/pokes the blog

It looks like recently we've been getting more active again, which is lovely. c:

Anyway, today was a nice day; we had a day off of school and Momo and Virgil came over to do the source of all great unhappiness in the world, i.e. the 40 Questions of APUSH Class. We got through ten, ate dumplings and pineapple, and then went on a walk with Lynda and her siblings to the elementary-school playground. The seesaw there is pretty good, though not a legit seesaw (it has springs :|a) and thus not perfect.

Later, Virgil and I wrote some more of our pottergatsbyfic, which now has a witty and metaphorically resonant title: Borne Back Ceaselessly Into the Past. I also made us an ff.net account tentatively titled shupicorns. We've finished the first two chapters and might post it soon. Harry & Co. travel back in time to fight deatheater!Tom Buchanan and destroy Voldemort's eighth Horcrux, which is actually Gatsby's fabled green light. The metaphors all fit so perfectly; what's not to love?

(Oh and speaking of writing, Lynda and I started a writing journal as well, though as of yet there's not very much on it. I might post pottergatsbyfic up there too; who knows.)

I like Alex Day's music. Not so sure about "Lady Godiva," though. :|

Well, that's about it for today. I will go back to procrastinating on the Internet.

in which xiy avoids public speaking and (successfully?) philosophizes

I had to present the NHD board today, which was basically a study in how quickly I could put the APUSH class to sleep (i.e., not a very long time), because I suck at public speaking and presenting things and there was such a lot to say and not very much time to say it. It's hard to fangirl over dead French revolutionaries when one stumbles over one's own words far too often. :|a

And this is why I like the Internet! Because my writing skills are so much better, see. I should just retreat into a cave with a good wi-fi connection and never come out again, but then again I wouldn't ever see my friends. That's not good, but perhaps my friends could visit me. I would be like Thoreau camping out in the woods, only I don't care at all about finding myself (because the self is very good at evading enlightenment) or cutting myself off from the world, hence the occasional friendly visit and Internet connection. Scathing criticisms of society could still work, I suppose, though I doubt anybody would care.

Interesting, isn't it, how Thoreau, despite being a recluse by a pond for two years (which reminds me, I was given the entirety of Walden last Christmas by this one Chinese college kid I don't know very well that my parents invited over, and I've been meaning to read it), had to rejoin society and actually write for his message to be known. If he'd stayed by the pond and never left, then nobody would know or care, except for maybe Thoreau.

At any rate, I think I could live pretty nicely in a well-stocked cave for awhile, though the nights would probably get pretty cold. The stargazing opportunities would be endless, though, if it were on a mountain. If it were on a mountain, the frostbite opportunities would be equally endless. I would probably fall off of the mountain and break something major, in which case I would have to retreat to civilization (assuming that civilization ever found my broken body, etc) for awhile. I could publish the book and call it Mountain and then get famous. Or something.

Or I could learn rock-climbing and/or proper balance, get a few goats, and start up a successful cheesemaking business and thus fund my enormous Internet bills. Perhaps I could learn hang-gliding with the extra money. That would be cool. Imagination is a wonderful thing.

Listening to Muse right now. It is pretty, but quite sad.


Not sure any of this post makes sense.


xiy

oh right it's my turn to post today

I hope everybody had a lovely Thanksgiving! Mine was quite nice; my family spent the day at home cooking, and it was very relaxing.

Nothing much really happened today except that my parents dragged me along to go Black-Friday shopping, though I didn't really get anything major. Mostly it was just stuff for my little sister, eg a winter coat and a ginormous package of giant Legos. I probably had more fun with the Legos than she did. >.>

In other art-and-sort-of-relevant news, I'm going to be getting a tablet (not to be confused with a computer/iPad sort of tablet) soonish, which is exciting because drawing with a mouse is difficult and now I'll be able to draw semi-legit things in Photoshop now. Hooray! :D


Ummm. Yeah. That's really about it.


xiy

happy almost-birthday, Lynda!

Tomorrow is Lynda's birthday! Hooray!

Tomorrow is also when I have a fencing tournament/library thing (not in that order) to go to and a Greek project to finish and a lot of homework to do, and I'm not really looking forward to the last half. We might possibly go see the second Happy Feet for Lynda's birthday, though from what I can tell from the trailers it has no redeeming qualities other than very cute penguins. I guess that makes up for the possible lack of plot and general sequel-not-as-good syndrome, so I'm looking forward to it.

Momo is right now probably in Jerseyland, which sounds like fun. I'm not going anywhere for Thanksgiving, but that's alright as well, since sleeping is so much easier when there is no traveling involved.


I was going to start homework tonight but then I got distracted by The Little Prince, some of which I can read in French though I mostly stuck with English, which is kind of a sad book but also quite a happy book and I do recommend reading it if you haven't already (I read this one sequel to it when I was little without having read the original book, which made me very confused but now I understand all the things!).


