Brandon Notices

Kevin's upset that he wouldn't be able to play Tetris DX, a Game Boy Color game, on the Nintendo DS. Myself, I'm disappointed that I can't play Pokémon Puzzle Challenge on it. You can't play multiplayer Game Boy Advance games, either.

But what's cool is that it has TWO SCREENS! It's has dual screens! That's what the DS stands for. Dual Screen. You can touch the bottom screen. Use a stylus. It's a touch screen! You can draw pictures or whatever.

It even comes with a built-in program called PictoChat. That's where people can send pictures to each other as instant messages. Unfortunately, nobody near me has a Nintendo DS, so I can't play PictoChat with anybody. It's boring playing tic-tac-toe by myself. Fortunately, I know some guy on the bus who has a Nintendo DS. I'll play on the bus.

We’re at my aunt’s house to celebrate Christmas! My sister, a handful of cousins, a boyfriend of one, and I made gingerbread houses out of graham crackers. There were only five platforms to work on, so Shelly and I worked together. We had a bunch of materials to work with, including two boxes of graham crackers, homemade frosting, and a whole bunch of sprinkles and candies. I found that the toothpicks worked even better than the knife for cutting the graham crackers. I'm posting a bunch of pictures below here. Sorry about the lighting and quality—Aunt Carla wasn't using her flash, despite our constant reminders. Or maybe her camera was broken.



Here's Stephanie’s. She decided to go with a traditional gingerbread house. It seemed to make her a long time to make the basic shape of the house. I guess it kept falling apart. I bet the roof will cave in—it's already starting to in this picture. I like what she did with the roof. She and Michelle made a "glaze" with water, frosting, and sprinkles. Shelly and I actually piloted the idea of mixing frosting with sprinkles to get a colored frosting mix.



Michelle decided to go with the winter theme a step more and make a ski jump. It’s kinda hard to see in the picture. She used several small rectangles to make the curved surface of the ski slope. She covered the platform with marshmallows for that lovely bumpy snow look.

I love the car. I've never seen a gingerbread car. It looks great. It looks like somebody put a gum wrapper on the top of the car—I think that's supposed to be skis. Oh, the other one's still on the ski jump. See at the foot of the ski jump the pair of red candies? Those are the feet of a marshmallow person who went headfirst into the snow. Aww, pity.



Here's Russell’s. He also went with a normal house, but he was a bit more ambitious with a large sloped roof. The roof was sliding off, so he had to put marshmallow column to hold it up. He lined the edges of the roof with peanut butter-flavored chocolate chips. He did the same thing that Stephanie did with the colored sprinkles on the roof. It looks nice like that that way. I like how part of the roof is cut away. I don't know what purpose that serves, but it looks neat.



Kevin says his gingerbread house is the best. I like it very much. He built it upside-down. It looks like there's a tree, and it's upside down too. If you haven't noticed, candy is everywhere! Candy on the top, candy littered on the ground, and look! Gold coins! This is why I like Kevin's gingerbread house so much. There's a chocolate bar stuck up in the top.



Shelly and I worked together, and still remembering our fun trip through Dallas, Texas, we decided it would be interesting to make a gingerbread airport. We started with the hangar, then we drew the runway. Then we were going to build a hospital landing pad for helicopters. Shelly drew a cross with the frosting, and I said, "Isn't it supposed to be an H in a circle?" and she said, "Oh well, now it's a Christian Airport," and Russell said, "It's Air Jesus!"

The airplane is made of marshmallows held together with toothpicks, a Hershey Kiss for the nose of the plane, and some graham crackers for the wings and tail. I suggested we make a red stripe across the plane, so we made some red frosting with red sprinkles, but Shelly missed and made a big fat smudge across the side of the plane, so we just decided to paint the entire plane. Then Shelly found some turkey things and added them to the airport. The one on the runway looks like it's dead, and we said it got run over by an airplane.

Overall, it was a lot of fun, I guess. I anticipate that over time, the roof on Stephanie's gingerbread house will collapse and fall in, Russell's roof will slide off, and other horrible things will happen with the other three gingerbread houses. Maybe their dog, Chica Sue, will try to eat them. Oh no, that would be horrible!

Aunt Karen arrives at Sea-Tac Airport on Wednesday afternoon. I want to go to the airport (exciting places, airports!) to pick her up, but I think Uncle Dick, who works really close to the airport, is going to pick her up instead. Then we're going to drive to Bellingham.

So today, at the blood center, I noticed a woman was bent over, resting with her head in her hand. I asked her if she was all right, she said not really, so I had to wave over the technicians. I've been working there since August, and this was the first time I had to get the technicians' attention for a person with "ill effects". They walked over with a wheelchair, and wheeled her back over to the beds so she could rest for another half hour. Whoa.

After that, Dad drove us over to the very nearby brand new Jo-Ann Fabric store because we had to wait for Mom and Stephanie to finish shopping there. While we were waiting, I bought a present for Stephanie. I can't post it on here because she's subscribed to this weblog. Oh well, now nobody can know. I noticed, at Jo-Ann Fabric, that Mom was holding a thing that looked like a Ninja Turtle! I asked, what's that, and she defensively hid it from my view. "Your Christmas present!" Oh, I can't look at that.

She must think I'm obsessed with the Ninja Turtles. Before we left for Kansas, she let me open a Christmas present that turned out to be a Ninja Turtles coloring book. She said it was a gag present, but it helped me pass a lot of time on the airplane.

Yesterday, in Calculus, Whitney brought Cranium and Scattergories. I don't think she brought them with the intention of playing in Calculus, but Mr. Worster was interested, and devoted the entire day to playing these board games. At first, he had us vote on which game to play. I voted for Scattergories, but the class was so divided that we all just decided to have both games play at once. So I played Scattergories with Alex, Aaron, and some other girl sorry I don't remember your name. Alex was really good. Aaron had never played, and I wasn't doing too badly. We played three games. I had 15 points, Aaron had 16, and Alex had 19. The girl had 10. Then we decided to play another three games, and Audrey joined us. She was awesome; she filled in nearly every blank, and even though we ran out of time and didn't get to total our scores for the last three games, I'm sure she won. I think the best answer of the day was "Something You're Afraid Of" starting with L, and Alex said "Lynching".

Today, we went to Petsmart like every year and got our pictures taken with the Santa. Again, this year, Santa was an old lady. Weird. Well, here's a picture.



We had a heck of a time getting the kitties to look at the camera.

Last Friday, I missed a test in Calculus test because I went to Kansas (remember?) so Mr. Worster was nice about it and let me make it up on Monday. And guess what. I got 100% on it! Phew, I thought I wasn't going to do so well. Derivatives are a little tricky.

Then, on Tuesday, I took a test in History about the Civil War. Blech... history. I'm not good at history. Then, we took our final early in Walking class. Phew... I was tired after that. We walked down the back road to the Meadowdale Beach, then walked up the Meadowdale Beach Trail, and back to school. It was about 4.5 miles, and when it wasn't uphill, it was steep downhill with slippery leaves.

Tuesday night, I made two dozen no-bake cookies for Christmas presents for my friends. Steffi helped me wrap them, and I gave them to some of the friends I saw yesterday and earlier today. I also made some math-themed badges for Mr. Worster. He really seemed to like them. He wore three of them during class. Audrey liked them, and asked where he got them. He said, "Well, um, Brandon gave them to me!" I'll post some of the images for the badges I made:

 

The first one simplifies to i/8 ("I overate"). You need to know trigonometry to find the fourth one funny.

So Stephanie, Mom, Shelly, Carla, Dick, and I went to KANSAS this weekend to go to my grandpa's funeral. I kept a log as I went, and I will share it with you.

Before we could go to our gate, we had to go through airport security. It was much more extensively done than before. For example, they dug through our bags and had us stand with our arms out as they used a handheld metal detector to search us for guns, land mines, etc. Then we boarded our plane for Dallas, Texas for our layover. Then to Kansas. Actually, Missouri.

12-09-2004 About 1:50 PM CST
American Airlines Flight 1694 (Dallas/Ft. Worth to Kansas City)
We safely arrived in Dallas, Texas at the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport for our layover. The first thing Shelly and I noticed was that the land was very flat. We also noticed a lot of cowboy hats in the terminal, and several boot polishing stations. I can't eat on an airplane, so this was the perfect place to get a burger. Fortunately, the terminal had two McDonald's. I wasn't too hungry, and I didn't really want to fill up and get full (in case I lost my lunch on the plane), so I ordered a cheeseburger and a Sprite. When I sat down to eat my burger, I realized that they had forgotten to put in the patty. I returned to the McDonald's and requested another burger. This one was fine. This one was good. It was a terrific burger. I felt satisfied and fulfilled.

12-09-2004 10:41 PM CST
Extended StayAmerica Hotel Room 210
I was surprised to see Aunt Karen pick us up at the gate at the airport in Missouri! Uncle Henry was with her too. We got our luggage. Then we went to Alamo Car Rental to get our rental minivan. We were walking around the lot, looking for the right one. I started to open the door of one particular dark blue one, but it wouldn't open. Only when I stopped pulling did the door open ... AUTOMATICALLY! What a cool van! We all knew we were getting this awesome van with the door that opens for you.

Then we drove to our hotel. It's pretty nice for a "two-star" hotel. It's neat in the fact that the room with the beds are separated from the living room and kitchen. Two different rooms. Three including the bathroom. We had a bit of trouble opening the doors with the keycards, but I figured it out: you have to push down on the door handle hard. Mom, Steffi, my cousin Shelly, and I have one room, and Uncle Dick and Aunt Carla have the other room.

Then we went to visit Mary, Grandpa's wife. We sat talking for a while, and admiring a ceramic light-up Christmas tree Karen made. Then I helped Shelly edit some letters.

