One Week Into the Semester

It's only the first weekend of the semester, and I'm already relieved that it's Friday.  My sleep schedule is still really screwed up from break, so I'm extremely thankful to have a day to sleep in.  Still, school's going really well so far, and I think it'll be a good last semester.  (I still can't believe it's my last semester in high school...)

My books seem to fall off my desk in AP English a lot...  I attribute this to the amount of books I have to carry to AP U.S. history and AP English.  If you watched the video I uploaded the other day, I talked about the bruises on my arm from carrying the books.  I have to carry a binder, and the books I stack on top of it always seem to slide off my desk.  Anyway, I'm telling you this because my books fell again today (while I wasn't at my desk just like all the other times), and someone picked them up for me.  They missed my planner, and I never noticed it was gone until two classes later.  I ended up rushing back to the room before psychology to get it, and it was laying under one of the desks.  I'm just glad someone didn't pick it up and mess with it.  (Junior year a freshmen got a hold of my calculator that I left in accounting and messed around with it before the teacher found it.)

We had a food day in yearbook today!  That's always a plus.  I was particularly happy because lunch was especially nasty today, so I wasn't as hungry when there wasn't much to eat.

In psychology we started a documentary on Freud.  I'll admit that I've never really known much about what Freud taught.  I'd heard bits and pieces of course, but that was it.  It's really interesting though.  I don't think I agree with a lot of it, but he has some very interesting thoughts.  I think most of it is a valid theory, and I can see how he could come up with this stuff, even if I don't necessarily agree with it.

We finished a current events quiz game in current events today, and my team came in first!  We're apparently playing this game every week, and we'll have the same teams.  He also said we're being graded based on how well we do on the game, so hopefully our team can keep that up!  I don't know how I feel about that type of grading though.  There are four teams, and we apparently get an A, B, C, or D based on what place we get.  I know he has to get grades somehow since it's all current events stuff, but I don't know how fair that really is.  Most of it involved every team guessing and using any clues we could get anyway.  (For example, one question asked what communist country this guy came from.  We could tell his name was Spanish, so we just guessed Cuba and got it right.  It had nothing to do with actually knowing the answer.)

I don't think I'm going to blog all weekend.  It'll be nice to go a couple of days without blogging.  I probably won't really be filming any videos.  I filmed one earlier that I'll put up tonight, and I may film one Sunday.  Overall though I think I'm taking a break this weekend (other than for homework).

Working Concessions Makes it a Long Night

Today has been a long day, and this is going to be a short post since it's late and I have a lot to do.  I filmed a video earlier today that talked about my first day back at school, so I won't repeat all of that here.  (Editing and uploading that video is one of the things I still need to do.  I'm getting no sleep tonight!)

In that video I mentioned that I had to work concessions at the varsity basketball game tonight.  That's why I'm so behind on everything.  I was there for about two hours, so now I have to get everything I would have done in those two hours done.  Plus, I have to write down the results of the Iowa Caucus as homework for current events, so I have to stay up to get those results.

Working the concessions was fun, but I was so tired today and it only got worse while working.  I can't wait for my sleeping schedule to adjust back to normal.  (Tonight definitely isn't going to help.)  This was my second time working concessions for Beta Club, and this time definitely went better than the last since I actually had people to talk to this time.  I worked with Ji and some other people from school.  Ji also took some pictures of the game and people working that we can use for the basketball and Beta Club pages of the yearbook.  I think those are the first Beta Club pictures we've gotten except for the ones I took at the induction ceremony.

I need to go edit that video, so I'm not up all night waiting for it to upload and everything.  I'm tempted to just put it off until tomorrow, but I know I'll regret that later.  Hopefully, I'll get to sleep at a somewhat decent hour tonight.  (I laid in bed for three hours last night before falling asleep sometime after one in the morning!)

The (Fake) Stock Market

Mondays: my least favorite day of the week.  They're even less pleasant when they're accompanied by a downpour of rain (and you have to walk through it multiple times during the day).

