My Winter Adventures

I can't believe that the last time I blogged was right after Thanksgiving, and it is already Christmas! Time sure does fly when you're having fun (or not having fun...). There is so much to tell. For one, currently, I am on vacation at my grandparent's house near Kansas City, Missouri. But more on that later. A few weeks ago, in preparation for Christmas, we invited some family friends over to decorate our tree, per tradition. Every year, we alternate between going to their house and them coming to our house to decorate trees, and this year was no different.  Instead of putting a bunch of Hallmark ornaments on our tree, as we usually do, we decided to only put up unique ornaments (read: non-Hallmark), so our tree looks a little different. We may have gone a little overboard with the ornaments, but it still looks very picturesque. I'll have to put up a picture later. The next weekend, my  mom and I decided to try some new recipes and made this delicious caramel apple cake. I made the cake basically by myself, and then my mom made the icing, and later these tasty (if a bit too gooey) squash blondies (I know, that sound disgusting, but they really weren't!) by herself because I wasn't feeling too good and went to my room to lie down for awhile.
School was pretty interesting these past few weeks, as well. In my biology class, we had two quizzes in the last three days of school before break, one of which I completely bombed. Also, a ton of my teachers decided to squeeze in tests, which bogged down my Christmas spirit a bit. The last two days were pretty easy-going, though. On Monday, we tie-dyed in AP Chemistry, which was actually the first time that I did that. I thought that it wasn't going to turn out very well, but I was pleasantly surprised when we washed it after school on Tuesday. I used the colors turquoise, royal purple, and emerald green, and it turned out much better than I expected. In my English class, we watched this Japanese version of Macbeth where they were all samurai soldiers in feudal Japan. It was pretty cool, but at times it was laugh out loud funny, when it obviously wasn't supposed to be. Reading the subtitles and watching the Lady Macbeth character not blink once and shuffle as she walked were especially amusing. (Side note - when we were reading the last act of Macbeth, I got to read Lady Macbeth's line "Out damned spot! Out I say!" and it made my day :) ) In civics, we watched 12 Angry Men, which is one of my favorite movies. All in all, a pretty relaxing and pointless few weeks of school.
The last day of school was especially pointless. To accommodate the annual Christmas assembly, we did our schedule backwards, with each class being only 30 minutes long, resulting in a 1st hour that is three hours long (including lunch and the assembly). That whole day was basically an all-you-can eat day - in English, my teacher made MacCupcakes that were red like the blood and gore in Macbeth; in French, we had bouche de Noel, a traditional French Christmas dessert, as well as cookies; at lunch I had part of a cookie my friend brought in; and after school, I ate a cupcake my friend made. Needless to say, I was stuffed by the end of the day. In the last class of the day, French, we basically did nothing for 2 hours because my teacher decided she didn't want to watch the Joan of Arc biography movie we had started on Monday. Then came the assembly, which was stupid as usual. I only liked the performance by Chickappellas, a girl's acapella group at our school, and the the finale where a bunch of students sat in chairs with white socks and gloves and did this routine under a black light to Carol of the Bells. The rest, as expected, made you wonder what they were thinking when they came up with it.
Since we had opened gifts on Sunday (I got a bunch of books and paraphernalia about France, some clothes, and some movies), all we had to do on Tuesday was to pack, which I had mostly completed the previous day. The next day, as usual, we were running late - although we got up early, we didn't get out the door and driving until 8:30. Other than torrential rain around Fort Wayne, Indiana, the drive to Kansas City was uneventful. This year, my parents decided to drive through St. Louis, instead of driving through Iowa, because it was only a few minutes longer and they knew that route better, but that was the only unique thing about the trip. We arrived at my grandparent's house at about 9:30 Central Time, at which time we decided it was a good time to eat dinner and went to Hiboy's (I mean, how could you resist??) I got a plain hamburger and Reces cup Cyclone, both of which were very yummy. The next day, Kingsley woke me up at 5:45 to get out of our bedroom, which was kind of annoying. Apparently, (I was asleep), after going out to the bathroom, Kingsley ran around with my oldest uncle and Aunt "Rose's" dogs, Gus and Max. Unfortunately, though, as soon as they started getting along well, my oldest uncle's RV broke, and he had to leave, taking the dogs with him. In the afternoon, my family went to the WWI memorial and museum in Kansas City. Though we have been there before, I don't remember the museum being so extensive, or going up to the top of the memorial. We called several family members to find out where my great-grandfather's memorial brick was, but after a very through and cold search, we found exactly where everyone said it wasn't. After eating a delicious dinner of a corned beef sandwich, my family meet up with Uncle "Frank" at the Plaza in Kansas City to look at the Christmas lights and shops. We stopped at Anthropologie, but, of course, everything that I liked wasn't on sale, so I couldn't get anything. After a nice walk around the Plaza, we spent some time at Uncle "Frank's" apartment nearby, and then went home.
Lastly, yesterday, we went to the Plaza again to do some shopping. We first went to Urban Outfitters, but didn't find anything,  so then we went to Gap, we we had a field day. I got this auburn shirt that was on sale, as well as some cute undergarments. After an exhausting few hours of shopping, we ate at this restaurant on the Plaza called Ingredient, which was surprisingly good. That's all I have for now - Merry Christmas!!!

Thanksgiving Pictures



Kinglsey sniffing the turkey

Spiced Pecans

Kingsley with his Thanksgiving bone

My Dad's Throwed Rolls

The Table on Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving and Fun Galore!

As you can imagine, much has happened since my last emergency blog after getting my driver's license, seeing as basically the whole of November has gone by since. Pretty soon after that post was the first snow of the season, at which time I, of course, was outside, freezing my butt off. Nothing stuck, but the first snowfall is always notable. Also, a few Saturdays ago, my family and I went to see the musical West Side Story. It was pretty cool to see in person after only watching the movie and listening to the music. There were several differences from the movie, though. A good portion of the dialogue and even the singing had been changed to Spanish to give it a more accurate feel (of which I only understood si and buenos noches), and some of the scenes were changed around. The latter change was particularly weird. The first act went up all the way to the rumble, and they put the sarcastic song "Gee, Officer Krupke" after the rumble, which seemed misplaced. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't be in a humorous mood after one of my friends was killed and . What I betanother killed someone else. On a whole, I enjoyed it, and though my brother complained a bunch beforehand, I think he managed to enjoy himself, too.

Since the last post, I've also had my first two solo drive. The first was only to my friend's house for her birthday party (side note: at this party, we went to this one place where we played laser tag, which I sucked at, but found surprisingly fun) which is like a block away, so that doesn't technically count. So I guess my first real drive alone was all the way across town to meet my sister and mom at Panera Bread last Saturday. Pretty exciting (or lame), huh?

