Wrapping Up the Break

I realizea lot of what I'm posting is boring, and it's probably because I'm on spring break at home with nothing to do, but I'll work on coming up with actual stories and things to talk about. Today I went down to my grandparents' house for Easter. There was a delicious potluck and a quite enjoyable game of Bump with my mom and uncles. School starts tomorrow and I'll be back to rarely posting, I'm sure. I had a great time with my family today. My grandpa turns 70 tomorrow and the day after that my grandma turns 65. Crazy! We're all pretending he's turning 60. ;) Other than that, I got shoes for the Mr. Thunder Pageant, I applied for a job at McMenamins, and I found my ipod! Yay.

P.S. I forgot to mention a while ago that I decided not to do softball. Too much stress with my classes and I just wasn't feeling up to it.

These are 3 of the 5 cousins I saw today and my brothers. And me.

Spring Break Continued...

I hope to balance out the last post with some positivity. First off, I finished the headband. I twisted it once before connecting the ends and it's quite comfortable. :) Second, I've actually had a lovely past few days. I took my wee cousins on a nice outing with a picnic and a stroll through downtown. They are the sweetest girls. I'm going to miss them so much. I also spent some time with Christian and when we were on the brink of utter boredom we decided to make a movie. It's 7 1/2 minutes long at the moment and not anywhere near finished. Who knows if it ever will be, but it was a very fun way to pass the time. I personally prefer directing, editing, and filming to acting. Jake and his friend joined us. Today primarily consisted of waxing, resume-writing (thank you Mom), and How-I-Met-Your-Mother-watching. I still have to start Wuthering Heights but if I read about 40 pages tomorrow and Saturday I'll be done. My desk is clean, I've been fitted for my dress for Mr. Thunder, and I unfortunately did not receive the General Scholarship from WOU. This is my break. And Sunday--Easter--will be a lovely time at my grandparents' house with my family. It's been really nice to have a break.
Crap... I have to catch up on Calculus homework.
Although my mom is probably the only person who will read this, I rather like how my blog has evolved. I'll probably try to advertise it more when I start the next one this summer. Only 2 more months (plus like a week). I gotta find myself a job...

Spring Break

Well, I'm no longer sick. But this break so far has proven to be thoroughly uneventful. I have no real plans until next Sunday for Easter--it's going to be a long week. I've been doing a lot of writing in my journal, photography, making music, and today I started knitting a headband. It's been so long. Also this week I have to read the first nine chapters of Wuthering Heights. I seriously hope it isn't too boring, I don't need any more reason to be bored this week. Otherwise I've just been dicking around on my computer. For the most part my friends are out of town, working all the time, or just busy, so I've spent a lot of time alone the past couple days. The most exciting occurrence has been receiving my dress for Skyliner in the mail. I hope things brighten up a little soon.

Winter Break

It's winter break! But it's almost over! I had a wonderful break. My dad took me and my brothers to Venice Beach, Hollywood, and San Francisco. I got some great Christmas gifts from my amazing grandparents and dad, including a Canon Rebel T3i camera, pepper spray, and a Shewee (portable urinating device for women). I also received my graduation gift early: a Macbook Pro. It is so kickass I can't even--plus my grandma took me shopping. Ugh, just best ever. I can't wait to be obnoxious with the camera (more than I already am, that is) and be attached at the hip with my computer. :P I am so happy though. And I kind of doubt anyone reads this besides my mom so I'm putting the filter down a little right now. I love you Mom!!!! You're the best!
I have missed home a lot the past two weeks though and it'll be great to be back tomorrow. I can't wait to see my friends and hug them and take pictures of them. :)

Salmon

Well, to refresh things since my last post, I got straight A's but my AP Exam score was crap. I realize now that I'm just not good at taking big pressured tests like that. I'm at about the same intellectual level as my friends but they all did better on the SAT and the ACT. At least most of them, not totally sure. And the AP Exam for that matter. I get A's but those tests just kill me. Lame.

Also, I've decided to go to community college for a couple years before transferring away. In the end, if I'm going to learn the same things at both schools but one is way cheaper, I'm gonna go with the cheaper. Plus it would mean I wouldn't have to move away for a while. I want to live in the dorm though just to get that experience and be on my own, doing my own thing.

