Brandon Notices

Today, we had a fire drill. I had been expecting it all day—Steffi had told me about it this morning. Ms. Thomas also knew about it, and told us at the beginning of AP Chem that we'd be having the fire drill during her class. As the clock ticked closer and closer to 10:15, we grew anxious because whee! the fire alarms would begin going off. I was bracing myself, expecting the loud, ear-piercing wail of the alarm, but when it started, I really didn't think it was very loud.

We all stepped outside; it was pretty cold out. Of course, I was prepared and had my coat on. Several people were excited because it was snowing a tiny bit. A girl standing nearby was trying to catch the snow in her mouth.

After the fire drill, we all went inside, and my class continued working on our assignment. Many of us were distracted, however, by the increase of the rate of falling snow. It wasn't long before it was a lot of snow falling! Ms. Thomas grew increasingly frustrated with the class's distraction.

During lunch, I bought a bag of Baked Cheetos from the vending machines. They're good, but not as good as Baked Doritos. Also during lunch, there were a lot of people standing outside in the snow, because yay, snow.

After lunch was Astronomy, and the class had a hard time concentrating. People asked Mr. Landon if we could study snow, or perhaps go outside and have a field study (perhaps "examine" the sky today).

Sure, Monday was pretty cold. M.J. McDermott promised us snow, so of course, everyone was hyped up about the expected snow day that Tuesday was to bring, right?

No. One person who was not hyped up was me. I didn't want to get my hopes up. It always happens. You stay up all night, hoping it will snow and that school will be cancelled for the day. Then you wake up the next morning, dash to the window, tear through the blinds, and you're Extremely Depressed to find that the ground is completely snowless. Or even worse, when there's like an inch or two on the ground, then you turn on the TV but your school's name doesn't appear on the school closure list. So you drudge along to school, wishing that you'd rather be home eating cinnamon sticks or whatever it is you do on snow days. It's not that I didn't want it to snow—snow is good—it's that I was choosing to not believe the weather forecasts and expect normal weather for today so as to not get my hopes up. I didn't want to get let down by sunny weather.

On Monday, everyone at school was giddy, jumping up and down with excitement in anticipation that school would be closed today. After all, practically every news station was predicting at least three days of snowfall, with an inch or two accumulation Tuesday morning. People were psyched! In ASL, Jasmine kept telling me how excited she was about the snow. When Ms. Hess asked her to close the blinds because the sunlight was in her eyes, Jasmine opened the window to check if the temperature was cold enough to snow. Ms. Hess signed to her that NO, it's not going to snow!

On MySpace, the eagerness for snow was all that people were posting bulletins about. Megan posted a bulletin trying to persuade readers to do a little snow dance, like a rain dance, to encourage the clouds to make snow. She and I exchanged messages about how I was trying not to get excited about the possibility of snow, and she said I needed to be more optimistic. I told her how I felt better off being pessimistic.

So of course, it started snowing last night. I didn't notice until Kevin sent me an instant message about it.

This morning, when I arose, I ran to the window and was disappointed to see that there was no snow on the ground. I suppose it's just as well—last winter, it didn't snow until January 7th. And it was a Friday night, so it's not like there was any chance of school closure anyway.

I guess no matter how hard you try not to hope for anything, you always feel let down.

I'm at my aunt's house in Bellingham for the Thanksgiving Weekend!

Yesterday, before I got here, my aunt and a few of my cousins went shopping, because after all, it was Shopping Day. Shopping Day is a pretty "recognized" holiday—the day after Thanksgiving that symbolizes the first day of the Christmas Holiday.

Actually, this year, I've recognized Thanksgiving in a different way than usual. Because people go shopping the day after Thanksgiving more than any other day I now see Thanksgiving as the feast that begins the Christmas shopping season. At least, this is how society seems to see it.

As you probably know by now, turkey contains an amino acid called tryptophan that causes drowsiness in people that eat it. Well, this is perfect for Commercial America because people go to sleep earlier after eating turkey, and wake up bright and early at 4:00 AM like my aunt and cousins did to go shopping. This is why we eat turkey.

I know it's supposed to celebrate pilgrims eating with Native Americans or something like that, but that was like a thousand years ago, and people these days just don't relate to things like that. It seems like people are more enthused about the turkey and the parade and the football games (myself: the turkey).

It's been foggy recently! VERY foggy! Let's see... it started on Thursday or Friday, and it's been foggy ever since then! The Weather Channel says that we have an air stagnation advisory; we're not supposed to burn fires in our fireplace because the fog is clogging up the fireplace and the smoke will have nowhere to go. According to weather.com, we should expect to see fog all through Tuesday.

Fog is eerie. It would have been so cool if it were lingering around during Halloween or something like that. That would have been better.

I saw the new Harry Potter movie today. It was pretty good, but I liked the last one a bit more... I don't know, I guess I just have a thing for enjoying temporal anomalies.

Yesterday, I went to Emily's surprise birthday party. I got there at 5:30, but Emily didn't arrive until about 6:20, and this was unfortunate because I was leaving by 6:30 to go to the school play, Cheaper By the Dozen with Kevin and Stephanie. Emily had time to open the present I had given her before I left. It was a gift card to Joann Craftland.

So we got in line; Stephanie's friend Abby had called her, warning that the seats were filling up fast. The line for the play was long—this was going to be a good play. As we got to the table counter, Mr. Pozzi, the play production coordinator, told Mr. Haase to hold off on selling tickets for a minute while he counted seats. As I stood there, I was afraid I could be the sitcom character who finally gets to the ticket counter only to have the SOLD OUT sign shoved up in his face. He came back and said to only sell 8 tickets left.

