Visitation with Rickling

Gunnar came to visit today. I've been, of late, focusing on (in Gunnar's words) firming my social ties, or something along the lines of that, with my high school friends. This means that Gunnar got hauled over to Cammie's house (he declared that Cammie is "interesting," and it sounded like he meant "in a good way" and not "ummm") to watch her pack. Cammie, after all, is leaving town to go to college on Friday, which is, as you might be aware, very, very soon.

The three of us eventually became hungry, and as Cammie is not in the possession of particularly much food (this is a side effect of getting home from Europe less than three days ago), we decided to go out for lunch. This was my first (and, in all likelihood, last) visit to the Shake Shack. Not that there's anything wrong with the place--the food was delicious, and there was an absolutely perfect quantity of it--but I don't go out to eat much, and I'm not going to be here for very many more days anyways. But I did eat a relatively guilt-free meal (I seem to have dropped half of what I gained this summer, which means that most of it was medication-induced bloat, which makes me extremely happy).

Gunnar's family also showed up at the Shake Shack, so I got to see his adorable younger brother again. As we were leaving, we also saw Lucas and Tamir. Cammie stopped to talk to them for a while--well, mostly to talk to Lucas. Gunnar and I stood awkwardly behind Cammie for a minute, uncertain of how the whole 'conversation' thing ought to proceed. Though Tamir's conversation was also limited, I believe that he's less cognizant of a need to avoid social situations in which one is unwanted, so he more or less ignored the awkwardness. Anyways, I said I wanted to call Yuma, so Gunnar and I went outside. I sat on the ledge of the truck's bed and he stood nearby while I scrolled through my phone.

Although I wasn't in possession of Yuma's phone number (Yuma, as it turns out, is not in possession of a phone), we decided to crash his house anyways, despite the fact that none of us, least of all Gunnar, knew its precise location. We drove around Paperclip on our way there, and Gunnar, funnily enough, was extremely impressed by the amount of lab space and the number of AP courses offered--despite the fact that I've always been very jealous of the kids I know who attended magnet schools. I think perhaps the moral of that is that high school sucks for everyone, so the grass is always greener...or something like that.

Anyways, then Cammie and I spent a good amount of time trying to explain to Gunnar what it's like to go to school with stupid people. One of his most significant questions was "how many of them are there?" to which we more or less said "normal distribution." We then started relating the antics of Umber's younger sisters and various other misdeeds. When I apologized to Gunnar later for dragging him along on these trips, he said he was glad to meet my friends because they "showed [him] what going to school with stupid people is like."

"Are you implying my friends are stupid?" I asked.

"No, but Cammie had lots of good stories."

I ended up driving to the approximate location where I used to let Yuma out of the car, then we went to the nearest house and rang the doorbell. No one answered, so Gunnar suggested I take out my laptop and try to get onto someone's wifi and start gchatting Yuma, which I did, but then Yuma came walking up the street with his dog.

As it turns out, Yuma's house is located rather farther back. We sat around there for a while, chattering about randomness--it was good to see Yuma after two months, and it's fun to talk about college with someone who is actually going to be at college with me.

We'd been there for about ten minutes when Yuma mentioned that Peter was supposed to be picking him up to take him to Brian's house in five minutes. I more or less flipped out--this would poke a huge hole in the "avoid Peter" plan of action--and Yuma ended up canceling on Brian to chill with the rest of us (apparently after an entire summer of Brian and Peter time, a change was appreciated), which meant that I drove over to Cammie's house sitting four-across in my pickup truck (le gasp). Julie arrived soon thereafter, and not to long after that I had to bring Gunnar over to Lucas's house and head home for dinner.

All in all, it was a fun day, and it was definitely good to see Gunnar. Now, one more day with Cammie, then a few days of hanging out, then packing while hanging out, and then...college. Holy shiznit.

Another Banal Update

Dad's pronunciation of all the hawaiian words is atrocious. He gets the first letter---sometimes even the first syllable---correct, and the last vowel, typically, but then all the letters in between turn into some sort of monkeyish jabbering. It's hilarious, and it drives Genie beserkers.

We drove the Hana (Hanna? Hannah?) Highway today, which meant that we went all the way around Maui in our rented minivan. We visited a lot of waterfalls, spent a lot of time in the car, swam in some pools and drove down the twistiest, most beautiful road I've ever seen while singing whatever songs my sisters and I could remember the words to. It was wonderful.

Now I'm back at our condo, sleeping on the couch (well, I will be sleeping, once I get off of the computer and wash up and crawl into bed, which I expect won't be for a while since Shelby is currently in the shower). There's not really anyone online to talk to--the time difference takes care of that. I started A Crown of Swords today, which is wonderful but a bit depressing, since it's currently focusing on Perrin and Faile, and I keep thinking about the awful mess that they're going to end up embroiled in, which makes me sad, not to mention how many books it is before Rand's craziness issue is going to be improved upon. I'm not sure if the books get darker, or if it's just that the plot lines developing now hadn't been resolved at the point where I last stopped reading, but the darkness of the story is suddenly bothering me a lot more.