Then we went to Sonic Burger! Oh, finally! All the dumb TV channels air commercials, but there aren't any in Washington! We ordered our food (me: bacon cheeseburger, coney (hot dog), fries, and Sprite), but Shelly had to use the restroom. They wouldn't let her use the restrooms inside for security reasons. So we said hold on, and went to Walgreen's across the street. They used the toilets, bought pop for the fridge. Then we returned to Sonic and ate the food. YUM..we HAVE to go back.

12-10-04 11:13 PM CST
Extended StayAmerica Hotel Room 210
We went to the funeral today at the church. There were tons of people I didn't know. Shelly gave a good speech. Then everyone gathered in the dining room to talk and eat cake and remember. It was a little weird that people were hugging me, remembering me from when I was two—and I didn't remember them at all. We got to see Matt—I hadn't seen him in three years, and even then, it was only for a minute.

Then we went to Smokehouse BBQ with a few guests from the funeral and their daughter, Laura, a college freshmen. She was nice, but she was uncomfortable because she didn't know any of us. I think she liked us less when Shelly and I tried to make a siphon with the drinking straws and Stephanie's strawberry lemonade. On the way back to the hotel, Shelly and I tried to sing The 12 Days of Christmas, but couldn't remember any lines from the 6th day and on.

12-11-04 10:45 PM CST
Extended StayAmerica Hotel Room 210
Today was Grandpa's burial in the small town called Bushton. However, it's about a 5-hour drive from our hotel. So we woke up really early and ate in the breakfast room in the hotel. Then we got in the van and just drove west. We stopped at a McDonald's about halfway there at 10:40 AM to get lunch. Guess what. They were still serving breakfast. Aww, I wanted a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. So I got a Sausage Biscuit with Egg instead.

The funeral was in a small town in the middle of nowhere. It was cold and windy. I thought they were going to lower the casket into the ground, but Shelly said that would be too hard for people to watch. Then we went to Oteka's house—she's Grandpa's sister-in-law. We had lunch. While all the grown-ups talked, Shelly, Steffi and I played Go Fish and War. Then, on the way back, we stopped at Russell Stover Candies to look at chocolate. I looked at jelly beans. I got A&W Root Beer and Tutti-Frutti jelly beans, and Mom got Sizzling Cinnamon jelly beans.

After we finally got back to the city our hotel is in, we decided to have Wendy's for dinner. I had two Caesar salads, a chili, and a bacon cheeseburger. On the way back to the hotel, while listening to a Christmas CD I made, Stephanie, Shelly and I tried to sing The Twelve Days of Christmas, but couldn't sing along very well.

12-12-04 About 10:30 PM CST
American Airlines Flight 1267 (Kansas City to Dallas/Ft. Worth)
Karen went with us to the airport. We also met with my dad's father and aunt. Then I bought an airplane keychain that lights up and makes airplane noises. Going through airport security was a pain this time—MCI security isn't very well organized. We're going to transfer planes in Dallas/Ft. Worth. We won't have much time to get to the next plane—we won't have time to shop or eat. Since our tickets are last-minute, our seats on the plane to Seattle suck. Each of the six of us sit in the center seats of six different rows. I won't be sitting next to anyone I know. I'll be surrounded by strangers. I hear Kevin and Terry are going to pick us in SeaTac.

12-12-04 About 1:45 PM CST
American Airlines Flight 533 (Dallas/Ft. Worth to Seattle-Tacoma)
We were worried when we arrived at the Texas airport because it didn't look like we'd have enough time to get to our next gate to depart for SeaTac. We only had 20 minutes until boarding, and we had (as I later found out) three miles to the gate. Three miles, with all six of us, would probably take us at least 40 minutes, walking quickly. Fortunately, we could take the TrAAin (AA is for American Airlines) right to our next gate. However, while walking to the TrAAin Station, we came across the man in the trolley. It's like an extended golf cart without the canopy. The guy was glad to give us a ride. So we rode all the way to our gate on the other side of the airport. It was fun, and we still had ten minutes to spare.

Thanks to the nice ticket lady at our gate, our seating arrangements were changed to allow us to be seated closer together. We're seated in pairs, which is better than sitting alone. I ate a yummy bagged bistro meal. It inclused a turkey sandwich, a bag of baby carrots, a bag of Ruffles, and a brownie. Shelly gave me her Ruffles. I also bought Sun Chips back in Texas. Oh, and I bought a keychain that says "Don't Mess With Texas".

Garth took the computer chair (he probably slept in it overnight) and I don't want to make him move...so I'm sitting in this hard dining table chair. It's not nearly as comfortable. Darn kitty, give me back the chair!

I recorded the entire Everybody Loves Raymond marathon. It took 2 video tapes. I shall watch it whenever I need to.

I think we're going to put the Christmas tree up today. I'll put pictures up when I get the opportunity. I made a chain out of red, white, and green construction paper. It's a Christmas decoration. It pretty. I put it up on the walls. It completely goes around the living room, and goes into the dining room a little. I made too much. I made it all during the ELR marathon.

Today is Thanksgiving. Yep.

Today is also the 8-hour Everybody Loves Raymond marathon. I really like this show.

Shenehneh will want turkey, but Garth doesn't like it. I'll give him some tuna.

I went to Emily's birthday party last Friday. It was fun, especially when we dressed Katie up in toilet paper. We obviously got last place. We got a trophy (toilet paper tube with "Most Creative" written on it). Katie and I promised to pass the trophy back and forth every Monday as a challenge to see if we could do it, but I forgot to take it on Monday, so I immediately blew the challenge.

I went to play broomball with Katie again. Our team won! At half-time, it was 3-2, then we won with 5-2! Then we watched Elf. I had already seen it. I liked the nacho cheese bean dip stuff. It was good. Oh, that was dinner. The flyer said it ended at 11 PM, but it really ended at 10, so they told us all to call home and leave.

The Nintendo DS sales started Sunday. I want one, but all they have now is the silver color. I want cobalt! Cobalt doesn't come out until May! I don't want to wait that long! I guess I'll settle with silver, or "platinum," as they call it.

The new Simpsons episode on Sunday was funny. I liked the part where Ralph ran in circles going "duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck" until Bart yelled at him. That was funny.

I was watching ELR yesterday on TBS, and was shocked to find out that on Thanksgiving, after noon, there is going to be an Everybody Loves Raymond marathon! All day!!!!! I'm so gonna record all of it.

Tomorrow is Wednesday. After that, it's Thanksgiving, and the start of another 4-DAY WEEKEND!

I got Mario POWER Tennis yesterday. It's awesome. I already unlocked four characters! I like Koopa Troopa. In the N64 version, I chose Paratroopa every time, but he wasn't available at first. I like Koopa Troopa's defensive power shot. It's swirly!

Guess what. I just finished an entire candy cane without it breaking! Ususally always when I eat a candy cane, it breaks. It's always so frustrating. I took care with this last candy cane to make sure it wouldn't break.

So on The Sims, last time Michelle was here, Michelle asked one of Stephanie's Sims to move in to her house. Some time after, Stephanie was upset that one of her Sims was taken from her house, so I told her to just have one of her Sims ask the other Sim to move back. And guess what she did. She asked that Sim, and another Sim from Michelle's house to move in. So great. Now all Michelle has is a teenager. The teenager can't ask anyone to move in, and nobody from Stephanie's house can ask the teenager to move in. I think Stephanie mutilated Michelle's family. I don't know what I can do to fix this.

Today at the blood center, it was really boring. I probably waited on fewer than half-a-dozen people. What a slow day. I only brought my Calculus homework—after I finished that, there was nothing to read but the boring magazines in the waiting room...

The fire alarm went off again on Friday during school. This time, instead of first period, it happened during my lunch time. Now, since, like I've said, my friends and I eat lunch apart from the other students, we didn't know exactly where to go. We ended up standing in the parking lot while the fire department came to assess the fire. I was glad I brought my coat. It turns out that there actually was no fire. One of the smoke detectors was malfunctioning. The schedule was not changed. I suppose this fire had very little effect on the rest of my day. Still, it was something I thought I should bring up.

In Calculus, Mr. Worster and Aaron have been talking about this question: "What if the earth suddenly stopped rotating about its axis?" We've worked this out: If the earth suddenly quit spinning, there would be tremendous jerk. People would be snapped 6 miles into the east at about 1000 mph. I think this would all be in fewer than 30 seconds, too. Not sure. It would be quite disastrous. So we're talking astrophysics in math class... Math class is never boring.

Today (well, technically, it's barely after midnight on Sunday, but I mean Saturday morning), Kevin came over, and we all left to see friends performing at the grand opening of the Village at the mall. I went specifically to see Megan, but alas, I didn't see her. I did, however, see Brandon B. working at Sears. It was boring because Stephanie was trying on Tolo dresses. Kevin brought his pocket PC, and we took pictures. It probably took us over 10 minutes to get out of the parking lot. Lots of cars.

Well, Bingo Night at school was much more fun than I thought it was going to be. I met Tiffany there, and my mom and Tiffany's mom stayed and played Bingo too. We got there at about 6:20. The cards, which came in a set of 15 games, cost $5. Each game had three bingo cards. That's three chances per game. However, once one person wins a game, that's it. Onto the next card. This game's over. We also could buy stampers (they only had pink) to mark the bingo cards. Those were 50¢. I only needed one.

This place was official. A real light-up board with the numbers—you know what I'm talking about. There were also TV monitors at the front that displayed what number popped out of the ball thing. It was neat.

