Bounce low, bounce high.

Before hitting the bed to get my badly needed beauty sleep for graduation tomorrow (I'll have to wake up at 6:00am sharp) I just have to say a few words about these past few days that have been filled with nothing but live music, cheap beer, awesome people and mighty fun time.

Wednesday:

Sixgun Republic at Bar Loose.

Anna's boyfriend is the drummer so we went to their place first to get started with the party mood and after that headed to the gig. To be honest, I was expecting a screamo band with a bunch of guys jumping around and screaming their lungs out - instead, I got a Volbeat-like rockabilly band with quite awesome sounding tones. Such a positive surprise.

Thursday:

MSTRKRFT @ Virgin Oil Co with Jade and Jannika.

After all these months of waiting, what can I say. One of the best nights by far this year, no doubt about that.

How do you recognize a good DJ? You simply can't stop dancing before they turn on the lights and kick you out of the place. Remixes of Daft Punk, The Killers, even Queen - I was about to get a heart attack, that's how good it was. It was awesome, perfect, orgasmic.

Waking up this morning with Jade at my place was hard enough but waking up tomorrow is going to be even tougher. I've been just running around pointlessly today between 50 different places, getting all the last minute shopping done, trying my best to memorize everything at the graduation rehearsal...

Tomorrow's the day I've been waiting for for the past 13 years of my life - it's crazy, doesn't even seem real.

I can't recall the last time I felt this happy.

A hard day's night.

Okay so I finally found a moment for updating this thing - it's 1am and yes, this in fact IS the only moment in 4 days that I found to just sit down and type on MacBook what's up with my life. Well, I'll tell you what's up. WORK, that's what's up. I had 12-hour shifts both today and yesterday, and I worked all Friday evening as well. Tomorrow I'll have a lighter day of only 6 hours but tuesday it's 12 hours again. But I can't complain, more hours is what I've been hoping for for the past month since they've been canceling almost half of my shifts so far and I need the money BAD right now in order to be able to pay my share of the around-the-world tickets by beginning of June. If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't spend my summer this way. The job itself is not that bad, the customers are fun for the most part and I always have some interesting conversations with some of them. It's just physically exhausting and boring at times when there are no customers around. On Friday Mr. Andy McCoy (the lead guitar player or Hanoi Rocks) came in for a beer, actually. I've met him once before a year ago or so, and that time he borrowed my eyeliner before their gig. One of the oddest people you'll ever meet, I swear.

But yeah, enough of work.

There's another thing (don't hate me for the webcam):

NOTICE ANYTHING DIFFERENT? YES? NO? YES? YES? MAYBE?

It didn't take that long to attach the extensions on my hair after all, 3 hours or so. And neither did getting used to them, which came as a surprise to me. It's funny, I've (more or less) always been "the shorter the better"-type of a girl when it comes to hair - but right now I actually think I prefer this length. Not super long, but just enough, there's no way I could deal with longer hair than this. I'm not feminine enough for that.

Oh! Oh! AND! Almost forgot.

Last tuesday Maija, Marianna and myself got together to finally make this photo shoot thing for Marianna's portfolio happen. Something that we'd been talking about for a while and finally the weather was perfect enough. Maija is posing (and being absolutely fabulous, don't you think?!), Marianna did the styling and the makeup and as for me, I was behind the camera and chose the locations. Say what you say, I think they turned out better than great.

No, this was not all, we took over 500 pictures in total. Thanks to Maija for being so beautiful and so GODDAMN photogenic, it took me and Marianna 3 hours to pick out the best ones. Mwuah, I love you.

I can't believe I'm really graduating this week. After all these years, I'll be officially out of school. Feels unbelievable. This has got to be the start of something new.

All these things that I've done.

In the past few days this is what my life has been mostly about.

Graduation invitations - meaning that we FINALLY got our final marticulation exam results last friday, after two long months of waiting. Not only did I pass but also my scores, believe it or not, exceeded all of my expectations. Since you may not be familiar with the Finnish grading system, the grade scale goes L, E, M, C, B, A, I - Laudatur being the best and Improbatur meaning "fail". I took my first exams already last spring since I didn't want to stress about all of them at once (which was one of the best decisions that I've ever made in my life), took five exams in total and this is what I got:

Swedish - L

English - E

Psychology - E

Finnish - M

Spanish - M

I couldn't help but literally scream in surprise when I saw my Swedish grade - I worked so hard on it though, and apparently it was worth it. In the beginning of the year I would've been completely happy with a C but I guess I improved quite a lot which made me so, so happy, even my teacher came to congratulate me for good job. And for once I was proud of myself.