I finished up my second article for the local paper today during yearbook.  This article is all about my school's Christmas dance that was this weekend.  There really wasn't all that much to say about the dance, so it's a little on the short side.  The paper also asked for some pictures, so I asked Jordan if she could send some of the ones she took.  (I would have asked more people, but I didn't know of anyone else I could ask who took pictures!)

Remember when my pencil got stolen in the bathroom?  Well, the exact same thing happened again today.  I'm never letting my pencils out of my sight at school again.  I'm running out of pencils.

Remember that rain I mentioned earlier in the post?  If it wasn't bad enough having to walk to and from the bus stop today, I also had to walk through it to and from peer tutoring over at the middle school (when I think it was raining the hardest).  The wind was also blowing really strongly one way each time.  By the time I got to peer tutoring, my front was soaked, but my back was almost completely dry, and by the time I got back to school, it was the complete opposite.  It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't freezing and the rain didn't feel like ice water.

We started doing a stock simulation in economics.  We started with $100,000, and we have to invest at least half of it in stocks under five dollars.  I had no idea it was so hard to find stocks for under five dollars!  I think we managed to find three or four.  If anyone knows of any cheap stocks we can invest in, please let me know.  Otherwise we may end up buying a thousand more shares of the few we did find.  Our group has also lost $73.99, but that's a smaller negative number than when I checked earlier.  We still have more than $97,000 left to invest, so I'm not too worried about the negative right now.  In fact, I think I'm going to go try and find some under $5 stocks now.  The cool think about this simulator app is I can "buy" stocks now, and when the market opens it'll automatically buy them.  (I know nothing about the stock market, so maybe the real stock market works like that too.  I don't know.)

Even More Stress

Is it really only Wednesday?  This week has been so long.  Today was a mixture of getting things out of the way that have been bothering me forever and adding even more things to stress me out.

We had an open book test in AP U.S. history today.  It really wasn't hard since it was open book.  If only we could do that for every test...

All we did in AP English today was work on our annotated bibliographies.  I still don't have mine even halfway done.  I'm not looking forward to working on that.  Even though it's not that difficult to write, I feel like it's going to take forever.

Ji and I have one yearbook page that's due this Friday.  The only problem is standardized testing is going on the next couple of the days in the computer lab, so we can't work on them during yearbook class.  That means we have to work on them at home.  I didn't even know we could access the yearbook stuff from home until Ji told me we could today.  I really hope we're able to get that finished.

At the end of computer applications I had to go up to the guidance office.  I've been trying to send my transcripts to colleges through this e-transcript thing for over a month now, but the guidance office wasn't getting my requests through the thing.  I'm not even really sure what was going on, but we have it all sorted out now.  My transcripts have finally been sent!

During lunch Haley and I ended up sitting at the table where Jordan and Bridget were selling dance tickets.  Haley said she sat at our usual table, and some immature boy started throwing food at her, so she moved over there.  I didn't see it happen since I was late to lunch because I'd been in guidance.

Peer tutoring was pretty much the same as usual.  I helped two girls with some worksheets, and in the other class, I really just sat there and watched.

We had a test in economics today.  The thing with econ tests is that I feel like I know it well, and I do perfectly fine on most of it, but there's always at least two problems that I get to and have no idea what the answer is.  It bugs me because I swore I went over everything.  Today, there were still a couple of hard ones, but I thought I remember talking about it, so I may actually be right this time.

I completely forgot that I had a hair appointment after school today until my sister reminded me as we were getting off the bus.  Regina was trying to get me to cut a ton off, but I told her that wasn't happening.  I don't think I've had my hair short since freshmen year.  I like how easy it is to brush my hair when it's short, but other than that I hate when I have short hair.  Instead, I just got it trimmed.

I really need to go work on my annotated bibliography, but I want to get some other stuff (including another blog post) done before I work on that.  It's going to take up my whole day!