We played 10 games at first, each with special rules, like picture frame, for example, or hardway (getting a bingo without using the free space. I didn't win any of those. However, Tiffany's mom did! She told Tiffany to choose a prize from the table, and Tiffany asked me to go with her. Many of the prizes available were gift certificates to restaurants, and there were also a few Christmas decoration things. Tiffany ended up choosing a $20 off gift certificate for Anthony's seafood restaurant. Good deal.

Between the second and third games, I went to the concessions stand to buy some pizza. Mmmm. The poster said "Four kinds of pizza!" so I asked what they had. They said, "All we have is cheese, and green pepper and onion." Now, they probably thought I would have said cheese, but no! I chose "green pepper and onion", and they gave me a look that said, "you can't be serious, get the heck out of here." It was quite good. It also had mushrooms (good thing). I'll eat any pizza that doesn't have anchovies. And pineapple. What business does pineapple have on a pizza? But I digress...

After those first 10 games, and a short break, there was a special game with a special card that cost 50¢ per card. I didn't want to play that. I think I thought the prize wasn't fun enough or something. So while I wasn't playing, and everyone else was, there were some children behind me roughhousing. Apparently, a boy had this one girl's shoe, and she was trying to get it back. I said, "Why do you want her shoe?" And then the boy told me it wasn't a her—it was his brother. Whoops. The long hair threw me off. I was upset at them because they had already won a big bag of Twix candies, my favorite candy next to Kit Kats.

After the special game, we played five more games with varying rules like before. Of course, I lost all those games, too. It was funny. When somebody yelled "Bingo!", everyone (not me, or anyone else I was with) would boo or just plain be poor sports. Gone are the carefree Bingo games.

After that, they were going to have another special game. "The BIG Blackout". Ooooh hoo hoo! I bought two cards, each at 50¢. They announced the prize we were playing for, a year supply of Starbucks or something, and Mom bought four cards because she really wanted to win it. She gave me one of her cards. It was hard keeping track of 9 bingo cards at once.

I never won. Mom didn't win either. What a letdown. You could tell the air was tense with excitement. Someone yelled "Bingo!" and everyone, even me, moaned. Then she said okay, we'll continue this game for a second prize. She pulled a number, and someone immediately said "Bingo!" Everyone moaned, except this time, they were just plain upset. That was it. Game over, dudes.

Aww... too bad. After this, while the woman was reading some raffle ticket numbers (we didn't win any raffles, either), the boy who was at the table behind us was talking to me. "What grade are you?" "11! What grade are you?" "1. Guess how old I am." I guessed 7. "No, 6." "Oh. Well, I was close, wasn't I?" "Nope." "Oh." Then I was walking to the trash can to throw away the plate my pizza was on, and as I was returning to Mom at the table, the boy gave me one of his Twixs. "Oh, thank you," I said. So, YES! I got a Twix.

We left. Mom was disappointed that she won nothing. I've yet to eat the Twix, but maybe in a minute. Probably right after I type this weblog. Or maybe I'll give it to Mom.

Driving School: ARRRGH! Today, in driving school at Sears, Mr. Norris put us into groups to do a test about subhabits and crash analysis. And guess what. My group was useless! No help at all! So I ended up doing it all by myself. Then I got upset when the one guy asked me for my answers. It only got worse as Mr. Norris repeatedly said, "Think hard, write fast," repeatedly while we were working. I did well on the test. Regardless, I was in a real bad mood afterwards.

I learned that Brandon B. works at Sears. I didn't have an opportunity to find him today. Maybe Thursday. Oh, and Natalie works there too. I remember her a little from middle school.

I had a very happy Halloween. On Saturday night, Kevin, Carla, and I went to Spencer's Gifts to get a strobe light. We carved pumpkins on Sunday. Mine was a sad pumpkin. Kevin carved a cyclops pumpkin. Shelly made a normal happy pumpkin. Michelle carved the word "moo" in hers. I'll add pictures if anyone requests them. At the blood center, later that day, everyone was dressed up for Halloween. Nobody dressed up as Dracula. I wore my costume shirt. The creepy music was fun! The technicians brought in potluck food and it was all good.

Well, today, I worked at my dad's carpet store to hand out candy for the 22nd Annual Halloween Trick or Treat Thing.

Mostly, what I did was sit there, wait for kids to come in with their parents, and give them candy. I had a nice stack of carpet samples to sit on. It was surprising to me how many people came in, sniffed the air, and said, "Wow, it smells like carpet in here!" People, it is a carpet store! Some people never learn.

There was one little boy in glasses who kept asking me questions. The conversation went like this:
"You sell carpet?"
"No, but my dad does."
"Where is he?"
"He's that way," I gestured towards him. "He's working."
"What's your name?"
"Brandon."
"Do you sell carpet?"
"No, but my dad does."
His dad apologized to me, and pulled him out of the store.

Well, it was pretty fun, I guess, if not boring and frustrating.

It was another boring day in Mrs. Hudemann's English class. Fortunately, it was a Friday, so the classes would not be quite as long as usual. We were discussing what the ten most important parts of Act 3 of The Crucible were, when, suddenly, an ear-piercing, shrieky noise pierced our ears.

Needless to say, it startled me, but it didn't scare me like it did Mrs. Hudemann. She jumped up, her mouth gaping wide open, her hands raised up to her chest. "What is that?" she asked, as if she had never heard a fire alarm before. Indeed, it was the fire alarm. The bright white light strobed in infrequent intervals. The ear-piercing noise continued to make noise.

We walked out of the classroom, in the F200's, and walked down the stairs into the grassy thing behind the school. It was cold. Some boy in some blue shirt said stuff not important to the story. There were some seagulls on the field, I noticed, along with a few crows. Some guy whose name I don't remember told me that there was a fire in the hallways. Suddenly, I heard sirens. Wee-woo-wee-woo.

We (we, meaning the whole student body and staff) were directed to the gymnasium to await the fire. Indeed, there really was a fire. It wasn't just a fire drill, like I assumed. I found Stephanie's friend standing in the gym. She really didn't have much to say. Neither did Aaron, when I found him. He said this was all really fascinating, though. Then I found Bryan and sat down next to him.

Mr. Wallace couldn't get everybody's attention, even with a microphone. He told us that there was a fire somewhere in the building, and that "the fire department is taking care of it." Then the student body applauded and cheered.

Then Mr. Hoffman, the principal, gave us a little more information on the fire. "It was a minor fire. All that caught fire was some paper—" he got cut off by the student body's cheering. I wonder what exactly they were cheering, there. Paper?

We got sent back to first period. Back to English. The morning schedule was compressed. Everything after lunch time was normal.

The fire was on the bulletin board right outside the F100's. For some reason, even those who knew where it was had soooo much trouble explaining where it was. It was "on the bulletin board outside the F100's." Easy-peasy.

In Walking, on Tuesday, we had to do some dumb tests for some idiotic standardized fitness assessment thing where no matter how hard you try, you always get the Poor rating. Ah well. We did the long jump. I did quite well at that. We also did some sit-and-reach thing and some body fat and blood pressure things. I think I'll need to have my blood pressure rechecked at a pharmacy or something. I hope Mrs. Oard's reading was wrong. She said a noisy gym really wasn't a very good place to take such a reading. After that, we did some exhausting relay things. Weird sideways jumping stuff I'm not used to.

This is weird. I think Calculus is my favorite class now. Strange. People usually say that math is their least-favorite class. Hmmm. I bet it's the people in the class. My classmates are fun, and the teacher's pretty cool too. Yesterday, on Wednesday, Mr. Worster got the new projector system that every classroom will have by the end of the year. It's practically a camera that you aim down at paper, or a book, or something. It's hooked up to a projector that projects the camera's image onto the overhead screen. Neat! I told Mr. Worster that it can also be used as a camera; point it at people. So he did. He pointed it at the class. That image was projected onto the screen. Then he pointed it at Audrey's face, and zoomed it so that her face filled the screen. She had fun with that, sticking her tongue out, making faces. We did this stuff for fifteen to twenty minutes.

After Mr. Worster's lecture (about infinity and limits and stuff), he was walking around to see if anyone needed help with the homework. He walked behind me, and I noticed he was reading the funny document I had in the front of my binder. The document contains stupid answers contestants gave on Family Feud. He kept reading them quietly to himself, then cracking up and laughing at the dumb answer. For example, "Name something you find in a bird cage. A hamster." Or "A man's name beginning with K. Kentucky Fried Chicken." Or "The most lovable breed of dog. Kitten." There's three examples. Mr. Worster thought it was so funny that he asked if he could borrow the paper. He took it to the front of the class, and read practically the whole thing to the class! Wooo! I change this document on the front of my binder weekly, so I don't think this will be the only time this happens.

I haven't mentioned this yet, but all Wednesday and today, my legs have been VERY sore. Like the "can't walk without limping and moaning" soreness. I couldn't get up from my seat without screaming "OW OW DARN CRUD!" Actually, I'm kidding. I mean, they really are very sore, but I didn't scream when getting up. It does hurt a lot, though. Still does. I'd bet my entire stash of cigarettes that it's P.E.'s fault. Dumb sideways high jump relays. Dumb legs. Stop hurting. It's the calves, and the left ... hamstring, is it? I think it's the hamstring. On the inside side.

And that's what made P.E. today such a pain. Of course, we had more of those dumb test things to do. Today was the high-jump, sit-ups, push-ups, and squats. Squats are when you sit down, then stand up. Sit stand sit stand. Repeatedly. For a minute. I'm quite good at that, even with pain-legs. It's 86 or something. Maybe 88? We also had the dreaded 12-minute run. I only dreaded it because of my stupid hurting legs. When I was jogging the legs stiffed up like boards. They didn't want to run. So I only ran 1800 meters in the 12 minutes. Tiffany and Barbie did better than me. Stupid leg. I HATE YOU.

