Long Time, No Blog July 3, 2008

I have realized that I have been siriusly neglecting this blog.  Yes, that was a Sirius pun.  Anyway, I haven’t posted anything in over a week, which is rare.  This time it is not due to any Plurking.  I have not Plurked in over a week either.  Life has just been utterly chaotic.

My twin cousins’ graduation from high school was last Saturday.  Graduations at their school are quite different than at mine.  Theirs are quiet and the students are respectful.  At my graduation, we were loud and obnoxious and did not shut up even during the speeches.  Beach balls, silly string, and bubbles were all over the place, despite the principal’s long lecture about not bringing them.  Then there were the loud shouts of ‘06!’ and the loud horns that people had stationed outside the building to sound when their friends names were called.

My cousins’ graduation was quite different.  The students were all quiet during the speeches and I did not see a single beach ball.  There were some bubbles, but they were being used by someone in the audience.  I was impressed that someone brought some horns and sounded them a bit, which was something that didn’t happen at my other cousins’ graduations years ago.

The party was fun and the food was good.  The biggest difference between their party and parties where I live was the lack of gnats.  At outdoor graduation parties where I live, pretty much everyone has their hand in the air waving away the gnats the whole time.  There was a noticeable lack of hand waving at my cousins’ graduation.  My family found this kind of funny.  Of course, there was also a lack of little black ’sprinkles’ in the cake.

We arrived home on Saturday night and I went to a friend’s graduation on Sunday.  That one was fun, although it did rain and we had to go inside.  Then, yesterday started my five days of work without a day off.  I worked yesterday, today, and have to work tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday.

Then, a week from today, we are getting our carpet redone upstairs.  This was brought on by my brother’s fish tank leak a couple weeks ago.  So I have to spend Monday and Tuesday moving all my stuff to the basement.  That will be a tedious job.

Other than that, not much new has been going on.  Benny is fine and he helped my mom clean out the refrigerator today.  He cleaned the vegetable drawers.  Sadly there are no pics since I was at work at the time.  Weasley and Moony are good as well.  Weasley will have to spend a couple days in a fish bowl during the carpet project since his tank is in my room.

Oh, and I am pet sitting my neighbors two tortoises for a couple days.  They’re pretty interesting.  I’ll get some pics sometime.  It was pouring rain when I went over today so I didn’t get any pics today.  They live outside.  Their names are Zander and Rocko.

Gotta Love It June 22, 2008

I am thoroughly enjoying my summer and not having to drive to school everyday.  Gas just keeps going up and is about $4.15 here at the cheapest.  I am happy to report that I just got gas for $4.10 at a gas sale today.  It cost me about $57, which wasn’t even a full tank.

You’re probably wondering why I am happy about this, but the thing is that I have not purchased any gas for my car in four weeks.  Yes, I went an entire month without filling up my car’s tank.  It is a pretty big tank at 18.5 gallons, but still.  I hadn’t realized how much gas I was burning going to school.  During the school year I would fill up my tank every other week.  It took me about 20 minutes to get to school during good traffic.  Work is half the distance at 10 minutes.

If things keep going with this, I will only have to buy 2 more tanks of gas this summer before I leave for school in August.  Of course, with gas going the way it is, it will be $4.30 the next time I buy gas and it will cost me over $60.

Blame It On The Plurk June 14, 2008

I too, have been caught up in the new online addiction that is Plurk.  My blogging friends, Baja, Tortilla, Yoon, VaZ, and PrincessGinger have also joined in on the Plurking.  I blame Yoon for my addiction.  However, since it is summer and I have no homework to do, I don’t really mind the new addiction.

Not much is new in my life since I have started Plurking.  I am currently working on a new fan fiction and reading The Warrior Heir, by Cinda Williams Chima.  It is very good and I highly recommend it.  I have also been working a lot.  My siblings are almost done with school and I have been out for over a month.  The summer is flying by.  I am actually going to start shopping for my dorm room tomorrow, so that just shows how fast the summer is going by.

The insane heat has finally come to an end, although I would prefer it to be cooler still.  It is in the 80s today and although that is better than last week’s 90s, I want it to be in the 70s.  Benny has been laying around like a lazy dog ever since it got hot.  He is still pretty crazy, but hasn’t really made much trouble lately.  Although, now that I wrote that, I’m sure I jinxed it.

Fun At Work June 6, 2008

Yep, today was pretty fun at work.  They had this event going on for employees to get everyone to live healthier.  They had a bounce house set up in the parking lot, along with basketball, power walks, whiffle golf, and a Wii set up in the break room.

An hour and a half into my shift one of the managers asks me if I want to go do the bounce house.  Of course I do!  I got paid to shoot hoops and go in the bounce house for 10 minutes.  And the best part was that they’re raffling off the Wii!  So I got four raffle tickets (completely free) and entered to win it.  That would be so cool if I actually won it.

Plus, they had free water, yogurt, granola, and fruit in the break room.  I went and got some once I was done with my shift.  It was quite tasty.

Of course, it had to be 90 degrees today.   It got so hot and humid that they decided to hold the power walks in the store.  I was all sweaty from my time in the bounce house, so that was kinda gross, but it was fun.  Not your average day at work.