So Kevin, Steffi, and I got into the play. Steffi's friends had saved her a seat, but Kevin and I had to sit in chairs set on the ground to the left of the bleachers. Regardless of the sucky seats, the play was good. If anyone, I blame Mr. Haase for selling tickets to just anyone. And the school, for building such a tiny little theater. I've seen bigger.

I am officially dislikeful of Yahoo.

Why is it that whenever I visit one of Yahoo's Geocities sites, it reaches its maximum bandwidth allowance when I'm halfway through viewing one of their sites? It's like, I visit one or two pages, click a link, and suddenly, I can't view any more because I've crippled the site by forcing Yahoo to use too much bandwidth?

I think Yahoo should be less selfish. They already impose annoying ads on their users' webpages. Unfortunately for the poor companies who use that space for ads, I am more annoyed about having to close the ad than interested in seeing their product.

And what is it with AOL? I can't send anybody on AOL an email without the Internet Postmaster sending it right back to me! I think AOL is mean.

Today, I bought Mario Party 7! I've been awaiting this eagerly for months now.

Steffi, Kevin, and I played today. We were already planning on playing at Grand Canal, which is like Venice with rivers flooding the streets. At first, I was stinking, frequently losing coins to my enemies. Also, it didn't help a whole lot that we decided to skip practicing to speed things up (besides, you usually get the hang of a mini-game after the first 10 seconds), but Toad, the computer player, automatically already knew what to do, so he won many of the mini-games.

For the Last Four Turns, Bowser threw Koopa Kid Spaces all over the place. On the last turn, Stephanie landed on one. Koopa Kid evenly distributed everyone's coins. Then I landed on a Blue Space and got three Coins, and Toad landed on a Happening Space. Then I won the mini-game. Well, it turned out that I won the game with 4 Stars, 28 Coins, and everyone else tied with 1 Star, 15 Coins. What a silly ending. I've never seen a three-way tie for second.

I have, however, won by a single coin before. There's no greater feeling.

On the spur of the moment, Kevin and I went to Value Village to find me a HALLOWEEN costume.

It was a hard decision. I decided that this year, the year of two thousand and five, for the Halloween season, I will dress up as myself.

That's not all. I'll be dressed up as more than myself.

I'll be dressed up as myself in a costume.

"What kind of costume?" you may ask?

Well, that's a very good question.

A question that I shall proceed to answer.

I will now answer the question.

I will dress up in a Halloween costume.

The Halloween costume will be that of a mad doctor.

I will wear a long, wrinkled, possibly bloody lab coat with big round bottlecap glasses and a squeaky stethoscope and an extra-stabby scalpel and an oversized novelty needle/syringe.

I'm still hammering out the details and accessories. If you have any ideas, please let me know.

In yesterday's blog, I said that the picture of Velma searching for her glasses was the coolest thing in the school.

I apologize. It was a lie. This is still the coolest thing in the school:



Okay. Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I have some more pictures to show you! This afternoon during lunch, I was in the Great Hall, so I decided to take pictures of each class's big poster hanging from the ceiling.

Once again, I apologize. This time, I'm apologizing for the blurriness of pictures again. People notice when you fill the room with a flash. They look over. Several people might ask, "Why are you taking pictures of the posters?" It's a little embarrassing to say, "It's for my blog."



Here's my class's poster, the Ninja Turtles one. It's pretty cool, ain't it? The picture of the maverick, our school mascot, on the manhole cover is an interesting choice. After looking at the poster for a minute, I'm afraid I'm rather concerned for poor Donatello's health. His left arm is so skinny near the wrist! Why, his bo staff is just as thick, if not thicker!



This is the freshmen's poster. I forget what that big poofy monster is called, but he looks like that guy from the car tires commercials, so I'll call him Michelin. By the way, the people at the bottom of the picture above aren't drawings of people running away from Michelin. They're people on the stage.



Here's the sophomores' poster, starring Mario & Friends! This time, they remembered to put the M on his cap! If you're wondering what Mario's holding, I have to admit that I was wondering the same thing. I asked Nick, and he told me that he's holding some goat cheese. You see, Goat Cheese is the class name of the sophomores.

Please don't ask me why Peach doesn't have any legs. I like the Paratroopa in the corner. The messy blue writing under the word "Super" says "Sophomores". I had to ask my sister about that one.



By far my most beloved of all the posters, the juniors' Scooby-Doo poster is perfect in almost every way. I noticed a few flaws: Shaggy doesn't have the fuzz on his face, and Velma's arm looks like a drumstick. I didn't notice the background on this poster when I took this picture, but it's by far the best background on any of the four posters.

After looking at the posters, I realized that I hadn't been to the freshmen's hallway. So I ran over there as fast as my fat little legs could carry me. I was mildly impressed.



At first, I thought it was a little lacking, but then I thought back to what our hallway looks like, and I realized this: Our senior hallway looks like crap! The freshmen's hallway is bright blue, and I like the city lights touch. There are little ghosts hanging from the ceiling that I didn't immediately notice. They're cool.



Fingerpainting? Geez, freshmen, grow up.

On my way back to class, I noticed what had happened to the directional posters located in the school:



Looks like we have some class competition! This sign points to where the E200's are. Some people have changed the 200 into 2006 or 2008 or whatever. I don't know, I thought this was at least a little interesting. Other directional posters have similar drawings on them. I like the poster that has the arrow switched around, pointing the wrong way. That made me chuckle.