Granny and gramps want to take Stephanie and me to dinner place tonight. THE ROCK PIZZA CAFE. I hope it tastes better than it sounds. Rock pizza? Seriously.

Oh, and I don't smoke. Don't have cigarettes.

Great. Now my back hurts. And my butt will hurt because of those uncomfortable driving school desk chair hard crap metal seats. Great. What a painful life.

Today, before Calculus, I was bored. I noticed a yardstick on the whiteboard tray that the teacher uses to draw straight lines and junk. Well, I decided to lean the yardstick against the middle of the board with the bottom resting on the tray. Then I used a blue whiteboard marker to write "Vertical Ruler" and an arrow pointing to the ruler. Remember, I was bored. Calculus is pretty much the only class where I'll write on the board.

Class hadn't started yet; Mr. Worster hadn't entered yet. Aaron thought the Vertical Ruler thing was pretty funny. Others said it was "interesting." Nobody said anything negative about it. It looked like one guy in the classroom was going to erase the writing, but he didn't.

Mr. Worster came to class on time, like usual. He noticed the Vertical Ruler, and thought it was pretty interesting. I don't think he thought I made the Vertical Ruler at that time. He said, "I'm not used to seeing rulers like this," or something. I said, "Well, we're just so accustomed to seeing them rest horizontally—I thought I'd switch things up a little bit." Then he said, "Oh, I should have known you would do something like this."

I thought he was going to take down the Vertical Ruler, and erase the text pointing to it. He said it was a little uncomfortable working around the Vertical Ruler, and I told him that he could take it down, or perhaps move it to the other whiteboard on the other wall, but he said he wanted to leave it up just to show that he could do it.

He left it up during the entire lecture. He even said it was a little convenient because it divided the board into two sections, which was useful for the lecture he was giving (about using algebra to find limits). Audrey complained at one point that it was a little annoying to have the Vertical Ruler up, and Mr. Worster said he kinda liked it. But, just to be fair, he had the class vote on it. Audrey and two others wanted to take it down, but four people wanted to keep it up. I didn't vote. I don't remember if Mr. Worster voted or not. So the Vertical Ruler stayed up.

It stayed up for perhaps an hour and 20 minutes—throughout Worster's entire lecture. I then decided to move it to the other whiteboard. I made sure not to accidentally make it horizontal on the way. Mr. Worster switched the arrow I drew on the board to point to the new location of the Vertical Ruler. Then he said he supposed you could go the other way to get to it, but I said that would be the long way. So he redrew the original arrow, and wrote "Long Way" under it. Then he wrote "Short Cut" under his new, correct arrow.

About five minutes later, without irritation or any warning at all, the Vertical Ruler fell. It surprised me—the whiteboard it was on was right behind me, and the sound of the Vertical Ruler hitting the whiteboard tray was quite loud. So yeah. That was the end of the Vertical Ruler. Thanks for reading all this.

I stayed home sick today. I think I caught whatever it was Stephanie was complaining about.

I learn that my computer can recognize the voice. You know voice recognition? It's pretty cool. They can recognize almost anything I say. It's not perfect, though. I just need to train it a little bit more. I do that by reading paragraphs it gives me, then it figures out my speech patterns from that. It's really neat. I'm using it to write this web log right now.

Sometimes, I can just hum into the microphone, and it'll translate what I hum into nonsensical text. For example, "moon alone than a gunman that the noon and are met and never a good climber a clay clay and render an FBI Mayo."

Today, I went to Toys "R" Us for a Pokémon-related event.

Before I left, I was afraid that there would only be little kids who didn't know how to battle or do anything. I was also afraid that there would be nobody else there to battle.

So we got there at 9:30. The first 50 people to get there got a free Pokémon poster! There were only six people there. I got four posters!

Mostly, what we did was trade and battle. Some of the others also played a demo of the new trading card game, but I wasn't very interested. I never was interested in the card game.

I was more interested in trading than battling. I traded with Ace, Sparky, Lee, Brisa, Dayne, and Jeremy. (I'm certain that many of those names are not real.) I talked to Ace the most. He traded me a Gastly to keep! Jeremy was the Toys "R" Us employee who had a Game Boy that he used to trade Pokémon to us. We were all expecting a rare Pokémon like Jirachi or Celebi, but all I got from him was a Haunter (which immediately evolved into a Gengar).

Dayne was the only adult there (besides Jeremy, but it was his job to be there), and Brisa was the only girl there who had a game. Ace's sister Kaylee was there too, but she didn't have the game. She played an emulation on her computer. Sparky was Ace's friend, and he was a bit bizarre. Lee was very slow at making decisions at trading.

Something worth noting (that most of the readers here won't care about anyway) is that Ace helped me get a Ditto onto my Ruby game. Now I can breed my male Sceptile and get baby Treecko! "It doesn't matter that he's male anymore...Ditto's available for prostitution!" is a sentence that came up today.

I battled Ace twice, but he pretty much only used legendary Pokémon, and they're really hard to beat, so I lost both battles. Oh well. He had a Jirachi and a Deoxys! I want those! He wouldn't trade them.

So it was a pretty neat day. The event "officially" ended at 11:30, but most of us stayed until about 12:15.

Yesterday, Stephanie joined my walking class. You see, her schedule got all screwed up and stuff, so now she has the same walking class as I do. So now the class has at least 44 students. Yikes. That's so many people that they technically split the class into halves. Mr. Wirtz keeps the first half of the alphabet, and Mrs. Oard joined us, and she has the second half of the alphabet. Unfortunately, they used the last names, so Stephanie's in my half of the class. Regardless, the two halves of the classes will go to the same places at the same time—we'll walk together. I wish I were in Mrs. Oard's group. She's a nice ol' lady. If the same could be said for Mr. Wirtz, it would be a very awkward statement, and I still wouldn't choose to be in his class anyway.

Today was an assembly to kick off Homecoming. Stephanie told me beforehand that she was going to be in it. There was this one part when the horse mascot came running into the gym, and I saw a bunch of Stephanie-hair-colored hair sticking out the back of the head of the costume. I immediately thought "Stephanie's hair" and realized that Stephanie was in the costume. I had doubts when I saw that the person inside the costume was too short for it—the fabric on the legs was crumpled together because it was too long. Stephanie always has huge 18-inch heels or something....... anyhoo, she confirmed to me on the bus that it was in fact her who was in the horse costume. Hmmm.

Yesterday was the first day of school. I was disappointed that not many of my friends were in any of my classes or lunches or anything.

Stephanie goes to my school now. I sometimes see her before third period. It's weird that she goes to my school. It's annoying riding the bus with her. Apparently, Cory is in the same Chemistry class as Stephanie.

In American Sign Language (ASL), the teacher, Ms. Brinkley, is deaf, so we have an interpreter in the class, at least for a little while. She taught us a game called the Elephant Game. Yesterday, I got to be the pointer! Everybody said I was tricky! And I was! I was trying to be tricky! And today, I won the game!

Tomorrow, Stephanie's inviting seven people over to watch movies. Her party is lasting for nine hours. I think Stephanie's laughter meter will increase during those nine hours, and so will her voice-coarseness meter.

On Sunday, I worked at the blood center for the first time. Overall, it went pretty well. I started at 1:30 PM. Pretty much, my job is to serve juice to donors (and the technicians too). There's a juice dispenser (like soda dispensers in restaurants) that dispenses apple, orange, or cranberry juice. Many people like an apple-cranberry blend, and I'm happy to make it for them. There's also tomato juice in the refrigerator, along with water.

One old man asked for tomato juice at the end of my shift (also when the center closes), and I was sorry to tell him that there was none in the pitcher. If we weren't closing, I would have asked someone to get a new can for me, but most of the people had already left, and the monitor (that's me) isn't supposed to leave the canteen (area with juice and cookies).

The donors can get their own cookies (four kinds!), pretzels (Rold Gold), or crackers (Club, my favorite) from the baskets at the tables. I'm also responsible for booking the donors' next appointments, making sure to get attention if a donor is not feeling well, and cleaning up at the end of the day. I work every Sunday except for the second Sunday of each month from 1:30 PM to 5:30 PM. Donate then so I can say hi to you. (16- and 17-year-olds need parent permission to donate blood, but that's not my responsibility.)

Stephanie invited me to go to a movie with her friends. It was Napoleon Dynamite. The movie really lacked a strong plot. It's about this boy who thinks he's cool, and has a fantasy life, who's really dull. He helps some new Mexican kid run for president, and his uncle's ruining his life or something. It was funny at times (people in the audience were laughing at something I would only smirk at). It really wasn't exciting...I'll say it again: "LACKS A STRONG PLOT".

After that, Kevin met us at the theater. Stephanie invited her friends, Kevin, and me to go to Red Robin with her. Kevin had driven to the theater, and didn't want to have to walk back to the theater, so he drove, and I rode, to Red Robin while Stephanie and her three friends walked. Kevin and I, of course, got there first, and requested a table for 6. The greeter let us two sit down immediately, and told us that she would tell the others where to go.

Kevin and I ordered drinks ("Sprite, no ice." "Is 7-Up okay?" ".......fine.") while Stephanie & co. walked. We saw them in the parking lot through the windows, but it seemed like it was taking them a long time to get to the table, so I got up to walk to the entrance to get them. However, I saw Stephanie, etc., sitting on the other side of the restaurant. They had gotten their own table! And I thought Stephanie invited Kevin and me to dinner!!! Kevin and I ate alone.

When he and I waited for Stephanie and her friends to finish eating, we went over to GameStop to look at stuff. They had a demo of Paper Mario 2! I played that for a little bit... It was awesome. The game is much smoother than the first Paper Mario. I played until Mario got into town, then he died mysteriously and suddenly. Then Stephanie's friends got there. They played a demo of Donkey Konga. They didn't know what to do when the blue zig-zagged icon appeared, but I did (you're supposed to clap), but I didn't tell them that because they already didn't know what they were doing. That's what they get for not reading the instructions.

