Two-hour early dismissal!

Today, during my first period of the day, it started snowing/freezing raining. This continued and changed to snow during lunch. So, thanks to the early dismissal that that won us, I am now sitting at home, not wanting to work on the science fair project essay/procedure writeup due tomorrow.

Assuming we have school.

I'm gonna go work on that. People keep saying that the ice is going to melt before it can cancel school tomorrow.

Snow Day!

I got to sleep in today... always a wonderful surprise when my parents don't wake me up until 9:30 AM. And it's one of those snow days that starts with a mediumish amount of snow that can cancel school, yet the plows get out and, within a few hours, get the roads ready for an extra weekend day, equivalent to any Saturday one could go shopping or get a haircut. Actually, my mom and I are planning to do that now. I probably should get dressed before I leave... I don't want to be refused a haircut because I am wearing pajamas (although if I were planning to attempt this, I might bring a camera to preserve the look on the receptionist's face.)

Anyway, its probably best that we are getting out of the house today because the basement-finishing people are doing something that (a) smells really bad, and (b) may trigger my asthma. So I probably should get out of here soon.

Maybe I can convince Mom we should eat lunch out... that happens so rarely that it's kinda fun. (although my mom is a really good cook. We just don't eat out much.)

Boy, is tomorrow ever Monday...

Well, the chorale was great. They did a couple of commissioned songs (kinda weird, but still great), a version of the Twelve Days of Christmas that had each verse representing a different composer or a different musical period, going from Gregorian Chants to John Phillip Sousa. I have to say, my favorite verse was the one done in Wagner's style-—or rather, Ride of the Valkyries style. Hilarious. And now I want a Brunhilde hat.

They also did the Christmas portion of Handel's Messiah. And the Hallelujah Chorus. It sounded great. (Especially the bass soloist... in his bio in the program, it says that he sang Sarastro's part in Die Zauberflöte. One of the lowest bass notes ever written is in that part. He's good.)

Anyway, other thing that happened yesterday was that I went to see the new Pride and Prejudice with my church's youth group. It was a great movie, but I like the (five hour!) 1995 A&E made-for-TV version better. None of the characters really looked quite right in this one... especially Mr. Darcy. He looked better in the five-hour one.

And, since the moviemakers were trying to not make a loooooonnnnngggg movie (although the five-hour one is worth it), the transitions were very fast. I think I had jet lag for a few hours afterward.

Anway, I have to get sleep so I don't fall asleep in school tomorrow. (Assuming that it doesn't snow tonight and cancel school...)

First try at email blogging... hope it works.

So this is my first try at emailing my blog a message. From a
non-HTML mail client. Hopefully the text won't garble...

Anyway, I just decided on a laptop bag that I want for Christmas.
It's a gigantic backpack with a laptop sleeve and room for my stuff.
I almost went with the Crumpler bags "School Hymn 12 inch," but
I really wanted a backpack, not something that would fit inside a
backpack. And they are the same price.

Well, supper is being served soon, and then I'm going to listen to my
mom's holiday chorus practice. The ------- Chorale really has sounded
great (want to protect them from being sold out by random blog readers
of Kyrian), and so I wanted to hear their dress rehearsal.
Apparently, people listen in on the rehearsals all the time, which is
cool. And free.

One last thing... I get to go with my church's youth group to see the
new Pride and Prejudice tomorrow! *happy dance*It also gets me extra credit in English...

EDIT: Apparently, mobile blogging/email blogging makes the blog post a draft. So this is a few days off.

Grrr, Blogger. GRRR!

= )

Belatedly reported goal reached!

I have been writing a book that may or may not be published over the past few years. However, I kept changing the plot, so I was continuously rewriting the beginning few chapters of my story. I have finally decided on a final plotline. I had written to a certain point in the story a few months ago but decided to change some things about the story's beginning. I have now reached that point again, and this time, I am sure I can keep writing without having to change the plotline again.

Hopefully.

Anyway, if I ever publish it, I will most likely post a link on here to whoever is selling it (I will probably start with LuLu.com, mainly because it is free due to the people at Lulu printing books as they are ordered instead of printing a thousand copies, hoping they sell, and meanwhile charging the writer hundreds of dollars).

Anyway, I have some quadratic equations to factor for homework, so I'm going to go do that now. And stop typing here.