I Need a Break

I'm am so ready for Thanksgiving break!  I need these five days off of school.  I'm beginning to get really stressed out, and a break will be nice.  I mean most of the stress is coming from college stuff, and I'm going to spend break applying to two colleges.  Still, no school helps take a bit of the stress off, and I think I could the main college-related thing that was stressing me out sorted out today.  So, hopefully it will be an unstressful break for me.  (If my sister succeeds in getting me to go Black Friday shopping, then I guess we can throw the unstressful break out the window.)

Since it was the last day before break, we didn't do much at school today.  I had an AP U.S. history test first thing this morning, but other than that, I didn't do much today.  We're researching for our trend analysis paper (with an annotated bibliography) in AP English, but I don't really consider researching to be hard work (unless you're having trouble finding information).

Our Jostens yearbook representative was in our yearbook class today to show us how to create the portrait pages, but all that required was us sitting quietly and listening to him talk.

I'm way ahead in computer applications, so our teacher asked Ji, Bethany, and me to help her wrap pennies from Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF.  Once we were finished with that, Ji, Alyssa, and I went up to the guidance office since we each had seperate things that we needed to get worked out.  That's when I hopefully got the biggest college-related thing sorted out.  Guys, applying to college can be hard when things don't go right.  I think I go to a great school, but something I didn't learn until this year is that it's sometimes hard to get things figured out because of the small staff.  I've been trying to get this sorted out forever, but our guidance office consists of two people (a guidance counselor and a secretary), and whenever I have time to go in there, they never seem to be in there (hence why I went during class today).  It was starting to get frustrating.  I've never had this problem until this year, since you don't really need to deal with guidance much (except during scehduling times) until senior year.  Hopefully, that's all sorted out though, and as soon as I send in these two applications, I'll be done applying to college.  (Then I just have to be accepted...)

Just like us high schoolers, the middle schoolers weren't doing much today either, so I didn't do much during peer tutoring today.  In the first class I'm in, I helped one girl with math a little bit and helped two boys study for a social studies class.  In the second class, the were watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving while working on a math worksheet that they didn't really need help on, so I spend the whole time just watching Charlie Brown.

We did actually do work in econ today, but it was easy and not nearly enough to take up the whole hour and a half we're in there.  Most of the class was spent doing nothing.

Since getting home, I feel like I've accomplished a lot, but it really doesn't seem like much looking back on it.  I managed to get some reading done, which hasn't really happened in a while.  I got half of a college application filled out, which I'm relieved that it's nearing being done.  I also filmed a video that I was currently in the process of editing before I got in the shower and then started writing (first my story and then this).  I have over twenty minutes of footage, so I hope to get it edited down a lot, which probably won't happen since I can't bear to leave out anything when it comes to books.  As soon as I post this I'm going to get back to editing that, and I'll hopefully have it up before I go to bed, which is looking less likely as it's getting late.

Dr. Seuss and Economics

We started writing our comparative analysis papers in AP English today.  Our last papers were challenging, but this is definitely the hardest yet.  I sat in front of the computer for what felt like forever before I even got one sentence typed.  It's definitely a tough paper to write.

I brought in my senior picture today for the yearbook.  For some reason, our yearbook teacher decided to show it up on the projector for the whole class.  It's a small class, and everyone's going to see it in the yearbook anway, but it was still awkward.  It's weird having everyone look at your picture and make comments (even though they were all positive).

We got to read Dr. Seuss in Econ(omics) today.  We got into groups and read The Lorax.  Then, we had to identify different economic stuff in it.  After we were finished we watched the cartoon version.  Who would have thought you'd be reading children's books in a high school econ class.  I'd actually never read The Lorax before even though I'd heard a lot about it.  Then, I came home and randomly stumbled upon a new Australian teaser trailer for the new Lorax movie that's coming out.  Weird timing.

This is a random fact that I found out the other day.  Thanks to kids in my grade dropping out, we now have a grand total of 99 kids in my class.  (Honestly though, we've always been just a little over a hundred, so this isn't really huge drop.)  We just keep getting smaller and smaller.  A pretty large portion is also graduating half year, so it'll be interesting to see how many seniors we actually have in school next semester.