Yessirree, it's Homecoming Week at school! The school's theme this year is Heroes and Villains, and each class has its own theme. The hallways have meticulously been decorated by the ASB to reflect each class's theme. My class's theme this year is Ninja Turtles, and coincidentally, the hallway where I hang out before school is the seniors' Ninja Turtles decorated area. I brought my digital camera to take pictures!



I profusely apologize for the extreme blurriness of this picture. It's a little embarrassing and awkward to use a flash because everyone looks over at you to see what's going on. Besides, if I had used the flash, you wouldn't be able to see the awesome green glow. They had set up overhead projectors with green butcher paper over them to cause the entire hallway to glow green! This did not last very long at all.

The place was supposed to be decorated like the sewers, but the idea was executed poorly. Solid-colored brown butcher paper was tacked onto the walls with graffiti spray-painted on the walls.



At first, it wasn't apparent to me why 06 was scratched out by Michaelangelo (because we're the class of '06) until it hit me that Oh Six is the freshmen name. Oh, I knew this would come back to bite us in the butt. Oh, another thing, the Turtles wouldn't spray paint graffiti all over the place, especially after all those PSAs they did back in the '90s.



The most awesome thing in the hallway was the Senior Pizza. Each of us got our own pepperoni! The names are handwritten—that must have taken a lot of work. Can you find my name?



There were several "questionable" decorations in the hallway, as well. For instance, look at the above picture. Can you figure out what that is? It's on the floor across the entire hallway. It took me a long time to realize what it is. It's supposed to be murky brown sewer water running down through the middle of the sewer. This brown paper was kicked up off of the floor by passing students by the end of 1st period.



Another decoration that wasn't instantly clear as to its purpose. It's supposed to be a pipe running through the sewer. I think it would probably have been better if the pipe had reached the ceiling. A pipe like this would spew sewer water all over the floor and you'd step in it.

The juniors' class theme is Scooby-Doo. Their names are on little tombstones stapled to the wall.



They made a really nice poster of the Scooby-Doo gang... we seniors didn't get any nice original artwork or paintings in our hallway. The poster is nice and colorful—don't ask me why Daphne or Fred have green mouths. Maybe they ate apple-flavored Tootsie Pops.



This is currently the coolest thing in the school, and I hope it never comes down. Velma dropped her glasses! She'll be crawling around for those glasses all week long!



Nice rendition of a Mario platform game for the sophomores. Their theme, of course, is "Mario & Friends". It's weird, I've never ever heard the game or characters referred to as "Mario & Friends", but I suppose it works. I don't understand the huge significance of the yellow ! switches in the poster above, but the vine was an excellent touch. It was a great addition.



This painting of Mario makes me giggly. He looks soooo excited! One extreme error is that Mario's mustache is supposed to be black, but it's not that bad. Even worse, however, is that MARIO'S HAT DOESN'T HAVE AN M ON IT. Bummer.

I haven't gotten around to seeing the freshmen's Ghostbusters decorations (I never go over to that hallway), but I'll go check them out tomorrow morning. If it's impressive at all, I might display pictures on here.

Short but big thunderstorm today. The rain was falling really really hard—the Weather Channel's Doppler radar had this huge red blob headed across Lynnwood. The thunder was very loud, and my poor kitty cat was horrified. He was crouching on the ground, and I picked him up, and he was so tense! Poor kitty.

So much weather stuff going on. Weather's getting a bad rep. Let's see... Hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck, and now Otis is planning on striking Arizona. An article on James' blog had me thinking about how everybody's gotten a turn with bad weather, and it should be our turn next. Earthquakes make me nauseous. I don't know, I guess all disasters are bad. I feel kinda bad for the people living in my SimCities. There were times when numerous volcanoes would rise from the earth, several UFOs would invade the city, lightning would strike five times per second all over the place, and fire would just spread from out of nowhere. Earthquakes would roar five times a minute, and four or five tornadoes would tear up the city at a time. The population would drop to zero, and every building not destroyed in the disaster would get abandoned. What a rough day for my Sims.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was, once again, preempted for a wonderfully boring baseball game. This is the second time in this season's run that this has happend, and we're only four episodes into it. At this rate, I'll have no idea what's happening half the time.

Ah, that reminds me. Our class's theme for homecoming at Meadowdale High School this year is Ninja Turtles. How fun! The freshmen have Ghostbusters, the sophomores have Super Mario, and the juniors got stuck with Scooby-Doo. During the assembly, the girl demonstrating what to wear during class theme day was dressed up as a turtle, spinning a nunchuck above this head; this surprised a lot of people. Two girls sitting behind me yanked out their Student Handbooks and pointed out to everyone sitting around that it distinctly says no "nun-chu-ka sticks." So the ASB's example might inadvertantly lead seniors to bring weapons to school. Don't let some guy poke your eye with a sai!

Every year, the seniors at my school get to choose the name for the incoming freshmen. Well, this year, it was finally our turn to nominate and vote on names for the freshmen!

I hope that "O Six" or "'06" doesn't win. That would be annoying and besides, it's a weak name. Not very clever at all. And they're the class of '09, anyway. We're Oh Six—it's what we yell at assemblies! If this wins, then once we're off to college, they'll be stuck with this weird number that doesn't relate to anyone. I also hope that the class isn't named the "Heinemans" or the "Goldburgs" (both named after students at school) because I've never heard of those people anyway and what honor do they deserve??!?

There was one name on the ballot which I thought would be pretty funny to give to the freshmen. I don't remember it, but I'll try to write it. "Meegle Oogle Boogle Roogle Leegle Teegle". Ah well, it was something like that. It would be so great for them to have to remember their class name, and for the administrators to say "Would the 'Roogie Noogle Poogle Foogle Boogie Woogie' class please head to the auditorium?"

