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.