Insulin Pump Woes

I love my insulin pump. It's easy to use, convenient, runs on AAA batteries instead of nearly-impossible-to-find-in-a-store button batteries, and has a blood glucose meter attachment so that, after I check my blood sugar, it tells me how much insulin I need, if any.

However, it is annoying. I set the thing on vibrate so that, if it starts alarming me during Algebra class, it won't distract other people. But the vibration drives me nuts sometimes.

It has blood sugar testing reminders that the user of the pump can set to go off at almost any point during the day. It has reminders for if I forget to bolus for a meal, reminders if the insulin inside the pump needs to be refilled, and many other little reminder-alarm thingies. Therefore, the pump vibrates very often. And it drives me crazy fairly often. If it vibrates at me when I'm in a bad mood, I might yell at it or something. Not that the pump cares—it's a computer the size of a cell phone.

Anyway, I try to not get terribly mad at the thing because I set most of the reminders myself. I can't really complain when I told it to remind me to test for lunch.

I guess this suppression of my annoyance has sneaked its way into my dreams. I will have a dream where my pump will vibrate to remind me to test my blood glucose, and I will push "OK" to get the thing to stop vibrating. Soon after, it will vibrate with another reminder for me. I push "OK" again, slightly annoyed. It keeps vibrating reminders at me, and each time I push "OK" to get the thing to shut up, I get a little madder. I might even tell a person in the dream how annoying it is. Then, I wake up from the dream to find out that my pump has been vibrating at me, once a minute, for the past ten minutes or so. Or maybe the past hour. Then all I want to do is put the thing into the blender on high power, but I just turn it off and go back to sleep.

But it is better than an audible, siren-like alarm. My first insulin pump, while it could be set to vibrate instead of beep (or imitate an ambulance's siren), used expensive, hard-to-find-without-special-ordering batteries. Putting the settings for any pump for the thing to vibrate instead of beep makes the battery run out very quickly, so I set the pump to beep instead.

One night, I woke up to something that sounded like an alarm. It was very loud. I went out of my room, saw the smoke alarm, and assumed it must be alarming. There was no fire, so I thought that it might be malfunctioning or telling us it had a low battery or something. I knocked on my parents' door to ask them to get a ladder to turn the thing off so I could sleep or something, but my mom just told me to try to sleep and wait until morning to turn the thing off. I went back to my room, surprised that the alarm seemed to be as loud with my door closed than it was with my door open (the smoke detector was in the hallway outside of my room.) Then I realized it was my insulin pump, telling me that my infusion site was clogged.

So, vibrate has its merits...it's just annoying.

Yes!

I made it into District orchestra!
I think my score was between 165 and 175, but since I do not have what that number is out of, the number doesn't really mean anything. But hey, I'm in. I think I am going to be a second violin, but that's fine with me...to dispel a common orchestra myth, seconds are just as important as first violins, if not more important. We help create the foundation for the melody, which is usually held by the firsts.

And now I can start practicing music that I'm not absolutely sick of. I will have to play the district pieces at some point in the future to prepare for the District orchestra event (basically 2 days of school, but all orchestra, all the time! except lunch), but maybe I will have learned to like them a little more. At least now I can work on my Suzuki solos (just learning the music in the workbooks, because it's really good music, but I'm not using the Suzuki method. Which is fine with me—it works for some people, but the method my private teacher uses works for me) and my senior solo piece (unless I change my mind in the 2 and 1/2 years until I'm a senior). And my 3-octave scales, which are way cooler than the 2-octave scales they had us practicing for Districts.

Anyway, on Homestarrunner.com, they've finally released a DVD of the Shorts cartoons (except Cheat Commandos). Personally, I want all of the DVDs and a Trogdor hoodie but have none of it. Even though usually you can read the transcripts of audio commentaries and bonus toons at http://www.hrwiki.org, it just isn't the same. You also don't catch the sarcasm in the audio commentaries that way... and you can't watch the bonus emails, and...yeah. But hrwiki still is a great site. It has pretty much anything you'd want to know about Homestarrunner.com, Thoraxcorp, and Videlectrix, and interviews with the creators. It lists all the easter eggs for the toons, which is nice (I had missed the "Dangeresque on Ice" egg before I looked at the transcript for email 125, Rock Opera).

But anyway, I probably should get back to my math homework... this matrix equation doesn't really seem possible to solve in either matrix or 3-variable system of equations form, but the 3 kinds of Chinese food have to have prices, don't they?