But enough with that trivial stuff all of you have been holding your breath for (not really) is my account of my Thanksgiving break. Am I right, or am I right, or am I right?? Well, the vacation began on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and like always, my family went and got our turkey from the turkey farm, then went to REI and ate lunch at Papa Vino's. We went slightly against tradition and stopped off at a local mall in between going to get the turkey and REI. I got this really cute coat and skirt at Eddie Bauer, and my sister got my brother's Christmas gifts at Gap. All and all, the day was very enjoyable. The next day, of course, was Thanksgiving. My parents prepared breakfast, and for most of the day, all I did was read. In fact, I finished three books over break, which is huge, since I've had a sort of hiatus in my reading of late. The first I finished was called The Disappearing Spoon, which is about the history of the Periodic Table. I know it sounds (very) nerdy, but it was actually quite humorous. It was interesting to see how competitive the search for elements was and the author's description of how accurate the official units of measurements were was hilarious. I would recommend it to chemistry hater and lovers alike. Anyway back to Thanksgiving. Other than the requisite turkey, my mom made some delicious stuffing and salad, I made spiced pecans, my dad made gravy, a pumpkin chiffon pie, and yummy throwed rolls. It was all so good!!! Unfortunately, because there was so much turkey left over, we have had turkey everything the past few days - turkey pot pie, turkey sandwiches, and tonight, turkey tacos. The rest of break was pretty uneventful until my computer got a virus that wiped by hard drive clean of everything except one file. Isn't that awesome! I didn't really need anything except all my English stuff from this year, which I now have to retype. Speaking of English, on Monday, I spent several hours trying to decide which book I wanted to read for an independent reading project. The only criteria was it needed to be a novel, which doesn't really narrow anything down, not to mention that I am notoriously indecisive about such things... After all that thought, I've decided to read Catch-22, which looks funny. Lastly, last night was the first sticking snow of the season, and I was crossing my fingers today for there to be a snow day, but to no avail. I really have no luck with the weather gods. Coming attraction: I will be singing at the local retirement home for French Club (in French). Should be fun!

Extreme Excitement

I know that I just blogged a few days ago, but I have a big announcement (for those who don't know, that last part was said in an accent and is a quote from Legally Blonde the Musical - look up the song "There! Right There!")! Today I took my driver's test, and I passed!!!! In fact, I only got two points off the whole test, both of which came from my parallel parking portion, which I kind of messed up. Even so, I thought I did pretty well. The tester said that I was a smooth driver, which I assume was a compliment. After a celebration lunch at Panera Bread, my parents and I went to the local (well, local may not be the right word, seeing as where it has been moved is twenty plus minutes away...) Secretary of State's office. Unlike when I got my permit, when we waited for only fifteen minutes or so, there was a long wait today. The number we had pulled was 13, and it started at 62 - you do the math. But the wait was worth it, because now I have my driver's licence (though I'm not really sure where I'm going to use it)!!!!! The official card comes in the mail in a few weeks, complete with the extremely flattering picture that I took there. Until then, I still have my temporary licence, which works the same. Pretty exciting news, huh?

Halloween and More

the inspiration for my Halloween costume

Before I even start talking about the past few weeks, I'd first like to say how glad I am that today is the first day of a four day weekend!!!!! Let me explain why I must use five exclamation points to convey the extent of my excitement. Well, basically for the entire first quarter of school, there are no days off, just five day weeks after five day weeks, with no end of sight. But then suddenly, once that quarter is over (as it was yesterday), there are multiple days off every other week. Next week is only three days long, and then two weeks after that is Thanksgiving week, which is only two days long! It's nice to have a rest after all the homework that has been piling up at school recently. I mean, yesterday, I had a test and two extremely difficult "quizzes." Weirdly enough, though, I somehow managed to have homework in only one class over this weekend, which makes it even better.

Now that I have that delirious rant out of the way, I can talk about what has actually happened the past few weeks. Yesterday and the Friday two weeks before it were the first Science Olympiad pizza nights of the year, which is pretty exciting. It was kind of the commencement into this year of Science Olympiad. At the first one, we watched Adjustment Bureau, and this time we watched the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean, both of which were surprisingly good, especially the latter. I was not expecting the Pirates of the Caribbean movie to be that great, seeing as two of the three main characters weren't in it, and the last two weren't the best movies... but I was pleasantly surprised. The same cannot be said for the third Transformers movie, which my family rented from the library to watch. That movie was one of the worst I've ever seen, and I've seen some pretty bad movies. I was laughing in places that I'm pretty sure were not supposed to be funny - it was that bad. I didn't think anyone could get worse than Megan Fox, but I was sorely mistaken.

In other news, as I'm sure you know, last Monday was Halloween. Since my dad had been out of the country on a business trip the weeks prior to that weekend, we didn't get our pumpkins until the Saturday before Halloween. Of course, it had to be raining that day, but other than that, I had a good time. Per tradition, we went and got freshly made donuts from this cider mill, which were delicious, as always. Because of the bad weather, we had to adjust our traditions a little and eat the donuts and drink the apple cider in the car, rather than outside as we usually do. After that, we drove to the pumpkin patch that we have been frequenting the past few years and everyone picked out a pumpkin. Since we were so late in the season, there weren't many options available, but I found a pretty good one that would suit my purposes quite well. We were going to carve the pumpkins sometime that weekend, but you know how things go - we didn't get around to it. I had even picked out what I wanted carved ("When I rule the world, I plant flowers" - a quote from A Very Potter Musical), but as of yet, it has not been done. Halloween itself was pretty interesting. I dressed up as Ron Weasley from A Very Potter Musical (I know, such a surprise), complete with a red wig and sweat band around my head, where I stored my dowel rod wand. No one knew who I was, but it doesn't really matter, for all the cool people have watched A Very Potter Musical. At one point, I thought that I would have to go alone because my sister had too much homework and there was this whole confusion of whether or not my friend was going, but it all got straighten out, and I went with my friend. We didn't stay out the whole two hours, but I still managed to get a lot of candy, most of which I donated to my sister out of kindness and pity (also, I don't really like candy, but let them think it was out of the kindness of my heart).

Other than homework and studying for tests, that has pretty much been my life for the past few weeks. Oh, there's one more thing - on Monday, I'm taking my driver's test, so if everything goes well, I might have my license very soon!! I'm not really sure what I'll do with it, since the only places I would drive is school, which my sister already does, but it'll be nice to know that I can, if I wanted to.

Homecoming Excitement?

