Brandon Notices

Look what I made! (This is something Charlie Brown would yell.) I bought it at Hallmark. It used to say "LAUGH".

Look what I made!



It is a scene of Linus, Lucy, Sally, Snoopy, and Woodstock gathering around a Christmas tree. Lucy wants to put the star on the tree, but Woodstock is already sitting on top. It looks like Linus wants to hand Woodstock a Christmas card.


The pages are laid out, not even taped together yet.

The poster is made of thirty sheets of paper, taped together to fit the size of my window, which is about 34″ × 59″. There is a reason why the picture looks off-center: the frame between the sashes blocks part of the picture. If I had centered the picture in the window, the tree and Woodstock would be blocked behind it. This would look bad.

The hard part was coloring. I could have printed the pages in color, but I decided to go with the coloring book style because I was worried that color ink would run if it touched condensation on the window. Crayons are small, and I had a lot to color, but I think it'll be safer this way.

With the lights on inside, the poster is illuminated for outdoor viewers. In the daytime, I hope the sunlight will pass through the poster so that the image can be seen from inside.

I got the picture design from a paper Christmas decoration I found in a Christmas decoration bin. I scanned the picture so that I could use it as my desktop wallpaper.


The original decoration, about a foot wide.


Here is the poster, seen from inside my room.

This year's garbage ghost is up! We did the same thing last year, and we've done it before.

 

Jesse and I made the ghost yesterday. We used two garbage bags this year, taping them together to make a much larger ghost. We stuffed the head with plastic shopping bags, using just a little paper to cover the Safeway logo so that it wouldn't show through. Jesse drew the face on with a Sharpie. I am impressed by how generic he drew the face. I was afraid he might draw a stupid-looking half-scary face. The moaning ghost look is very appropriate. We stopped working on the ghost to rescue his cat, who was stuck meowing on his roof.

Hanging the ghost is very tricky. (I want to mention that the fishing line is attached to the top of the ghost's head—it is not tied around the neck.) Jesse plays a lot of sports, so he is a much better thrower than I. He tied the fishing line to a rock and threw it over the street light. Once we got it over, but before we pulled the ghost up, I messed things up. I stepped in a loop of the fishing line and got it tangled around my foot. I don't know what Jesse was thinking, but he cut the line around my leg, and this messed up this hanging.

I could tell that Jesse was getting tired, and when his mom asked if he wanted to go with her to pick up his sister, he went with her. Patrick and Jeanina had come outside to watch, but I realized that none of the three of us would have an easy time throwing a rock over the light in just the right place. I got out my Foxtail, tied the string to the tail, and flung it up and over the light. Unfortunately, I forgot to have someone hold onto the other end of the string (not attached to the ghost), and it got pulled up by the Foxtail's weight, so I had to do it again—I got it on the third try. I pulled the ghost up and anchored the string to the bushes underneath.

The ghost is really cool! With breezes, it spins slowly around, and its tail floats behind it.



It seems like the ghost is alive (or undead, at least), looking around the cul-de-sac. I hope this ghost stays up through Halloween.

I came across a PowerPoint presentation I made last summer when I was extremely bored. It's about cats and dogs, and which we should love more. It's supposed to be stupid. Here are two slides from it.

I was fiddling around with my Garfield Randomizer recently, and turned it into something completely different: the Garfield Shifter!! It takes a random Garfield comic and either puts the first panel at the end of the strip, or puts the last panel at the beginning.

I'll admit that most of the time, the results aren't very impressive, but every once in a while, you'll get something that seems to defy causality...



...or something that changes the punchline...




...or probably something just plain bizarre...







The Shifter doesn't totally shuffle all three panels; it merely shifts them all. It never generates a strip that maintains the original order. You can tell which comic used to be the middle one because it doesn't have the black outline that the other two panels have.

I used to have the Garfield Shifter available online, but I'm sorry to say that it's no longer available.

When I was searching my computer for pictures to put on my bulletin board, I came across a few Garfield comics.

People on the Internet have done some really crazy things to Garfield comics. The first weird thing is removing Garfield's thought bubbles. This changes it from being a comic about a geeky, losely man and his snarky, pissy cat into a comic about a deranged loser who talks to his cat.

It turns this:


into this:


A bunch of other messed-with Garfield comics are available at the Truth and Beauty Bombs Forum.

Something else that's funny to do with Garfield comics is to randomly select panels from different comics and combine them into one crazy, far-out strip. Sometimes, they don't make a lot of sense:


Sometimes, they do make sense, or at least create very surreal comics:






As you can see, I've had a lot of fun playing with the Garfield Randomizer. The only thing I didn't really like about the Randomizer is that it was apparently designed to only pick panels from comics between 2001 and 2004. I tweaked the code so that picks from nearly all of the comic strips (1979 through 2007). The only problem with this is that the artwork sometimes changes dramatically through a randomized strip, and you'll even sometimes see a panel that isn't colorized. But I suggest doing this if you dare to see the most absurd comics in your life. If you want to see the entire strip of one of the panels, right-click on one of the panels and click Save Background to save the entire strip to your computer.

