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.