I'm hoping that this year I get an open 1st period. Plus it would give Jake more reason to hurry and get a car and a license and stuff since I wouldn't be driving him to school. That is, if he doesn't also have an open 1st...I'm going to switch out of AP Lit and into Writing 121 because at this rate I won't pass the AP Exam and I'm going to end up taking Writing 121 eventually anyway. Plus I wouldn't call myself much of a reader. Also I won't have to do summer reading. Yeah.

 In other news, I've been making more money doing random jobs and babysitting than my regular job. Things are slow during the summer. Also, starting the 13th until the end of the month I won't be working at all. I'm going to visit Maya in DC and then I'll be doing Fiddler rehearsals. I should probably take a look at my lines and the songs...

This summer has been great so far--Kacie came to visit from Texas last month and we took a family trip to the coast. And a lot more is to come!

(Jake and I went out on a boat at the coast and caught salmon!)

New Year Resolutions

It is officially 2012. That last one was quite lengthy and now I'm ready for a new year. I'm going to actually try to make resolutions this year...I'd like to work out (seeing as I won't be doing softball this year), and take an online health class. I think there was one other thing but I can't remember. If I remember, perhaps I'll post it. I don't want to set too high of goals for myself. This has been short but nothing else is really new. Ta ta for now.

Christmas and Things

My 6 months are officially up. :) Christmas was interesting this year. We left in the afternoon for California and got there around 1:30 AM. The next day we visited my great grandma, and the day after that I went to San
Francisco with my aunt and Max. It was great! We got back yesterday. School starts back up again on Tuesday. I still have to read most of a book for AP Lang. :( No one has blogged in a little while, including myself so I thought I would.

Thanksgiving Break

I'm leaving for California again, shortly. This time I'll be driving part of the way--to Weed. My dad is in town and we got to show him downtown a bit yesterday. I'll have Thanksgiving down there and then we'll drive back on Friday. I'm excited. My 6 months will be up in one month and 5 days. This is a pitifully short post but I thought I might as well.

Seattle

I've spent the last 5 days in the lovely city of Seattle. It's my first time coming here and I've enjoyed it quite a bit. I was staying with my great aunt and uncle. On the first day we went to the public library which is seriously the coolest building. We also went to Volunteer Park. The next day we went to the zoo, the troll under the bridge, and the locks. My favorite thing at the zoo was the gorilla; it ran past me behind the glass and banged its fists on it. Scared the crap out of me. On Saturday we went to the Seattle Center by the Space Needle and I saw the coolest fountain I've ever seen. Definitely the highlight of the trip. Yesterday we took a water taxi downtown. We went to Pike Place Market and the Seattle Art Museum. I love the modern art. Today we went out to Tacoma to the Museum of Glass. We actually got to see people blowing and molding the glass. Very cool. I'd definitely come back here someday.

New Places

There are so many things I've been doing, it's incredible. First of all--Philadelphia. The first thing we did was take a tour of Independence Hall. The capital of the US used to be Philadelphia. I had a real Philly cheesesteak sandwich from Pat's King of Steaks and it was literally one of the best things I've ever eaten. After that we saw the Liberty Bell, and unfortunately I learned nothing about it. We saw where Ben Franklin's grave and the place where he worked and ran up the steps from the movie Rocky. :) We were all yelling victoriously at the top. We drove through Amish country in a town called Intercourse... We had a lot of fun toying with that name... I did learn a lot about the Amish but I have too many other things to talk about. Gettysburg was the last place we went to in that area. It was very cool, and again, too many other things to talk about.

After ariving back in DC, my grandpa had to go straight to the hospital for emergency eye surgery. He had a retinal detachment and couldn't even see out of his right eye. He had a cataract surgery abnout 30 years ago which, for some reason (we don't know why), can cause a higher risk for retinal detachment. They put a gas bubble in his eye to push his retina back against the supportive tissue. (He had us research it so we'd know all about it.) We had planned to do a few more things in DC but he couldn't drive. He's doing better now though.

