Ok, we jammed. I sucked. Really bad. All of them have mass experience and I do not. I tried really hard to keep up with them, but Austin is this amazing guitarist and Dan is also, (even though he was playing bass tonight), and all I know is your basic punk rhythm, power chord type stuff. I can't do any solo work and I'm no good at foreign chords. So, as you can see, I'm feeling very low at this point. I wish I was good. I wish I was amazing. I wish I was the awesomest guitar player in the world. I wish I weren't just another girl trying to act cool because I know how to semi-play. I'm feeling very bad for myself right now and I am very frustrated. I am going to kick my butt into getting better at the guitar. Battle of the Bands isn't until March so I've got about four months to get myself in gear. I also have to learn the riffs to Dan's band because I am replacing Dustin for the Battle because he is from a different school and they need a rhythm guitarist. I'm so afraid that I'm going to go to their rehearsal tomorrow and absolutely explode, just simultaneously combust with frustration. I think Dustin mainly plays power chords so that is a relief. For the most part, they are a punk band, which makes my life a whole lot easier.

I'm so full of fear and intimidation I can hardly speak. What's wrong with me?

I am very happy because tomorrow, me and three other friends are getting together to jam and create music. We plan on participating in Battle of the Bands this year. Most people get involved with the Battle early, perhaps their freshman year of high school. I didn't start playing guitar until sophomore year, and even after I got to be good, I've only now decided to participate. I am a senior in high school. I am crazy about Christian punk music. I love bands like relientK, mxpx, hangnail, and weezer. I enjoy a bunch of other bands too, but those are my particular favorites. I've always wanted to play like them, to sing like them. For the longest time, I wished I was a boy so I could have a voice similar to M@ Thiessen's from relientK. It didn't take long for me to decide it is better to be a girl because of all the hot, punk boys that I can have crushes on!

I'm really hoping that we can come up with some awesome songs with a good, Godly message because I would love to graduate from high school with an amazing Battle victory. The band is made up of Austin, Sarah, Dan, and me. Austin will be on guitar. I'll be on rhythm. Sarah on drums and percussion. Dan on the bass. We are going to have a wide variety of music. Slow, melodical. Fast, punk. Rock. It's also really cool because there are girls in the band! There is one other band with a girl and she is really good, but for some reason, I can't really see her as a "girl." She doesn't look girly. Sarah and I-- we're girly for sure! So, that in itself is saying something.

I am just rambling. I guess it's late and I am pumped about tomorrow. Plus, I needed something to write about and this was the first thing that came to mind.

Over.

I guess it wouldn't really surprise anyone if I said that Christmas time is my favorite time of the year. Of course it is. It's pretty much everyone's favorite time. I won't list everything I love about it, but I guess I felt like talking about it a bit. I figure if Jesus were down here right about now, He'd more than likely be totally pumped about his birthday coming up. I wish I knew what date he really was born. It had to have been in the winter time though. I suppose something miraculous could have happened and it snowed in July, but I think the sheperds or the wisemen would have mentioned something. So, Jesus was most likely born in the November, December, January, and maybe February months.

I've made the decision to absolutely celebrate Jesus' birthday to the maximum! In everything that I do, whatever tradition I fulfill, I will remind myself that Jesus is the reason for the season. With every snow that falls, I will kneel into the snow, and praise God for creating me and sending baby Jesus to live and die for me.

I've also made the ultimate plans to do things completely different this year. I want to do the things that I've always wanted to do for Christmas. I'm going to buy my own miniature Christmas tree and make homemade ornaments and buy lights and make my own star for the top. Leah, (newday101), and a bunch of other friends from bible study and school are going out about a week before the celebration to sing various Christmas carols, which I have never done before. I'm also going to write notes to friends on cut-out snowflakes! I'm going to do everything that I've seen other people do and more! I'll come up with my own traditions and activities! I'm going to make a Christmas video journal starting December 1st till Christmas morning! I've got so many great ideas flying through my head, I can't get them written down fast enough. So as you can probably tell, I am very excited about all this!

Happy Holidays and may the love of Christ be your reason for the season! From the jeffersonairplane staff.