My senior class name is the "Squirts". The juniors are the "Squealers", and the sophomores are "Goat Cheese". Oh, you know what? Another name nominated for the freshmen was "Goat Cheese II". There's no merit in the name and I certainly hope it doesn't win.

I jumped off of the treadmill yesterday and ran into the dining room, and somehow accidentally slammed my right knee into the edge of the surface of the table. So, if you noticed me limping around school today, it's because my knee hurts. I don't think it's broken; indeed, I think it's feeling much better now. Who knows, perhaps it'll be fully healed by tomorrow.

So, I've been watching The Weather Channel a bit recently. Looks like our decent weather is about to take a turn for the worse. The forecast predicts rain every day for the next week. That stinks. Hopefully, those more distant days' predictions are less accurate, but I could see in the clouds today that they're ready to rain all over us.

My next-door neighbors' black lab puppy, Mandy, has been getting into so much mischief lately! For some reason, her leash always gets let go, or she jumps over her little kennel, and runs into Harold's yard, which is on the other side of my house. Harold hates dogs in his yard, and I sometimes hear him yelling "GO! SHOO! GO, DOG!" through my bedroom window, even when it's shut. I'm fine with Mandy in our yard as long as she doesn't poop in our grass like all the neighbor dogs did all the time years ago.

Jesse, the youngest child, had Mandy on a leash, and was trying to teach her to "sit" and "come" when I walked out to get the mail, but Mandy wasn't listening to him. I had remembered something I had recently read, which said that unlike humans, who think of everybody as equals, dogs think of themselves in two categories: "leader" and "follower". I told Jesse that if he doesn't make Mandy think he's the leader, she won't obey him, and will instead think that she's the boss of him!

So I was at the blood center today, signing one of the donors up for her next appointment, when she said, "Uh oh." I looked up to see that her bandage was leaking. Blood was dripping onto the counter and floor. In these cases, I'm not supposed to touch the blood; rather, I'm supposed to call a technician over. So Lisa told the donor to go lie back down so she and Wendy could put another bandage on her, then Lisa cleaned up the mess... I thought you might like to know what goes on at the blood center.

I tried cream soda for the first time today after buying it from Safeway. They're currently remodeling, moving all their merchandise and stuff. Mom's annoyed, saying that you shouldn't fix something if it isn't broken, but I think it'll work out to be okay. The produce department is now apparently in the middle of the store... I'm a little peeved that the pop and chips are currently on opposite ends of the store, but I hope they'll move them closer together. Hurry and go to the store now, go as far to the right of the store as possible. It's totally empty! Check it out!

Also, in case you haven't noticed, a Spirit Halloween store has opened next to the mall, not far from Red Robin. I went in to see if they had any Halloween music CDs, and I was really disappointed to discover that the store this year sucks compared to last year. Last year, there was a dark, moody atmosphere, Halloween music was playing, and you could hear all kinds of haunted sounds. This year, in the smaller store, there are mostly costumes (instead of decorations), and they hang from undecorated pegboard. Maybe they plan on furthering their decorations or selection as we get closer to Halloween, but I doubt it.

My sister went to music camp today, and my mom went with her, so they aren't here. Before they left, Mom gave me a coupon for Chevy's, and told me that Dad and I could go to Chevy's for dinner. "Okay, probably." Then, a few hours later, my cousin Kevin IM'd me and said that he wanted to treat Dad and me to dinner, coincidentally at Chevy's. I told him he could use our coupon, and so we went to Chevy's tonight.

Now, this wasn't any ordinary coupon. This was a Mexican Poker coupon. The idea was that the coupon came with two tiny pictures of cards. We could take these cards to Chevy's, and compare them with three other cards posted there to make up our poker hand. Our hand determined the type of discount we would get.

The cards we had were the six of diamonds and the ace of hearts. Kevin pointed out to me before we left that we already automatically had the Ace High, so we knew we couldn't lose. Then we arrived at Chevy's and eagerly ran to the poster to see what the other three cards of the hand were. And one of the other cards was an ace! This means that everybody won at least the Ace High. But we had a Pair. That was worth $5 off!

I ordered a steak quesadilla, but they brought so many chips with so much salsa before my quesadilla arrived that I got full mostly on delicious chips and couldn't finish my quesadilla. Then, after the meal, the waiter seemed disappointed that we didn't want dessert. If they didn't fill us on chips, maybe we'd order dessert.

I guess the moral of the story is this: You can't eat both chips and dessert.

Today, Kevin and I saw The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. We went to the new Lowe's theater next to Alderwood Mall. It's a neat story, if I may say so myself (which I may). Despite the exhaustingly unnecessary mountain of stairs that you have to walk up to enter the theater (or you could take the escalator), it's a nice theater. Big! After getting my ticket, and waiting for Kevin to get his, we went to Theater Nine. Stadium seating! It's nice because (a) you don't have to worry about not seeing over people's heads, and (b) you're more level with the screen, reducing cranenecking.

The movie itself was pretty good. I was expecting that it would be annoying to watch because the original story would seem to be pretty hard to translate into a Hollywood video, but they did it pretty well. While I was pretty upset about Zaphod's second head, there were several points in the movie that were really funny.

One hilarious moment in the movie is when the camera zooms out from the earth just prior to its destruction. It's funny, but describing it would ruin it if anyone reading this were to see the movie, so I'll just say "don't walk away while the earth is blowing up."

I liked the So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish song so much (and several other songs) that I had to buy the soundtrack at Fred Meyer. So that's interesting.