This weekend I have had enough time to actually sit down and blog for the sole reason that this is (was?) homecoming weekend. The past week was Spirit Week at school, and thus, was a crazy week, as it is every year. Even with the seemingly benign spirit days, you never know what to expect. As themes go, this year was okay. Monday was Tie-Dye/Hippie Day, Tuesday was Senior Citizen vs Toddler Day, Wednesday was Western Day (formerly known as Cowboys vs Indians, and then Cowboys and Indians Day - I guess they didn't want to offend anyone or something), Thursday was Seasonal Holiday Day, and Friday was Black and Orange Day, as always. I participated in all but Senior Citizen vs Toddler day, which I thought was completely stupid. My favorite was Hippie Day, where I wore a maxi dress, a vest, a headband and live flower in my hair, and my mom's "Jesus Shoes." Minus any mind altering psychedelic drugs or pot, I thought I was pretty authentic. Thursday was probably the easiest day (other than black and orange) to dress up for, at least for my grade. Our seasonal holiday was Halloween, and I think that the people who came up with the Spirit Week days were thinking that we would only wear Halloween shirts or something like that, but we took it a step further. Basically my grade justified wearing anything they wanted to as a costume, which technically goes with the Halloween theme, if not what was originally intended. All in all last week was pretty interesting. Basically anything went - whether it was boys cross dressing and wearing short shorts and dresses, or a Native American costume that made you have a double take because it looked like they were only wearing a loin cloth.

On Friday, we had shortened days because of the pep assembly at the end of the day, which meant that for most classes, we did absolutely nothing. In my Honors English class, we watched the beginning of Beowulf until the fight scene between Beowulf and Grendel, which was quite interesting. For some reason, the people who made this movie decided that Beowulf was going to fight in the nude, so whenever there might have been a full frontal view, they strategically placed items such as elbows, candles, and swords. They had no problem with showing the back side, for some reason. I don't think the movie was supposed to be funny, but I couldn't stop laughing because it was so ridiculous. For example, one character's title was "Virgin Violator" - nice, isn't it? The only class we actually did work was probably my AP Biology class. In my AP Chemistry class, I had already finished the problems, so for the whole hour I did nothing, except for the occasional assistance of my classmates. The pep assembly itself was pretty disappointing. Later that night, I walked in the homecoming parade with Green Group, something I haven't done (walking in the parade, that is) since first grade or something. We didn't have any candy with us, so the kid along the way, who were quite demanding, by the way, were a little disappointed. After the parade, I watched the game in the student section, where, if you wanted to see anything, you had to stand up the whole game, except half-time. Needless to say, by the end of the day, my feet hurt and I was exhausted.

Yesterday was a long day, too. At noon, my dad left to go to the airport, where he is flying to Japan, then South Korea for a business trip. Unfortunately, that meant that he missed seeing me off to the Homecoming dance later that day. I actually went over to a friend's house, were a bunch of us got ready, and then invited the parents over, who took a bunch of pictures. The hardest was one were we stood in a circle and then took pictures of our shoes. I wore a vintage dress that I had bought a year ago that was black (I know, surprise...) and lacy, black 5 inch platform heels, and a red belt and necklace. A picture of the ensemble is above. The dance itself was okay. It was a little crowded, and everyone kept on wandering off, so that we spent half our time looking for people. They placed the DJ in the middle of the gym, but when you were in front of it, you couldn't hear anything. There is a good reason for that - the speakers were facing the other direction! In the adjoining gym, where refreshments were being served, they had live goldfish and some idiots actually ate them!!!! I know, disgusting! You would think that we would be mature enough to leave the fish alone, but apparently not. Also, they had signs up to spell summer, because the theme was seasons, but the s sign fell down, and no one put it back up, so it spelled "ummer." By the end of the night, I was ready to go home and fall asleep. And that is pretty much the extent of my involvement in Homecoming week and weekend.

Pics from September

My Reuben sandwich

the white chocolate chiffon cake

my presents (mostly books)

the newly remodeled bathroom

the sink in the newly remodeled bathroom

School and More

Looking at my blog posts up until now, one might think that I haven't started school yet, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. Three weeks have gone by and school is already in full swing. I've already had two major tests - one in Mathlab and another in AP Chem, the latter of which completely fried my brain - as well as countless quizzes and more homework than is desirable. I've also been working after school at my neighbors, which takes away several hours that I could be working on school work. And if that sounds like a lot of work to you, you should hear what my sister is doing - 5 AP classes and Spanish 5, working three days a week after school for three hours each, in several clubs, and now she wants to audition for the school's musical. That kind of puts my problems into perspective. I really don't know how people can do a sport or work longs hours and still manage to do well in school and have a social life. I'm having trouble and I don't really have much of a social life outside of school. It's only been three weeks and I'm already tired of school. And to top it off, I've been sick for the past week or so - not too bad that I would have to miss school, but still not fun.
Other than school starting, there has been another super important event that has occurred since my last post - my birthday! It was last Saturday and I had a good time, even though my dad and brother had tickets to the University of Michigan football game and were gone for most of the day. For breakfast, we had scones and pastries that my mom had bought from Zingerman's the day before. As expected, they were delicious. Originally I wasn't planning on doing anything all day - I just didn't feel like it - but on a whim, I decided to invite a friend to go to the movies with my mom, sister, and I. We saw Contagion, and it was pretty good. By the end of the movie, though none of us wanted to touch the shared candy that we had and were a lot more conscious of the number of times we touched our faces. Luckily, no one was coughing or something in the movie theater. That would have been bad. After getting back from the movie theater, we made corned beef/Reuben sandwiches from food from Zingerman's (rye bread, Swiss cheese, Russian dressing, sauerkraut, and, of course, corned beef). Once again, the food was delicious. After letting our dinner sit for a while, I then opened my presents and ate desert. Man, I had so many presents that it isn't even funny. I don't think that I have ever gotten that many presents for any occasion - they completely filled up two large bags, one of which was one of the presents, and a majority of them (26 or so) of them were books. In addition to the extraordinary number of books that I got as presents, I also got some cool shirts and other clothing. Two of the t-shirts were Harry Potter themed and another says "obstinate, headstrong girl" - a quote from Pride and Prejudice, for those who are unfamiliar. My friend who came to the movies with me also gave me a copy of this KYO (a french band) CD that we listened to a bunch of times in French class last year. I have to say that that was one of my favorite gifts. For desert, my mom made white chocolate chiffon cake, and my sister made an ice cream cake, and like everything else, they hit the spot. My mom actually messed up the recipe for the icing and put too much butter in, so had to compensate by adding more of the other ingredients, so we ended up with a ton of extra icing, the majority of which is still not eaten. It was pretty funny, actually.
So that has been my life since school started - get up, go to school, go to work, do homework, and then go to sleep. Except for a few reprises, like my birthday, that pretty much sums it up. In fact, right now, I am home working on homework while my mom, sister, and friends are at the Renaissance Festival (my sister gets extra credit in AP European History) and my dad and brother are at another Michigan game. Fun times!!!

P.S. I almost forgot about the downstairs bathroom - It's almost finished. A few days ago, we got the glass shower door, and now all there is left to do is decorate and hang up the mirror.