I guess it's just as well... I'm not a huge fan of Chinese food anyway.

Drat! The spell checker on this thing still isn't working...

Rosin arm

Well, I auditioned. I think I got in. I didn't stop like I usually do while playing, I am almost certain that I did not sound shaky, and I was even able to correct a tiny intonation problem. We get results later sometime... I don't know when. But I know I did well.

By the way, if anyone out there reading this has to audition for something, eat a banana first. There's something in them that calms nerves somewhat. I am sure it helped me; when waiting out in the hallway, one can hear which exerpt of a song is being played, and when waiting outside the second audition room, I realized I had left the piece of music that has my fingerings and bowings and notes and stuff in the other audition room. They had the part taped to the stand, but it didn't have my fingerings and circles and scribbles. Praise the Lord, I had that piece memorized pretty well, so I could just look at their part and let muscle memory do the rest. A year ago, I would have panicked at that situation. I think the banana helped that, as well as experience. Although, if going to an audition, if someone tells you to relax, let me tell you now; it is almost impossible to relax in an audition or performance. Just remember how well you can play the part and basically boost your self-esteem. That, and remember that God is always with you... that was what helped me most.

Although, thanks to holding my violin under my arm the way I am supposed to, covering the bridge and strings with my elbow, I have streaks of violin bow rosin on the inside of my elbow: what I call Rosin Arm. (for you non-string players out there, it is sticky and rubbed on the bow hairs to allow the bow hairs to "grab" the strings on a violin for a cleaner, fuller sound) So I'm gonna go wash this rosin off of my arm... it's sticking my skin together. Yuck.

If you didn't understand that last paragraph, don't feel bad... it's an orchestra-specifically-violin-and-viola-thing. Heh.

Anyway, I gotta go...we're eating out at Chick Fil A or somewhere and I am being called by my parents. So, yeah. I'll post whether I got in when I get the info and feel like it.

Wow... oops

My top, absolute favorite website has not been on my sidebar for some reason. Maybe I just forgot. Anyway, please, if you have never been there, go visit http://www.homestarrunner.com. Now. Or find some time soon. It's clean, it's hilarious, and if you're bored, it's great. Just poke around. I'd suggest looking at the "characters" page first to learn who the characters are (click "eject" on the VCR for a hidden video about the "easter egg" character), and then look at the Strong Bad Emails (sbemails), which are probably one of my favorite features on the site. Then venture to the toons page, and, well, just have fun. The site's great. I've been visiting off-and-on since 8th grade, (mostly on) and I've never grown tired of it.
And now, back to math homework.

Stuff

Well, I did get blisters from ice skating, but it was fun. Next time, hopefully I'll remember to wear long, thick socks instead of thin ankle socks.

Anyway, I put up a couple new links, one to the official "Dilbert" website (Dilbert is awesome) and another to Scott Adams's blog (he created Dilbert). This does not mean that I support what he says on his blog (like his latest post on Darwinism vs. ID). It just has some funny stuff sometimes. Personally, I think young earth. If you want to debate that with the various billion-year periods and dirt layers, I point to Noah's flood—that's where the dirt levels came from. I mean, they have found entire fossilized trees sticking through what is supposed to be several million or billion years worth of dirt! I have never heard of a tree living that long. I am a Protestant Christian, and if you don't like that, sorry.

Anyway, on to math homework involving identity and inverse matricies! yay... heh

And apparently, the spell check button now spews its code instead of checking my spelling, so if I didn't spell something right, sorry.

Watch me get lots of comments about D vs ID. Yikes. At least I can delete them...

Well, I haven't posted in a while, but my AP World History homework has, for the moment, lightened up a bit. Thank goodness. Anywho, what's new...

One of my friends who starts writing story after story but never really finishes one has finally finished one. She's a really good writer, but she asked me to edit it, so I pointed out a few typos and a few places where her spell checker messed up and mentioned a few plot holes. Otherwise, the story is excellent. If she has it published and I remember, I'll put a link to one of its sellers so everyone can buy it. Or I might just put the title. We'll see.

Her working on her story has encouraged me to work on mine... so I have added a prolouge with a backstory and a few pages of the main story to my (maybe) future book. I'm not posting any details here so no moochers steal my ideas. I'm only saying that I seem to type with the mood of the story; when I was typing a scene in which the main character was being really stealthy earlier today, I was typing as quietly as possible and barely moving my fingers. During other, more exciting parts, I'm tapping away like crazy. I'm so weird.

