New and Old and In-Between

I had never been to Dairy Queen prior to last night. For some reason, it strikes me as a midwestern kind of thing, but I honestly don't know why.

A good crowd came bouldering last night: me (duh), Cammie, Nyx, Argon, Nimue, Kerry, Yuma, and Annika. Granted, I personally didn't do all that much in the way of actual bouldering--it should be clear by now that athletic activity is not my strongsuit--but I did make an attempt, and I did succeed in hauling myself up a few of the V-naught level walls and falling gracelessly down onto the mats.

I ended up sitting for probably more than an hour in a powwow circle with Yuma, Argon, and Nimue. It had been quite some time since I'd talked to Argon and Nimue, so that was certainly nice. It was strange to hear about high school again, because it feels like graduation was a lifetime ago. The senior summer flew by, but, at the same time, it feels like this is the only existence I've ever known, if that makes even the slightest bit of sense.

I'm crossing my fingers for Argon getting into AIS. He deserves it if anybody does (though he is on my mental list of "people who might end up ditching us for that other, extremely geographically proximate school. That boy really ought to actually join science bowl, because I think his help is going to be desperately needed.

In other news, both he and Nimue are taking bucketfuls of AP classes and working on college apps and pretty much sitting right where I was a year ago (well, slightly different--Argon has a more rigorous schedule than I did, Nimue's is less so). It feels so distant, though. I'm a bit worried about getting to college and diving into schoolwork again. I'm worried my mind has forgotten how to be fully intellectually engaged.

Think how bad it would be if I'd taken the fellowship and waited two years. That no doubt would have been a nightmare.

After both bouldering and DQing, Cammie went back to her house to pack up the car and, in the morning, leave.

She's our first departure. Well, technically our second, but no one had thought that Kathrya wouldn't be coming back. I hadn't even had sufficient time to get used to the haircut, but I suppose that's what skype is for. Even so, I already miss Cammie and her silliness--but I know that once I get to AIS, home will be the last thing on my mind.

Besides, it's going to be good to be somewhere new (well, maybe not 'new', but at least not here). I'd gotten way too used to having someone's arm around me on these outings, and I'm not sure now is the time to be thinking about--well, I'm sure you all know.

Ah, well. It is what it is, as always. I think I'm going to try to find a watch and some goggles and swim some laps. It'd be good for me.

Do I have stories to share?

Of course.

Am I going to share them?

Probably not.

Although, for all interested parties, today during Science Research, I was working next to Mario at a computer, and Kerry was on his other side, when Mario suddenly started laughing. Kerry and I looked at him, confused, but he didn't notice, so I looked at his screen.

He was on the Home Access Center, looking at attendance. Thursday and Friday were both marked in light blue.

"What?" I said. "Is getting your absences excused funny?"

"No, this is Irving's."

"You're on Irving's page," said Kerry.

"He gave me his info."

We stared at him.

"It's not as if he minds."

Kerry elected to roll with it. "How are his grades? Doesn't he have like a 2.9 or something?"

"No, he actually has A+s. He's spreading that around to make himself look normal."

I laughed at that.

A moment later, Louette and Granada caught wind of our conversation.

"Irving?" said one to the other. "Isn't he failing?"

"Oh, look," laughed Kerry, thrilled to be in on the joke. "They heard it too!"

Whoopsies

First brush with accidental lack of clothing around the landscape guys.

I had gone swimming earlier, then taken a shower, then a settled down on my bed, comfortably wrapped up in a towel, and began rereading Harry Potter. I was there for quite some time before I heard some noise behind me. I looked over my shoulder and saw Kerry, who was approaching rapidly. I jumped up and raced into the bathroom, where the shade was still down. I put on a long sweater that was in there, came back out, got clothes, went back to the bathroom, got dressed, and then sat on my bed and resumed reading Harry Potter. While I am aware that this could be easily avoided if I didn't run around in a towel with the shades down, the lighting is much better that way, and the only thing visible out the window is some bushes and the sound.

Also: Hahahahaha

More Books (and a little embarrassment)

I think that embarrassment should be spelled embareassment, because having a bare ass would be embarrassing.

This morning, Mom had Kerry and his landscaping buddy over. I talked to Kerry for a couple of minutes, but there were these little gnats flying at my face, and I started panicking about being afraid of bugs and pretty much ran away. It was awful.

On the upside, I did manage to finish two books today. First, I wrapped up Ender in Exile, by Orson Scott Card. It was just as fun and exciting as everything else Card has written, so no surprises there. Then, this afternoon, I read To Catch a Duke, by Eloisa James, and it was every bit as enjoyably awful as it sounds. I have a large portion of my heart that will be forever devoted to godawful regency romances. This one was as wonderful as always, with lots of romantic confusion, horribly exciting arguments, witty dialogue, and gratuitous sex (there's a reason I used to have to sneak them past my mother).

Anyways, all in all, it was a good day.

Flag bomb up finger pencil

I don't actually have anything OMG! worthy to say, but I really wanted to use the webdings for speaking purposes. Actually...

Hello! I'm writing in WEBDINGS. Actually, it turns out tht OMG! is really ear, sunrise, monument, spider, but really, who cares?

returning to normalcy, now.

I'm trying to think of what interesting things occurred today. Hmmmm....

In ASR, which is basically a free period at this point, Theo, Adrian, Kerry and Garrett found a 'bullet' from Adrian's A.P. assassination gun that had been previously lost. Sam then had the genius idea of rigging up the smart board to have a target, then throwing the dart at the board to make marks. Unfortunately for almost everyone involved, Garrett has inhuman dart throwing abilities, so it wasn't much of a contest. Boris threw a fit because the objects being thrown weren't tethered, and according to the A.S.R. rules, all projectiles must be tethered. He was, however, overridden by Dr. Breese, who found the entire situation hysterical.

