I ♥ Crime-Free Grinnell

Note: I was going to post this two days ago, but my internet connection crapped out. Inexplicably, it was still fine on my laptop (but I didn't have the post saved on that computer, so it did me no good).


There's so little theft around here that many people don't even bother to lock their bikes, instead leaving them strewn about major congregating places. I locked my bike anyhow. Though, I increasingly have just been putting it in a rack, if I'm not going to be long. Yesterday, Security sent out an email saying that there's been a rash of bike theft and stripping, and people ought to start using their locks.
-But I didn't check my email yesterday. I got up to go to breakfast, and went to my bike, and my bike was gone. In my naivety, I had left it unlocked over the night banking on trust in my fellow Grinnellian. It was nowhere around. So I had to walk to breakfast instead. Then I called up Security to report it, but I didn't have time before class to file a report, so instead I went to class. Afterwards, I called them up again, and they said to come on down to the Security building to report it. I walked there. And before I got in, I noticed my bike was in their bike rack. The lock was still on the lock-holder bracket, so I undid it to prove to the lady on duty that I knew the combination and it was mine. She had no idea why it was there, and I was the second person to come to file a report and find their bike there that day. She asked someone else in the back, "Do you know how's come we have all these bikes?" So I have my bike again. It took a different theft to convince me to lock my bike up every time I used it; now it's taken this one to convince me to lock it up every time, no matter where. On a side note, people suck.
-So, now that I've said that, let's get an in-depth look at my first week or so at Grinnell. The first few days were taken up completely by New Student Orientation stuff, which booked our schedules. Luckily, I had already gone on the Outdoor Orientation, so I was able to skip some of the stuff and take a rock climbing class instead, in the old gym. They created all sorts of events to get us to meet new people, most of them flawed in one way or another. For example, in the new gym, they had everyone aggregate on the floor and get in groups by various attributes, like shirt color. Then they had us make a human map, and then they had us line up by birthday. The flaw in this is that we met at least a hndred new people and were expected to learn the names of all of them, and consequentially we overloaded, and I only remember one person from the whole thing (Sadish). Another time, we played a massive game of freeze tag on Mac Field, but it was well over the critical mass for a freeze tag game, so everyone stopped playing and fractured into little groups, standing around. As far as I'm concerned, the very best way to meet new people is through something like GOOP. At the very least, they should do this stuff in way smaller groups and more organically. Anyhow, despite all that, I managed to meet a whole bunch of people, although I've forgotten many of them. And everyone here is someone I could get along with, and also carry on an intelligent conversation with. It's weird coming out of a place like Finneytown, where there are only a few people among the mass who actually have the faintest clue about anything, and coming to Grinnell, where my intelligence is probably only about the average, and everyone understands when you talk about abstruse, obscure, or non-sports things. I won a game of Scrabble at a Board Game night. And did other fun stuff.
-They had a hypnotist come over; he's been coming here for about 7 years to give a good time to each incoming class. Being interested in the unconscious, because of a book that I'm going to write sometime, I tried to get hypnotized, but it didn't work. I just had to content myself with watching the 30 or so people on the stage. It was pretty awesome. There was no specific moment where he signaled "Now you're hypnotized", so it was weird watching them gradually become entranced without feeling anything. He started out tame, making them think they were hot and then cold. Then he had them experience various tastes from an imaginary piece of candy, finally locking their jaws open with it by making it expand inside. After that, we got to watch a butt dance competition, and everyone put their all into it; two people were actually quite impressive, putting some creativity and energy into it. He trained one guy to take an imaginary cat to the litterbox every minute or two, and trained another guy to be physically attracted to a microphone stand. He also struck a soft spot by maltreating a stuffed dog, which they thought was real. And the had some people put on an Aretha Franklin concert, complete with a girl lip-synching "Respect". Finally he wound down by planting some suggestions that they could keep, like, some people had to answer to a ringing sound he had by taking off their shoe and answering it, and some people ot dragged by imaginary dogs when he said "Big dog," and one guy, at the sound of a slide whistle, rushed out to a tiny life preserver on the stage and called for help from an invisible ship. All of this las stuff was post-hypnotic stuff, too. It all ended after they left the room, at least. Oh man, it was great. I have a feeling this place is going to be the time of my life. Where else would they bring in a hypnotist? And, you can start a student organization and request funding for it, so obviously I'm going to create a krokay group, and hopefully get some extraordinarily durable nylon 6,6 for some mallets that will last a lifetime. I've joined some other groups already, like the newspaper, the press, Quiz Bowl, and possibly Dag (people hitting each other with foam swords in a melee situation) and some other stuff. The organizations here are so great. I didn't realize until I got here how little fun I had before.
-The classes are tough, though; especially English 223, which was my second choice, and I'm trying to get into 228, so I just have to hope someone already in it drops it. The professor opened the class with a quiz. Honestly! The others are some better, but that might just be because they haven't gotten into full swing yet. I'm sure I'll be quite familiar with unending torment by the end of the semester. DID YOU KNOW: Grinnell's workload is rated the third highest in the country, approximately, depending on the source.

Part Deux

So, I last left you at the end of the first night of canoeing. Now we will move on to the rest of the trip. On day 2, we got up at about 0700, ostensibly, but really between 7 and 8. This was to be a patern for the rest of the trip, actually. We spent the morning creating an enormous breakfast of hash browns with cheese and eggs stirred in, and lots of bacon. We finally had camp struck and got on the water around 1100. Within a little while, we'd gotten off of Alder Lake and onto the Manitowish River. I think I was rowing with Micah Bot-Miller at this time. It wasn't too bad, mostly, and went by a few waterfront houses. Then we found ourselves in a field. Grass rose up on all sides and we couldn't see the river any farther. It turned out that there was a path through the grass, but barely. When we got through the grass, we were into just more grass. A different GOOP group, which had started halfway down the trail coming the opposite way, came by us and said nonchalantly, "It gets worse." We were in a marsh that must extend for about a square mile, maybe two or three. Sometimes there was a way through the grass; sometimes we just had to get out and walk. Eventually it got a little straighter, but this was a cruel joke. We heard a machine noise in the distance. As we drew nearer, it got louder. Finally, we arrived at a confluence. Our river joined with another flowing the opposite way, and both of the rivers flowed into a grate punched into a tall wall at the bottom of a hill. I went up the hill to take a pee. There was a motorized pump, working hard and making the ruckus we were amiliar with, pouring the combined rivers into a manmade flume that ran along the edge of a deserted but well-mowe field. In the distance, over much more field, I saw a tractor or something. There was no explanation. So, we tried to remove our shoes by dragging the canoes through a shoestring stream whose banks were covered in sucking mud, all the while being careful not to step into the pool created by the confluence, because we would then be sucked down into the grate next to the mysterious, nasty deep water, where who knew what dwelled. We started rowing up the other river, the Trout River, which, as the other group had said, was even worse. When we got out to walk the canoe through periodical shallow water, we were walking on a mud bottom, not gravel. And the walks were frequent. Moreover, we were still in the marsh. We rowed for hours. Things failed to improve. Finally, we got to a beaver dam, and the water above it was a good foot deeper and twenty yards wider. We didn't have any trouble rowing, and we were free to make conversation, which we did. However, by now it was also late, so for the first time in Ilan's canoeing career, we stopped short of our intended campsite. The one we found was on the Trout River; another opposite-traveling group was staying there for the night. So Ilan made another amazing dinner, of I believe lentils and such, and we had fun with the other group, but mostly with our own group, getting to know each other. Or telling stories about stuff in our lives. We liked stories. I'll tell a couple when I get to tomorrow night.
-So, we set out earlier the next morning - instead of an enormous breakfast, we had granola cereal. There was still another two hours or so of the Trout River left, if you can believe it. Some of it ran by a golf course. Some more of it was completely unpaddleable, about a half inch deep, but by that time it had at least switched to gravel bottom. Finally, and abruptly, we ended up at the source of the Trout River: Trout Lake. Just looking out across it, we knew it would be difficult. The land on either side of us had protected us from the wind while we were on the river, but now it came galloping across the water at full speed, and we could tell it meant to bring rain with it soon. Even so, we steeled ourselves and pushed out into it, right against the wind. Trout Lake is a huge lake. We had a long day of padding across it. But at least we never had to walk. I think I paddled with Natasha that day. She's really nice. Kind of shy, but warms up in not too long, as I said. We should have talked more while we were on the lake, but we were kind of focused on paddling. At the other end of the lake, we pulled up the canoes and did our first real portage.
-We'd done a different one earlier, but it was just a few yards. This one was entirely different. I didn't carry a canoe, which meant I had to carry two packs instead, and that was probably just as bad. We staggered down a paved trail, then across a street and down it a ways, and finally found Stevenson Creek and put down the canoes. Now, we'd heard horror stories about Stevenson. We'd heard it was the worst leg of the journey and mostly walking. But this year, as Ilan said, it "was really forgiving." It was still the most bizarre creek that I think I'll ever canoe on. For the most part, it was only about two feet wide - but a foot deep, giving ample paddling depth. At one point, bushes growing on the banks joined to form an arch over us. At another point, they did the same, except instead of over us, in front of us, and we had to plow through. It was surreal to see a creek with a width and twists and turns comparable to the creeks I've creekwalked on, hardly more than storm runs, but completely paddleable. Chris was the steerer for this, and I'm amazed at the ease with which he took the hairpin turns and astounding bottlenecks. In the next couple hours, our groups got very spread out, and the leaders, Micah and Alex, had no map or leader, so we didn't know if they'd get lost. Then, it turned out they were behind us, which puzzled us to no end until they explained that they had hidden in a niche and waited to pop out and scare us, but then decided not to, and just paddled silently to confuse us later. We found another marsh. This one was much more mazelike than the others, and we took several wrong turns, but eventually we found the second portage. We carried the boats to Pallette Lake. Ilan carried both an 80# canoe and the ~60# food pack. I'd heard about Pallette and was expecting the best. It was even better. No motors are allowed on it, nor even some fishing. So it's crystal clear. And the banks are completely free of Improvements imposed on them by civilization. We paddled briefly across it to another campsite, meeting en route a group that had left earlier in the morning on the first day, and set up. A few of us swam, but not all at the same time. Alex swam for about half a second before she got frozen out. Natasha, on the other hand, frequently swims in Lake Superior, so she was totally comfortable and had fun and a great exercise. I was somewhere between. While I swam, I was really impressed with how incredibly clear Pallette's water is. Even at an eight-foot bottom, I could see right down to the rocks and sand. I swam without much aim, and then, getting bored and sort of lonesome with no one else out there, I walked back up to camp. Dinner was something or other delicious. Then we sat around talking. We were discussing strange things that happen. Chris told us about a time he and his friends were driving through a suburb at night. Suddenly, an owl came through the sky, swooped down, and landed in the road right in front of the car. Then it turned its head ninety degrees and stared at them. For about five minutes. They were too spooked to move the car. "This has got to mean something," he thought. Finally it flew off and they drove directly back home. Chris also told us another strange animal anecdote. He says the squirrels at Grinnell are famously weird, and said the weirdest thing he knows of is: his girlfriend was walking along, when she saw, around the flagpole, a circle of squirrels. They were evenly spaced, and they were staring up at the flag. She was seriously weirded out. Ilan told us that he and some friends at a camp once spent a long time cutting some cords to a perfect length, then woke up at midnight, paddled across a lake to a girls' campsite, and tied their tents shut. Then he said, "The thing is, that was the plan. What actually happened is, we slept through the alarm." Alex had a story that I missed the first time she told it, where her mother told her and her sister, who thought boys were gross, I guess: "Some day you will learn to love a man's penis." Josh and Ilan, who are both Jewish, shared their respective experiences of traveling through the Israeli desert. I don't know if Natasha and Micah had any, but they probably did, and I just forgot. I probably told some too, but I forget which, and anyway they're probably ones that you've heard already.
-The next morning we shipped off Pallette Lake and went lakehopping. There were three portages that day. I carried a canoe for two of them. The last one was the longest portage of the whole trip. Micah carried a canoe along the dirt road as well as me, but he missed the well camouflaged turnoff, and traveled about another third again as long as the regular portage with Alex. Ilan ran and caught up to him and got him pointed in the right direction. Micah carried the canoe the whole time. He's incredible. I aspire to be as rugged as that. Through various lakes and a stream called Nixon Creek, we ended up back on the Manitowish River. We started by paddling off Boulder Lake onto the Manitowish River on the left; we would be rejoining it from the right. Boulder Lake is a wide spot in the Manitowish River. We made camp on the Manitowish, and it was a great campsite and great campfire and great trail calzones. We were all really happy, not least because tomorrow involved only about an hour and a half of paddling. We considered skinny dipping, apparently, but didn't because only two people had volunteered, and it was decided that that would be kind of weird, rather than skinny dipping fun. Micah, ever helpful, filtered lots of water for us; we think he doesn't trust water filtered by anyone else. I swam a little, but there were weeds on the bottom, so not much. We swapped more stories. I loved every minute of it. That night, I forwent the tent and slept outside in my sleeping bag under the bright stars. It was the best possible way to spend the last night on the trail.
-The next morning, we slept in a little and ended up at Camp Manito-wish again around 1400. We had dinner there, and we were going to go to a supposedly great ice cream place, but the slow-witted guy there had closed down early and wouldn't reopen for our party of thirty. So we just went to bed. And we rolled out, back to Grinnell, the next day. And of course I'll be writing about Grinnell directly.

