Song of the day: Verivery - L.O.V.E.

Hey y'all! I'd at least make an effort to recount what's happened this week, but I'm just kinga tired right now for reasons that I shall presently divulge, so if I can remember what all's actually happened this week that'll come later. But for now, let me recount my day.

Firstly, it started when it was still night, by some definitions. As I love to say, I rose before the sun, in order to do a "senior sunrise", where the whole senior class watches the sun rise together, to celebrate the beginning of the year, and as a parallel they watch it set at the end of the year. Well, it's not really the beginning of the year anymore, but oh well. Anyways, despite the early hour (I got up around 6:15, and was out the door twenty minutes later---a new record?!?), I was actually peppy! For a while---once class started a few hours later, I was somewhat comatose, though I ended up pepping up at intervals throughout the day.

Anyways, we had doughnuts (though the mini doughnuts were all that was left---I was the last to show up of those who attended) and got some washable markers, which got used mostly to make "senior '24" grafitti on the cars of those who have them, and we chit-chatted and took a lot of photos. It was quite fun indeed!! I'm glad I went, though I shall probably be a zombie for the rest of the day. But such is the price of fun.

After that came double Latin---ugh. Nothing against my Latin teacher personally, but the way he's teaching the class these days is not only not what we signed up for (which was AP), and not only annoying, but kind of pointless. He could very well have just kept teaching us in the style of our last Latin teacher, but he insisted on making us fluent, which has has some fun parts, which I'll get to shortly, but it's mostly just been annoying, with a lot of what is, if not in actuality, busywork at least in spirit, and I just can't. UGH!!

Though we did have some fun times today. Since there's only one non-senior in the class, we were pretty much all tired, so eventually we gathered up and he told us a story in Latin about a dragon, and then we played "magister dicit" (which is Latin for "teacher says"---basically Simon Says) and watched a clip from Marcell the Shell. That was all really fun! But now we have to write down active and passive forms for homework. So I'm just kind of sick of that class. The teacher has such great potential, but then he doesn't make the class live up to it! O_O

Besides that, it's been a pretty good day. I don't have any history homework, and I finished my English vocab during my cancelled college counselling class, so I just have to do some Latin busywork tonight, and then some English reading---we started Wuthering Heights yesterday, about which I am very enthusiastic!! I'm the only enthusiastic one, but who care?---that I'll do tomorrow during my study hall, when I'm hopefully actually alert, because that's a class I care enough about that I want to properly comprehend the book. But yeah, this week has been a blur and I am so ready to sit home and veg out for the rest of the night---I think today, it's justified. So I'll catch y'all on the flippity-flip! :)

Published on Thursday, September 28, 2023, at 4:59 PM.

Song of the day: Super Junior - No Other

Howdy y'all! I've had a pretty eventful weekend. Yestderday my mother and I went to my favourite Chinese place for lunch and I had some singapore chicken and more wonton soup, and a little of my mother's sesame chicken. It was all really good and we had leftovers for supper! We also watched the first half of the original 70s movie of Death on the Nile (with Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Angela Lansbury and more!) and the guy who played Simon was really handsome! :) Speaking ofn handsome, the guys from Super Junior are really handsome in this music video for their song No Other, especially Donghae! (He's the one in the black off-the-shoulder tank top in that one dance scene, and the one with the basketball in another scene. His smile is so pretty!! And he's just plain handsome! Gushing over.) I really like this song! Especially the Sorry Sorry reference and Ryeowook and Heechul's parts! And Shindong's little rap part. This is such a good song!!

But with that aside, I worked on homework as well yesterday, and then today Blue and I went down. Green was supposed to meet us, but we only saw him very briefly since he went to a little festival my town was having. It wasn't Blue's and my speed, so we went to a vintage shop instead, where I bought two cute tops, and to an ice cream parlour, where I had chocolate as well as a scoop of banana nut, which I had never hitherto had! And then we stopped by the library and I checked a book out and went home. And my father and I practiced driving, and I went on a near-highway for a minute! And we had spaghetti, garlic bread and peas for dinner. Today's been a pretty cool day! Although I haven't really had time for my Korean lesson. But I can do that during my study hall. But it's getting late, so I'll talk to all y'all later! Toodles!