Happy Halloween!

I hope everyone had an awesome Halloween.  Mine wasn't bad, but it definitely wasn't the best either.  It really wasn't very Halloween-ish.

There's really no way to describe last night other than weird.  I feel like I spent most of the night only half asleep.  I kept waking up, but I can only vaguely remember it even though I could out of bed at least two or three times.  I've felt half asleep all day.

Since it was Halloween the first thing we did at school today (after announcements that is) was watching the Halloween parade.  Every year my school lets the people who dressed up to walk down the hallway, and then they choose cutest, scariest, and most original costume.  Ji was taking pictures for yearbook, but it turns out the camera's memory card won't upload to the computer, so we can't really use any of them (or any that we've taken recently).

The only good thing about not being able to use the yearbook camera is that a lot of the teachers recently got iPads, so we can use our yearbook teacher's to take pictures.  Ji and I spent yearbook class walking around the school taking pictures of people who dressed up.  Interestingly, most of the pictures are color-coordinated.  It just so happens that each class tended to have people with the same color costumes.  I think it looks cool.  My favorite pictures we took was of what I'll dub the "black group."  My friend Haley's in the picture with a Slytherin tie and Harry Potter glasses with a terrified look on her face while a vampire is behind her about to bite her neck.  They're not the only ones in the picture, but that's basically the focal point.  We actually got several hilarious ones of that group.  They were the largest and really the only ones who posed in a funny position.

Our computer applications teacher gave us blow pops because it was Halloween, which was pretty awesome.

After school came play practice as usual.  You'll be hearing a lot about the play from me this week as it's dress week, and we open Friday.  This means five and a half hour practices all week.  The awesome part is that we get supper, and there's not really anything left for us to do other than scene changes (and people doing lights and sound), so I have time to do my homework during practice.  (Not that I got much done today during practice.  I don't work well when I have a headache.)  It's weird thinking that the play opens this Friday.  It doesn't feel like this is the seventh week we've been working on it.  Hopefully, everyone who comes to see it enjoys it!

Debates, Yearbooks, and Inductions

Next week we're having debates in my AP U.S. history class.  I'm pretty excited for this because I've never actually participated in a debate before.  Being a very quiet person, I'm a little nervous, but I hope it will be fun.  We went to the library to work on it today.  My group with debating Indian removal.  We're on the con side.  Today I got put in charge of our conclusion.  I'm a little worried about it because I have to have something written down, but I also have to be able to change it a bit during the actual debate so it relates to what the other team argued.  I'm really worried because I'm not great at coming up with things on the spot.  If you take out that little bit though, I'm extremely excited about this.

Today was also our second day of watching the movie A Few Good Men in AP English.  Our next paper is going to be about obedience to authority, and we're able to use the movie in the paper.  I'm definitely not complaining about watching a movie for a few days in that class.

We're making some decent progress on the yearbook this week.  We looked at a template for the pages today, and it looks so cool.  I'm really excited for this yearbook.  I have hopes that it'll be pretty great.

I'm not really sure why, but our economics (which is the same class and teacher as government from last quarter) teacher had us form our desks into a circle during class today.  We had a discussion about economic stuff (descriptive I know) like minimum wage, Social Security, etc.  Then we watched a video about China's economy (and how it's tied to the U.S.).

I stayed after school today (just like every day the past few weeks) for play practice.  We didn't do a whole lot today.  I sorted through the makeup and picked out some of the older, used up stuff, and I helped paint just a little bit.  It was actually a bit funny because she asked me to paint because I'm left handed, and she couldn't paint this one bit because she was right handed.

After practice, my sister and I came home for just a little bit before going back to school for the Beta Club induction.  My sister was inducted into Beta Club tonight, and I was taking pictures of the induction for the yearbook.  I didn't get that many good pictures unfortunately.  I stayed in the back because there was no way I was going up to the front, and I had a bit of trouble with the camera (it refused to take pictures at one point).  Still, I think I could enough pictures for us the use for the yearbook.  Ji and I actually have the Beta Club page, which we should start on since we now have pictures from several things.