When the credits started, most of the audience left, but Kevin, several other people, and I stayed, and it's a good thing we did, because there was the Careless Talk animated guide entry and although it wasn't nearly as funny as the animation in the BBC mini-series, it was worth seeing.

On our way out, the ushers were handing out Juicy Fruit to those of us who had stayed. Whoopie yay! I will keep it to remind myself of today (along with my ticket stub...I usually don't throw those away).

For these last two weeks, the freshmen and sophomores have been taking standardized tests during the first class of the day. For the rest of us, that means that we've got blocks of classes where most of the class is sometimes missing.

Last Tuesday, most of the class in Chemistry was taking the test, and people were testing in our chemistry classroom, so we juniors and seniors went to a different classroom where we had practically two hours of free time. I read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy during most of those two hours.

Last Wednesday, Ms. Hudemann was proctoring the testing, so we had to move to a different classroom and Mr. Cook was supposed to be subbing for us, but the bell had rung and he wasn't showing up. Many people in the class kept saying that we all should leave, but nobody was doing anything. Eventually, a few people left, and one person apparently went to tell Mr. Hoffman, the Principal, that we had no teacher, so then Mr. Cook came and my group worked.

Last Thursday, we had two hours of History. Sigh. A pretty normal class since it's a junior class and nobody was testing, except it was two hours long. And last Friday, two hours of ASL. Ms. Brinkley didn't have anything planned, so we did nothing. I learned how to play a card game called 13 that didn't seem to make any sense at all.

Oh, and last Friday, it was remarkably hot in Mr. Worster's classroom, and somebody asked Worster if we could go outside and do our work there. Yoon wanted a place with shade, though, so Mr. Worster sent Rachel and me to go scout out a nice place with shade. Unfortunately, as it was just around noon, there weren't really any shadows around, so we sat on the concrete steps on the hill and I got a sunburn.

Mr. Worster and I were talking about Kansas or something and I brought up the Topikachu (Topeka was the site for a big Pokémon event, Topeka + Pikachu) thing and then we started talking about Pokémon, and how his son wanted cards, so he had asked his students to donate Pokémon cards and he got a bunch and yadda yadda. My point is that he got me playing Pokémon again and I beat Pokémon FireRed and I had already beaten Pokémon Ruby so I merged my two Pokémon teams together to create one really diverse team!

On Monday, in Calculus class, Mr. Worster thought our brains would get fried doing math homework for two hours straight or something, so we watched a movie called Stand and Deliver. It was a good movie.

Today, we had two hours of Creative Writing class, and it was a good thing we had the extra amount of time because Ms. Shaw wanted to keep watching Good Morning America because Bruce Springsteen was going to be on and she wanted to see him, but after a while, she decided to start teaching once she realized how much time she was wasting.

Sure, everybody gets Spring Break earlier in the year than we do, but hey, we've got better weather, as well as Daylight Saving Time. So just back off!

So, Spring Break started after a really long day of school yesterday. In History, we took an in-class essay. I thought I wasn't very prepared, but apparently, I did enough studying to write the essay without forgetting any of my mental notes, which is a good thing. Yesterday, the Organ Lady was going to be giving presentations all day, but the only way to get in was if your teacher signed in, and I was afraid that none of my teachers would have signed up, like the last two years. But, fortunately, awesome Mr. Worster signed our Calculus class up to see the Organ Lady! Overall, I was a bit disappointed. I thought we'd get to poke at organs and stuff, but instead, it was just a lady who talked about not smoking and stuff. All the good seats in the front were already taken by the time my class got there, so I had to sit in the back with those people who yabber jabber, so I couldn't hear very well, and worst of all, I could barely see the blackened smoked lungs and hearts and stuff. Awwww...

On Monday, I am going to have my wisdom teeth removed off of my face. I honestly can't say I'm looking forward to it. If anyone has any sage advice, let me know (leave comments).

April Fool's Day is tomorrow. I like April Fool's Day! Some people apostrophize (I checked; that's really a word!) "April Fools Day" differently. I guess it depends on who you interpret is the fool. Myself, I put the apostrophe after fool because I see it as a holiday when you "fool" people... day to fool, fool's day. Isn't "fool" a weird word? "FOOOOOOL." Say it. Encarta defines FOOL as several things, including a person who behaves comically or entertains...that's how I see the word "fool" in "April Fool's Day".

Probably one weakness I have when fooling people is that I never get around to saying "April Fool!" I mean, the opportunity never arises. For example, and here's a weak example, I say, "Whoops, I forgot my lunch!" knowing well that I have not forgotten my lunch. Then somebody will say "Oh, that's too bad" or something. Then what? That's not an appropriate time to say "April Fool!" I don't know, maybe it's a bad example or something, but saying "April Fool!" right then would be awkward and would feel out of place. Hey, isn't "awkward" also a weird word? Think about it. Think about how weird all words are.

Oh, don't think about poking me on the right shoulder from behind when you're standing on my left. I never fall for that one. Besides, I probably won't be turning my back on anyone tomorrow anyway (I wouldn't want a "Kick me!" sign taped (or worse, glued!) on the back of my shirt).

I wonder if anybody has an April Fool's Day prank planned where they bring a gun to school. I hope nobody's planning a joke like that, because it probably won't end up being very funny.

There are several types of April Fool's Day pranks. I'll list a few:

1. Spoken Pranks
   These usually take the least amount of preparation, and when done correctly, can usually make people laugh or make other people laugh at the prankee. Here are a few examples of Spoken Pranks:
   • "My dog Freddy died."
   • "I told the teacher you were cheating, even though you probably weren't."
   • "I'm the one who pulled the fire alarm."
   • "I need to raise $50 to bail my dads out of jail."
   • "I liked my trip to Renton."



