Today, Ms Sullivan talked to the freshies about their summer reading and Claire said that she already doesn't like her.

Why did they take Lord of the Flies out of the curriculum and replace it with (of all things) The Catcher in the Rye?!  I think Ms Edwards and Ms Gaylor have a little explaining to do.  Or rather, they would if I could ever find anyone during lunch. ...

Nothing happens at school anymore.  I (almost) miss third quarter.

After nearly walking into 6 people in 2 minutes' time, I've decided to go to sleep a little earlier.  (And you thought I only walked into walls...)

Ahh... yearbooks rarely cease to be amusing...





Yeah.  Sure.

Judge says nizzle-shizzling not an offence

Some Teacher: ". . . so 5 of the problems come from that worksheet, word-for-fricking-word!  When they all fail anyway, it's like, did they do the worksheet or not?"

"Hi, I'm a scientist and I molest small animals."

10 million points to anyone who identifies the speaker of that second quotation.

I got a decent grade on the multiple choice section of my French cultural reading test!!  Yeah!  (Excuse me while I take away 3 hours of homework time to gloat over my victory in the grand war against trivial schoolwork and pretend that I don't have worksheets to fill out and papers to write.)

Despite my ambivalent feelings toward ARML and Math Team in general, I've decided that this weekend's trip was a Good Thing.

Saw the movie The Italian Job.  It was "only" an action movie, but it was a really good one.  By the way, anyone who tries to drag me into a mushy movie in a theater (they're only tolerable on small screens) is going to see me sneak quietly back outside and run for my life.

Whitman people on my relay team need to read questions better.  I need to do computation faster.  I mean a lot faster; closer to 15 seconds than 2 minutes and 15 seconds.  Holy crap, I didn't think I could get any worse than I was at practice but I did.  Team and Power questions were an abomination as usual, I managed to largely ignore them as our proctor was ridiculously lenient and didn't stay in the room with us.

Much walking around Penn State.  Was not able to afford Penn State branded souvenirs.  Ate at Subway, but am still ordering via point-at-desired-food method.  Ought to learn how to order food one of these days.

The loveliest times I had by myself were on the bus rides with the CD player turned up to full volume and being utterly immersed in the lives of selfish socialites of the nineteen twenties.  I listened and imagined and for a few fleeting hours, I didn't feel like I was on a bus.

Oops.  Schoolwork's gonna catch up with me really soon.  School's not over yet.

*clears throat*  Okay, my page has been taken over, but only for this entry.

"Here be a chance to do something good and eat yummy things at the same time... Next Saturday, the 31st, from 10-2, there's a bake sale going on on the corners of Darnestown Road and Quince Orchard Road, outside the Safeway.  The proceeds from this sale are going to the "Great American Bake Sale" (dorky name), an organization which is combatting child hunger in the US."

"It would be greatly appreciated if'n you guys would either:

1. Bake food and sell it there
2. Buy food from somewhere else and sell it there, or, if you can't do either of the two,
3. Buy food from the bake sale (not from the Safeway behind us!)"

"If you buy food from the sale, you will then have tasty baked goods, to be consumed at your leisure... Come on, people, this is a good cause."

Who thinks the two winners (I still say that Humza should have beaten Barry... defeating Seth by something like 60 points counts for a lot!) should have gotten shiny trophies?  I think so.  Pizza was mediocre, but hey, it's pizza.  I managed to get rid of the two bags of chips and one bottle of cola that my brother oughtn't consume so I'm happy that they're out of the house.  People are mighty messy, though, I had to go back to room A2 to pick up after them.  Tsk tsk.

In case anyone still doesn't know this, I still can't buzz in at all.  But.  There was a question on "The Courtship of Miles Standish" and A Clockwork Orange, so that makes everything better.  (Umm, not everything.  Seriously, Teapot Dome?  Teapot Dome?!?!?!)

Oh, but everyone's perfect timing was worth it.  Belkin and Revzin's frequent negatives were worth it.  The Dali painting of melting clocks (what's the title?) was worth so much.  And, I got my copy of Felton & Fowler's back!  What a day.

I'm finally starting to feel okay.  So much for feeling sick for nearly a week...

Oh, but I gave that conics unit test a beatdown and redeemed myself for the stupid C on the strikingly similar unit test in AAF last year, so that trumps all other thoughts for today.  (Hmm, where's that motivation to do my portfolio piece now?  What little there was has already fled.  Gah.)

