My first two weeks of school weren't terribly awful. This semester, my weeks are super short. They essentially feel like three very packed days, followed by a four-day weekend. The arrangement is pretty nice, except that I am much less likely to get work done early because I feel like I'm on break all the time. I'm sure it doesn't help that I've started the weekend trips, but they keep me sane so I'm not likely to slow them down anytime soon.

On Thursday, I got out of a full day of back-to-back classes and jumped in the car for a seven or eight hour drive to Rhode Island. As always, being with Matt makes everything better, even though I knew I'd have to do the drive backwards and immediately go to class once it was over. Time with him is always worth whatever I have to do to make it happen. I'm really freaking excited that I finally got to see the dæmons play live, and I drove back here last night and this morning feeling very inspired to write again. I really needed the change of scenery, to see Matt before he goes on tour for a month and a half, and the reminder that I can go some places and feel like I belong there.

Rhode Island has seriously grown on me since I started spending more time there with Matt. I love the people and the food and aside from needing to deal with Connecticut traffic, I don't even mind driving there anymore. Saturday night, I ran up to give Brad a hug when he got to the party and he said, "Welcome home." It's really heartwarming how a relatively new place can just feel like home, even if you've only visited for a few weeks. Being at Etown still doesn't give me that feeling, so it's especially nice when I get to experience it in the middle of the semester.

I'm only going to be here for the next three days, so hopefully I'll get all of my reading done without getting too cranky. I'm kind of worried about how it's getting more and more difficult for me to force myself to do everything far enough ahead of time to get in reading responses and study for unnecessarily frequent quizzes on the chapters. I am very close to being done with college and I know I can do it, but now that I've decided not to continue or try for a job in Psychology yet, it's becoming a lot tougher to get all of this work done.

On the bright side, I picked up a ton of mail today and put the new art up on my wall. If I'm lost for reasons to keep smiling this semester, you guys and the things you've sent me will definitely point me in the right direction. I'm trying to figure out the best way to make a video about all of this art, and I don't know if I should wait a bit before I do that. I definitely want to find a clever way to share this with you guys though, because it's one of the coolest things ever having a wall covered with cards that people all over the world decorated and sent to me. Thank you again for doing this for me. :)

I am now approaching the part of the night where I am thinking about how great it would be to go to sleep, but unfortunately, I have another textbook chapter, some Psychology articles, and an outline for a presentation I have to give on Thursday to work on.

So here’s a scenario for you.

You’re an independent musician focusing on internet promotion to get your music and other projects out there. After around four years, you’ve accumulated a bit of media attention and some really awesome fans, many of whom have become some of your greatest friends. You can’t play very many shows yet because you’re still in college, but you spend every free moment you have trying to spread the word about the performances you do manage to line up. Eventually, you get to play the show in, say, Winner, SD (and it’s awesome). Immediately upon returning home, you check your YouTube messages and right on top is one that looks like this:

Subject: Your Biggest Fan!
Dear Lauren,
I love your music so much. I have all your CDs and they are constantly on repeat in my car. My ultimate dream is to see you play a live show. Why don’t you ever come to Winner, SD?

jnrfdgoffseosfkdfsdkdsfjj (In case you were wondering, that is the result of your head banging into your keyboard because your diligent promotion managed to escape the attention of your biggest fan and you really have no idea when you’ll have the money to visit Winner, SD again)

Today (well, yesterday when I wrote this), I’ve decided that I’m actually going to put together a comprehensive website that covers all of the various music and internet projects I’ve started over the past few years. I bought a brand new 13” MacBook Pro about a week ago, so I’ve been playing with iWeb pretty much all day. I seem to have given up trying to do something creative and I'm just going with their cookie cutter layouts until I figure out how to do something else, but we'll see how long that lasts. I’m not sure where I’m going to host this or which domain name to buy or if I’ll even finish the website before I get distracted and start another project, but it’s a start.

I realize that I’m probably going to be linking to this site on all of my other various methods of internet expression for a long time before people even consider coming here first for updates, but we’ll see how it goes. If I can reach one more fan that would have missed a show update otherwise, then it’s worth a try.