The Things You’ll Find June 2, 2008

In preparation for the carpet project (see previous post), I have decided to thoroughly clean out my room.  I figure the more stuff I get rid of now the less I’ll have to move when we get the new carpet.  As I was rifling through the various detritus from the past few years it became obvious how long it had been since I performed such a task.

Buried in a pile of various electronics chargers was my GameBoy Color.  I haven’t played this in ages.  Inside of it was my Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets game.

Along the same lines, I also found my Bop It Extreme.  I remember when they came out with the first Bop It when I was in elementary school.  Someone brought one to recess and we all played it.  My parents didn’t want me to get one since they can become very annoying to listen to.  Then they came out with the Bop It Extreme and I asked my aunt for it for Christmas.  She got it for me.

Even more interesting was the various junk from school.  I found a few binders full of various papers from junior and senior year of high school.  That was 2 and 3 years ago, which shows how long it’s been since I cleaned my closet.  I found a report card from junior year, my SAT admissions ticket, cards from my 16th birthday (junior year), my temporary learner’s permit, film negatives from photography class, my entire math binder from senior year (which got dumped in the recycling shortly after I found it), my senior research paper, and my first ever piece of fan fiction.  This was actually a school assignment.  In junior year I had to write a fan fic about Of Mice and Men. I looked at the grade and I got a 95 on it and my teacher wrote ‘This is great!  Wonderful job.’  I am sure that is the only assignment that I got that written on it.  Most of the assignments that year were essays about boring books that I never got above a 90 on.

Another relic I found that got unceremoniously dumped in the recycling was my chemistry review book.  This was from junior year.

Along with my Chemistry reference tables.

And last but not least my US History review book from senior year.

Believe it or not these were not the most interesting items I found.  I also found my journal from Creative Writing in senior year.  I really liked that class because I enjoy writing as long as it’s something I want to write about.  I rifled through it and found multiple story ideas and various poems.  I’ll highlight a few here, but am going to save most for future posts.  My favorite one by far was from May 1, 2006.  It’s a list of stuff I didn’t like on that particular day.

-George Bush                       -Homework                         -Traffic Jams

-Getting up early                  -Regents Exams                  -This assignment

-Gas prices (this made me    -Freshmen boys (my bro     -Slow people in the halls

laugh, gas was just under      was a freshman that year)   -Middle schoolers

$3 at that point)                    -Slow Computers                 -People who walk on the wrong side of the hall

-Double physics                   -School laptops                    -Gym class

I am not sure what the purpose of that assignment was.  I didn’t even know what it was a list of until I read it.

Another favorite is this-

‘I would love to see George Bush put in jail.  I think he is one of the worst presidents.  He has done illegal stuff like domestic spying and the CIA leak, but he hasn’t been impeached.’

That’s all for now.  I’ll post more of my journal at some point.  Stay tuned for further updates on the room cleaning as well.

Graduation May 23, 2008

Well, it’s official, I am a college graduate.  I got my Associate’s Degree in Liberal Arts last night, aka the degree for those of us who had no idea what we wanted to major in.  The ceremony was nice.  It was very long, though, it went until 9:30pm and it started at 7:30pm.  It was a bit calmer than my high school graduation.  People were loud, but everyone was quiet while the speeches were taking place.  In high school, everyone talked and screamed through the speeches.  At this one, we didn’t have very many speeches.  Just the college president, state assemblywoman, and one of the students.  During graduation practice, someone announced that there weren’t going to be any long speeches and everyone started cheering.

The worst part was having to stand outside the building for 45 minutes until we started the procession.  It was chilly and rainy, but that’s to be expected.  It rained during my high school one, too.  Heck, there was a major flood just a few days after my high school graduation.  But once we were inside it was nice.  People were throwing beach balls around and they had a bunch of balloons that got dropped at the end.  There was a group of people playing the bag pipes as we left the building.

Graduation practice on the other hand was not nearly as fun.  First, I had to drive to the nearby city (my dad drove during the actual graduation) and I hadn’t really driven downtown before.  I managed to find the place, but then had to park in a parking garage.  Not something I want to do again anytime soon.  I drove in and had to pull a ticket out of a machine, but I couldn’t reach it.  I had to unbuckle and lean out the window to get the ticket.  Then when practice was over it took me over 10 minutes to get out of the garage, and then I had to pay $2 to get out.  I’ll take winding country roads any day over city driving, thank you very much.

I don’t have my actual diploma yet.  It’s going to come in the mail sometime in July after they’re sure I’ve met all the requirements for graduation.

It’s Finally Over! May 20, 2008

Today was judgment day in calculus.  I took my final at 9:50 and it took me about an hour.  I actually knew what I was doing for most of it.  The last couple of problems were pretty hard and I guessed on them.  But after the test I was talking to one of my friends about it and I asked him what this one formula was that I couldn’t remember.  He told me and I realized that I actually guessed correctly.  So, I think I passed and I may have done decently.  My professor said she’d have grades up tomorrow.  The only thing left to do is wait.