The End is Near

Kelsey Museum of Archeology

The end of August is nearing, and you know what comes with that...school (gasp of horror)! Yes, the school year is drawing near, like it does every year (can't you just sense my excitement). Once again, the district has decided to make the first day a full day, which I, personally, find stupid, because you don't do anything on that day - why draw it out longer than you have to. But let's stop dwelling on negative thoughts and look back on this year's summer. As summers go, it was nice - I slept in, spent a lot of time outside, read a lot, and did go on vacation once. Yet, I cannot say it was any better than any previous summers. I always find it interesting that at the end of the school year, you (or at least I do) always tell friends that you are going to see each other over the summer and keep in touch, but except for one of my friends, I have only seen my friends in passing. But other than that depressing fact, I've enjoyed myself lately.
On Friday, August 19th, my mom, sister, and I all went to Ann Arbor for the day, which is quite a bit more exciting than the usual fare. First, we went to the Kelsey Museum of Archeology on the University of Michigan campus. When you first walk up to the museum, you see this cool, old building that doesn't look that large. I didn't think that it would take more than an hour to look at everything. Little did I know that the museum is entirely in a newer addition, and quite extensive. I find history to be interesting, so not only did I have to look at everything, I (as well as my mom) had to read every sign, which stretched things out a bit... I think my favorite things were the Egyptian mummies and this recreation of the "Hall of Mysteries" - a room from a house in Pompeii that was buried in the historical volcano eruption. The room was really colorful and had paintings on all the walls, but the interesting thing is that archaeologist aren't really sure who owned the house and what the paintings on the wall are supposed to represent.
After spending a few extra hours than expected in the museum, it was time for lunch, so we went to this relatively new restaurant called Sava's. I got a turkey Reuben, which was pretty good - other than it had a little too much dressing - but the most memorable was the hummus appetizers that my mom and I split. As the name suggests, the appetizers had hummus, as well as delicious pita chips and fresh vegetables. It was very good. From the restaurant, we went to this vintage store across the street, and I got a bunch of vintage dresses. Unfortunately, one of them turned out to be not so nice - the hem was coming out, and there were stains, as well as being see-through (we tried to find a slip, but couldn't find any good ones) - but the rest were very pretty. We also went to Urban Outfitters, where I got this purple lacy dress that I had seen earlier, but had sold out when we went back. After that shopping spree, we briefly visited the University of Michigan art museum, and then drove over to Zingerman's/Kerrytown, where my sister and I got milkshakes from Sweetwater Cafe (I think that's the name...). By that time, it was pretty late, and we still had to pick up our CSA (community supported agriculture) food from the farm. When we finally got home, my dad made homemade deep dish pizza. Words really can't describe how delicious that pizza was.
In addition to that outing, I have been working my butt off at my neighbor's house for five hour stretches, went on a bike ride with my sister and friend, and studiously preparing for AP Chemistry by reading and taking notes in two (not one, but two) of the suggested supplemental chemistry textbooks for the summer. I've also went to registration for last Tuesday, but didn't see really anyone, which was a bit of a disappointment. I have no idea if any of my friends have the same classes as me, but I am keeping my fingers crossed. At least I (and when I say I, I really mean my sister) decorated my locker. In the near future (tomorrow), I am taking segment two of driver's ed. That should be a blast. The only reason why I will be able to endure the pointless classes - not to mention the early wake up - is that it will get me closer to getting my driver's license - not that I really have anywhere to go. Either my sister or my mom will be driving me to and from school, I don't really go over to friend's houses, and I work across the street. Maybe I'll change my mind about the usefulness of a license when I actually have one. And that is pretty much how the rest of my summer is going to play out - sounds exciting, doesn't it?

Totally Awesome!!

If it really is the thought that counts, then I should get some credit for all the times I thought about blogging, then got distracted by other things. As it is, I haven't blogged for some time, so there is some catching up to, into which I will dive headfirst. The first eventful thing that happened to me since my last post occurred on Monday, August 1st. Some of you might be wondering what happened the six days between my last blog and that day. In one word - nothing, or at least nothing worth noting. But back to August 1st - the day that my sister, friend, and I went bike riding. The bike ride itself was pretty uneventful. It was a bit warmer than would be considered comfortable, and my sister (as usual) was speeding up in front, forcing my friend and I to go faster than we wanted, but other than that, we had a good time. What was interesting about this outing is that, after calling my dad to figure out how to put the bikes back on the bike rack, my sister accidentally left her phone on the bumper of the car. Unfortunately, this mistake was not realized until we reach home, at which point a frantic search commenced. We (my sister and I) even retraced our path, hoping that we would be able to spot the phone on the side of the road. We had no such luck. But I guess that God was smiling upon us (or at least my dad), because, later that day when my dad came home from work and he and I went out searching for the lost phone, we (or should I say my dad) found it on the side of the road. Needless to say, it did not survive being flung off the bumper at 30 mph - more specifically, the screen was cracked. Since then, my sister has been using my dad's cell phone with her sd card inside, and until she gets a new phone, that will be the case.

Other than that exciting adventure, my life has consisted of a few high points. Most notably, my sister had a A Very Potter Musical party on the Thursday after our Monday adventure. Originally, she had invited quite a few people, but by the time the day rolled around, only five or so attended. Even with the reduced number of people (or maybe because of the the reduced number...), we still managed to have a good time. For those of you who don't know what A Very Potter Musical is, I will enlighten you. It is a very humorous musical that was created by University of Michigan students a few years ago that combines most of the novels into one storyline. For those of you who are Glee fans, Darren Criss (who currently is in the aforementioned TV show) plays Harry Potter. I would highly recommend looking it up on Youtube, as well as its sequel, A Very Potter Sequel. Anyway, back to the party. I dressed up as Ron (minus the red hair), who, in the musical, wears a gray sweater over a white button-up shirt, black pants, and a sweatband - which is where he places his rather over sized wand. We had hamburgers for dinner, and ate s'mores, cookies, and Red Vines (which play a starring role in the sequel) for dessert/snacks while watching the musical. All in all, the evening was quite enjoyable. If anyone is interested, here is the link for Act 1, Part 1 of A Very Potter Musical: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmwM_AKeMCk. Watch it; it's good.

Other exciting news from my life is that I finished all my summer reading stuff a week or so ago. I read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in one day, if you can believe it. And now that I've finished reading all the books that I checked out from the library (for my own pleasure), I am going to start looking over the chemistry books my mom bought me to look over during the summer - better late than never, right? Going back to specific activities, my sister, mom, and I went on a college tour at Michigan State University. From all my trips there for the state competition of Science Olympiad, I knew my way around, but the trip wasn't completely useless - I learned some information about the school itself, and I also got ice cream out of the deal (not during the tour, though). Also, I've been working quite a bit lately (sometimes 5 hours a day) helping my neighbor clean her house and have been bringing home the bacon. If you add in taking multiple walks each day and reading like there's no tomorrow, that's pretty much been my life these past few weeks. That's all I have to report for now. Hopefully the hiatus between posts will be a bit shorter next time.

Political Theory?