Virgil and I left Nerdfightery notes in all the copies of John Green's books in the school library today. It was fun, but then the librarians chased us out because it was four PM and the library, being silly, closes early.


There was also a kind-of book club meeting today in which nothing very much was accomplished. There were muffins, though.


/ramble ramble ramble


xiy

happy national dress-up-like-Bio-Teacher day!

I think that Momo has already mentioned in a previous post what Bio Teacher (as opposed to Other Bio Teacher, who is the biology teacher of House and Lynda and therefore far less cool) dresses like; for those who missed the memo and and don't feel like clicking the link, he basically wears a lumberjack shirt and carries around a gold (but probably not real gold) coffee mug every single day. Today, by popular agreement of our bio class, was dress-up-like-Bio-Teacher day, in which over half the class showed up wearing plaid. It was funny.

here is my interpretation.

Bio Teacher also bought us bagels, because we organized Bagel Fridays and nobody else wanted to bring them today, so he was forced into it. So it's like he's earning negative money for teaching us. ^.^ I had a raisin bagel and it was very delicious.


School was pretty dumb today and nothing very important was accomplished; after school, Lynda and I hung out with a fellow freshman nerd who, unlike his largely far-dimmer compatriots that populate my math class, has decided to take proper traumatizing ninth-grade geometry/algebra instead of being dumb and jumping up a grade. It was nice and we talked about how the high school library is terrible and also about grades, because no nerdy conversation can be complete without a conversation about grades.


(It almost made me feel popular. ^.^)


And then I went home and ate a lot and now I don't feel so well and I really don't want to do some dumb French homework assignment. And the IB programme is stupid. They need to work out their nouns and adjectives, because that's just stupid. (Speaking of the IB programme, there used to be a poster for it hanging on the wall of the school, but then the wind blew it off the wall and it broke a window, so now it is no longer there; that amused me to no end.)


In NaNo related news, my wordcount is at 7,115 (I haven't written anything yet today) and I guess putting up excerpts is, like, a thing, so here you go:


They ended up, oddly enough, with a minimum of fuss and explodey noise on some sort of damp greyish rock with enough terminal force to bruise a rhinoceros; gods not being rhinos, they got away with one slightly bashed shoulder (Rediculus), a copiously bleeding nose (Sors), various smaller injuries, and lots of pained not-wailing-because-gods-are-better-than-that. Rediculus ended up having most of the minor bashery and landing in a puddle as well, as Sors was the god of luck and it was probably about time that particular facet of his personality kicked in. It was only fair.

So, yeah, NaNo this year is about Roman gods. On vacation, only not really. Sort of. I don't even know. But anyway, I need to ask you Latin people quite a few questions once December kicks in and I actually start to care about realism.

xiy 

oh hey wait blogger's turned back into its old self :|a

Today is Friday and I did really nothing constructive after school besides read a very lovely sheep detective story* and also do my math homework, the former of which I enjoyed much more than the latter. At least factoring is easy; Geometry Teacher drilled it so firmly into our heads last year that it's very difficult to forget, though the dumb freshmen in my class who have not had the (dubious) fortune of taking geometry with Geometry Teacher are consequently rather dense in such matters. In fact, some of the freshmen in my math class are just overall very dense; Math Teacher will tell them very specifically not to blurt out the answer and they will raise their hands, every single one of them painfully eager to show off their not-so-precocious talents (some are noticeably more enthusiastic than others, though that's not saying much, when their base mode of existence in class seems to be 'OOHHH TEACHER TEACHER I KNOW THE ANSWER OOHH OOOHH CALL ON ME TEACHER I KNOW I'M SMART'), and promptly proceed to blurt out the answer.

It is pathetic. Even the teacher gets fed up on a daily basis.

Anyway, in other news, tomorrow is Homecoming which is supposed to be a big deal but it isn't, not really, though the parade is rather fun. I'm going to be taking the PSAT tomorrow morning, and of course that's going to be oh-so-fun. And then I get to march with Chinese Club's float and shout cheesy slogans ('Beijing Welcomes You!'), probably, but there's candy so that's okay. And of course I'm not going to the dance, because that would just be silly.

And then more things are going to happen this weekend and it makes me feel like I actually have a social life, except I don't. Wheee.


I don't have any drawings to show you today.


So, yeah, I think that's it.


xiy

*the two things which I love to see mentioned in any sort of fiction is either a) sheep or b) the French Revolution; I'm not sure why. Probably I'm weird.

I am reading a novel about the French Revolution,

but at the moment, I don't think it's terribly good. I am, however, only on page 76, so perhaps I should reserve further judgement until later.

The book is Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly, and apparently it's supposed to be good (this opinion originating from the letter from the publisher stuffed at the front of the book), and it's about the French Revolution and I like the French Revolution, so, hey. Maybe when it gets more into the historical bits and less about the main character angsting and angsting and angsting (and angsting and angsting and angsting). Because that's already getting really boring.

It's Carrie's birthday soon! Happy almost birthday!

Aaaaaaand ummm. There was book club today. We ate cookies and it was fun.

