The Fair

Yesterday, I went to the New Hyde Park Street Fair. To be clear, I don't live in New Hyde Park, but my mom will do anything for eagle paraphernalia. Including walking down Jericho Turnpike in the pouring rain, which is what we did. 

The weather forecast said that it would rain Saturday night into Sunday, but as we drove to the fair at 11 am Saturday morning, it starting sprinkling. By the time we reached the vendors, it was a near-torrential downpour. My parents and I didn't have umbrellas or raincoats or anything, so we found ourselves walking down the road with as much soaking wet poise as we could. I felt so bad for all of the people without canopies and the people with canopies that were quickly being weighed down with water. I saw a man with dozens of boxes of picture frames frantically trying to shield them from the rain. 

On the bright side, I bought a blue flower crown, a yawning cat keychain, and a pickle for various discounted prices for my perseverance. My dad thought that after we were all already soaking wet, he would buy us umbrellas, which did not help much. After half an hour of swimming through the street, my mom found the man who was selling fleece jackets with animals on them, and when she bought her eagle jacket, we were finally allowed to leave. My mom and I ended up coming back later because my sister (http://jessicaiscurrentlyonfire.blogspot.com/) wanted a flower crown, too, and the sun was finally out. While there, we ate five-dollar Chinese food, and ran into Danny Magaldi (http://danielmagaldi.blogspot.com/) and his dad. 

On the way home, my mom and I passed a yard sale. I bought a mug with rainbows on it, but the best item at this yard sale was a near-mint-condition white 1963 Rolls Royce. It even had the steering wheel on the right side of the car and the lady was asking $15,000 dollars for it. My mom was seriously considering taking money out of her 401K to buy it and sell it to the guys on American Restoration.
And after this very interesting day, I went home to do my Chemistry homework.

Afterlife

I found an article on Big Think and I think it is really, really interesting. The writer hypothesizes that if people knew that a little while after they died, an asteroid would destroy life on Earth, things like cancer research and engineering projects would stop. The only reason why people do things to help people is because they want to make sure that it will benefit the future of the world, but if the earth was doomed anyway, there is no point. The thesis is that the future existence of earth is our primary motivation to do work.
As a pretty nonreligious person, I find it hard to believe in heaven or other forms of afterlife, but I do agree that hope is a large motivator for me. I make art in the hopes that I will get better at it. I go to school in the hopes that someday I'll go to college and get a good job. If I knew for a fact that I would never get better at art or get a good job, I would probably stop. There is no use watering a flower that will never grow.
Here is the link for anyone who is interested:
http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/how-knowledge-of-an-afterlife-gives-existence-meaning

Crowdsourcing

http://www.palantir.com/engineering-culture/
I like the three guiding ideas: "The Best Idea Wins," "Nothing is Permanent," and "Keep Focused on the Mission." These are actually good rules to live by in general. "All voices are equal here—we hire people to have an opinion and be creative. We’re intolerant of politicking, ego, and power brokers. If your idea makes the most sense, that’s what we’re doing, regardless of the seniority or role of the person presenting the idea." This rule reminds me of STAC, because we don't tolerate people being assholes to each other.

http://www.palantir.com/life-at-palantir/
This seems like a great place to work. It reminds me a lot of STAC. You do your work, but you don't need to sit at a desk and frown at a screen the whole time. It seems like the employees at Palantir have very good relationships with each other, which is very good for getting work done because everybody is comfortable and happy. It seems almost too good to be true.

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/11-tips-for-crowdfunding-how-to-raise-money-from-strangers/
I feel like these are the exact steps that Amanda Palmer took. She was passionate, compelling, interesting, smart... and here it is, all on one website. These tips are extremely helpful, because now I'm not as lost when it comes to knowing what we're going to be doing for this crowdsourcing project.

http://www.behance.net/gallery/Google-Visual-Assets-Guidelines-Part-1/9028077
I like how the Google template is so colorful, yet they are the same colors all over the website. The icons are really geometric, which makes a huge but subtle difference in how people perceive Google.