Clickety click

It's only a collage, mind you.  But still!  I can't believe this is classwork, it's fun.  Uh, except for the part where I end up staring so closely at the computer screen that I forget to blink often.  (I still wish MCPS didn't require a fine arts credit though...)

Witness the irreliability of RM's computers.

It would have been so funny if it weren't me.

First there's that math packet.  Oooh, it's late, better just leave it with Lisa and let her figure out what she's supposed to be doing.  The girl (what's her name?) who was also there was quite helpful, though.  Turns out that hyperbola was simple.

Ack!  There's Sandy!  We've got to go find a place to reprint our Oedipus debate papers, as her printer sort of "died" on the third page.  We ran to the lab at room 118, but some guy there kicked us out after we logged in because we're not supposed to be there.  Okay... couldn't you have told us that sooner?  Back upstairs to the English office -- maybe Ms Sullivan will let us print it out?  But no, ack, she's in a room and chatting with other English teachers and the computer's not even on.  Dash into the media center, where none of the computers actually turn on.  Oops.  Dash back out in a half-panic and nearly get hit in the face by a door being opened.  Oops.  Ask the computer lab in the English hallway -- awww, such generous teachers, they'll let us print it because it's only for English.  Yes.  Sandy opens the .doc and realizes... what, there's only three pages in total?  Oops.

We waste so much time.

I couldn't make it to RM Coffeehouse because I got sick.  No joke, I think all the stress is taking its (temporary) toll.  I wish I could have gone, but given that I could barely get out of my room yesterday, it didn't seem like a good idea to try to leave the house.

On a happier note, I bought a book at Barnes & Noble at Washingtonian Plaza yesterday afternoon.  C'mere, gorgeous.

(For anyone who disagrees with my taste in short stories, perhaps you'd rather read something else.)

Worship Sheila, for she 0wnz j00 is a great person.

No, I'm serious.  Give her a (figurative) pat on the back, buy her frappuccinos, edit whichever articles she asks for, whatever.  She is supremely wonderful because she extensively edited my SAP and acted really happy to be doing so.

On that note, I'm off to briefly pretend to study conic sections, then it's time to sleep.

I think we all learned a couple of things today, and by today I mean in the last few days.

Most importantly, if you creep up behind me and scare me with a whispered voice, I will shriek like the wimp I am and jump a few feet away.

I can apparently study for anything at the last minute.  One exception may be a French test on a 8-page cultural reading that I did not read.  Cognates are our friends, and Normandie is the only answer you ever need to know.

No matter how low education funds are, even if RM must discontinue using printed transparencies for the rest of the school year, Blair will always somehow fund exorbitantly expensive distance trips.  My only conclusion: they have mob connections.  It's the only explanation!

As for the obligatory obsessed-sounding It's Ac comment for this post: 1) practice can get nasty, as when juniors on opposing teams are apparently attacking one another with staplers.  2) People at practice don't have dirty enough minds.  3) Frisbees should not be thrown with full force into the room if one wants the frisbee back without bite marks.

Hey, I didn't say that they were valuable lessons.  (And, Meg: don't give me chocolate anymore.  I nearly walked into a wall because I closed my eyes because the chocolate was so good.)

Meet James Ensor

Lucubrate means to stay up late studying?  Oh Dictionary.com, how I love thee.

"Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor of journalism in that by giving us the opinion of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community."

I'm tempted to offer a prize for the speaker of that quotation, but you can look it up on Google yourselves.

I named the first five Vice Presidents today!  I feel mildly accomplished.

edit -- The previous entry, summary of hideously yet amusingly exploitative Japanese reality TV and all, is gone.  It was kind of stupid to leave the nasty anti-Harvard rant up that long in the first place.  I'm sorry... this a public web page, not some cobwebbed corner of my mind.  The frustration was directed at my dad and at my (now-discarded) stereotypes, not at any people I know.

Online or not, the thesaurus is my friend.  I'm not going to fail English.

Where did the entries go?  Oh yes, it was the 15th entry mark again.

Working on SAP, working on SAP... old beginning of draft was entirely narrative and not analytical, so I scrapped it and started a new one, and it's barely a page long.  Is it going to be done by Monday?  Yes, but it's torture staring at it because the words are just so clumsy and hideous... I'm glad Verne isn't alive to see what I'm interpreting from his translated prose, but I'm afraid he just may be turning over in his grave.

By the way, Sheila is exceedingly helpful.  I'll probably ask for help many more times between now and Thursday, but one paragraph is enough for now, I guess.)

I get the feeling that at this point, I shouldn't be constantly changing my thesis...