Bye!

I guess this is to Funky, cause no one else reads it.
I'm leaving to New England finally! Christmas was wonderful here in warm, humid Florida, but I'm so excited to be flying to Boston in a few hours!!! My dad's already up there and he says there's a foot of snow, and more on the way! This is going to be an awesome trip. I'm not bringing my computer, just my iPod. I'll write what I can in my little book, but I won't have too much time to. Adios, au revoir, ciao, see ya!

Christmas Morning

And it just doesn't feel like it... I'm the only one up and my mom's sleeping on the couch with the TV on, cause she's been going between napping and finishing wrapping gifts all night. Awesome.
Everything's just been kind of a mess since the divorce. It doesn't feel like Christmas with a broken family.


But it's better than no Christmas at all!
Merry Christmas, and God bless you and your family :)
Happy birthday Jesus!!!! <3

(I can't wait for tomorrow!!!!!!!!!)

Christmas Eve :)

I'm sitting in my driveway right now. I'm wearing a camisole. It's winter, Christmas Eve! Idk whether to say I love it or hate it here...
I say I hate it but I think I would really miss it if I left. That's why I'm staying in Florida for college, "only" 4 hours from home :)

So Close to Christmas!

Today was our (all my friends') party to exchange gifts!
And I got to see Andrew :D That was probably the best part. He hasn't changed at all! Good, he better not. :P And he really liked my gift! He was playing with it all night.
I got some neat stuff from my friends :) I got this really pretty scarf from Becky, and a necklace and matching earrings too. From Abbie, I got this HUGE "Universe" book. This thing is massive. And she got me a tote bag that says "Astrophysics: Learn it; Live it; Love it". Coolest gift everr!!!! Haha love it. :D Kelsey got me a really pretty necklace too :)
Cally, Becky, Kelsey, Andrew, Abbie, Aaron, Lawson, Alyssa, Craig, Grant, Amber, Megan!
I love my friends :)! <33333

"But I sent all your presents to Texas!"

I have a cousin who lives in Texas. For about a month now, we (close family) have been keeping it a secret that he's coming home for Christmas, to surprise his mom. He came home today and his sister recorded their mom's reaction. She was soo happy!! It was so nice to see the joy that family brings, especially during this season; almost made me cry :') I can't wait to see them all!!! <33333

:O

I'm awake!!!!!
This is rare and you should be proud of me.
Enough said.
Good morning starshine, the Earth says hello!
:D

The Day's Events

Jon's Eagle Court of Honor
Jon's an eagle scout! Yay! :D And he had me and Tracy play bagpipes for his ceremony, which ended up being hilarious. We couldn't play an entire tune without cracking up in the middle of it! Oh and she made a really good "that's what she said" joke. We saw this trailer, and she was like "it's extra long." So I said "that's what she said" "And boxy." We couldn't stop laughing, it was great :) Maybe you had to be there. Cause that sounds really lame on here. Oh well :\
Anyway! Ya we kind of failed on pipes but Jon's mom said we sounded good so I guess that's alright.
Oh and it got us on the program :)

The actual ceremony was actually really interesting. The people who spoke were really funny :D And there was foood! Anything with food is worth going. I'm jk it was a really nice ceremony and I'm really happy for Jon.


Abbie's Birthday Party

Was "wild west" themed! So I got to wear my new boots and cowboy hat :D She had a real bull whip, we were playing with it outside (it was actually cold!!!!!) which was pretty fun :) Almost dangerous, haha, but what can you expect from a bunch of teenagers? She lives in a penthouse now, all the way in Fort Myers. Her home is on the 27th floor!!!! Sooo high up, it was really neat to go up and see it. The view of the city lights was great. Fun party overall; we had some dancing and of course, that bull whip was fun. ;D

The FAK

Too cloudy to go out tonight :( So I went for more shopping with Dad! :D
Found these cool things: Cool Things

Kite-Eating Trees!

So much fun in physics! And band ;)
So in physics we made kites. And got to fly them!
On the second day, me and Jon really wanted to stay outside, so we skipped band class. We saw Kelsey in the hall (she's in the other physics class) and convinced her to skip with us! Getting our kites out of the band room, the teacher saw us and asked what we were doing. We said we wanted to fly them during that period and he said "Sure! Just don't get in trouble!" Haha I love him :)


Mine kinda failed.... The first day I kinda got it in the air with help from the teacher, but then he had to help someone else and I ran out of time. Second day, it wouldn't fly, so I changed it a little to make it lighter. It flew for like 3 seconds then a dowel broke... tried fixing it with duct tape but that failed :( So we flew Jon's! His was like, perfect. He got it up with no help and tied it to a bench and it flew itself. Kelsey's string was too short so we couldn't really fly hers lol.


Getting Jon's kite down was fun! It took forever to reel it all in, and it ended up getting stuck in a tree across the lake. Me and Kelsey wanted it to crash in the lake, that would've been funny :P But he broke the string so it fell, and just walked over and got it. Boooring!