While reading the newspaper this morning, I came across an article on the negotiations of the debt ceiling. For whatever reason, it reminded me of something I had read in Gulliver's Travels (weird, I know). Looking back at the passage I had in mind, I found the following excerpt about a political theory a man had from Gulliver's voyage to Laputa to be oddly appropriate in this time of political gridlock...

"When the parties in a state are violent, he offered a wonderful contrivance to reconcile them. The method is this. You take a hundred leaders of each party, you dispose them into couples of such whose heads are nearest of a size; then let two nice operators saw off the occiput of each couple at the same time, in such a manner that the brain my be equally divided. Let the occiputs thus cut off be interchanged, applying each to the head of his opposite party-man... he argued thus: that the two half brains being left to debate the mater between themselves within the space of one skull, would soon come to a good understanding, and produce that moderation, as well as regularity of thinking, so much to be wished for in the heads of those who imagine they come into the world only to watch and govern its motion."

Think about it :)

Heat Wave

Finally, the heat has (somewhat) abated!! This entire week has been super hot and humid outside - at least for Michigan standards - and it is wearing on my nerves. The past few days haven't been that bad (currently, it is 86 degrees outside), but the first part of the week was torture. It almost never gets into the high 90's here, and with the humidity, it felt even hotter than that. My brother keeps on insisting that it's not that hot out there, but what does he know - he spends his entire day inside, in the air conditioned house, playing on his video game. And to top it off, even if I wanted to go swimming in our lake to cool off, I couldn't because they put the chemicals in there on Monday to kill weeds or something. It seems obvious to me that it would make more sense to put the chemicals into the lake in the beginning of the summer, and not in the middle - during a heat wave, no less - when everyone wants to swim, but apparently, not everyone is as intelligent as myself.

Anyway, back to what I have been doing since I returned home. Well, as you all must know, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows: Part II came out on Friday, July 15th, and seeing as it is the last movie in the series, my family unanimously decided that we should go to the midnight showing, which is what we did. It was a pretty cool experience. Every theater in the complex (and I think there are about 20) was showing the movie, and quite a few of them were sold out. We came super early (8:30-ish to be precise), just so that we could get a good seat. My sister's friend, "Sacajawea", came with us, dressed up as Darth Vader. It was quite funny. She had on the mask, as well as a light saber, and on a sign, she had a picture of Harry Potter on the front and "The force is strong in this one" written on the back. A good percentage of the people there were dressed up as characters from the books, or at least had on a t-shirt that had something to do with Harry Potter. Sadly, I was not one of those people. Even so, it was still pretty cool seeing some of the costumes people thought up. There was even someone who had dressed up like Ron Weasley from A Very Potter Musical, with a sweatband on his head and a rat on his shoulder (full disclosure: I myself haven't actually seen that musical, so my sister was the one that pointed it out). Except for a little bit of sleep deprivation and the traffic jam to get out after it was done, it was a fun experience. The movie itself was superb, even if they did change a few key scenes around. What matters is that they got the feel of the book, as well as the majority of scenes correct.
Other than Potter-related things, I haven't really done anything worth noting. I did go on a bike ride with my sister and friend, which was fun. I have also been forcing myself to read Gulliver's Travels, which is one of my summer reading novels. I took a week or so hiatus to read other books (6 other books to be precise), but I really need to get cracking, seeing as it's the third week of July already, and I am only on my second book. You see, my problem isn't the reading itself. In fact, the book is quite funny if I actually get around to reading it. My problem is the starting to read it - I have so many other things I would rather do, no matter how interesting the book could be. That has been pretty much the extent of what I've done since last blogging. The only other thing I should say is that my sister's friend, "Sacajawea", is coming over tomorrow and spending the night, so that she can help my sister with hair and makeup for senior pictures, which is on Tuesday. My sister has decided to make a cake for her today, so that should be tasty. So now that that tangent has been exhausted, I say adieu.

Random Pictures from Vacation

"Kingsley" Digging in the Garden (Courtesy of Aunt "Rose")

Kingsley Enjoying his New Blanket

LaMar's Donuts

Max

Gus and Max

Gus

Casper resting

Tour at Washington University in St. Louis

Washington University in St. Louis

Cardinal's Game

Cardinals Game (you can see how close we were)

Cardinal's Game

Cardinal's Game

At the Lake

Puppies and Driving Home

Star

Kingsley meeting Ninja

Kingsley meeting Ninja

Ninja-Star

Ninja

It's now time to get back to work...well for some members of my family. Though I still have plenty of free time, my family's vacation to Missouri is over. We arrived back in Michigan last night after a long and grueling drive. We were originally supposed to get home at 8:30 PM (at least according to the GPS), but due to some difficulties, we didn't arrive until around 11:00 PM. But more about that later; right now, let's recap the last few days of our vacation. I think last time I posted, I left off on our last day. Well, the last day was a nice one - we went swimming, on one last boat ride, and then ate dinner at a restaurant in town called B&J's, where I got a delicious burger and tried fried green beans for the first time (I don't know about you, but fried vegetables seem to defeat the purpose of having something healthy). By the time we did all that, we didn't leave to 6 PM or later, so we didn't arrive at my grandparent's house near Kansas City until relatively late at night. My Aunt "Rose" and "oldest uncle's" new Westie puppies, Max and Gus, were sleeping when we got there, but they woke up when Kingsley nudged his way into the room the were in. Of course, now that they were awake, we had to introduce them to Kingsley. My dad suggested that we do it one puppy at a time, as to not overwhelm Kingsley, and eventually, Kingsley adjusted to not being in the center of attention (though he occasionally got jealous). For the record, I have to say that the puppies are extremely cute, though a bit rambunctious, especially Max. After unpacking everything, I played around with them for an hour or so, and then went to bed (which I had to share with my sister and mom - not fun).

The next morning, I was awoken by the high pitched barking of the puppies, and after tossing around a bit, I decided to get up. My mom and Aunt "Rose" had left earlier to get donuts from LaMar's Donuts, which was twenty miles or so away, I believe. Why they had to go so far to get donuts, when they could have gotten perfectly good ones closer to home, I don't know, but I will say that the donuts were delicious. I had two sprinkle donuts, as well as pieces from some of the others they had gotten. There was no set plan about when we were going to leave for St. Louis, though we joked that we would leave as soon it was lunchtime, so that we could go and eat at Hiboy's, a local fast food restaurant, and one of the few exceptions I make to my no-fast food rule. In essence, that is exactly what we did, though more for the reason that that was when we finished packing up than anything else. As promised, we stopped at Hiboy's on the way out, and, though it may seem superfluous to say it, the food was very good.