I'm going back to college for my senior year in a little under a month. I'm not particularly excited about it, especially because this summer was an awesome preview for what I'll be doing full-time once I graduate, but there isn't much I can do about it. One thing I am looking forward to, however, is moving into a quad on campus with three of the most awesome people ever, living right next door to like three sets of amazing people who I don't see often enough. I've been trying to figure out the best way to transport myself from the quads to the rest of the campus where I'll be eating and going to class, because walking will take a while and driving (and then parking) will be obnoxious and less than environmentally friendly.

And then I ordered a Xootr Roma folding kick scooter. Hooray! I kind of can't wait to reinforce my reputation on campus as that weird singing Harry Potter nerd girl, since I'll probably be getting even more confused looks than usual as I fly past people on what looks kind of like an over-sized child's toy.

It is apparently still supposed to come in the mail today in Rhode Island, though I seriously doubt it. Even though it started off in Taylor, PA two days ago, when I woke up this morning, the tracking website was updated to say that it is now at a post office in Hodgkins, IL. It went almost twelve hours in the wrong direction. I guess that could be a bug in the system and it might actually be on the truck for delivery like it should be right now, but I emailed them just in case. Hopefully they'll get back to me because I don't really want someone else to get my new toy dropped on his or her doorstep. The amusing part is that it still says it's right on schedule for delivery today.

I know Rhode Island is small, UPS, but even though you have to look extra hard to find it on a map, you should probably actually figure out where it is before you try to send something there. Nerd-girl needs her scooter.

Update: I guess they realized that they screwed up. Delivery has been rescheduled for August 4th instead. Not cool, UPS. Not cool.

Hey, remember that time I updated a blog? Remember that time I had almost no internet time on tour, so I was planning on updating a bunch once I got back? Well, my excuse for not doing that will hopefully not be so terrible.

As soon as Nina and I got home from the most amazing three weeks on the road, we got right to work on our new EP! If you didn't know this already, we were asked to be part of the Wizard Rock EP of the Month Club for 2009! You should check it out and subscribe if you haven't already. We had less than two weeks to finish August's EP in order to get it in on time, but it ended up working out and I'm really happy with the end product! It was really stressful and caused quite a few headaches, especially for Nina who had to do most of the work, but I'm glad we made it happen.

A while ago, I had an idea to do an album completely a cappella. That's right... no instruments, just voices. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough ideas left over for Myrtle and the concept was a little too much of an undertaking for a full album. Then, Paul approached us about doing an EP (or a short album!) for the club and we knew we could make it happen. I'm hoping to get one or two of the tracks up on MySpace or YouTube so you guys can hear some of the crazy things we recorded. There's even a rap on it featuring the vocal stylings of Tom Riddle, also known as our friend Zack.

If you subscribe to the club, you'll get our 'Bathroom Acoustics' EP in the mail. The only other way to get it is to come to one of our shows once we receive our copies of it in the mail, but we'll only have a limited amount.

And that is why I've been too distracted and exhausted to post in this blog.

I've started reading Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. I still have no clue what's going on, but I like reading it. Matt says it will get even better once I figure out what's happening.

On another note, I'm playing a show in Parsippany, NJ tomorrow by myself and I am pretty freaking nervous. Granted, I haven't really promoted the show or practiced for it, so that would be an appropriate emotion in this case. Please come? And RSVP on Facebook? Who knows... I might even make some of this week's Tuesday video at the show, since I've also been neglecting fiveawesomegirls and now I finally have the time and internet access that I've needed to get back into vlogging.

I love you all.

All day, I've been packing up my room and taking down the stuff on my walls. This would be a tedious and kind of sad process if I weren't so eager to get out of here and get my summer started.

I really enjoy covering my walls with faces I love and bright colors, but I'm not going to lie. It annoys me just a little bit that I get so many comments on my videos that have nothing to do with anything I've said or the music I've played, but that are just from people saying that they like my posters. I mean... I work on a solo CD for months and you choose to comment that you like V For Vendetta or that Natalie Portman's bald head scares you (it's hot, okay?). This hasn't happened until I put movie posters on my walls either. Luckily, with every new year I get a new dorm room and a clean slate to make my own (and in the case of last year's roommonster situation, I got to do this twice).

