Oh, man. Isn't that a great title? Obviously it's completely irrelevant, but isn't it great?
I had a birthday this Friday. I'd say several factors contributed to it being the best birthday I've had in several years. First, during band, Matt Rebman and Jess Scholl surprised me with a blue mylar balloon, festooned with permanent marker renditions of drawings from shirts from my store (visit it, www.cafepress.com/permanentmarker . BUY STUFF) and "Happy Birthday". I tied it to my wrist. Later I found out they had decorated my locker too. Isn't it great? In history we read out of some old books, but on a whim I decided to achieve neutral buoyancy with my balloon by tying stuff to it. I soon found about the right balance of pencils and rubber bands to keep it hovering in the air, not sinking and not rising. By the time I got it, a lot of people were watching me, including Mr Volz. (I also that bell mentioned I was in the process of creating a shirt with a picture of Alan Greenspan really digging it on a wicked electric guitar, but I sucked at drawing guitars, and he drew some for me.) In math we had a test, but it was only a slight blemish because the stuff was easy and I feel reasonably confident I got a 100% on it. Afterwards I worked toward neutral buoyancy again, with more precision. Gradually everyone became riveted by the process. I tied a receipt to the string with the rest of the ballast and tore off little bits of it at a time. Once, I thought I had gotten it, but then Cait Pantano, sounding tragedy-stricken, said, "No, it's going down!" and I had to tear a little more off. Finally I tore off what seemed like a little too much--it almost imperceptibly started rising--but declared it a victory after it also started falling, a little later, and attributed the variations to air currents. I really had an audience, and they were enthralled. Thanks, Matt and Jess, for the balloon.
-I rode home with it on my bike, which was interesting, and then had chips and salsa until my mom came home and took me to Fuddrucker's. Nobody else came, because Dad was getting home late, and Micah's suspension deal has morphed into a kind of home-schooling thing because they won't let him back in, and we dumped him on Dad's parents in West Virginia for a week. Now, the only thing is, Fuddrucker's has kind of gone down in quality. They still have the World's Greatest Hamburgers, but they don't put that sprinkling of spices on the fries anymore, and that was what made them so great. They also were out of root beer that day. But still, subbing in Dr Pepper, I had a great and also very fulfilling dinner. I opened my presents from Mom: two CDs (Bernstein and Pachelbel/others) and five books. The books were Ethan Frome, Oliver Twist, Night, The Grapes of Wrath, and Moby-Dick. Mom knows I'm trying to get my foot into the classics. Right now I've read about 80 pages of Oliver Twist. After dinner the I found out the staff was calling out trivia questions over the loudspeaker. I got one right--the answer was "Polyester"--and they gave me a free card good for a half-pound burger. Just before we left, I got another one right ("depression") and they gave me another. Finally, to close out a great day, at home I loitered around the Internet long past curfew and went to bed for a long time.
-The thread on the screw-down crown of my watch has been deteriorating for a long time, but today it finally became officially stripped, as in I can't screw it down anymore. I'm going to have to take it up to some watch expert's place, like at the mall I guess, and have them overhaul it. Dad says they'll also want to do a cleaning, and it'll set me back about $50. That's too much. But it's cheaper than buying a new one. I paid $200 for this. Maybe it's under warranty, though. I'll see if I can find my thingy. Warranty sheet, or whatever.
-Third quarter's over. I'd say I did well. I hope I did well.
-Oh! Plus, this last week, we had a freak March snow day! It was great. About three inches of snow came down. The roads were more or less totally clear, so I didn't even check to see if we had anything, but Mom was listening to the radio that morning and shouted we had a two-hour delay. I went back to sleep, and when I woke up I checked the WLW SchoolWatch and it was a snow day. The roads were still pretty much clear, and I realized the staff had wanted a snow day just as much as I did, so they just used this as an excuse. That's the one good thing the administration has done for me this year.
-I'm thirsty. I'm going to get a glass of milk. I sure do hope I'm cleared of any wrongdoing involving those squeegees.
Saturday, March 25, 2006
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Buy now while supplies
Last time I updated, it seems, was in January. Well. I, uh, I guess I don't really have an excuse to give you. I mean, I could think one up, but--well, actually...
-After school all days of the week until late at night I had to go to my special apprenticeship to Trent Lott. I was thus unable to update my blog.
Well, now that that's settled, let's get down to buisness. Here in Cincinnati our crappy start to the winter led directly into a crappy end to the winter, making for an all-around crappy winter. I think we got maybe five inches of snow the whole time. Sometimes people ask me why I like snow and cold weather. I can't really say why. I suppose part of it is that I really hate being hot; every summer, lulled into complacency by an idyllic period of temperate weather, I realize again with renewed feeling how much I hate it. When you're hot, there's no escape unless you have the air conditioning up really high (thus spending money better usable elsewhere) or you're willing to go all the way to an air-conditioned restaurant or the pool. Another part is that I like it when there's snow on the ground. I mean, I don't know; I just like it. A lot of this is going to be personal taste. Ooh, here's another one: I'm a night person, and winter has longer nights. Of course, Minnesota has summers too, with long days, but they have good winters, unlike here. I think another reason is that, though summers aren't too bad and they certainly offer some good opportunities for recreation, they need to be balanced out by a winter. A good winter. I'm just kind of rambling here, though.
-In band we just kept on playing that music. We got it quite good. There was this one day that Mr Canter realized we were all really just burnt out on band, so he gave us Friday off of X-Period in exchange for a promise that we'd all practice 20 minutes that weekend. Finally, last Saturday, we took two buses on down to Winton Woods High School, which I discovered is actually about as close to Winton Woods as Finneytown is, and did our contest performance. The stage there was really crowded. I performed pretty much right on it, I suppose. I gave it some punch, anyhow. The three pieces we did were New Dawn, The Awakening, and National Emblem. I think I like New Dawn or maybe National Emblem best. Anyhow, then we went on to the sight-reading room (their library) and played Whispers of the Wind, which was about on a seventh-grade level. We shuffled off to the cafeteria and, directly, found out we got a I. Huzzah! They say it's the first time in history we Finneytowners have gotten a I in Class A. Okay!
-So anyhow, the end result is we're now going to State and we've retired The Awakening and National Emblem in favor of something called Loudoun Praises, and something else TBA.
-On other fronts, I wrote an article for the newspaper about why watching TV is bad. A lot of my source material was this, which, though in need of some aggressive editing, has some good material. I encourage you to read it some time. I have sworn off TV except for shows like Jeopardy! and the occasional dose of something else like The Simpsons, which can at times be just as interesting as a book, or, if not, at least has a lot more comedic value. For this reason I also enjoy Dave Letterman, though I'm rarely up that late. Sounds like a lot of exceptions, but, then again, think of how many shows you watch. Oh, you say you don't even have time to watch TV, so you don't. Well, that's because you're a high school/college student, in which case you probably watch a fair amount nevertheless. If you aren't a student and you still say that you're most likely a liar.
-I guess that qualifies as a rant. But it's a very civilized and abbreviated one.
-Today in math we were working on probability; we were doing a problem about phone numbers. It had to do with how many possibilities there are for each group of numbers ((aaa) bbb-cccc) when figuring in given restrictions (such as: in the area code the first digit can't be 1 or 0, and the second digit has to be either 1 or 0). Well, for the last four digits, the restriction was that at least one of them has to be something other than 0. How many possible four-digit combinations are there in that system? The way the class has learned to work it, you multiply 10 × 10 × 10 × 9 and get 9000, because one of them has to be restricted to nine digits. If you're a thinking person, this will immediately jump out at you as incorrect. The correct way to figure it is to realize that by requiring that at least one digit not be zero, the only combination they have excluded is 0000, which is one of 10,000 possibilities. This leaves 9999 viable combinations, which is considerably more than 9000. However, Mrs Otten didn't object at all when someone wrote it on the board the other way, and neither did anyone else in the class. Just having realized they were doing this problem at the board (I'm prone to bouts of apathy in math, wherein I just doodle on a sheet of paper), I raised my hand to tell her the way I did it, but, because I had made a comment about just excluding 0000 earlier while I was only listening and not watching--a comment that apparently went unheard except by Mrs Otten--she told me, "I knew you were going to say that," and then gave me the "wait a second" sign, meaning she'd come back to it later. She didn't; she just kept on doing the problem until it was done, wrong, with the answers all about ten percent off. I raised my hand again. She came over and squatted down next to my desk and told me in a confidential voice that, yes, technically that was the correct way, but the simple way gave an answer that wasn't all that far off and anyhow this kind of situation didn't come up that often, so she had made a decision that she wasn't going to bother teaching the right way to get the answer. Then she walked away and I chewed on that for a while. Gradually I started getting more and more righteously incensed by this deliberate miseducation. Toward the end of class I raised my hand again. I came over and told her, "I've been thinking about this--", but she instantly cut me off and started getting defensive and angry and told me that she had made the decision to let this mistake ride because it didn't really come up that often and if I wanted to debate her on it we could do it in private. I started to make the argument that none of the other stuff we learned in math class came up that often, or, indeed, ever, and the fact that there was even a real-life example of this should give it some special consideration, but she wouldn't give me the chance. It was the end of the bell, so I stopped arguing and got ready to leave. Later I realized that I shouldn't have given in to her: I was clearly in the right; in fact, I was mathematically proven to be in the right, so I should have kept on arguing it with her until she was forced to concede, and not just let her change reality because she gets paid to illuminate it to us! I realized this while I was walking to my next class. Later, I thought: how much has Mrs Otten been miseducating us about? Who else has been lying to us? Why now should I trust any of the faculty? I've had my feelings that the staff around here was a bit dubious: problems with discipline, unquestioning acceptance of totalitarian regulations. Usually I've been able to overlook it and figure that I simply misunderstood or didn't well enough understand the situation. Perhaps that guy's swearing and slurring wasn't actually against the rules severely enough to warrant action, even though it seemed to be. Or, maybe there's a good reason that the main entrance to the high school is still blocked by mud and construction fence more than four months after the water main was replaced. Dr Tracy was willing to give reasons for things that seemed illogical. I figured usually these reasons at least had a hint of reason in them, somewhere, or he wouldn't give them. (There were exceptions to this, such as when I noted, "Isn't it funny how the cheerleaders' uniforms are so against the dress code?" and he said, "I don't know which parts of the dress code you would be talking about...".) But now I'm disillusioned. If there's corruption that's this outright, then I really have no reason to trust anything a staff member says again. I'm now thrilled by the revelation that this school is a place where lying is commonplace and not really frowned on at all! It explains so much! Why do we have to tuck in our shirts? No reason; they're just lying because they thought it would create "common decency" and they don't want to admit it did nothing but seriously make students mad at them. Why is that construction project still unfinished? When I asked Dr Tracy, he said it was because the winter wasn't a good time of the year to plant grass, and they wanted to do the whole thing at once. At first I thought that was just a true reason that happened to be absolutely ridiculous; now I realize that it was total bull. The thing it doesn't explain is: Why am I letting this group of people take charge of my learning, my intellect, and my future?
-That's a rant.
-After school all days of the week until late at night I had to go to my special apprenticeship to Trent Lott. I was thus unable to update my blog.
Well, now that that's settled, let's get down to buisness. Here in Cincinnati our crappy start to the winter led directly into a crappy end to the winter, making for an all-around crappy winter. I think we got maybe five inches of snow the whole time. Sometimes people ask me why I like snow and cold weather. I can't really say why. I suppose part of it is that I really hate being hot; every summer, lulled into complacency by an idyllic period of temperate weather, I realize again with renewed feeling how much I hate it. When you're hot, there's no escape unless you have the air conditioning up really high (thus spending money better usable elsewhere) or you're willing to go all the way to an air-conditioned restaurant or the pool. Another part is that I like it when there's snow on the ground. I mean, I don't know; I just like it. A lot of this is going to be personal taste. Ooh, here's another one: I'm a night person, and winter has longer nights. Of course, Minnesota has summers too, with long days, but they have good winters, unlike here. I think another reason is that, though summers aren't too bad and they certainly offer some good opportunities for recreation, they need to be balanced out by a winter. A good winter. I'm just kind of rambling here, though.
-In band we just kept on playing that music. We got it quite good. There was this one day that Mr Canter realized we were all really just burnt out on band, so he gave us Friday off of X-Period in exchange for a promise that we'd all practice 20 minutes that weekend. Finally, last Saturday, we took two buses on down to Winton Woods High School, which I discovered is actually about as close to Winton Woods as Finneytown is, and did our contest performance. The stage there was really crowded. I performed pretty much right on it, I suppose. I gave it some punch, anyhow. The three pieces we did were New Dawn, The Awakening, and National Emblem. I think I like New Dawn or maybe National Emblem best. Anyhow, then we went on to the sight-reading room (their library) and played Whispers of the Wind, which was about on a seventh-grade level. We shuffled off to the cafeteria and, directly, found out we got a I. Huzzah! They say it's the first time in history we Finneytowners have gotten a I in Class A. Okay!
-So anyhow, the end result is we're now going to State and we've retired The Awakening and National Emblem in favor of something called Loudoun Praises, and something else TBA.
