gown and saved the wearing of my hat for later, and ran back to the North Main hall thingy to sit around and hear some guy talk for an hour and a half about going up stairs and stepping on X's and YES, I have to agree with Natalie that homeschoolers cannot follow traffic patterns, not that that has anything to do with anything. But the whole two-by-two became a little tedious as we had to stop several times on the way to being moved to some other room to listen to more instructions and quickly snarf down chick-fil-a sandwiches and make sure the collar things were tucked in right and stuff like that ...what was I saying?

Oh, forget it.

So once the ceremony actually started (in another room which we were moved to AGAIN), it went fine. I met some very nice new people, though ended up stuck in a ceremony with two people I kind of knew, because the rest of my senior friends had decided NOT TO PARTICIPATE IN THE FIRST PLACE BECAUSE...well, I don't really know. Anyway, I was a little upset by that, but I'm fine now. At least Allison came.

We came back the next day and I can't remember much except that we ate pizza and I was really tired. And the muffin thing. But I'll save the muffin story for later...too tired for that now.

So long!
~Jessica