After Stephanie's friends left, Kevin, Stephanie, and I went ice skating. This was my first time, and hopefully, my last. The ice was far too bumpy for me. I fell on my butt then quit for the night. I cut my hand on some metal overhang above the handthingys on the stairs. OUCH! CUT! Fortunately, the first aid had bandaids.

I prefer roller skating over ice skating now.

Mom and Stephanie went to Bellingham last Tuesday to paint ceramics, and brought Karen back with them. We have done a lot while Karen was here. We taught Karen how to play Mario Party 5. She liked to play it, even though she wasn't great at it. Dad didn't like to be her partner. Stephanie and I make a great team in MP5.

Some time last week, while Karen, Mom, one or two other people, and I were shopping at Value Village (there's some great old stuff there!), I found a Scrubbin' Bubbles. It's rubber and it barely squeaks. Jackson and I used to play with one of these at daycare. I was going to buy it, but Karen said that she really wanted it, so I reluctantly said that she could have it.

Tuesday was quite an eventful day. We went to Costco only to buy another large jar of Jelly Belly Jelly Beans. That was it. The cashier was having a lot of fun making fun of us for only buying jelly beans. Then we went to Longs' Drugs to mail some stuff to Karen's house back in Kansas. While there, Karen and I each bought small boxes of JBz's. They're like M&M's, except the shell is flavored like a jelly bean. They're really good, but I don't think I could eat a whole box in one sitting. We had Pizza Hut pizza that night. Mmmm.

Remember when I talked about those Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans? Karen bought me a bag of them. (Here's a flavor guide, except it doesn't mention soap, earthworm, or spaghetti.) I took some normal beans from the 49-flavor jar, and put them in the bag, so now there really is every flavor! So exciting! Anyway, back to Tuesday...

We took Karen to the airport. Of course, I offered everybody jelly beans on the way there. It's about an hour-and-a-half drive up, so it was dull. Karen's luggage was heavy—Kevin actually hurt his hand picking it up—so I found a cart in the parking garage to cart her stuff around. Then we said bye to Karen. I was interested to hear about these new things the airport has. They're little mailing kiosks for things you can't carry onto a plane. Basically, if you have a pocket knife or something, you can zip it into a bag, stick a mailing label on it, and stick it into the slot. It costs money, though. Kevin drove home in the express lanes, so it was much quicker (and exciting!) to return home.

Everyone in the cul-de-sac spontaneously decided to have a cul-de-sac party. I learned at 11 a.m., and decided to plan some games. Stephanie, Jesse, Alyssa, and I filled up maybe over a hundred water balloons. The games went well... We played two games. The first was a game where you put the water balloon on a plungerhead, and race to the finish while trying not to drop the balloon. The second was a tossing relay. We could have played a third game had the neighbor kids not wasted all the balloons throwing them at each other.

On Friday night, we watched another movie with Daniel's projector. It was Hook, and it was pretty good. It was about Peter Pan who grew up and forgot about being Peter Pan, so these kids remind him and then he kills Hook, who stole his kids. When it wasn't funny, it was exciting, so it was pretty good.

We beat Rampage: World Tour on Saturday night. It was fun. The ending was weird...they go onto the moon and win—I don't understand. There were like 130 stages.

Yesterday, Kevin, Katrina, Christina, and I went to Shelly's "mansion" to move her furniture from her room to the basement, where her new room is. It was fun. I put up Christmas lights all around the room! Then Shelly took us to Baskin-Robbins. Then we got Little Caesar's pizza. The pepperoni pizza doesn't have enough cheese on it.

Today, we are going hiking somewhere near Larrabee. Mom and Stephanie are supposed to meet us there. I'm not entirely sure where it is or how long the hike is, but I do know this: I'm bringing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Let's see... I've been “camping” since Sunday. Really, we’re in my aunt’s backyard.

On Sunday, not too much happened. First, Kevin, Stephanie, Ryan, Daniel, Dad, and I had a water gun fight. My shield was useful, but unfortunately, I frequently run out of water. Then, we went into Kevin's old playhouse, and looked at some toys and stuff, some of which is older than me. We also played tetherball and air hockey. We used Daniel's projector to play Atari and Nintendo on the pole building. It's fun playing Super Mario Bros. 3 twenty feet high.

Monday morning, Daniel, Kevin, and I hooked up Game Boy Advances and played Mario Bros. Later that afternoon, Mom, Dad, Stephanie, Daniel, Dick, Kevin, and I went to Larrabee to hike down to the beach, but we took another trail instead once we realized that we passed the parking lot. It was a nice trail. It even crossed over the railroad. The beach wasn't much...more like rocks along the shore. Sandstone.

Wise Old Man told us there was another trail to a nice, sandy beach if we followed the train tracks for half of a mile. While we were travelling along that track, a train came from ahead of us. Dick, Dad, and Kevin were ahead of us, saw it first, and yelled back for the rest of us to jump away from the track. Daniel and I did. However, Mom and Stephanie were far behind, and almost didn't hear us. They jumped off the track with maybe ten seconds to spare. (Mom was beginning to regret going with us, wishing she had gone with Karen and Carla to Costco instead.) After all that, there was a nice beach. Shelly joined us then. We saw lizards! Shelly and I searched for geckos so that I could record them with my camcorder. Dad dropped his cell phone into the Puget Sound. That night, we watched a movie with Daniel's projector.

Yesterday, on Tuesday, even more stuff happened. Oh wait...I mean less stuff happened. Dad, Mom, Stephanie, and Karen went to the mall to buy Dad a new cell phone. Mom also got an identical one. While they did that, Kevin and I didn't really have much to do, so we watched some movies.

So that was fun. Then Mom asked me to program her phone. So I did. It's cool...it has a picture. I took a picture of Dad, and set it so that his picture appears on the phone when he calls. Funny! Mom downloaded an Aerosmith Dream On ringer. Whee, what fun. That night, many of us watched another movie on the projector.

Well, tomorrow, I'm going camping. I'm going prepared, too:



The SHIELD BLASTER 3000! I can use up to three nozzles for triple the dousingness! However, I get more power using only one. I can control how fast the water comes out by how quickly I turn a crank! However, if I crank too quickly (to get more power), I sacrifice control, and the water wobbles all over. The best thing of all, however, is that the water gun doubles as a shield, protecting me against enemy fire (I mean water). My arm just barely fits into the shield (my arm's just too muscular!) so it hurts a little. I probably couldn't use this for hours on end. It holds 60 ounces of water, which is double what my sister's and dad's can hold.



Stephanie and Dad have HYDROBLADEs. Ha ha, it only has one nozzle. The "cool" thing about it is that with a push of a button (on the other side of the picture), a circular foam "blade" swivels in front of the nozzle. It doesn't look like the blade in the picture—it's completely circular—no notches at all. What the blade is supposed to do is cause water to spray out in all directions. What it really does is cause water to backfire on the user. Funny. My shield is extremely useful against this blaster.

Kevin, Stephanie, and I went to see Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. We went to the Regal Cinemas—the one next to Mervyns. All the movies seemed to be starting around the same time, so the tickets counter had a long line. We got our tickets, and entered the lobby. Nobody really felt like wanting to have refreshments. After a short wait, we went into the theater.

After sitting for a few minutes, The Twenty came on. For those of you who don't know what The Twenty is, it's some short little thing to entertain the audience before the showtime. Yes, it's about twenty minutes long. Kevin and I were annoyed and disappointed to find out that The Twenty promised several entertaining things, but never showed them. Born Supremicy and Evil Knieval in fact, but all we got to hear about was another one of Tim Allen's Christmas movies...

Then the movie started. It was good. I liked it.

Then we left. Remember how I said that all the movies seemed to be starting around the same time? Well, many ended at the same time, too. So it was difficult to get out of the parking lot because there were a lot of people trying to leave at the same time. So we got home, and that's pretty much where we're at now.

Well, next week, it's annual camping time. I don't know exactly what to expect, but I can promise you this:
I am going camping next week.

Karen left this morning. We never left to see Anchorman this week. However, Stephanie, Karen, and I played a lot of Life. You know, The Game of Life? We found a new pink car at the local Value Village, on Wednesday, that goes with the game. Stephanie and I were happy because our Life game doesn't have a pink car. Now Stephanie I think will always use the pink car. It's funny because both Mom and Karen want the red car. Kevin never cares what color he uses, so he usually gets whatever's left over.

Yesterday, Kevin came over, and he, Mom, Dad, Stephanie, Karen, and I went to the Tasters Wok (I don't like Asian food, so I wasn't happy), but there were too many cars in the parking lot, so we sat, in two cars in the parking lot, trying to decide where to go next. We decided on Ivars. Yum. I got fish and chips, and for dessert, I got some kind of chocolate pie. It was pretty good.

Then, Stephanie wanted to go ice skating with her friends. Stephanie and Kevin convinced me to go with them, so I got in the Jeep with them. However, we had to stop home anyway, and Karen decided to go with us. But she didn't want to skate. Neither did Mom. I can't blame them—I didn't skate either. Karen and I played dots. When Aunt Carla and her daughter Shelly arrived, Karen, Carla, and I played Upwords. I did quite well, getting more points than Karen, but fewer than Carla. But they're both pretty good, so I wasn't expecting to win or anything.

A show I've started watching that is pretty funny is on CBC, the Canadian channel. It comes on at 5:30, and is called Just For Laughs: Gags. It's a hidden camera show, but it's much better for several reasons. I like that there's no talking to distract from the show. For example, on Candid Camera, the host is always talking, and it takes away from the funniness. The gags on this show are more visually oriented, and they run much quicker. They manage to fit about 12 of these gags into a half-hour show, which is much better than Candid Camera's six in one hour.