I need to decide whether to go back to frisbee club when I get home. On the one hand, I need the exercise, I've missed playing, I had a lot of fun with it this spring, and it will make it 100% clear to Peter that I'm not avoiding him without me having to actually spend any time sorting things out with just him. On the other hand, I really would prefer not to have to deal with seeing Peter, because I strongly suspect that however over it I am now, seeing him is going to destroy that resolve (I mean, seeing Dawson did that to a certain extent in April, and that was a smaller involvement and a greater time lag...but it's hard to say). I also feel like if he wants to see me, that should be up to him. I'm more or less letting my pride lead me at this point, which is probably not a good thing, as I'll more likely than not end up embarrassed (oh, the number of times I spelled that wrong while writing up things for the summerbook....) about something that wouldn't bother me otherwise. I just don't want to let on to him that I'm still affected--that I was ever affected at all--because he's the one who ended things. Frisbee isn't about seeking him out, but I'm worried it'll seem that way to him, and I don't want him to think that, so I'll end up embarrassed and awkward, and then it'll really seem like I'm seeking him out. If I avoid any place he might be, though, that could be a problem. That I won't do. I want to avoid him, but I won't, because that would be both obvious and rude.

This is ridiculous. I shouldn't care. I don't care, not really, but I still worry.

Zee Prom

The actual prom was strange. That's the best word I can think of for it. It's funny, because by the next morning I was, shall we say, very comfortable with Peter (I mean that literal sense, not in the hanky-panky sense), but at the start of things I really wasn't.

The party bus was bizarre. We weren't allowed to drink anything, even water, while we were on it. It fortunately not a model that included a stripper pole, but terrible music was blasted, and it was so loud we could hardly talk at all, and the liqueur cabinet (which I think was actually just full of empty bottles and what looked very similar to the jugs of bleach we have at lab) kept swinging open, so Peter and I spent half of our time yelling at the cabinet door and the other half attempting to kick it shut. For some reason, this was considered fun. He also did that terribly awkward "Here I am yawning and oh, look, now my arm is around you!" thing. I leaned into him reflexively when he did, even while half of my brain was asking the other half why I was encouraging him when I'd already decided that he was boring (answer: I was cold. Also, it only just occurred to me that this was why he would not stop asking me if I was cold, despite my vehement denials. Would have been a better excuse than an awkward yawn. I feel somewhat pathetic for not realizing this sooner).

The eating bit was fine. The gang of however many of us there are got a table together, and we made cheerful conversation about things like someone's---it was Cammie or Kathrya---propensity for spilling drinks. Then music started, and there was dancing, and that was the point at which I got really uncomfortable.

I'm still not totally clear on why I felt so out of it. I think part of it was the sheer number of people around me, all of them darkened, and large, and just too much---I've never been good with crowds. And then there was Peter, who kept wanting to touch me---not anywhere inappropriate, mind, just my hands, and then my waist, but he's so much taller than me that all I could see was his chest, and his face was completely obscured, so I just kept swaying with the music, even as I wanted to shrink into nothingness and retract my sweaty palms and run off to somewhere, anywhere, just not right there right then. I danced because I didn't know what else to do, but it felt perfunctory even to me, this half motion, but he was moving less and I couldn't figure out why he kept resisting my attempts to stop (the touching, I know now. And now that I'm more comfortable with touching him I'd quite happily go back and run the whole thing again, but right then I was miserable). It's funny, because I understand what those sexual assault videos were saying, even as I recognize that I wasn't in a bad situation at all; even when I wanted to leave, even when all I wanted in the world was to be gone, I stayed there and I danced his dance, because he was big and it was dark and there were so many people and I didn't know how to explain that I desperately wanted to leave in a way that didn't make it sound like I desperately wanted to leave him, because I didn't. I like him, and I could remember that I didn't want him to think that I didn't want to be there, but it felt like I couldn't remember why.

I'm not sure this makes any sense at all. It's everywhere-writing, the stuff I got halfway decent at last year, but I'm not sure it works here. I just remember the everywhere emotion.

I still don't understand, though, why I got so scared. No, that's not right---I know why I got scared. I just can't for the life of me understand why I suddenly stopped.

I fell asleep on Peter during the ride home. He gave he his jacket so I wouldn't freeze, and Vincent was sitting across from me, who I hadn't seen since his strange visit to math team just to say goodbye to me. There were couples everywhere, and his girlfriend kept touching him and he kept looking at me, so I closed my eyes. I vaguely recall Peter tucking me into him and sliding closer, because he was warm, and then next thing I can remember was the bus arriving at Cammie's house and then getting annoyed with Yuma for photographing my sleep.

The actual prom was very, very strange.

The Before (Kind of)

The experience of prom was substantially more fun than I thought it would be. Granted, I thought it was just going to be a giant puddle of awkward (which, notably, it stopped being---well, to the extent that Mr. Tall and Awkward is capable of being not awkward). The picture taking was fine, and I can't remember talking to my date's mother at all. I talked to my mother, and she threatened me with certain doom if I didn't go and pay some attention to said date (I had slipped out to watch her to Ginny's makeup), and I was perfectly civil and we were not altogether pathetic on the whole.