P.S. Duolingo added hearts to the on-line version---it not having them was its best part! I don't want to freaking pay to make mistakes. Screw that, ugh!!!!

Published on Sunday, September 24, 2023, at 9:03 PM.

Song of the day: Girls' Generation - Forever 1

Today has hitherto been quite annoying. My history teacher is super strict on tardies, and we always have her class right after homeroom or lunch, but they changed the freaking schedule this year and so nobody knows what time exactly homeroom ends at, and we don't have a bell, and people are slow and all, so this teacher gives out a lot of tardies. I get why she does and I would probably do the same if I were her, since we have so little class time and breaks right before, etc., but it's still really annoying. I think I just need to start lighting a fire under my own and my friends' butts or something so we all get to class on time.

And then I got very frustrated because after a day, I still couldn't pick a poem for this next analytical essay for English that I both liked and that I thought I could get something out of that was arguable, but was "beyond surface-level analysis". And I only succeeded randomly after coming back to it and finding a poem that had got in my tab stack randomly and having some genius epiphany about it. But I think I'm set up for it now! And I'm going to yearbook, and lunch was Chinese food, so everything will be okay. Thanks for letting me ramble! (As if you had any choice.) Toodles!

Published on Thursday, September 21, 2023, at 3:29 PM.

Song of the day: BESTie - Thank U Very Much

Hi y'all! This is going to be short since I have seven minutes until I have to go to class as I start this, but I just wanted to do some blogging! Firstly, yesterday we changed the format of Latin class for the third time this year! I mean, I get why he did it (because it was mostly his choice) and I prefer this format, but I'm kind of sick of all this changing around. Also, my history teacher expects us to have a draft of our posters done by the end of class today, but not only can I not find any good ideas for visual aids, but Pink, my partner, is home ill today (get well soon if you're reading this!) and so it's only going to be me working. Nobody else I've talked to thinks they can get it done either, so I think we're all a little faffed.

Also, I am a little annoyed because I feel like we never talk enough in French during French class, and it's really quite annoying because I want more of an opportunity to practice specifically in French but I don't want to be that person who nags everyone to say things in French instead.

And for some reason everyone is getting sick! All three of my best friends have been out sick at one point since Friday alone, and some of my mother's friends are sick as well, and my father had a cold. Why is everyone getting sick all of a sudden?

...And that's all I was able to write until the next day. I swear, I feel like I'm so busy these days I either don't have the time or energy to do a lot! But I didn't have very much homework tonight besides some busywork for Latin. I had to write out the declensions for four nouns ten times each, for a total of four hundred words. I'm not aware of any tall, pointy hat sitting atop my head, but after that assignment, I suspect I may be surprised. But really, beside that, I've been having quite a splendid time! It's been rainy and cool today, and it's finally getting to fall weather! I don't think it's quite cool enough to debut my cute purple sweater yet, but we'll see. Actually, I may well wear it tomorrow for school picture day. But then, apparently it'll be warmer tomorrow, so I'll have to wait. I also got a chance to watch some Murder, She Wrote after school and have some yogourt!

And today, my grade had a "diversity, equity and inclusion" session or whatever, which amounted to us eating doughnuts and sharing things others might now guess about us right off. I think all diversity days should be like this, but if The Office taught me anything...

And I have to choose a poem for my English essay that I can do a two-page paper on, whilst going beyond "surface-level analysis". Literary analysis is only fun when it's not forced, people! But I love that class, though. But if anyone has any poem recommendations please e-mail me via the hyper-link in the sidebar!!

And that's about it. I just hope the rest of this week goes faster and I can get right to the weekend!! Toodles!