-On other fronts, I wrote an article for the newspaper about why watching TV is bad. A lot of my source material was this, which, though in need of some aggressive editing, has some good material. I encourage you to read it some time. I have sworn off TV except for shows like Jeopardy! and the occasional dose of something else like The Simpsons, which can at times be just as interesting as a book, or, if not, at least has a lot more comedic value. For this reason I also enjoy Dave Letterman, though I'm rarely up that late. Sounds like a lot of exceptions, but, then again, think of how many shows you watch. Oh, you say you don't even have time to watch TV, so you don't. Well, that's because you're a high school/college student, in which case you probably watch a fair amount nevertheless. If you aren't a student and you still say that you're most likely a liar.
-I guess that qualifies as a rant. But it's a very civilized and abbreviated one.
-Today in math we were working on probability; we were doing a problem about phone numbers. It had to do with how many possibilities there are for each group of numbers ((aaa) bbb-cccc) when figuring in given restrictions (such as: in the area code the first digit can't be 1 or 0, and the second digit has to be either 1 or 0). Well, for the last four digits, the restriction was that at least one of them has to be something other than 0. How many possible four-digit combinations are there in that system? The way the class has learned to work it, you multiply 10 × 10 × 10 × 9 and get 9000, because one of them has to be restricted to nine digits. If you're a thinking person, this will immediately jump out at you as incorrect. The correct way to figure it is to realize that by requiring that at least one digit not be zero, the only combination they have excluded is 0000, which is one of 10,000 possibilities. This leaves 9999 viable combinations, which is considerably more than 9000. However, Mrs Otten didn't object at all when someone wrote it on the board the other way, and neither did anyone else in the class. Just having realized they were doing this problem at the board (I'm prone to bouts of apathy in math, wherein I just doodle on a sheet of paper), I raised my hand to tell her the way I did it, but, because I had made a comment about just excluding 0000 earlier while I was only listening and not watching--a comment that apparently went unheard except by Mrs Otten--she told me, "I knew you were going to say that," and then gave me the "wait a second" sign, meaning she'd come back to it later. She didn't; she just kept on doing the problem until it was done, wrong, with the answers all about ten percent off. I raised my hand again. She came over and squatted down next to my desk and told me in a confidential voice that, yes, technically that was the correct way, but the simple way gave an answer that wasn't all that far off and anyhow this kind of situation didn't come up that often, so she had made a decision that she wasn't going to bother teaching the right way to get the answer. Then she walked away and I chewed on that for a while. Gradually I started getting more and more righteously incensed by this deliberate miseducation. Toward the end of class I raised my hand again. I came over and told her, "I've been thinking about this--", but she instantly cut me off and started getting defensive and angry and told me that she had made the decision to let this mistake ride because it didn't really come up that often and if I wanted to debate her on it we could do it in private. I started to make the argument that none of the other stuff we learned in math class came up that often, or, indeed, ever, and the fact that there was even a real-life example of this should give it some special consideration, but she wouldn't give me the chance. It was the end of the bell, so I stopped arguing and got ready to leave. Later I realized that I shouldn't have given in to her: I was clearly in the right; in fact, I was mathematically proven to be in the right, so I should have kept on arguing it with her until she was forced to concede, and not just let her change reality because she gets paid to illuminate it to us! I realized this while I was walking to my next class. Later, I thought: how much has Mrs Otten been miseducating us about? Who else has been lying to us? Why now should I trust any of the faculty? I've had my feelings that the staff around here was a bit dubious: problems with discipline, unquestioning acceptance of totalitarian regulations. Usually I've been able to overlook it and figure that I simply misunderstood or didn't well enough understand the situation. Perhaps that guy's swearing and slurring wasn't actually against the rules severely enough to warrant action, even though it seemed to be. Or, maybe there's a good reason that the main entrance to the high school is still blocked by mud and construction fence more than four months after the water main was replaced. Dr Tracy was willing to give reasons for things that seemed illogical. I figured usually these reasons at least had a hint of reason in them, somewhere, or he wouldn't give them. (There were exceptions to this, such as when I noted, "Isn't it funny how the cheerleaders' uniforms are so against the dress code?" and he said, "I don't know which parts of the dress code you would be talking about...".) But now I'm disillusioned. If there's corruption that's this outright, then I really have no reason to trust anything a staff member says again. I'm now thrilled by the revelation that this school is a place where lying is commonplace and not really frowned on at all! It explains so much! Why do we have to tuck in our shirts? No reason; they're just lying because they thought it would create "common decency" and they don't want to admit it did nothing but seriously make students mad at them. Why is that construction project still unfinished? When I asked Dr Tracy, he said it was because the winter wasn't a good time of the year to plant grass, and they wanted to do the whole thing at once. At first I thought that was just a true reason that happened to be absolutely ridiculous; now I realize that it was total bull. The thing it doesn't explain is: Why am I letting this group of people take charge of my learning, my intellect, and my future?
-That's a rant.
What?
Honestly, I don't know why you bother coming back here to keep checking if I don't write anything. Hold on, because I've got to switch to the computer in my room. This one is outfitted with The Virtually Indestructible Keyboard, which is a great idea but the absolute worst computer keyboard as far as typing ergonomics goes. It rates only a step above manual typewriter, and it's considerably below an electric one.
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Honest Excuse
I have an honest excuse for not updating my blog. My computer has come up with a very successful new way to irritate me: about fifteen minutes after I turn it on, it abruptly and with no warning whatsoever switches off. I didn't want to go through starting an entry just to have it disappear to the Land of Lost Data. Fortunately, we've discovered that the problem doesn't happen under my Mom's username; unfortunately (since my font-making program is under my name), I can't work on Cyril until it's fixed. I do have the italic for it somewhat finished, but I don't have any numbers done.
-Well. First, the holidays. Boy, it's a stretch thinking back that far. First, we went on up to Dayton or wherever--Middletown, Centerville, one of those--and did Christmas on my Dad's side of the family. I got some good socks like I asked for, one of those neat Magnetic Induction Principle flashlights, uh, some other things, and of course peanut butter fudge. Nana's peanut butter fudge is sublime. And since it's made with sugar, it keeps for a long time, enabling me to eat just one piece a day and savor it for weeks. I think I have seven pieces left.
-A few days later (on Christmas Eve--for tactical reasons, Christmas is never allowed to be on Christmas now), we had Christmas in Oxford with my Mom's side of the family. There I got a few books, also as I asked, and a fishing lure, and a tackle box, and a lava lamp ( I still don't know why), and some incense I haven't seen since, and, uh, some other stuff. Also, I got seventy-five bucks: seventy from Grandpa, and five from Uncle Joe. I have to say: if you can manage it, being Grandpa's grandson can be pretty profitable. Ha, ha, ha. Just kidding, Grandpa. (Kind of!)
-The next year, school started back up. Pfaugh. And so did January. Now, I read somewhere that Cincinnati has never had a snowless January, but, if it weren't for some kind of freaking little flurry or something that happened in the very early days, we may be on our way to the first. We have had just slightly above zero snowfall this whole month so far. There are not words for the contempt I feel for this January. If there were something concrete I could blame it on--say, some machine--a good word would be hostility. If there were something to blame, I could get really involved, probably to a criminal extent, in absolutely ravaging whatever it was until it was torn apart into unrecognizable bits. This has been the suckiest winter I've experienced as far back as I can remember. All season, we've had one snowstorm! And then about four weeks of fifty-degree weather! As soon as humanly possible, I'm getting out of this backward, oil-slicked, dark gray town, this town that's covered tangibly with a thick layer of tedium, where there are no positive aspects or attractions, where the center of town is a Taco Bell, and of course where the school system has been perverted by soulless board members who don't even consider what the students think and whose goal looks to be to turn Finneytown into Big Brother's first outpost, just to give a totalitarian kick to the new millennium. I may or may not go to college somewhere in New England (see below post), but wherever I do, I'm going to move to Minnesota afterwards. As soon as I can, I'll buy a shoreline cabin on a forgotten lake wrapped in dark green pine forest and stretching out far enough to get lost in. During the nights, the only sound will be the occasional thunderstorm every week or so and maybe distant cars on a highway that only exists as part of a world I don't belong to. During the days, there will be the interweaving songs of all the different birds on shore, and the splash of my kayak's paddles and the whiz of my reel as I go out into a distant bay to catch fish for dinner, and maybe the thrum of a mayfly's wings just before it lands on my hand. On vacations, I'll go out paddling, straying for days down a string of interconnected lakes into places where they haven't yet gotten the news that the human race was invented, and then stopping in a distant lake, turning around, and pointing my kayak back to home whenever I decide I want to. Maybe I'll remember those days when I was in a distant land of truck exhaust, police sirens, and the afterglow of city lights electrifying the smog to taint the night sky from black to a sickly purple. Then I'll just shake my head and jump into the water.
Exams were last week. I'm embarrassed to admit I had to take English: I got a B first quarter, because I failed to turn in one assignment. It was the Puritanism and Neoclassicism notes that we had to turn in alongside the test on the test day. I hadn't taken notes in class, because I'm not a take-notes kind of guy, and I never heard her tell us to, and so I stayed up 'til after midnight the night before to work on them. Then, on the test day, there was no exact time when someone said, "Okay, turn your notes in now to this place," and so I didn't. I suppose we were just supposed to staple them to the test. So, I didn't turn them in, and they were worth (whoa!) twenty points, and I got a B for the quarter. Mom, shut up! Yes, it is too late to do anything about it, and yes, I almost ceratinly have an A for the semester anyhow! But I had to take the exam. Otherwise, the ones that you can't get exempt from were math, history, Spanish, and physics. The only hard one among these was history, but boy was it a bear. Fortunately, Mr Volz grades on a curve. He says only one person has ever gotten an uncurved A on his midterm, and she was the person who, when they were reviewing things in class, would say, "Oh, yeah, that's question 18 on test 7," or something like that. On the day I took physics and history, there were three exams scheduled, but there's obviously no exam for study hall, so I had a free bell between them, and it lasted two and a half hours. The exam schedule said students were expected to stay off campus when they didn't have an exam, but just to be sure, I checked in with Mrs Flick to see what I was supposed to do. She said I had to stay on campus! So: not only is the school moronic for making me stay when I had nothing to do, it's also misleading and inconsistent! Well, Aaron invited me to stay in Mrs Lawyer's room to waste time while he finished up some sort of webpage design project for her, so I did.
The forecast calls for warmer-than-average weather, with rain two days next week, and a possiblity of a little bit of snow that will melt anyhow.
This is the first of two new posts. The other is just underneath this one.
-Well. First, the holidays. Boy, it's a stretch thinking back that far. First, we went on up to Dayton or wherever--Middletown, Centerville, one of those--and did Christmas on my Dad's side of the family. I got some good socks like I asked for, one of those neat Magnetic Induction Principle flashlights, uh, some other things, and of course peanut butter fudge. Nana's peanut butter fudge is sublime. And since it's made with sugar, it keeps for a long time, enabling me to eat just one piece a day and savor it for weeks. I think I have seven pieces left.
-A few days later (on Christmas Eve--for tactical reasons, Christmas is never allowed to be on Christmas now), we had Christmas in Oxford with my Mom's side of the family. There I got a few books, also as I asked, and a fishing lure, and a tackle box, and a lava lamp ( I still don't know why), and some incense I haven't seen since, and, uh, some other stuff. Also, I got seventy-five bucks: seventy from Grandpa, and five from Uncle Joe. I have to say: if you can manage it, being Grandpa's grandson can be pretty profitable. Ha, ha, ha. Just kidding, Grandpa. (Kind of!)
-The next year, school started back up. Pfaugh. And so did January. Now, I read somewhere that Cincinnati has never had a snowless January, but, if it weren't for some kind of freaking little flurry or something that happened in the very early days, we may be on our way to the first. We have had just slightly above zero snowfall this whole month so far. There are not words for the contempt I feel for this January. If there were something concrete I could blame it on--say, some machine--a good word would be hostility. If there were something to blame, I could get really involved, probably to a criminal extent, in absolutely ravaging whatever it was until it was torn apart into unrecognizable bits. This has been the suckiest winter I've experienced as far back as I can remember. All season, we've had one snowstorm! And then about four weeks of fifty-degree weather! As soon as humanly possible, I'm getting out of this backward, oil-slicked, dark gray town, this town that's covered tangibly with a thick layer of tedium, where there are no positive aspects or attractions, where the center of town is a Taco Bell, and of course where the school system has been perverted by soulless board members who don't even consider what the students think and whose goal looks to be to turn Finneytown into Big Brother's first outpost, just to give a totalitarian kick to the new millennium. I may or may not go to college somewhere in New England (see below post), but wherever I do, I'm going to move to Minnesota afterwards. As soon as I can, I'll buy a shoreline cabin on a forgotten lake wrapped in dark green pine forest and stretching out far enough to get lost in. During the nights, the only sound will be the occasional thunderstorm every week or so and maybe distant cars on a highway that only exists as part of a world I don't belong to. During the days, there will be the interweaving songs of all the different birds on shore, and the splash of my kayak's paddles and the whiz of my reel as I go out into a distant bay to catch fish for dinner, and maybe the thrum of a mayfly's wings just before it lands on my hand. On vacations, I'll go out paddling, straying for days down a string of interconnected lakes into places where they haven't yet gotten the news that the human race was invented, and then stopping in a distant lake, turning around, and pointing my kayak back to home whenever I decide I want to. Maybe I'll remember those days when I was in a distant land of truck exhaust, police sirens, and the afterglow of city lights electrifying the smog to taint the night sky from black to a sickly purple. Then I'll just shake my head and jump into the water.
