This Weekend

This weekend has been interesting. Yesterday, we had donuts for breakfast, which were delicious. In the evening, my parents went to a birthday party at our neighbors. It was a combined party for three people in the family, and there were cars parked up the street, on both sides. Talk about dangerous! Anyway, we were left to fend for ourselves for the night. Just kidding. While out earlier looking for things for when we renovate our downstairs bathroom, my mom picked up a $50 Panera Bread card. For dinner, my sister drove us to Panera Bread and we used the gift card to pay. Afterwards, I really wanted some desert, but I knew that we only had mint Oreo and vanilla (mint Oreo - yuck) ice cream at home. So, after texting my parents to ask if it was okay, my sister and I drove to Dairy Queen to get some desert. We had coupons for the peanut buster parfait, so that was what I got. Man, was it good! My sister was all annoyed because she wanted to eat her ice cream but had to drive instead. When we got home, we watched New In Town, which my sister had rented from the library. I don't know where my brother was during that period of time... but rest assured, he's still alive.
That's pretty much is for yesterday. Today, I was supposed to go to piano, but we overslept. When we called to say that we were going to be late, my teacher told me that the person who comes after me (who usually comes late or not at all) will be right on time. Of course, the day that we're late, she'll show up. We were offered to go after her, but I had signed up for a driver's ed driving time at that time. Driver's ed didn't go as planned, as well. My friend and I were supposed to drive at 2 PM, but when we got there, there was no driver's ed car. We waited for 25 minutes or so and called all the numbers we had, all while it was pouring down rain (of course). Just as we were about to leave, they called us back and said that they'll be there in a few minutes. Apparently, they thought we were driving at 1 instead of 2, and when we didn't show up, they left. It didn't really matter because we got in most of our drive, so now we don't have to re-schedule or pay the $25 fine. That's it for my weekend (so far...).

Umm...

The past few days have been quite interesting, let's start with Friday. Well, in the morning, I had my second drive for driver's ed. Then, in the afternoon, my mom and I were driving to pick up our CSA (community supported agriculture) share from Tantre Farms, but on the way, there was this huge traffic jam. We waited for a few minutes until my mom got annoyed and pulled off the highway to turn around and go home. We turned on the radio to see if there was anything about crashes or construction in the area, and we heard that there was this fatal motorcycle crash. We weren't sure, but we thought that that might have been the reason behind the back up. The main event on Friday was that we (my mom, sister, and I) were ushering Midsummer Night's Dream at the Nichols Arboretum in Ann Arbor. Every year they put on a Shakespeare play in the arboretum (which is basically a big park, if you didn't know); it's called Shakespeare in the Arb. We went and saw Two Gentlemen from Verona two years ago, and loved it. As ushers, we guided people to each scene, which was pretty easy. In return, we got to see the play for free and got these cool t-shirts. My dad and brother were going to watch the play, but they sold out in the group in front of them in line. Apparently, they spent their free two and a half hours getting the CSA that we hadn't picked up earlier, and then went over to a family friend's house for the remaining time. The play itself was really cool. For the character of Puck, they had three people playing it, and the effect was pretty interesting. Also, there were a violinist and a flautist playing in between the scenes. Right as we were picked up, it started pouring down rain and was really windy. At one intersection, the street lights just turned off all of a sudden. It was like it was run-out-in-front-of-cars-in-dark-clothing-at-night day. I mean, there must have been at least a dozen people who ran out in front of us on the way home, and we almost hit some people twice. Crazy. Later that night (probably around midnight or thereabouts) the power kept on turning on and off randomly, which was really weird.
On Saturday, the whole family (minus my brother-who doesn't really count-and Kingsley) went out to look at stuff for the downstairs bathroom that we're remodeling. It was kind of boring and the salesperson was kind of annoying. But, there were some,um, interesting parts. Like an advertisement with people's naked butts on it. You know, that kind of thing... Anyway, afterwards, we went to the mall to look at couches that could replace our old one, which is around 25 years old and is all torn up. We found this really comfy one at Crate and Barrel, and I think we might buy it. Not wanting to waste a trip to the mall, we went to Gap and several other stores, where we bought a few things. The mall that we went to was really big it's separated into two wings that are connected by a "skywalk" (really a bridge with windows over the road) that has these really cool people-movers on it. Don't you love when you get off one of those things, and it feels like you are still moving. I do. Unfortunately, they seemed to be going a lot slower than I remember and we got off, which meant that we didn't get to ride it long enough to get that feeling. By the time we got home, it was around 8 PM or so, even though we told my brother that we wouldn't be gone long. Even though it was late, we made pizza and watched the last three (four?) episodes of season 3 of Burn Notice, which was awesome!
My father's day wasn't exactly spent all day with my dad. First of all, I had piano lessons in the early afternoon and after eating a hurried lunch, I had another drive. When I got out at 5, we all went on a bike ride, which we rode in record time. The trail is 8 miles around, and I think we made it in about 40 minutes or so, which is pretty good! By the time we got home, I realized that I had lost my phone, probably somewhere on the trail. Miraculously, some couple found it and called my dad (who is listed as "Dad" in my contacts), and we were able to recover it. I thought for sure that it would be lost forever. That's pretty much what happened for the past few days.

