The title of this entry is not a line from an action movie*, but damn, it should be.

* as far as I know...

So, the first week of August, my family went on a Fantastique Bike Trip up Lake Champlain and into Canada. It was amazing. Biking through the Adirondacks was a tiny bit less amazing, if only because biking up and down mountains is tough. While we were biking, one family member would always be driving the van. ... and would be constantly on the lookout for bread.



I finished The Sun Also Rises and The Awakening, and I must now muscle my way through East of Eden.



I have many more tales to tell, so I'll post again sometime when I'm ready to talk with my words and not with my AppleWorks Paint skills.

So, today in band, our conductor FINALLY admitted that she is, in fact, pregnant. This is made rather ironic and funny, seeing as she's a fill-in conductor for our old one... who is on maternity leave, because about this time last year, she announced that she was pregnant. So, yeah, I guess that being the band conductor at my school is a fantastic fertility drug. Now we just have to worry about the student interns who sometimes conduct the band...

In other news, my dear mother almost but then didn't ride that plane that crashed into the Hudson! o.o Luckily, she didn't (and is safe) and all the people who were on it are also fine. Nonetheless, it was a bit nervous-making to hear about.

And finally, here are the four photos I was missing from 365 photos.

( below a cut of course )

Photo the seventh of 365 photos.



I keep forgetting to take photos when I'm outside, so this is another bit of my living room. It's too bad, because today was a snow day, and I could've taken a photo of the delightful slush. (Not so delightful when it caused my dad to swerve off the road...)

I'm going to sleep now.

PS. I saw Onmyoji today and it was PHENOMENAL.

I've gotten my algebra grade back to what it was at the end of last term. I have the remainder of this term to raise it as much as humanly possible.

My father is heading off to the Wonderful Magical Special Land of Brittania! Unfortunately, there may be freezing rain tomorrow, which will make the journey to the airport hazardous. Fingers crossed it all turns out well, though.

These are the sorts of days I would not necessarily blog if not for having a photo to post. But here's Battle Hymn of the Republic Jewel, my other guinea pig.



He's almost six years old. That makes him an Ancient and Wise Soothsayer in guinea pig years. (This is probably also why he looks crazy. His eyes are naturally red, though.) (Also, I have no idea what's up with all the random capitals in this entry. I guess it will Forever Be A Mystery.)

My father's birthday was today, so we had a very nice little celebration at home with homemade pizza and cake.

And, from that cake, here is photo #2 for 365 photos:



Also, yay for having all of my icons back! I love having a paid account.

That's all for today, folks.

I just friggin' love Subway so much.

Summary of every day since Christmas: wake up, go on computer, eat meals, go on computer, watch an episode of a medical drama, go on computer, go to bed. I am being so inefficient with my vacation BUT I am sort of complacently happy, so that's good. Now, I just need to get out and see some people.

Also, lots of hugs to my big sister and big brother for the new music fix -- I have been listening to nothing but Queen and Lady GaGa and Paramore and it. Is. Awesome.

One thing our family got for Christmas was a packet of those magnetic words, the theme of which was famous movie lines. We have already had a lot of fun re-arranging the words. Some quotations now on the fridge:

"I am not his mother"
"Here's looking at your heels"
"All right Mr. De Mille, I'm ready for all the gin joints in the world"
"Dave, the truth is you look like a wise guy in my pajamas"
"I love the smell of napalm in the morning"
"We don't need no little dog"
"You talking to a magic mirror?"
"Frankly, my dear, the force is sniffing glue"
"You just never know how you show me home"
"I can't handle your eyes on the wall"
"I once shot a boy's best friend in Kansas"
"Ask yourself, is it an angel or a damned dirty ape?"

Sense: we make very little of it.

Also, today, my sister and brother got out their flute and clarinet, and I got my trombone, and we all played and sang Christmas carols, and it was marvelous fun.

Hope it was a cheerful day for everyone!

This post is REALLY LONG, so I apologize.

So, Monday was rather fantastic. I got to school and was not looking forward to algebra (I never am...). But, in some incredible run of luck, algebra didn't suck. I was not wishing pain on my teacher the whole time. In fact, I was understanding everything, and I didn't wish any bad things on anyone! I hope this is a good omen for algebra in general. I'm going to hope it all gets better from here! Also, I wasn't looking forward to band, and was hoping that maybe we'd have a band study, but since I was almost sure my conductor was in school that day, I figured we'd have to play... but we didn't! It turned out that my conductor's plane back from Chicago had been held up due to the snowstorms. It was quite the real life deus ex machina.