2. Gestural Pranks
   These are really simple, subtle pranks that only involve movement of a body part or gazing in one direction. Here are a few examples of Gestural Pranks:
   • If you're talking to somebody whose back is to a door, look around him as if somebody is entering the room. He'll turn around to see who's entering.
   • Say "You've got something on your face," and touch somewhere on your own face. The prankee will frantically try to rub something off his face.
   • Look up, and people will look up to see what you're looking at.
   • Stand behind somebody to the right, and tap his left shoulder. He will look over his left shoulder, and will be surprised to see that nobody's standing there!



3. Physical Pranks
   These are much more involved than Gestural Pranks, and usually get more attention as well. It's likely that you will get the attention of a lot of people, so if you try to pull one of these off, make sure it is a good one. If the prank doesn't work, you'll feel embarassed. Here are a few examples of Physical Pranks:
   • Pretend like you're about to trip right into somebody.
   • Stick your foot out right in front of somebody walking, and trip him. Works great if he's carrying a bunch of books!



4. Prop Pranks
   These pranks require some preparation because the props have to be gathered or constructed ahead of time. Here are a few examples of Prop Pranks:
   • He bites into the donut and is surprised that instead of jelly filling, it has mustard filling!
   • Poke holes in the side of somebody's straw while they're away. When they try to drink with the straw, it'll be difficult to suck the beverage up!
   • Give somebody a mylar balloon that says "It's A Girl!" in front of a bunch of people.
   • Slip a few sardines into somebody's sandwich.
   • Tape a "Kick Me" sign on somebody's back.
   • Tape a "Kill Me" sign on an enemy's back.

In elementary school, my teachers seemed to love April Fool's Day. They'd play a prank on us. I remember falling for a trick Mrs. Engle played on us once in 2nd grade when she told us that school lasted an hour later, and we were going to get rid of third recess. I was like, Nooooooooo! Actually, though, they did get rid of third recess a few years later.

Elementary school teachers like pranking little kids, but in high school, none of the teachers seem to like playing tricks. Hmmm... but this year, I have a bunch of good teachers. Ms. Hudemann, Mr. Worster, and Ms. Shaw are three likely teachers to try to prank us. Mr. Singh and Ms. Dixon are probably too serious, and it would be too confusing for Ms. Brinkley to try to fool us, so...I don't know.

Ahhh... tomorrow, I have to go to school early tomorrow during Tutorial to catch up in my classes. Maybe, instead of telling my teachers I was sick, I could tell them something more serious, like maybe I fell down the stairs or I had symptoms of a heart attack or something. I bet a few of my teachers are going to try to fool me into thinking I missed something serious or something difficult to make up. Then I'd probably ask them, "Are you foolin' me?" and they'd say no, even though they probably were or something. It's hard to tell.

Pay close attention to this. If you try to fool somebody, and they ask you if you're trying to fool them, just say you are. It's annoying if you say, "No, I'm not fooling you," but later, you say you were fooling. I mean, the person already probably figured out you were fooling them but you said you weren't.... yadda yadda....... I call it a "fool loop". It's too confusing to talk about it in detail. I'm only making my headache worse.

I don't know how much my friends like April Fool's Day. I don't remember from last year what they did, or how they reacted to my foolings. I guess we'll see (unless I'm sick, but I can't miss school on April Fool's Day!)

Oh, if you skipped all of the above paragraphs to read this conclusion, shame on you! Go back and reread it all.

Today was Math Day. It was a field trip to the University of Washington. Before it all got started, we were all seated in a huge auditorium in Meany Hall. Aaron and I thought about what presentations to view later, and we thought that Hyperbolic Geometry would be fun, and so would Aeronautics and Astronautics. However, A&A required a "ticket", and neither Mr. Worster nor any of the other teachers had tickets for that. So instead, Mr. Worster gave us two tickets to Applied Physics, and said to try to trade those for tickets to Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Everybody had to watch the plenary presentation, whether they wanted to or not. Everyone was gathered in the auditorium in Meany Hall to watch some guy give a presentation about securely transferring data (like credit card numbers, etc.) over the Internet. I thought it was pretty interesting, but word is that a lot of people found it to be "boring" and "stupid". Ah well, I guess not everything can please everybody.

So afterwards, Aaron and I went to the ticket trading booth, where people set down tickets they wanted in exchange for tickets they didn't want. Aaron, who is much taller than me, could see that there were no A&A tickets there. One guy had one A&A ticket, and didn't want it, but refused to give it to us because he wanted it to exchange for something better.

We went to the hyperbolic geometry presentation, which was actually called Images of Hyperbolic Geometry. Aaron was disappointed that he only skimmed the surface of hyperbolas, mostly only showing pictures. He also complained that the idiot had no idea what he was talking about, but to be fair, he wasn't a professor, despite the fact that I kept calling him "the professor" (it wasn't until later that I found out he wasn't one). But still, to be fair, the pictures were interesting and neat!

Since we couldn't get tickets to A&A, we went to Trial by Mathematics, which didn't require a ticket (the presentations didn't require tickets, only the "field trips" and hands-on things). It was interesting because she mentioned that most people only identify other people by their hair and eyes, the most common things mentioned were higher on the body. She discussed how math has been used in several trials, many of them using probability ("it's a 1 in 12 million chance this couple did it...").

Lunch was next, and since it was an hour, we went and played with those little logic thinking sliding puzzle things that you see in gift and puzzle stores and such. Then we all boarded the buses, and one girl was missing. But they found her and we left.