Exams were last week. I'm embarrassed to admit I had to take English: I got a B first quarter, because I failed to turn in one assignment. It was the Puritanism and Neoclassicism notes that we had to turn in alongside the test on the test day. I hadn't taken notes in class, because I'm not a take-notes kind of guy, and I never heard her tell us to, and so I stayed up 'til after midnight the night before to work on them. Then, on the test day, there was no exact time when someone said, "Okay, turn your notes in now to this place," and so I didn't. I suppose we were just supposed to staple them to the test. So, I didn't turn them in, and they were worth (whoa!) twenty points, and I got a B for the quarter. Mom, shut up! Yes, it is too late to do anything about it, and yes, I almost ceratinly have an A for the semester anyhow! But I had to take the exam. Otherwise, the ones that you can't get exempt from were math, history, Spanish, and physics. The only hard one among these was history, but boy was it a bear. Fortunately, Mr Volz grades on a curve. He says only one person has ever gotten an uncurved A on his midterm, and she was the person who, when they were reviewing things in class, would say, "Oh, yeah, that's question 18 on test 7," or something like that. On the day I took physics and history, there were three exams scheduled, but there's obviously no exam for study hall, so I had a free bell between them, and it lasted two and a half hours. The exam schedule said students were expected to stay off campus when they didn't have an exam, but just to be sure, I checked in with Mrs Flick to see what I was supposed to do. She said I had to stay on campus! So: not only is the school moronic for making me stay when I had nothing to do, it's also misleading and inconsistent! Well, Aaron invited me to stay in Mrs Lawyer's room to waste time while he finished up some sort of webpage design project for her, so I did.
The forecast calls for warmer-than-average weather, with rain two days next week, and a possiblity of a little bit of snow that will melt anyhow.
This is the first of two new posts. The other is just underneath this one.
Oh, something else
I just reread the comments on my last post, and I noticed they had a distinct collegiate bent.
-I haven't even come close to deciding what college I'm going to go to. A few days ago, BJ was around on his semester break, and I had a nice long talk with him about colleges. He suggested one called Amherst in Massachusetts, and some other one in Minnesota that I forgot. He says pick one I like. Well, I won't try to contradict that advice. But he also says I ought to pick out one with a good reputation for its English department if I want to be an editor. This begs the question, BJ: How am I supposed to know what a college's reputation is? What I really need around now is a big list that says what assorted colleges are known for, and how well they're known for it. Is there such a list? Where do I get it? There probably isn't. So, how do I know?
-Another thing I need to know is how much colleges give for a National Merit Scholarship. It's different with each college. So how do I know what it is for each college? Like, say, does Amherst tell somewhere on their website how much they're going to give me because I'm a Scholar? And if not, how am I supposed to tastefully find out--from each college I'm thinking about? Or am I supposed to just navigate in the dark? And more than just how much they'll give me, here's another question. Where does it say what the tuition is for a college? That at least is probably on the website somewhere.
-Those are the questions I keep asking. Now I've actually asked them of someone.
-I haven't even come close to deciding what college I'm going to go to. A few days ago, BJ was around on his semester break, and I had a nice long talk with him about colleges. He suggested one called Amherst in Massachusetts, and some other one in Minnesota that I forgot. He says pick one I like. Well, I won't try to contradict that advice. But he also says I ought to pick out one with a good reputation for its English department if I want to be an editor. This begs the question, BJ: How am I supposed to know what a college's reputation is? What I really need around now is a big list that says what assorted colleges are known for, and how well they're known for it. Is there such a list? Where do I get it? There probably isn't. So, how do I know?
-Another thing I need to know is how much colleges give for a National Merit Scholarship. It's different with each college. So how do I know what it is for each college? Like, say, does Amherst tell somewhere on their website how much they're going to give me because I'm a Scholar? And if not, how am I supposed to tastefully find out--from each college I'm thinking about? Or am I supposed to just navigate in the dark? And more than just how much they'll give me, here's another question. Where does it say what the tuition is for a college? That at least is probably on the website somewhere.
-Those are the questions I keep asking. Now I've actually asked them of someone.
Monday, December 12, 2005
Four Sherbet Nixons and a Fudge Jibbly-Do
I didn't know what title to use, because I don't know what I'm going to write yet exactly, so I just made something up.
-Well, I'm going to write for the moment about that thing I mentioned at the end of the last post--the "rededication" of the PAC. I'll just copy it out of my journal.
-I had to report at 1815. It started, comically, at 1930. We all just sat and did nothing--or watched the Bengals-Colts game--until we went into the PAC slightly before then We stood onstage and played the Opener and the Closer (for the last time, I might add), and then sat down in some hard wooden seats to enjoy the ceremony.
-I really, literally don't think I can describe the profound, the unbelievable, the impossible boringness. I'll try. Imagine: You are sitting on a cushionless chair in a darkened section of the PAC 100 yards from the stage. The whole group you're with has been cautioned to be very quiet. Onstage, there is an old person. Thie person's task is to tell the whole audience what the PAC was like in the '70s, and to reminisce at incredible length and exhaustiveness about all the plays he did in the '70s--who directed them, the names of all the cast members, and anything and everything else he can possibly remember. He goes on for about twenty minutes without mentioning a single thing you can connect to, or a name you recognize. Then he concludes, there's some sarcastic applause, and up to the podium comes another old person. He is in charge of the '80s. Each speaker took at least twenty minutes onstage; some showed unrecognizable slides, and some came on as a group. Because the focus was moving toward the present from the '70s, they got progressively younger and more numerous. The three in charge of the '90s lasted probably 40 0r 50 minutes. I think they repeated some decades a couple times, because there were more than three groups.
-Finally, we all got up, attempted but failed to go onstage, and then spread around the audience, and had Mr William Swartzel, who started the band program Way Back When, conduct us in the fight song. Then, then we all ran away from the PAC like people chased by wolves and went home shaken. I could not believe how boring that was.
-Now that I've bored you all, let me think what else has happened. We did our holiday concert. Though I played pretty well in practice even a few hours before (at home), my lips were absolutely blown when I got onstage. I couldn't figure it out, but I couldn't get above, like, an F. I probably stuck out, too. They say what's done is done, but I still wish it were done better.
-The following week the big talk around town was the snowstorm predicted for Thursday night. Sources predicted it varying from two to eight inches, but always with 100% certainty of snow. The only question was how much it would snow and when it would start: these are the determining factors in a snow day. I had heard 1400, but on Thursday it didn't start up until I was biking home from school at 1500. Far too early, I thought. Fortunately, it wouldn't stop. It came down vigorously hour after hour, and slowly built up to at least, I figured, six inches. I was disappointed to note it tapering off at around eight or maybe later (I don't remember). I went to bed late, and when I did, there was at least a two-hour delay called in for Finneytown. I hoped for more.
-When I woke up it proved to be a snow day. So Micah and I took a walk up to Warder. I forgot to tell you about what we found up at Warder the other day. We were just walking around by the Ivory Tower (the tall pine tree) when we saw a couple of 6′×6′ wooden decks, one lying on the ground and one leaning up against a tree, and some plywood against another tree. There were also four chairs arranged around a fire pit. Weird, we thought. We investigated a little. Without too much effort, we discovered something even stranger: behind the sheets of plywood were five huge 3′×5′ playing cards. They were K♣, K♠, J♠, J♣, and Q♦. The Queen was weird because she looked like she was singing opera and her crown was poking off the top of the card, like those billboards that have extensions. We also found a scepter with a spade on the end. My immediate first thought was that it was some kind of weird pagan ritual. I still don't know any more about it. Without anything else to see, we left the area.
-That was a week or two before the snow day. On the snow day we just went to the pond and threw stuff across. It wasn't thick enough to walk on, which was puzzling because we'd had about four days in a row where it didn't get above freezing. A little later we went home.
-I had a surprisingly good Monday today. In band we got music: The Awakening, which we played last year, and something called New Dawn. That wasn't what contributed to it being good--it just happened. Let's see. I got my PSAT score back. I got a 222, and I'm in the 99th percentile. Rosie last year got annoyed because I kept asking everyone what they got and then telling them what I got (217) when they asked. She said it was bragging. So this year I just left the results sheet on my desk and watched people come over and look at it, or told them when they asked unsolicited. It still got all over the school, but this time it wasn't because of me. So there, Rosie.
-Next we had academic team, against both Summit Country Day and Mariemont. The matches were separated, and once we finished one we got to go to the other. With Summit, we didn't win, but I got a bunch of questions in the lightning round. With Mariemont we didn't win, but we were darn close, and we would have if they hadn't been faster than us on that last question. We lost 30 to 31. The last answer was Antony and Cleopatra, and Jane knew it (and I guess I kind of did), but they got it first. Nuts.
-But, I was asked my name by the coach of Summit's team, and she wrote it down under "best player on opposing team". I thought that was swell. I rode my bike home, and, since the sidewalks are covered with giant clumps of snow, I rode on the road. That was invigorating.
-And I finished off the day so far with a good pot roast. I've just discovered that my mom, who just left for a vacation to Arizona to her aunt and uncle to burn up her leftover vacation time (which she can't cash in or roll over), has gotten mysteriously ill. She got that way just three hours after she got on the plane, and now she's up in some hospital. They don't know exactly what's going on yet, or, if they do, they haven't told us. But apparently she still has the strength to nag me from across the country (viz. the last comment last post), so it can't be too bad.
-Well, I'm going to write for the moment about that thing I mentioned at the end of the last post--the "rededication" of the PAC. I'll just copy it out of my journal.
-I had to report at 1815. It started, comically, at 1930. We all just sat and did nothing--or watched the Bengals-Colts game--until we went into the PAC slightly before then We stood onstage and played the Opener and the Closer (for the last time, I might add), and then sat down in some hard wooden seats to enjoy the ceremony.
-I really, literally don't think I can describe the profound, the unbelievable, the impossible boringness. I'll try. Imagine: You are sitting on a cushionless chair in a darkened section of the PAC 100 yards from the stage. The whole group you're with has been cautioned to be very quiet. Onstage, there is an old person. Thie person's task is to tell the whole audience what the PAC was like in the '70s, and to reminisce at incredible length and exhaustiveness about all the plays he did in the '70s--who directed them, the names of all the cast members, and anything and everything else he can possibly remember. He goes on for about twenty minutes without mentioning a single thing you can connect to, or a name you recognize. Then he concludes, there's some sarcastic applause, and up to the podium comes another old person. He is in charge of the '80s. Each speaker took at least twenty minutes onstage; some showed unrecognizable slides, and some came on as a group. Because the focus was moving toward the present from the '70s, they got progressively younger and more numerous. The three in charge of the '90s lasted probably 40 0r 50 minutes. I think they repeated some decades a couple times, because there were more than three groups.
-Finally, we all got up, attempted but failed to go onstage, and then spread around the audience, and had Mr William Swartzel, who started the band program Way Back When, conduct us in the fight song. Then, then we all ran away from the PAC like people chased by wolves and went home shaken. I could not believe how boring that was.
-Now that I've bored you all, let me think what else has happened. We did our holiday concert. Though I played pretty well in practice even a few hours before (at home), my lips were absolutely blown when I got onstage. I couldn't figure it out, but I couldn't get above, like, an F. I probably stuck out, too. They say what's done is done, but I still wish it were done better.
-The following week the big talk around town was the snowstorm predicted for Thursday night. Sources predicted it varying from two to eight inches, but always with 100% certainty of snow. The only question was how much it would snow and when it would start: these are the determining factors in a snow day. I had heard 1400, but on Thursday it didn't start up until I was biking home from school at 1500. Far too early, I thought. Fortunately, it wouldn't stop. It came down vigorously hour after hour, and slowly built up to at least, I figured, six inches. I was disappointed to note it tapering off at around eight or maybe later (I don't remember). I went to bed late, and when I did, there was at least a two-hour delay called in for Finneytown. I hoped for more.
-When I woke up it proved to be a snow day. So Micah and I took a walk up to Warder. I forgot to tell you about what we found up at Warder the other day. We were just walking around by the Ivory Tower (the tall pine tree) when we saw a couple of 6′×6′ wooden decks, one lying on the ground and one leaning up against a tree, and some plywood against another tree. There were also four chairs arranged around a fire pit. Weird, we thought. We investigated a little. Without too much effort, we discovered something even stranger: behind the sheets of plywood were five huge 3′×5′ playing cards. They were K♣, K♠, J♠, J♣, and Q♦. The Queen was weird because she looked like she was singing opera and her crown was poking off the top of the card, like those billboards that have extensions. We also found a scepter with a spade on the end. My immediate first thought was that it was some kind of weird pagan ritual. I still don't know any more about it. Without anything else to see, we left the area.
-That was a week or two before the snow day. On the snow day we just went to the pond and threw stuff across. It wasn't thick enough to walk on, which was puzzling because we'd had about four days in a row where it didn't get above freezing. A little later we went home.
-I had a surprisingly good Monday today. In band we got music: The Awakening, which we played last year, and something called New Dawn. That wasn't what contributed to it being good--it just happened. Let's see. I got my PSAT score back. I got a 222, and I'm in the 99th percentile. Rosie last year got annoyed because I kept asking everyone what they got and then telling them what I got (217) when they asked. She said it was bragging. So this year I just left the results sheet on my desk and watched people come over and look at it, or told them when they asked unsolicited. It still got all over the school, but this time it wasn't because of me. So there, Rosie.