Published on Wednesday, September 20, 2023, at 8:31 PM.

Song of the day: Jerusalem (the hymn)

So this'll be a pretty quick entry since it's getting late, but I've had a pretty eventful couple of days! Firstly, my school has had a petty piece of drama relating to the student lounge's whiteboard pretty recently. We seniors put useful stuff up on it, because the lounge is our space moreso than other grades' for reasons I won't get into here. But someone kept having the freshmen erase it, and we tried to write our stuff back up but it kept getting erased again, and of course it ended up getting personal and heated on all sides (and I admit I got pretty peeved---too much so, actually), and the mastermind of the board-erasing scheme, who turned out to be a traitorous upperclassman, ended up getting caught, and finally after all those involved had a talking-to delivered to them from the principal, we all seem to be back to normal. Thank. God.

But seriously, what was all this, baby's first office politics? This is the kind of people we are at my school, and I love it and hate it all at the same time. (I do admit at the beginning of all this I was at least intrigued by the hint of drama livening up our normally boring school life.)

Now onto the wasps! Yesterday was a really good day for the most part---not only did I do a good hour and a half of history work without wanting to pull my hair out, and eat at my favourite Mexican place for supper, but I had Bosco sticks for lunch!! Do y'all know how much I love Bosco sticks?

But of course, there had to be the dingy brown lining on the glorious, dark grey cumulonimbus that was yesterday. During performing arts, we were reading a script for a piece we all (w'all?!) are going to perform when something flew across my field of vision at the speed of a freaking UFO. It took me a half a second to a second to notice that it was in my hair, and that it was a spider! But wait, no it wasn't, because my friend sitting next to me, her attention attracted by my sudden alarm, exclaimed that it was a wasp!

Now, I didn't know what to do, she didn't know what to do, and all the other students were, I think, just befuddled. But thankfully the teacher, who is also my English teacher this year, came over quickly and used her script to entice the was away from its pursuit of climbing up toward my face, and then she and my friend stepped on it to make sure it was dead. My friend and I went to tell the headmistress/head principal/whatever, since apparently even after a problem with the wasps (it turns out there was a nest in the auditorium ceiling!!!) at an assembly nobody had done anything about it, but we ended up telling two of the directors instead since the headmistress was gone. Thankfully, the nest was removed very soon, as were what we thought were two other nests but actually turned out to be a stuffed shark (Blahaj?) and a sticky hand thingy. So that was harrowing!

And today I volunteered for a small fall festival not too far away! Blue and I weeded and helped set up, and got some free game and raffle tickets and food at the event as a result, which was already cool, but doing work with a friend makes it a lot more fun! For lunch, Blue got a tuna wrap and I a vegan oatmeal creme pie (which was pumpkiny---very seasonal!) from a vegan food truck nearby, but they didn't have anything else left that I fancied, so we walked to Starbucks, where I got a pumpkin spice frappucino and a turkey, provolone and pesto panini! The sandwich was pretty good, though not really stellar, and I burned my fingers slightly on it, and the pumpkin spice frappucino had coffee in it, and I don't like the taste of coffee that much, but overall both were pretty good! The frappucino was much better after the whipped cream got mixed in.

My parents and I came back in the evening to use up our tickets and it was alright. There was some very Austenian square dancing, which, aside from being Austenian, looked very fun, although sadly I had no gentleman suitor to dance with, and some other games that didn't particularly appeal to me. I did see my French teacher, though! And then we got supper. I got a bean burger, a side salad, an apple crisp and some sweet potatoes. The sweet potatoes were alright, I guess, though they tasted less like sweet potato and more like the smell of a Tractor Supply; the apple part of the apple crisp was good but the crisp was subpar; the garden salad was kick-butt!; and the bean burger was not very good---whilst I wasn't a fan of the taste, I could live with it, but the mushy texture of beans does not do well as a burger. But oh well. And it rained pretty well today, including a stint with dark grey clouds!! :D So I'd say I've had quite a fun time. Toodles!