Wednesday, November 27, 2001
I feel very unlistened to right now. In these past months, the past days, and minutes. For some unknown reason, I feel unheard, ignored, and in many ways, invisible. Mostly, my family seems completely unbeknownst of my life. They never ask me how my day went? They never ask, "What have you been up to?" They reveal no curiosity about my life, my interests, my friends. I go about day-to-day, doing lots of things and meeting new people and discovering new things about myself, but my family has no desire, (to my knowledge), to know anything about anything about me. My friends don't seem too interested either. More so than my parents, at least I feel I exsist when my friends are around. Still, I feel I am the one who lacks interesting qualities, and sometimes I feel totally worthless compared to others. Is this my own doing? Have I inflicted this upon myself? The only time I ever feel interesting is when I have a story to tell. "Something hilarious happened to me the other day!..." That's when I feel like I'm revealing a little piece of my insides to someone else, and what a wonderful feeling it is when I know that someone is getting to see me just a tinge better than he or she did before. Perhaps it is my fault that my parents have no interest in me. I'm not exactly sure, because I know that I tell them about things that are going on all the time, but they always reply, "Oh, that's great, honey," or, "Cool, Car. Tell me more later cause I gotta go check my email" or some other lame excuse. My parents aren't evil, in fact, they're wonderful. I just think they are so caught up in everything that's happening around them that they don't realize that they sometimes make me feel unimportant. They also don't realize it's been going on for too many years now. I can't remember the last time I got home from school and my parents asked, "So what happened at school today?" I yearn for that question. My heart longs for it. Yes, I attempt to tell them what happened anyways, but if they asked it would make my life so much sweeter simply because I know they are genuinely interested.

At least God found me interesting enough to create, love, and save me. That certainly boosts my confidence.

If you look above you, you will see the air compartment button. If you should ever have difficulty breathing, just punch the ceiling with your fist a coupla times and the respitory supporter should fall into your lap. Quickly strap it around your head and breath deep. If the elastic band should cut the blood circulation off to your head and you pass out, enjoy the pleasant relaxation. Besides, it's not our fault your head is so massive! The elastic band even says, "One size fits all." Sheesh...

Is there anything in your life that is so important to you, it makes you weep? Two things are that important to me:
1. My love for Jesus Christ.
2. My love for playing the guitar.
Today, it was the second one that got to me. I have guitar lessons every Tuesday after school, and lately, the frustration has been building up so much, I can feel it in my throat. I fought the tears whenever my teacher would ask, "Do you follow?" or "You understand?" You see, it isn't that my hands won't physically do something that he wants me do, it something completely different. It's guitar theory, which is all about numbers and memorization and calculating things and such. I hate it! It is one of the only things that I have come to actually hate! At the end of my lesson, I could barely speak. Hardly even a "Uh-huh" and "Ok" left my mouth, my eyes and cheeks were burning with frustration. The moment I heard the door click shut behind me, I broke into tears and wept the whole way home.

"Why can't I understand what he's trying to teach me? Why is it so many other people are able to get this stuff?"
And stoopid other things came to mind:
"Is it because I'm a girl? Because I'm a girl, should I play like girls? Can I not play rock music? Can I not be a punk? Because I'm a girl? Was that only meant for guys?" Like I said, ridiculous. But that's how upset I was!

Leah, (newday101), called me tonight and I completely expressed my frustration to her. In fact, I nearly started crying all over again over the phone. This is obviously bothering me, but I'm not sure whether I should go to my teacher about it or not. He is a great teacher, and he's helped me a lot, but I'm still frustrated. Leah helped a lot by just listening and allowing me to vent, but still, the frustration remains. I still don't understand, and next Tuesday, I'm going to go back to Rick's, like every week, and get more frustrated, and continue to listen, and concentrate, and study, and attempt to memorize, and do everything like I did the previous week. But that's how much I love playing. I wish I could do it for a living. So, I won't quit. I won't quit the thing that I love. All this pain and frustration is worth going through for the love of playing.

We are experiencing some mild turbulence, but we predict some blue skies ahead.

Nothing really exciting happened today. The only thing that I can think of that brightened it up a little bit was when I got home from my English 101 class this morning and decided to redecorate my car. It once belonged to my sister until my dad decided to take it back and give her my cute, blue toyota Corolla. O, how I miss "the duck"... Technically, my dad has permitted me to use this car, but I basically consider it to be mine. Until he fixes up our run-down isuzu Trooper, these keys won't leave my fingertips. So basically I stripped it of everything this morning. Of the torn up seat covers, the hawaii necklaces hanging from the rearview mirror, the trash, the clothes, the CD's, and everything else you may find under the seat in your car. I got the ultra-suck-vacuum out too and gutted that baby of every grain of sand, dirt, dust, pollen, and doodoo of any kind! It was kinda fun to see what the car looked like without all the garbage. I even took a bottle of 409 and handwashed every window, inside and out. It looked so nice. It looked really different. But I finally felt like this car no longer had the name "Cassie" branded on it's side. Suddenly, I felt the car was fitted for myself. It was clean. I still can't get the dumb stickers off the back window and bumper, but I'm not so concerned about those.