That paragraph makes no sense. I can tell that it makes no sense, but I am uncertain as to how to resolve the problem.

My dress was, I think, shorter than I'd previously realized. Everyone else looked gorgeous. I still think Cammie looked like a Grecian goddess of awesomeness.

I'm having trouble remembering little details and conversations. I can clearly remember Yuma bringing onion rings and mozzarella sticks for Ginny. I'm thinking that the gap between pre-prom and the time I got some solid sleep is long enough that I can't remember preprom.

Okay, I'll cover the regular prom later....yup. Lab today was fun. I got made fun of for skipping out before happy hour last week. Good stuff.

The Afternoon After

There are more posts---one about how I've only just realized that I'm leaving, at least one about prom---but I'm exhausted, so, for now, all you get is a transcription of the latest weird dream. This one occurred during my accidental three hour nap. Corrections to my atrociously written post-wakeup writing in italics.

I was at a hotel with Nyx, Cammie, and others (actually, I believe it was our prom group + Genie + Peter's mother and brother (who was named Reggie and does not, to my knowledge, actually exist)). I do not (written in journal as "donot") remember all of the mechanics of things. I know the three of us had been up to no good (I think there was swimming involved) and were covered in slimy blue stuff. Cammie was in the shower. The hotel was fancy. Nyx, who was in the midst of lecturing me about my need to be more spontaneous, declared that she was going skinny dipping.

"Where?" I asked, but she had already climbed out the window.

I stripped off and ran after her, clad only in Peter's tux jacket (which was long enough to make me perfectly decent, somehow) and carrying an orange towel. I rushed after Nyx, and she continued to iterate all of my flaws and all of the changes I should be making.

The road we were walking down turned into my street, and the hotel transformed into my house. We went in the direction of the culdesac. I saw Brian and asked where Nyx had went, but he didn't seem to know.  I rushed on. When I was nearing the end of the street, Peter showed up in front of me.

"You are not going to do this." Coincidentally, at that moment a police helicopter swooped over us. "See, it's illegal!" he finished, though we both knew that he didn't think the copter was at all related to me.

"No," I said. "I need to be more spontaneous, I need to be more spontaneous."

He tried to get me to put on more clothes, but I just kept saying no. He slid his arm over my shoulders and walked me around the neighbor's garden party, continuing to repeat that he wouldn't let me. We both ate food. I think he had me convinced. Then my mother woke me up.

A Wonderful Feeling

Today, my grandparents got back from their winter in Florida, so, of course, they had to come over for dinner. Mom made something yummy, and Grandma found a way to make a dessert that Mom wouldn't object to.

My grandparents, having been in Florida, naturally had not yet seen my prom ensemble. So I left when we were about halfway through washing up to zip myself in and slide (or, erm, wrestle) on my shoes. I love the way the dress feels when I put it on---just the right weight, just enough give in all the right places, the perfect shade of purple. And it's soft on me, and light, unlike the layers I've been piling on for lab every day.

I went into the kitchen and did my best imitation of a model's strut. I stood still and twirled while they preened, Papa being his typically skeevy self and Grandma being nothing but kind. It was nice to be preened over, nice to be the center of attention. When I was, at length, dismissed, I went upstairs rather than back to my room---the closest full-length mirror to my room (discounting my younger sister's, which is small enough that I can't see my entire person in it) is in the exercise room upstairs.

I clacked up the stairs, and I stood on the rubberized mats, and I looked at myself, and I was beautiful. That's how I looked to me, anyways. The right balance between legs and curves, the perfect dress, the perfect shoes, the somewhat glowy smile---perhaps I wasn't wearing glasses, so I couldn't see the flaws, but, in that mirror, I was as sexy as sexy could be. I looked at myself and I saw that ugly duckling daydream, of the great nerd---who is really only nerdy because of her glasses and involuntary participation in some variant of Quiz Bowl---showing up at prom and being suddenly beautiful, suddenly breathtaking, and leaving them all in awe. It's ridiculous, I know, but I felt like I could be Taylor Swift at the end of that cheesy, cheesy music video.

And I didn't care. Seriously. I was more excited about getting into Harvard than I was about this---which is saying something, since the only reason I was even glad I got in was that it meant that Bryant hadn't fared any better than me. I looked at myself, and I could see the dream existing, that little thought in the back of my nerdy mind that I was the belle of some imaginary ball, and I didn't care.

I liked the way I looked, sure. I hopefully will still like it once I get through the actual event (with any luck, it'll be enough to allow me to survive prolonged contact with Peter's mother). But it paled in comparison to my academic accomplishments. RSI, MIT, April 30th, Thiel, even last night's High Honors dinner, was worth more to me than the discovery that someone pretty lurked underneath my cargo shorts. What matters to me is exactly what I have.

