Welcome: Part Grace

Hey, I'm Grace.

Do me a favor - this works a lot better with ambiance. Click this and turn it down to the point where it's tasteful background music. Imagine you have a nonfat half-calf soy venti Oprah mocha chai latte with an extra shot in front of you, and I'm across the table. That's better, isn't it?

Nice to meet you. Welcome to our blog. I hope you feel nice and cozy. We chose the color palette (palate? pellate? pilates?) with great care, based on psychological research on which colors are the most soothing and warm, because that's...pretty much how we roll here.

Who's we?

Alice + Grace. There's a lot of ways to describe us. I think the most fitting would be the straight-man and goofball comedy archetype - where one guy acts like a doofus and the other stands nearby and makes rational, witty comments to further highlight the first guy's doofusivity. I'm sure it's not hard to to guess which one I am.

As different as we are, Alice and I are the exact same person. We're two different puzzle pieces, but still the puzzle, if that makes any sense whatsoever. We both love snagging cute things for cheap and looking at places on Pinterest we'll never go. We love soul-moving quotes, disturbing movies, and cool patterns on shorts. We love old books, aspire to write kind of okay-ly, and genuinely enjoy logic puzzles.

So you can imagine how excited I was when I met this cool chick. She's exhausted the extent of our meetings and subsequent friendship forays in her own welcome post, so I won't reiterate. I'll sum up my own feelings in a T-Swizzle quote: "I was enchanted to meet you." Unfortunately, she's leaving (sob) in a few short months to become a responsible adult, while I still have a year to go. So to keep in touch - and to document these next couple months together - we're gonna go where too many have gone before.

We're gonna start a blog.

It'll document the craziness, the hilarity, the Jackson Pollock painting that is our friendship. We've got so many cool ideas planned for future segments. If you've found us, I hope you stick with us. It's roller coaster time.

You can turn off the smooth jazz now.*

Signed,

Grace

*But you really shouldn't, because smooth jazz rocks. No pun intended.

Welcome: Part Alice

Hello there. I'm Alice. I'm seventeen years old. I live in possibly the most-mocked of these United States (and probably the least-understood). I was homeschooled and now go to a large-ish public school--something that, two years ago, I could never have imagined. I was once a knitting-addict, and am now a fully-fledged member of Pinners-Anonymous. I am an omnivert; the results of any personality tests I take oscillate from extremely extroverted to insanely introverted. I cannot remember a time when I did not love reading. I once tried to estimate the number of books I've read in my lifetime, and when it approached one thousand, I stopped. I like the theory of math, but it tricks me in practice. 

I met Grace on a church retreat when I was a sophomore (I think). The problem with trying to nail-down our friendship "anniversary" date is that neither of us really remembers. We're both pretty sure it was a fall retreat, and that we bonded over Taylor Swift's Red and another friend's nail polish. I distinctly remember Grace huddling in her tucked-away top-bunk, reading. I think that is when I knew we would be friends.

Fate brought us together again when I stumbled into my second-semester business class last year.  I had hurriedly switched out of an elective I would have failed, and had just been released from the guidance department. I was still learning the ins and outs of the school's layout, and turned the corner a little too quickly, and into the classroom. The period was half-way over. Ashamedly, I rushed to the closest seat as the teacher took my name and noted my presence. 

"Hey! I think I know you," a voice offered. 

I turned around in my industrial-strength plastic chair. I knew this girl, too. It was Grace. 

That moment launched a new, real start to our friendship. As we bonded over Microsoft Office--Word! PowerPoint! Excel!--we quickly realized how similar we were. When she made her "free-choice" PowerPoint presentation on Bastille (complete with a homemade collage), our friendship was inevitable.

Summer came, the semester ended, and we stayed friends. After a thrilling night of celebrations for her sixteenth birthday party (in a hotel! with a pool! watching Pompeii! falling asleep at eleven!) and an eventful candle-sniffing trip to HomeGoods, we were close enough that I didn't feel bad falling asleep first at our next sleepover. And I did. While watching Austenland. And I will never forgive myself for missing the end, because it took so long to get the copy. 

When school resumed, I was whisked into the whirlwind of senior year (college! prom! cry!) and she was thrown into the mess that is junior year. Grunts at each other in the halls and complaint-fests over lunch and our lack of time together did not suffice. 

That's where this blog comes in.

Here, we're going to keep up with more than just silly faux-complaints in the halls. Here, we're going to muse about silly things, sure, but we are going to do it together. When I leave for college, we'll keep this running from two different cities.

And that's a neat thought.

Welcome.


Signed, 

Alice