I Am So Weird

So I've been giving it a lot of thought lately, and you know something? I am a really strange person. Many of you reading this are probably my friends and/or family members, so this news should not come as a surprise. Most of the rest of you have probably read my blog before, so you probably could have figured this out by now. However, for the few among you readers who still clutched on to the idea that I am a normal or perhaps even cool human being, it is time that your misguided little bubble be burst. I am really, incredibly strange.

In the past few days, a few ideas have popped into my head for possible blog posts. I thought about writing about a little excursion I went on over the weekend. I considered talking about my new hobby. While these would seem to be normal ideas in the abstract, I realized that, in my case, blog posts about either of these ideas would simply make me look like a giant freak. Let's start with my weekend excursion, shall we?

On something like Friday of last week, a couple of my friends and I decided to go to Let's Spoon for the thousandth time this semester. I had already eaten three full meals that day and I had a half-finished theology paper due at midnight, but when 8:30 rolled around, it was froyo time. Even this reality, while gluttonous and perhaps indicative of mislaid priorities, wouldn't have been that weird. But I haven't yet mentioned our soundtrack for the night. You see, in my car, I keep an assortment of jams (as in music, not  preserves/jellies) in a No Boundaries CD case that I purchased at Walmart circa 1999. Most of the CDs in said case also hail from this era, since I bought a lot more of those in the late 90s/early 2000s than I do now that there's iTunes and stuff. Often, when people flip through my CD case, they say something along the lines of, "Wow Sarah, your music collection is so ironically vintage and fun!" In reality, this is not true. My music collection basically just consists of the same things I listened to when I was ten. For our froyo excursion, then, we flipped between two CDs: "Teen Spirit" by (wait for it) the A*Teens and "Metamorphosis" by Hilary Duff. I still knew about 80% of the words to these albums. We opened the sunroof (it was dark outside, to remind you all) and we rocked out - often in three-part harmony. This is not normal. Upon musing over this event later, I thought, "I really did that. ...Wow." Three days later, when I returned to my car to find that the aforementioned sunroof had been left open that whole time - including through a hurricane-strength rainstorm - my mild disappointment in my own strangeness switched more to a burning self-hatred. This self-hatred lasted just long enough for me to realize that the only damage seemed to be a cupholder full of leaf-infused water and a driver's seat that left my jeans uncomfortably damp when I got out of the car, thus throwing me back into a cycle of weirdness by forcing me to walk around for the next hour or so awkwardly patting down my butt.

And then there's this new hobby of mine. I had requests (okay, one request) to write a whole blog post on this, but I decided against it for two reasons. First, I've reviewed a lot of things on the blog lately, and I don't want people to think that's all I do. Secondly, I cannot just write a blog post about this and let it sit like it's normal behavior. My new hobby, you see, is Pottermore. For those of you who do not know, for starters, we are no longer friends. Pottermore is the officially-licensed online world of Harry Potter. On Pottermore, you can take an "interactive" journey through, for now, the first book in the Harry Potter series. You enter into animated "moments" from the chapters and search for small gifts and new content from JK Rowling to unlock. Along the way, you buy school supplies, get a wand created just for you, and are sorted into your Hogwarts house by a weirdly intuitive Sorting Hat quiz. Though it was released last July, this weekend marked Pottermore's opening to the general public. I was finally able to join on Sunday night, and it is pretty much the best thing that has ever happened to me. For anyone who's curious, my wand is made of chestnut with a phoenix-feather core, and I am a proud Ravenclaw. For anyone who was still unclear, THIS IS WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT WHEN I SAY THAT I AM A GIANT WEIRDO. I actually just talked about my magic wand and my Hogwarts house to potentially the entire internet. In case this wasn't bad enough, I wrote a poem about Pottermore on Sunday night to submit for a grade for my poetry class. Most of my Sunday brunch was spent discussing Pottermore with my similarly weird friends.

People of earth, my "normal human being" card should really be revoked! I am an unacceptably strange person, and based on the existence of this blog post, I apparently do not care who knows it. I listen to Hilary Duff while driving around town in 2012. I am a practicing member of Pottermore. I know how to speak Ubbi-Dubbi, that weird gibberish language that you vaguely remember them speaking on that TV show Zoom back when you were in elementary school. I may actually be the weirdest person I have ever met, but at the same time, I somehow manage to still be cooler than, like, sooo many 12-year-olds. This is a pretty good existence. In closing, then, I will leave you with this: my Pottermore username is FlightMist24736, and you should add me as a friend.

SEE?? I'm insufferable.

In other news, if you're wondering, no, it is not too early to ask me to the Dome Dance that Howard will be having at some indeterminate point in the 2012-2013 school year. Hint, hint.