While I'm at it, I think I'll mention the Garfield search engine. This is neat to use to find specific phrases in a Garfield comic. Search for "Irma" and you'll see all my favorite comics that take place in the diner.

I found a bulletin board in the garage, and I had a little spare time today, so I decided to put a bunch of fun junk on it to snazz up my room. Mostly, it's Far Side comics from the daily calendar I had last year, but there's a few other comics up there, along with other stuff. When I find something funny, I'll just staple it onto the board, over the stuff that's already there.


You can click the picture for a closeup. I'm going to add a few keychains, too.

Happy 2008! Yet another revolution around the sun from this arbitrary point! Our family celebrated by playing several hours of Yahtzee at my aunt's house up north in Bellingham. To supplement the usual snack of Chex Mix, my sister and I made some fortune cookies, and we put specialized messages inside of them!

My sister was in charge of making the batter and putting it in the oven, and I was in charge of folding them. Folding the cookies isn't very hard—the only thing that makes it difficult is that it has to be folded at a temperature of 300 degrees. I had to wear some well insulated gloves, but I still burned my hand a little bit. Nothing serious, though.

I'm going to list a bunch of the fortune cookie messages here. Many of them were inside jokes; I removed those from this list.

• You might not want to eat this cookie... I already licked it.
  
• Everybody likes you. Yay!
  
• This fortune has a crush on you.
  
• You will find true love tonight.
  
• You will excel at something you are good at.
  
• You will find true love on Valentine's Day.
  
• You will find a lucky penny! ☺
  
• Turn that frown upside-down!
  
• You will realize the secret to making delicious sandwiches at midnight.
  
• One must be crazy to expect help from a cookie.
  
• This fortune will self-destruct in 10 seconds.
  
• The star of stupidity is shining on you.
  
• You have misfortune stuck in your teeth.
  
• This little slip of paper doesn't have any answers for you.
  
• Keep this fortune in a safe place. You never know when it might come in handy.
  
• Please don’t open this fortune cookie. Thank you.
  
• Beware of advice.
  
• All I really need to know I learned from scraps of paper.
  
• Your stupidity is your greatest enemy.
  
• You will soon be more aware of your growing awareness.
  
• You are not not not not not not not not not going to die today.
  
• Redeem this code for a shot at $5,000! 3HJ5SC6M2WSAH
  
• This fortune will not come true.
  
• Don't read this fortune or you will get bad luck.
  
• Don't look under your bed this week.
  
• Your luck just ran out.
  
• Poof! Now you're a frog!
  
• Don’t read this aloud.
  
• This fortune no verb.
  
• When fortune cookies are outlawed, only outlaws will have fortune cookies.
  
• Congratulations! You have won!
  
• Wise man sees no point in killing a dead horse.
  
• When you squeeze an orange, orange juice comes out. It's what's inside that counts.

This isn't the first snow of the season (it snowed a little while earlier this week), but this is the first time the snow is sticking to the ground, so the neighbor kids asked me to come outside to help them make a snowman. Of course, any time I tried to do anything to the snowman, they told me to stop it because I would ruin the snowman. Of course, they themselves knocked the thing over three times while trying to build it. Jesse, Jeanina, and Patrick kept arguing over what to do about the snowman, and every time they began to disagree, one of them would hit the snowman and knock out a big chunk of it or tip the whole thing over.

An argument over whether to use tree needles as hair resulted in the snowman wearing a baseball cap. He has a baby carrot for a nose because nobody has any regular carrots, and he has rocks for eyes because Jeanina didn't feel like running inside to get buttons. I suggested we use tree branches for arms, but Jesse declared that to be a stupid idea, so he ran and got some thin wooden slats, which I personally think look hilariously out of place. He has a twig for a mouth, and instead of having a corncob pipe, he is... sucking on a straw? I'm not sure what the straw is there for.

On a separate note, I'm not sure that my rain gauge will work very well for measuring how much snowfall we get.

I stepped outside today to check the mailbox. There were a bunch of neighbors outside, and one of them suggested that we make a ghost, like we've done in the past. Years ago, we would craft a ghost out of a white trash bag (it's waterproof) and hang it with fishing line from the street light in the cul-de-sac. A bunch of the neighbor kids wanted to help make it. I got some supplies out, and Jesse, Jeanina, Patrick, and I started to make a ghost. We made a ball of paper and stuffed it in the bag to make the head. I went inside to find some fishing line to hang the ghost up with, and when I came back outside, they had already finished the ghost, including tying the neck and drawing the face in permanent marker.

The hard part has always been getting the fishing line over the street light. I tied one end of the fishing line to the ghost, and Jesse tied the other end to a rock. Jesse had to throw several times to get the rock over the light. Every time he missed, the line got tangled up in the big, prickly bushes underneath the light, and every time, it was a hassle to untangle it. And we had to do that half a dozen times. When Jesse finally got the rock over, we pulled to get the ghost up, and Jesse and Jeanina tied the ghost to the basketball hoop underneath.