Absolutely Fantastic

Dad and I actually left on Thursday, and had a long, boring drive across Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa to Grinnell. We moved my stuff into my room, which, for the interested, is in Rawson Hall, which is in North Campus. Aunt Ellen and Aunt Irene, I'm not terribly familiar with how Grinnell was in the 1950s and 60s, but I can say with reasonable certainty that it's pretty darn different now. For one thing, they have several new buildings, including East Campus, a whole new Campus with its own glass-enclosed loggia. And we get Pioneer-1 Cards, which have a proximity activator thing in them, so that when you breeze your wallet by the little sensor on the door, it unlocks for you. But I think Rawson is probably very much as it was in the olden days. My dorm doesn't have much in it to indicate that the Information Age is here, or at least it didn't until I put my computer and such in it. I got the VAIO laptop that Grandma and Grandpa bought me, as well as all the accessories. I am now typing my blog with the laptop, actually.
-In the new Rosenfield Center, we met up with various other students going on the GOOP trip. We also had dinner there, because it's where Dining is located now. Then there was a little conference, and afterwards we GOOPers all left to go to the Dari Barn, a local ice cream shop. It was kind of abrupt, as Dad has pointed out; we just kind of walked off and left the parents standing around. I said bye to Dad while retrieving my mp3 player from his truck. And then he left. Stayed in a motel overnight and drove to Ohio starting in the morning.
-I had a slushie at the Dari Barn. The next day we spent learning the basics of canoeing, first aid, the Leave No Trace doctrine of camping, orienteering, and tents and knots. We also got sorted into five five-person groups for the trip, each group with two upperclassman leaders, making seven. The next morning we loaded bunches of gear into a big bus and rode off to Wisconsin.
-Our destination was Camp Manito-wish, a camp that the director of GORP (the department behind GOOP) once worked at. Each group was named after an explorer from the early days of the region; my group was Brulé, and lucky us, one of our leaders, Ilan, has also worked at Camp Manito-wish. Our other leader was Chris. We packed stuff up in the evening and slept through the night. In the morning, we had breakfast. Now, that day was Paul Bunyan Day, which is a camp thing. So the director, a Dave, dressed up in lumberjack clothes and used his already full beard to be Paul Bunyan and tell a story about how camp was back in th bad old days of logging and lumberjacks. "We didn't have these fancy aluminum canoes. Aluminum wasn't invented yet. They were made out of LEAD. ...Maybe not. They were made out of wood. They didn't weigh too much. Eighty, ninety pounds. But when they got in the water, they soaked it all up. SEVEN HUNDRED POUNDS when wet! Try portaging that!" He told of how the lumberjacks always complained at breakfast, until finally one day the cook said no oe was allowed to talk anymore. So now on Paul Bunyan Day everyone eats breakfast in silence, and the first group to talk has to clean up the mess hall afterwards. The counselors go around making a ruckus by clearing their throats, banging dishes, carrying chairs, carrying people, carrying people on chairs. The rest of the camp this morning was a group of middle-school girls, so we didn't lose. I didn't hear any talking, but I think we were pretty much exempt from the get-go anyhow, since we were just eating the one meal there.
-Anyway, Brulé group set out around noon onto Boulder Lake, and we started our counterclockwise transit of the Trout Lake Circle trip. It was really nice. We were in three separate canoes: the Dave Brailey, the Telleen, and the Brooke Rogers. We fell into a rowing rhythm right off the bat, and pushed right on through to camp on Alder Lake. So we set up our tents and made a fire.
-Here is Brulé:
-Ilan's parents are Israeli. He's a really soft-spoken guy, but only in volume. You have to watch out, because anything he says could be deadpan humor. For example, one day we pulled in on shore to eat lunch. He emptied the pack out with materials for pita sandwiches for the group. "Sweet," he said, sitting in front of it. "There should be some more food in the food bag in the canoe if you guys want something." Without a trace of irony. He is also the cook of the century in camp. We'll get to that later.
-Chris is knowledgeable and a great guy and jovial. He also has cancer, so he really wasn't supposed to do this trip, but he says of the doctors, "I guess I showed them." He didn't let it get in the way during the trip, and we went along as if it weren't there. He was chief map guy and brought along a GPS, so we never got lost. He's also into guns, knives, and survivalism. He brought four knives and ended up giving one to Ilan, one made out of "pure death", painted black so it won't glint in the sun and give away your position to the enemy.
-Alex is from St Louis. She's small but loud, and like everyone there has a generous sense of humor. She prefaces any opinion of any sort with "I feel like...", and she's one of those types who says "like" every few words to keep the sentence in the air. She was one of the group's three vegetarians. Ilan was able to use "We have vegetarians" as an excuse to snag positively unfair amounts of meatless foods from the kitchen for the trip.
-Nastasha is from Duluth. She was sort of quiet until we all got to know each other. She's fun and articulate. She was another of our vegetarians. Also great with fire and firewood.
-Josh is from somewhere or other. He kept our conversations from getting too tame, and he has a voice that sounds like it couldn't possibly be his regular voice - reedy and high and funny.
-Micah Bot-Miller was kind of a surprise, in that I've never known a person named Micah who was the same age as me. He's from St Cloud, MN, and does a lot of canoeing, and owns his own canoe. So, he turned out to have near superhuman strength where canoes are concerned; he can do a one-man lift, and portage almost indefinitely, and paddles like no one's business. He's also probably the most wholesome of everyone, and really nice.
-And then of course me too.
-So, that first night, since we were Brulée, we made crème brûlée. It was pretty much completely preposterous, but that didn't stop us. Ilan spearheaded the effort, because he spent pretty much every day last summer making crèmes brûlées of increasing complexity and preposterity, so he had the procedure down. We mixed together some milk we had kept in a Ragú jar with some eggs and sugar and other ingredients. Then we made a double boiler - a pot full of water, with the crème brûlée dish floating in the water, and then we put that contraption over the fire and cover it and boil the dickens out of it until the crème jells. Then we had to brûler it. We tried several methods - first, a torch lighter that Chris had, which didn't get the sugar hot enough to caramelize it, and then a spoon heated in the fire, which also didn't. Finally we covered the dish with an upside-down pan and built a fire on top of it and took turns keeping a constant air stream on it to get the coals as hot as possible. All told, it took about tree or four hours, which was ridiculous but completely worth it.
-I'm going to finish this in another installment, because it's getting kind of late. In the meantime, I am now on YouTube. The new nickname wasn't of my choosing. By the way, sorry if there are assorted letters missing from this post. New keyboard. Getting adjusted.