So now that I can breathe in relief knowing that I'm done with high school for good and that I finally get to graduate in less than two weeks, I'm going to need to use all of my energy on the planning of the graduation party. It's definitely going to be the day to remember in my life and I still have a bunch of things to be taken care of, including the last 20 or so invitations that I've been working on for a week now. I've got 30 done, 20 more to go and the ones that I have left on my list, well, I'll just send them an invitation in the form of a text message and hope that they'll forgive me. Making 50+ invitation cards by hand was a bitch to do, and I know I can only blame myself for that since I wanted the cards to look good and elegant, instead of just typing something lame on computer and printing them out. Today, after 6 hours of sitting on my desk and paper clipping and glueing, my head was about to explode and I was craving for an easy way out so I just decided to leave them more or less plain anyhows. Well, I wasted two whole days and too much money on them so people better be happy and not just throw the cards straight into the trash bin.

Apart from the invitations, I've got most of the other things under control now. Dress? Check! Shoes? Check! Getting hair extensions in two days and I'm a little scared of how they will turn out. I have a clear picture in my mind of how I want them to look like, using The Kills singer Alison Mosshart as my main source of inspiration.

Someone told me I look like her - if I had to name a style icon whose wardrobe I'd love to own, it'd most definitely be her. I hope that I'll be able to pull that hair off.

So anyhows, as I told you I totally flipped over my final scores which made me kind of lose control of my use of money that day, rewarding myself of the work I'd done and I still think I deserved it. Jade and I spent the whole day strolling around Helsinki city and both of us managed to find some great pieces - I bought a bright hot pink hoodie, an Ed Hardy-style T-shirt and an accessory for my grad outfit.

Besides spending money on clothes, I also invested on getting hammered that night - and that investment turned out to be a great success! It was Jannika's 20th birthday so we first got started at her place in the outskirts of Helsinki and later found ourselves at this bar called Pacifico.

Eurovision song contest party on saturday was simply awesome as well - BBQ, drinking contest and the people were hot and the music was definitely not, just the way it was supposed to be. Let's face it, 4 hours of laughing our asses off at the artists' ridiculous outfits, dance moves and song lyrics... Eurovision has got to be the most entertaining show there is. At 2am, after watching Norway kicking everybody's ass with the hot violin guy and Finland failing miserably, I realized I'd forgotten my wallet home so I walked home, saw a car accident happening on my way over there and went straight to sleep.

Tomorrow we're going to have a photo shoot for Marianna's portfolio - I'll be placed behind the camera and Maija's going to be infront of it. Gonna be fun for sure. And I still have a pile of cards to be written on my desk so, adiós amigos for now!

Only happy when it rains.

On saturday it was time for me to get started with my late spring closet inventory - I decided to simply toss all of my clothes that I hadn't worn in a long time and, no matter how I was trying to deny it, never again would've. So I spent hours and hours going through my closet and ended up, surprisingly, packing up over half of my clothes in boxes, bags and suitcases and taking them to a flea market at 6am on Mothers' day with my friend Salla.

And who said that my car's too small to fit a thing in it?

Despite the fact that we didn't get as much sold in those 8 hours as we'd hoped, the day was quite fun nonetheless with lots of coffee and fun people around.

I didn't really care about the profit, I just wanted to get rid of my old things - I feel like starting all over again with some certain things in my life, including my wardrobe, apartment and lifestyle. My way to celebrate the fact that a new era's about to start in my life is to make some more or less major changes and just simply put things in order. Why? Because sometimes you just have to say goodbye to the past, cut out and let go on the things that just don't work anymore, no matter how well they did previously. Whether it's about a pair of shoes, a habit or a relationship.

Today I slept in after getting home late from my friend's video game night. Woke up around midday to realize that it was raining outside, my umbrella was missing, my boss had cancelled four out of my five shifts for this week, I was coughing my lungs out and that the day was simply gloomy in many ways. Getting coffee with a bunch of friends made it better though, as it always does.

Maybe it's just better for me to have a couple of days off right now, despite the fact that I'm in desperate need of money. There are 50 blank invitations on my desk waiting to be written and a pile of Australian working visa application forms in by bag to be filled out. Also, I haven't been to the gym in three days, my place is still a mess and I need to go shopping for some necessary graduation stuff. So I guess I should just get my ass up now, turn off my MacBook and start doing something with my horrible time management skills. And be proud of myself for once.

