i think i'd be good for you

lately, i've been listening to mostly just folk. i'm not anti-other music or whatever...it's just been fitting my mood lately. anyways, i still have a guilty pleasure. and their name is weezer. i suppose it's not a truly guilty pleasure, or else i wouldn't be willing to admit it. so yeah, weezer. they're not even close to being the most amazing band on the planet. and yet i still love them. they have quirky, sometimes cute, lyrics, and really catchy melodies. it's impossible to listen to them without singing along. in my opinion, the blue album (1994) was their best album. although i'm a big fan of the song el scorcho (from pinkerton. apparently some of their songs are on guitar hero and stuff. i find this annoying for some reason, i'm not sure why. maybe it's the thought of them getting butchered? anyways, i already mentioned the fact that some of their lyrics are cute. there's something nice about listening to happy lyrics about how people are in love. i'm just a cheesy person like that, i guess.

do you believe looooove?

so my super stylish ’92 buick only has a cassette player. i have an ipod adapter dealy, but i find that to be really distracting while I drive, so i decided to switch it up. my dad has a bunch of old cassette tapes that, for some reason, he hasn’t gotten rid of yet. i went through them yesterday and found about ten or fifteen interesting ones. some of them have lovely 80s pop (supertramp, huey lewis and the news, etc.), while some have random classical music (mandolin solos, bassoon concertos, etc.). i also came across a mix tape that my parents got as a wedding favor in the early nineties. it’s quite entertaining. one side is titled “mary’s side” and has a bunch of u2 songs and a few other cheesy love songs, dedicated to her husband. The other side, “vince’s side” has an assortment of equally cheesy love songs, proclaiming his undying love and all that jazz. Although he does have some okay songs, so perhaps i can forgive him. oh, and i found a few decent greatest hits tapes, including the byrds, the hollies, and chicago. i was also pretty excited to find a bob dylan one too. all in all, it was a pretty successful cassette tape raid. so if anyone happens to hear me driving along with the song “higher love” by depeche mode blaring, just blame vince.

the clue of the whistling bagpipes

i loved nancy drew when i was younger. like, i wanted to be a detective when i grew up. i would spy on people and do other semi-creepy things like that. i guess it didn't seem creepy to me when i was seven, but looking back on it is kind of funny. so my best friend and i (i suppose i should keep her nameless? her middle name is irene.)would always hang out at my grandparents' house when we were in elementary school and early middle school. we would hide stuff, and talk about what people would think of it when they dug it up hundreds of years later. yeah, we were cool. so i went to my grandparents' with my mom for a few minutes tonight. and i remembered a particular note i had written and stuck in a random book, so i went on a hunt for it. i found it rather quickly, actually. i had stuck a folded-up neon pink post-it note, written in sparkly purple ink, in an old copy of macbeth (copyright 1911). i think someone got it for a gift, because written in pencil in fancy cursive is "feb. 3, 1922." so anyways, this note. i don't remember if i thought it was profound at the time, but i cracked up when i read it this evening. here's the note, word for word:

"Hi! This note was written by Caitlin Bradford on March 9th, 2003. I am in 6th grade at Franklin Middle School. I have a Hamster named KC. My favorite color is kelly green. I like pandas."

as we can see in this note, i was obviously a child prodigy, with many deep thoughts running through my head at all times.

diente de león

i've always liked dandelions. they're a nice color when they're new, and they look really cool when they become clocks (the wishing stage). so of course, i had to read the wikipedia article on them, right? apparently the name came from butchering the french "dent de lion," which means lion tooth (because of the zigzaggy leaves).also, in modern french, i guess they call a dandelion a pissenlit, which means urinate in bed. pretty appetizing, eh? they're supposedly thirty million years old, too. and they have lovely antioxidants! i still make wishes on dandelions. i make wishes on most things, except on 11:11. for some reason that seems stupider than other things, which i guess doesn't really make sense. but anyways, dandelions are one of my favorite parts of spring.

the powder blue dream

so in the dead of winter, i got a new bicycle. new to me, at least. i got it for free from someone at my church. i used to ride my bike everywhere in elementary and middle school. there was something i always loved about it, i guess. after i outgrow my first schwinn, i never got a new one (i'm not sure why). but anyways, when i saw this bike at church, i was really excited. i did a google search for it, and i found a nearly identical one from 1971. so i'm thinking i have an authentic retro bicycle now, which i find exciting. the only difference from the picture is that mine is a girl model, while this is a boy one. i found the picture on some guy's blog that restores old bicycles. he paid 75$ for his and had to do a bunch of repairs, while mine was free and in nearly perfect condition (except for the back brake pad.. i'll probably replace it sometime). it's name is maude (yeah, i name inanimiate objects). so today i took a break from ap us studying and rode it around my neighborhood. it was lovely. i'm thinking about starting to ride my bike to school, too, now that the weather is nice. the only problem is that my backpack is sometimes grossly heavy. but it might be worth it, considering i just spent a million dollars for gas filling up the tank in my car.

heyletstxtloljkttyl!!!

i hate texting.

very little is generally accomplished by it. sure, there might be a few good uses for it, but for the most part, it's just annoying. i think it's rather pathetic to be in a class where 75% of the class is texting (many times each other)while the teacher is trying to teach. do people really not care enough to at least pretend to pay attention? do they realize there are kids in the world that would give up their right arm to go to school? seriously. if you're going to text, do it some other time. and also, who has an actual conversation through a text? just call them. or talk to them in person. another thing i hate about texting is that it seems to tell the person you're with that they're not as important as the person you're texting. there are a few friends of mine that will text while we're hanging out. and it's like "oh, am i not interesting enough for you? sorry about that.."

disclaimer: if for some reason someone is actually reading this, and they text, just know we can still be friends. (unless you're a creepy stalker)

i'll be laughing at your silly little jokes

i make lists all the time. it's probably because i'd forget everything if i didn't write it down. i make lists of things i need to get done for school, things to do before i die, books to read, movies to watch, etc. so it seems appropriate for me to make lists of things on my blog, right?
a list of things i've been thinking about in the past sixty minutes
1) i was researching some intense jazz clarineting on youtube. i found this clarinet solo in the song "beautiful love." the guy playing is pretty talented, and i'm pretty sure he's only in high school.
2)at the moment i'm listening to noah and the whale. i'm a pretty big fan. it's folk, so it's pretty focused on the vocals. they have cute lyrics. and their songs are quite catchy.
3) i need to finish my other homework, too. i had too much homework today to hang out with my friend berniece and play scrabble, which is a shame.
4) i found out i can't go to honduras this summer. i applied to do this internship at an orphanage outside of tegucigalpa. they're having some leadership problems or something, so they're not having an interns. i'm upset about it, but hopefully it'll work out for next summer. now i'm wondering what i'll be doing this summer now that i won't be in honduras for a month.
5) i like daffodils.
6) i'm also wishing i didn't have to take ap exams.
7) seahorses are neat. and apparently they hold tails during courtship, which makes me laugh. they're also used in chinese herbology.
8) i want to have a pet duck someday. that would be really cool.i would name it tilly.
9) it'd be really fun to speak swahili. i've met people who speak it, and it sounds cool. elephant in swahili is tembo or ndovu
11)when i was little i had this picture book by remy charlip called Arm in Arm (A Collection of Connections, Endless Tales, Reiterations, and other Echolalia). it was just a book filled with random pictures and phrases. it made me want to be a picture book writer.
12) i like words that look like their definition. for instance: scofflaw, killjoy, layabout, fussbudget, smellfungus, etc.