Now I’m officially done with the semester and done with community college.  Graduation is on Thursday.  I tried to sell back a whole stack of books at the book store after my test.  They bought half of them and I got $44.50.  After that I decided to go to another book store to see if they’d buy the rest.  I had heard rumors that that book store buys any books.  Apparently the rumor is not true.  They bought one book out of the six I had left.  It was my walking class book and they gave me $2 for it.  Ugh, if I had known that I wouldn’t have bothered going, since I’m sure I spent more than $2 in gas to get there.  Now I am left with 5 books that no one will buy.  One is my chemistry book that I have tried to sell four times now.  No one wants it.  Maybe I’ll try Craigslist, although why anyone would want to buy my text books is beyond me.

But enough about text books.  Now I get to sit around all summer and hope to make more money than I spend.  Ah, summer.  I hate the insane heat, but love the vacation.  However, it doesn’t feel like summer yet.  There was a chance of snow last night and I am sitting here in a sweat shirt.  Gotta love the weather.  A few weeks ago it was almost 90 degrees, and last night it was 33.  I just hope I did decently in all my classes.  I’m sure calculus brought down my GPA, but hopefully the other classes helped off-set that.  None of my grades are up yet, so I’ll be checking quite often the next few days.  I’m guessing I won’t even know all my grades by the time graduation comes.  That’ll be pretty funny, graduating without even knowing my final grades.

By Some Miracle… May 16, 2008

…I passed my calculus test!  I got a 52 out of 80, which is a 65%.  Not a spectacular score, but passing none the less.  My professor said we all did horrible and she wanted to cry while she was grading them.  So, I think I did all right.  I just have to hope that I do decently on the final.  If I get a 70 or higher on that, I might scrape a B in the class.  Just that final, and then I’m done with school!

Failure is Imminent May 14, 2008

The question is not ‘did I fail my calculus test today?’, it is ‘how badly did I fail my calculus test today?’  Today was our fourth and last test, not including the comprehensive final next week.  I tried to study last night, but I just couldn’t concentrate.  There were so many other things I wanted to do, such as write fan fiction, so I only studied for about a half hour.  Of course, it did not help that my professor squeezed a whole chapter into about 2 and a half weeks of class.  I knew as soon as I saw this chapter that I would fail the test.

So I knew I would fail last night, and the day pretty much sucked in general.  I got to school and realized that I left my copy of the Constitution and the Articles of Confederation at home, sitting next to my laptop.  Since I live 20 mins away from school and there’s only 10 mins between classes, my choices were either hope that my history professor would not choose the Constitution essay, or run to the library in between classes to print them off.  I chose the latter.  I get to the library and luckily there was a computer available.  Unfortunately, it was an extremely slow computer.  I finally print off the documents and run to class.  I arrive at the classroom, out of breath, but prepared.  I needn’t have worried, however, because the professor decided to just let us choose which essay we wanted to write.  I wanted to write the one about the Revolutionary War, so the documents were unnecessary.  I left them sitting in the lobby of the building in case someone else forgot them.  They were about 20 pages long all together, so I kind of feel bad about killing a tree, but I know if I hadn’t have printed them, the professor would have picked that essay.

Then, after history, I’m walking to the dining hall and realize that I left my books in my history classroom.  I had to walk all the way back to that building and get them.  I then eat lunch and go to my walking class.  This was fairly uneventful, except that we had to walk up a monstrous hill that was steeper than the hills in my neighborhood, and that’s saying something.

I got to calculus hot, sweaty, out of breath, and thirsty, but I was on time.  I looked at the test and realized that I didn’t know how to do the first 4 problems.  Not good.  I go on to the other problems and found a couple that I thought I knew how to do.  Then I found one that I was really confident about.  It was a plug numbers into a formula and find the integral and I actually remembered the formula.  However, I plugged the integral into my calculator and the calculator’s answer was two more integrals!  It couldn’t do the problem.  I was ready to scream.  The professor wrote on the test that we were to do the integral on the calculator.  I was going to ask her about it, but I ran out of time.  I wrote down a bunch of random stuff on the remaining problems and hoped some of it was right.  Now all I can do is hope for partial credit.

Afterwards, my friend and I went to the store I work at and bought gummies.  Candy was necessary after this horrible monstrosity of a test.  I can only hope that I do better on the final.

All Prepared for Finals… May 12, 2008

Today was the last history class before my final.  The final involves writing one essay.  There are 5 essays that the professor assigned 6 weeks ago.  We had to write 1 page of notes front/back for each.  The professor isn’t telling us which essay we’re going to have to write until the day of the final.  My notes are all done.  It probably took me 15 hours all together.

Today in class, the professor let us ask questions about the final.  One of the essays is about the Industrial Revolution, which was called the Market Revolution in our book.  A few people were a bit confused about this.  Then one guy decided to demonstrate exactly how much he learned this semester.

Professor:  The Industrial Revolution is just another name for the Market Revolution.

Student:  So, is that the one with the Stamp Act and the Sugar Act?

It was all I could do not to laugh at that one.  He is definitely all prepared for the exam on Wednesday.