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.