Oh, and who could forget the auditions to get into the Senior District Orchestra? I have to audition on Monday (I don't know if I said this elsewhere in my blog, but I play violin). I hope I get in, but I have played the audition excerpts so much in the past few weeks that I am beginning to despise the pieces. So we'll see.

And hopefully I will remember to tell my math teacher that I will not be able to tutor Monday because of that... I kind of forgot that I had auditions on the 14th when I signed up to tutor... = )

And there are live performances of musicals in my future. Actually watching them instead of playing in them. Wow. I get to see Les Misérables for my birthday in December (and get out of school a little early for it... heh) and then, when the school orchestra goes on a trip to New York this spring, there is a really good chance that we will get to see Phantom of the Opera. My two favorite musicals! *does happy dance* Hopefully I won't start singing along with Les Mis...

Anyway, I need sleep. I have German first thing tomorrow morning at school, and we have a new teacher who, no offence meant, but she's really annoying, in my opinion. Although after school I have German tutoring, and my tutor is both a Christian and a friend, as well as being really a very nice person. So at least tutoring is a lot more fun and interesting than German class.

Oh, and I get to go ice skating tomorrow! One of my friends now has a job being one of the people at an ice skating rink who skates around to: a. make sure people don't do stupid things like skate against the flow or chip away at the ice with the blades and b. Help the people who either fell or were knocked down by someone doing something stupid like skating against the flow or by tripping over a pothole in the ice. So I am fairly sure she loves her job, and she asked me to join her at the ice rink tomorrow. Where, supposedly, they have wide skate sizes. Which I need, or else I end up in oversized skates or in skates that are too thin/small and give me blisters. So I might actually walk out of the place not reciting the "Why I never go ice skating" list that usually comprises of 1. no wide-sized skates and 2. I stink at ice skating (mainly because the skates are the wrong size.)

Okay, I'm going to sign off now before I start typing again.

504s... ah, fun.

Well, I just had my 504 meeting for this year. If you don't know what they are, they are basically meetings for people in schools (kids/teens) to make sure their teachers know about medical problems. And the teachers sign a form saying that they will allow any accommodations that are necessary. All of my teachers this year are very nice and have complied, and I would like to congratulate Mr. F (rest of name withheld for privacy) for being the first member of the PE department to ever have come to one of my 504 meetings that I know of. *claps for him and hands him invisible congratulatory certificate*. He teaches driver's ed and I will only have him for one quarter, but still--he came. That's good.

What is bad is that, during 3rd and 4th quarters, I will have the head of the PE dept. as one of my PE teachers. And she isn't very agreeable. She was the one who, last year, made a policy that gym teachers should not carry around student's inhalers or glucose tablets (basically, "sugar pills" for if someone like me gets a low blood sugar and needs sugar fast. They taste slightly better than conversation hearts *gags thinking about it* (sorry if you actually DO like conversation hearts, but then you're kinda crazy in my opinion. No offense!)) I received news of this by a pink sheet of paper onto which the email had been printed that my (very nice and now retired) gym teacher handed me along with my glucose tabs. I carry my own inhaler in my purse, so the gym teachers don't have to be burdened by it. *cough* Anyway, this was against the 504 for last year. My future gym teacher has already broken my 504 once (heads of departments are bound by it, too, FYI hinthint PE dept) and I am pretty sure she will complain about having to go out of her way by carrying my glucose tabs around (the tube they're in is smaller than a toilet paper tube!!!). My mom has numbers of lawyers who have connections to ADA (American Diabetes Association) (you wouldn't believe how many organizations have that acronym... we need to talk to the *nonexistent* (as far as I know) AAAAA about that (American Association Against Acronym Abuse) although I would hate to have to go to court about this. But this isn't just about my rights. This is about the rights of everyone who goes to school and has a 504 or medical problems or something. So I guess I'd be fighting for the rights of a lot of people. These are federal laws that are being broken.