My dad, brothers, and I left for New York on the 5th and met my aunt and uncle there pretty late at night. But time doesn't really matter there, so we were out 'til like 3 in the morning. We went to Times Square and got peanuts and a big pretzel from some carts. It was sort of mesmorizing just to see everything there. I feel like I should be more used to seeing tall buildings. The next day we went to the top of the Rockefeller Center and got a great view of the city. At FAO Schwartz we played the Big Piano and actually got to see a couple of the employees there perform a few songs! We all got animal puppets. We walked a very tiny bit into Central Park just to sort of get the gist of it. While looking for a taxi at the hotel (we needed two for 6 people), my dad got us a LIMO! The driver (Adelson) took us where we could see the Statue of Liberty from a distance and the Bodies Exhibit by the seaport. That was very interesting...There's a bunch of real (dead) people that are all cut open and have no skin. They somehow replaced all the water in the organs and things with silicone...something silicone. They were all just stiff, out in the o[en, in different action poses. There were a bunch of different sections--skeletal, muscular, digestive, respiratory, circulatory, reproductive, and there was a separate room for fetal development. I couldn't stand to look in any of the bodies' eyes...it made me realize that they were real people. And they just looked pretty weird. After that we went to Ground Zero...It was very emotional. We had dinner in Little Italy. It took us a long time to leave the next day. We took a subway just for the experience and it got delayed. We were going to go up the Empire State Building but we kind of got that experience at the Top of the Rock, so we just hung out at a restaurant at the bottom for a little while.

That night, my aunt and uncle took us up to their house in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts. On the way there by brothers stuck their puppets out the window and talked to people with them. They got an elephant and a hippo; mine's an alligator. It only took 35 minutes to drive through Rhode Island. The next morning we went to the beach right next to their house. The Atlantic is way warmer than the Pacific and it's calmer but the beaches are much rockier. We also went down to Rhode Island for some nicer beaches and other things to see. We looked at some big mansions that people use in the summer and it was totally the Great Gatsby setting. We drove out to a (private) beach and enjoyed the waves for a bit. The sand was much nicer there. It started pouring down rain and the waves picked up a lot, plowing me over several times. It was extremely fun though and one of the best times I had on my whole trip. The next day we went to Boston. First thing, we took a Duck Boat tour of the city. After that we got a tour of Fenway Park! Most of the people there were Yankee fans. :P Boo. Red Sox all the way. That evening I slurped an oyster for the first time, and it wasn't bad! I put cocktail sauce on it and it just tasted like the sauce. Why is it you're "not supposed" to chew it? The next day we went to another beach and we swam in the ocean a bunch. This was a very rocky beach and I cut my foot. It hurta a lot more now but hopefully it won't be infected. That salt water burned. We went to Boston again the day after that and walked the Freedom Trail. We saw Paul Revere's house and grave and did a lot of shopping. That evening we went to a restaurant and I had lobster for the first time too! I'm kind of a pro at getting the meat out...no big deal... But I'm pretty sure I prefer crab to lobster. We took a plane back to DC. It was so fun to go there and I'd really love to come back some day. :)

Today in DC we went to the Korean War Memorial and the Vietnam War Memorial. My grandpa was actually in the Vietnam War but he was stationed in Japan. He knew a couple guys that died in the war and we found their names on the wall. While we were there it started DUMPING rain and we all got totally soaked. I'm going home the day after tomorrow! Jake is going to Europe tomorrow with my dad. I'm so jealous. He'll have so much fun! A few days after I get home I'm going to Seattle. This summer is sort of great I think...besides my stupid foot, that is. And now I'm sick.

Back East

I left the lovely Bend, Oregon one week ago. So far I've been to the National Museum of American History, Arlington National Cemetery, the Marine Corps Memorial, Mount Vernon, and Bull Run (Manassas). The cemetery is enormous; thousands of people are buried there. We saw JFK and his family's graves. Mount Vernon is where George Washington lived. They keep his mansion restored and we learned a lot about him...but the main thing I remember is that he didn't have wooden teeth. There were supposed to be reenactments at Bull Run with musket firings and other Civil War stuff but it was all cancelled because of the heat. A heat wave is coming east from the mid-west and every day has been extremely hot. Today it got above 100 degrees. Jake keeps saying how 22 people have already died in the mid-west because of it. But it was like 110 over there. Anyway, hehe...I'm talking about the weather. Tomorrow morning (this morning; it's past 1 AM here) we're going to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg. It's not a garden; it's an amusement park. :) On Sunday we're going to Colonial Williamsburg. There are a whole bunch of actors and they're all in character in colonial times and it's all set up that way. It should be cool. Next weekend we're going to Philadelphia, and the weekend after that we're going to NEW YORK!!! I'm so excited!!!! We'll be there for a few days and then we're going to Boston to visit my aunt and uncle for a few days. When I see all of this on a calendar it makes this time I have here seem much shorter. When I get back, I'll be home for a few days and then I'm going to Seattle. It's going to be difficult to just sit down and do those summer reading assignments...Oh well. This will be awesome. :)