Published on Saturday, September 16, 2023, at 8:58 PM.

Song of the day: Girls' Generation - Forever 1

What up, Net nuts?!? Right now, I'm sitting in my luxurious double study hall, the best part of Tuesday morning. So far, I ran my scene for performing arts, which I think I'll have to perform later today, and annotated a poem, and for the most part chit-chatted with Blue. (Which reminds me, I really need to get around to making that blog glossary I've been meaning to make for ages now!) The past few days have been pretty good for the most part!

Over the weekend I cashiered again (with Green) at my local library's book sale, which I do whenever possible and really love doing. I also came back to help clean up, and since most of the leftovers were going to be recycled anyways since they couldn't sell, my mother and I got to go a little wild due to the prospect of free books! I picked up some really cool things I would've normally picked up, like a little book of comics about the early Web, and some I just got because they were free, like AP study books for my mates. I don't have a full list right now, but when I do I'll try and post it here. But we're not going to keep all the free books we got, because they all filled my mother's backseat and that's a little scary. So we're going to sift through and get rid of some that we don't really want. And this is what you have to do when you have a book problem, like we do. We need help!

But besides that, it hasn't been nearly as eventful. The rest of my weekend, I totally just chillaxed, which was a much-needed break! I even figured out the two-zipper mechanism on my dang sleeping bag I can never zip or roll up right. It's a real terrible, disagreeable little thing!

Meanwhile, yesterday was nice and cool and rainy all day, which y'all that have read my blog before know made me very happy! I took a super-rad walk in the rain and it was all super relaxing! I also finally finished all that weird D&D math with the help of the club leader! So far, my character is a High Elf princess who's going on one last adventure before becoming an official adult, and she's a bard as inspired by "accomplished ladies" of the Regency Era, and also by that opera singer from that movie The Greatest Showman (which I didn't like, but I digress. We started some very basic roleplay today and it went well! Although I'm definitely not the best at coming up with random story details under pressure.

The one bummer these past few days has been history. Since yesterday was 9/11, yesterday and today we diverged from the projects we've been working on for a 9/11 lesson, which has been the most in-depth lesson we've ever had about it. It was a kind of timeline, showing things as they happened with a lot of clips, and it was really moving. Pink and I both almost cried and it really changed the way I looked at it, making it a lot more real. I wonder how those kinds of accounts would apply to making other historical events seem realer? Like COVID or Queen Elizabeth's death, for example. It definitely gave me a much better sense of the event and I think this is one of the best ways to learn about these kind of massive events.

But okay, that got pretty sad. For the most part I've been having a good few days! Although I do feel pretty busy whenever I have commitments after school these days. But I've got to go now. Toodles!

Published on Tuesday, September 12, 2023, at 10:02 PM.

Song of the day: April - Tinker Bell

So I'm writing this in my Latin class, & we had a total monster assignment last night!

...And that's as far as I got in Latin class before I decided that, despite my slight boredom, paying attention to class probably would be a good habit to get into as much as possible. The times have changed, y'all, since 9th grade, when I had history class, physics class and philosophy class in which I slacked off and worked on this site (really, those classes are where I built a lot of this site!) and algebra as well, where I wrote a lot on my old novellas I loved to write at the time.

But anyways, the past couple days have been pretty fun! Yesterday I started applying to college! I haven't sent in my first application yet, but I'm working on it. Which is really scary! I think I'm going to cry when I actually send my first application off, which ought to be pretty soon. All this has such an air of finality to it for some reason! I'm terrified I'll put my address or my e-mail in wrong on an application and thus jeopardize my chances of admittance to my top picks. And I also need to figure out how application fees are going to work. I'm working on finalizing my actual college list, and plan to work some on that this weekend, but for now I'm chillaxing.