The ride to St. Louis was pretty uneventful, but what happened afterwards wasn't. When we arrived, Kingsley met another set of puppies, this time pugs. Their names are Ninja and Star (do you see a theme?), and per Aunt "Rose's" request, I have posted pictures of them. Though we stopped in St. Louis on the way down, they hadn't gotten the dogs by then, so this was the first time we met them. Like Gus and Max, Ninja and Star were full of energy and rarely sat still. It was some feat to take a good picture of them. After meeting the dogs and unpacking, it was revealed that my aunt had two extra tickets to that night's Cardinals' game, and wondered if any of us wanted to go. Both my brother and I wanted to, and in a few minutes we were on our way. But don't feel sorry for the rest of my family; they met up with my Grandpa (my dad's dad) at the Wildhorse Grill, where they ate dinner. My dad rarely sees his dad, so they had a good time. But back to the Cardinal's game. Let me tell you, the seats that we had were amazing. They were one section away from the Away dugout, and about 5 or so rows from the field itself. Pretty nice for a game, I wasn't even expecting to go to (or knew about, for that matter) a few hours ago. It even had its own private concession stand and bathrooms. All I can say is that it was quite a bit nicer than the nosebleed seats my family had at the last baseball game we attended, watching the Tigers at Comerica Park. Nearer to the end of the game, my brother, cousin, and I went searching for cotton candy, and in the process, got our pictures taken twice for the Cardinal's website. We found this kind of strange, seeing as only my cousin was wearing Cardinal's clothing, and were joking that if another person came up to us, we would say something along the lines of "no paparazzi, please." The game was pretty exciting, too - especially in the last two innings, where the Cardinals tied and then won. I feel sorry for the people who left in the 7th inning, when they were down by 3. Luckily, there were no extra innings, so we got home at a relatively reasonable time.

And now on to our trip back to Michigan, which was certainly longer than 10 hours. First, there was a traffic jam just before we got off to eat lunch in Plainfield, Indiana. I'm not joking, it took us thirty minutes or more to travel 2 miles. When we finally got there, we had trouble finding the Panera Bread, because we had never eaten there before. But the worst was after we left from there. My parents planned on going one way so they could bypass some construction or something like that, but it turns out that the exit they were planning to get on was closed. So, we decided to follow the GPS and see where it took us. Well, we got quite a nice drive through the nice and not so nice parts of Indianapolis. The route was also confusing because this road we were driving on eventually turned into the highway, which was hard to see on the map. Needless to say, everyone was a bit cranky by the time we got out of that mess. We finally got back on track, but it took quite a bit longer than we expected it would. The vacation was a lot of fun, but now we are back to reality, where you can't swim every day or read books for hours on end. The only thing I wish we would have done is stop at Ted Drewes' in St. Louis, but it's probably for the best that we didn't, seeing as I have eaten so much ice cream and desserts during this vacation. Right now, I kind of need to detox. It's also probably high time that I start reading the rest of my summer reading novels. So, until my next exciting adventure.

Traditions and Boat Failures

As I previously mentioned in one of my blogs, the plans for this trip have been constantly changing. You would think that once we were on vacation, the plans would be set in stone, but no. Fortunately for me, this is a welcome change. My whole family was going to have to leave the lakehouse and drive up to Kansas City to my grandparent's house so that my sister could go to this college visit, but yesterday (or maybe the day before), my parents decided that my sister and mom would go up by themselves in my grandparent's car, and then we would follow them there the next day (today). As you can imagine, I was happy about this change because it meant that I would get an extra day down at the lake.
But back to what I have been doing since I last blogged. I think I was complaining about the fact that we hadn't done any of the things that we normally do. Well, per tradition, on Wednesday, we ate lunch at the Port Grill, and then for dinner, got pizza from Pizza Hut. I was kind of hoping to go to Pizza Hut by boat, but you can't have everything. The only tradition that we have left to do is go tubing, but I don't think that is going to happen, seeing as the tube has a whole in it somewhere. I'm not too disappointed in that turn of events, though it would have been fun to go tubing at least one time, even if it was behind the waverunner. Anyway, at the Port Grill, I got a Reuben sandwich, which was pretty good. Mind you, it was no Zingermans, but I didn't expect it to be. Even though the food was pretty good (excepting the onion rings we got for an appetizer - the crust was all flaky), it took forever to get anything. Granted, we did have a big group, but there were people who came in after us, who had groups just a little smaller, who got their food first. It was pretty annoying. But the meal there isn't really what was important about this trip, that was the same old, same old. It was what happened afterwards that is memorable. Right when we got out of the no-wake zone and tried to go faster, there was something wrong with the boat. My uncle wasn't sure what was wrong with the boat, and didn't want to risk anything, or to turn the engine off, in fear that it wouldn't start again, so we had to drive all the way home at about 10 mph - in the hot, sunny afternoon. Needless to say, it was not the fun experience we were looking for. We managed to make light of the situation, though, by making a video pretending that we had been on the boat for 60 days, or something like that, and were all about to eat each other. It was pretty funny. When we finally got back to the dock, we were all sweaty and hot, and as soon as it was possible, we all jumped into the lake to cool off. Of course, it was just our luck that as soon as we went back to swimming, it got cloudy, while while when we were stuck on the boat, the sun was beating down on us.
Fortunately, the boat got fixed yesterday, so we were able to go on two boat rides that were faster than 10 mph. It was a huge improvement. We even got off to go swimming, in a cove that is apparently called "Party Cove," though there didn't seem to be any partying there at the time we stopped. Like I said before, I'm not really sure what the plans for today are, but hopefully, we will be able to spend some time down at the lake before we have to leave. Until next time, then!

More Fireworks

Here are the videos of the fireworks that I promised. Though these are just some of the highlights, they should give an accurate portrayal of the awesome fireworks display yesterday. A few of them are sideways, so if if looks like the fireworks are shooting off to the right, just turn your computer or deal with it :)

Fireworks Galore!!!!

Just in case you were wondering, last night's fireworks display was awesome. There were several ones that I've never seen before, and even though it was a bit short, I enjoyed myself a lot. There were a few mishaps, however. One of the fireworks caught fire, a few went sideways and almost hit us, and another that we had lit earlier in the day just randomly went off. But, at least for me, that added to the excitement of it all. Instead of shooting them off down the street, as we usually do, we decided to shoot them at the end of the peninisula. I believe the resoning for that was so that not as much would need to be picked up and they wouldn't land on other houses. Though they were a lot closer and we were in more danger of being hit, I found it cool that it seemed that they were shooting off right over our head, that we were in the thick of the action. You can't really see that in the videos, but in person, it was pretty cool. I think that my favorite firework was called "the peacock," which, as the name suggests, shot fireworks out in a triangular way, just like the feathers of a peacock. Unfortunatly, I did not manage to get a video of that particular firework. I thought I was recording, but apparently, I wasn't pushinng hard enough down on the button, and the video didn't even start recording. I'm sure that these videos and pictures will make up for it, though. Enjoy!

