Brandon Notices

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?