Ah, the Joys of Shipwreck Camp

Hi, guys. Today's post has been brought to you by the incredibly ancient computer at my mom's work. It's so old that it uses Windows 2000; therefore, there's only Internet Explorer on the darn thing. I'm already missing Firefox and its nice, if annoying, spellcheck. Oh, and the computer totally butchers font, so that everything looks weird and pixelly. Blah. >.<
AND the keyboard is covered in this crusty, dusty, sligtly yellow-white old gunk that is absolutely disgusting. THe mouse has some of the stuff on it too, but it's slightly better. Except that the bits of gunk on the mouse are sticky as well. Which is also disgusting.
See what I'm putting up with just to post this? Gosh, I must love you guys.
[Actually, I'm posting 'cause I'm bored with nothing else to do. Heh.]
So, for the next eight days (as in, until Friday of this week and then from Monday to Friday of next week), I shall be attending this thing called Shipwreck Camp. It's a local, non-sleepaway affair, so don't worry--I will still be around. Basically, the premise is something like, "if you found a hypothetical shipwreck, how would you hypothetically go about salvaging it?" and stuff. For the past two days, we've been learning about the basics of marine archaeology and shipwreck survival and boatbuilding (with plastic soda bottles).
Speaking of plastic soda bottles, today there was an activity where we split into groups and built a not-more-than-twelve-feet-square boat using plastic bottles (not just soda ones, actually; there were some square juice bottles and some gallon milk jugs in the mix), plastic bags, one roll of duct tape, and some bamboo sticks.
My group's was, I'm pleased to say, was the best and most seaworthy. Ours actually had a working sail; however, there was barely any wind and so it couldn't really go anywhere. It was sort of a catamaran-like structure, with one giant more-or-less-square sail made out of a white trash bag. It was pretty cool.
For lack of a better name, we decided to call it the "Gilligan." However, the person in my group who made the sign spelled "Gilligan" wrong, so it ended up being the "Gillian." *sigh*
Tomorrow, the camp's going to canoe in a marsh. Lovely.

Now, a different topic.
Yesterday, while coming home, I heard on the radio that NASA is going to hibernate (aka totally shut down) Spirit [the Mars rover, doncha know] for the Martian winter. There's so much dust on Spirit's solar panels that it doesn't have enough energy to heat itself electrically (which is what it's done in the past few winters). Also, even after the winter's over, Spirit's probably never going to move again--its wheels are all really messed up and stuff. But NASA's still going to use it as a weather station or something. Poor Spirit. THe other rover, Opportunity, is apparently having better luck; sometimes, a few stray breezes blow off some of the dust coating its solar panels.
This xkcd comic sums up my feelings quite well: http://xkcd.com/695. (Poor Spirit. It's okay, little rover. I think you did a really good job.)
It's been six years since NASA sent Spirit and Opportunity up to Mars, y'know. Six years. Wow. I remember when they were launched (gods, that makes me feel so old). . . It's passed pretty quickly, really. Huh. Six years.
*mumbles incoherently for quite a while*

Less than a month to go until my birthday!! ^.^

I guess I'll just leave it at that.

[I agree with Virgil that the whole "asking questions" thing is getting old. Can we do anything else? Another theme week, maybe, now that everybody's regained use of a computer? DISCUSS IN COMMENTS.]

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader! :D

Guesswhat guesswhat guesswhat? The trailer for the third Narnia movie, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, is coming out at 12:00 PM EST this Thursday! TWO MORE DAYS! AHH LUDI AHH (*sigh*... The crazy Latin people--i.e., Virgil, Carrie, Momo, and House--have got me using their exclamation now)!! I'm so very excited; can't you tell? It's been ages since the last movie, made worse by the fact that the Twilight movies have been coming out one-a-year; considering that Twilight is a piece of [censored to preserve your innocence], it is extremely unfair. 
Did you know that Disney's not doing the Narnia movies anymore? They dropped it back in, like, November of 2008; Fox is funding/marketing the movies now. I personally don't care who gives the money; as long as the movies are being made, I'm happy.
I'm listening to the remix of "He's a Pirate" right now. 'S very inspirational, doncha know.