And so I put forth a challenge. I refuse to let the white cinder block walls show for my senior year... this place is enough of a prison as it is. But I would love to spend the summer taking new photos and collecting new things that I can put up on my walls for senior year so I don't have to put the movie posters back up (at least, not where the camera can see them anyway). I feel like my backdrops over the years have given a nice edge to my videos and while I don't want it to be distracting, I think it would be really fun to make next year's walls a collaborative project.

I would love to make this some kind of art collage, but I'm not exactly sure what to do with it. I'm thinking that I could accept 4x6" horizontal index card submissions with magazine clippings, photos, song lyrics, drawings, letters, and other fun little colorful things attached to them and get some kind of P.O. box for people to send them into. Would you guys be interested in creating a piece or two of my YouTube backdrop for the upcoming school year? Do you have any other ideas for things I could do to decorate? We have all summer and I know you guys are creative. This could be awesome.

In other news, I'm going home tomorrow!

Okay, I'll admit it. I search for myself on Google when I get bored.

One of the really hilarious things about being moderately well-known by people on the internet is that you hear amusing rumors about yourself and you can never really be sure where they got that idea from. Here's a gem I dug up that I found on an American Idol forum dedicated to voting for the worst person on the show at any given time:

"Does anyone remember Lauren Fairweather? I think she was Season 5, and she auditioned in Boston. At that time she was a 16-year-old from Hillsborough, NJ. Apparently, Randy REALLY didn't like her, so I don't think she made it to Hollywood. Currently though, she's 1/5 of the YouTube hit fiveawesomegirls, and has recorded 2 albums with her band, The Moaning Myrtles (they sing about Harry Potter) and 2 solo albums. She's signed to DFTBA Records. Don't you think it would have been awesome if she made it to the voting rounds? I mean, a Harry Potter nutjob in the Top 24 would have been a VFTW Victory ! Could someone dig up her audition? I don't know if it was even on the show, but she said in one of her YouTube videos that Randy Jackson really hated her voice."

1. I never auditioned for the judges. I got rejected at the first round where you sing in front of one of like 20 random producers lined up on the football field and they don't even have TV cameras around yet. I don't know where this person heard that Randy Jackson hated me either considering that I never even sang for him. And since when does Randy ever say anything besides "Dawg dawg dawg I'm feelin ya dawg" or "Dawg not your best dawg"?
2. I'm not signed to DFTBA Records either? I've been releasing albums for years before they even existed. I also got the impression that they were founded to help talented songwriting YouTubers release albums if they don't have the funding or materials to do so themselves, and I don't exactly fall into that category since I've been doing this myself since 2005.

People are hilarious.

It’s that flavor they intend to be grape but is really kind of gross and tastes nothing like grapes. Because I love grapes and I am offended that they would make grape-flavored things so gross, I refer to that taste as purple instead.

Do grapes even come in purple? I’ve only seen red and green ones outside of cartoons.

I enjoy science. When I was in high school, I was seriously considering a career in biology or genetics and I was actually in a club that met after school where the especially nerdy (see also: awesome) students got together and did college-level bio labs to solve challenges and such. We watched Gattaca once. Fantastic movie.

However, that interest never really extended to Physics. This might have had something to do with the fact that my high school Physics teacher, hilarious as he was, spoke with a thick Romanian accent that took me about a semester to decode. I would blame my confusion on this, but even once I figured out what he was saying, I actually realized that it was Physics that I couldn’t understand.

So, here I am, in college and in need of a lab science. I’ve already taken (see also: failed) Neuropsychology and crawled my way through Neuroscience, but the psychology-related science class selection is pretty limited here. And that is why I was enrolled in How Things Work, a Physics class for people who don’t get science or math. Or in my case, a Physics class for people who don’t get Physics or Calculus, since I technically kick ass at most types of science and math.

Today, we began a unit on Physics in Music. I thought this would be pretty cool considering that I love music and the professor has already asked me to bring in my guitar on Tuesday. Unfortunately, this particular class period consisted entirely of a bad 1980’s educational film in which the voiceovers repeatedly mispronounce the word ‘timbre’ and proceed to simplify something as beautifully complex as music into, essentially, a picture of a wave and some numbers.

Way to make one of the most interesting concepts into a bland, impersonal, emotionless scribble, Physics.