-Next we had academic team, against both Summit Country Day and Mariemont. The matches were separated, and once we finished one we got to go to the other. With Summit, we didn't win, but I got a bunch of questions in the lightning round. With Mariemont we didn't win, but we were darn close, and we would have if they hadn't been faster than us on that last question. We lost 30 to 31. The last answer was Antony and Cleopatra, and Jane knew it (and I guess I kind of did), but they got it first. Nuts.
-But, I was asked my name by the coach of Summit's team, and she wrote it down under "best player on opposing team". I thought that was swell. I rode my bike home, and, since the sidewalks are covered with giant clumps of snow, I rode on the road. That was invigorating.
-And I finished off the day so far with a good pot roast. I've just discovered that my mom, who just left for a vacation to Arizona to her aunt and uncle to burn up her leftover vacation time (which she can't cash in or roll over), has gotten mysteriously ill. She got that way just three hours after she got on the plane, and now she's up in some hospital. They don't know exactly what's going on yet, or, if they do, they haven't told us. But apparently she still has the strength to nag me from across the country (viz. the last comment last post), so it can't be too bad.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Now up--winter
I have neglected to write. Now, I'll be the first to admit that my life has been pretty busy, but I won't pretend that I had absolutely no time to write an entry. Another part of the lateness was just that I didn't want to at the time ("the time" being just whenever). Anyhow, here I am, back with you today, as if nothing had happened.
-First and most importantly, marching band season is over. And about time! We went to State in Columbus on November 4th. The high school hosting it was the size of a modest college. We were the first band to perform. Before going, we stood behind the field idling for twenty minutes while the judges combed their hair and read the comics. ("Hey, Mary Worth is good today.") Then we did our show just like we'd been trained to since July--excellently. Unfortunately, the judges didn't think it was quite so good. Perhaps because we went on first and if they'd given us a One they'd have had to give one to everyone else, or perhaps because our tone was off because of our nice break behind the field, or perhaps because they had a little indigestion and were in a bad mood, they gave us a Two. Well, a Two at State isn't so bad. Not the best, but nothing to sneeze at. Look at it this way: we hadn't even been to state until last year. So we're still cool.
-Seeing as marching band is done with, Concert Band is up. For our holiday concert we have such classics as Sholom Aleichem and A Christmas Festival, along with such actual classics as Hallelujah Chorus (from The Messiah) and Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. I haven't had a bunch of time to practice. I shall get on that this weekend. As well as my playing test (which I just have to record for Mr Canter on a tape).
-Moving Right Along
-We've had an abnormally warm fall this year. All up until two days ago, when I went outside, I felt like I was stepping into a warm September day, not anything like November. But then a highly organized and efficient straight line of storms made a sweep of the whole country, extending all the way from Mississippi or so up to Michigan or thereabouts, and towing a cold front behind them. As a result, we had some reasonably heavy sleet before the line had entirely gotten past us, and the next morning was below freezing. Today, a little puddle that always collects in a little depression on one of the school's sidewalks was frozen until at least ten o'clock. So, winter is finally getting its act together and coming off its stylish vacation in Australia to start working up here, and to that I say, "About time."
-We got report cards recently, and I'm pleased to tell you today that I've just signed legislation outlawing Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes. (Have you never heard that Reagan outtake?) Ah, I have strayed a bit. What I mean is that Mom says I got 2 B's and the rest A's. I haven't actually seen it myself, because Mom didn't actually show it to me, but that's what she says. One of them, I believe, is in English, and since that's a semester class I'm not exempt from the midterm. Crap! I couldn't say exactly what caused me to get a B in English (If that's where it was)--I seem to recall getting an A on everything she handed back. AP history I didn't really expect to get an A in, and no, that's not why I didn't--it's genuinely hard, and involves memorizing way too much stuff to be legal. But it's okay. Mr Volz told us that even you, BJ, had your bad moments. (He was saying that you can get a bad test grade and then get a 5 on the AP test, and that there was no doubt from the beginning of the year that the person in question was going to get a 5, and I figured it had to have been you, and he said yeah.) On the other hand, I have to take that midterm too. But the rest of that week is free & clear--almost like an extension of my winter break! I think. Is that how it's going to play out? Ah, I'll check it out later.
-Steven Hackmann, in charge of Youth Groups, has just now called and generously offered to let me rake the leaves of some woman from the church on Saturday morning at 0930, so I suppose I will.
-There's some other stupid band thing on Sunday-- the "rededication" of the PAC. I very much do not want to go. I don't know that I will. I've had enough with band functions. Mr Canter ought surely to have sensed that from everyone in the band by now.
-If I were hungry right now, I'd want some chili. Maybe later I will be.
-First and most importantly, marching band season is over. And about time! We went to State in Columbus on November 4th. The high school hosting it was the size of a modest college. We were the first band to perform. Before going, we stood behind the field idling for twenty minutes while the judges combed their hair and read the comics. ("Hey, Mary Worth is good today.") Then we did our show just like we'd been trained to since July--excellently. Unfortunately, the judges didn't think it was quite so good. Perhaps because we went on first and if they'd given us a One they'd have had to give one to everyone else, or perhaps because our tone was off because of our nice break behind the field, or perhaps because they had a little indigestion and were in a bad mood, they gave us a Two. Well, a Two at State isn't so bad. Not the best, but nothing to sneeze at. Look at it this way: we hadn't even been to state until last year. So we're still cool.
-Seeing as marching band is done with, Concert Band is up. For our holiday concert we have such classics as Sholom Aleichem and A Christmas Festival, along with such actual classics as Hallelujah Chorus (from The Messiah) and Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. I haven't had a bunch of time to practice. I shall get on that this weekend. As well as my playing test (which I just have to record for Mr Canter on a tape).
-Moving Right Along
-We've had an abnormally warm fall this year. All up until two days ago, when I went outside, I felt like I was stepping into a warm September day, not anything like November. But then a highly organized and efficient straight line of storms made a sweep of the whole country, extending all the way from Mississippi or so up to Michigan or thereabouts, and towing a cold front behind them. As a result, we had some reasonably heavy sleet before the line had entirely gotten past us, and the next morning was below freezing. Today, a little puddle that always collects in a little depression on one of the school's sidewalks was frozen until at least ten o'clock. So, winter is finally getting its act together and coming off its stylish vacation in Australia to start working up here, and to that I say, "About time."
-We got report cards recently, and I'm pleased to tell you today that I've just signed legislation outlawing Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes. (Have you never heard that Reagan outtake?) Ah, I have strayed a bit. What I mean is that Mom says I got 2 B's and the rest A's. I haven't actually seen it myself, because Mom didn't actually show it to me, but that's what she says. One of them, I believe, is in English, and since that's a semester class I'm not exempt from the midterm. Crap! I couldn't say exactly what caused me to get a B in English (If that's where it was)--I seem to recall getting an A on everything she handed back. AP history I didn't really expect to get an A in, and no, that's not why I didn't--it's genuinely hard, and involves memorizing way too much stuff to be legal. But it's okay. Mr Volz told us that even you, BJ, had your bad moments. (He was saying that you can get a bad test grade and then get a 5 on the AP test, and that there was no doubt from the beginning of the year that the person in question was going to get a 5, and I figured it had to have been you, and he said yeah.) On the other hand, I have to take that midterm too. But the rest of that week is free & clear--almost like an extension of my winter break! I think. Is that how it's going to play out? Ah, I'll check it out later.
-Steven Hackmann, in charge of Youth Groups, has just now called and generously offered to let me rake the leaves of some woman from the church on Saturday morning at 0930, so I suppose I will.
-There's some other stupid band thing on Sunday-- the "rededication" of the PAC. I very much do not want to go. I don't know that I will. I've had enough with band functions. Mr Canter ought surely to have sensed that from everyone in the band by now.
-If I were hungry right now, I'd want some chili. Maybe later I will be.
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Food for thought
Mrs Lani's real name is Roselani Nowicki. The first name is Hawaiian; the last name is Polish. The "MRS. LANI" sign in her bus is in a Chinese-style font. She defies classification.
It's been going about normal. We went to two more contests and Qualified two more times. Or has it only been one contest? I'm not prepared for this entry, really. I just found out what Mrs Lani's name was and thought I'd say so on my blog, so I wasn't planning much else.
It's getting to be fall here in Ohio. I read that we here have even more colors than those guys up in New England. However, I also read Bill Bryson's article about New England falls, where he asserts that they're the best not only because they have so many colors, but because the background is exceptional--nice towns and pretty churches--and the air is superb. Regardless either way, I have to spend my fall in Ohio, so I might as well enjoy it as I can. A while ago, I tried to go online and find a guide to when each tree changes colors, what color it changes to, and so on. There was nothing available. Well dang it, I thought, I guess I'll just have to make my own. But not this year, because fall has already started. I'm going to learn stuff about trees starting now, and then I'll be better prepared to record the changing of the seasons when next autumn rolls around. Of course, I could use some help. I'm probably not going to be able to go visit one of every species of trees every day to see if it's changed or not--in fact, I certainly won't. This is where you come in. If, as you watch that tree in your yard change next year, you were to casually note what species it is, what color you'd say it just changed, and the date, and send that information on over to me, I would be quite pleased. This sounds like a fun kind of project. I'll do it every year, of course, so I can get average dates, not just dates for one specific year... I'll have charts, I'll have... other stuff. Don't you agree that it's a noble endeavor?
-I don't have too much else to say. Uh, I've been eating a lot of Hot Pockets, because Mom keeps buying them, and they're not too bad. And I've been working on Cyril. Gettin' better. And for our latest, last game we all dressed up in Halloween costumes, so I dressed up as Neo. So, uh, that's all for today.
It's been going about normal. We went to two more contests and Qualified two more times. Or has it only been one contest? I'm not prepared for this entry, really. I just found out what Mrs Lani's name was and thought I'd say so on my blog, so I wasn't planning much else.
It's getting to be fall here in Ohio. I read that we here have even more colors than those guys up in New England. However, I also read Bill Bryson's article about New England falls, where he asserts that they're the best not only because they have so many colors, but because the background is exceptional--nice towns and pretty churches--and the air is superb. Regardless either way, I have to spend my fall in Ohio, so I might as well enjoy it as I can. A while ago, I tried to go online and find a guide to when each tree changes colors, what color it changes to, and so on. There was nothing available. Well dang it, I thought, I guess I'll just have to make my own. But not this year, because fall has already started. I'm going to learn stuff about trees starting now, and then I'll be better prepared to record the changing of the seasons when next autumn rolls around. Of course, I could use some help. I'm probably not going to be able to go visit one of every species of trees every day to see if it's changed or not--in fact, I certainly won't. This is where you come in. If, as you watch that tree in your yard change next year, you were to casually note what species it is, what color you'd say it just changed, and the date, and send that information on over to me, I would be quite pleased. This sounds like a fun kind of project. I'll do it every year, of course, so I can get average dates, not just dates for one specific year... I'll have charts, I'll have... other stuff. Don't you agree that it's a noble endeavor?
-I don't have too much else to say. Uh, I've been eating a lot of Hot Pockets, because Mom keeps buying them, and they're not too bad. And I've been working on Cyril. Gettin' better. And for our latest, last game we all dressed up in Halloween costumes, so I dressed up as Neo. So, uh, that's all for today.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Grape-Nuts
Yesterday, the only breakfast in the house was a box of Grape-Nuts. I had wanted to try Grape-Nuts for a while. That guy on the commercial, and occasionally people I had seen, looked to think it tasted pretty good. So I poured myself half a bowl as a trial. Then I took a bite.
-I figured it would taste like one of two extremes: either like sawdust or like a delicious bowl of fruit. Well, what I discovered is that it doesn't taste like anything whatsoever. That simple: no taste at all. Thus, the texture makes or breaks whether the cereal is tolerable. And the texture, I decided, was like a mouthful of pebbles. So here I was, with a bowl of gravel that I couldn't possibly eat. In the interest of not being wasteful, I drank just the milk from it, and then threw it out. Yes, I know there are starving kids in Africa, but I'm confident they wouldn't have liked them either.
-And that brings us to the starving kids in Africa. Today in history class, Mr Volz told us to get out a sheet of looseleaf and start writing a letter to a person about our age in Tanzania. He gave us a little background on Tanzania: apparently, it's on the east coast of Africa. And judging from the pictures he sent around, it's also very hot, boring, and hot. There does seem to be starvation, too: one picture showed a kid looking a lot like shrink-wrapped bones. I thought, "That really sucks." I wrote a letter answering the four prompts on the board
1) Who am I?
2) What is a typical day like for me?
3) What would I like to see changed in the world by the time I grow up?
4) How can I help make this happen?
I said I had big hair and I'd like to see the environment less dirty, and to that end I never litter, I recycle whenever possible, and I almost always go places by bike. For my typical day, I described a school day, and then said that when I get home I either go to Warder Park, read a book, or work on my font Cyril.