:)

Autobiographical Narrative

Recently got an assignment in English to write a 1000 word autobiographical narrative about an influential experience. A lot of big words made simple: write a big blog! This is an English assignment I'm actually liking. As of this moment, I have 623 words, and I still have a lot to write about! I love this! I'm enjoying  writing an essay! *makes note of historical moment in time* I'm writing about SYMS - my most recent, and best by far, music camp. I've been to... (*counts on fingers* one: flute camp, two: Encore/Coda, three: FGCU camp, four: SYMS!) four different camps over the course of... (*counts again* summers after 6th through 11th grades) 6 years! For a grand total offff.... (*ugh mental capacity reached*) 10 camps ever! Haha. I'm sorry, that was REALLY confusing. But ya. I've been to a lot of camps. And I liked SYMS the best :))) Although the others were really great too!! I'll post the essay/big blog once it's finished :D


Me and my buddies at SYMS - Ellen, Emily, and Gracie <33333

party!

"So who's your date?"
"This is my sister-"
"Ohhh I'm sorryyyy!! I'm waaasted!"


Christmas party at the restaurant where Ben works! Last night from 10-1. XD It was an okay party though; seeing everyone drunk made it pretty interesting, lol. I'm glad Ben took me, I'd be kind of worried if he was there by himself. We went up to this one guy and he asked Ben if he wanted any of his drink. When he declined the guy was like "you sure? I can hook you up!" :s
It was really funny though, they did a secret santa and just about everything was alcohol related.
This one girl, Ashley, got a DVD that said "maybe we watch together???" on it, with a stuffed animal and a book full of "red-hot-love coupons" from one of the chefs. Awkward much?! She even has a boyfriend, haha.
Well. Good party.

busy doing nothing

I've been meaning to blog on here for a few days now. I had a pretty intense weekend.


Staurtday <-- this is how I just typed this, I think it's funny so I'm gonna leave it, haha :)
(there's no underline setting? darn.)
Slept in 'til about noon. Got busy stapling fliers for the canned food drive on bags. Got bored so I decided to distribute at least the ones in our neighborhood. That was neat :) 60 bags to 60 houses.  I came inside for a "break" but ended up taking a lot of time to eat and cool off. It was sooo hot outside!! I was outside for about an hour and I was sweating like crazy. Ughhh, Florida. Even right now it's 86 degrees.
Anyway, I got a call from my dad saying he would be picking me up in about an hour. Wow I lost track of time! So I took a shower and barely had enough time to get ready before he was here ready to take me to the Fak. FYI: "Fak" is short for Fakahatchee strand in the Everglades where I go stargazing on the two dark (no moon) Saturdays of every month. It's so amazing out there... It's a perfect location: far away from both Naples and Miami to keep the light domes dim, flat so there's no obstructing the horizon, surrounded by manmade lakes and limestone rock so there aren't too many bugs. Soooo many stars! And on Saturday, sooo many meteors!!!! Geminid meteor shower! :D And I didn't even know it was until like halfway through the night, lol. Charlie was there, of course. Mike was there - again, of course. Mike really bugs me sometimes :( He's really pushy and talks to me too much. Jon, from Scotland was there, and a lady named Dana who I didn't know. She had some guy with her, too. They sounded young, but they got there after dark so I don't know what either of them look like, lol. And there was an astrophotographer who was there last time, but I don't know his name. He took some really awesome pictures of the Orion nebula, with color and everything! They looked really good! He tried taking one of the horsehead nebula on Jon's scope but it didn't work for some reason. Oh well. And OMG Rick was there, with both the "binochair" (coolest thing ever!!) and his 16" telescope. 16" means the lens diameter. This thing was like 8 feet long!!! You had to get on a ladder to see through the eyepiece! Oh ya and the binochair :D it's a binocular chair. You sit down, rest your head back and use your hand to adjust where you look up and down. It swivels, so you use your feet to just kick and spin! It was better than a small telescope because you can use both eyes. I learned a lot that night. I can now collimate "my" (it's owned by the club but I use it) telescope by myself, if I have a laser lol. And... I can find some more constellations, like I learned about Orion, Canis Major, Canis Minor, Lepus, Taurus, and Eridanus. Saw five stars of the trapezium in the orion nebula, the dark bands of the andromeda galaxy and NGC 2169, aka "ICA 37" lmao. Mike tricked me! NGC 2169 is an open star cluster in orion that looks exactly like the number 37! Hence, ICA - I see a - 37. It's apparently a common joke to play on noob astronomers like me. I totally fell for it :P I barely used my own telescope out there. I spent most of the time with Rick, either looking through his gigantic scope or sitting in his binochair watching meteors :) I think he's my favorite member of the club. Well, besides Denise, she's so nice! But she never comes out to the Fak. I wish she would... Anyway, I think that this is worth mentioning: I saw a red meteor! It wasn't a geminid: it was coming out of totally opposite part of the sky. And it was huge, although it didn't go very far. But it was RED!!! And it went UP which I thought was pretty awesome. Haha I have so much to say about only a few hours! I feel like such a dork :) but I love it so much lol!!
After we left the Fak, we headed to Megan's party! Turns out it was over. Lol. Well, there were still a few people there, but most everyone had left. So us leftovers decided to go to the beach! Not just the beach but the pier! One of megan's friends from college is a physics major, when I told her I would be studying astrophysics she said that's what she wanted to study but they didn't have it! Instant buddies. XD I wish she could've been out at the Fak with me! She would've loved it. Out at the pier there weren't any lights, but the naples light dome was huge. So half the sky was pitch dark and the other was like wicked polluted. I got to show off what I learned and told everyone about the meteor shower and constellations :) Driving back was fun too, windows down, music blasting, like a late night on the town should be! Finally got home about 1:30 haha.