Today, I got oriented for volunteering at the Puget Sound Blood Center (from now on, I'll be referring to it as the PSBC, or PBSC if I don’t think about it). It doesn't sound too hard, but it requires a lot of attention (if someone is feeling woozy, I need to do something about it).

Our digital cable box was updated some time last week, but the special new On Demand feature isn't working. Some Comcast employee should come on Saturday, I think, to fix it. I don't know how exciting this On Demand thing is, but Kevin's been hyping me up for several months about it now.

Lots of birds have been flying by recently, stopping at our bird feeder. The birds have been driving Garth nuts. He'll meow, wanting to chew a wing or something.

Dad just brought home a pack of Bertie Botts' Every Flavor Beans from Bartell Drugs. Here's the flavors: Black Pepper, Blueberry, Booger, Earthworm, Cherry, Cinnamon, Dirt, Ear Wax, Grape Jelly, Grass, Green Apple, Lemon Drop, Toasted Marshmallow, Buttered Popcorn, Sardine, Soup, Spaghetti, Spinach, Tutti-Frutti, and Vomit. The Dirt genuinely tastes like dirt! My favorite flavor is Soap. And you'll regret eating Earthworm. Eeyuck. Bleh! I though I was going to chase the retched flavor with a Soap jelly bean (how appropriate, eating soap after earthworm), but I was surprised to learn that it wasn't Soap. It was Sardine! Also bad tasting! Arrgh. Earthworm was worst, though.

My cousins, sister, and I have written a script for a movie based on the board game Clue that we're going to make during the last week of July. We wrote this before we knew that they already made a movie based on Clue. I'm bored right now, so I guess I'll post the entire script right here right now.

(Open with Mrs. White writing letters to the other characters in the study, each of the characters read a section aloud for the audience)

Dear Friends,

Mr. Boddy invites you to spend this weekend vacationing at his estate, Boddy Mansion. There will be dinner served in the dining room from our wonderful kitchen, ballroom dancing, and drinks in the lounge, lovely plants and flowers to smell in the conservatory, and good books to read from the library. Not to mention the great hallway leading into the study. There is lots of fun to be had in the billiards room. Oh, don’t forget to bring a personal weapon! You never know if you'll need it!

Sincerely, Mr. Boddy

(Mr. Boddy walks into the room)

BODDY: Have you written the letter?

(White nods once and says ‘mmhmmm’)

________________________________________

(Crossfade to Boddy Mansion exterior. Display title. Each arrives at the Boddy Mansion and is greeted by Mrs. White and Mr. Boddy and Mr. Boddy shakes each guest’s hand)

BODDY: Hello Miss Scarlet. Nice to see you. It’s been a while.

SCARLET: Yes it has!

BODDY: And Professor Plum, how goes the plumbing business?

PLUM: Oh, I’m up to my knees in work.

BODDY: Mr. Green, how is your gardening job doing?

GREEN: It’s the best it’s ever been.

BODDY: Col. Mustard, I haven’t seen you in a long time!

MUSTARD: Yes, (under breath) but not long enough.

BODDY: And Mrs. Peacock, hello!

PEACOCK: Hello. (She waves)

________________________________________

(White takes everyone on a tour of the mansion. She walks slowly, so everybody talks while they wait to get into the next room.)
WHITE: …and this is the lounge…

PEACOCK: Well, this is boring. I already know this mansion like the back of my hand. I used to work here as a chef.

SCARLET: Really? I used to work here as Mr. Boddy’s cosmetologist. I would make him look good before he taped commercials. He fired me when he got replaced by a younger spokesperson.

PEACOCK: Commercials? For what?

SCARLET: I don’t know.

PEACOCK: Boddy fired me when I served him escargot and told him it was snails.

SCARLET: Eww… snails.

GREEN: Did I hear you right? You two used to work here too? I used to be Mr. Boddy’s gardener! But I quit because he wouldn’t give me money to purchase new seeds and tools.

PEACOCK: I wonder if everyone here has worked for Boddy.

WHITE: (irritated) Shush… follow along quietly now.

(Scarlet shrugs)

________________________________________

(Everybody but Boddy is sitting at the table for dinner.)

PLUM: Mrs. White, where is Mr. Boddy?

WHITE: He’s finishing drawing in his Flintstones coloring book. I’ll go get him.

(She exits)

MUSTARD: This food needs more mustard.

PEACOCK: Oooh, mustard. That sounds good. Could you pass the mustard, Mustard?

MUSTARD: (passing the mustard) I invented mustard.

SCARLET: (impressed) Ooooooooooooooooh!

WHITE: Okay, Mr. Boddy is on his way in here. He just has to put away his crayons.

________________________________________

(Afterwards, Mustard, Plum, Green, Peacock, and White sit in the lounge, waiting to play a board game. Scarlet walks in.)

SCARLET:Blech…Mr. Boddy is absolutely hideous!

WHITE: Meh. He takes me for granted…he never says “thank you. ”You know, this mansion has always been in my family. Boddy is just a squatter, who happens to own this mansion. I hate him. He stole my mansion!

MUSTARD: So what, he stole your mansion. He stole my trillion-dollar idea! I hate his guts. He stole my idea for mustard and marketed it, making millions of millions of dollars!

PLUM: He hated my idea of plum mustard. I mean doesn’t that sound good, plum mustard? I think it does. I quit when he threw the plum mustard into my face. I swear, I hate that man.

GREEN: He doesn’t know how to treat people! First of all, he wouldn’t give me any money to buy flower seeds or tools to make gardens. Then he complains when there aren’t any flowers in the garden! So I quit.

PEACOCK: Oh, shut up everybody. I am hateful towards him because I hate everybody. Except my cats. (She pets Ralph, if he’ll stay in her lap)

PLUM: That’s not your cat—

BODDY (walking into the room) LET GO OF KITTY.

________________________________________

(Nighttime. From now on, all of the characters but the investigator wear their pajamas/robes. Scarlet stands in front of Peacock’s door and knocks. After a few seconds, Peacock answers the door, looking annoyed.)

PEACOCK: Yes? ?

SCARLET: Did you hear a noise?
PEACOCK: No, (angrily) I was sleeping.

SCARLET: Oh. Sorry to disturb you. (She turns to walk away.)

PEACOCK: Wait.

(Scarlet turns back.)

SCARLET: Yes?
PEACOCK: Could you give me a makeover?

(Scarlet smiles.)

________________________________________

(Morning. Outside shot of the Boddy Mansion. There is a loud girl-like scream, which comes from Prof. Plum, who stands in the kitchen, staring at Mr. Boddy, who lies dead on the floor. Everyone rushes into the kitchen. Scarlet kneels down next to body, and checks for a pulse, or breathing.)

SCARLET: He’s dead.

(She runs to the telephone and picks it up, dialing 911.)

PEACOCK: I bet Mrs. White did it.

WHITE: I didn’t do it!

PEACOCK: Oh, come on. The butler always does it.

WHITE: I’m not a butler!

GREEN: I didn’t do it either!

(The investigator runs into the scene.)

INVESTIGATOR:I am the private investigator! I will ask everybody in turn about his or her whereabouts last night. Sooooooo… I’ll ask Col. Mustard first!!!!

MUSTARD: (off-guard) You can’t ask the murderer first!

(Everyone laughs except for Mustard.)

MUSTARD: (nervous) Just kidding.

INVESTIGATOR: (turning to Scarlet) Did you do it?

SCARLET: No, I was giving a makeover to Mrs. Peacock all night, I couldn’t possibly have done it.

INVESTIGATOR: You were giving it all night?
SCARLET: She really needed it.

MUSTARD: I didn’t do it!

INVESTIGATOR: What about you plummy?

PLUM: I was too drunk to be able to handle a weapon.

MUSTARD: I was making a sandwich!

INVESTIGATOR: (jokingly) You didn’t happen to use any mustard when making that sandwich, did you?
(Mustard frantically runs from the room into the lounge; everyone gasps.)
(White raises her finger.)

WHITE: Mr. Boddy is deathly allergic to mustard, and I’m the only one who has ever known this, except for Mr. Boddy, and, possibly, Col. Mustard.

PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR: Hmm… there is mustard all over Mr. Boddy’s lips…. . someone must have fed him mustard…poisoning him to his death.

(Everyone else walks into the lounge, watching Mustard twiddle his thumbs.)

MUSTARD: I really did kill Mr. Boddy. Not kidding.

WHITE: How come?

________________________________________

(Flashback! Everything in the flashback is muted. We could even mute the colors. Mustard, Boddy, and several other extras are at a barbeque on Boddy’s back porch. Mustard is spreading some mustard from an unmarked container onto his food.)

MUSTARD VO: Years ago, at a barbeque party Boddy was holding, I put some mustard on a (hot dog/burger). One of his guests asked if she could try some. Of course, I said yes.

(One of the guests spreads mustard on her food. She enjoys it.)

MUSTARD VO: Of course, Boddy wanted to try some too. He didn’t seem to like it too much.

(Boddy, after eating some of the mustard, collapses on the back porch. Everyone rushes around in panic.)

MUSTARD VO: We rushed Boddy to the hospital, and I forgot about the mustard I left on the back porch.

(Zoom in on container of mustard.)

MUSTARD VO: When Boddy returned, he must have realized how popular the mustard was, and marketed it. He got trillions of dollars! All from my idea!

________________________________________

(No more flashback.)

MUSTARD: He didn’t even give me a nickel. All I could do to get revenge was kill him.

INVESTIGATOR: Col. Mustard, you’re under arrest for first-degree murder.

(The investigator will not be on camera for the rest of the movie.)