Christmas

     Yesterday was Christmas! I've decided that it's much more fun to say "Happy Christmas!" Who even says 'merry' anyway? Oh I'm feeling quite merry today. No.
     I'm sooo happy! I received a new camera and a piano bench with storage in it and a bunch of knitting stuff! I can now take beautiful pictures that are good quality! THANK YOU FAMILY! I LOVE YOU!
     Today was my second day of work. I didn't work yesterday so I stayed a bit later today. I got a $3 tip for it! But then I left it in the uniform laundry... Meh. Tomorrow I won't have to. It's really nice to be able to snowboard though! I get a free season pass. I'm just bussing tables and washing dishes but sometimes I'll see people I know.

Winter break!

It's here!!! At last, freedom! Although I got homework from 3 teachers... But whatever! I can actually do some things now! Well maybe. I got a job. :) I took a drug test today and will probably start work on Monday at the mountain! I need to go Christmas/birthday shopping soon. And learn how to drive in the snow. I need to learn some Christmas songs on guitar. I'm wondering if there will be karaoke at the Christmas party tomorrow...because there better be.
I wonder if anyone is opposed to these very short posts I've been writing...there's not enough information to make a long post lately, I guess.

Thanksgiving Break

Virginia was wonderful! On the flight there we stopped in Denver and then went on the Dulles. The hot tub is working now so that was fun to use. We had ping pong and darts tournaments and played lots of games in the yard including bear in the woods. In the city we went to an old train station, an old post office with a big tower, the FBI building, and the museum of natural history. We didn't stay at the museum for long but we saw some really cool stuff. Thanksgiving was incredibly lovely. The food was amazing. The only really bad thing was the flight back and that I was sick most of the time. We didn't switch planes so we stopped in 3 cities: Chicago, Minneapolis, Pheonix, and finally we got to Portland. It took 12 hours. Miserable. And then of course there's the 3 hour drive home. Sitting for that long is not healthy. Oh, by the way, the lost our luggage. Of course. So now I'm just trying to recover from the cold and wait for my bag to arrive, probably on Tuesday.

Refreshing

It looks like I've been writing less and less. But I'm finally back from Virginia and camp and I can finally relax. I am so glad to just have peace and calm for once. I can finally do nothing! Well...besides stupid summer reading. I will probably start writing more again. There's only one month left and I still have to finish 3 books. D: I have to read A World Lit Only By Fire for AP European history, and The House On Mango Street and The Good Earth for English. I wish I had photographic memory and could read one page per second. I also have to do journal entries for Mango Street and Good Earth. And guided reading questions for the history one. :P I'll probably do some more reading today. I need to make a habit of it. It's really nice out so I want go outside soon.

Virginia

It's been a long time since I've written! A LOT has happened. It took us 6 days to get to Virginia. One of our cars broke down on the first day so we didn't even make it out of California. Then we went through Nevada. We stayed one night there. We went through the top part of Utah, including Salt Lake City. There was salt everywhere! At first I thought it was sand or something. We spent the night at Little America in Wyoming. It's a really famous place. I got 2 post cards from there. Every time someone goes through there, they get an ice cream cone. So we got one too. They're only 50 cents! Then we continued through Wyoming and got into Nebraska. We went from my favorite state of the trip to my least favorite. Wyoming has beautiful landscape and sights. Nebraska is awful. Nothing but flat grass and billions of gross bugs everywhere! We stopped at a gas station and I had to run if I ever got out of the car. I hated it. At the hotel there were tons of frogs outside. It got to the point that if I saw a leaf blow in the wind on the ground, I had to double take to make sure it wasn't a frog. I was so glad to get out of there. We went through Iowa and got just inside Illinois and spent the night. We made it all the way through Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio and spent the night in Pennsylvania. Those states all sorta look the same. From the highway at least. Lots of corn fields and green hills. We went through a corner of Pennsylvania and through Maryland and finally made it to Virginia. Virginia had a lot of trees! It immediately looked different.