Sunday
Got to sleep in again! A little too late, actually. I was rushed getting ready for the concert, and my mom thought rehearsal started at 2:30 when it was really at 2. So I was really late and everyone was worried I wasn't going to be there. And on top of that, I forgot to wear black pants and wore khakis instead... which ended up making my mom miss most of the concert. AND I messed up my solo. UGH. Not a very good concert.
But after the concert was nice. My mom and I went to Lowe's to get supplies for my physics kite project! It was so much fun! We each went down a different aisle to look for something, and when I went to find her, I saw her on the other end of the rows of aisles, kind of hiding from me. So we ended up chasing each other!! Keep in mind we're in concert dress! The employees were watching us, it was great. And then we kept having to ask the employees where everything was - it was always on the other end of the store as we were on XD Fun :)
Then once we were home, we picked up the canned food donations we asked people for. We got 148 cans from only 12 houses! Out of 60 I gave fliers to. Then we looked for what we could donate! We found big bags of candy left over from Halloween :) I really hope families with kids get those. And big bags of chips, too. Grand total after we gave ours and rechecked in the morning: 185 :)

shopping!

is really fun!
but Christmas shopping is really hard!!!
I have no idea what to get anybody :(
I went to the mall and thought I'd see a ton of great gift ideas for all my friends.
Nope, nothing. Ugh. I saw a lot of stuff that I'd like, though... haha.
Idk when I'm going to have another chance to shop, and I really need to. I hate this! I probably should have started shopping earlier. :s
I feel like I don't know my friends well if I don't know what to get them! But that's not the case! I know my friends really well! :\
Ahhh I'm frustrated.

at abbie's

I'm at my friend's house and we're watching random youtube videos :)
I got her to make a youtube account so we could be friends lol.
This is really fun :D up past 2 am and we're looking up FAMU videos and some of her old dance recitals...
and a whole lot more random stuff.
Tomorrow we're going to go Christmas showing at the mall :)
Ok. Wicked tired. Bedtime.
Blegh. G'night

I'm a star

My mom was messing with all the stuff in the garage and attic, and she found some cool old stuff.
INCLUDING!!...
a kit to name a star that she got me when I was little! I never did it!! I remember I wanted to name it after my crush at the time, Daniel, haha. But I think I'm finally going to send it in and have it named after me. At first I thought that kind of seemed selfish. But, I am going to be an astronomer, and it was given to me as a gift. So I'm going to be a star :)


I'm kind of worried that because I waited so long after it was purchased to send it in, either that company won't be naming stars anymore, or so many stars will have been named already that mine will barely be visible even in a telescope. If I'm going to be a star, I want to be able to see it... Well, it's better than nothing, and I'll never know what'll happen unless I send it in!! I can't wait to get a chart from them telling me where my star is! :D

Oh!

My URL!
Star
Rae
Nite

Star, of course, referring to my love of the night sky
Rae, a nickname for Rachel
Nite, short for night


Run together, it's sorta close to "Starry Night", no? ;)
See, there's a method to my madness.

A First..?

Not my first blog.

Not my first rant.

Not my first outpouring of feelings.

But my first post here :)

I guess there are a few things you should know about me.

Let's start out with the name.

I'm Rachel.

K, that's out of the way ^^

There are three things I love more than anything:

God

Stars

Music

Well, people too, of course!!! But that's sort of a "human" given. I love my friends and family so much :)

I made the title of this blog "Story of my Heart" because the only writing I like to do is telling stories. And when I do write, what usually comes out are my feelings, dominantly love. I love everything. I love everyone. Or at least I try to.

*WARNING* When I write, I ramble! I write how I talk. I write what comes to my mind. I don't try to make it sound good, or witty, or poetic. Just thought I'd throw that in there.

OK. I'm supposed to be writing an essay right now, but I'd much rather write here. :) I think I'll cut it off now and write more some other time.
*edit* ^ that didn't happen LOL. :P