Brandon Notices

Yesterday, I went to the rehearsal for the graduation ceremony. It was long. Several people in our class need to practice standing and sitting with decent timing.

Then Melissa, Bryan, Emily, and I went to Anthony's Beach Cafe. I got a burger. That was fun. Then we went and checked out the new Weather Center nearby... all it really is is some temperature displays and some little thing about tides. There was a really lame video made by grade school children.

I gave Garth a bath yesterday afternoon. Then we combed and combed him. He's really soft today and he is clean.

Last night, I went to the awards ceremony. When the lady was about to hand out the Bronze Presidential Volunteer award something, she pronounced my name "Brandon Dilbert." Ack! She corrected herself but I still wanted to blow up the whole auditorium. Not that anyone was laughing or anything. I also won an award for being in National Honor Society and another one for being in the top 10% of my class or something like that.

Today, I hooked Mom up with Pac-Man so that she could play that. (She's not very good; I don't know why she likes it so much...)

For much of this week, Dad's been wondering where this cell phone came from. It's a Samsung phone that he found in his car recently.

He called several of the contacts on the phone and learned that the phone's owner works in the auto department at Sears at the mall—the guy had left his phone in Dad's car while working on it!

So Dad's waiting for this guy to call his cell phone so they can schedule when he can pick it up.

The school year is wrapping to a close (more literally than you would think!). In the fall I shall be attending The University of Washington. Yes! Ten out of ten for style, right?

I got angry because I wanted to get a vest to keep warm while camping but nobody has vests these days! Not even JCPenny or Sears or NOT EVEN ROSS has vests. I had to go to Value Village. My grandpa also had a vest he never wore so he gave it to me.

I have noticed lately a lack of desire to eat jelly beans. Could this be the end of my addiction? I doubt it... I've still been on the lookout for the smoothie-flavored beans. I don't think they'll be selling them in store; I'll have to order them online. I'll also need to order Jalapeño online because they don't sell them in stores. Unless... does the Sweet Factory (in the mall) sell Jalapeño in bulk? I don't know.

Sigh I am just typing to avoid having to pack to go camping tomorrow. We're going to Thousand Trails tomorrow morning and I was rather upset to learn that sites are distributed first come, first serve. That means that we'll have to get there nice and early (impossible!). We're doomed to have the rainiest campsite!

We were rather upset last month to learn that they're going to tear down the "greenbelt" on the other side of the street from our cul-de-sac to put in some apartments. That means there's going to be noise and other bric-a-brac all over.

I was also upset to learn that the Ninja Turtles show currently running is going to make a huge change to the show by thrusting the characters some billion years into the future. I think they're going to drop most of the main characters and give the Turtles stupid costume changes (I've seen the pictures on the official website; they're not pretty).

I've had a sore throat (due to allergies) for the past few days now and it's going to suck going camping because that'll probably only upset me more. Life sucks when you've got allergies (or sunburns...ouch).

I wish I had an anecdote to tell you, but I don't. (When I was typing "anecdote", my finger slipped and I typed "qawszc".)

This weekend, I'm thinking I might count the number of times I sneeze while camping. Sounds tedious, though. But only if I'm actually sneezing (and let's hope I'm not).

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.

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.