R&R at the Lake

"Hope High School"

Joplin, Missouri


Random Kingsley Picture - I just saw it and thought it was cute

Dogs Relaxing at the Lake

Happy Fourth of July everybody! Once it gets sufficiently dark, my uncle will be putting on his very own fireworks display, which is something that I look forward to every year. All weekend we have been watching the fireworks from across the lake or down the street, so in theory, we don't really have to our own, but it is still exciting. I will have to put some pictures later. But before that, I should describe what my time down at the lake has like been so far. To start out, the weather has been amazing. Up until late last night, it has been sunny with few clouds in the sky. If it weren't for the heat (yesterday it got up to 111 degrees), it would be perfect. The first two days down here were everything that I was expecting. We went swimming, rode on the waverunner, read, and generally relaxed and eaten delicious foods. Actually, correction: we didn't ride on the waverunner until the second day because my dad had to get it working. The deal with the waverunner is that it is only ridden one week of the year - the week of the fourth. In fact, if my dad isn't here to fix it (like he wasn't a few years ago when we stayed home), it doesn't get ridden at all. Basically the only bad thing that happened is that I got a little sunburned, but that's to be expected.

Yesterday was the exception to the routine. Instead of going down to the lake and vegging out, my family decided to go over to Joplin, Missouri - where that horrible tornado hit in May and where my two uncle, including Uncle "Frank", live - and volunteer for the tornado relief. Other than the heat, the day was nice. What we did is we signed up at the volunteer base in the local university parking lot, and then were bused to the high school, which was destroyed during the tornado. From there, we were given our assignment and were bused out to the house where we would be working. Because of all of the particulates in the air, it was required that we where these masks, which, while effective, were still uncomfortable and hot. The actual temperature outside did nothing to help. I think at one point, it got up to 111 degrees. Because it was so hot and there was a chance of getting a heat stroke, the volunteer leaders were constantly going around making sure everyone was hydrated. I must have drank around ten water bottles during the few hours (3 or 4 - I'm not sure) that we were there. What did we do exactly, you might ask? Well, basically we were picking up debris from the house and in the yard and sorting it into different groups. For example, there was the whole brick wall that had been blown over, and over the course of our volunteering, my family was able to clean it out and put all the bricks into the pile for salvageable bricks. After a few hours, we were super tired, dirty, hot, and sunburned, so we decided to stop and after signing out, just drove around town to get the whole picture of the destruction. I think my favorite thing from my time in Joplin was the high school sign. All that was left of Joplin in "Joplin High" was the o and the p, so someone put the letters in tape or something so that it spelled out "Hope High." It was something very simple, yet touching. Also, in the house across the street, one of the only thing left untouched was the closet full of clothing. It was stuff like that that really made you think.

Once we were back at the lake, we just relaxed and lay down because we were all so tired. Other than sleeping, though, one of the main things that I've done here is reading. I've finished four books while on vacation, not to mention the three or four others that I finished the week before we left. I'm a veritable reading machine. Granted, many of said books were quite a bit below my reading level, but that is still an accomplishment to be proud of. Out of all the books I have read here, my favorite is probably Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I thought that Pride and Prejudice couldn't get any better, but this book was hilarious. I will definitely have to read the sequel and prequel. One of the books that I finished at home was A Tale of Two Cities, which is one of my summer reading novels. Even with all the preparation from hints from my family, I still was surprised by the ending, which I liked very much. (SPOILER ALERT: skip to next paragraph if you don't want the ending revealed to you) Sydney Carton just came out of nowhere. I didn't really think he was that important in the first two books, but in the third books, he comes out of the shadows and into the spotlight. From all the foreshadowing and such in the book, I was sure that it was going to be Charles Darnay who was going to die. Needless to say, I was certainly surprise when it was Sydney, not Darnay, who died. I also liked how everything came together and was glad that Mme. Defarge was killed. All in all, it was a very good book, and even though some say that the middle is sluggish to get through, I still enjoyed reading it. It is definitely one of my new favorites.

Until Thursday, this is what my days are going to be like. The only new thing today was that we went on a boat ride this afternoon. It was delayed by the early morning rains and then by not being able to start the boat, but when we finally went out, the weather was beautiful and cooler than the previous days, which was nice. We even stopped for a while and swam off the end of the boat, which is something that I haven't done in a while. Now, all we have to do is order pizza from the Pizza Hut and go to the Port Grill - two traditions. Again, happy Independence Day, and tomorrow, there will be more on the fireworks display. I promise.

Down at the Lake

I know that it is already the third day of my Fourth of July vacation, and this is the first time I am blogging, but the past two days were veerrrry long, and by the end of the day, I was too tired to do anything but sleep. For those not in the know, I am currently at my uncle's lakehouse on Table Rock Lake in southern Missouri, where we spend (almost) every 4th of July week. I know that southern Missouri is not France or Italy, as two of my friends have gone or are going to this summer, but we've been coming down here every year (with one or two exceptions) for as long as I can remember. Our vacation began on Wednesday, when my family drove down to St. Louis. The car we used, our ten year old Suburban, recently had its air conditioning fixed, and we were crossing our fingers that it would hold out - you do not want to be driving south for ten hours in a car that does not have air conditioning. That would make an already unpleasant experience more uncomfortable. Luckily, it worked, and the drive was relatively uneventful, if slightly boring.

Usually we drive straight through to my uncle's lakehouse or stopover in St. Louis, only to drive the extra five hours the next morning, but this trip was different. Before setting off from Michigan, there were quite a few plans that were made about the way down - at first we were going to visit a bunch of colleges before driving to St. Louis. Basically, every day, there was a different plan and it was so hard to keep track of what we were going to do that I stopped trying. Luckily for my family and my sanity, we decided to visit only one college: Washington University in St. Louis. But trust me, we made up for all that time that we didn't spend on on other colleges in this visit. First of all, we had to get up early for a campus tour - it was at 8:30 AM and we just made it. Then, we had meeting after meeting, we had to eat lunch, and while waiting for another meeting, we went into this weird modern art museum on campus. We didn't leave until 3:00 PM. It was a long day and super hot outside - 97 degrees out - so even though I really liked the campus and thought the school was nice, I kind of just wanted to go back to my aunt's house by the end of the visit.