My favorite part was that the auditorium was called Meany Hall.

Since the girls' basketball team lost yesterday, they played a consolation match today, and once again, most of the student body was gone to see it.

I walked into Chemistry class this morning, and instead of seeing a classroom full of people leaving from Tutorial, there were only a few people. Weird, I thought. In all, only 7 out of 30ish people were in Chemistry today. It was nice and quiet. Except for when Hailey, Brian, and I talked briefly to each other, it was the quietest the class had ever been. Mr. Singh didn't lecture or anything today—what can you do when most of your class is absent? He just gave us free time. First, I worked on stories for my Creative Writing class, then I read my book for a while, then I fiddled with my calculator. It felt like a long class.

Then was History. Again, only about a third of the class was there. The figure I guessed was about two-thirds of the school went to that game. The rest of us had to work on our history project. Most of the people didn't have their partners for the project, but fortunately, my partner was there. We went to the library to do working. We got to use the computers! The printer only printed in black and white. I mean, it only printed in black (there's no white ink—the paper's already white anyway).

Right before lunch, they announced the results of the girls' basketball game. Awww, the "Lady Mavs" lost! Again! So now they're out of the tournament. And too bad, too. They lost the first game too.

The weather is getting nicer and nicer. We actually ate lunch outside today. I hope it'll get warmer before it gets colder.

Then after History, we had Creative Writing! Ms. Shaw had us push all the tables together into one big table so it seemed like we were at private school (there were only 12 of us). We talked about poems based off of the blackbird poem briefly, then left us to ourselves to work on our portfolios. Dinah seemed to like my Stones poem. Then, R.C. (doesn't stand for remote-controlled) was showing us a website on the screen. Then, somebody else popped up a website of something funny. Then, I thought I'd pop up my website for everyone to enjoy. Ms. Shaw really seemed to like my "How to Write an F Paper" essay, especially about the part about microwaving the paper, and she was surprised when I told her that I wrote that. She asked R.C., who was holding the mouse, to bookmark my website! So now I have to stop talking bad about my teachers in case she finds this blog through the Links in my website.

It's officially spring now—I can hear the ice cream truck outside! It's playing Yankee Doodle.

The school was nearly empty today.

The girls' basketball team went to state competitions far, far away, and most of the student body went with them, just to watch. So everybody else stayed at school. I was one of those people.

Right before English class, everybody boarded the rooter buses. So English class, typically, was pretty empty. There were only like 10 out of 30 or so people in class. However, Ms. Hudemann refused to let this ruin her class. We continued watching The Great Gatzby, and the rest of the class will just have to rent the movie if they want to catch up.

ASL was a lot more fun. There were only like 7 out of 26-ish people there. Most of us were over on the same side of the classroom, so it was cool to have the other side of the class practically empty. First we had a practice test, and I did pretty well (except I wrote down 25 when she signed 15). Ms. Brinkley had nothing else planned—we could choose to watch a movie or read for over an hour, and knowing the movies she chooses, we chose to read. However, it didn't take long for us to stop reading and just start doing other stuff. I played dots 'n' curves on the board with Rachel, Alex, and Steve.

Lunch was pretty normal, but Calculus was way off! Out of our class of 18-ish, there were only 5 of us, excluding Conner, who was taking a test outside of the classroom. We watched a video about integrals that Mr. Worster thought would be fun to watch, but it really wasn't very good—he wanted to test it on us to see how fun it was, I guess. It wasn't. I waved the tissue in the air like a surrender flag, and he laughed at that and stopped the movie. Then we went over the test. I didn't do too well on it... I asked about one problem and I entered the equation incorrectly into my calculator but Mr. Worster reawarded me with those points because it was a strange mistake involving the way the calculator handles complicated exponents, but I got the math totally correct.

The girls' basketball team lost today—that means that they play tomorrow morning at 9:00 AM. Which means that I bet a bunch of the school will go to that game too. If the "Lady Mavs" had won, they would have played tomorrow at 3:30 PM, and students would not be able to miss school tomorrow. I bet a lot of people are happy that they lost the game.

ASB elections were today. One of the candidates for Vice President took off his shirt and pants to reveal a white tanktop with something illegibly written on it, and a pair of hot pink short shorts. His point was that he would do anything for our school. Weird. I voted for Leah, who had chosen to sing a song she had written. Nathan was running unopposed for President, so he just wasted the time for his speech, making up a song along the lines of the Oscar Meyer song, "My baloney has a first name...".

Later right before Calculus, I asked Audrey, who is the current ASB president, if the elections were rigged. I was joking. She gasped, and said, "No!" Then, right before class ended, they announced the winners. Then school was dismissed. As we all walked down the stairs, I asked Audrey if she already knew who the winners were before the election. "Yeah, we counted them during third period—oh, before the election? No, I didn't know. The election wasn't rigged, Brandon."

Oh, something else that happened in Calculus. Since the candidates gave their speeches today, the bell schedule was rearranged. Usually when this happens, the bells don't ring for some reason. Before Calculus, Mr. Worster asked if the bell had rung. It was late to ring. He said something about the bells always being late, then I said that "it was a good thing the bell rang, or else we'd all be in perpetual passing time". That comment was a big hit. Then Mr. Worster suddenly starting talking about those drugs like Viagra, and how the commercials warn you about erections lasting over 24 hours and how weird those commercials were.

Not much has happened during Mid-Winter Break. It's practically a waste of free time. However, the weather has been bearable.

On Wednesday, Stephanie and I invited Kevin over to have a Mario Party party. We decided we were going to play for 30 turns on Faire Square. Some people would say that's a lot of turns, but I've played 50-turn games several times—35 turns is called a standard game... But the party was based on this game, so it wouldn't make sense to have it end after only an hour and a half.