My best friend's birthday is coming up this Saturday, (December 1), and I'm not so sure what to buy her. You'll never guess what we're doing-- that's right! Ice skating! It was my idea, of course! When I mentioned it, she thought it was an awesome way to celebrate her birthday. Plus, she and I got a lot of practice in this last Friday. I'm thinking I'm going to get her the new relientK CD, "Anatomy of the Tongue and Cheek" and something else equally cool. I'm just not sure what'll be yet.

We have now reached 36,000 feet. If you look to your left, you'll see... Whatever you want to see! I don't care! Use your imagination!

What an amazing weekend! No school on Thursday or Friday, but I honestly feel like I've been out of school for a whole week! On Thursday, while most American families were eating their turkey and stuffing, my mom took my little brother and me to see the movie, Harry Potter. Last week, my grandparents, my sister, and her fiance came to visit us. Since we were all together, we decided to advance Thanksgiving up a week. My mom really didn't feel like cooking another bird, so we decided to take advantage of the vacant movie theater.

On Friday, a bunch of my friends and I went ice skating at SnoKing! I think I'm gonna be there every Friday from now on. Whenever I go ice skating, I seem to improve a little bit more compared to my previous time. I enjoy it so much. The heels of my feet and my ankles don't blister anymore either! I wish I could take my family, but since Christian skate is so late, (9:00 PM-12:00 AM), I don't think they'd feel so up to it.

On Saturday, I basically babysat the majority of the day. It was fun though because the kids wanted to go rollerblading at SkateKing! Needless to say, I was overjoyed to take them. We had an awesome time, and when we were done, we went to Burger King. Most of Saturday was spent lounging in a giant comfy chair next to a raging fire watching "The Grinch" starring Jim Carrey. How does he do that with his face?

Of course, like every Sunday, I attended Redwood Hills church which takes place in the town movie theater. Pastor Greg gave us a quick preview as to our coming lessons. The next series is going to be about Jesus and what it might have been like if he had lived as a 30-year-old in this time, in this generation.

Anyways, I gotta go. It's late and I'm tired.
I pray that you all had a wonderful weekend as well. So long and God bless! Signing off.

Hey hey.
I had an interesting day today. In Chemistry class, we made root-beer. Someone brought vanilla ice cream so we all enjoyed root-beer floats. It was pretty fun. And it tasted really good! I hate root-beer too, but I loved what we made. It was tasty... I was a little paranoid about drinking it out of the same beakers that we've used for doing experiements using chemicals like sulfuric, hydrochloric, and nitric acids! But my teacher assured me that it was safe because they'd been cleaned out thoroughly. Then again, my teacher loves to play pranks and makes us think that a bomb is about to go off at any second. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my special moment of the day!

I like keeping my blogs short but with a good point. So I will proceed to wrap this one up.
My relationship with Christ has been dwelling mostly on my growing faith and my ability to listen to what God desires of me. Lately, the Lord has been requesting simple things from me. For example, if I see someone sitting alone during lunch, God has asked me to simply go up to them and invite them to eat with my friends and me in the band hallway. Usually, the thought of going up to someone I don't know makes me cringe, but I've been practicing and it's getting better. There are even times when God has asked me to simply give someone in the corner a smile. A smile! That's all! How on earth does that do anything for that person? And God always reminds me, "You can't see their hearts, but trust Me, because I certainly can." So, basically, that is my ultimate goal each and every day: To love others the way God wants me to.

Over and out.

Hello, welcome to jeffersonairplane. This is your Captain speaking:
Ok, ok. I should probably credit newday101 and again47 because they both have inspired me to start jeffersonairplane. Each blog is dedicated to building their lives toward Christ and making each day better than the previous one with God's help.

If you're curious about the blog title, I'll tell you about it. Relient K is my favorite band, (of all time), and on their Creepy EP six track sample CD, they have a song titled Jefferson Airplane. And that is all I will say about that...

So, for today, I will end on this touching note:
"On Jefferson Airplane, I'm trapped and I am enclosed.
But I won't complain, I'll open all the windows.
Cause when I'm colder, I feel much better.
When I cry on my own shoulder, just throw on a sweater
And go." God bless!

Welcome aboard jeffersonairplane. On this flight, you will reach amazing altitudes. You may experience mild to extreme turbulence, so be prepared.