Pokemon Lectures

Today seems like it was packed with stuff that I could mention in a blog, but I'm having trouble actually remembering things.  This seems to be happening a lot lately, and I don't like it.

Our English teacher wasn't there today, so we had a sub.  This sub just happened to be one of our past English teachers who retired this year.  It was nice to see her again.  Another awesome thing about English:  We took a vocab test, and the name Hermione was on it.  I'm not at all exagerating when I say that made my day.

Yesterday, we got our yearbook shirts that I meant to post a picture of on twitter but never did.  (I would now except it's kind of in the laundry since I wore it today.)  The fit of them seemed kind of weird when we first pulled them out of the box, but mine turned out to fit okay.  The design is really cool too.  My friend Ji actually drew up the design.  I'll try and post a picture at some point in the future.  (We all know that I'll completely forget, and a picture will never really happen.  Just know that they look awesome.)

Also in yearbook, we had our training over how to use the site/software to design the yearbook today.  It was all pretty much the stuff I learned at the workshop I went to over the summer, but it made me excited for designing the pages all over again.

This is random, but it's awesome, so I'm going to mention it.  I got a brownie in computer applications.  Alyssa made them for yearbook, but we didn't have time to eat them (because of the training).  Ji and I are lucky enough to have also have computer applications with Alyssa right after yearbook, so she gave us each a brownie then.  It was an awesome brownie.

My grandma, brother, and three of my cousins picked me up from play practice today, and we all went out to eat for supper.  It was so much fun.  I always have some hilarious conversations with my family.  Just a small portion of our conversations were about: jokes (mainly Chuck Norris and blonde jokes), flying snakes, Pokemon, riddles, and so many more.  When it comes to Pokemon, I just want you to know that they taught me a lot tonight.  I was surprised how much my brother and all three of my cousins know about Pokemon.

There was a lot more that happened today of course, but those are the things that come to my mind first.

The Newspaper Article and Stage Crew

I never posted about this on the blog (because I was freaking out about it so much), but I somehow ended up writing a column for the local newspaper.  They wanted a kid from each school in the area to write about stuff happening at that school.  My yearbook teacher and friends thought I should do it.  This all happened a couple of weeks ago, but the issue with the first article in it came out yesterday.  I had several people tell me today that they'd read it and enjoyed it.  The secretary at the middle school even mentioned it when I went over there for peer tutoring.  She'd only asked what my name was a few days ago.  I didn't think she remembered it!  I'm a little embarrassed.  I mean, everyone's said good things about it, but of course the would in front of me.  I'm so paranoid about it.

It's so hard to write posts about just general life stuff now because of play practice.  By the time I get home, I'm worn out and have forgotten most of the day.  I could write about play practice, but there's really nothing to say.  I'm not great at building things, so I'm the one doing the small, random jobs, such as holding something or searching for different props and things.  I'm really happy I joined crew, but it doesn't give me much to blog about.

One random tidbit that might be interesting:  there's apparently a ghost up in the passage way that leads from the costume/prop room to the place where the lights and stuff are controlled.  I haven't actually been past the costume room and I haven't heard the footsteps that everyone else claims to hear (even when I'm in there alone).  I'm not really sure if I should believe everyone or not.  One girl claims she was chased once.  We'll see how I feel in a month.  I can say that that area is creepy, so I can see why people would believe there's a ghost there.

I usually look forward to Saturdays because I get to sleep in, but that's not happening tomorrow.  Why?  At three a.m. my mom and I are leaving to drive up to Indianapolis to visit Marian University.  Marian isn't one of my top choices for a school, but I definitely think I'm applying there.  It should be interesting.  Although, the long car right in the wee hours of the morning may be even more interesting thanks to sleep deprivation.  Here's to hoping I can get some sleep in the car.

I Could Never be a Sales Person

I love Saturdays.  Sleeping and not having to go to school is the best.  I haven't done much today other than read and work on some homework.  I have to write notes on a chapter of AP U.S. history this weekend, and I'm about halfway done at the moment.