Hrrrmmm... What to say now? Oh! Oh! Didja see the newset comic on xkcd? It's technically yesterday's, but I like it a lot because it's 1)not about math/computer programming, 2)therefore, I can actually understand it, and 3)it's funny in an "oh, FAIL" kind of way. Here it is:

...Now what? 
Erm, I haven't really been paying attention to the World Cup; has anything interesting happened?
*hums to self*
The weather's pretty nice today--cool and a little rainy. I hear that in Beijing it's going to be around 99F by Friday. Poor them. It'll get hotter later in the week where we 6LCF live too, but definitely not as hot. That's good.


I'm not very good at this small talk, am I?
I'll just get on with the questions, shall I?


1) What do you fear most in this world?
2) Do you like broccoli?
3) Did you know that broccoli is a natural fractal?
4) Do you know all of the words to "Bohemian Rhapsody"?
5) How's the summer going?
6) Are you excited for Voyage of the Dawn Treader (I am!!)?
7) Should we do another 6LCF video?


Gee, what a short post. -.-;

dang i forgot to put in a title and now it's Saturday... frick. fail.

"HOW ABOUT A NICE GAME OF STRIP GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR?" —Randall Monroe, xkcd.com

1. Omg Auditions Imgonnadie

First and foremost, I've got auditions for a band/symphony-group-thing, which I've just about died a few too many times over in the past week or so. (Virgil's trying out for the same group. There are upper and lower groups. She'll make it into the upper; I'm just trying to get in. We both play the flute. Carrie also plays the flute.*)

2. Hands

Hands are pretty bloody impressive. As a FBI agent friend of one of my teachers once said, "Someone can kill you with their hands. They can't kill you with their feet." People can pull a gun with you quite easily with their hands. Doing that with your feet is harder. (Just a little bit.) A ring can symbolize a person being married... or they're just lonely, pitiful, and/or can't accept reality. Hands can also convey emotion. A girl "b*tch-slapping" you can show that she is really, really upset with you. The feel of another person's hand grasping to yours can convey love, trust, and/or fear.

3. Romance and the 6LCF

Status:

1 in a new relationship

1 in a existing relationship

1 in denial that she likes someone (but not really because she doesn't, but we're going to try to convince that she likes him/he likes her, anyway, since we don't have much else to do)

1 crushing over a certain someone

2 Not in a relationship/I dunno (Not that I don't care. I just dunno.)

4. Frikkin Pickles

So I was at the store buying pickles. I got little chip ones for my sammiches, but then had to go look for larger pickles for eating outside of sammiches. I picked up a jar of spears, thinking that they were dill spears, since the label was the exact same, but nooo. They were (agh) sweet pickles. I did not realize this until I took that first, horrendous bite. Now my retainer is going to taste like sweet pickles. Omg.

5. The Brand New Banner Thing!!!

(It was drawn by xiy, by the way.) I wanted to point out the little details to you that might have not caught them:

Virgil: Has symbol of the Deathly Hallows on shirt; is holding a pencil

Momo: Is holding a hedgehog; has unicycle on shirt; is in the typical "ta-da!" stance because she is hyper/happy

Carrie: Is wearing mismatching knee socks; has dinosaur on shirt; heart above head

xiy: Has eighth note and piano keys on shirt; has pencil behind ear; is carrying a notebook

Lynda: Is standing on books, pretending she is tall; has "NO SWIMMING" on shirt; is looking fondly at a dollar bill

House (me): Listening to music; has American Eagle logo on shirt; is the only one wearing a skirt

Other: Notice the lovely unicorn, url [that you are already at], dinosaur**, painter with cool hat, xiy's signature, rainbow, lovely radiant ray-thingys coming off of us, science beaker with bubbly liquid, glasses with fake nose/mustache, unicorn, Archie (who has chocolate ^_^), and subtitle "WHERE WE REJECT YOUR REALITY AND SUBSTITUTE OUR OWN"***.

6. What I Learned

Today, I learned two things:

1) Hugging someone when they're wearing a black tee shirt that is very warm can be rather pleasant.

2) Lynda should probably ask me to supervise her if she ever puts on mascara again.

With all due respect,

House

(Not too exciting, yeah. I know.)

Edit: I really suck at remembering to put in a title... yeah, sorry 'bout that, then.

*Which is surprising because we are all very awesome people. Not that flute isn't an awesome instrument or anything, but the tenor sax still has us beat by a lot. (In my usually-not-so-humble opinion.)

**She is my dinosaur, actually. Her name is Kitty and has taken up residence on Nerdfighteria Island.

***(Which is a cute little tribute to Adam Savage, professional mythbuster)

xoxoxoxo

6LCF