Anyways, beyond that, I tried out Quiz Bowl yesterday! It's a very big thing in my school (whenever there are announcements about it at assemblies, it sounds like we need a Speaker of the Gym just to quiet it down) and I've had people tell me for a while to try it out (I mean since sixth or seventh grade) and somehow I only just got around to it. Which is lucky, since I'm doing D&D club too, because senior year is totally the best time to finally start taking extracurriculars seriously! But I don't think it'll matter too much, hopefully; it doesn't seem like most of the universities I'm applying to have started all this "holistic admissions" stuff. But I'm supposed to be talking about Quiz Bowl!!!

Only five other seniors and I showed up for Quiz Bowl, so I wasn't overwhelmed by underclassmen (har har), and Green was one of those. The old coach of the program who's still the figurehead isn't the head coach anymore, but it's still in her room and we got snacks from her hoard, including these fig bars to the right in both blueberry and raspberry, which I had never had before! (At least not in those flavours.) And they were so amazing, and it turns out pretty healthy. I think I may have found my new snack addiction! I'm kind of sad I'd never had them thitherto, but I still want to buy so many of these next time I'm at the shop. But despite my use of words like thitherto, I only knew the answers to about five questions of the thirty-some (?) that were asked, but according to Green that's normal. It wasn't the absolutely most fun I've ever had, but it was still pretty fun and I think I'll continue with it casually!

I think I mentioned in my last post that there was confusion/hullabaloo over whether or not my Latin class will be AP and the principal came to our class to talk about it. It appears for now that it won't, but will instead be an "advanced capstone seminar", as is now written in the new syllabus, or "APILALLUS" as we called it, which, if you're wondering, stands for "Absolutely Proficient in Latin Advanced Lingua Latina Ultima Stella", which is our response to the AP acronym. Anyways, apparently it's going to be reading-heavy, as is exemplified by our homework last night, which was to read forty pages of Latin in one night. Yeah, I had thirty minutes of proper free time last night. Apparently it's going to be a lot less strenuous in the future, but the teacher still thinks forty-five minutes of homework for one class every day is reasonable, for a non-AP class, and I doubt we'll change his mind. If all of my teachers did that, not counting electives, I'd have almost four hours of homework a night, which, with after-school activities, is not really doable.

But that's that, and I don't have much control over it. There's really just one or two people who are in favour of and against it being AP, and I really don't care as long as we don't die of homework. In other news, there was a fire drill today! I overheard the librarian talking about it, so for the first hour of the day I was constantly afraid that it was about to happen, and then when it did during second-period NAM (non-AP math), it was kind of anticlimactic. I guess I'm getting over my old fire drill anxiety! I think it's specifically the noise of the fire alarm, which makes it sound like they have a little banshee inside the things. Also, the other day I introduced my NAM class to Vi Hart with this video below that was related to class, and then another non-related video we watched later at the insistence of my classmates. They may be hooked! And that's about all interesting that's happened recently. Now I'm going to go on a walk before it gets too dark! Toodles! :D

Published on Friday, September 8, 2023, at 7:01 PM.

Song of the day: Girls' Generation - Blue Jeans

I've had quite a good day today! It rained a bit last night, and it was cloudy for a while today, so I've been rather happy. I really thought it was going to rain today, but no dice; it was, however, significantly cooler than the summeresque temperatures we've been having! Summeresque I assume because it's still summer, but still they've been a bit hot for my tastes. And according to the weather that I checked a bit ago, it's going to stay cool all the rest of the week!! So it may finally be time to break out my beloved zip-up hoodie that I wore for about half of the second and third quarters last year.