After posting yesterday, I remembered that there were two things I forgot to mention in that post.  I decided I'd just post about them today.  Now that it's almost a day later, I'm not sure if I want to post about them or not since it feels kind of pointless now, but here we go anyway.

I was in the bathroom at school the other day when two of my old best friends walked in.  There was someone else in the bathroom, but they were actually in one of the stalls, which meant the three of us were just kind of there at the sinks.  As soon as the walked in my awkward self got a little nervous.  I've barely spoken to one of them since middle school, and I still fill kind of weird around the other one even though we talked in class all last semester.  We started up a conversation though.  It was awkward, but not quite as bad as I expected.  To most people reading this, this may sound random and unimportant, but these two were my best friends for a really long time (in addition to Summer, who still is one of my best friends.  Our group kind of split in half I guess...).  It's just so weird whenever I see them now.  I miss them, but at the same time all three of us have changed so much that it's just not the same.  Yeah...

I also forgot to mention that Ji and I went around selling yearbook ads again yesterday.  This is getting kind of stressful.  We have seven businesses between us, and we only managed to sell one ad last Friday.  We sold another one yesterday.  One business told us they're definitely not buying one, and there's another business that we're almost positive isn't because they're really indecisive.  Out of the other three, one we just managed to find yesterday, and they're thinking about it.  I can't find addresses for the other two business anywhere.  They're no where online, in the phone book, and no one I ask has heard of them.  I'm going to have to talk to the yearbook teacher Monday because I'm not sure what to do about them.

Before I wrap up this post, I just want to share a cute little scene I saw earlier today.  At about noon, I went looking for my little brother to see what he wanted for lunch.  I found him on the ground outside just reading a book with both of our dogs beside him.  It was so random but adorable.  I looked kind of embarassed when I found him.  I think he was just taking them out so the could go to the bathroom, but he took a book to read while he was waiting and lost track of time or something.  I'm not really sure what happened, but it was cute.

Four Day Weekends Throw Me Off Track

The four day weekend really screwed up my days, sleep schedule, etc.  I laid in bed for hours last night before finally falling asleep at some time during the early morning.  I honestly can't remember a whole lot of the day because I was half asleep through most of it.  Hopefully I can think of some things for this post.

We turned in our first paper in AP English.  This paper is our first assignment that goes toward getting college credit.  I'm kind of scared to think about the fact that she might be grading it right now or maybe already has.  I don't think it was that great, but I hope that's just because I'm so nervous about it.

We finally got to hand out yearbooks during yearbook class today.  It really wasn't that eventful, but I like knowing that everyone finally gets to see it (even if I had nothing to do with last years).  Ji and I handed out books to the kids in Spanish and study hall.  The study hall kids had kind of scattered across the school as some where in the library and some went to teachers rooms to get help, so we had to go to about four different places other than the Spanish and study hall rooms.  After that was all done, we finally got our theme for this year's yearbook down.  I'm so excited about it!  It's basically the theme that the teacher and I talked about at the workshop over to summer, which makes it even awesomer to me.

Third block was stressful because I was supposed to help this kid who absolutely refused to do his work.  The teacher told me to go help someone else because he refused to do anything.  Luckily, the girl I ended up helping had no problem actually working, and everything after that went fine.

I almost forgot to mention that my friends and I discovered that one of our friends switched schools today.  It was really unexpected, and there were a few sad moments today when someone would comment on how weird it felt that she wasn't there.  I'll miss her.  I now have an empty seat beside me in AP U.S. history and government.  She was quiet like me, so when it was just us two, we didn't really talk to each other since I don't think either one of us is great at starting conversation.  Still, she's an awesome person, and it sucks that she won't be there anymore.

"It was you! You did this to me!"

Now that I'm looking back on it, today was actually pretty evenful compared to my usual days.