Anyway, I think I am going to go study up on those laws. I'd like to print out a hard copy so that, if I get a gym-teacher-can't-carry-your-glucose-tablets email printout again, I can go straight to the source, pull the laws out of my purse (which goes with me everywhere... I run laps wearing it, and play pretty much all run-around-until-exhaustion sports like soccer and volleycross with it on) and show whoever is violating my rights whatever they are doing wrong. Maybe that would get me enough attention in the eyes of the law, or school, or whoever to get this stuff fixed. This involves everyone who has medical problems and everyone who has to deal with those with medical problems. Those with medical problems will always be with us (especially for those of us with medical problems... heh), so this really needs to be cracked down on it. So if something comes out of this, great. If I am martyred in the process, figuratively or literally, fine. God gave me diabetes, asthma, crazy amounts of allergies, hypothyroidism, and *thinks hard* anything else I have that I may have missed or may not have been diagnosed yet (knee problems, possibly!) for a reason. It might be this, but I will pray about it before doing anything drastic. (At least I don't have PE for a while...)

Anyway, knowing the law never hurts, so I'm gonna go look it up.

Long time, no blog

I haven't been writing for a while... anyway, the museum my friend and I went to (Natural History Museum) was pretty cool, except for the evolution theories which are all false. The restaurant gave out pizza slices about a foot long and 7 inches wide rectangular and huge cookies. I don't feel like posting the picture I took of the cookie yet, but whatever.

Anyway, life in my school routine is stressful, especially with the period of crying after I got home from school pretty much all of last week. Why? Last year, we had a REALLY good orchestra teacher. He was funny and kind of like a father figure to most of us. And he moved. Our new teacher was arrogant, self-centered, and she verbally abused both us and our former teacher (something that staff members do NOT do--dissing another teacher is BAD. And she did it.) Thankfully, our concertmaster thought enough to take notes on what the new teacher was talking about. She showed her mother, who is also leader of our orchestra's booster organization (we haven't auditioned for seats yet, but she would probably get concertmaster anyway--she's good.) She and her mom told the 11th grade principal/head of fine arts dept, and the new teacher is now being transferred to another job to explore the other jobs she could take in the school system. Translation of the last phrase: She is being transferred to another job where she will most likely become bored and leave the school system. Anyway, now we have a very nice substitute who played oboe and has/will have (don't remember whether she has it yet or not) a degree in Musical Theater. I almost hope that she would be our new teacher, but the school already has its eyes on someone else. At least the crazy teacher is gone.

I don't like binders. They are huge, and when they are full, they are heavy. I have to carry around binders for Algebra 2 honors, Chemistry honors (kinda boring at the moment, but who knows), AP World History, and English Honors. If I have to carry them all at once, my purse does not fit into my backpack (which, I must add, is probably one of the largest backpacks I have ever seen) and my pencil case is hard to fit in. And the binders will most likely fall apart in the middle of the year like they always do. At least they aren't the kind that are zippable--those tend to make my papers all crumply.

On a good note, I am now the proud owner of two pieces of sheet music--one for Fantasie de Carmen and one for my absolutely favorite song of all time, Introduction et Rondo Cappriccioso, which I am planning to do for my senior solo in a few years (I'm a sophomore). Here's a link to a MIDI recording of Introduction (I don't feel like copypasting or writing it out, so too bad). Click here to go to it. http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/MIDI/Saint-Saens/Capriccioso/01Introduction_&_Rondo_Capriccioso.mid It is such a beautiful piece. Hopefully I will be able to do it with full orchestra instead of PIANO though... full orchestra sounds... fuller.

Anywho, I probably should finish taking notes on Antigone for English... which reminds me. Over the summer, I saw the 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice which has become my favorite movie. I read the book for fun (and it was GOOD) and we're reading it as part of the English curriculum later! I just hope the analysis doesn't mess up my liking the book...and the new version of the movie coming out on Nov. 18 doesn't give the story a bad rep. (No offense meant, but the Mr. Darcy in the 2005 version previews kinda didn't look right for the part. None of the other characters looked right, either.)

And now I must go take notes on Antigone. Bleh.

DRIVING! Is weird

I have just driven around in an elementary school's parking lot for an hour and a half. The first part, my mom was grabbing the wheel every few seconds so that I wouldn't take out a sign or something, which was annoying, but I can understand her concern (teen driving for the first time + THIS IS MY CAR!!! = panic situation every few seconds). I finally got better, learned how to park (not surrounded by cars, shopping carts, and crazy people/drivers, but still), and other driving basics. Funny thing was, that, even coming out of a stop with the accelerator pedal not pressed, the car still moved at 5 MPH. Which is about what I stayed at the entire time. I didn't count how many times we went around the kiss-n-ride loop, but I am guessing it was over 50 times. And I still have no clue how to turn on the wipers, headlights (thank the Lord they're automatic or else I'd have been driving almost blind during the last half hour) or turn signals. Hey, it's an empty parking lot and my first time driving. At least I know which pedal makes the car move.