MUSTARD: Nobody’s taking me to jail!

(He draws out the revolver, his choice weapon.)

(Everyone else, shocked, takes out his/her weapon, aiming at Mustard and everyone else. This lasts for a short while.)

MUSTARD: Time out! (He runs out of the lounge.)

(Everyone chases him. Mustard runs out of the front door, quickly followed by everyone else.)

(Cut to exterior shot of front porch. Everyone runs onto the front doorstep, and looks out, surprised, to see Mustard already driving away. Everyone gives cries of despair, anger, surprise.)

SCARLET: I’ll get you next time, Mustard!!! Next time!

GREEN: We could still catch him.

PEACOCK: I would if I could but I can’t so I won’t.

PLUM: Indubitably.

WHITE: Let’s go try to bring Mr. Boddy back to life!

(Everyone makes sounds of approval and walks back inside.)
The End.

Karen, Carla, and Shelly made it safely from Kansas. Kevin came over too. He, Shelly, Stephanie, and I wrote a script for a play that I will probably post on here once we finish editing it. It's based on the board game Clue. It's going to be bizarre.

We went to Chuck E. Cheese's today! (Well, actually, it wasn't today, as "today" ended less than an hour ago...) I took my camcorder with me! It was fun. Karen, Kevin, Stephanie, Mom, Shelly, and I went, and Katrina and Kristi met us there about half-hour later. It was fun. We played a lot of Skee-Ball. I'm a little tired, so I won't be posting as much about the trip as I did last time. Shelly and I both redeemed our tickets for pink fist-like plastic projectiles. When you squeeze the handle, the air pressure inside forces the pink puncher across the room! Mine is already beginning to not work.

We didn't picnic at the park because it wasn't sunny enough for a picnic, so Granny, Gramps, Stephanie, and I ate inside Quiznos instead. I have leftovers! Leftovers are special for when you don't like to cook because "POP" into the microwave and it's ready to eat! So I have the leftover Quiznos sub, and some microwavable lasagna that I can heat up for lunches.

Kevin came over today (again). We played outside and played Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour on the GameCube. It's cool because you can transfer characters from the GBA version to the GCN version!

The weather has decreased in sunniness. It's bittersweet, I guess, in that it's not so hot, but then again, it's not as sunny...

I can't believe this guy! That Jeopardy! champion is still running strong! He's already won at least a half-million dollars! I wonder if he'll get to be a 20-day champion.

Well, I gotta get my sleep now. I don't want to end up staying awake till 2:30 AM and waking up at noon like last summer.

On Wednesday, the schedule called for my Art Books and Drafting finals. The final for Art Books wasn't that bad. Ms. Coburn has us fold a few origami papers into some kind of box-like spherical thing. Folding each page wasn't too hard; piecing the twelve papers together was the hard part. I think she gave everyone who finished it full credit, so yay!

Mr. Huddleson cancelled the final for us Drafting 1/2 students. The Drafting 1 students, however, had to do a rather difficult project.

Thursday was my Precalculus final. The schedule also said it was my English final day, but remember, we took that last month (I aced it). The math test was not very hard, overall. I got frustrated and confused with some trig though and left a few answers blank...

Today, I had my World Civ. final. It wasn't too hard. Just a few fill-in-the-blanks and a short response to a quotation. That wasn't hard. I also had my Biology final. That wasn't hard—I'm good at this stuff.

During Precalculus class today, a few of us went to the Mac Lab to take an Accuplacer test. This test was not easy, even for a Pre-Calc student. We got our results immediately (except for Aaron—his computer got messed up or something), and I finished in the ninety-nine percentile! Wahoo. Next year, I'll be taking Calculus for college credit!

We're having a garage sale today and tomorrow. I'm taking a break right now from it. It's been sunny as hell until about an hour ago. Whew—tired and sweaty. Fortunately, the neighbors too are having a garage sale, so they've been talking with us, so at least it's not boring. I took the fan outside a while ago.

Well, I'm going to get back outside now.

We went to Chevys today. We got 50% off of our meal because Dad sang a song, we brought in an avocado, and some other things. Then we went to Office Depot so Stephanie could get some Vis-A-Vis Pens. While there, I looked at the PDA's. These things are so cool! I wrote with the stylus, and it recognized my handwriting and converted it into text! Awesome! Then we went to La-Z-Boy. Mom and Dad bought a pair of recliners—we're getting them delivered here some time Saturday.

At about 8:30 p.m., Mom, Dad, Kevin, Stephanie, and I left home to go to Target. While there, I bought a pack of Garfield Trading Cards. I got four cards: one of Lyman, one of the movie version of Arlene, one of the entire Garfield cast, and one with the Garfield and Friends TV show on it. I also got a window cling sticker!

Then we crossed the street to the Grand Cinemas to get a 10:00 p.m. ticket to Garfield. Of course, we got there at 9:00, so we had to wait a while. Mom, Stephanie, and Kevin seemed to spend a lot of time in front of the concessions stand getting a huge bucket of popcorn. Dad played a racecar arcade game, and I made sound effects (the game was muted). On our way to see if we were allowed to be admitted into the theater, I ran into Bryan. He had just gotten out of the 8:00 showing of Garfield. I asked him what he thought of it, and he said something about it not being as good as he had hoped. Before we were admitted into the theater, Stephanie tried to catch popcorn in her mouth, but failed miserably...

Oh, and Stephanie thought it would be fun to bring the stuffed Garfield I got for my birthday. She held it in her lap during the movie.

Then we entered the theater. We sat through a slideshow of advertisements for perhaps 20 or 30 minutes before the movie began. There was also some short Ice Age thing about a squirrel with nuts who fell and almost got killed by a nut or something. Then the movie started.

It was a pretty good movie. I understand that Arlene couldn't be pink—otherwise, it would look unrealistic—but Nermal's voice was waaaaaaaaaaay off. Nermal's supposed to have the soft, cute, high-pitched, annoying, childish kitten voice. I guess I'll say that the book is better than the movie—it has more details and tells more than the movie does. However, the train scene was much more fun to watch in the movie. I was laughing throughout it. I guess I'll be buying the DVD... Eleven thumbs up. That's right. Not as good as Harry Potter...

Stephanie's in the living room right now, trying to catch popcorn in her mouth. I just heard Kevin say, "I think it's the throwing, and not the catching, that you're having trouble with."

Today was quite a day. First, I awakened. Then I thought about getting up out of bed. Then I got up out of bed. Then I climbed down from my bed. Then I thought about misting my lizards. Then I misted my lizards. Then I changed clothes. I did my hair and ate breakfast. It was Froot Loops with marshmallows in it. The marshmallows are supposed to be aliens for some reason...

Then we drove to school. I went to Mrs. MacWilliams' class. We did English there. We read "The Missing Piece" and it was quite a day. Then I had Pre-Calculus, and again, Mr. Youngren had trouble getting people's attention. Then it was lunch. It was rainy, so we had to eat lunch under the cover of the thing instead of eating in the lunchroom. Then it was Biology and we had to watch one exciting video followed by a less exciting (boring, if you will) video. Then I boarded the bus. VROOM!

Tonight at about 5-ish, Animal Planet is going to air a special about Garfield the Movie. Then at about 7-ish, we have to go to Stephanie's school for a concert of some kind.

Yesterday at around noon, Kevin, Ryan, Stephanie, Mom, and I went to a private showing of Shrek II hosted by Mom's bank at the Edmonds Theatre. It was quite a funny movie. I like the part when the Starbucks customers (it actually wasn't Starbucks, but a spoof—Farbucks, I guess) ran across the street into the other Starbucks when they got frightened by a giant "something". Better than what I thought it would be. I liked the dilemma that Shrek faces. Nine thumbs up. The movie ended at 2:30.

Then I went to Nick's birthday party from 3:00 PM to 7:00 PM. I was barely on time. It was a good party I guess. We played tag and capture the flag for a long time (yeah, a little too long)... I liked playing Mafia. I gave him a card and money inside. I didn't want a hot dog—I wasn't hungry. I did, however, take a marshmallow, and shove a tiny Hershey Bar segment through a marshmallow. It tasted like a chocolate bar with marshmallow in it, but in this case, it was a marshmallow with chocolate in it.

At 10:30 PM (well, actually, we got at the theater at 9:30 and waited an hour), Kevin, Stephanie, Dad, and I went to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban at the theater next to California Burger. Now, this was my favorite book, but I didn't know the movie was going to be so good. I like the whole time-travel thing there. I guess this Harry Potter movie is better than the last two combined. Seventeen thumbs up.

I went outside for a little while to talk to Jace and Jesse around 8 o'clock because nothing was on TV. We talked about Pokémon (I gave Jesse my old Pokémon Yellow game for his birthday). Then it started sprinkling rain. It wasn't annoying enough for me to get off my comfy spot on the brick wall, though. Then Alyssa came out their front door and said "Jace, Jesse, it's time to go to bed." I looked at her and said, "What? It's only 8. You're kidding right?" She said "No. Mom said it's bedtime." How ridiculous! It was still sunny (for Seattle weather) out!

This is my favorite optical illusion:



Focus on the dot in the middle, and move forward and backward from the screen.

We went to Chuck E. Cheese's! Mom, Stephanie, Kevin, and I went at about 7:00. It was really fun. All games only require one token. Stephanie brought her own Chuck E. Cheese brand token dispenser, and about 15 tokens, plus all four of us got 25 more tokens with the pizza. Before the pizza was ready, Kevin and I played Skee Ball while Mom and Stephanie ate their salads. Generally, Kevin's better at Skee Ball than me, but I'm not bad. During our first game of Skee Ball, our movements mirrored each other (really, he's left handed), especially when we threw it too hard and it bounced back simultaneously. I did pretty well at Speed Skee Ball, a game I made up where you have to play Skee Ball really fast. Skee Ball always gives you four tickets (except for the broken one on the right). I think my high score for Skee Ball was 210,000 pts. Stephanie won with a high score of 320,000 pts.