Fun Times!

Today, there have been several important things happening. First of all, today is my parents' 31st wedding anniversary! I think that they are going out to eat (alone) to celebrate the occasion. Secondly, I have been alerted to the fact that this is my 100th blog post, which I guess is cause for some celebration. Whooo! Now that I've got that out, I have to say that it's hard to believe that it has been so long since I started blogging. Come to think about it, I believe that it's been about a year.
Thirdly (is that a word?), Driver's ed started this Monday, and so far, everything is okay. My friend and I had our first drive with our instructor today. In my humble opinion, I think I did okay. I mean, I haven't run anyone over yet. That's a start, isn't it? I still have to work on several things, but it wasn't that bad. One of the things that happened that I thought was annoying was that some lady sped up when she saw that I put on my blinker on to move into her lane. There was enough room before she sped up, and then she had the nerve to honk at me! I wonder what was going through her mind. First she speeds up to cut me off, and then she honks at me when I get too close. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. We came to the conclusion that all drivers in Nissan cars were aggressive drivers. Our next drive is on Friday, and I think that we might go on the highway. Cross your fingers that no one gets hurt. Also, Kingsley had his teeth cleaned at the vets. He was gone all day because he had to recover from being under anesthesia. It's was so quiet with him gone, kind of lonely. Now that he's back home, I must say that his teeth are sparkly clean. And I am out on my 100th post.

The Last Day of School

What do you think of the new background? There are some new backgrounds and I wanted to try some of them out. But now that I've changed it, I can't figure if or how to can change it back. So, grass it is. Dots were so yesterday, anyway (literally). Sorry if you liked the previous background or got used to the look.

On a different note, it's now summer!! As you can see, I used two exclamation points; I've been waiting for school to be over for about a month. Yesterday was the last day for the high school, and it was quite fun. I got 100% on my biology exam and my final project in computers, which were the two classes I had yesterday. Still no word about my other classes, but I'm sure they'll be up soon enough. Actually, the scantron (paper where you mark your answers in multiple choice) for biology marked that I had one question wrong, and it was one I asked about, as well. So, my teacher figured that she'd better check and make sure that her answer key was correct, and sure enough, she had marked false (B on the scantron) instead of the correct answer, true (A on the scantron). And thus, I got every question right and I hadn't even studied (except making up the note card). I still won't get to sleep in really late because driver's ed is 9 to 11 AM, Monday to Thursday, for 3 weeks! Yes, I want to learn how to drive, but getting up that early is going to be hard. Although, it is fortunate that it takes place at the beginning of the summer instead to the end, but still.

After school got out, two of my friends and I walked downtown and ate lunch and desert at the Yum Yum Tree, which is a local restaurant. I got a cashew chicken panini and a turtle sundae with praline pecan ice cream, and both were excellent. I don't think I've been there in at least five years, I didn't remember how good the food was. When waiting for my friend's mom to pick her up, my mom went into this store to look around and found this framed picture by a local photographer that she really liked. She also thought it looked really familiar, and when she brought it up to buy it, the cashier told her that it was one of the top 15 pictures in this photo contest in the Smithsonian magazine, where my mom had seen it before, and liked a lot. Isn't that coincidence interesting?

Then later that night, my parents and I went to Ann Arbor to see To Kill a Mockingbird at the Michigan Theater. Next month is the book's 50th anniversary of being published, so after the movie, they had this discussion about the book and the movie afterwards. Before we went to see the movie, we ate dinner at Zingerman's, which was soooo good. I split a Ruben sandwich with my dad, and it definitely hit the spot. I usually don't like dressing on my food, but this sandwich was delicious. Back to the movie...this was the first time I have seen the movie (in the Michigan Theater of all places!), and I can see why it won a lot of Academy Awards. The book discussion was really interesting, as well; I got to see what other people thought about the book. Some of the things talked about was how far have we gotten since then, and about who some of the characters might have been based off of. I wasn't going to go with my parents, but I'm glad that I did. It was a nice end to the day.

Senior Exams

Sorry for my ramblings; during this week, a hodge-podge of things happened, so it's kind of rambling. We had Monday off for Memorial Day, and for the past three days, it has been the senior exams, so we've had half days. I guess they don't have enough buses available to take us home. Several bus routes are crammed onto one bus and the bus driver doesn't even know where they are going. But it has been nice to have half days, and I'm not quite as tired as usual. Monday is going to be hard, seeing that we have to go to school for a whole day. Luckily (or not so much), the three days after that are exams and half days, and then school is over. I've brought home stuff for several of my classes so that I can study this weekend. Shouldn't that be fun! Actually, for my last exam, 6th hour Computers, I don't actually have a test, only a final computer project.