I'm tired and have a day in Washington D.C. tomorrow with one of my friends, leaving at 9 AM tomorrow. I gotta go.

DMV, diabetes, and cheap batteries, oh my!

I guess I should go in the order of the title. DMV is, to say the least, not the place I want to spend almost two hours just to get my learner's permit. My mom and I spent an hour and thirty-six minutes in line, waiting for our number, F738, to be called. They eventually called F739 and F740 when my mom realized that they had skipped our number. F741, 2, and 3 were called while she went into another line to complain. The lady at the desk she complained at said that we missed our number. Lady at Desk: The DMV is so stinkin' boring that, for entertainment, we were both staring at the little signs at the top of the wall that said things like [Window 10] [C016 Please Go To] (and yes, it was backwards like that.) Almost the entire time. We didn't miss the number. So she suggested giving my mom another number, which was immediately put down by my dear mother by something like "No, I do not want to wait another HOUR AND A HALF." So we got service at the next available window, where we showed my documents, I took a 10-second eye exam thingy, and was sent off to wait by the "examiner's" desk. The examiner called for me almost immediately when I first got over there and then again, and I identified myself and was sent to test station 4, where the little TV showed me tons of info about the test (most of it was repeated a few times) and asked me questions like "What is your name?" Four names of girls, one was mine. "What is your birthday?" Four dates, one was my birthday. I was almost surprised that it didn't start asking me "What is your quest?" To get a learner's permit. "What is your favorite color?" Red. "What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?" What do you mean? An African or European swallow? "What? I...I don't know that! Auuuuuuuugh!" Anywho, then it told me the number of questions, etc. I aced the signs part of the test and discovered that pushing the onscreen buttons was painful to the pointer finger nerves, but what the heck. Took the second part of the test. Aced first twenty questions (the minimum) and so it stopped, because, even if I had gotten the next five wrong, I still would have gotten a nice piece of stiff glossy DMV paper with my name, picture, birthday, etc. on it. It told me to go back to "The examiner" and began counting down:
5
4
3
2
1
and went back to the stupid little welcome screen. Around three, I went back, declared my doneness of the test, had my picture taken (I should have smiled, but my smiles look cheesy and forced anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter) and got my permit. And left that stupid place. I had no clue how to drive yet, so my mom drove me home.

Anyway, the diabetes part. A while ago, the DMV sent my mom a packet with a cover letter saying, basically, "You have a medical problem that brings into question your safeness as a driver. Go get all of your doctors to sign forms and increase their arthritis problems. In 30 days. [evil voice of doom]OR LOSE YOUR LICENSE.[/evil voice of doom]
She was able to get the signatures she needed, but we are both sure that such a letter awaits me threatening my permit because of my diabetes. Both her endocronologist and mine were like "That's only if you've gotten into an accident or if someone turns you in for unsafe driving, right?" And our responses: "Not now." Virginia's DMV, or at least the one in our area, is getting stricter on diseases and those who have them's driving privileges. So, even though I just had a doctor's appointment yesterday, I may need to get ANOTHER one (hard in only a month) soon. Lovely. Thank you, DMV, for making life harder.

And the reason I have been using a normal toothbrush instead of an electric one for over a month is.......[begin drumroll] .........[cymbal crash][end drumroll]CHEAP BATTERIES! The stupid toothbrush would work for a couple seconds and stop. My mom finally took matters into her own hands and replaced the batteries of my toothbrush with the nice little timer and such. Guess what kind of batteries were inside?






Have you ever heard of Vinnie batteries? They're the ones all huge right here.

Those are the ones that came with the stupid thing. Cheap batteries that don't last like energizer bunnies. Or duracells, or (my dad's favorite) Rayovac. VINNIE. Sounds kinda wimpy. Is kinda wimpy. After getting that toothbrush, it lasted for, perhaps, two months or so. The five-buck electric toothbrush I used before lasted much longer than that on normal SANE BRAND NAME batteries. Brand names aren't always good (clothes, but maybe that's because I think clothes shopping is BORING AS HECK), but in the case of batteries, stick with normal.