-And that of course brings us to Cyril. I've made all the letters now. That doesn't mean I'm finished--far from it. Now that I've made all the letters, it goes up for critique, to make sure it's the best it possibly can be. Then I make an Italic. After that I make a bold and a bold italic. And of course I'm making all the Russian bells and whistles, which means about seventy characters, even though only 33 or so are used in regular Russian. The rest are for things like ancient texts and Church Slavonic, when they hadn't whittled the alphabet down quite so far yet. I realize that nobody will ever use these, most likely, but I decided that if I'm going to name the font Cyril I should really include the most of the Cyrillic alphabet I can. (Cyrillic is the name for the Russian alphabet, named after a St Cyril who adapted the Greek alphabet to Russian.) In the meantime, if you want to see a bunch of people talking about beziers, x-heights, encoding, boumas, and hinting, and be astounded when I understand almost all of it, tune in to http://typophile.com/node/12860 and don't say I didn't warn you.
-I figured it would taste like one of two extremes: either like sawdust or like a delicious bowl of fruit. Well, what I discovered is that it doesn't taste like anything whatsoever. That simple: no taste at all. Thus, the texture makes or breaks whether the cereal is tolerable. And the texture, I decided, was like a mouthful of pebbles. So here I was, with a bowl of gravel that I couldn't possibly eat. In the interest of not being wasteful, I drank just the milk from it, and then threw it out. Yes, I know there are starving kids in Africa, but I'm confident they wouldn't have liked them either.
-And that brings us to the starving kids in Africa. Today in history class, Mr Volz told us to get out a sheet of looseleaf and start writing a letter to a person about our age in Tanzania. He gave us a little background on Tanzania: apparently, it's on the east coast of Africa. And judging from the pictures he sent around, it's also very hot, boring, and hot. There does seem to be starvation, too: one picture showed a kid looking a lot like shrink-wrapped bones. I thought, "That really sucks." I wrote a letter answering the four prompts on the board
1) Who am I?
2) What is a typical day like for me?
3) What would I like to see changed in the world by the time I grow up?
4) How can I help make this happen?
I said I had big hair and I'd like to see the environment less dirty, and to that end I never litter, I recycle whenever possible, and I almost always go places by bike. For my typical day, I described a school day, and then said that when I get home I either go to Warder Park, read a book, or work on my font Cyril.
-And that of course brings us to Cyril. I've made all the letters now. That doesn't mean I'm finished--far from it. Now that I've made all the letters, it goes up for critique, to make sure it's the best it possibly can be. Then I make an Italic. After that I make a bold and a bold italic. And of course I'm making all the Russian bells and whistles, which means about seventy characters, even though only 33 or so are used in regular Russian. The rest are for things like ancient texts and Church Slavonic, when they hadn't whittled the alphabet down quite so far yet. I realize that nobody will ever use these, most likely, but I decided that if I'm going to name the font Cyril I should really include the most of the Cyrillic alphabet I can. (Cyrillic is the name for the Russian alphabet, named after a St Cyril who adapted the Greek alphabet to Russian.) In the meantime, if you want to see a bunch of people talking about beziers, x-heights, encoding, boumas, and hinting, and be astounded when I understand almost all of it, tune in to http://typophile.com/node/12860 and don't say I didn't warn you.
Sunday, October 2, 2005
The Suspense
Hi, BJ. Hi, everyone. How's it going? Long time no see.
Sorry I didn't write anything. It's because junior year is quite the busy year. I've had barely any time to write. When I did have time to write, I usually used it on working on my font instead. In fact, Cyril is coming along very well. It's so much better than that version of it that I posted under critique on that one website. It's also getting very complete. Matt, as soon as I get done with it, I'll e-mail you the new version. And then, then I get to start working on the italic. When I haven't been working on the font or busy with school stuff... band, homework... I guess those are the times when I ought to have posted. But, I forgot about the blog at those particular times.
-As I've mentioned, this month has been busy. Band is a leading factor. Every Friday a game, and for the last three Saturdays there's been a competition that took up the entire day. Oh, these competitions... oh, these competitions. A typical competition involves getting to the school at about 1430, then marching in unfailingly hot weather for an hour. Then Mr Canter lets us go back into the band room and usually feeds us; this food break is an hour or so long. Once we've all finished eating and changing into Chafe Brand Band Pants, which go up to your armpits and hang off your shoulders by suspenders, we siphon ourselves onto the buses. Of course they're hot. They cool down some as we ride to another school somewhere, which takes at least 45 minutes, though the first two of the three trips we've taken so far took upwards of two hours. Bored, we tumble off the buses to start waiting for our practice area to clear out. From there we play some parts of the show, tune, and start accumulating into a block of bandmembers, whence we walk up to the area behind the field. There, we watch while another band finishes marching, and then we get into the stadium to start things going. We herd to about the fifty yard line, depending on where we are in the form, and stand at Parade Rest, and then some airheaded guy announces, "Finneytown Band, you may begin your preplacement/warmup." So we do. Next we all march onto the field. Only when we've all gotten onto the field does the announcer say, "You may take the field for your OMEA adjudicated performance," which always seemed peculiar to me.
-Now, during the show, the emotions are so varied that it's impossible to just generalize a typical show experience: it's different from person to person, and competition to competition. Usually there's plenty of tension. Sometimes there's confidence, sometimes nerves. But at any rate, what mood someone's in doesn't matter to the competition, so we put it on the back burner and just march. That's the way it has to be done. Our show is pretty exciting this year and everyone's gotten pretty well into it. So we do well.
-Once we get off the field we filter into a holding area somewhere, where Mr Canter stands on something (yesterday, a tractor tire) and briefs us on how we did. Then, depending on how many bands are left, we either change or don't, and go to the stands to let the competition finish out and the awards to be announced. This year we've done very well as comes to awards. At our first competition we swept the board for Class B bands and got third place for the whole competition, even beating out a AA band and all the A's; at our second one we didn't get many awards, and we were feeling pretty rotten when suddenly the guy announced we were going to State--afterwards we found out that the scores were all within about three points of each other, and that's why everyone got a little bit of everything and three of the four bands qualified for State--; and at our htird competition, yesterday, we marched even better, swept the board again--though we didn't get third place, because judges always seem to favor AA bands and Lakota East was here with all 300 of their members, and plus there were more bands than at the other one--and qualified again. Qualifying again only means that you haven't deteriorated in quality since last competition: you can't go to State twice.
-Finally we load the buses, drive home, and scatter to our respective houses. Usually that's at around 1 am. Yeah.
-In other news, junior year has been going So Far So Good, though I need to keep my nose at that grindstone and work like there ain't no more working... or something. I have a study hall half a year. That really grates me. And I'm only in one AP. Matt's in three. Rosie, three, and one last year. I'm slipping into the "underachiever" file. I suppose I'll just have to take a lot of APs next year. I figured out that there are seven bells that could all fit together, all APs. Matt said, "If you survive, you'll be valedictorian. And if you get all A's. If you don't, you'll just be dead." I don't know if I'll take AP Chem. Could be, could not. Same with Econ. I think physically one of those two won't even fit.
-Mr Lorenz is turning the ignition for Academic team on the 10th, and we'll be kept idling and warming up until the first competition, which is on the Whatth of Whentember. BJ! You're not here this year! What are we going to do? Now when we don't know the answer, nobody will be here to helpfully let us know it's Byron!
-I leave you with this: can you snap triplets with one hand and eighth notes with the other? Hint: it sounds like "Carol of the Bells".
Sorry I didn't write anything. It's because junior year is quite the busy year. I've had barely any time to write. When I did have time to write, I usually used it on working on my font instead. In fact, Cyril is coming along very well. It's so much better than that version of it that I posted under critique on that one website. It's also getting very complete. Matt, as soon as I get done with it, I'll e-mail you the new version. And then, then I get to start working on the italic. When I haven't been working on the font or busy with school stuff... band, homework... I guess those are the times when I ought to have posted. But, I forgot about the blog at those particular times.
-As I've mentioned, this month has been busy. Band is a leading factor. Every Friday a game, and for the last three Saturdays there's been a competition that took up the entire day. Oh, these competitions... oh, these competitions. A typical competition involves getting to the school at about 1430, then marching in unfailingly hot weather for an hour. Then Mr Canter lets us go back into the band room and usually feeds us; this food break is an hour or so long. Once we've all finished eating and changing into Chafe Brand Band Pants, which go up to your armpits and hang off your shoulders by suspenders, we siphon ourselves onto the buses. Of course they're hot. They cool down some as we ride to another school somewhere, which takes at least 45 minutes, though the first two of the three trips we've taken so far took upwards of two hours. Bored, we tumble off the buses to start waiting for our practice area to clear out. From there we play some parts of the show, tune, and start accumulating into a block of bandmembers, whence we walk up to the area behind the field. There, we watch while another band finishes marching, and then we get into the stadium to start things going. We herd to about the fifty yard line, depending on where we are in the form, and stand at Parade Rest, and then some airheaded guy announces, "Finneytown Band, you may begin your preplacement/warmup." So we do. Next we all march onto the field. Only when we've all gotten onto the field does the announcer say, "You may take the field for your OMEA adjudicated performance," which always seemed peculiar to me.
-Now, during the show, the emotions are so varied that it's impossible to just generalize a typical show experience: it's different from person to person, and competition to competition. Usually there's plenty of tension. Sometimes there's confidence, sometimes nerves. But at any rate, what mood someone's in doesn't matter to the competition, so we put it on the back burner and just march. That's the way it has to be done. Our show is pretty exciting this year and everyone's gotten pretty well into it. So we do well.
-Once we get off the field we filter into a holding area somewhere, where Mr Canter stands on something (yesterday, a tractor tire) and briefs us on how we did. Then, depending on how many bands are left, we either change or don't, and go to the stands to let the competition finish out and the awards to be announced. This year we've done very well as comes to awards. At our first competition we swept the board for Class B bands and got third place for the whole competition, even beating out a AA band and all the A's; at our second one we didn't get many awards, and we were feeling pretty rotten when suddenly the guy announced we were going to State--afterwards we found out that the scores were all within about three points of each other, and that's why everyone got a little bit of everything and three of the four bands qualified for State--; and at our htird competition, yesterday, we marched even better, swept the board again--though we didn't get third place, because judges always seem to favor AA bands and Lakota East was here with all 300 of their members, and plus there were more bands than at the other one--and qualified again. Qualifying again only means that you haven't deteriorated in quality since last competition: you can't go to State twice.
-Finally we load the buses, drive home, and scatter to our respective houses. Usually that's at around 1 am. Yeah.
-In other news, junior year has been going So Far So Good, though I need to keep my nose at that grindstone and work like there ain't no more working... or something. I have a study hall half a year. That really grates me. And I'm only in one AP. Matt's in three. Rosie, three, and one last year. I'm slipping into the "underachiever" file. I suppose I'll just have to take a lot of APs next year. I figured out that there are seven bells that could all fit together, all APs. Matt said, "If you survive, you'll be valedictorian. And if you get all A's. If you don't, you'll just be dead." I don't know if I'll take AP Chem. Could be, could not. Same with Econ. I think physically one of those two won't even fit.
-Mr Lorenz is turning the ignition for Academic team on the 10th, and we'll be kept idling and warming up until the first competition, which is on the Whatth of Whentember. BJ! You're not here this year! What are we going to do? Now when we don't know the answer, nobody will be here to helpfully let us know it's Byron!
-I leave you with this: can you snap triplets with one hand and eighth notes with the other? Hint: it sounds like "Carol of the Bells".
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Now that school has started
I got my schedule for the year the night before school started last Wednesday. I was disappointed to find I had a study hall fourth bell. Other than gym and B&W/digital photography (which I have because it was one of only three choices for that bell when I was making choices last spring), all my classes seemed pretty good.
-I woke up at o550 on accident (meaning for 0600, but my clocks wer ten minutes ahead somehow) and found that I didn't need half that time to get ready, so I sat around; I might have even gone back to sleep. Then I biked on up to the school.
-Band came first, and it was just like I remembered X-periods being: tired. Next came physics. Mr Barney, to impress us, did some tricks with an electromagnet and also an interesting one where he put rosin on his fingers and swiped them down a six-foot aluminum pole to make a noise sort of like the world's loudest dog whistle, except low enough that instead of being inaudible it only made you bleed through the ears.
-Gym was stupid; Creutz (Mr Creutzinger) gave us a bunch of forms to sign and told us what the rules were this year. Then came AP American History with Mr Volz. He has long hair and told us he had a sense of humor. When people tell you they have a sense of humor they usually don't have a spectacular one.
-In study hall I read the book I had, A Sand County Almanac (and Sketches Here and There). I like that book. Then I had Advanced Math Concepts with Mrs Otten, who said we were free to talk without raising our hands. Lunch was halfway through that bell; I had pizza. I finished math and then went to English. Mrs Kopke gave us a story to read on the very first night. I've heard that's more or less typical of how English 11 Accelerated goes. And finally I had Spanish IV with Mrs Rudolph, who almost looks like a student. She's short and about 21. After Spanish school let out.
-This year I have three classes with Aaron, compared to just English last year. I'm also with Rosie, Matt, and Kristen more than last year. I've tried to get my study hall fourth bell changed to Community Service, which would look good on a college application, but Mr Volz (who's in charge of that too) told me he already has 36 students in fourth bell and may have to eject some of them into study hall. He never explicitly told me no, so I'll keep a little bit of hope, but it's pretty dim.