It's a triumphant feeling, somehow. I'm not at all certain that I'm expressing it properly, though maybe it doesn't matter. I feel, to use something Meg Cabot liked to have Mia worry about in those Princess Diaries books (the books, mind, not the movies), self-actualized. I'm not sure Mia ever realized what it was---or maybe she did, and I wasn't old enough to appreciate it, so I've forgotten whatever life lesson she picked up---but it was something about knowing who one is and being excited about it. And being an adult, or mature. But I think it was understanding of oneself and satisfaction in that understanding. And right now, I feel like I get it.

It's a wonderful feeling.

An Actually Somewhat Grand Finale

My last day of high school is now over.

Well, technically, it's still underway--I have a month of internship before I graduate. But no more classes. No more awkward lunches with Peter (though, really, I need to just get comfortable talking to him, because if I don't get over myself prom is going to have a high suckiness potential). No more terrible talent shows, no more "quiet in the halls", no more permissions to enter public spaces of the building.

Not that hacking is going to be allowed, just that it'll be different. I look forward to the entire experience.

That said: no more homework, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks.

On the plus side, though, my beloved friend Julie wrote me a poem that was read aloud during the pilgrimage. I'm typing it up here so that I don't lose it, because it was far to sweet and far to lovely for me to let myself forget it.

Her name's but one way she is always known:
Her purple hair, her brains, her happy tone,
What other ways are there, the color green?
That, too, is a descriptor often seen.
And our Tea towers over most of us,
Though when we comment, she may make a fuss
And say she'd not prefer to be so tall.
Admittedly, she tends to trip and fall,
The only little drawback to her height.
I know that she has college in her sight;
She'll be somewhere in [redacted] in a year,
or sunny Cali. She's a pioneer
and has a plan for the electric grid:
Flow batteries! She just received a bid
To spend two years and start a company,
That's far beyond the reach of you and me.
Between these two she now will have to choose:
Start college, save the world? She cannot lose!
Oh, our Tea, we all know, does love to read
Those math and physics texts, though she will plead:
It doesn't suit her to be just a geek;
Conviction's what you hear when she does speak.
Politically, her goal is women's rights:
One of her main concerns is thus the plights
That girls, when in her field, will sometimes face.
Impostor syndrome: they feel out of place
And never understand what they can do.
She says: if I can do it, you can, too!
In many classes, Tea, she always draws;
Her doodles on her paper are not flaws,
They're simply an expression of her thought,
And still she takes her nots. She really ought
to concentrate a little more in class,
But does well anyway: give her a pass!
Before she graduates and leaves this school,
She'll be on internship at someplace cool:
For four weeks she'll be in a bio lab 
And know cells microscopic as a dab.
Before I also say goodbye and leave,
I'll tell her she'll succeed---to just believe.


This continues to make me all warm and fuzzy inside. It also seems to sum up a lot of what I do, which makes me love Julie all the more for knowing me so well. For the record, any of the rhymes/syllable counts that sound silly were created by me in an attempt to account for changes in my name and location.

I also wrote my own little piece for Yuma.

Oh dear Yuma, from not quite here, his hair's
Not long nor short and neither is it fair---
It's black! His glasses once were rimmed in wire
But then they broke. He used some glue and fire
To make them whole, but bought a different pair.
Today, more stylish glasses he does wear.
He serenades beloved Gin upon
His uke or small guitar. When she bent on 
A-polishing his nails, she made them shine
Gray-silver like robots of his design.
Each week he spends much time a-working hard
To train the frosh to be of high regard.
I say---a lab partner beyond compare
Except, perhaps, in Gretchen, to be fair.
He's great at stats and all things math. I think
His random samples are quite neat. The clink
Or thud of Frisbee falling to the ground---
It is to him familiar a sound.
I wish you luck in measuring the height
Of rolling coins. Do keep your smile bright.


I think I should win some sort of prize for the number of hints to my identity I managed to squeeze into it without being obvious about the hintiness to people other than Yuma. Regardless, the pilgrimage was quite fun, and now I've got the poems recorded for posterity. Good is good.

Minor Happenings

This evening, I went on an event that resembled a date with our (not so) dear friend Peter. It was boring and not really worth much of the worry that lead up to it. On the plus side, I've emerged with renewed confidence (I can do better!) as well as improved comfort in my independence (I'd have had more fun by myself or with a friend!). Great success!

In other news, we're beginning a new game of mafia. I can say no more without risking death by beheading from Frank, our beloved overlord, so that is all I can reveal with regards to that specific category.

Last night's girly sleepover was quite fun and extremely enjoyable. Organic soda is delicious. Air mattresses are comfy. The companionship of Julie, Cammie, and Gretchen is wonderful.

Why is it that a bad date makes me so happy? More importantly, is this analysis worth performing? Probably not.

I also have a fiction assignment due Tuesday. I have to fictionalize the following memoir and hand it in:

Last summer, on August 2^nd, Annie died. She was six years old. She was the child of my father’s stepsister, but I’d known her for all of her six years. I could remember, way back when, visiting her family after she’d just been born, looking at this teeny tiny baby and marveling at how any human being could be that small.