Back from Camp

Well, I'm back. Camp was fun. We stayed in a beautiful cabin in the Smoky Mountains. Other than playing MarioKart Double Dash and DDR, we watched movies (which is why Pride and Prejudice is now my favorite movie), deep fried French fries, oreos, and waffle batter, rode a cable car, went ice skating, and listened to musicals in the car.

The deep frying was supposed to be only for dinner. We deep fried some French fries in vegetable oil (because we are cheapskates). After dinner, someone came up with the idea that "hey, we should have deep-fried some oreos while we had hot oil" and "Well, the oil is still sort of warm, isn't it?" And so we heated the oil back up again, crushed some Honey graham Squares for breading and mixed egg, vanilla, and milk as a breading glue thingy. That oreo was good but incredibly sweet and sort of squishy. So we used bisquick instead of crunched up breakfast cereal. Which worked better, but it wasn't as sweet. Whether or not that is a good thing I will never know. And eventually, it was suggested "Hey, why don't we make some donuts?" How were we supposed to make donuts? Waffle batter made out of bisquick. Eventually, we also added cinnamon sugar. We made what looked like a cross between a donut hole and a hunk of fried chicken first, and then the donuts began to look like, well, fried donuts. And then we fried one with a hole in the middle, which was really cool looking, and then another one, which broke and turned into a "C." The donuts were sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, as they were somewhat bland otherwise. I caught most of it on the youth group's video camera. Oh, man, that camera is really cool. The donuts were pretty good, but blander than your typical donut. Then we watched My Fair Lady (weird!).

The cable car was cool, abeit squishy (120 people in one car=me wanting to scream "GET OUT OF MY BUBBLE!")
We also went ice skating, which was, for me, painful. Everyone in my immediate family has wide feet. I have never been to a place where ice skates came in wide sizes. I asked for a 7 and 1/2, but I think I got a 7. They fit well, but now I am beginning to reconsider my foot doctor's idea that I may need orthotics eventually (I have somewhat flat arches). However, the rubbing on the back of my leg gave me a blister and the pressure on the sides of my feet caused a lot of pain. When I finally gave up and took off the skates to get the heck out of the ice rink, I forgot that the rubber-matted floors are covered in puddles. My socks were wet and grey on the bottoms when I put my shoes back on, but it felt good on my abused feet, so that didn't cause too much of a problem. We got ice cream on the way back to the cabin at a Coldstone spinoff (Marble Slab Creamery) which was, in my opinion, better than coldstone (coldstone doesn't have waffle cups that I know of!) I splurged and got a chocolate-dipped waffle cup with double-dark chocolate ice cream with a Reeses peanut butter cup mixin. That was really good. Although the cup's diameter was about six inches, which meant that I ate an insane amount of ice cream. Hey, insanity isn't so bad...

My favorite musical still has to be Les Miserables, but the tenth anniversary version was really weird. Javert sounded awesome as usual, but Valjean sounded like he had a sore throat or something. This version also cut out parts of songs and even entire songs. They even cut the song in which Marius first sees Cosette. I mean, it was like, they suddenly knew each other from nowhere and POOF! They're in love. And I'm pretty sure they cut Gavroche's death, which was a pity. Even though my second favorite character dies in it, it's a cool song. I prefer the symphonic version—nothing's been cut, most of the characters are really good sounding (no sore throats) (although Eponine sounds like she is singing way too far forward in her throat, in my opinion) (and Valjean is a little late sounding in some of his lines in the prolouge so that Javert has to catch up), and the orchestra is good. Anywho, I got to listen to this tenth anniversary edition on the way to the cabin. On the way back, we listened to Jekyll and Hyde (cool, but please forgive me if Imisspelledd it or something), Jane Eyre (confusing, weird, and a little too sentimental), Phantom of the Opera (cool, especially on Christine's high notes that I could reach if I warmed up) and Whistle Down the Wind (incredibly weird and modern sounding (rock musical in some places, if you catch my drift)).
Favorite Musicals (in order):
Les Miserables
Phantom Of The Opera
Jekyll and Hyde
Please note that things in this post and my entire blog are opinion only. I don't own any of the musicals (no job yet and $10 allowance a week... duh). These are my comments on the musicals only and were not really meant to be quoted/taken completely seriously. Don't use this as a guide for buying a Les Mis recording, as my tastes may differ from yours. And if I have done anything illegal here, please comment and tell me so I can remove/edit the offensive material. None of this was meant to offend anyone, so if it does, I am sorry but I did not mean to offend you.