-This year there's a new policy in our school: everyone has to tuck their shirts in. They say it's to promote common decency and keep people from concealing weapons. That's a bunch of hooey. Common decency? Tucking shirts in isn't common. And who are they to say just what Common Decency is anyhow? Not many people are tucking their shirts in, but at the class meeting today we found out that if everyone starts doing it they might consider repealing the rule. Also at the class meeting Aaron asked if we could start using mesh bookbags, as opposed to no bookbags, to carry stuff around to classes. As it is I have to carry a toppling twenty-pound stack of binders and textbooks and folders to each class until sixth bell. It doesn't take much to figure that's not quite right.
-This morning I was wearing a "Think Ahead" shirt that my mom ordered a few days ago and Mr Canter noticed it. When he did the daily announcements he said, "First of all, I want you all to look at Neo's shirt." (I'm called Neo in band, for obscure reasons.) "I think we all need to get a shirt like that."
-"I sell 'em," I said peppily.
-"Oh do you?" he said. He didn't ask me for the website name, possibly because I didn't have a chance to tell him I sold them on a website, but in Physics, Oh Who Was It asked me about it and I gave her the address. I'll post it here again too, because by now that one post is far buried. I also think I'll make another shirt today.
Cheers,
Myself
-I woke up at o550 on accident (meaning for 0600, but my clocks wer ten minutes ahead somehow) and found that I didn't need half that time to get ready, so I sat around; I might have even gone back to sleep. Then I biked on up to the school.
-Band came first, and it was just like I remembered X-periods being: tired. Next came physics. Mr Barney, to impress us, did some tricks with an electromagnet and also an interesting one where he put rosin on his fingers and swiped them down a six-foot aluminum pole to make a noise sort of like the world's loudest dog whistle, except low enough that instead of being inaudible it only made you bleed through the ears.
-Gym was stupid; Creutz (Mr Creutzinger) gave us a bunch of forms to sign and told us what the rules were this year. Then came AP American History with Mr Volz. He has long hair and told us he had a sense of humor. When people tell you they have a sense of humor they usually don't have a spectacular one.
-In study hall I read the book I had, A Sand County Almanac (and Sketches Here and There). I like that book. Then I had Advanced Math Concepts with Mrs Otten, who said we were free to talk without raising our hands. Lunch was halfway through that bell; I had pizza. I finished math and then went to English. Mrs Kopke gave us a story to read on the very first night. I've heard that's more or less typical of how English 11 Accelerated goes. And finally I had Spanish IV with Mrs Rudolph, who almost looks like a student. She's short and about 21. After Spanish school let out.
-This year I have three classes with Aaron, compared to just English last year. I'm also with Rosie, Matt, and Kristen more than last year. I've tried to get my study hall fourth bell changed to Community Service, which would look good on a college application, but Mr Volz (who's in charge of that too) told me he already has 36 students in fourth bell and may have to eject some of them into study hall. He never explicitly told me no, so I'll keep a little bit of hope, but it's pretty dim.
-This year there's a new policy in our school: everyone has to tuck their shirts in. They say it's to promote common decency and keep people from concealing weapons. That's a bunch of hooey. Common decency? Tucking shirts in isn't common. And who are they to say just what Common Decency is anyhow? Not many people are tucking their shirts in, but at the class meeting today we found out that if everyone starts doing it they might consider repealing the rule. Also at the class meeting Aaron asked if we could start using mesh bookbags, as opposed to no bookbags, to carry stuff around to classes. As it is I have to carry a toppling twenty-pound stack of binders and textbooks and folders to each class until sixth bell. It doesn't take much to figure that's not quite right.
-This morning I was wearing a "Think Ahead" shirt that my mom ordered a few days ago and Mr Canter noticed it. When he did the daily announcements he said, "First of all, I want you all to look at Neo's shirt." (I'm called Neo in band, for obscure reasons.) "I think we all need to get a shirt like that."
-"I sell 'em," I said peppily.
-"Oh do you?" he said. He didn't ask me for the website name, possibly because I didn't have a chance to tell him I sold them on a website, but in Physics, Oh Who Was It asked me about it and I gave her the address. I'll post it here again too, because by now that one post is far buried. I also think I'll make another shirt today.
Cheers,
Myself
Monday, August 22, 2005
School
My summer has shrunk to the size of a regular old day off. All there is left of it is tomorrow. And I only got one creekwalk in. I wanted to take one today, but then I realized I had band practice. The one I got was on Friday or Saturday. I don't remember which. I was about to go somewhere and was putting on my shoes when Aaron called me. He asked if I wanted to go creeking. I decided creekwalking was more important than where I was going and biked up to his house to show him some maps.
-I had figured we'd either go to the Railroad (doubted it even then) or on a creekwalk I haven't done before, the school to Winton Woods. But Aaron surprised me by telling me of a different creek he knew, one that emanated from a place called Melody Park right down a street from his house. I checked my trusty topography sources and saw that it joined up with the creek behind the school to got to Winton Woods as well. Since Aaron's printer wouldn't work, I freehanded a little map, and we had a few cups of water, and we left his house.
-I didn't know what Melody Park might look like. And as we walked down Melody Lane, which ended in a cul-de-sac a hundred yards from where it started, I didn't even see where it might be. Then when we got to the end I noticed there was a little sidewalk running between two houses. I discovered that the sidewalk runs under a few trees and then turns into a shallow staircase going down a very tall hill to a field lined with tall grass hiding the creek. The creek was different from other creeks, but then all creeks are. It had a lot of rocks around, good for stepping on, and it ran right behind a bunch of backyards. There was almost no room for walking on either shore: there was a vertical bank and then a very thick forest. Luckily the rocks were there for a lot of the time. When they weren't we had to either go through the forest or try to cling to the bank, sometimes by using trees to hold onto. One time while moving down a shore and hanging onto trees one after another, leaning out backwards over the creek, I fell in and dunked my shoes, but other than that we were mainly successful. We named a few places along the way. A tree across the creek from the yard of a guy who kept talking on his cell phone was "Stop Here and Rest a Moment", and a log somewhere farther along was "Chillin' Log". Right around Chillin' Log I found a black plastic A. I gave it to Aaron. And we made jokes, and that sort of stuff. You know, the kind of stuff you do with friends.
-The creek we were on sideswipes Daly Road, and we had started hearing traffic, but the traffic wasn't coming from the right angle to be Daly. Sure enough, when we came up it was Compton, which I then realized we hadn't crossed yet. We did then, and found the creek again running under the Jerome W Sirk bridge. To the left of the bridge it forked away, but we took the right fork and kept on going. The creek was a little wider here and the bank was a little flatter. A while further on the woods at the left bank vanished and as I stood on the other bank, on the edge of what appeared to be a bridge that was demolished, I saw across the creek what looked like some kind of religious building--a pyramid with about twenty sides, and inflated a little so it was convex. Then I looked through the open doorway and realized it was a salt storage dome. While I stood there a green county pickup truck wandered aimlessly there. Aaron caught up and we took advantage of the road that had once crossed the creek on the now-defunct bridge. It was paved with gravel and it ran alongside the creek. It ended at a road. The road was Compton.
-And here I figured we were farther along than that. Across the street was a condo complex called Bridgecreek, featuring the creek running under a nice bridge. To the right was Cherryblossom. I checked my freehand map again and couldn't figure out where we might be. Aaron decided we must've made a wrong turn at the Jerome W Sirk bridge so far back, and rather than keep going we decided to follow Cherryblossom back to his neighborhood. In retrospect it was probably a good thing we stopped there, since we were both probably somewhere close to dehydrated. We hadn't brought bottles, because there weren't any handy. Cherryblossom turned out to end right near Skyline Chili, so we stopped there and with the sixteen dollars we had together bought a modest but filling meal and drank a lot of free refills. We also tried to visit BJ, but he wasn't home so we walked back to Aaron's, stopping at Andy Hughes's place along the way.
-Yesterday Dad took me to bigg's and we bought some school supplies--mainly notebooks and folders. I want to go to Office Depot and get some more #3 Pencils, because I'm running out. I bought, like, five dozen one time about three years ago and they've lasted me until now.
-So school starts on Wednesday. Bright and early at 0720 for us band kids. I think the first day of school should start at noon. And while I'm at it, I also don't think you should have to go to school on your birthday. Oh, and I can't wait for winter. Mrs Rielac up the street says this one's probably going to be a hard one, judging by how there are already berries on her magnolia and acorns on the ground. That means more snow, and thus more snow days!
-I had figured we'd either go to the Railroad (doubted it even then) or on a creekwalk I haven't done before, the school to Winton Woods. But Aaron surprised me by telling me of a different creek he knew, one that emanated from a place called Melody Park right down a street from his house. I checked my trusty topography sources and saw that it joined up with the creek behind the school to got to Winton Woods as well. Since Aaron's printer wouldn't work, I freehanded a little map, and we had a few cups of water, and we left his house.
-I didn't know what Melody Park might look like. And as we walked down Melody Lane, which ended in a cul-de-sac a hundred yards from where it started, I didn't even see where it might be. Then when we got to the end I noticed there was a little sidewalk running between two houses. I discovered that the sidewalk runs under a few trees and then turns into a shallow staircase going down a very tall hill to a field lined with tall grass hiding the creek. The creek was different from other creeks, but then all creeks are. It had a lot of rocks around, good for stepping on, and it ran right behind a bunch of backyards. There was almost no room for walking on either shore: there was a vertical bank and then a very thick forest. Luckily the rocks were there for a lot of the time. When they weren't we had to either go through the forest or try to cling to the bank, sometimes by using trees to hold onto. One time while moving down a shore and hanging onto trees one after another, leaning out backwards over the creek, I fell in and dunked my shoes, but other than that we were mainly successful. We named a few places along the way. A tree across the creek from the yard of a guy who kept talking on his cell phone was "Stop Here and Rest a Moment", and a log somewhere farther along was "Chillin' Log". Right around Chillin' Log I found a black plastic A. I gave it to Aaron. And we made jokes, and that sort of stuff. You know, the kind of stuff you do with friends.
-The creek we were on sideswipes Daly Road, and we had started hearing traffic, but the traffic wasn't coming from the right angle to be Daly. Sure enough, when we came up it was Compton, which I then realized we hadn't crossed yet. We did then, and found the creek again running under the Jerome W Sirk bridge. To the left of the bridge it forked away, but we took the right fork and kept on going. The creek was a little wider here and the bank was a little flatter. A while further on the woods at the left bank vanished and as I stood on the other bank, on the edge of what appeared to be a bridge that was demolished, I saw across the creek what looked like some kind of religious building--a pyramid with about twenty sides, and inflated a little so it was convex. Then I looked through the open doorway and realized it was a salt storage dome. While I stood there a green county pickup truck wandered aimlessly there. Aaron caught up and we took advantage of the road that had once crossed the creek on the now-defunct bridge. It was paved with gravel and it ran alongside the creek. It ended at a road. The road was Compton.
-And here I figured we were farther along than that. Across the street was a condo complex called Bridgecreek, featuring the creek running under a nice bridge. To the right was Cherryblossom. I checked my freehand map again and couldn't figure out where we might be. Aaron decided we must've made a wrong turn at the Jerome W Sirk bridge so far back, and rather than keep going we decided to follow Cherryblossom back to his neighborhood. In retrospect it was probably a good thing we stopped there, since we were both probably somewhere close to dehydrated. We hadn't brought bottles, because there weren't any handy. Cherryblossom turned out to end right near Skyline Chili, so we stopped there and with the sixteen dollars we had together bought a modest but filling meal and drank a lot of free refills. We also tried to visit BJ, but he wasn't home so we walked back to Aaron's, stopping at Andy Hughes's place along the way.
-Yesterday Dad took me to bigg's and we bought some school supplies--mainly notebooks and folders. I want to go to Office Depot and get some more #3 Pencils, because I'm running out. I bought, like, five dozen one time about three years ago and they've lasted me until now.
-So school starts on Wednesday. Bright and early at 0720 for us band kids. I think the first day of school should start at noon. And while I'm at it, I also don't think you should have to go to school on your birthday. Oh, and I can't wait for winter. Mrs Rielac up the street says this one's probably going to be a hard one, judging by how there are already berries on her magnolia and acorns on the ground. That means more snow, and thus more snow days!
Sunday, August 21, 2005
The Lawnmower Man
True story:
-My uncle Dan and aunt Tracy recently moved. Before they did they had a neighbor who liked to run his riding mower. All the time they would hear his mower going. He wasn't mowing his lawn. He actually had the mower parked there on his patio, and he was sitting on it, letting it run. Occasionally he would have a few beers.
-This is completely irrelevant, but I remembered it a minute ago and decided I'd write about it.
-My uncle Dan and aunt Tracy recently moved. Before they did they had a neighbor who liked to run his riding mower. All the time they would hear his mower going. He wasn't mowing his lawn. He actually had the mower parked there on his patio, and he was sitting on it, letting it run. Occasionally he would have a few beers.
-This is completely irrelevant, but I remembered it a minute ago and decided I'd write about it.
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Café Press.
I am going to elaborate on CaféPress here. It is a website that is very clever in concept. You upload your design to them, and choose what shirt it would be best on. Then, when someone orders that shirt, they make it for them and charge them. The price is whatever you want it to be, as long as it's at or above CP's base price, which is usually somewhere like $12 to $14. You mark it up however much you want.