I think we need another theme week. I can't think of anything to really post. 


So I will be taking my inspiration from Momo's "Five Ways To Start an Interesting Post," because I am unoriginal like that.


2. In elementary school, the best way to spend recess was...

On sort of rainy, drab-ish days like today (today was very rainy and very drab) when one's breath was visible in the air (the raininess and drabness hasn't quite reached that point yet), I remember we'd always play dragons and pretend to be blowing smoky water vapor and exploding things with our fiery breaths. It was really fun, and a good way to pass the time too, since on rainy days the slides would almost all be out of commission and monkey bars are no fun if one gets one's hands all wet and cold while hanging off them.

And then in winter, there would be all sorts of games along the lines of Antarctic Explorers and See How Fast We Can Pull The Sled and Dig Candy Out Of The Snow and Throw Badly-Made Snowballs At Badly-Made Snow Forts. 

I miss elementary school. ):

/ramble

xiy 

so it looks like it's finally fall.

I think fall has officially arrived in Curlyfryland, in the form of chilly walks to school (how much am I looking forward to walking to Greek on Tuesday? not. at. all.) and the sudden necessity of wearing jackets while doing so. Also, it involves lots of tea and sickness and leaves turning pretty colors. I saw a few really pretty pinky-red leaves today on the ground, which is a nice change from the standard year-round clutter of dead brownish ones.

Today we were supposed to watch the movie/musical 1776 after school for APUSH extra credit, but technical difficulties prevented us doing so. Lynda borrowed the DVD from APUSH Teacher #1-of-4 and Momo graciously invited us (us being Lynda, House, and me) to go over to her house to watch. It was pretty interesting, even though we didn't get to finish because then the band people had to go to a marching band game.

Speaking of band, I hear Momo and House did very well in their band auditions; I KNEW YOU COULD DO IT; CONGRATULATIONS. <3 <3 <3


I have to get four of my teeth viciously yanked out tomorrow. D: I am not looking forward to it. Like, I'm going to have to walk around with four great big gaps in my teeth for months. It's going to look so stupid. Urghhhh. (Thank goodness today was school-picture-day [though, of course, picture day is nothing to look forward to] and not, like, next Friday or something.) And it's going to hurtttttttt and I don't like painnnnnnnnn and it's so unecessaryyyyyyyy and I don't like painnnn and it's going to hurt. D: D: D:


On a happier note, I got Photoshop last week and it is BEAUTIFUL. There are still some things I like better about Gimp (like how in Gimp you can press ctrl-z indefinitely to undo as many mistakes as you want, but in Photoshop you need to press ctrl-alt-z to undo more than one step, which is annoying), but over all Photoshop is awesomer.

Speaking of APUSH, here's a King George III.

And now I'm working on Carrie's birthday banner. It involves cake. ^.^

Annnnnd that's pretty much it. 


xiy

hooray for fridays!

Today there was supposed to be a fencing tournament and Momo, Virgil, and I were going to attend (and get soundly beaten by the eleven-year-olds, probably), but then it turned out to be an epee tournament (and for those who don't know, epee involves a slightly larger weapon and a larger target area and is generally far scarier than good ol' foil), and none of us know how to fence epee. And so we chose to stay safely at home instead of getting beaten by the adults who are apparently attending, because if there's anything worse than a scary fencing eleven-year-old, it's a scary fencing adult.


Speaking of fencing, I read a book called Foiled about a week ago that talked about fencing. It was kind of interesting to see what a legit fencer's life is like, though the plot got all muddy and strange about three-quarters of the way through, and it wasn't really developed properly. I don't know if there's supposed to be a sequel or if it was just because it was a graphic novel and there was some sort of restraint on length, but the plot was very badly explained toward the end. The drawing style was very good, though. And some of the double-page illustrations were really beautiful.

Also, I'm really tired. Today wasn't even a Greek day (and I fell asleep at ~10:30 last night too, which, all things considered, is fantastically early), but I woke up tired and the biology test didn't help at all, though I'm cautiously hoping that I didn't do too badly. 

And I really should be doing homework right now, but since I came home I've basically just been sitting around at home, eating and reading Agatha Christie. I really must have no life. (Agatha Christie is lovely, though. I'm reading The Mirror Crack'd at the moment, in a four-in-one Miss Marple Meets Murder book.)


The start of NHD is looming up rather scarily already, even though it's not completely due until January. APUSH Teacher is hinting pretty heavily that any boards (should we choose that option) are going to need to be MUSEUM QUALITY!11!1! and nothing less, which, uh, considering the state of last year's Robespierre board, might be rather difficult. But House and I are hoping for the best. :)


I was going to say something but then I forgot what I was going to say, and now I can't think of anything remotely interesting and so I guess I'll end it here. Or something.


I WILL TRY TO DRAW SOMETHING AND POST IT NEXT WEEK TO MAKE MY POST ACTUALLY INTERESTING. I WILL TRY.


xiy