It was so fun when we got to the house. We played hide and seek and 'Bam!' Bam is a game my brother introduced. You have 2 teams and have 2 bases. You have to point your hand like a gun and if you see someone on the other team you say 'Bam __' and the person's name. It was really fun. We've been here for about 5 days.

Yesterday we went to Washington DC. I'd never been there before! It was so cool! First we went to the Museum of American History. Then we got some hotdogs at a stand and walked to the Washington Monument. It's the tallest thing there. It made me dizzy to look up to the top! I went up and touched it and it didn't really feel like hard, rough stone. It felt softer. I wonder what it's made of. The capital building is the second tallest. No other building there can be taller than it. We didn't go up to it though. We saw it from a distance. After the Washington Monument we walked down the National Mall towards the National WWII Memorial. There's a lot of national stuff. The National Mall is a huge stretch of lawn between the capital and the Washington Monument. The National WWII Memorial has a huge fountain in the middle and on one side there's pacific and the other has atlantic. It says all the different places on those sides that men were killed. We put our feet in the fountain. (A lot of people did) It felt so good! It was so hot outside! After the monument is the reflecting pool and the Lincoln Memorial. The reflecting pool looks cool from the Lincoln Memorial because the Washington Monument is reflected across the whole thing. But up close it's really green and gross-looking. We climbed a lot of steps up to the Lincoln Memorial. Everything smelled like sweat and we were all really sweaty but I didn't really care because I just had to get the perfect picture. Haha I'm such a nerd. It was really cool to see the big man in person. I realize now that I'm mad that I didn't go up and touch it. After that we went to the White House. It's surrounded by a big, black, metal fence with spikey looking tops. Haha for some reason I always thought the capital was the white house.

So Close

I pulled an all nighter last night. Loads of fun! I'm really really hungry now. Today I'm hanging out with my friend Conor. Then on Tuesday we're hitting the road and going cross country. We're driving to Washington DC. Well, near it, anyway. I'm pretty excited. I'll get to see a bunch of states and see some sites. :) I'll take tons of pictures.

Moving

I haven't written in a while. It's been a couple weeks since I've been in California. I drove my dad's truck a few times and we went to Water World and went to some parties. It's been fun! We play Guitar Hero World Tour like every day. My permit came in the mail so I've showed it off to my family. :P Lol. I'm sick right now. Conjested and coughing a lot. I took a ni-quil for the first time last night. That thing kicks butt!! I was knocked out cold! I went to bed at like 1:30 and woke up at 12:06!
Right now we're in the process of packing up the house. We're moving to Washington DC soon! I'm not actually moving, just my dad and them. It'll be awesome to see the sights and stuff! When I was little we moved from Georgia to the west coast but I don't remember any of the drive. So I'm excited to actually remember it. And take a million pictures. :) I've also never been to the east coast so that'll be cool too! I'll have to ask my dad for the route and put it on here or something. This roadtrip will take a few days. My dad wants to go about 600 miles each day. That's so far!! I'll have to do a lot of reading in the car. I have stupid summer reading. :P Ugh... it's like having to do tons of homework on the plane to Ireland. (I really did do that.) I'll keep track of all the states we go into and the stuff we see. I'm excited. :)

California

Today we drove into California. I got to listen to my new music I got and slept a little bit. When I got here I played piano, played with the dog, saw a bunch of my family, showed everyone my permit, climbed a tree, and ate Chinese food. So far things are starting out good. :)

I like this new blog design.

Home Again

We left this morning at around 8:30 for home. The drive was about 8 hours long. Ugh... And we didn't make any long stops. The only nice things were that we stopped for In-N-Out and I got a 2 hour nap. Other than that it was not fun. About an hour before we got back I started having to pee, so by the time we got home I was in pain, holding it. About 10 minutes after we got all of our stuff in, the people I was planned to babysit came over. I had to watch them for 5 hours. Luckily, I got $50 out of it. :) That really was the highlight of my day.