She’d died of a brain hemorrhage. It was bizarre, completely uncontrollable, completely incapable of being healed. There was nothing we could do, though, and I’d never seen death before, never been to a funeral. I hadn’t reached the place where I am now—I suppose it takes a second death for that.

But, regardless, my family had splurged on airline tickets to Colorado months before, flying away for the first time in two nearly two years.

We didn’t want Shelby to have to go to the funeral—Shelby, my baby sister, who already thinks that she’s psychic and is about as emotionally overwhelmed as it’s possible to be already. So my parents stayed for the funeral, and they sent my sisters and I jetting off across the country. The three of us spent a week in a house by ourselves, learning independence, messing up the cooking, wandering off, looking for our own sources of closure. Sometimes, the funeral doesn’t help.

Developments

So Yuma came off the waitlist of [school of choice]--I really need to come up with a nickname for said school, but I'll get to it later. Anyways, I am adding Yuma to my list of college buddies, and I'm probably going to get even more annoying about talking about [school of choice], but I am super duper excited and really proud of him for being one of a very small number of students admitted off of said waitlist.

Well, there was someone on here whose nickname was Clay prior to today...I've decided to change it. So, now it's Peter. This made no difference in anybody's life, I'm sure, but, trust me, it was necessary. People whose blog names look like real-life names of different people get to be confusing, particularly in light of current developments (why yes, I did just insert the title of the post into the post in a deliberately cheesy fashion).

Lucas told me a story today about Gunnar, one of my campers this summer. Apparently, one time in his younger years, Gunnar ate so many tootsie rolls at Lucas's grandmother's house that he upchucked. This is funny because Gunnar is very intelligent and does not usually do things with such clearly negative consequences.

Yeah, terrible story. I'm going to change all the Clays in the archives to Peters now.

Musings on Nothing

I am cold. For some reason, the temperature of the air when I'm walking outside in the sun doesn't translate well to the inside of my room.

I am hungry. Apparently the cupcakes I devoured during lunch were not sufficient to hold me over. The dry rice crispies that my tutor-ee and I ate while I was teaching her to classify triangles was also not enough...Shelby just came in to call me to dinner. More later.

It is now later. Dinner was chicken parmesan, and it was delicious. I wish that I was capable of spelling delicious without the assistance of spellcheck, I really do. I'm now trying to think of what happened today in an attempt to come up with something halfway worth reading. The squabbles in the truck on the way to school with Genie and Shelby, for example, do not qualify as interesting. Nor does the fact that our household ran out of 2% milk.

I keep wanting to add \ to the front of the percent. LaTeX is slowly doing me in.

I have been be-ticketed for prom. I let Peter pay for my ticket--I'm not sure that I should have, but he said that he was in a brook-no-arguments sort of tone that really ought to have bothered me but didn't. Dad advised me, when I was worrying over it later, that his mother was probably paying for it, and she'd given me at least eighty dollars of grief over the years, so I really shouldn't worry. Ginny and Yuma have also both be-ticketed themselves--I'm not totally clear on whether her parents are aware that she's going with Yuma, though I don't know how much they'd care at this current point in time anyways.

I hope Ginny starts blogging again when she gets to college, because I'd like to have some way to keep up with her life. Hopefully I will have more to write about than just psets, and this will be a decent medium for keeping up with my life.

The second half of my physics final was uneventful. At least, I think it was uneventful--first period isn't usually clear enough in my memory for trustworthy recollections. My free periods in the caf dragged on for far too long. Facebook ate a bunch of notifications. I should probably play the piano but lack the motivation.

I've continued reading Woolf's The Voyage Out. Her characters are remarkably realistic. I feel like I know them, and they're tangible, and yet they're far too complex for me to predict their behaviors. It's a big departure from Sanderson's characters--his women in particular seem to all be somewhat similar, a complaint that's frequently been made of Jordan's work, which is interesting. But, then again, Woolf is on a whole different playing field.

I'm going to go back to my reading.

Diplomacy

I played my first game of it today. We only had five people, though, so the dynamic wasn't quite right. It was me, Genie, Julie, Peter, and Josh (though Cammie did eventually show up).

It took us an hour and a half to read the rulebook. This was partially because Julie outright refused to read it out loud, which meant that we read over it individually while the remaining people were talking. Genie actually never read it--she listened to my explanations and then repeatedly flubbed up the rules during gameplay.

We also were not particularly diplomatic. We tried, but it's difficult to make teams with only that many people, so alliances were boring and not that interesting. I allied with Julie, who turned out to be somewhat useless, and then we all kind of went off on solo campaigns. I attempted to worm information out of Peter, but he refused to tell me anything and said he was "planning a psychological invasion of Germany." Totally not helpful.

But whatever. In Soviet Russia, Diplomacy diplomacize you. Or something to that effect (I was Russia...though not Soviet, of course. Early 1900s and all that).

Okay, it is officially way too late for this. Goodnight world.