-This is very great. But there are a few problems. The first one is that they don't offer any dark colors, as they can't figure out how to put light-colored ink on a dark-colored shirt. They only offer four colors of shirt: white, light green, gray, and pink. I'd say that severely limits creativity.
-The next problem is that they put limits on you. They offer about fifteen kinds of shirts, including the pink, gray, and green ones. But you can only sell each kind of shirt with one design on it. So if you put, say, "Design A" on a green shirt, and you have also "Design B" that you want to put on a green shirt, you can't do it UNLESS! you upgrade to a "Premium Shop" for $5 a year. That's why I haven't yet put out any more than two designs. I've only found two designs that work with the kind of shirts they're offering.
-And to make things worse, I've hit on a problem that not many other people have. One of my images (One that says "Caution: Do Not Read This Shirt" and has a red triangle with a black exclamation point in it), which I uploaded to the site but had kept in my "Image Basket" until I could find a good shirt for it, seems to violate a copyright. That's what was in the first letter they sent me. It was a very cheerful letter that was careful not to be accusative, so that's all good. But it still supposedly violated someone's copyright. I asked them whose. They promptly sent me another letter telling me that it was the copyright of one Jim Vitello.
-I researched Jim Vitello. He owns an online shop. The shop sells Scratch-'n'Sniff underwear. He markets it under the brand Caution, with an exclamation point in a triangle, a lot like mine. His website doesn't actually appear to sell anything, though. What it looks like has happened is that he registered the word "Caution" for a Registered Trademark with the U.S. Patent office for the sole purpose of cruising CaféPress and pointing out to other people trying to use the word "Caution" that he owns the trademark. Because when I researched him, I found an entire message board consisting of people who had been gotten by the Caution Guy. Most of them were trying to sell stuff on CaféPress that, blindingly obviously, had nothing whatsoever to do with his Scratch-'n'-Sniff underwear (if he even makes it at all). Stuff like my T-shirt. Every time he finds something he writes to CP--I can see him staring at his keyboard in the dark, doing a little hunt and peck with his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth--and tells them BOOP, BOOP he's found someone trying to infringe on his trademark. Then, because CP is afraid of him suing them, they quickly email a paranoid letter to the offending innocent. I wrote CP a letter back once I found out what this guy was about. I said, yes, my shirt was pretty similar to his logo and that I would change it, maybe taking out the exclamation point, but that the real issue was that this guy was a lunatic, and that they needed to get a backbone and do something about him. I don't know if they will, but they obviously should.
-Anyhow, I'm going to write a description for that "Think Ahead" shirt, because I haven't yet, and then maybe put some of my other designs onto the different variations of white shirt they offer (fitted, organic, economy...). But I don't think I'll stick around with CaféPress much longer. They seem to be dweebs. Get the shirts while you can!
-This is very great. But there are a few problems. The first one is that they don't offer any dark colors, as they can't figure out how to put light-colored ink on a dark-colored shirt. They only offer four colors of shirt: white, light green, gray, and pink. I'd say that severely limits creativity.
-The next problem is that they put limits on you. They offer about fifteen kinds of shirts, including the pink, gray, and green ones. But you can only sell each kind of shirt with one design on it. So if you put, say, "Design A" on a green shirt, and you have also "Design B" that you want to put on a green shirt, you can't do it UNLESS! you upgrade to a "Premium Shop" for $5 a year. That's why I haven't yet put out any more than two designs. I've only found two designs that work with the kind of shirts they're offering.
-And to make things worse, I've hit on a problem that not many other people have. One of my images (One that says "Caution: Do Not Read This Shirt" and has a red triangle with a black exclamation point in it), which I uploaded to the site but had kept in my "Image Basket" until I could find a good shirt for it, seems to violate a copyright. That's what was in the first letter they sent me. It was a very cheerful letter that was careful not to be accusative, so that's all good. But it still supposedly violated someone's copyright. I asked them whose. They promptly sent me another letter telling me that it was the copyright of one Jim Vitello.
-I researched Jim Vitello. He owns an online shop. The shop sells Scratch-'n'Sniff underwear. He markets it under the brand Caution, with an exclamation point in a triangle, a lot like mine. His website doesn't actually appear to sell anything, though. What it looks like has happened is that he registered the word "Caution" for a Registered Trademark with the U.S. Patent office for the sole purpose of cruising CaféPress and pointing out to other people trying to use the word "Caution" that he owns the trademark. Because when I researched him, I found an entire message board consisting of people who had been gotten by the Caution Guy. Most of them were trying to sell stuff on CaféPress that, blindingly obviously, had nothing whatsoever to do with his Scratch-'n'-Sniff underwear (if he even makes it at all). Stuff like my T-shirt. Every time he finds something he writes to CP--I can see him staring at his keyboard in the dark, doing a little hunt and peck with his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth--and tells them BOOP, BOOP he's found someone trying to infringe on his trademark. Then, because CP is afraid of him suing them, they quickly email a paranoid letter to the offending innocent. I wrote CP a letter back once I found out what this guy was about. I said, yes, my shirt was pretty similar to his logo and that I would change it, maybe taking out the exclamation point, but that the real issue was that this guy was a lunatic, and that they needed to get a backbone and do something about him. I don't know if they will, but they obviously should.
-Anyhow, I'm going to write a description for that "Think Ahead" shirt, because I haven't yet, and then maybe put some of my other designs onto the different variations of white shirt they offer (fitted, organic, economy...). But I don't think I'll stick around with CaféPress much longer. They seem to be dweebs. Get the shirts while you can!
Saturday, August 13, 2005
Permanent Marker
I have just finished starting creating my T-shirt store! It is located right here. As yet there are only two shirts there: "Think ahead" and "What do you mean it's backwards?" As soon as I figure out how to put more on, I will do it. Rest assured, I've got eleven more great designs to put forth. I'm a little bit worried that it's not possible to add more products. Hope it is.
Other than that, this last week or two I've been going to band practices and doing Spanish stuff mainly, because (have I said this already?) I'm skipping Spanish III this summer to do IV this year, but I can't just skip it, so I've got to do the course during the summer. I just finished the course book last night and tonight wrote my one-page essay on La Catrina, which isn't as lame a book as it sounds like, but is still fairly lame. Fortunately, the essay only peripherally involved the book. It was much more about what foreign country I would go to college in if I were going to. I said Canada. I also vouched for Spain's siestas. I said I think there should be siestas everwhere. Tomorrow is the Spanish "Exam", which Mrs. Rudolph mentioned before she left for vacation last week, but didn't explain. I guess I'll... go up to her house, or something. I don't know.
BJ--How do you want me to Drop You A Line? If here is okay, then sure I'll go to the bowling party with you. What alley? One time at Brentwood Bowl a few years ago I was with Micah and one of their vending machines failed to vend (it was the kind where you stick a quarter in and out comes a small, crappy toy), and when we told a certain guy at the desk, he said it was a vending machine where you only have a chance of getting something, which it obviously wasn't--for one thing why would anyone put their money into it if they didn't know they'd get anything and there was no fun involved in trying to get it?-- and when we tried to explain this to him he got all annoyed and rude--and we were, like, twelve and eight at the time, bear in mind. So I told him he was a rude person and ever since I haven't gone back there. But maybe they've fired him. It seems likely. And if they haven't, he wouldn't dare be rude to a large group of teenagers, for fear he might find his car on fire, with him in it.
Other than that, this last week or two I've been going to band practices and doing Spanish stuff mainly, because (have I said this already?) I'm skipping Spanish III this summer to do IV this year, but I can't just skip it, so I've got to do the course during the summer. I just finished the course book last night and tonight wrote my one-page essay on La Catrina, which isn't as lame a book as it sounds like, but is still fairly lame. Fortunately, the essay only peripherally involved the book. It was much more about what foreign country I would go to college in if I were going to. I said Canada. I also vouched for Spain's siestas. I said I think there should be siestas everwhere. Tomorrow is the Spanish "Exam", which Mrs. Rudolph mentioned before she left for vacation last week, but didn't explain. I guess I'll... go up to her house, or something. I don't know.
BJ--How do you want me to Drop You A Line? If here is okay, then sure I'll go to the bowling party with you. What alley? One time at Brentwood Bowl a few years ago I was with Micah and one of their vending machines failed to vend (it was the kind where you stick a quarter in and out comes a small, crappy toy), and when we told a certain guy at the desk, he said it was a vending machine where you only have a chance of getting something, which it obviously wasn't--for one thing why would anyone put their money into it if they didn't know they'd get anything and there was no fun involved in trying to get it?-- and when we tried to explain this to him he got all annoyed and rude--and we were, like, twelve and eight at the time, bear in mind. So I told him he was a rude person and ever since I haven't gone back there. But maybe they've fired him. It seems likely. And if they haven't, he wouldn't dare be rude to a large group of teenagers, for fear he might find his car on fire, with him in it.
Wednesday, August 3, 2005
Ted Berry
I was at Wendy's the other day, having a spicy chicken sandwich and sitting by the window watching the cars pull into the parking lot. I had been sitting there about fifteen minutes when one car in particular got my attention, because it had two bumper stickers that said "Ted Berry for Judge" and two huge decals saying the same things on both the back doors, and the license plate said "TMB 2". It didn't take much to deduce that the person driving this car was probably Ted Berry himself, whoever that was. He came out of the car, dutifully peeled the two decals off the back doors (they turned out to have been magnetic), put them in the trunk, and came into the restaurant.
-After he ordered he sat at a table that was nowhere near mine. He looked kind of Mexican, and he had a mustache and was wearing a tie. He ate for a while, and one time he got a phone call from what seemed to be his wife. I ate the rest of my meal too. He got up around the same time I did, and we met at the garbage can. "So are you Ted Berry?" I asked.
-"Yeah," he said. "Why?"
-"Oh, I saw your decals and your car."
-"Oh. Yes, I'm Ted Berry," he said and shook my hand. As we walked out the door he asked, "Are you eighteen yet?"
-"No, I'm not voting age," I laughed.
-"Oh," he said, walking to his car. "…You live around here?"
-"Yeah, just down the street."
-"Well … tell your parents to vote for me!" he said eagerly. I smiled at him. Then he opened his trunk and gave me a flyer, which I later discovered had a few typos, and pulled out a Ted Berry for Judge sticker and put it on my sleeve. We said bye and I got on my bike. I realized I didn't know yet whether or not I supported him, or even what party he was from, but I thought it was kind of neat that I had met someone with his own stickers, so I wore it all the way home and then stuck it on my door. I did some research on him and found out that he's the son of Ted Berry, Senior (thus TMB 2), Cincinnati's first black mayor. He's also a Democrat. My family is Republicans, but he seemed like a nice enough guy (if a little desperate—but wouldn't you be?). But then again, I imagine so would his opponent if I met her. It's all moot anyhow, 'cause I'm not voting age.
+++++++++++++++
The rest of this post is unrelated and happened more toward the current time (the Ted Berry thing happened on 23JUL). It has to do with the fact that I've sort of been wasting the last few days of my summer, but now that I've realized that, I'm doing my best to remedy it. Yesterday I sat around inside the house and did almost absolutely nothing. Today I'm going to do stuff. In fact I've already done a little stuff: I went to Wendy's again, and I updated my 'blog. Next I'm going to sit and do some of that "Español III en el verano" stuff that I have to do before school lets back in. I figured it would take me a lot less time than it actually does. For example two days ago I decided I'd do a bunch of it, so I went to Warder and sat in the Ivory Tower (a tall pine) and cracked the books. I figured I'd have about a quarter of the book done by the time I got down, but I only got a lesson and a half done, out of 16 lessons. So I realized it might not have been an entirely bad thing if I had started earlier on in the summer. Now I have to cram, in a way.
-I've also realized and been depressed by the fact that there's not even a month of summer vacation left. By the way, does anyone know when school starts back up? I hate the end of summer. It's like a Sunday night during the school year, except a lot worse.
-After he ordered he sat at a table that was nowhere near mine. He looked kind of Mexican, and he had a mustache and was wearing a tie. He ate for a while, and one time he got a phone call from what seemed to be his wife. I ate the rest of my meal too. He got up around the same time I did, and we met at the garbage can. "So are you Ted Berry?" I asked.
-"Yeah," he said. "Why?"
-"Oh, I saw your decals and your car."
-"Oh. Yes, I'm Ted Berry," he said and shook my hand. As we walked out the door he asked, "Are you eighteen yet?"
-"No, I'm not voting age," I laughed.
-"Oh," he said, walking to his car. "…You live around here?"
-"Yeah, just down the street."
-"Well … tell your parents to vote for me!" he said eagerly. I smiled at him. Then he opened his trunk and gave me a flyer, which I later discovered had a few typos, and pulled out a Ted Berry for Judge sticker and put it on my sleeve. We said bye and I got on my bike. I realized I didn't know yet whether or not I supported him, or even what party he was from, but I thought it was kind of neat that I had met someone with his own stickers, so I wore it all the way home and then stuck it on my door. I did some research on him and found out that he's the son of Ted Berry, Senior (thus TMB 2), Cincinnati's first black mayor. He's also a Democrat. My family is Republicans, but he seemed like a nice enough guy (if a little desperate—but wouldn't you be?). But then again, I imagine so would his opponent if I met her. It's all moot anyhow, 'cause I'm not voting age.