This reminds me of a humorous anecdote that happened at Chuck E. Cheese about a year or so ago. Mom, Stephanie, and I went (same place) and played Skee Ball. Suddenly, the machine started spewing out 400 tickets! It's fun when they're all connected. We redeemed them for a Firefighter Chuck E.

Then the pizza was ready. The real reason I went. We had half pepperoni and half combo. While we ate, Chuck E. Cheese appeared on stage! He sang Help I Need Somebody Help Not Just Anybody for the first song, and for the second song, the duck/chicken/bird sang a love song to Chuck. It was a bit awkward as an audience (actually, we were the only ones eating there).

After pizza, we all went to play Skee Ball, except the machine on the right wasn't working. And since there were only four Skee Ball machines, we couldn't play four-player. Oh well. There were other fun games there that we played too. The Super Speedway game was fun. Ordinarily, the game gave out four tickets, but if you were good enough, and broke "the all-time record", you won ten tickets instead. I did this twice! I was surprised to learn about that jackpot. Kevin couldn't beat the jackpot, so at least that compensated for my stinky Skee Ball playing (don't get me wrong here, I love Skee Ball).

However, not all games are fun. Hitter's Rally (I wrote the names of these games on a napkin so I wouldn't forget them) was the game from hell. You had to press a button to make the machine pitch the ball, then flip a lever to swing the bat. The annoying thing was that half the time, the machine would pitch the ball too far for the lever to reach. It was really annoying, like I've said. And when I could actually hit the ball, it ended up going far to the left, and I could barely catch the ball with part of the lever. If I could keep doing that, I could hit the ball well, but then the lever would stop working and I would lose! ARRGH! I only got two stinkin' tickets from that game.

There's also a ride of sorts that costs one token. You get to sit in (or stand behind, in my case) a car with Chuck E. as a passenger! And it takes a picture! Whee-hah! We took some funny pictures. Altogether, it wasn't the best thing there, and it gives you no tickets, but it gives you a memorable picture!

Behind the Chuck E. Ride was my favorite game there: Buzzy Buzzy Bee. It's a box-shaped machine with a fan in the bottom that blows bee-painted ping pong balls into the air, and you have to use a net-like stick to catch the bees in mid-flight and pour them into a "honey container" to score points. It takes some practice, but after a while, it's pretty easy, and it's not hard to score three bees at a time. Sometimes the ping pong balls fly right into the honey pot without any assistance. I guess I liked it even more because it has a Double Dare-esque feeling to it. It even has a 30-second time limit (okay, it's 35, but it has the same feeling)! I love this game, and I love it even more because it gives you five tickets, each time you play! My high score for this game was a remarkable 21 pts!

With 30 minutes left before the place closed, we had to redeem our tickets. They have these really cool machines (they had them last time too) that you feed your tickets into. It counts them as you insert them, and when you're done, you can press a button and it prints you a receipt. By the end, I had 182 tickets. Altogether, we all had 541 tickets! There really were no prizes I was particularly interested in except for two plastic lizards. That cost me only 30 ticket points. Everyone else added together their ticket points to get a kickball that has a picture of Chuck E. on it. And Mom got a pretty little foldable flower thing that she has in her car.

Well, that was my two hours of fun at Chuck E. Cheese. I hope you enjoyed reading about it.

We had two readings that were due today in English. One of them made sense to me, but the other might as well have been written in Greek. I mean, it was Greek to me. Then Mrs. MacWilliams handed out an on-demand essay test that's only worth a piddly three hundred points! Cory didn't believe that when I told her this at lunch (Cory has this class after lunch). Overall, I don't think the test is hard, but then there's that stress that comes from the fact that this essay (Mrs. MacWilliams is calling it our final exam) pretty much determines a full letter grade on our report card. We're going to finish it in class on Thursday.

Oh, today was the Mock Car Crash! I looked forward to it all day...
Mrs. Jatul said we couldn't leave Biology right away for the car crash because she was borrowing lab tools from the University of Washington, and we had to do the experiment then and there. She said we'd only miss the introduction, and could afterward go view the car crash. After we finished what we needed to do for the experiment, she dismissed us to the parking lot to see the mock car crash.

We walked to the parking lot, expecting to see the beginning of the car crash. We walked through the arts wing to the west parking lot. Mr. Hoffman, the principal, was standing near the door. He asked the people in the front of our large walking class why we were late (or something, I couldn't hear) and Allison (as I remember) told him about our class doing the experiment. He shrugged, illustrating that he couldn't care less. I saw two emergency vehicles with the flashing lights. We walked over to the large group of people encircling what I like to call the "crash zone". I looked over some heads (our class got stuck behind everyone else) to see a wrecked car. Great, I thought to myself. We missed the crashing! We hadn't stood there for 20 seconds, however, until I heard a booming voice amplified by a speaker. It said something like "Go to the gym now for some kind of speech." Ack, we missed the entire crash. Damn!

I walked drugingly (is that even a word? Oh, no, it's grudgingly, my mistake) to the gym. Some guy was talking. He talked about how drinking and driving isn't worth the risk and something bad could happen like we had seen in the mock car crash. I guess it was kind of meaningless, not having seen the car crash. It made his speech long and boring. I heard one girl watching fainted.

Drafting class was really weird today. We had a substitute teacher, and she was so uptight! It was annoying. She kept telling us to sit in the right seats, but the seating chart was wrong because Mr. Huddleson moved us around without updating the seating chart. She got upset when people were talking. Neither Aaron nor Mike were in class today, so I couldn't work on my project because they're my partners, so I really had nothing to do, again. Oh well.

Today I went roller-skating for the first time ever. It was Cory, Holly, and Katie's birthday party. It was fun. I found that I was able to get up standing on my feet really easily at first, but I was having trouble getting the movements down. Within about a half-hour of skating, I could skate relatively well. By the end of the four-hour party, I could skate without falling down a lot. I had some trouble on turning, though. Thanks to Katie, Cory, Emily, and anyone else who helped me learn how to skate.

My butt, back, and left palm hurt from falling while skating. I only fell a few times. The worst fall had to be when I tripped, and both my knees and my left hand hit hard into the ground. There was also a moment when Katie U. snuck up behind me, surprising me. I turned back in instinct, and completely losing my balance, landed right on my tushy!

After the party, Mom, Stephanie, and I stopped at a garage sale where everything was free. I got a composite cable for my Nintendos, and eighteen plungers, as well. You see, I thought it would be good to have plungers for cul-de-sac parties. For example, we could play a game in which we'd have to carry water balloons in plungers in a race, or something. If your balloon hits the ground and bursts, you lose! Ha ha! Actually, I only wanted to get ten plungers, and Mom told me that we didn't need that many plungers, but right after that, she got the rest of their plungers and put them into the car. Rest assured, the plungers were new.

Today felt like the longest day EVER! For the first block, we took the Math WASL in Ms. Carey's room. Overall, I think I did pretty well, except for one dumb question. It said to look at a stem-leaf plot and derive an answer to a question from the plot, but I had never seen or heard of a stem-leaf plot in my entire life! So I guessed. It made me upset that the WASL people didn't bother to describe how to use the chart. Oh well.

After we took the Math WASL in Ms. Carey's class, it was time for Ms. Carey's history class. Whoo-hoo, we got to sit in the same room for three or so hours. What a drain. It also made fifth period seem extra long.

Between first and third period, I noticed a few construction paper fish scattered on the ground in the flex areas. I picked them up. Most of them say "le premier avril" or "poisson d'avril". On my way to lunch, I noticed more of them on the ground. I picked one up when I saw one, and put it into my pocket. I asked Katie U. what they meant (she takes French) and she said that they mean "first of April," and apparently, they are April Fools' Day pranks. After that, I went through all of the flex areas of Commencement Hall, and after that, I had about 25 fish! Katie K. seemed very interested in this. Bryan said he saw a lot of fish in the library, so Katie K. and I went to the library to go fish hunting (or if you will, "fishing"). As of now, I have 32. I would have more, but I gave one to Cory and one to Emily, and I probably dropped a few, too.

In Drafting, we're continuing to have highly intellectual conversations. On Monday, we were discussing infinity. Today, it started when Dylan on my left asked me how long I've been living in Washington. I replied, "Oh, about 11 years." Then, Jeremy on my right said, "I almost fell off the Space Needle once." Yeah, sure. Then, the intelligence level of our conversation skyrocketed. Our first question was, "If you fell head first off the Space Needle, would it hurt?" I guess it depends on how quickly you go unconscious, because if you were to go unconscious before the pain registered, it wouldn't hurt, right? Then we were curious about if there were a trampoline under the Space Needle. We concluded that it would still hurt or break bones if you were to land on the trampoline. Then, for some reason, the girl behind me asked about what if it were a 200-foot tall trampoline. I couldn't stop laughing after this question. What an absurd idea, a 200-foot trampoline!! Then she asked what if you landed onto a 10-foot cake? I bet it would still hurt, or at least break a few bones.

All his reminded me of a story Dad told me once, that he stopped a criminal in a police chase by parking his plywood truck (He used to work at Kansas Plywood) in an intersection so the driver couldn't get around. I asked about if a car going at 80 MPH were to drive into a plywood truck, but we concluded that it would hurt a lot.

Suddenly, our conversation got weird. "Let's say a truck is going 80 MPH down a dirt road, and the driver slams on the brakes, but just at the precise moment the driver slams his foot down, the laws of physics abruptly stop. What would happen?" Yeah, this is what we discussed.