Gesunfternoon!

There are now only two days before Dad is taking me into the Hawkeye State, which nobody knows why it's called that. I haven't packed sufficiently yet; my next two days will be spent having some quality time with cardboard boxes. Actually, we're leaving Wednesday, and today's Monday. So I really have just one day left at the house. That startled me, just there, because I didn't realize it before. Tomorrow is the only day I have left for packing. Then it's off to Iowa, and of course subsequently to Wisconsin for that Outdoor Orientation, which I expect is going to be a bunch of fun. Then back to Iowa. This has been the most nomadic summer of my life, easily. Home, Crowduck, new home, Iowa, Wisconsin, Iowa. And I assume I'll be having a fair number of visits home, too, increasing the nomaditude even further. I don't have a class schedule yet, inasmuch as I register for classes after I get to the college and get a chance to talk with my Advisor (Dr Savarese). But it looks like life is about to get a whole lot more interesting. In fact, it already has, but I mean more so. Here, let me explain: Finneytown, as we have seen in previous years of posting, has pretty much nothing going for it. It has the highest property taxes in Cincinnati, because there's no industry there to make the area profitable. As a zone, it's a consumer and not a producer. The best thing as far as natural attractions go is Warder Park, which I've learned over the years to make do with, but which, for all the rhapsodizing I've done over its beauty, is still only beautiful by comparison, and overall not that great a place as far as wilderness is concerned. It's a diseased area, but less so than the area around it, is my feeling about it. Now, life has gotten more interesting because I'm now living in Wyoming, Ohio, which first off is new to me. I spent my first few days biking around and getting acquainted with what the place had to offer. One critical thing in that category is a railroad. I've never lived within casual traveling distance of a railroad before, and I have to say it's pretty keen to be able to bike to the tracks and wait no more than half an hour before seeing a train go by. The other day I watched one at night, which I'd never done before. I didn't know train lights pulsed like that. It was like watching a UFO coming from behind the trees around the bend in the track. Trains are also deliriously loud right up close. Besides trains, Wyoming is also at least ten times nicer than Finneytown as a neighborhood, and it doesn't hurt that we're now living in a much larger house that finally has room for all our crap, Thoreauvianisms aside. It's famed for its trees. Everything is so well kept. Since we live right on the border, I can ride right into Hartwell and watch the instant decrepitation of the road and sidewalk under me as it passes into Hartwell's jurisdiction for maintenance. Everything instantly becomes seedier and crappier. It's actually kind of unnerving if you think about it too closely. So I like to stay in Wyoming, though I must confess that it doesn't have the breadth of restaurant selection that Finneytown has - just some expensive places, and a few places over the border in Hartwell. I have yet to go exploring any woods thoroughly, because I've been so busy right here at home and because it's been so butt-sweatingly hot outside. So I guess I'll save that for my first trip back home.
-Micah's going into 9th grade, for reasons that elude me. The Wyoming School district, which I guess should know a thing or two about these kinds of things since it's been rated as high as 12th in the nation for public schools according to Mom, decided that he should just move into high school. He, Dad, and I were at Gold Star the other day, and I told him he now had to be careful for Carnegie Units. Dad concurred and told him, "If you get bad grades in high school, when you graduate you might as well look for a recruiter. But if you get good grades, we might be inclined to fund some of a college education for you." I guess now we just see if Micah takes the point. He also seriously needs to start making better friends. He has a consistent record of picking up the lowest bottom feeders: Brian, Matt, Josh, Dustin. These are kids who have no future. Kids who no one else will tolerate, but who Micah, thinking he's a misfit and can't do any betterthan them, latches onto. They've depressed me for years.
-So now life is about to get a whole lot more interesting again, as I go off and start what they usually call a New Chapter in My Life Story. One thing's for sure, there'll be more entertainment (the administration, I'm informed, has noted that Grinnell is an isolated town in Iowa, and thus provides all sorts of fun stuff to do), and more opportunity for interesting friendships. Perhaps I can finally find a girlfriend. There will also still be trains, though I understand they only come by about twice a day on the track that runs directly through campus. Rather than speculate, I'll get more information to you once stuff starts happening. All indications point to fun.

Now let's have an abrupt change of gear from this happy-go-luckiness. I don't remember what I was searching for when I found Anthropik.com. But I've since kept going back there time after time. The spearheader here is Jason Godesky, and his critical work is The Thirty Theses, a rough draft that he's put up online for a book he intends to create, so that he can get comments and corrections and generally a vigorous if informal peer editing process before making it a final draft. If he's correct in the points he's making, then the theses are most likely the most important thing you'll ever read. I can't say whether he's ultimately right or wrong yet, because I haven't finished yet, and because I don't have the history background to ask the right questions. However, BJ, the man who got a 5 on the AP History Exam with a half hour's studying and at one time at least told me you were majoring in international relations, I want to know what you think of them. I don't know what kind of time you have, but I exhort you to at least read a little bit about the site and the first few theses. I want to know if Jason Godesky is reasonable here, because, as you'll agree if you read it, this is significant, and very few things are more significant if it's right. I'd be more specific here, but I'd sound like a possibly deluded alarmist, and there'd be a possibility no one would go there, or they wouldn't take him very seriously.

And now for something completely different

And so, Grandma, Grandpa, and I went to Crowduck. So did Dan, Tracy, Dave, Maria, Jazmin, Sierra, and Hayden. But more on Crowduck later. Suffice to say that it was a glorious two weeks, and I did much swimming there, and I really love lakes as opposed to swimming pools for several reasons, not least of which is no chlorine. It was hot in Canada. Yep, Canada does get hot. I'll transcribe my Crowduck journals sometime, but I can't guarantee when, because things are getting turbulent.
-The day before we were due back in Ohio, we were staying at the Antlers Motel in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and Mom called and said we had closed on the new house at 1000 that morning. So, as I predicted, the day before I left for Crowduck was my last night sleeping at the old house. I slept over at Grandma and Grandpa's the night after Eau Claire, and then Mom came and got me the next day and I drove us to the new house; she gave me directions.
-It was pretty bare, and we spent the next few days picking up heavy furniture and putting it in a trailer and bringing it to the new house. This task was not made any more fun by the weather, which in addition to a heat wave is also a humidity wave. The human body's natural response to hot weather is to sweat, which cools down the body when it evaporates because the latent heat of vaporization is drawn from the body's heat. But in the humidity, it's much more difficult for sweat to evaporate, because the air is nearly saturated; thus, the sweat stays around and makes your clothes stick to you, which even further compounds the problem by insulating your heat into your body. This is why it's not the heat, it's the humidity. And I hate hot weather. Our air conditioner needed renovating before we could use it indefinitely, so we mostly left it turned off on the last few days. We also did not have internet, because the phone company was slow to come out and hook it up. They just did that today; hence, this blog. So I've been isolated for the last few weeks, with only occasional access to the internet - at Grandma and Grandpa's, or at the library down the street. The internet has definitely become a dominant force in life, and pretty much all my important Grinnell-related notices come by way of it, so being away for this long has resulted in a backlog of stuff to do, which I'm finally getting around to and which I'll continue to work off over the remainder of the week.
-We're pretty well moved in now, and the stuff left at the other house is all trifling stuff. It wasn't until we started moving that I realized just how much absolute junk we've accumulated in the fifteen years we spent in Finneytown. A few days ago, Micah and I had to clear out the attic. Occasionally, we put some stuff in a bag and then chuck it up into the attic. Over the years, this stuff became a pile at least four feet high in some places, encircling the hatch door; when we had it all tossed out into the kitchen below, it was piled so high that it took some doing to even get the ladder folded back up into the ceiling. It was all covered with a half an inch of dust, and it was all absolutely useless, but we still took almost all of it along. Similar situations have arisen with the shed, the garage, and the Pods (those takeaway storage containers that you see advertised sometimes). They were all full of crap that we haven't used in a decade or more, but which we couldn't bear to part with. For example, Dad's computer books. They're for computers made in the 1980s, but we couldn't get him to let us throw them away. Mom even had them in the can, but he made her fish them back out. Homer Simpson had to clean out the basement once:

MARGE: I want you to throw away these old calendars and TV Guides.
HOMER: Are you mad, woman? You never know when an old calendar might come in handy. Sure, it's not 1985 now, but who knows what tomorrow will bring??

Or alternatively, check out this.
Seriously, we only use about twenty percent, if that, of the stuff we've moved into our new house. And know what? The new house is bigger, so we're going to get even more crap now that we have room for it! Thoreau would have us consider doing something different: "Simplify, simplify." And "A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to do without." Mom and Dad should have paid more attention in college English.
-However I must make the point that I love the new house. I had no idea how cramped we were until we moved here. Now we have actual space in the house, and we'll be able to move around without running into piles of old mail (which is another thing we need to learn how to throw out). I only regret that I'll be living in it so briefly before going off to college for a few months. I got my room assignment the other day at the library. I'm in 3213 Rawson Hall, and my mailbox is number 3200. The two numbers are unrelated - I'm in a triple, and my roommates have numbers hundreds off from mine. Well, actually, one does; the other is close to mine. Whatever. My roommates are Jeremy Johnson and Jay Bhadnagar. I don't know anything about them except that Jay is from New Delhi. So don't ask me. Mom keeps asking me all about them, and I still have no new information besides everything I just told you. I'm going to go check my email and see if either of them has written anything to me.