We played football on the turf field with our socks on, and Berk, who does have his funnier moments, devised 'bowling,' a game in which ten of the guys line up like bowling pins and he rolls a football at them. When it touches the person in the front, all ten fall over on top of each other, moaning dramatically.

After gym, I left my sweatshirt, bag, and lunchbox in the cafeteria and went to pick up my yearbook, as I left, I saw, immediately in front of me, Mario. I bounced forward with a cheerful "Hi!" and other portions of our brief conversation are recorded below.

T: Hi!

M: Hello. How are you?

T: *thinks for a second* pretty good, thanks.

M: You got a yearbook?

T: Yes

-brief small talk ensues for about 10 feet, until the cafeteria comes into view-

M: Oh!

T: yes?

M: Do you know what lunch spanish has?

T: Um...

M: It's first, right?

T: Third.

M: Really?

T: Really.

M: oops. I guess first was last month.

T: Yeah

-it actually wasn't, but I didn't have the heart to tell him that-

M: bye

-Mario does a complete 180 and heads towards Spanish, for which he is already late-

Science Symposium

Well, the science symposium left me feeling like a socially stunted retard. I blame the fact that many of the other sophomores are not true science geeks, so I find them somewhat unrelatable. Also, both Julie and Mario weren't in attendance, which was highly unfortunate.

At one point, I was standing awkwardly by myself, looking at someone's poster, when Kerry comes over and is like, "Tea, want to see a totally awesome poster?" and I'm like, "Well, it beats standing around by myself. Not that I have no friends, it's just that Julie isn't here, and Minnie has better people to talk to, I guess." Well, that doesn't sound remotely pathetic. "Great!" "Whose poster?" "Lysander's."

So, Kerry leads me over to Lysander's poster. He starts talking about his project, which is actually even more boring than standing by myself, and Kerry immediately runs away, probably bored out of his mind. Lysander's poster was something about how cellphones affect driving, and it was boring enough that I would have rather listened to Mario talk about economics and stocks. It was actually boring enough that I would have rather listened to someone else talk about Mario's project on economics and the stock market, which is saying something. So, Lysander is talking to me, and his eyes aren't leaving my face AT ALL while he was talking, and I keep wanting to look at the poster instead, but he keeps looking at me, and I try to look away, but then I feel weird, because he's still looking at me and talking, and then I basically start internally panicking, because I'm not really that good at reading people, and his eye contact cues aren't fitting in with any of my stored information on what various looks mean, so as soon as Dad wanders over (actually only a minute after Lysander started talking), I mumble something about wanting water and bolt. I meant to say something to Kerry today about feeling badly, but then I forgot

Oh well.

Casual Fridays

Or, in my case, shoeless Fridays.

I just don't like wearing, shoes, okay? It isn't as if most people even notice, and when they do, they laugh, and think that I'm slightly insane, but whatever.

I did, however, wear shoes to the gala (which I went to with Nyx) last night. We had to conversations with other people while we were there. In the first, we ran into Kerry and Lysander.

Nyx and I walked up to them, Nyx started talking a bit, and I stood there kind of awkwardly, because the conversation wasn't really related to me at all. After a minute, give or take 45 seconds, she decided to introduce me.

"Oh, guys, this is Tea. Tea, this is Lysander."

"Hi, it's nice to meet you," I said.

"You too," he responded.

We both stood awkwardly for a moment while I tried to determine whether I should attempt a handshake, since his hands were full, but it felt rude to just stand there, so the silence dragged on for a bit, until Nyx opened her mouth to talk and Kerry and I interrupted simultaneously, him with "I know Tea already" and me with "I already know Kerry."

I checked out of the conversation at that point.

As we went up the stairs, we passed Ryan, Ida, and Cammie. I said, "Hi, hi, hi," my voice growing progressively higher pitched with each, and Ida, who was third, laughed.

"Hi, Tea."

"Hello," I replied, greeting her again, as Nyx and I continued up the stairs.

"Oh," Ida called, "are you wearing shoes?"

"Of course!"

"I don't believe it," said Cammie.

"Let me see," Ida ordered.

I swung my leg over the banister, flip-flop and all. "See? Shoe!"

"Good job."

Unfortunately, I think I managed to lose Nyx's socks at some point during this conversation, which I really do feel quite badly about.

---------

I leave you with my final essay using my midterm planning from Western Humanities, this essay about Historical Values.

During the Renaissance, they like Renaissance Men. This is because this era was horribly repressive towards women, so they didn't want to be Renaissance Women. Also, Renaissance Men knew a whole lot of stuff, like Da Vinci, who was awesome. As far as art goes, there was Michelangelo, who spent years of his life on his back (painting a ceiling, of course). They were also really religious, so Michelangelo painted a lot of overly muscled angels. The government was decentralized, which is a big word, so should be used frequently in essays, so the church took up the decentralized slack with the powerful, decentralized pope, who did many powerful decentralized things, because decentralization is decentralizingly important.

In Rome, they were big on Pietas, which, unfortunately, has nothing to do with Tas flavored pie. They did their duty and had a big army, and the had Gravitas, which we still have too, since I have yet to float away. Gravitas is also exemplified in the Star Wars Storm Troopers, but I have no idea how, since I can't remember what Gravitas is, but it probably has something to do with their sick awesome artificial gravity. Dignitas is like dignity, but spelled wrong, according to my spell checker, and it caused fighting and class separation. This is why my eschewing of dignity and not wearing shoes is good and will end all fighting and class separation.

The End.