Besides that, classes have been really good! I had French today, and though we sadly didn't speak that much in French, at least compared to our block last week, it was still quite alright. I mean, I also apparently misconjugated some -re verbs, but at least from that I learned how to say "don't rest on your laurels" in French! (It's "ne te repose pas sur tes lauriers!" if anyone was wondering.) And then in English, we started our poetry unit. I'm not a poetry fan per se, but we had to read some poems for homework tonight and annotate, and I actually liked one! And I tolerated another unreluctantly, and yet another I begrudgingly condoned. And then in my non-AP math class (tm), I introduced the class to (and I suspect got at least one of them hooked on) Vi Hart! (it was relevant, though I definitely would just start talking about her videos---they're awesome!!!) And we had a community activity afterwards where we threw string around and said things we were grateful for. It was actually really fun for the most part!

And for lunch we had lasagna, broccoli and garlic bread! Sadly, because of the screwed-up new schedule this year, the middle schoolers were swarming the lunch line so we couldn't get seconds, but I'm not going to let any of today's little annoyances get me down. It's a good day! :D And I hope y'all have had a hunky-dory hump day too!! God bless :)

Published on Wednesday, September 6, 2023, at 8:40 PM.

Song of the day: B1A4 - OK

I have school off today since it's Labour Day, so I've been able to do some homework, do some housework and relax! I did a few math problems (I really need a nom de blog for my easy math class) and worried that I overthought one and I still have to do some French, and I tried to scrub off some algae from a flamingo decoration in the fish tank, but ended up accidentally scrubbing off some paint as well and eventually gave up. I really need to try and get rid of algae more often!

But I've had some excitement this weekend! Saturday I went out with my dad to visit my Nan, and she and I spent the day baking cinnamon rolls! They turned out really well, and I have her recipe now to make them in the future. This weekend we also went to a concert! It was for some Gaelic band my parents really like, and I thought it was pretty good too! At least live---it's not the type of music I like to listen to normally. But I clapped along and made merry and all, although I will confess I had to wear earplugs the whole time because it was unreasonably loud, even in the back of the house---I could feel the vibrations relatively intensely in my chest. From the level the amps were turned up to, you would've thought it was a metal concert!

Beyond that, in my last post I said I'd talk more but I'm not exactly sure what about, so I'll just say that math quiz went well to my knowledge, as did the rest of the day. The faculty sponsor for the D&D club I joined also started "D&D101" on Fridays, so I went to that and learned what the heck all the races and classes actually are, so I know (kind of) what's going on! So that sounds like it'll be fun! I'm also considering joining quiz bowl after being told for going on five years that I should. I know senior year is a bit late to pick up extracurriculars, but who cares? It might be fun! I'm going to ask the leader if I can sit in on a practice or something this week to see if it's for me---we'll see how that goes! But anyways, that's about it for now---I'm gonna go do some more stuff on my checklist! Toodles!

Published on Monday, September 4, 2023, at 1:55 PM.

Song of the day: Girls' Generation Oh!GG - Fermata

Hey all y'all, it's ya girl, coming back at you from study hall with another litty prank!!

But jokes aside, I'm sitting here with ten minutes left of study hall as I start to write this, so brevity is of the utmost importance and I'll just give y'all the SparkNotes of recent happenings. School's been going pretty well, and (at the recommendation of Blue and Green) I joined the D&D club! I'm not yet sure whether or not I'll enjoy it, but so far it seems like a chillaxed environment for the most part, and the first after-school club I've engaged in in a while. I'm also going to do yearbook club, and typing this makes me realize I have no clue when yearbook club is going to start. I might also join the aquarium club, seeing as I'm a fish mother!

Then, in terms of college, I've had a slightly stressful time this week, considering I don't know whether I meet the minimum requirements for a college I'm interested in since I'm not taking a science class this year (it was AP chem or nothing---ew) and all the other I'm considering don't have applications open whatsoever. And I tried looking for scholarships, but it feels like I'm not eligible for 90% of them and most of the 10% are weird crap that I'm not interested in. But I'm going to try and research them a lot more soon. But I have a math quiz in a few minutes, so I ought to go to math class! I'll talk more later, maybe after school, but for now, toodles!

Published on Friday, September 1, 2023, at 9:09 AM.