+++++++++++++++
The rest of this post is unrelated and happened more toward the current time (the Ted Berry thing happened on 23JUL). It has to do with the fact that I've sort of been wasting the last few days of my summer, but now that I've realized that, I'm doing my best to remedy it. Yesterday I sat around inside the house and did almost absolutely nothing. Today I'm going to do stuff. In fact I've already done a little stuff: I went to Wendy's again, and I updated my 'blog. Next I'm going to sit and do some of that "Español III en el verano" stuff that I have to do before school lets back in. I figured it would take me a lot less time than it actually does. For example two days ago I decided I'd do a bunch of it, so I went to Warder and sat in the Ivory Tower (a tall pine) and cracked the books. I figured I'd have about a quarter of the book done by the time I got down, but I only got a lesson and a half done, out of 16 lessons. So I realized it might not have been an entirely bad thing if I had started earlier on in the summer. Now I have to cram, in a way.
-I've also realized and been depressed by the fact that there's not even a month of summer vacation left. By the way, does anyone know when school starts back up? I hate the end of summer. It's like a Sunday night during the school year, except a lot worse.
Saturday, July 30, 2005
Getting up to date
Now that I'm finally done with that Crowduck segment, which is the longest single-topic thing by far anywhere on my blog, I can get y'all up to speed on what's been happening recently. I expect you've all been waiting very patiently but a little irritatedly for me to finish up with all this Crowduck stuff and do that.
-First and foremost is band. The day after I started the Crowduck installments I had a band practice, and thence one every day after it. It was really different from what the rest of my summer has been. Especially odd was the first one, where I went to the band room for the first time in several months and was around bunches of people I had forgotten I even knew. It was uncomfortable. After that week of practices, I had band camp.
-Band camp, ouggh.
-I just got back from it yesterday. I'm not even going to talk about it, because it was just like any other week of band camp, which means that it was torture. I'm trying to purge it from my memory by sitting down for the first time in a week and staring at a computer or drawing fonts or stuff like that. Which reminds me: I have a lot of fonts sitting on top of my dresser, prbably twenty pages of them. I still haven't had Mom buy me the program I need to make these sheets of looseleaf into workable fonts. I'm going to do that directly.
-And one more thing: I'm about to start up a business. A t-shirt business. It's going to be called Permanent Marker T-Shirts. As soon as I create it I'll give you the address. I'll have all the funny T-shirts I come up with, which so far is about thirteen. What I need you to do is buy a bunch and then tell everyone you know to buy a bunch, and tell them to tell everyone they know. If it works, eventually the entire world will have heard of my T-shirt business and bought a shirt from me. At $3 profit per shirt, that works out to be $18 billion for me! And all you have to do is tell someone about it. I might even give you a few hundred million if you do.
-First and foremost is band. The day after I started the Crowduck installments I had a band practice, and thence one every day after it. It was really different from what the rest of my summer has been. Especially odd was the first one, where I went to the band room for the first time in several months and was around bunches of people I had forgotten I even knew. It was uncomfortable. After that week of practices, I had band camp.
-Band camp, ouggh.
-I just got back from it yesterday. I'm not even going to talk about it, because it was just like any other week of band camp, which means that it was torture. I'm trying to purge it from my memory by sitting down for the first time in a week and staring at a computer or drawing fonts or stuff like that. Which reminds me: I have a lot of fonts sitting on top of my dresser, prbably twenty pages of them. I still haven't had Mom buy me the program I need to make these sheets of looseleaf into workable fonts. I'm going to do that directly.
-And one more thing: I'm about to start up a business. A t-shirt business. It's going to be called Permanent Marker T-Shirts. As soon as I create it I'll give you the address. I'll have all the funny T-shirts I come up with, which so far is about thirteen. What I need you to do is buy a bunch and then tell everyone you know to buy a bunch, and tell them to tell everyone they know. If it works, eventually the entire world will have heard of my T-shirt business and bought a shirt from me. At $3 profit per shirt, that works out to be $18 billion for me! And all you have to do is tell someone about it. I might even give you a few hundred million if you do.
Having left
We had the 0600 departure today, so at 0515 someone, I think Mom, woke me up, and I spent the next half hour or so gathering up every last trace of what I'd brought. We stuck all our suitcases and other crap on the back of one of those pickup trucks and then we climbed on.
-I took a few last pictures as we went. The lake disappeared into the trees. It was over for this year.
-We loaded our stuff off the pickup onto a boat, then took a different boat from that one (except Micah rode with the stuff) to the end of Provincial Road 309. We unloaded the stuff from the boat and into the car and then we drove off, following Grandma and Grandpa in their big van. About a hundred miles down the road we stopped for breakfast at a place that had good food, despite being called "The Lawg Caybun". I don't know why stupidity is all the rage. My breakfast was really good, anyhow.
-Then, long story short: we drove for seventeen hours. Slept some, listened to CDs, but mostly just sat. Seventeen hours. It's the most boring day I've ever had. Well, maybe a few in school. No. I worked a little bit on an idea I have for a font called "Siwash"*, but I had no notebook paper. We got really familiar with the Harry Potter 3 soundtrack. And also a really weird and spooky-sounding CD called libera that Mom has of a little boys' choir. Toward the end I played solitaire with a deck of cards Micah got at the border shop so many hours ago. I'm not sure where we are right now. I was asleep when we got here. All I can tell you is Toom 218, and I'm not even sure if that's right.
*I've since renamed it "Creek", because it turned out "Siwash" is a derogatory term for an Indian.
-I took a few last pictures as we went. The lake disappeared into the trees. It was over for this year.
-We loaded our stuff off the pickup onto a boat, then took a different boat from that one (except Micah rode with the stuff) to the end of Provincial Road 309. We unloaded the stuff from the boat and into the car and then we drove off, following Grandma and Grandpa in their big van. About a hundred miles down the road we stopped for breakfast at a place that had good food, despite being called "The Lawg Caybun". I don't know why stupidity is all the rage. My breakfast was really good, anyhow.
-Then, long story short: we drove for seventeen hours. Slept some, listened to CDs, but mostly just sat. Seventeen hours. It's the most boring day I've ever had. Well, maybe a few in school. No. I worked a little bit on an idea I have for a font called "Siwash"*, but I had no notebook paper. We got really familiar with the Harry Potter 3 soundtrack. And also a really weird and spooky-sounding CD called libera that Mom has of a little boys' choir. Toward the end I played solitaire with a deck of cards Micah got at the border shop so many hours ago. I'm not sure where we are right now. I was asleep when we got here. All I can tell you is Toom 218, and I'm not even sure if that's right.
*I've since renamed it "Creek", because it turned out "Siwash" is a derogatory term for an Indian.
7 Camp
The last day is depressing. Now I know it's just a few short hours until I'm back in a cramped car with Micah just driving and driving all the way back to Smellville.
-Today I had a bunch of breakfast: 3 Pop-Tarts and a few strips of bacon. Then I lounged around for a few. It'll be another year before I have this much family with me for this long, so I made conversation while it lasted. Family being together. It's always good.
-Instead of Micah, I went with Mom and Dad to fish today. I figured we'd go to "Chuck's Cove"--I'll call it that for now--but we went to Dad's. It was a different cove than what I thought Dad's cove was--Dad didn't even know he had a cove, but apparently this one we were in now was his. At least that's what Mom said. On Dad's very first cast he got a fish, a real kicker of a pike named Dirk. We figured it must be a hot spot. So we trolled around. Nothing happened. That lasted about fifteen minutes. Then Dad caught three more pike. Mom caught one too, and I finally got another fish, even though it was a walleye. A little later we drove back in. The water was really choppy and it got to hurting your butt from bouncing it against the seat. But it was also tremendously beautiful. The air was clear, the sun was bright, and the wind was cool. We were in an especially scenic section of the lake, with granite and forest intermingling on the hilly bank. Boy, do I love this place.
-An hour or so after we got back we decided not to go out to the Falls again today. Going all the way up there in this extra-choppy water would leave you with no butt. So I have no pictures of it until next year.
-Today Ray Henschell, the guy who sold shirts here last year, was here. He had a broader selection of shirts and stuff this year, but none of them had pictures of the lake on them. I'm glad I bought mine last year. Still, I liked the hat I saw there and, even though it was a ridiculous $25, I still bought it. After all, where else am I going to get one? A lot of other people from our camp bought stuff too. Ray Henschell went home pretty rich.
-Earlier today I had a nice talk with Nick, Bill's dad, about what he used to do out here. He was a trapper, back in the '40s. He says it really toughened him up, and he meant way up. When he went into the --Air Force, was it?--he could lift double what everyone else could. After he got out of the Air Force he opened up a restaurant called Nick's, and then when Crowduck "came along", he bought it. I also talked about maps, and he went to get me a Whiteshell map from behind the counter, but he couldn't find any. Maybe there'll be some at the Visitor's Center or whatever. Hope so.
-I went swimming today. There were already three kids--relatives of Bill's?--there, playing on a big yellow thing that you could inflate and then stand on in the water. Their names were Nathan, Sid, and "Jube", but I don't think Micah heard that last one right before he told me. Well, Micah was sitting, on top of that yellow thing, and he hadn't gotten all the way underwater yet. So one of the kids and I decided to push him off. He put up a lot of struggle, but we got him. Then he got all sulky and got out of the lake. He kicked into the lake the stuff I'd taken off before I got in. Oh well.
-We had a huge dinner tonight, with all the great stuff from the rest of the week. I had onion rings, waffle fries, fish, muffins, and salad. It was the best meal I'll have for a year.
-I kept wanting to do something really fun and different to finish off the week, but it was too late to do anything on the boats--they had to be back by 2000--and I couldn't think of anything to do without them. So with a little melancholy I sat down and played Scrabble with Mom and Aunt Irene. I didn't win. I have to do something great tomorrow morning. Maybe I'll go jump in the lake off the dock or something. Definitely I'll take a few more pictures.
-There's some lightning playing south of us. A cool breeze is sweeping in through the screens out here on the porch. I'm sitting here listening to Crowduck and I wish it weren't over. I wish I could stay here and fish and hike and listen to the wind forever. But I can't.
-Today I had a bunch of breakfast: 3 Pop-Tarts and a few strips of bacon. Then I lounged around for a few. It'll be another year before I have this much family with me for this long, so I made conversation while it lasted. Family being together. It's always good.
-Instead of Micah, I went with Mom and Dad to fish today. I figured we'd go to "Chuck's Cove"--I'll call it that for now--but we went to Dad's. It was a different cove than what I thought Dad's cove was--Dad didn't even know he had a cove, but apparently this one we were in now was his. At least that's what Mom said. On Dad's very first cast he got a fish, a real kicker of a pike named Dirk. We figured it must be a hot spot. So we trolled around. Nothing happened. That lasted about fifteen minutes. Then Dad caught three more pike. Mom caught one too, and I finally got another fish, even though it was a walleye. A little later we drove back in. The water was really choppy and it got to hurting your butt from bouncing it against the seat. But it was also tremendously beautiful. The air was clear, the sun was bright, and the wind was cool. We were in an especially scenic section of the lake, with granite and forest intermingling on the hilly bank. Boy, do I love this place.
-An hour or so after we got back we decided not to go out to the Falls again today. Going all the way up there in this extra-choppy water would leave you with no butt. So I have no pictures of it until next year.
-Today Ray Henschell, the guy who sold shirts here last year, was here. He had a broader selection of shirts and stuff this year, but none of them had pictures of the lake on them. I'm glad I bought mine last year. Still, I liked the hat I saw there and, even though it was a ridiculous $25, I still bought it. After all, where else am I going to get one? A lot of other people from our camp bought stuff too. Ray Henschell went home pretty rich.
-Earlier today I had a nice talk with Nick, Bill's dad, about what he used to do out here. He was a trapper, back in the '40s. He says it really toughened him up, and he meant way up. When he went into the --Air Force, was it?--he could lift double what everyone else could. After he got out of the Air Force he opened up a restaurant called Nick's, and then when Crowduck "came along", he bought it. I also talked about maps, and he went to get me a Whiteshell map from behind the counter, but he couldn't find any. Maybe there'll be some at the Visitor's Center or whatever. Hope so.
-I went swimming today. There were already three kids--relatives of Bill's?--there, playing on a big yellow thing that you could inflate and then stand on in the water. Their names were Nathan, Sid, and "Jube", but I don't think Micah heard that last one right before he told me. Well, Micah was sitting, on top of that yellow thing, and he hadn't gotten all the way underwater yet. So one of the kids and I decided to push him off. He put up a lot of struggle, but we got him. Then he got all sulky and got out of the lake. He kicked into the lake the stuff I'd taken off before I got in. Oh well.
-We had a huge dinner tonight, with all the great stuff from the rest of the week. I had onion rings, waffle fries, fish, muffins, and salad. It was the best meal I'll have for a year.
-I kept wanting to do something really fun and different to finish off the week, but it was too late to do anything on the boats--they had to be back by 2000--and I couldn't think of anything to do without them. So with a little melancholy I sat down and played Scrabble with Mom and Aunt Irene. I didn't win. I have to do something great tomorrow morning. Maybe I'll go jump in the lake off the dock or something. Definitely I'll take a few more pictures.
-There's some lightning playing south of us. A cool breeze is sweeping in through the screens out here on the porch. I'm sitting here listening to Crowduck and I wish it weren't over. I wish I could stay here and fish and hike and listen to the wind forever. But I can't.
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