Found Objects

in my A.P. English pocket divider that literally exploded last week:

• R-rated movie permission slip for Spanish class
• A New York Times Op-Ed article we analyzed about 4 months ago
• 1 sheet unreinforced blank notepaper
• 3 sheets reinforced blank notepaper
• 8 pages of museum synthesis prompt
• registration details for a science fair I'm not participating in
• 2 scoring commentaries written in incomprehensible handwriting (even worse than Peter's)
• Leo Africanus's description of Africans from Shakespearian times
• 4 pages of synthesis essay prompts
• The first page of Umber's research paper from last year about plastic bags
• an exemplar photocopy of my essay about pennies
• my actual essay about pennies
• the first chapter of Sarah Palin's book
• an 8 page packet on invasive species
• 2 more sheets of unreinforced notepaper
• a full transcript of Obama's speech on race
• 6 page packet on space exploration
• Othello 4.2.52-80
• the actual penny essay exemplar
• 10 page packet on pennies
• my entire A.P. English midterm

Dreamboat

Aren't you all glad that my fascinatingly imaginative subconscious is acting up again? I had this one at four in the morning last night.

It was the last day of school. I was with Nyx, and she, for some reason, had to talk to one of her teachers, so I was walking with her. There was some point thing on her report card (it sounded like the middle school point system, kind of) and she had to go talk to one of her teachers. She had 128 out of a possible 130, and I remember wondering if I had done better than that, but, because she was older, she knew and I didn't. Also, I wanted to talk to Dr. Verona, my ASR teacher for next year, but I didn't know who he was.

Then, Avon and Vicky showed up. When Avon heard about Nyx's thing, she immediately started worrying that her points were also messed up, so went with her. Vicky came with me to the third floor. We went up the stairs that are near the Continuing Ed. office. As we neared the top, we could see all the science teachers walking in the other direction. The orchestra teacher, Mrs. Kilmer (the one I actually like) came up behind us and told us to go around somewhere. Vicky and I decided that we didn't really need to see the science teachers, so we left. Also, Vicky's hair had the texture it does when it's wet, but it had a glowing color worthy of a shampoo commercial.

We went down the stairs, and they morphed into ones that looked like the double flight that went from the 5th grade hallway to the cafeteria in the elementary school Nyx and I attended. They were very crowded. As we turned to go down the second flight, Mario, who had been coming up the stairs, caught my hand. Vicky was pulled down the stairs with the rest of the crowd, and Mario released me.

"Oh, hi, bye," I said. "Have a nice summer."

"You, too. I'll see you at SHP next year."

"Yes." I nodded, and Mario went in for a hug. I was a little bit surprised, but went along with it. When we hugged, his shirt changed from white to gray and he got a bit taller, so I couldn't see his face as well. After a suitably brief hug, I started to pull back, but his arms were still closed, so I closed mine again, and then he started to pull back, but my arms were closed, so he closed his again, and then I unsuccessfully tried to untangle myself one more time before just giving in and staying there. We both laughed.

"So," I said, jokingly. "When should I be letting go?"

His voice changed, becoming harsher. "Yesterday."

"Huh?" I was confused. He was all flirty, and now he wasn't, and, aside from that, we hadn't been hugging yesterday, so the comment didn't really make sense.

"Let go. Now." His voice was firm.

"Oh," I responded, a little bit hurt, and extricated myself from his arms. Dora then came up behind me.

"Tea!" she called.

"Dora!" I squealed, and we hugged. Mario and everybody else was gone.

"I'd stay and talk, but I have to catch my bus. Bye!" she said.

I stood there for a moment before remembering that I had to catch mine as well. I went to chase after her, but she had already vanished. I emerged from the cafeteria stairs into the entrance hall of Paperclip High School. Nyx and Avon were standing there. "Nyx!"

"What?"

"I have the most embarrassing story to tell you."

She laughed. I looked out for my bus, but they'd all left. I had missed my bus.

Then I woke up. I felt more distressed when I woke than I felt the time I woke up in the middle of explaining to Peter's mother that Peter was dead.

Interpretations?

Tripping Tea Strikes Again

This morning, before my Spanish final, I was walking up the stairs. My foot caught on the edge, and I tripped forward. I looked back, hoping nobody had noticed, and that my skirt hadn't flown up. The guy behind me said, "Don't worry, nobody saw."

Except him....

In other news, the waiter at the restaurant we went to for dinner looked eerily like Lysander, only different, and with a possibly fake Italian accent, and no glasses. It was utterly bizarre.

Also, we had a pretty awesome impromptu party at my house; Ginny, Tierra, Dora, Avon, Nyx, Vicky, and Gretchen all came over, although Nyx didn't get there until almost everyone else had left. Regardless, it was a fun time.

I hugged Opmin during my last day of U.S. History. I was like, "this year was awesome, can I hug you?" and she went "Okay!" so I did. Horribly exciting, no?

Also, I might as well share a story from U.S.

