Brandon Notices

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.