( and then even MORE stuff happened )

WE GOT A SNOW DAY ON FRIDAY
FWWEEEEEE~
:D

This meant that me not having done any of my homework didn't matter at all! And the funny part was, it didn't start snowing until 1 PM... and we get out of school on a normal school day at 2:10. Still, it has been snowing practically nonstop since then, though it's calmed down a bit now.

I managed to get most of the Christmas presents I was intending on buying today. Now I just need to get one for my sister and Chris and I'll be all set. Christmas shopping is very tiring, and its quite astounding to watch as the money slowly but surely disappears. ._. Still, wrapping the presents is a lot of fun, and I think this is the first year I'm getting everyone in my family a present.

I think I realize why so many people get socks for Christmas. There are oodles of socks on sale around Christmas time, and most of them are very nice. Really, the whole time I was shopping, for every person I was buying for, I kept saying to my sister, "What if we got them these socks? Or these socks? Or what about slippers? Leg warmers?"

Other than that, there's not really anything new to report.

Today, I did an entire ID sheet for history. This is an accomplishment, because ID sheets are really hard and take a long time. The reason for this is that they just give you a list of historical terms/items, usually somewhere between 26 and 30 (this time it was 38), and then you have the name every bit of significance they had between two certain years. The years this time were 1789 and 1800, and my goodness, a lot of stuff happened in those years. Yeesh. But I finished it! And now I have to write an essay on Frankenstein. Oodles of fun.

I am very excited for Christmas! On the one hand, it can't come fast enough, but on the other, I still need to make Christmas cards, clean up the living room so that we have a space to put advent calenders and decorations, buy everyone stuff... Aww maaaan, I've really got to get to that. I can't make up my mind about what to do for gifts, though. Should I get my whole family and very close friends something, and get them all something nice, or should I get all of my friends something small? I dunno. If it boils down to it I'll at least make cards and get people candy. Candy is always good.

In other news, my writer's block/lack of inspiration/lack of ability to formulate a plot is *still* stopping me from writing anything. Very frustrating.

That's all for now. Oh, one more thing! A bundle of teachers were cross-dressing on Friday. You just don't expect to see male teachers in dresses, but it wasn't so weird mostly because mostly they were wearing those shapeless, hardly feminine dresses that might as well have been pants. It was still very funny though.

My sister is back home for the weekend, yay! We all had chinese food and cake and it was lots of fun. Also, we (my big brother, big sister, big brother's girlfriend, mother, and myself) went on a walk down to the resevoir and took nice photos. The fall colors are so pretty. Fireworks on trees, I swear — and it looks amazing reflected back in the water. What's also great is that the ground is literally blanketed in pine needles, so everything looks orangish and stuff. Autumn is the best.

Unfortunately, I have disgusting amounts of homework. Really, DISGUSTING amounts, it makes me want to gag and throw stuff and break things. It's very frustrating. So, back to work!

Namely, we are giving props to my siblings. Even though they are miles away and with their own schoolwork they STILL were able to go onto AIM for a while and try and help me slog through a heinously long and complicated algebra problem. It involved a lot of confusing typing and a lot of photos taken and then sent for the sake of showing work, but, in the end, we got an answer of some sort, so it's all good. Even if we hadn't, it's still spiffy that the internet makes it possible for me to do that at all.

But I have some more work I should probably get to. Biology, namely. Also, I have a field trip this Thursday! YAY! And I've memorized how to play Build Me Up Buttercup on my trombone! DOUBLE YAY! The only problem is I haven't memorized Carry On yet and I really need to. nyuoom...

Today my family all helped my sister move into her dorm. For the first time in my life, I have my own room! It's actually sort of weird because I'm not used to it.

Also I only have seven days left of vacation and I have so much work left to do AAAAA

So I think I'm going to have to get offline right now and not come back ever until the 27th.

Haha, who am I kidding, I have no self-restraint and a horrible work ethic.

Also, I was watching Harvey Birdman and Robot Chicken the other day. Both were very funny.

EDIT: After listening to the Last Unicorn, I'm listening to the Last DJ. What other "the last" songs are there?