change of pace

School ended. I was exempt from all but my photography exam, as I may have noted; I got an A on that. (I found all this out later when I got my report card in the mail, which revealed that I have all semester A's, except in AP US history, where they're both B's. So that's good.) On June 3rd, I took the SAT at a place known as "Harmony Community School". This time, rather than finishing mid-sentence, I nailed the essay, writing as fast as I could to get all the words I wanted to write (I later read that longer essays get more points, on average). In fact, I had been considering what kind of questions they might use for the essay. They would need something suitably vague, but also very broad, so anyone could answer it. Last time it was whether people should change their ideas. This time I thought a good vague one might be technology; while sitting in the waiting room just before the test I thought what I might use to write an essay about technology. And I got in and the essay was about whether a strong focus on technology caused a culture to neglect standard of living. Ha! I am psychic.
-And on June 10th I took the ACT too. It was different. I don't know, I think I liked the SAT better. The essay on that was an out-of-nowhere one about whether fast food restaurants should be required to serve healthy foods. Nonetheless, I think I did quite well on that too.
-I've been having a fun time out of school. Occasionally people will ask me, "Happy to be out of school?" Now honestly, what kind of question is that? "No, I'd much rather be getting up at 0630 every single morning and immediately biking a mile and a half to a gulag to sit on hard chairs for seven or eight hours." I've been reading books. Mostly I've read Tom Brown's Field Guide to Nature Observation and Tracking. The thing is, it's not just a book; it requires a commitment, and every time I want to do something to improve my skills per the book, I have that annoying collegiate itch that tells me I need to do college stuff instead. So in fact I have been doing college stuff. I figured out and wrote down the other day what I want from a college. Only thing is, it's not quantifiable, and it's highly subjective. I need help with the process, so I will solicit some from BJ, sometime when he's on AIM. BJ, I'm shamelessly requiring you to give me help.
-In other college news, I'm going to go visit Grinnell, Carleton, and possibly Macalester on my way to Crowduck this year. Aunt Irene's coming too, and she's a Grinnell alumna, so that will be good. That's going to be around July 30 or 31. Grinnell is on August 1, and the Minnesotan one or two are on August 2. We spend all day on the road on the 3rd to get to Kenora, and we sleep there and go to Crowduck on the 4th. We're going late this year because Uncle Dave (who's been having a rough year and deserves to go) couldn't go the first week of July like it usually is. If it were the first week of July, we would be about to go: I just thought of that. I could be packing my clothes right now. Tomorrow I would go up to Grandma and Grandpa's house and get in the van and they would drive me to Iowa. On the way they would treat me to great restaurants, because they're Grandma and Grandpa. We'd pick up Aunt Irene at some point, and visit the colleges, and then move on up to Kenora, past all the dark blue Minnesota lakes and evergreen forest. I wonder if the Whispering Pines motel is open, or if they're permanently closed? Last year they were closed. I like that motel. It has an ice cream parlor built in. We'd take a refreshing trip to the Safeway and get all our groceries and then drive to the drop-off point and then load all our stuff in the boats and cross Whiteshell and take the Limo on up to the camp and we'd be in Crowduck. This year, Bill's going to have the rest of the cabins remodeled - last year 5 and 6 were still waiting on it. Ah, and I've gotten a comment from someone else who goes to Crowduck! It hadn't occurred to me, actually, to meet other people who go to Crowduck. When we're there, the rest of the people there are generally old guys on a Fishing Trip with the Guys, and we normally don't really socialize with the people in the other cabins, I suppose because they look like they've got enough socializing amongst themselves, and because we've also got quite enough to get on with with our own large family. Plus we're fishing a lot of the time. I did search for Crowduck one time, but I just got this guy Sam Minter (who calls himself Abulsme Noibatno Itramne - obviously an anagram of "Samuel 'Abobanation' Minter"), and he didn't go to the camp, just somewhere near the lake. I'm intrigued. Where do you live? How much stuff do you take? Because we always take way too much. What week are you going this year? This is interesting!
-A couple of other large items have happened. One is that while Grandma and Grandpa were away in Greece, their basement flooded with two feet of water, and wasn't discovered for a week (after which time it had drained and left mold on all the walls). Dad and Dan and Dave and I all helped them clear out all the soaked and irretrievable stuff. Then we came back the following Tuesday and totally tore down the basement - took it to bare concrete. I was given the job of garbage hauler; I picked up big armloads of drywall, or bins of drywall that was too flimsy to hold shape, or big boards, or really old National Geographics, and dumped it in a big rollout dumpster in the front yard. Fun fact: after being aged several decades and then soaked, National Geographics give off a potent smell similar to that of a pile of fish that have been rotting for two weeks. Anyhow, I worked and worked and worked, and I did get paid, which was good. And we had a good dinner.
-And the other thing is that just today, I biked up to Subway for an interview. The interview went like this:
-"I'm Sarah. Your name is?"
-"[Chuck]."
-"All right, [Chuck], I'm going to hire you."
-[Note to those new to my blog: Chuck Masterson is my pseudonym, which I use for my blog for no discernible reason.] She then gave me a big old packet full of written standards of how to work, and told me to come back at 0900 tomorrow with it filled out. The packet is of varying degrees of coherence; toward the lower end of the spectrum, you have things like this: "After the meats you will then add to the bottom of the bread a generous portion of our topping's in which are routinely placed on each six-inch or footlong sandwich, unless requested otherwise by the customer." However, I could make out almost all of it. I have a job! And about time, too! I plan to keep this job, too. However, I do still need to confide to Sarah about the three straight week's in which are I'll be gone (due to band camp and then college visits plus Crowduck). I hope she understands, too. She hasn't, technically, hired me yet, I don't think: just given me a fat packet of stuff. Nevertheless, Mom's taking me clothes shopping tonight so I can get some black or kakhi [sic] pants with no pockets down the side or shorts made of cotton or polyester or cotton/polyester blend that are neatly tailored, which is what I need according to the book. In the meantime, I'm hungry.

-By the way, what's up with the Brothers Chaps not putting up a new cartoon of any sort for over a month at homestarrunner.com?