Knitting

When I was in the third grade, I took a knitting class as part of the Saturday Recreation program. I wasn't really good at it, obviously, because nobody is really good at anything at eight years old. On Friday, the 13th, I realized that I didn't like how I spent my free time watching TV on the couch, so I figured, if I did something productive while I watched TV, then it wouldn't be a complete waste of time. So I went upstairs, found some yarn and a pair of needles, and set to knitting a scarf. It turns out, I'm not that bad at knitting anymore. I think it may be because my fingers have become more nimble ever since I started braiding hair as a hobby. Since Friday, I have learned multiple stitches and two different ways to cast on. I still don't know how to knit anything other than a scarf or blanket, but that can be something to strive for. I also found out today that my mom's mother, who I've never met, loved to knit and crochet, which is unbelievable for me. I never believed the theory that some skills and interests are hereditary, but maybe some aspects of that are true. Although I'm not a very religious person, I'd like to think that my grandmother, wherever she is, is happy that we have something in common.

My Very First Library Post

For as long as I can remember, my mom has affectionately called my dad, a "wealth of useless information." I seem to have inherited his sense of curiosity, because I take great pleasure in knowing little tidbits of information that have absolutely no use except for maybe a conversation starter or creative inspiration. When I was trying to think of the type of website I was trying to discover, many different things passed through my head, because like many teenagers in my generation, it doesn't matter what website I'm on, I just generally enjoy the Internet. This was until I found this website: http://mentalfloss.com/

This website even better than my dad at spitting out things that you didn't know you wanted to know. To be honest, I had known about the mentalfloss YouTube channel before, but when I happened across the website, I was pretty excited. The YouTube channel makes videos such as "31 Strange Medical Conditions", "26 Weird Animal Mating Habits", and "37 Odd College Mascots." The website has entire articles based on these kinda of things. My favorite feature on the website is its "Most Interesting Fact Generator," which can be found by pressing the Amazing Facts tab. When you press the button, it gives you the type of fact that you would find on a snapple cap, but better. I have actually found articles about every single topic, from literature to pop culture to sports to history to art. Mentalfloss also has a partnership with Dos Equis, where they do a miniseries on How to Be More Interesting, like "How to Walk a Tightrope" and "How to Rip a Phone Book in Half." They also have a lot of different quizzes you can take for fun. If anybody is interested in Mentalfloss, you can go the website, the YouTube channel, or you can subscribe to their magazine. I personally believe that knowing a lot about nothing in particular makes a person wiser and generally more fun to talk to, and I think this website will serve as a big source of information that I can incorporate into my writing.

Artist's Biography

               

Alexa Nicole Jellema, more commonly known as Lex, was born on November 22^nd, 1998, in Williston Park, a suburb on Long Island. As a child, she enjoyed singing, writing, and drawing,  and in the eighth grade she entered the English Scholars Program at Herricks Middle School and auditioned for the school’s production of Seussical: the Musical, in which she had a small role. In the ninth grade, she enrolled in the Student Television Arts Company (STAC), the gifted arts program at Herricks High School. Since then, she has explored film-making and has made several short silent films, as well as participated in the school play, Our Town.

                Lex spends her spare time reading and watching copious amounts of Netflix, as well as braiding her hair in different ways over and over again and hanging out with her friends occasionally like a normal fourteen-year-old girl. Someday, she dreams to finally discover her purpose in life, because she personally believes in some elements of destiny, karma, and wishful thinking and she will not let anything stop her from being happy. As an INFJ on the Myers Briggs scale, she is deeply idealistic, but as an Enneagram Type 9 wing 1, she tends to go with the flow more or less.

                Art has always been a way for Lex to free herself from whatever frustrated or saddened her, and she hopes to do that for other people, someday.

Them Heavy People verse:

They hold my head underwater and I can't breathe,

The cold, it hurts, but it seems to complete me,

I stop fighting and their hands let go,

I rise to the top and the sun makes my face glow.