I was sitting in my quartergroup with Emma, Joanie and Charles. Emma was talking about going to college, and how she wanted to go to University of Florida but that, since her sister (who is currently training to be a sex therapist) hadn't gotten in, wouldn't either.

Joanie responded with, "Well, was it a target school, or no, because it makes a difference."

and Rachel immediately butted in.

"Don't say that!"

"Um..."

"It's rude and cruel."

"Look, Rachel, I said a target school, it wasn't anything interesting."

"I told you not to say that!"

At that point, Charles mostly just looked confused, and Peter and I were cracking up.

"I have no idea what word you're talking about."

"Retarded. You said retarded."

"She didn't say retarded, she said target," I said.

"No she didn't." She looked at Peter and Emma for agreement.

"She definitely did not say-"

"STOP SAYING THAT!" Opmin interrupted.

"I didn't say anything in the first place," grumbled Joanie.

Oh, Rachel. In the beginning of class, Michael pulled out a pair of large silver headphones and put them over his ears. "These are great," he said. "I can't here Rachel at all!"

My table, at least, was in hysterics.

Also, there are suspicions that the gatorade was spiked. Charles was drinking it, and he said, "Wow, this gatorade tastes funny."

"It's blue gatorade, what do you expect?"

"No, I mean, it doesn't taste normal. Don't drink it, okay?"

"I wasn't planning on it."

"I'm serious. It's spiked or something."

I gave him an incredulous look. "Whatever you say."

A few minutes later, Daniel turned around.

"Charles," he said. "I think the gatorade is spiked."

"I know, dude. Weird." He turned to me. "See, it's corroborated. Don't drink it."

"I already said I wasn't going to."

"Good."

Gym Class!

As I already informed the Fabulous Vicky, I caught the football twice today (*victory boogie*). I also wore no shoes the entire gym period. The teacher, who is the football coach at school, spends the entire period on his cell phone, so most of the kids in the class dump their shoes on the track and enjoy the squishiness of shredded tires between their toes. Kathrya caught the ball, too. I will sometimes swear when the ball comes towards me. She, however, released an extremely annoyed "you have got to be kidding me." She then proceeded to catch the ball, and even remembered to run. Yay Kathrya! The only other occurrence during gym today was that while I was totally looking where I was going and being a good little football drone, Peter, who was going in entirely the wrong direction, ran headlong into me. It hurt. I'm still a bit annoyed with him about this, but I suppose I'll get over it. Eventually. Maybe.

Again, I'm working on my portfolio, and really don't have anything long and drawn out in me. I did, however, manage to locate some Spanish homework from last year. It isn't as exciting as Harry Potter, but it'll do. By the way- most of my grammatical errors are kept intact.

In 2005, I went to Italia. First, I went to Piza. I saw the inclined tower of Piza. I tried but was unable to go within the tower because it could fall. I took photos of my sisters in front of the tower. Later, my family and I went to a restaurant and we ate pizza. It was delicious, but I like more the pizza of Westport.

Later, we went to the house of my uncles, near Florence. I spoke little Italiano, but I understood more because Italiano is similar to Español. We went to a parade of Easter. There was a Jesus and many youths were apostles. In Italy, they celebrated all of the Easters with a parade. It is a very interesting tradition. My family and I went to Lucca. We saw the Cathedral of San Martino. It was old and big. The Pope Alexandro II made the cathedral in the year 1003. There was a very big wall outside of the city. We rode bicycles and strolled with bicycle on top of the wall. It was very fun.

The last week, i went to Rome. I saw the Vatican. The Vatican is wear the Pope lives. I had to wait for two hours before I went inside of. When I arrived, I heard the pope, but I did not understand him because he spoke Latin. The church was very pretty, and it pleased me a lot. Then, I went to the hotel, and in the morning I left from Rome and returned to Connecticut.

The End.

And, just to be annoying and pile MORE old, boring schoolwork on you (at least I don't have to read it!) Here's my English recruiting letter. Boy, do I make the class sound like fun.

Welcome to English 9H! That is an example of a boring and unoriginal leading sentence. Which, had I not put this off until the night before, would not exist. If I had started this letter in advanced, my sentence would read more like “Your path through English 9H will be a rocky one, but the difficult journey will be well worth it when you reach the finish line.” Well, maybe not, that has too many clichés. A word of advice for English 9H- avoid the clichés. This teacher can’t stand them. And putting papers off until the last minute, well, I’d avoid that too. If you like to knock out the whole paper in one go, go right ahead, but do so a few days in advanced. Editing and revising does wonders. That’s why grades go up with second drafts.

And another bit of info- try to avoid over-stressing about the grade. As your writing improves (and with the number of papers you’ll write, it will), your grade will go up. The first few quarters it’s a lot of work, but after that I was mostly adjusted. By the end, some of the papers were even fun. I realize that grades are important, but I’d say the writing improvement is worth a couple of Bs (which are a perfectly good grade anyways). I haven’t received any grades this year lower than that of my first reading quiz. I’ve had a few equal to it, but none lower. I think. I’ll have to ask my friend, who keeps track better than I do.