Crowduck

Just thought I ought to leave a quick note to say I'll be gone until the 28th, on my Crowduck Trip. I'll get back in touch with you afterwards. In contrast, here's a guy who definitely needs to leave the internet behind when he goes on a vacation.
http://www.abulsme.com/trip/2002q4/RV2002Q4D@.html

1,000

I generally go to bed late during the summer: 0300 or later. I try not to go past 0400, because then I wake up way too late. I think I've written about that before here.
-Wednesday night. I was getting a late start into bed. After finishing my journal entry around 4, I went out into the living room where Micah was watching a movie and watched that for about fifteen minutes, for no reason. Then I went to bed. I made to go to sleep. It was hot. I turned over whenever it got too much to bear, and changed positions trying to get comfortable. The minutes crept by, like a person trying to find his way out of a desert. At 0523 I started counting, but not sheep, for no really good reason. I hit 100, then 200. When I was about to 450 I decided that if I got to 1,000 I would give it up as hopeless.
-And I did. So I walked outside and watched the early morning. I was too late to catch the sunrise, but the air was cool and humid and windy; I wasn't wearing a shirt, and it made my skin wake up and pay attention to how great a morning it was. I walked up the street, stood under the locust tree that's there in someone's yard. Mrs Rielac, a lady up the street who I used to see while biking to Building, was out walking her dog like she always does. She told me it was cooler this morning than last night, and moved on to tend some plants for a neighbor, I suppose. A middle-aged guy jogged by: "Morn'n'." I started walking back toward our house. Another guy, letting his dog out, said, "What are you doing up so early?" I told him, "I couldn't get to sleep, so I decided to call it an early morning instead of a late night." I sat on Mom's car's trunk. There were birds all over, but I couldn't see very many of them. Slowly I started noticing more of them. One danced around under an aspen for a little while. Lots of them flew overhead from out of sight to out of sight in another direction; I wished I could do the same, unconcernedly and naturally going from any place to any other place through the air almost instantly. Instead I just had to watch a couple pigeons establishing a pecking order atop a power line. A lady walked by a couple times - went around the block. She said it was a beautiful morning for sitting out here and watching. Couldn't agree more. Are all mornings like this? Are all mornings this great? I'm going to find out. Maybe I'll even change from my summer 0300 ways.

Here's what I've been waiting to write.
I'm still finding it kind of hard to believe that I'll be going off to Grinnell in less than a month. I know I will, but it just seems pretty impossible. I mean, I've been in Cincinnati for 18 years; how could anything different possibly exist even? It's similarly weird to think of living in a different house; this is the only one I've ever known, and though it sucks, it's familiar. Here I am about to be thrown into some situation that I know next to nothing about. In Iowa, 400 miles away from where I've been my whole life. I recently found out that, in a poll, Americans voted Iowa the state they'd very least like to be exiled to. What have I gotten myself into? Well, it'll all be fine in the end, but until then, I'm finding it hard to believe. I guess that wasn't as coherent as I intially thought it was going to be, when I started writing. Oh well.

I have no idea why I am unable to assign a title to this entry.

Well, let's start with the fonts. Fonts are abstruse; I'll forgive you if you skip right on down to the next paragraph, but I'm going to write this one anyhow. As you can see if you've been scrupulously paying attention to the thread, I've now had some help as to figuring out how to market a font. Paul D. Hunt and I swapped a few e-mails. I finished kerning just tonight - hopefully (I don't think I can think of any more pairs) - and tomorrow I'll hit the AutoHinting button, which I'm not sure what that does, but apparently you're supposed to do it. And then I'll fire off an e-mail to either Veer or MyFonts - I haven't decided which yet - and see if I can get this thing sellin'. Within not too long, I hope, I'll have enough money to upgrade from TypeTool to FontLab, and then I can make my fonts quicker and better and sell them even faster. As soon as I get FontLab, I'm going to expand Newt to encompass Latin-Extended and Greek, and then I'll use the handy feature where its encoding system actually WORKS to do the same with Cyril; I'll also be including Cyrillic and Cyrillic-Extended.
-You have reached the next paragraph, wherein I write about a krokay game that Matt, Aaron, and I had a few days ago on the 5th. I had previously scoped out Melody Park, which is a few hundred yards from Aaron's house, and decided that it was perfect for a krokay game. It's located in a deep depression behind the houses on Melody Street. Technically its name is Brentwood Park, but Aaron says that even the people who live on the street across the park from Melody Street, where there's a sign that says Brentwood Park, call it Melody Park. Melody is a cul-de-sac, but there's a little outshoot from the sidewalk that runs between two houses' fenced yards. Then it turns into a steep and extraordinarily tall staircase. It reminds me of the staircase in The Worms of Kukumlima, which is a book that no one has read, even though it's a spectacular children's book. I think Daniel Pinkwater is probably the best kids' author around. His scenes are more evocative than those of, I would say, any other author I've read, even "serious", "grown-up" ones. I've felt like I was there watching the action unfold in other books, but in Pinkwater's, I feel like I'm there actually actively taking part in the action. As you're descending the staircase watch out for that low branch. (Aaron hit it.)
-There was even more challenging, fun krokay terrain than I'd thought. They had dug up a tennis court that was absolutely covered with graffiti. Melody Park does have the distinction of being the most graffitied park I know of. They graffitied the picnic table, trash can, and even several of the trees. The crater left by the tennis court is an interesting, relentlessly sticky mud with ground-up bricks mixed into it. I put two wickets in the crater. I also put two in between pairs of trees, some at the edge of a creek, and the turn wickets on a little incidental slope. We got off to a flying start, and we all pretty much stayed neck-and-neck. The turn wickets were what got us all. It was easy enough to get through going down, but there was nowhere to position yourself going back up after you hit the stake, so you just had to hope you got lucky. Aaron was fired out through the wicket after about fifteen turns, Matt after twenty, and I after twenty-five. Of course, that meant that Aaron became poison and came back and killed both of us. It was his first win, though, so I'm willing to let him go this time. Afterwards, we all took Matt's car to Skyline, and didn't have enough to pay, so Matt took Aaron to work before he was late, and then brought some more money to foot the rest of the bill.
-I've been practicing parkour. Note: a parkour-doing person is called a traceur. I found Whitaker's playground. It has a jungle gym that isn't much, but it's still enough to practice on, and to bulk up a bit. I did 13 pull-ups the other day, which was good. I'm also doing an ab exercise that I came up with: I hang upside down and then crunch upward. I'm sure someone else has done these before, but I came up with them independently, so I don't know what they're called, and I just call them bar-ups. I've also been jumping around like a mad squirrel and, for all that, sustaining surprisingly few injuries. The only one was that I fell down on some bars a few days ago and hit my shinbone, but it's still very intact. Collateral damage. Whenever I do something fun, such as jump over a sofa or something, and then ask Dad if he can do anything akin to it, he always answers that he doesn't care to because he's done a risk-benefit analysis and can find no benefit that outweighs the risk. And as such, I haven't seen him do anything physical purely for the fun of it for years, except when we portaged to Ritchie Lake a couple years ago, and when we took a bike trip a few months ago. Even the bike trip he treated more like a chore. He's paralyzed by risk, having no conception of fun through exertion and even danger. Wonder how long it's been since he got an adrenaline rush because of something he himself did. Decades. I like to do stuff that I enjoy without being frozen by considerations of consequences. Which is not to say that I ignore consequences completely - I stay safe, because I enjoy being in one piece - just that I don't let them control me.
I was going to blog something else, but I'll leave it for next entry.

Summer: What is it

Really, all I hoped to do was get a job this summer. I want to help finance my college education. I really do. I mean, Mom and Dad can afford it, but it's still not something that comes cheap, and any help I can offer is important, just shy of indispensable. So, here's what happened. I went and interviewed for the job at Hillman; the interview went very nicely. I even got a request for a drug test, which I took as a sign that they'd pretty much decided to hire me. Why spend however much it costs to get a drug test analyzed if you're not going to hire the person? I waited a few days after the test; then, Αλήθεια called me and said it had gone through all fine, and what dates had I said I was going to be on vacation? I called up Grandma and asked. The 16th to the 28th. Then I called Αλήθεια back up and told her. She consulted her manager, then called me back. With the infinite diplomacy you must have to learn if you're in HR, she told me: "I talked with my manager, and he wants to go ahead and pass on bringing you on for the summer." It took me a moment to realize she had just said I wasn't getting the job. I tried to get her to change her mind: hopeless from the start, but I thought I could get her to recant if I reminded her that I would definitely come back for the winter season, when I have a month off of school. It didn't work. So, I didn't get a summer job: at this point, it's way too late to turn in any other applications. Αλήθεια has said that I should definitely call back during the winter, but that her manager just doesn't think it would be effective to bring me on for two weeks of work, two weeks of vacation, then two weeks of work (for vacation, it would be about four weeks straight that I could work, and then I would also be trained for the following summer). Dad asked a couple days later whether there was any chance that I would be hired if I forsook Crowduck. There probably was, but I look forward to Crowduck all year; I'm not going to just erase it. "Well, there you go. Yeh makes yer choices," he said.
-So now I have to try to make money off my fonts, having no other real source to get money from. I should be able to get a reasonable amount of money for them, but as yet no one has responded to the question I left on Typophile. And another guy just bumped his thread ahead of mine. He's sure persistent with that Agamemnon font. It's not a terrible font (though it was at the start), but he just writes so many questions about it on the thread that everyone except Eben Sorkin has mostly given up responding to them. I'll wait until tomorrow, then bump mine back up, because my financial fate rests more or less on it. I really want to sell Newt! And get a more high-end font-making program with the money! These things are expensive, man. The industry standard program costs like $650. I have a watered-down basic version of it, which I can trade in for credit towards that sum, but then I still have to pay $550. I wonder if any Typophile people will find their way to my blog now because I've mentioned Typophile stuff. Doubtful. Because I haven't had my question answered, I still don't know the first thing about marketing a font. The first thing, in my mind, is "How much money might I be able to make off of it?" Because I feel like a mooch, and even if you say I'm not, Mom, really I still am, even if I couldn't help it.
-I'm going to write another entry tomorrow, I think. Or sometime soon.