After we got the ghost up, I went inside. Not too long after that, they came to the porch, rang the bell, and said, "Trick or Treat!" when I opened the door. They had remembered a promise I made to them last year. They could come to the door in costume once a day during October and claim some candy. The candy is hardly ever anything very special, so I'm usually pretty lenient as to what counts as a costume.

Today, I gave them Baskin-Robbins hard candy flavored like mint chocolate chip ice cream. Then they came back a little later in different costumes to get more candy. I had to tell them that the candy is a once-a-day deal, but they got really aggressive about it. Jesse would keep his foot in the door so I couldn't close it, and they would try to push themselves past me to reach the candy dish located on the nearby table. I acquiesced, offering them a few jelly beans. A few jalapeño jelly beans! But they weren't satisfied with that. They kept pushing. Jesse reached in and stole a lollipop, and then Jeanina started crying because she didn't get as much candy as Jesse. So I had to give everyone a lollipop. Wish me better luck tomorrow.

We dyed Easter eggs today. We don't really celebrate Easter except for dyeing eggs. We used an old Crayola egg coloring kit and had only ten eggs to dye. I hard boiled the eggs beforehand because Mom wants to eventually use them in salads. Dad tried to color an egg but messed up—he mistook the purple dye for blue dye and colored his egg the wrong color. He was trying to make a red, white, and blue egg. I kept getting frustrated because the yellow dye was hardly coloring the eggs, so none of them are yellow. Mom got offended by one of Stephanie's eggs; Stephanie used white crayon to write "ASS" on an egg before she dyed it.



I dyed a few eggs: First is the green one on the left with "EGG" on it. I also dyed the purple "HAPPY EASTER" one on the right, and the purple/green egg in front of it. I colored the blue-green egg in the back, too.

The reason for the "News" instead of "New" is because there's a ton of news about what happened over the New Year's Weekend! Like usual, I headed up to Bellingham to celebrate. I went up with Kevin on Thursday because I didn't want to wait until late Saturday to go with my family. We didn't do a whole lot on Thursday or Friday; those days aren't really important.

Saturday, the day of the Eve, we set up the cots in the pole building (big-ass shed/garage/loft) because there wouldn't be enough room in the house for all us cousins and cousins' friends to sleep. While we were doing that, Kevin booted up the computer, projector, and sound system in there so we could work to some music. He launched Winamp onto the big screen and played music from an Internet music station. Then I turned on the full-screen visualization because the desktop was boring to look at.

Then it hit us. THIS 10-FOOT-TALL VISUALIZATION WAS WICKED COOL LOOKING. We turned off the ground-level lights (Michelle was setting up the girls' quarters upstairs) and it was really really cool. We turned on a dance club radio station and I told Kevin that he should have Daniel bring up his strobe light.

After the New Year and fireworks, we went out to the shed and whacked a piñata that Michelle, Shelly, Kevin, and I worked together to make. Steffi (who went first because she's youngest) knocked it off of its string. Then I went next and made a big whack in it! Then Katrina hit it and candy started falling out of it! Nobody there really wanted the candy, possibly because some of it probably fell in oil left behind from cars that park in the shed.

After that, we danced with the projector and strobe light on in the shed, which we had by then dubbed the Club. Well, techincally, I didn't dance. I maintained the visualizations and videotaped the dancing. We need a fog machine and a disco ball.

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!

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.

Here's a funny something somebody wrote in English class when we had to write Analects, or something. I don't know this person, but it was displayed on the wall in the classroom. I think I'll keep him anonymous.

The courteous man answers not his cell phone in a public place, but in privacy. For while conversation, and communication are lofty goals, he must not barrage his neighbor's ears with overbearing and one-sided conversation.

Oh, here's an updated picture of the snowman. It's currently 11 days old. Wow. What an old snowman. I hope it lasts to be two weeks old! That's a lot longer than the small one Emily and I made at school.

Okay, I got a picture of the huge snowman!



By the way, that's my cousin, Katrina, and my other cousin's dog, Chica. Isn't that cool?! The snowman was just a baby in these pictures.

And...here's the snowman the following day:



We're starting trigonometry in precalculus class. Yippee. Right now, the stuff we're doing is easy, but soon we're going to have to do sines and cosines and tangents and stuff! I don't think I'm ready for all this!! This is gonna be crazy!

Today, I went to Creatively Yours (stupid name, isn't it) to paint ceramics with my mom, sister, aunt, and one of my cousins. I painted an alligator. I named him Earl, after Earl Sinclair, the dad on Dinosaurs. You don't remember? Disney's show with the animatronic dinosaurs? Anyway, Earl on TV was a dinosaur, but my ceramic is an alligator. He's not done yet. He won't be done for a few days.

The phone rang while we were there, and the woman answered it. Although I only heard her half of the conversation, it went a little like this:

Woman: "Hello, this is Creatively Yours. ... No. She got fired."

Happy Easter. Mom and Stephanie emptied the insides of eggs through small holes in the shells. After we colored the eggs, they filled them with confetti. We smashed one on my grandma's head and it got in her hair. Oh, what a day.