When we finally returned to my aunt's house, we packed up and drove down to my uncle's lakehouse. Even though it is usually a 5 hour drive, it seemed to be super long. On the way there, we were on the lookout for this billboard on the way, that we didn't have time to take a picture last time we came down. All it says is "Jesus" in huge lettering, and for some reason, I just find that very amusing. Even though we were on the alert, we still didn't manage to get a picture. Maybe next time, but for the time being, I put a picture at the top that I found on the Internet. I don't know if it is the same billboard, but it looks the same. Anyway, we finally arrived there at about 10:00 PM or something like that. Now today, all the dogs, my dad, sister, Uncle "Frank", and I all went on a walk early in the morning. It is supposed to get hot today, so that was the only time where you wouldn't melt with the heat. Hopefully, today we will be able to go swimming and go out on the lake :)

Summer Sun

So, it has been the first few weeks of summer, and so far, it's been pretty nice - the weather, for the most part, has been great, and I have enjoyed sleeping in. But, that being said, I haven't just been just lying around and doing nothing these past few weeks. For one, I got a job cleaning my neighbor's house on a weekly basis. I don't remember if I've already mentioned that, so if I did, I apologize for being repetitive. I've gone over two time already, and mostly, I have been vacuuming her entire house. In addition, I have washed windows and mirrors. It's not the most interesting or fun job in the world, but at least I am doing something useful and making money in the process (which I have been putting into my savings account for college). What I find ironic is that I wouldn't be someone you would call neat, and I don't really like cleaning up after myself, and yet, here I am cleaning up someone else's house and being paid for it. Next thing you know, my family will be using my "expertise" in this field to their advantage...
Other than my new job, I - along with my sister and mom - volunteered last Friday by ushering for "A Winter's Tale" at the Nichols Arboretum at the University of Michigan. For those who are confused, the University of Michigan puts on a Shakespeare play outdoors in the arboretum every summer; the whole thing is called "Shakespeare in the Arb." As ushers, we are supposed to show people to the next scene and where to sit (again, for those who don't know, the scenes move around to different locations in the arb). Basically, though, we don't really do anything and get a free show and t-shirt out of the deal. It's pretty awesome. This year's t-shirts are especially interesting - on the back, they say "exit, pursued by a bear," which is a stage direction in "A Winter's Tale." Unfortunately - or fortunately, depending on how you look at it - on Friday, it was raining on and off all day, so only about 7 people actually bought tickets. They weren't going to put on the play, but they decided to just do it anyway. Because there were so few people (about half the audience was ushers), you didn't have to fight for a good place, and could hear everything well. We are volunteering again tonight, but the weather looks much better, so there will probably be a bunch more people. It still should be fun, though.
The next thing I did, and probably the most significant, was that I took the ACT for the first time last Saturday. It wasn't as horrible as I thought it would be, but it wasn't as easy as the practice tests I took. I ran out of time for the science portion, so had to put random answers, so hopefully, I'll still do well. The results are supposed to come in 5 to 8 weeks after taking the test, so until then, I have my fingers crossed. Talking about school related subjects, I started reading A Tale of Two Cities for my Honors English summer reading, and so far, I have really enjoyed reading it. I have finished Books I and II, so all I have left is the ending. I hear that it is surprising, so I'm looking forward to finishing it.
The last thing I want to talk about is that yesterday, which was my parent's 32nd anniversary, my sister had a few friends over while my parents went out to eat and we watched the four hour version of Pride and Prejudice. Since we hadn't really cleaned up our house for quite a while, we had to spend the whole day cleaning up. Of course, the vacuum had to die on me during right when I was almost finished. You know how these things work. Anyway, everyone came over at about 7:30, but we didn't start until about 7:45 or a bit later.Since we started so late, only one person stayed to the very end (it was at about 1 AM), but it was still enjoyable. My sister had made a cake, which was kind of pitiful because the layers had slid a bit, but still delicious, one of her friends made peanut butter cookies, and there were tons of M&M's. I was stuffed by the end of the night - I ate two pieces of pizza, a piece of cheesy bread, a piece of cinnamon bread (that was all part of our dinner), two cookies, a slice of cake, and probably too many M&M's. This pizza-movie night is supposed to be a regular occurrence, so next time, I will remember not to each so much.

School's Out for the Summerr!!!!

I apologize for the long delay between posts, but my schedule has been very hectic the last month or so. Before I talk about my past month, I must issue an apology Aunt "Rose" and my oldest uncle, who feel that in my last post, I portrayed their quick visit in an unfavorable light. That was not my intention. I enjoy their visits so much that I wish that they could stay for longer periods of time.
With that out of the way, I can go back to what has happened in my ever exciting life. In May, it is as if my teachers realized that we had basically a month left of school, and piled on the work so that they could fit everything in. It always confuses my why this happens every year - they, like everyone else know when the end of the year is, so why couldn't they plan it out better. In Chemistry, for example, my teacher was teaching us stuff that would be on the exam the in the study hour beforehand because we couldn't fit it in the actual school year. That being said, I did extremely well on my chemistry exam (only one wrong, which apparently is very good), which probably had something to do with the last minute explanations and cramming. But all the stress and worries of school are now past me, for it is officially summer break. Our last day of school was Friday, and because we got out so early and don't go back until after Labor Day, we practically get three whole months for our summer break. That sort of compensates for all the stress I was put through this past month or so.
Unfortunately, I wasn't exactly free to go after school got out on Friday because my sister and I had decided to stay after and recycle with Green Group (which I was elected representative for next year - don't ask me what representatives do, but it is a step). Anyway, because it was the last day of school, all the teachers were unloading all their paper that they had collected over the year (my chemistry had 5 full boxes of periodic tables), so we had to recycle paper as well as sort the bottles. That split our already small group of people into smaller groups. That is why, even though we began at 10:34 AM after school got out, we didn't finish until sometime after 1 PM. But that can be partially attributed to all the troubles we encountered. First, the paper bin was already overflowing when we began to recycle, so we had to place our bags around the outside and hope that they pick it up sometime soon. Also, one of the bins that we collect paper in had its tire fall off, so we had to transfer all the paper in that bin into another bin so that we could unload it. It seemed that everything bad that could happen, did happen. Fortunately, once we were done, we all went downtown to get some ice cream, which helped even things out. I got a sundae with caramel, apples, and cookie crumbs. It was delicious!!! Interestingly enough, by the time we got home from school, it was about the time that we would have gotten home if we hadn't had a half day.
So, onto what I've done so far in my first taste of summer. First of all, I've been outside quite often. The weather has been and is currently so nice and warm (sometimes too warm...) that like it is actually summer already. It's especially nice when you compare it to the "spring" we've been having. Basically, we had a super long winter, and then it went straight to summer. Sounds fun, doesn't it?? Yesterday, I went to a going-away party at my friend's house. She's moving to Colorado in a few weeks and this was kind of our goodbye to her. There were tons of people there and I enjoyed myself immensely - except for the ever present swarm of mosquitoes who seemed to be attracted to my bug spray, not repelled. Seriously, I was eaten alive - I went from no mosquito bites to over thirty in one night!!! But besides that, it was a nice night. As a going-away gift for my friend, I drew a picture of her, which turned out pretty nicely, if I do say so myself, and gave her a "Don't Mess with the Mitten" t-shirt to wear with pride when she is in Colorado. Then today, I went to the movies with another friend and saw Kung Fu Panda 2. We had watched the first one at a Science Olympiad movie night and had some good memories, and decided when we were still in school that we had to see the sequel together. I enjoyed the movie, though it wasn't quite as funny as the first one. All and all, I would have to say that this has been a good start to the summer. I even have gotten a job cleaning my neighbor's house, which starts Tuesday. I don't really have plans yet for the summer (except Honors English reading...which I haven't exactly started, even though some of my friends have already finished a book), but as of yet, it looks like this might be a good one.