It was picture day today.  I'm not too fond of picture day.  We take them in a dark auditorium, and there are tons of people just staring at you as you take them.  Senior year your pictures don't go in the yearbook because you get to turn in senior pictures, but we still had to take them for school records or something.  Needless to say, I did nothing for the picture, and I'm sure it turned out horribly.  I am wearing one of my awesome Hunger Games shirts though.

Remember that paper I mentioned that we were writing for English?  We peer edited it today.  This has done nothing but make me even more nervous about the paper.  I don't feel like mine is good at all.  I really hope that this is just me panicking over nothing.

At lunch today, Haley was going on about how she's been absolutely obsessed with Disney movies lately, and she has no idea what caused it.  She started trying to think of why this is.  Suddenly, she stood up, pointed at me, and said very loudly, "It was you!  You did this to me!"  I burst into laughter as she kept on going saying stuff like, "I watched your video about Disney!  This is all your fault!  I'll never forgive you!"  It was absolutely hilarious.  I can't even begin to describe how awesome her reaction was.

During government everyone started to smell something, which we eventually figured out was freshly popped popcorn.  It turns out that the guidance counselor was popping popcorn over in the concession stand, which is next door to the government classroom.  I was absolutely starving at this point because it was the end of the day and I hadn't eaten much lunch as it was particularly disgusting today.  We had to smell this popcorn popping for at least half and hour before the guidance counselor came into the room carrying a decently sized bag of popcorn.  He said that it was unfair for us to have to smell it popping and not get some.  As soon as he sat the bag down on a desk, at least half the classroom, including me, ran up to get some.  Usually I don't think of my school as being that great, but it's moments like this that make me realize it's actually pretty decent.  I'm not sure how many schools have a guidance counselor that would just come in and give the kids popcorn.  There are advantages to attending a small school.

After school Ji and I decided that we were going to work on selling ads for the yearbook.  Everyone in the class is assigned certain businesses that they have to go to.  For some reason my sister Regina decided to tag along.  I'll admit she was helpful though because she helped us find this daycare that Ji and I had never heard of before in our lives.  It went pretty quickly, but the fact that it was so hot made it drag on a bit.  We couldn't turn the air-conditioning in Ji's car up that much because she was low on gas, and it was a hundred degrees.  At one point the thing on Ji's car said it was even a hundred and three degrees.  I thought I was going to die in that car.  I was so thankful for air-conditioning when I got back home.  I can't wait for it to cool down.  Regina's 16th birthday party is tomorrow, and it's supposed to be ninety-nine degrees.

One last little thing:  I watched some bats fly around earlier this evening.  This is pretty irrelevant, but I wanted to mention how awesome bats are.  When I'm thinking about my favorite animals, bats don't usually come to mind, but when I do think of them, they definitely deserve to be one of my favorite animals.  I love watching them fly around.  They are just cool.

Even People You've Known for Years Can Surprise You

I feel like this week should be called New T-Shirt Week.  On Sunday, I finally got to wear one of my new Hunger Games shirts.  Then, I wore the other one Monday, and today I wore my new Lord of the Rings shirt.  As I was walking in the door to yearbook today, my English teacher from last year stopped me and asked if my shirt said Mordor on it.  I told him it did.  He followed me into the classroom because he needed to talk to the teacher and said to her, "Check out the Tolkien reference on Haley's shirt."  This started a Lord of the Rings conversation with the people in the classroom at the time.  It was interesting.  Turns out there's a Lord of the Rings fan in my yearbook class who is the last person you would have expected.  Seriously.  I've known her since elementary school, and I'm still surprised she even knows what Lord of the Rings is.  People can surprise you.

I think I mentioned that we've been learning the Ammendments in government.  Well, I did way better on that quiz than I thought.  I only missed two of them!  We took our test today, and it went way better than I thought it would too.  I suck at memorizing lists of things like that.  If you were to ask me what a certain ammendment is right now I don't think I could even answer.

One last thing for today:  Sevenly.com is selling some awesome shirts, and for every shirt that's bought, seven pairs of shoes go to children in Honduras through Soles4Souls.  They're pretty awesome shirts too.  You should go check them out.