Let me tell myself

"Emo" is a new word, popularized like everything is, through the internet. It's a derogatory, short for "emotional", and characterizes people (usually teens) who claim to be all in touch with their emotions. This really means that they cry and write things about how sad they are. They're also usually antisocial and often dye their hair odd colors and get their lips pierced. They seem to blog a lot, since they're introspective and mostly just use the internet a lot with their door closed, and seem to only blog about things that make them sad. I've noticed that over the last few posts I've strayed almost into emo territory in my blog. This is merely a statistical fluke. I write funny and pointed posts in somewhat equal measure; recently, I've had several pointed ones in a row, which, devoid of much humor, may change my reputation from somewhat a wisecracker to somewhat an emo social commentator. Well, I'm not, so don't worry yeself about me.
However!
This post is another one fitting the foregoing description. Note: it is excerpted directly from my paper journal.
(This disclaimer provided by Danforth Disclaimer Doing)

Holy crap, I wasted the day. Last night, Micah kept waking me up for various crap reasons, and then I got a touch of insomnia, so I woke up today, again, after 1300. Why is it so bad to wake up after 1200? you may ask. Well, it isn't inherently. But it means I went to bed really late and wasted half the day sleeping. I sleep for about 8, 8½ hours in any case, but if I put those hours after about 0300, it's doubtful I've done anything with most of my day. And that's because I very seldom do anything worthwhile after about 2300. It's always just internet browsing. The internet eats my life after 2300. I could do stuff, but really there's not much to do. Go to Warder? But it's dark out. Read a book? But the internet is right there. Spend quality time with the folks? They're always just watching TV. Or in Micah's case, playing RuneScape. The daytime is a much better time to be active. After I get a third-shift job, if I do, I'll be waking up at, oh, 1500. But I'll be able to do stuff until 2100. Hopefully, I can even wake up earlier - 1300 or 1400, say. And I'll have weekends. I want to not waste my life. [Note: for this paragraph I was mostly rambling, so the sentences aren't in a logical progression to a conclusion sentence.]
-Well, let's get past talking about my wake-up time. I sat around and did nothing. Picked up puzzle books and didn't solve any puzzles. Walked outside pointlessly, then after a few seconds, walked back in. Examined and re-examined a font I've drawn. Stared into empty space. Looked at internet places I've already looked at, checking forums for new posts minutes after visiting them and finding no new posts. Ate pizza, looked in the cupboards for more food even though I wasn't hungry and had no intention of eating. Looking back, I almost want to cry. I write in my journal, Never again. [I've written that never again will I waste my time like that.] And then after accumulating a series of Never agains, I write: time to stop saying Never again, and time to start actually using my time like I say I'm going to. A charming sentiment, but though I try to do it, I always fail in one way or another without thinking about it. All day, I suppose, I had a subconscious urge screaming, "You're doing NOTHING!" But it never surfaced onto my awareness. And thus, without even realizing it, I sat down to watch two episodes of Stargate. I knew I was wtching them, and I knew I didn't want to be watching them, but I didn't do anything about it. The same for all the rest of the day. I seemed to be waiting for something. But there was nothing coming, and so nothing came, but I kept waiting. Taking a look at the half-built deck slicked by drizzle out the back door, then turning around and looking out the front door. Well, I'm fed up with that shit. Now I'm going to be consciously aware of when I'm collecting my time and flushing it down the toilet. I'm not going to do it anymore. This is the last time I'm going to say that, and now I'm going to start living it instead. I'm slowly killing myself by gnawing off the end of the string of my life. Here's where that stops for good. This summer will now get a whole lot better, because I made it.


Regulars will notice that I have said a cuss, something I very seldom do, and some might even chastise me for it. Well, I decided to let my thoughts go uncensored, because I really couldn't think of a word that had the same power and meaning without making the sentence longer, rendering it weak. Also, while I was writing it, I was thinking of this.
-Next post, something will be funny, and you'll also get to know what's happening in my life, assuming something has happened by then.

Why

Why do craneflies suck so bad?

They're not good at anything. Most of them don't even have six legs anymore. I'm glad I'm not a cranefly.






Today's Stream of Consciousness sponsored by The Hartford

A change

We've long been working on getting ready to move into a new house. A few months ago, Mom found a house she really likes; Dad likes it too. Recently, we've started getting ready to put our current house on the market. On Monday, Mom told me, "We're moving in about two weeks."
-I knew we were moving, but I expected to know farther ahead of time. I didn't realize it until I heard we were moving, but I actually kind of like this house. Well, that's misleading. What I like is a couple things peripheral to the house. One is our backyard, which is the best sledding hill in the near vicinity (not opinion, but a verifiable fact, considering steepness and lack of fences). The new house has a flat backyard. And the other thing I like is Warder. Warder is not, actually, a great park. It has woods, but the woods are mostly composed of shrubs and very difficult to walk around in: you have to bushwhack to get anywhere, pratically have to crawl. And there's a pond, but it's a very small pond and the water is definitely not the kind of water you go swimming in. I'm don't even wade in it unless I'm trying to catch a frog. But it's the closest park to me, and I've spent many happy hours there. It does have some good aspects. The first one that leaps to mind is the Ivory Tower. This is the name that Micah and I have come up with for a towering old pine tree that resides in a mostly unvisited part of the park. It has its share of dead branches, but an accomplished climber won't be daunted. There are more dead branches now than there have been for a long time. This is because last winter there was an ice storm. Several of the larger limbs snapped off. One is still suspended by the branches below it, and I don't know when it might hit the ground. All these broken branches have left stumps, and the stumps have oozed a prodigious amount of sap. I think they've healed over somewhat now, but the climbing branches are still covered with pine tar that leaked onto them - I think the rain just can't wash it away. I walked up to Warder yesterday without direction and ended up at the Ivory Tower. I climbed up it and watched the sun going down. Silhouettes of pine needles and far-off trees on a background that blended from a deep, jolly orange at teh horizon to an unassuming blue to an encompassing indigo that was night but still trying to be day. I sat in the tree. I thought, but then decided not to, and just sat in the tree watching the orange turn to red and then magenta, watching occasional lightning bugs, and listening to the nature around me: an unchanging hum of crickets, the occasional snapping noise of some other insect, wind going through the trees. Cat Stevens's "The Wind":
"I listen to the wind, to the wind of my soul.
"Where I'll end up well I think, only God really knows.
"I sat upon the setting sun
"But never never never never,
"I never wanted water once;
"No never never never."
I enjoy that song. I got a Cat Stevens CD recently. I noticed that while most songwriters' lyrics read like, well, like song lyrics, his read like poetry. I don't know much about poetry, but some of the Nobel writers were poets rather than novelists, so I guess I'll be reading some in the not-too-distant future.
-I checked Google Maps on 31 Sherry. It's mostly suburban around there, as here, though the houses are bigger; but I noticed that there isn't a park right nearby. There's a woods, but I haven't been to it: it might not be accessible (private property), and it might not be very good, and in any case it's not very big. So it looks like if I want to go recreate in someplace that's not a building or a road, I'll have to bike there. I could reach Warder in about 15 or 20 minutes, and Winton Woods in 20 or 30. I'll see what there is more immediately nearby, too.
-I'll be using these last two or three weeks (Uncle Dan, the House Professional Person, came by and he says it'll be more like three, probably) to say a hearty farewell to old Warder. (I can't really bid farewell to the sledding hill in fitting style in June, but maybe I'll roll down it once or twice for old time's sake.) I plan to sleep out there sometime in the next couple weeks with Micah in his tent, and I'll take more excursions like that sunset one. I've mostly finished my font, which was eating up several hours of most of my days. So now I'll have more time to go outside.
-I applied for many jobs: Borders, Walgreens, CVS, Panera, Hader Hardware, Graeter's, Bruegger's Bagels, Skyline, Winton Woods, Gear's Nursery, Blockbuster, The Hillman Group (where Mom works). Most managers said they were flush with summer workers already. I biked up to Bruegger's five times on five different days before finally coming into contact with the manager, who told me that. But today I finally got a call back. It was from Hillman. I applied there as a warehouse worker. I'm not sure quite what that entails yet, but I'm going in for an interview tomorrow at 1400. I expressed interest in any of the three shifts, knowing that they're always shortstaffed on 3rd. Sure enough, the hiring manager, Alethea (note: Greek word for absolute truth, though missing an i - Aletheia / Αλήθεια) seemed interest in having me work 3rd. I don't mind, actually. Often I've toyed with the idea of becoming nocturnal during the summer, but I've always had too many obligations (band camp and subsequent twice-weekly practices) to try it. Now that I've washed my hands of marching band for good and I'm (probably) getting a 3rd-shift job, I can actually try it. Too hot during the day anyhow in the summer. Only thing I can think of that would keep me from getting the job is my limited time frame. I'm leaving for Grinnell on the 14th or 15th. Crowduck is from the 16th to the somethingth. There's a family reunion this weekend - I just heard about that one today. Still, that leaves about a month and a half for me to package widgets in the mysterious Hillman warehouse. And better to have an employee who works for a month and a half than to have no employee at all in that space and leave critical widgets unpackaged.
-I predict that once Google discovers this page in a few days it will remain forevermore the only hit for the phrase "critical widgets unpackaged".

Went frogging

Micah and I went frogging last night and took some pictures. Here they come.

First catch

A big one

Underside. He looks like he's terrified, but somewhere deep down, having fun a little bit.

