After School Unadventurous Adventures

I left Spanish this afternoon with Gretchen and Avon, and we were the nearly last, if not the very last, people to leave. Avon went down the first staircase to catch her bus, and Gretchen and I sped up, soon overtaking Dino and Sonny, who, while moving at a reasonable rate, couldn't match what Richard calls Gretchie's ridiculously fast pace. We then proceeded to talk about Dino, but, despite his relative proximity, he didn't notice.

Then Gretchen ended up wrapped in some conversation with Sonny, Dino forged on ahead, and I followed far enough behind him that it didn't seem worth the effort to chase after him just to awkwardly disengage upon reaching the bathroom.

By the time I extracted my wallet from my backpack and journeyed downstairs in search of a bake sale, the lobby seemed almost deserted, and there was, alas, no bake sale. I located Nyx by means of her floral shirt (which is very pretty, by the way) and announced myself to her, Kathrya, and Tybalt by means of a request for food.

I was very disappointed to discover that Tawny's baklava, which had previously been in the locker she shares with Nyx, had been removed. I pulled out some pretzels, which Kathrya and Tybalt agreed didn't taste like "real pretzels," and Nyx left for the dodgeball game, and the three of us stood somewhat oddly in the lobby for a few minutes. Brian came by asking for members of his team, and a bit later, in a matching tee, Rodney walked past.

Rodney can be identified by the fact that, in my English class today, Ms. Seltzia mentioned tessellations. I said that they were my absolute favorite, and Rodney was, sadly enough, the only person in class who got the joke.

Kathrya, Tybalt and I eventually started walking towards the cars, and we saw Bryant walking towards us, and then we all turned around and walked out to the parking lot.

The only bit of the conversation I can remember is that something about Dino came up, and Bryant said, somewhat out of nowhere, that Dino has a really annoying voice. I then mentioned something about being really confused when he started laughing at me in the language lab until I realized that the audio system was making chipmunk voice, and there was a fair amount of me trying to figure out where to walk, because I didn't like being way out on the edge, because it's hard to talk across four people, but it felt sort of weird to drop back, so I think there ended up being a fair amount of weaving about, but I suppose it worked.

When we reached the vehicles, Bryant requested his ride to unstickered parking, and Kathrya and I both volunteered.

"You want to ride in the truck?" I asked. "It's pretty fun."

"It is," said Kathrya, "extremely cool."

Bryant consented, so we waved goodbye to the lovebirds (yes, I am going to call them that). I stood on that random black bar on the underside of the truck that is probably not random at all and meant for standing on to throw stuff in the back, and threw my backpack and lunch into the bed of the truck. Bryant seemed apprehensive.

"Do I need to put mine back there?"

"Just hang onto it."

"What do you do when it rains?"

"I don't. I mean, I haven't had a passenger when it was raining. Actually, wait, no, I drove Ginny home. She just held everything. It's a bit crowded, though."

He nodded, and I put in the key and rolled down the windows. As soon as power reached the stereo, Lady Gaga and Beyonce's "Telephone" started blaring at a somewhat inhuman volume. I turned it down a bit and pulled out of the parking spot.

"You mess with it," I said.

"This is fine."

"I hate this song."

He did something to the music controls that I didn't see because I was driving. Britney started singing "and I'm caught in between, counting 1, 2, 3-"

"Oh, that's loads better," I said.

He laughed and did some different button pushing and the music changed again, to something instrumental, familiar, and yet somehow out of reach.

"Should I go right up here?"

"It doesn't matter."

"I'll go straight then."

I turned out of Paperclip, still trying to figure out what the song was. "It's Lady Gaga, singing, well, something, I just...."

"Bad Romance."

"Ah, yes. I probably ought to have known that."

I wasn't looking at him, but I could practically feel his shrug.

From there, we somehow managed to discuss both what house the blueprint on the dashboard was for (he read off my address, so I assumed it was my house, but it turns out that he actually read the builder's address label, and it was for a different project) and, after I took a turn a little bit too quickly, whether I was allowed to have passengers in the car.

I said that as long as he could pretend to be my twelve-year-old sister, we'd be fine, but I wasn't sure he could pull it off, and, oh, wait, my sister is actually thirteen, I totally know how old my siblings are.

I think I got a laugh for that one.

And then there was something about parallel parking, and then we were at his car, parked as crookedly as predicted, and he was gone, and I was coming to an intersection I wasn't accustomed to, trying to determine the best possible route to a pastry.

Mushroom World

Gchat during science research, corrected with nice grammar and punctuation so it looks pretty.

Tea: Julie is offline. What is her problem? omgeedeeeez.

Julie: Jeez, I'm online.

Tea: Howdy.

Julie: We're sitting right next to one another.

Tea: yayyyyyyyyyyyyy

Julie: maybe we can talk.

Tea: haha. oh.