The ocean breeze is salty.

Mallorca was (because I believe that pictures do speak more than one thousand words)...

The week was filled with quite a lot of sun, heat, good food, spa, shopping and relaxation. In addition to occasional family drama, way too many conversations of golf and not sufficient amount of sangria (because it was simply delicioso). I was too lazy to even try to improve my horrible-sounding Spanish most of the time which was kind of a shame, I'd already forgotten most of the stuff I'd been learning at school all these years, but yeah. Anyhows, to put it simply, it was all good, kind of balancing since I'd spent the weekend before in Amsterdam living it up on my own.

Oh, and we also got to play paparazzis - spotted Tom Felton (a.k.a. Draco Malfoy) having dinner with his girlfriend and family at the same restaurant - one of those 'wtf' moments in your life. Didn't get to snap a pic of him with my Canon thou since I figured he would've probly had enough authority to get us kicked out of the restaurant. Too bad.

On tuesday we got back to see for ourselves that even here in Finland the spring is close to turning into summer - at last, after all this waiting. This time in Helsinki is simply beautiful, the whole city's waking up.

Then, falling right back into reality: this is about the time for me to realize that it's already May 8 and that my graduation is just 3 weeks away - and I still have all the invitations to be made and sent to people I don't even know of, my final grades to be checked and simply hundreds of things to be taken care of. Some of them being not-that-great, including making a dentist-appointment, getting my knee operated and doing the late spring cleaning thingy that I've pushing further and further away from my thoughts all spring long, despite all the time I've had. My weekend's going to be filled with work, cleaning up and, well, listening to my mom's whining about how on earth the invitations are not ready yet.

P.S.

Today Veera called me up and we ended up driving out of town to go flower-shopping for mother's day - and I ended up buying the most adorable thing ever for myself.

I think a pink pineapple cactus was exactly what I needed since my dogs Tiku and Sasha live with my parents - a pet that is weird-looking, colorful and extremely easy to take care of. Suits my apartment  and personality perfectly.

Another travellin' song.

I'm pretty sure that the fact that I'm spending a sunny day in Spain on my MacBook updating my Blogger tells you something about the level of excitement of the vacation I'm having right now. My parents and sisters are on the golf course at the very moment - and what am I doing? Apparently, I'm stuck inside a hotel room - or well, not quite literally 'inside', the good news are that at least I'm able to type this entry on the BALCONY of the hotel room. Ha.

When we arrived here last tuesday I was already prepared for the longest week of my life, since the beginning was quite interesting - I'd been hoping that our hotel would've been located in Palma, the capital city, so that I would've had at least a slight chance of sneaking out to experience the Majorcan night life, out of my parents' reach for ONE NIGHT - but oh no, no, no. As it turned out, my dad had (still not quite sure wether it was by mistake or on purpose) booked a hotel that was located miles away from any civilization at all. The name of the village: Cala Pi; Estimated amount of people living in here: 42. Hurray.

Oh well, nah, seriously speaking it hasn't been that bad. Not as bad as I thought it would be, at least. It's been alright to just relax for a bit and, sure, spend some quality time with my folks. Especially now that I'm leaving within a couple of months again for a whole year, I guess this week was kind of mandatory for me. Also, after this I'll be getting back to work - and work will be the only thing I'll have time to do for the next three months. So I'm trying my best to think of this week as my early (and only) summer vacation. It's just that we've now reached the unavoidable point in any family holiday: the point where everybody's sick of each other. That meaning me being sick of my little sisters singing Katie Perry, my dad's obsessive and passionate talk about golfing and the fact that this is the first moment in four days that I've been able to spend on my own, without any need to talk, listen or argue - believe me, I'm really, really trying to make the very most of it.

I'm also trying to avoid remembering that yesterday was May 30 - the Finnish labor day or "Vappu" as we Finns call it, also known as 'the day of dressing up in the most colorful clothes you can find, go out with your friends and party like there's no tomorrow'. I guess it's just good for me to stay still for a while and relax but right now I'm starting to be in desperate need of some exciting company (=anyone younger than 50 and older than 13 who couldn't care less about golf) and, well, a drink. No, I'm not an alcoholic, I'm LIFE-aholic.

However, there IS something else about this week that I've been extremely excited about: the countryside of Majorca has turned out to be beautiful so I've had quite a lot of use for my Canon 400D.

Pictures, I'll post as soon as I land on the colder side of Europe next tuesday.