"Whatever. Just put me back when you're finished, okay?" The hand is Micah's.

Burke's pond has some very deep and rich mud. Smells sulfurous. For all this, I still didn't catch the frog I was going after.

Frogging is fun. We plan to go many more times this summer.

Graduation and Such

We were instructed to arrive at eight in the morning for graduation practice. There were people around that I haven't seen for years, for one reason or another. One of the main reasons was that a lot of people took Finneytown's vocational school program, at the Oaks campuses: Diamond Oaks, Scarlet Oaks, Laurel Oaks, and Live Oaks - but somehow I doubt there are many oaks around. Incidentally, the laurel oak is the same species as the diamond oak. Other people I hadn't seen because they were not so bright, and I hadn't had any classes with them for a long time. And in at least one case, a guy was taking classes at a college. Most of these people I didn't really care about seeing; they were nondescript and unexceptional - that's why they were in trade school or lower-level classes. However, the college guy, Caleb Combs, was interesting; he had gained a full growth of beard since I last saw him, and he had always been a Nice Kid. Anyhow, we practiced graduation, which was a pretty stupid process. We lined up in an order that was rigidly enforced yet, as far as I could tell, random. Then we sat in the absurd heat and waited for our names to be called. Ms Owen was doing the name reading; she has no classes for seniors, and is our class advisor because, I'm told, she has been since we were in about seventh grade and no one thought to change it. She was practicing pronouncing our names. She said this was our one chance to correct her before she read it out loud to the audience later tonight, so everyone whose name she fumbled made sure to set her straight. After that, we had a big sweaty group photo, and then went home. More precisely, Aaron took me to his house, and then his dad took us to Chipotle. Then I went home.
-We all met up back at the Compound at 1815, I think. We got on our robes and mortarboards. They lined us up, and then gave us about fifteen minutes to scatter throughout the gym before lining back up. It was still butt-hot as we walked out to the football field. But at least there were nice white chairs for us to sit on. Several people made speeches of varying lengths and topics. Mrs Solomon, a retiring librarian, spoke for at least ten minutes on the subject of being a good person. Dr White, my biology teacher this year, who's also retiring, talked too, but kept it briefer. We also had the class president (Dave Steel), the valedictorian (Rosie), and the salutatorian (Kristen). Kristen's speech was memorable; I think her opening was her senior prank: "What do you do when you're on a canoe in the middle of a mangrove swamp and you have to go to the bathroom? The only thing you can do: you pee over the side of the boat." It was a metaphor, but I have no clue what for. Rosie's and Kristen's speeches were both subtly sarcastic; I don't know if they wrote them that way consciously, or if the utter badness of our school offered no other alternative and it just came out that way from their subconsciouses. For example, Rosie said that she was able to compete in track and swimming, which she couldn't have done in a better school because she wouldn't have made the teams. On the face of it, it's a compliment, but without too much digging, it's also a deeper-reaching insult.
-Ms Owen read all of our names, and it became abundantly clear that she hadn't taken in a thing when we corrected her pronunciation. My name wasn't hard, so she got it right. But there were several mistakes.
•She pronounced "Bascombe" with a long a.
•She pronounced "Wergers" with a soft g and "Sturgill" with a hard one.
•Rosie's middle name is Rabayev. Ms Owen confidently called, "Rosie Rebmanov Korman." I think Matt Rebman was amused.
•Ms Owen just gave up when she came to Yana Andreevna Demyanova. It's not hard if you sound it out, especially if you've been instructed beforehand how it's pronounced: /'Ya•na An•dre•'yev•na Dem•'ya•no•va/. Phonetic! Well, she called /'Ya•na An•'drēv•na De•vi•'yav•no•va/. Pathetic! Andreevna I can understand, but how do you add two extra v's and an extra syllable to Demyanova?
We all got our diplomas despite her. (I think Yana should have waited for here to get it right before walking out to the front.) Actually, we didn't get our diplomas: we got the covers for them. This is a really rotten thing the Compound does at graduation - instead of getting your diploma, you get the cover, and that way, if you decide to do anything at graduation that would indicate you have a sense of humor or are an interesting human, the school can make you do some type of community service before they'll give you your real diploma. For this reason, we did not toss our hats. I still don't know why they told us not to throw them - what possible reason could there be? But Mr Fisher warned us that he would review the tape if he saw any flying hats and we'd be really easy to pick out. Yet another reason that I hate the Compound.
-And now, I've been searching for a job. I think I started too late, though. I've put in about ten applications all across town, and nobody's really hiring. Bruegger's Bagels and Panera both say they're looking for someone who can stay for the fall and winter. I was pretty disappointed when Bruegger's said that, because I'd biked up there on Monday to find the hiring manager gone, Tuesday to find her still gone but confidently predicted to be in tomorrow, Wednesday to find that she'd left hours ago, and finally met her on Thursday, when she told me. In any case, I've put in an application with Hillman, where Mom works, to work in the warehouse for the summer. Mom says I've got a good chance of getting the job, but to still bike around looking for more applications. Applying for work sucks.
-Finally, I'll note that I've been doing a blitzkrieg of work on my font Newt, and I hope to have all the weights ready for selling sometime this summer; maybe I can at least make some money before I go to Iowa.

I need to write this, real quick

There's something that's been hanging around my computer area for a few weeks. It's a brochure from the National Guard, inviting me to join. On the front, it has a big picture of a race car driver. The caption says,

CASEY MEARS™ NEEDS
A FEW NEW DRIVERS
ON HIS TEAM.

Other captions say,

AS A TEAM, WE BRING POWER,
SPEED, AND VICTORY TO AMERICA.

and

Love racing? Want to keep up with Casey Mears™? Join Casey's Platoon, a unique fan club devoted to the National Guard's official NASCAR driver and renowned racing hero.

This guy has a trademark sign after his name. As soon as I saw his name, I hated him. I will never have a favorable opinion of anyone who trademarks his name. Now, I'm informed, he's taken up a partnership with the National Guard. ("Hendrick Motor Sports is proud to announce its newest winning partnership - the Army National Guard and Casey Mears™.") Inside the brochure, there's a picture of three National Guard soldiers gathered around Casey Mears™, standing in front of his car. Casey™, in full racing regalia, carrying his helmet, is beaming radiantly, and the three soldiers are gazing sycophantically into his magical aura while simultaneously putting up their smarmiest front for the beneficent and infallible National Guard. All the writing in the brochure gives the impression that if I don't think Casey Mears™ is a god among men, then I'm tragically deprived and I should immediately remedy the situation by enlisting in the Guard and joining this loving and devoted fan club.
-The National Guard thinks this will get me to join in? I guess that tells me what they think about teenagers: they're obsessed with sports and famous people, and they'll join a fan club at a moment's notice without regard for other responsibilities entailed, as long as their sportsperson of choice is sure to notice them and be their friend. I was never going to enlist in the Guard anyhow, but if there had been any chance beforehand that I might, this brochure would have immediately let me know never to even consider it. Amazing that in just one brochure, while trying to do the exact opposite, the Guard has made me hate them with such a passion. I suppose that's an accomplishment in itself.
-Sorry. I just noticed that brochure on the floor and realized I had to get this off my chest. Thank you for paying attention during my rant; I hope it was as much fun for you as it was for me. Sometime later, possibly today or tomorrow, I'll write about graduation and such.

That's all

Before I start here, I would like you all to note - shoot, I'm going to write this later. Pfffft. I'm taking a walk.