Julie: WHOAAAA.

Tea: Kathrya and I were making fun of Mario during gym today. Cause he was doing random high kicks. He did, like, two and-

At this point, Julie snorted, and I started giggling, and we both dissolved into hysterical laughter loud enough that the entire class turned to look at us. Angela then started chatting me as well.

Angela: WHAT HAPPENED

Tea: Nothing happened.

Angela: tell me NOW.

Tea: I TOLD YOU.

Angela: TELL ME

Tea: okay, fine, well, in gym today, my friend Kathrya and I were making fun of Mario because he did random high kicks.

Angela: mario...?

Tea: over there. behind you. by the computer in the front. next to the sub.

Angela: oh. HAHA SP FUNNY. So* SO**

Tea: yup.

Both conversations then devolved into massive numbers of copied and pasted crab emoticons.

About a half an hour later, I remembered that I could go and get my research paper back, so I snuck out of class and retrieved it from Mrs. Seltzia's room. On page five of the paper, I had written "Mario, who is quoted above, asked to be introduced in this paper as 'Paperclip's resident genius' (Mario). Although he wasn't entirely serious, these types of attitudes are not uncommon."

Seltzia's comment on the bottom: for this reason, I do- as much as I love Mario- question some of what he earlier said- though the reasons for his dissatisfaction I think may connect with what you also have already written about.

I immediately understood that she was implying that Mario's arrogance meant that his expressions of boredom probably flow more from a braggart's nature than an actual capacity beyond the schoolwork. I showed the comment to Mario, and he got stuck on the bit near the quote where she wrote "excellent." I attempted to explain the arrogance bit, but he just looked confused.

In order to further my own understanding, I endeavored, in a truly Mario-like fashion, to read some fun advice by people who talk about sex a lot. My horoscope here advises: That hottie you're so enamored with? Turns out they don't always say what they mean or mean what they say, if you know what we're saying. And we always mean what we say." Mario may not be that much of a hottie, and I'm not exactly enamored with him at this point, but he certainly does say conflicting things about his own intellectual abilities and whatnot. This horoscope is clearly presaging the comments on my paper.

Also, apparently Cosmo gives awful sex tips, so he's pretty much screwed.

Poor kid.

Miscellaneous

I learned to spell that word from playing The Sims.

Mrs. Hirten said Yuuuuge instead of huge again. It made me cringe.

I've been trying to write down items worth blogging during the day, but I always lose my lists. I did manage to glean a few gems from my English binder, however.

Inverted sentences have the verb before the subject and sound like Yoda. For instance, "happy, I was, when I walked down the green hall."

I think Ms. Seltzia has death on her mind. When describing pungent flowers today, she asked if any of us had "been too a funeral home where there are lots of lilies."

Also, who knew that personification of nature is called pathetic fallacy?

And does anyone know where I can buy vanadyl sulfate?

A Day in Discussions

with Lysander:

Lysander: What are you eating?

Tea: Bear claw.

Lysander: What?

Tea: It's a-

Lysander: I know.

Tea: It's good.

Lysander: okay.

Between Mario and the health class:

Mario: I just said the 1st one was the bad stage, the second was really bad, and the third was even worse

(regarding the stages of syphilis)

Between Ms. Seltzia and a boy in my sister's class:

Boy: I went with my cat when it got put down.

Ms. S: Did it make you sad to watch it slump lifelessly to the ground?

Boy: Yes.

Diction in Great Gatsby

"He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy, straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two bright, arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes hid the enormous power of that body- he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting where his shoulder moved under his coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage-"

Tell me that doesn't sound like it could be right out of Fool for Love or Much Ado About You or any of the other ridiculously cheesy romance novels I read. In face, I definitely remember at least one description about someone who was so aggressively masculine that he made his overly stylish clothes look good, but in an over-the-top, more mediaeval manner. It isn't until the last three words, "-a cruel body," that the whole thing gets subverted.

Granted, I mentioned none of that in class. You wouldn't have expected me to tell everyone about my secret love of bodice-rippers, would you? Instead, we went through the above paragraph and discussed the various harsh connotations of certain words. When we got to "hard" Ms. Seltzia informed us that we would bypass the sexual connotations for now. Krystal, who appears to lack the typical devices to restrain speech, waited two beats before announcing loudly "Oh my god, I hadn't thought of that AT ALL." The class, which had managed, until that point, to keep the snickers away, began laughing.

The Victim

Every English class has one. He (and the victim is typically male) doesn't pay any less attention than anybody else, but, invariably, when there is silence, he is pegged as someone who isn't paying attention and gets called on, and which point he stumbles out a response and goes back to trying to hid from the teacher.