We played ten turns, which takes about 40 minutes, then Stephanie decided that since it was so sunny, she wanted to go play tennis (on my grandparents' badminton court, which is too small to play tennis on). So she called my grandparents to ask if it was okay to play on their court, but they weren't home, so we decided to go to the park instead. I thought we were going to go to Meadowdale Neighborhood Park, but Stephanie wanted to go to Wilcox Park instead. I was looking forward to swinging, but a bunch of selfish little kids refused to let us use the swings in the main playground, so we left to go to the smaller, older playground on the other side of the park. We ran crazily through the forest, with me yelling "I know the way, follow me!" but when we got to where I thought the playground was, Stephanie and I stood there staring at the empty field, then looking at each other. The second playground was gone! No longer there! Disappointed, we all returned to the playground and played on the see-saw for a while.

When we got back, Mom and Dad were home. Stephanie started talking to her friends online, and this made me angry because we were waiting on her to finish our Mario Party game. After she finally finished what she was doing, we played our game. The interesting thing about Faire Square is that you can buy up to 5 stars at once, and the prices change between day and night. The game ended anti-climatically when Twila wanted 40 coins for every star. Yikes, that's a lot.

Then on Thursday, Stephanie and I decided we had so much fun with Mario Party that we decided to have another Mario Party party. We invited Kevin over, but then Stephanie decided she didn't want to play. But we had already invited Kevin over... Stephanie ended up getting sick, so she watched Survivor with Mom and Dad while Kevin and I played a 10-turn game in E. Gadd's Garage. We played together on a team, and would have lost if it weren't for the end-of-game bonuses.

It doesn't snow much here, but, well, it finally snowed! The news channels had been taunting all us students for a week, but it finally snowed on Friday night. Well, we didn't miss school, but at least it snowed. Friday night, while my cousin Kevin was over, we noticed snow falling under the street light. We ran outside to play in the snow. Stephanie wouldn't join us because she's always talking to her friends online. There was only less than half an inch of snow, so the only practical thing we could do was make drawings in the snow. First, I made a hopscotch, then we played Hangman and Kevin wrote "oops" in the snow by shuffling his feet around. Just to be funny, I put a "P" before the "oops" and guess what it became. Thaaaat's right.

It snowed much more overnight today. We have probably two inches, which is actually quite a bit for this area. There were kids sledding down the steep hill in front of our cul-de-sac. Cars have to be careful not to hit any of the stupid kids that don't move out of the way. Kevin, Stephanie, my neighbors, and I had a snowball fight. This one guy, Zach, who I don't think lives around here, was a jerk. He pulled my hat off. Oh, then later, he rolled the snowman body over Stephanie's hat. I tried to help by pulling her hat out—I grabbed the little pom-pom ball sewn to the top of the hat, but instead of pulling the hat out, I just yanked the pom-pom off. How embarrassing.

That afternoon, Stephanie had a surprise party to go to, and Kevin and I had to take her to the Azteca in Mukilteo. While we were in the area, waiting to pick her up, we ate at Pizza hut, and shared a medium pizza. Then we went to RadioShack, and then RiteAid, where we saw a hilarious 4-foot singing, dancing Santa Claus. He was marked 75% off since the holiday season was over, bringing the price down to about $20. It was too funny—Kevin had to buy it. He plays several songs, and one funny thing is that you can plug the included microphone into it, and Santa's mouth will move along with your voice. It's fun.

I've been watching The Weather Channel a bit recently. I like their description for the weather we might have here on Monday:



THUNDER SNOW! Yikes! And the low on Wednesday—watch out! Brrrr.

Everybody's been hoping that it snows soon. The weather reports have said for a week now that it's supposed to snow today and Friday. Nobody knows. I heard some people at school say that if it snows, and they don't call it a snow day, they still aren't going to go to school. (If it snows an inch but the road conditions are fine, we still go to school.)

I just heard on the Weather Channel that a winter storm watch has been issused for our area. But I bet it won't be as bad as it has been in Kansas. People literally have to break into their cars—they had to break the ice to open the doors.

Here's a picture of a weird product I saw on the shelves in the bathroom:



Isn't it creepy how the mask causes flowers to grow out of your eyes? She obviously doesn't like wearing the mask, because she isn't smiling. The bright red color makes her look evil.

On a positive note, I hear it might snow later this week. I'm so excited! I don't want to jinx anything, but let's just say that "I have a snowball up my sleeve, and everybody'd better watch out". It would be so much fun to finally get a day off from school and throw snowballs at Alexandra—she and I have this thing with snowballs in the face during the winter. Let's hope for snow. Cross those fingers, people! Please!

On a negative note, it's been really really cold recently—it's been freezing! There is a frozen puddle in the middle of the cul-de-sac! It's too cold—I hate being cold. I wish it would warm up a little bit—the cold gives me headaches and it isn't comfortable at all. And I hate bundling up because I can't move as easily; I have to lug my coat, etc., with me everywhere. I really want warmer weather. The funny thing, however, is that in the summer time, everyone will be cursing the heat, begging for something colder.

On an even negativer note, I learned that I have to take an English final and a Calculus final...on my birthday. They always say "happy birthday", but I don't know... Last year, I had a History final and a Pre-Calculus final on my birthday. I never get to have a happy birthday anymore. I like having a birthday party, but I never get to have one at the park or anything because it would be too cold and people would get upset and leave because they were too cold. And I almost had to cancel a party once because of the snow—remember that, Megan?