I wrote that a couple days ago. I seriously needed a break from the internet. I think I'm ready to write now, right now. What I wanted you to note was that this is my one-hundredth post. Even were it not, it would be a significant milestone.
-Today, class, we're going to talk about my graduation party. There were two parts to it. The first part was a krokay party. I invited my friends Tara, Matt, Keith, and Aaron. I sent instructions to meet at an obscure turnout off a road in Winton Woods. I showed up a while ahead of time and hiked into the woods to set up the course - a twelve-wicket course this time, instead of a regular nine-wicket course. Here are handy diagrams, for no especially good reason:
Dots are stakes. Little lines are wickets. The captions are the names of the various wickets and stakes. Arrows indicate direction of travel. Duh. The "POISON" at the end means that now, you've finished the course, and you're poison, as will be described forthwith.
When I came back to the turnout at noon, I found Tara wandering around in a dry creekbed. She said she'd gotten there really early and seen me plunge into the woods, but hadn't gotten out of her car quick enough to catch up to me before I disappeared, so she'd just kind of wandered aimlessly around the creekbed for a while. I walked up to the turnout; she elected to stay behind and wander a while longer. No one showed up for about fifteen minutes, so I walked down and asked to borrow Tara's cell phone. I called Matt, Aaron, and Keith: Matt was on his way; Aaron had completely forgotten; Keith had completely forgotten and was, additionally, at work. I walked back up and found Matt arriving, so we had a three-person game, in anticipation of a four-person game later, upon Aaron calling back, which he said he would do.
-The course was truly something spectacular. This course is situated at the top of a lovely hill deep in the forest about 150 yards from a trail. The hilltop is flat and strewn with a luxurious collection of fallen trees, standing trees, divots, bumps, stumps, and sticks. It's all covered with a light, unintrusive layer of dead leaves to set the mood. We each picked out a ball and put it through the starting wicket to begin. And then we took off. Tara gained an early lead when she made it through both starting wickets in one shot, which Matt and I failed at; as such, she was able to knock her ball halfway to the first right wicket in her first turn. We soon caught up, though, and all proceeded to get lost in the complex structure of sticks and logs in which I had placed that wicket. We moved on, some of us faster than others, to the first center wicket, for which you have to hit your ball under a log. This shouldn't've been too challenging, but Matt had difficulty. The next wicket, the second right wicket, wasn't too challenging, nestled against a long log. I like the second center wicket: it's right between a big tree and a little tree, and there's almost a little pathway leading to it. The third right wicket was difficult simply because it was tough to find where it was. I realized too late that I'd been hitting my ball in a totally wrong direction. Near this wicket, there was a fallen tree that, if you looked at it from the right angle, looked eerily like a giant moray eel in full ambush posture. No lives were lost, however, as we moved on to the turn wickets. I had thoughtfully left the turn stake directly in front of a dark, forbidding hole in the base of a tall tree, but nobody managed to get their ball into it, which frankly is a shame, because it would have been pretty funny to watch someone try to get their ball out of a tree using the end of their mallet. Around this time Aaron called and asked for directions. We pointed him to the turnout. The leaders at the time - I think they were Matt and me - pushed forward to the first left wicket, while Tara stayed behind, not having gotten past the turn stake. Aaron called a few more times. When he called us for the final time, he was already in deep woods, and told us he was going to find us by echolocation. So he yelled, and then I did. Amazingly, we only had to do this about three times before he came brushing through the undergrowth from a completely different angle than I expected. He couldn't join in the game, but he did start refereeing for us. We came back through the second center wicket, and found the second left wicket underneath a folded tree, and then came back through the first center wicket. When we play here, I like to perch the third left on the edge of the flat part of the hill, so that if you miss it, your ball will roll all the way down and you'll have to spend several turns knocking it back up to the top. I approached it first, and managed to get through it unscathed. While I headed off to the exit wickets with sinister ambitions of becoming poison, Tara fell down the hill. Matt didn't, and came hot on my heels, but I drove through the exit wickets, finishing the course and becoming a poison free agent. Matt was nearby, so I immediately hit his ball and knocked him out of the game. He was less than pleased, but accepted it as a tragic turn of fate. Aaron provided a running commentary as I looked for Tara, who was still coming back up the hill. Things took a turn for the ugly when she slipped back down and I followed her. Suddenly, she had poison prospects. It was a race back up to the top. If she made it to the exit wickets, we would have a double poison game that could potentially go anywhere in the park. She made it uphill just a turn before me, but before she could get to the finish line, I stopped her and won the game by knocking her out.
-Unfortunately, we had heard thunder, so we had to go without a second game, which left Aaron feeling sleighted by nature. We headed back to my house for phase two of the party. This was a traditional "party" party. Most of you reading this blog were there, so I don't need to elaborate much. Karl was over laboriously making enough food to feed a reasonably sized army, except that Karl's food would make an army man, accustomed to MREs, weep with pleasure. Ribs, chicken, grilled corn on the cob, all in almost obscene quantities. We still have plenty of leftovers in the freezer; we won't need to go out to eat for a while. I just want to note that, over the course of the day, we had this many people:
Mom Dad Micah Me Matt Aaron Tara Kristen Rosie Bryce Grandma Grandpa Dave Sierra Hayden Jazmin Dan Tracy Mike Tami Jackie Nana Papaw Martha Jeff Tawnya Kyle Karl Lt.-Taylor James James Arianna. I think there may be a few more that I'm missing. That there is 32.
-In addition to several hilarious or sentimental cards (Dan, Rosie, Dave, Grandma and Grandpa) I got gifts. Martha gave me a handy MiniMaglite. Mike and Tami gave me a Grinnell hoodie. Jeff and Tawnya gave me a Wal*Mart gift card. Dave gave me some money. Grandma and Grandpa gave me a handwritten coupon good for one free computer, which I really need to get around to deciding what computer I want to get. I'll do that by Friday, Grandma and Grandpa. And Nana and Papaw gave me a spectacular quilt that Nana sewed for me out of a bunch of different plaids. I love plaids. The quilt is flannel and it'll be really warm and great on cold Iowa nights.
-And finally, I played a bunch of games of krokay in our backyard, which, though not quite as extreme as the hilltop earlier, was fairly extreme, because it's a hill. Aaron got to play, and I've also gotten Bryce hooked on the fine sport that is krokay. I won a game, Dan won two, and I don't remember who won the fourth. People gradually left. Finally, it was just Matt and Bryce left. We watched some comedians, and then they left too, and we the residents, too lethargic from all the food to do much cleaning, mostly sat around or went to bed. It was pretty much the best party ever.
-I should have written about graduation here, before writing about the party, but I didn't, and now I'm not going to, so I'll save it for another post. I'll also post some pictures of stuff that happened. Now, I'm-a go to bed.

The best thing ever

I can see barefooting is an issue that many of you feel passionately about. After I posted, I found what's billed, correctly I think, as "the definitive paper on barefooters explaining us." I'll link to it at the end, though, so you don't go there and forget about the page that linked you to it, which is something I do all the time.
-Bare feet aren't the item for today's blog, though. The item is kitejumping. "Pardon?" you ask. Kitejumping is a sport that you do by means of a big giant kite. Don't visualize one of those little triangular or Charlie Brown-type dealies. These kites are called powerkites. They look much more like rectangular parachutes. So, you get a powerkite. Now you go out into some field somewhere, and wait for wind. When you get it, you wait for just the right moment, and then jump. The kite takes you way the heck up into the air and you come back down to the ground a ridiculous distance away. I've watched lots of Google videos of kitejumpers. I need a powerkite.
-Take note: kitejumping has shot up straight to the top of the list of great sport-type stuff to do at Grinnell. The reason is obvious. I'll be in Iowa. There's almost nothing but fields, perfect for kitejumping, and the abundance of fields means that there's nothng to stop tremendous winds from building up, again perfect for kitejumping! Ideal! And, another thing to know: kitejumping isn't the only sport you can do with a powerkite. There's a whole family of these sports: kitesurfing, kiteboarding, snowkiting, and kite ice butt boarding all come to mind, and there are probably resourceful people all over who have come up with innovative new ways to use a powerkite. I think I very well might get into snowkiting; failing steep hills, it may be the best bet for a winter sport in Grinnell, because you only need big winds to propel you. (Gravity is for troglodytes!) To this effect, as soon as I get a job, I'll be saving up to buy a reasonable powerkite (and also, obviously, to help finance college). I guess I'll have to practice around here so I can get good at it. Where's a clear, flat place? Maybe somewhere in Winton Woods. And once I'm fairly good I can have a go at a clear place with a big hill, that being the Elmridge Overlook. Hopefully, if I try that, I won't blow into the lake. Though that would probably be most comical for an observer.
-You people always wonder where I come up with this stuff, so I'll explain briefly: I searched for a sound file online, and found it at www.kitejumping.org. After going only to the sound file usually for a while, I eventually took a look at the rest of the site, and discovered what kitejumping is, but didn't really think twice about it. That was like a year ago. Then I was on Google Videos the other day thinking of things to search for, and that came out of my head, and when I watched the video it was the greatest thing ever.
-Parkour too. I wonder if the buildings are any good for parkour? Probably. College campuses usually are. By the way, I found another guy, via facebook (a networking website), who's going to Grinnell and does parkour. We'll even both be first-years (trivia: Grinnell doesn't use the term "freshmen"). He has some pictures up of him doing parkour, and he's way better than I am, mostly because he's actually had places to do it. But he says he only started about a year ago, so there's hope for me yet.
-Graduation in two days.

The promised link: http://www.barefooters.org/key-works/case_for/

A trifling crusade

As I noted before, I've decided that I'm going to go barefoot a lot this summer, and not exclusively outdoors, either. I noted that, in fact, there is no Health Department regulation whatsoever that prohibits you from going barefoot inside a restaurant or similar establishment. I know this because I found a website where a couple guys wrote letters to the health Departments of all 50 States asking if there was a law. They all wrote back saying there wasn't, and he posted all their letters on the website. So, legally I ought to have no trouble. Of course, establishments are still free to set a dress code that you have to follow if you want to enter; this usually goes along the lines of "No shirt, no shoes, no service" on a sticker on the door. They could require you to wear pink hats, if they wanted to. I read that example on a website and I liked it enough that I always say pink hats now.
-I haven't gone into enough places to get a broad range of reactions, but I'll tell you a few things that have happened.

-I've gone into Walgreens several times without incident, probably because they haven't even paid attention to my feet.

-I've gone into Graeter's - for you out-of-towners, that's the best ice cream company in the country - a few times. Only once did I get a reaction. That was when the manager and an employee were chatting by the door. As soon as he saw me come in, he said, "Shoes???!"
-"Why?" I said.
-"We just had a big health inspection! I can't have anything happen!"
-At this point I whipped out a printed copy of the Health Department letter, because I knew it would come in handy for this sort of thing. "Well, actually," I said, handing it to him, "That's not a law." He glanced at it and said, "Okay. You're free this time." A pretty jerky way to put it, but I can understand, what with health inspections.

-I also went to Skyline the other day. Out-of-towners, it would take too long to explain, so go do independent research. I had flip-flops in my pockets. (Cargo shorts.) When I walked in, the manager lady said, "Sir? You have to have shoes on to eat here." So I shrugged and flipped and flopped into them, and ate. When I was done, I talked with her. "When I came in, as you noticed, I didn't have shoes on. I'm wondering, Why can't I eat without them?"
-"I don't know, it's a Health Department rule," she said, shrugging it off.
-"I thought it might come down to that," I said, and showed her the letter. She looked at it. Then she said, "Well, it's our policy. I don't know." So I said, "Well, in that case, let me ask you - I put on these flip-flops. How exactly does that make my feet less objectionable?" She said, "I don't know. It's just a policy. I don't know." I couldn't argue with "I don't know," so I said okay and left.