Last year, the victim was Richard. We had four demo teachers, but the problem didn't truly become evident until the third one, who singled him out, calling on him repeatedly, trying to get him to talk. When the fourth one came, he eventually asked a question that no one knew the answer to, and he looked out at the class for someone to answer it. "How about you?" he asked, looking at Richard. The entire class burst into laughter. The poor teacher was very confused.

This year, the victim is Lyle (I don't know if this helps, but he's friends with Jeff and isn't related to Lisa (Lisa is a famous person, not a nickname) and was in all of my core classes in eighth grade). I'm fairly certain that Ms. Seltzia has called on him while he wasn't raising his hand once per class this year. To contrast, I have yet to be called on while I'm not raising my hand. Usually, he says "can you repeat the question?" before managing a half-hearted response. Today, she had put our next essay assignment up on the projector.

"... polire- that's Latin. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing it right. Does anyone here take Latin?"

"Lyle does!" somebody said.

"Lyle?"

"Huh? Yes."

"How would you pronounce this?"

He squinted at the board. "What?"

"P-o-l-i-r-e."

He looked confused. "That's Latin?"

The class laughed.

"Yes. But how would you-"

Ariadne couldn't contain herself any longer. "It's Polire! You're right!"

Lyle nodded. "Yeah..."

First Day

Link: Dora, check it.

Guess what, everybody- I survived. I am totally and completely intact. My dentist even said that my tooth is totally fine, and Mom and I were overreacting. I just spelled overreacting wrong, but spell check caught it and fixed it.

I've been infected with the blushing disease, which is, to say the least, highly annoying. Mere days after I decided that I don't really like Mario as much as I did last year, I start turning beet red when talking with him, about him, or when Vicky endlessly teases me about him. To make matters worse, he's in two of my classes this year (health and science research), so he might even notice! AAAAAAAaAaaahhhhh! I'm so embarrassed, I'm just going to start blushing more. This blushing reflex is very, very annoying, and Julie tells me that absolutely nothing I do is going to make it go away, which is highly annoying.

All of my classes today were fine except for English. I was the first one in class, so I picked my seat and sat down. Unfortunately, both the seats next to me remained empty. I swear, guys, I don't bite and I don't cheat. Also, the class size was really small, and Ms. Seltzia even remarked on it. When I told her that Gretchen couldn't get in the class, she seemed really put out, and wanted to know, specifically, who wouldn't let her into the class. Gretch, if you're still interested in switching (and I don't know if you will be), talk to her. She might be willing to pull a bit of leverage to get you in. Failing that, continue to pester the guidance counselor for the remainder of the drop period. If anyone drops out, I'll tell you, and you can go to her armed with that bit of information. Just, if I have to spend all year there, I think I'll cry. It's oh so very lonely. I was in such a good mood all day, and then, after that, it was just gone, poof, just like that.

It was quite tragic.

Journal Highlights

1/31/08

Well... today in English Ms. Seltzia read aloud a page of Girl in Hyacinth Blue that basically described sex using musical metaphors. I, for one, was giggling like crazy. Gretchen, unfortunately, was too busy ignoring me to catch my eye, but it was still funny. Also, we discussed vocab tests and how we study. Jess goes "I IM with Tybalt then print out the conversations. That helps a lot." and the teacher goes "really?" and the class takes a couple of seconds to process this before a low ooooh! broke out, and we started laughing. And Jess is like, "it helps! really!" and blushes a bit. Then the teacher goes, "there's definitely a bit of pink in her complexion." By that point, Tybalt was extremely red as well, and attempting to laugh it off, but in an extremely awkward way.

3/6/09

I feel stressed. Let the stress flow from the ache in my stomach and heart, through my shoulder, down my elbow, jetting down the rest of my fingertips and flowing to the tip of my pen, where the dark of ink releases it from my body.

That's a bit better.

11/7/08

Back to SHP tomorrow. Mario's a db. It wouldn't bother me much, generally, but I'm far more attracted to him than I should be, and can't bare to just blow him off, but something just makes me want to slap him, huge pores and all. I am desperately hoping that we reach some level of conversation by June, or I swear to a possibly existing deity, I will cry.

11/18/08

Today was the drawing field trip to the Met....blah blah blah etc. At the end of the trip, Mom told us to meet her at the temple. Me and Gemma were with her, so it was no biggie, but everyone else was late. Mom was so worried. She thought that she was such an awful chaperone, they'd never let her come on a trip again. By the way, it's requiring a colossal amount of effort not to mention Mario right now. That boy has somehow managed to insinuate himself into my thoughts, and it is somewhat aggravating AND I can't talk about him, because Nyx always laughs and GAH!

1/14/o9

I'm glad I don't have to come-of-age twice. Seriously, though, I always feel like I'm a character in some sort of book. Currently I'm in the midst of a classic tale in a high school, with a science and feminism subplot. I'm also in the exposition of another imaginary romance, but right now, I mostly just feel myself growing up. It feels like I'm too self aware.