That’s another tip; work with your friends. (I apologize for any unintentional improper semicolon use). Having someone else proofread your papers can be a lifesaver. And we have a lot of readings. A friend who complains about a reading you didn’t do functions as an amazing alarm clock. Just talking to people about English class can help a lot.

My last tip- and this one is going to be in all capitols, because it is both obvious and important- DO THE READINGS. Sorry, just had to get that out there. We don’t read things for no reason. Either they help with the books, the essays, the quizzes (hint, hint), or just class discussions. I talked to someone in the class (and I won’t name names) in around February who informed me that he/she (and I don’t mean he/she is a he-she, its subject-verb agreement) had read only two of the books. He/she was not having a great time in the class, mostly because they didn’t understand what was going on (shocker). Anyways, we read something like fifteen pages per school night (only not that continuously, and mostly on weekends), so keeping up would be a good idea.

So, basically, (this is getting more unprofessional by the whatever-the-heck-so-and-basically-are) English 9H is hard work, but writing everything gets better as the year goes on, (we just read Shakespeare and wrote some fiction stuff. Yay!), and, um, work hard and stuff, but English is pretty awesome, and it was usually a bright part of my day (except when it wasn’t, like when we had a reading quiz), but overall my writing got better and it was fun. So, while I know The Odyssey looks scary, take a deep breath, and remember that things will get better. Although thing is a nonspecific word, which I should not be using. But that is beside the point. Welcome to English 9H!

Old People Doing Stuff

Grim Reaper Day was today, and I didn't feel that the assembly did particularly much. It felt impersonal and didn't really move me. I think part of the reason was that they never really said anything about the people who died aside from "it was my best friend," and the guy (who's probably only in it for the community service hours) was even worse. Listening to Opmin talk about what her brother was like during class had me staring at the desk thinking "don't cry" as I teared up, but the movie at the assembly just made me dizzy.

In English today, we discussed our weekends.

"My mom is graduating this weekend," Caroline informed the class. "She's getting her masters in education."

"Oh, that's so nice! What's her degree for?" Mrs. Leon asked.

"Oh, um, I dunno...she teaches third graders?"

The class laughed at her confusion.

"So elementary education. That's wonderful," said the teacher.

"Oh!" responded Caroline, "I was going to say that, but I didn't want to sound stupid."

"That went well," someone mumbled sarcastically, and the class laughed again. I then raised my hand.

"Speaking of people getting degrees later in life, my great-grandmother went to college when she was about 60," I said.

"What did she major in?"

"I dunno. It was before I was born, my Mom was just randomly talking about it last weekend, and it seemed relevant."

Another chuckle.

Then, Emily raised her hand. "My nana used to work as a secretary for a company that sold things to the army, but she found out that the younger, hotter secretary was getting paid more than she was, so she confronted the boss, who refused to pay her more, so she quit, started a competing company, and drove her old boss out of business, and now she sells stuff to the army from her attic as the only employee of her business. Go granny!"

Then, Dino spoke. "So," he said, making his usual unsuccessful attempt at a dramatic pause. "Speaking of old people doing stuff-"

"Old people doing stuff! What?" Mrs. Leon squawked.

"Well, they're old people, and they're doing stuff, so" *undramatic dramatic pause* "old people doing stuff. Anyways-" he paused, again "-my great-aunt- she's Caroline's great aunt too-"

"Wait," interrupted Rachel. "You and Caroline are related?"

"Yes," he said, and proceeded to explain their relationship in intimate detail before actually telling his story, which was boring enough that I can't remember it. He finished with, "So, see, old people doing stuff. I think I should trademark that. Old People Doing Stuff."

"My grandpa ate breakfast this morning," muttered Peter.

Caroline and I turned to Gemma and simultaneously said "What did he say?"

Gemma shrugged, and we all turned to look expectantly at Peter.

"My Grandpa ate breakfast this morning."

So old people CAN do stuff other than go to college!

Today

Regarding Pertinax: the New Wave of Erectile Dysfunction drugs- I'll develop the science, Vicky can do the marketing (lots of old men in bathtubs) and we'll make millions, I'm sure.

In other news, today was the last day of the softball unit in gym, and I finally scored a run. This was primarily because Peter, who was in front of me, hit a home run, requiring me to jog around the bases. It was quite annoying, because I didn't really want to run that far, but I suppose I'll have to get over it.

We spent our entire U.S. History class discussing the school's future budget cuts. Due to the economic recession, there are apparently going to be some big changes around the school. None of my classes are going, so I'm not overly upset, but once they start pulling from the art department, I'm going to get pissed.

I'm going to leave you with one of my favorites from the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. This is a competition for crafting the greatest badly-written literary sentence.

When he concentrated, his thick black eyebrows furrowed, looking not unlike a pair of Hypercompe scribonia caterpillars on a collision course over the bridge of his nose, but unlike them, his eyebrows would never evolve into giant leopard moths, and would find better places to hover after nightfall than around her 40-watt backporch light.

-Jane Auerbach