-And finally, I went into UDF yesterday. Out of-towners, it's a gas station and convenience store. I was getting laundry detergent. There was a managerial-looking guy, about 60 years old, and I asked him where it was. He pointed me to it, and then, suddenly noticing, said, "You have to have shoes on to come in here."
-I didn't handle this one as articulately as I needed to. "Oh. Is - is - is there a sign on the door?"
-"It's a Board of Health regulation. You have to have shoes on."
-"Well, actually, ther - "
-"Actually, sir, you have to have shoes on," he said, completely cutting me off.
-"There is no Board of Health regula - "
-"Actually sir you have to have shoes on."
-"Why?"
-"Because there's food in here! Use your head, sir!!"
-"Okay, look. I'll put my sandals on and - "
-"Okay then. All right."
-I walked out toward Mom's car where I had my sandals. Then I reconsidered. I opened the door and hollered, "Actually, considering that reception, I'll take my business elsewhere!"

-This guy is the worst reaction I've gotten so far. He wasn't even trying to be civil about it; he was just an out-and-out jackass. However, I'll address one thing real quick. "Because there's food in here! Use your head, sir!!" Well, if he had used his, he'd notice that what he said didn't make a whole lot of sense. All right, I'm barefoot. So shoes are cleaner than feet? I wash my feet daily. I've never washed my shoes. What exactly does he think is going to happen, anyhow? If I'm carrying any diseases, he should require me to wear a mask, because the mouth is germs' primary escape route to the air. So, now we've got that cleared up.
-After the UDF jackass incident, I told Mom about it and why I didn't have any detergent. So we went to a different convenience store. On the way, she asked me why didn't I just wear shoes. Well, because I don't like to. She cited the familiar ghost Health regulation, which I promptly dispelled for her. So she argued differently. She says it's a cultural thing. It's polite to keep you shoes on here, just the same way it's polite to take them off in Japan. Okay, so people like you to have your shoes on. Since when is it a right for people to have everyone do exactly what they want? I don't think that one was in the Bill of Rights. I'll give her that it's polite. But I happen to think it's uncomfortable. Isn't one of the goals of a consumer establishment to make a customer comfortable? Someone lost sight of that. So now Mom tried a different tack. She said: "There are just so many more important things in the world."
-Agreed! To name just three of them, there are millions starving and being killed in Darfur, the South Koreans live under a madman, a quarter of the globe is under the totalitarian control of communist China. All this is tragic, and there's no way to argue otherwise. It would be a triumphant victory for mankind if just one of these three problems were solved in the next few years. But no one can claim to think solely about those things. We have our own lives, too; we're not completely diffused into the total Earth society. Duh. Thus, in my own life in the here and now, I'm taking on my trifling crusade to be allowed to go barefoot in public places. Why not? I like to. It's comfortable. I can take the flak from overzealous manager types. And jeez, it's summer.


P.S.: Another objection is that it's a liability issue if a store lets someone in barefoot. Two rebuttals: If a store says this, they're basically admitting that they create a dangerous environment for customers. And people need to get out of the litigation mindset; I won't sue for anything reasonable that happens to me that wouldn't if I had shoes on. (I would sue if an overzealous manager type came at me with a dinner knife, for example.) I'll tell as much to anyone who comes at me with a liability concern.
P.P.S.: The website I mentioned is www.barefooters.org. It's very good.

"Doneness" is a real word, but it's still a bogus one

The bio and psych tests were easier than I expected. The bio test really wasn't the torture it was made out to be, though it was still difficult. The psych had a cinchy multiple choice, but the essays were a lot tougher. In particular, I remember being asked what a locus of control was. I wrote: "I have no idea what a locus of control is, but I know you're having a boring day, so I'll write this joke: What's brown and sticky? A stick." I won't get any points for it, but I'll have brightened the reader's day. I hope I get good grades on all these. The only other AP test I've taken is the US History test last year; I got a 3 on it. (Top grade is a 5; 3 is the lowest passing grade.) Time will tell. Results arrive in July.
-After that, all the AP tests were done. Because my classes this year were five AP classes and one joke class (econ), my year was effectively over. I came to school Wednesday and here's what we did: in psych, we watched Awakenings. In bio we played rummy. In econ we watched Roger & Me. In English we watched Breaking Away. In Spanish we watched Spanglish. In math we watched an obscure film about quantum physics called What the Bleep do We Know?!. Apparently Devin Judge's aunt was involved in its production somehow. The rest of the week followed a similar pattern. It didn't hit me until the weekend that, after the coming Tuesday, it would all be over.
-I realized something that I probably should've realized a while ago: that I had been building up to next Tuesday for 12 - nay - 13 years. That's over 2/3 of my life so far. It seemed like I should be doing something extraordinary. The best thing I could come up with, though, was something I'd thought up months ago - to come to school without shoes. Actually, I didn't even do that. I copped out and brought flip-flops. But I mostly didn't wear them. I don't think anyone even noticed. So much for making a bang. At least I didn't have to touch any of the bathroom floors or the lunchroom floor. I didn't even notice when the math bell, the last bell of the day, of the year, of Finneytown Local Building District, rang. I left the room with everyone else. Before I finally biked off the campus, I chatted briefly with Aaron. After I finished, I said: "Well, here I go." And I turned my bike around and left.
***
-Of course, it wasn't that definitive. On the next day, Wednesday, I biked up to the compound to tutor Patrice, and today I had to bike up to print out my econ final (a 3-to-5-page essay). Additionally, there's a Senior Banquet tonight (eating real, catered food in a fake lunchroom - innovative experience), and, of course, graduation on the 31st. But I don't have to go to any more klasses. I don't have to bike up there at seven in the morning anymore when I'd rather be doing almost anything else. I'm done.
DONE
What to do this summer? Well, for starters, I've got several books lined up to read. The Sound and the Fury, My Name is Red, Independent People, Reasonable People, and I want to check out something about the unconscious. The last one is for a book that I want to start writing over the summer, and possibly even finish. Incidentally, the third and fourth books are by completely different people: Third, an Icelandic Nobel Laureate by the name of Halldór Laxness; fourth, a Grinnell English professor named James Savarese. Besides these endeavors, I seriously need to get a job. I'm thinking Borders, if I can swing it. If not Borders, what else is there around here? Let's see: Hader Hardware, Walgreens (they're moving across the street into a bigger building, which is being constructed currently, but I doubt if the move will be finished before I leave to the cornfields, so it's mostly moot, I'd say), Kroger, - actually, there are a lot of establishments in Finneytown, but a lot of them are the type I just would not work at: Sally Beauty Supply, SimplyFashion, Brooks' Bar, Snow Nails, Curves. Ruling those out, I still probably have a reasonable pool of places to apply to. Though, I don't want to work in foodservice. Too stressful, and I doubt I could even get accepted, given my warm reception at Subway. And, as well as reading books, writing a book, and getting a job, I want to tone up so I can start doing parkour. (That video is by no means the definitive parkour video; many others are way more entertaining, but this one is informative as well. Long, though. Finish reading this first, probably.) I can't even do a handstand right now. I can do at least twelve pullups, but apparently among traceurs 30 are a warmup. Part of a warmup. I want to be able to do decent parkour, because, simply put, it looks like a lot of fun. And, as if those four things weren't enough, I want to finish at least one of my fonts and get it selling. It's looking like a busy, terrific summer. Let it not be said that I'll be lazing around doing nothing. You people have no idea.


Because you weren't going to go back to the previous paragraph: parkour.

Testing Testing 1 2 1 2 3

I knew all year that this time would come, and I knew I'd be in the stress neck-deep. That's right, it's AP week.
-I don't know if you knew, but I took 5 AP classes this year. They were English, Spanish, bio, psych, and calculus. I knew when I signed up for them that it was going to be a heavy load, and it was, but I did my best not to notice. I just treated it like I was getting a normal workload. In fact, it wasn't until a few weeks ago that I realized how hard I've been working all this year to keep my grades up. I hope I can keep this up during college, rather than get totally stressed out. Grinnell is well known as a school where you rarely stop studying. I'll have plenty to occupy me. A lot of it is writing, and I like writing, so not only will I not be miserable doing it, but I'll also hone my writing.
-However, I was supposed to be talking about this week. Actually, AP week is two weeks. Last week, I was testing Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Those were Spanish, calculus and English. Spanish was a really hard one, but only because of the listening comprehension stuff. There was one part where we got a source to read and a source to listen to, both of which were about Hispanics celebrating their national heritage after moving to the US, and then we had two minutes to come up with an oral report about those two sources that would also last two minutes. There was also a simulated phone conversation where a friend calls me up and asks if I want to go to a Shakira concert with him. I was supposed to accept, but I forgot to read the sheet, so I just did what I would've actually done in that situation, which is I refused. Whoops. But I think the oral parts only counted for like 10% of the grade. The rest of it was easy, pretty much. The calculus exam was possible, and I did it. I think I got pretty much all of the ones I answered right, and I only left three blank. Except on the free response; I left two of about 19 parts blank, because I ran out of time. It was tough stuff. The free responses were a lot harder than in previous years. The English exam was difficult; there was one poem called "When I Buy Pictures" that was just flat-out a bad poem. If a poet writes so that the person reading it has no idea what she's saying, the whole point of poetry is lost, and the poem is bad. The AP Board should take note of this. Circumlocution is not a merit. For the Open Essay, they asked me to describe a book where a character has a relationship with the past, either trying to reject it or trying to embrace it. I used The Road by Cormac McCarthy, which is a pretty good book. It's a postapocalyptic book.
-So, tomorrow is bio, and Tuesday is psych. I'm going to be studying for both of them; as soon as I'm done with this blog post, it's to the bio notes with me.
-There's something else I was going to write about, but I have no idea what it was. It might have been books, but I'm going to leave that for the next entry, which, with any luck, will be after Building on Tuesday. Because there's no curriculum left after the test in my AP classes, we're basically socializing with several different groups of friends over the day. I've had only one day of this, and it wasn't complete, because we're still working in bio and psych. (Once you're done with an AP test, you're allowed to leave the building, so I've had three half-days.) When I come back to the skedule on Wednesay, I'll have total nothing. This'll be pretty cool.