Legal mumbo jumbo ish yuck, but whatever.

Anywho, enough about camp, I think. New website I just discovered a few hours ago thanks to my parents saving a newspaper article. http://www.lulu.com is a site that allows anyone to publish a book completely free of charge with 80 percent royalties. Each book is printed after it is ordered, so if your book sells 0 copies, Lulu hasn't lost much and neither have you. I just need to keep writing on my book... if I ever publish it, you can be sure a link will be here to Lulu (most likely, anyways) so that people can read it—in either book form or e-book form! That would be cool. And I could put my own artwork on the cover. I just need to get up the nerve to draw it... some of the characters creep me out, and I would hate to have a creepy character staring at me from the book's future cover as I write it. The only thing that Lulu lacks, I think, is an editor, but if one writes a story, prints it out, shoves it in a friend's face with a red pen and commands that friend to edit and show no mercy, and then if this is repeated with other people, and revisions are made, who needs an editor?

I gotta practice my violin (after a week of not being able to practice due to me being 8 hrs away from my violin). Here's to hoping my ears and my brain don't implode!

Done with packing!!!

Finally finished packing. I will have to borrow/temporarily steal my mom's hairdryer later tonight to make my hair not look freakish, but otherwise, all of my personal stuff fits into a duffel baglike suitcase and the DDR pad and PS2 fit into my dad's giant green duffel.

In about fifteen minutes, one of my mom's friends from the Reston Chorale is coming over to teach my mom and me how to cook Japanese-style. She's from Japan and came to America in what I think of as kind of an exchange teacher program. She has an iBook (because Macs rock Windoze's socks) and a little translator mini-laptopish thingie. Last time she was at our house, my dad and I showed her how to rebuild her iBook's desktop (still predominantly Mac OS 9) and I introduced her to DDR. That was fun.


Note to self:
Dear Self,
TELL DAD TO (RE)INSTALL MACLINK PLUS ON MOM'S iBOOK!!!!
Sincerely,
Ky
We had to use my dad's blue-and-white G3-turned-G4 to open some .doc files that my mom received in an email. Why the people couldn't save them as PDF files which nearly everyone can open (both Macs and PeeCees, and the program to open them is a simple free download) is beyond me. No, school-running people who sent my mom that stuff, the Mac is not going down the drain. Although iPod sales are predicted to slow, Apple has come up with many new products that are available for both Mac and PeeCee. =) Have you seen the new Mighty Mouse? As soon as I saw that, I almost started drooling. That thing is sweet. And less than fifty bucks. Click here for Apple's website. And click here for techspecss, design info, and other stuff about the Mighty Mouse. It's cool. I hope I can get one!

Weirdness

I don't remember who said this or his or her exact words, but I am proving what they said true. Girls, when explaining things, tend to write/say an entire essay-like entity, while guys usually say something monosyllabic. Heh. I hate writing essays for school yet write them quite happily in my blog, which no one is grading. *sigh*

Off to camp!

I haven't posted in almost a year. I have been extremely busy with life, and playing in my school's musical (assistant principal second violinist in the Les Miserables pit orchestra! Yeah!) and stuff. Anywho, I just finished Institute for the Arts (art summer school) and am packing to go to my church's youth group's camp. We're going to Tennessee and staying in a beautiful cabin. I can't wait.

With that said, I am also preparing to reread Eragon in preparation for the release of Eldest. Can't wait for that! Here's to hoping Books a Million has a midnight release party thing!

Just hoping that the books don't squelch my inspiration for my writing... After reading a book, I tend to think about "What if this happened instead?" or "I can't believe that happened!!! Why did the author do that?!?!" (I wish interrobangs were standard characters on a keyboard. They'd make things so much easier! Google "Interrobang" and read about them. They're so cool!

This summer has been extremely busy for me, even with all of the fun stuff. I don't think I have been able to sleep in to a decent time (10:00 or later) at all. First, a trip to Texas. Then, IFTA. Now, camp. After, reading the AP world history guide and making a PERSIA chart on various ancient civilizations. Fun fun fun. Stupid summer assignments.

Anywho, off to finish packing!

Wow. I was spell checking this, and it told me I had spelled "fun" wrong. And what did it offer as a suggestion? "fun." Maybe I had extra spaces next to the "misspelled" one.