Brandon Notices

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.