Yearbooks and Mockingjay

I don't know why but this week has just seemed to inch by for me.  There's no way it's only Tuesday.  I was also a little shocked yesterday when I turned to the new week in my planner and saw September.  Time's going by so fast and yet so slow.

Last year's yearbooks came in today!  We spent all of class trying to sort out all of the personalized ones by grade.  Tomorrow I think we're sorting them into groups passed on what class the kids are in that period, and hopefully we'll be able to hand them out.  We did get to take our own, so I have mine.  I haven't looked at it much though because I haven't had the time.  It's really similar to past yearbooks, but it's pretty awesome.

During lunch today, my friend Haley, who's reading Catching Fire, picked up a copy of Mockingjay and read the last page.  Her reaction was absolutely hilarious.  Neither one of us could really say anything since Jordan, who's getting ready to read Mockingjay, was sitting right there, but her face was priceless.  She said she wanted to go read Catching Fire after that.  I love seeing Jordan and Haley's reactions as the read the books.  We also had fun talking about Starkid and fanfiction.  They're basically the only people I know who actually understand these things.

We took a quiz over Ammendments 14 throught 27 in government today.  (We took one on one through thirteen yesterday.)  It's definitely wasn't as hard as I was expecting since I couldn't remember any of them, but I know I screwed up a couple of things.  It's so hard to keep all of the numbers straight!

That about sums up my rather uneventful day.

Who's Irene?

I love Saturday.  It is by far the best day of the week.  My feelings for it kind of wan in the summer, but as soon as school starts again, I remember how much I love that particular day of the week.

Today was the Drive One 4 Ur School event that I worked at.  One of the local car dealership let people test drive cars for free, and our school got money each time someone test drove.  There was a decent sized group of kids there from school, way more than was needed.  Most of our time was spent just sitting there talking.  A lot of the teachers were there, including our principal, vice principal, and guidance counselor.  It's kind of weird seeing them outside of school.

I was so excited about finally getting to wear my awesome new shirt today.  (I can't wear it to school because it's kind of spoilery for the last Hunger Games book, and Haley and Jordan are still reading them.)  Then, I get there, and they hand me a Drive One 4 Ur School.  I didn't really have to take it, but everyone else was wearing them.  (Plus, I wasn't turning down a free shirt.)  I'm determined to wear that Hunger Games shirt tomorrow.  I don't care that it breaks my rule of not wearing t-shirts to church.  (I'm never dressed up at church anyway, so it's not like it's a big leap or anything.

Ji and I were only supposed to work an hour and a half, but we ended up staying for two and a half hours.  It really wasn't that bad since we were just talking to everyone.  We even played hangman for a while.  Ji and I took some pictures for the yearbook.  (Ji took a lot more than I did.)  We also informed Ji about the hurricane when she asked who Irene was after hearing the name.  I then informed Ji of every single bit of Hurricane Irene news that I say through twitter for the rest of the morning.  We even got some awesome free popcorn.

When I got home, I discovered that my Hoosier Girls State DVD had come in the mail!  That actually reminds me that I need to go make my family watch it with me.  I'm looking forward to all of the memories (and making my family see how awesome it was).

I  have a slight favor to ask you guys today.  As you know, I'll be going off to college next fall, so it shouldn't be surprising that I'm trying to get as much scholarship money as I can.  There's this site called Fastweb that helps you find scholarships.  It's pretty awesome.  Right now, if you refer someone to the site, you're entered into a drawing to win $500 of scholarship money.  If you're also looking for scholarships, please use this link to register.  It'll help you find scholarships, and you can help me out at the same time.  I'd be extremely greatful.

That basically summarizes the more exciting parts of my day.  The rest of it was mainly spent watching Naruto, How I Met Your Mother, vlogbrothers, and The Hillywood Show.  (Isn't that just full of variety?)  I'm going to go convince my parents to watch that HGS DVD with me.  (It's only August, and I'm already reliving the summer.)