Those were the top two hits. So Talle has already heard of the devil car, so I'll have to beg his forgiveness. The story goes like this.
I was in Lafayette for my day on campus and we were racing back to Martinsville for my driver's ed class. I had driven once here in America, and that was with a drive instructor with a brake on his side of the car. I hadn't wrecked into anything, but he had used that pedal more than I was comfortable with. At the end of the last session, I had been given a package in an envelope, and I had put off reading it until now. So I opened it up to find this huge list of blank squares... I stared at it in confusion for a few seconds, and then decided to turn it over to see if the back had any helpful advice. It did. I had to have thirty hours of driving between the time I got the piece of paper and the time that I got my licence. When I told dad, he nearly freaked out. "What? 30 hours?" he wasn't really very happy with the idea. So he almost immediately pulled over (He did wait for a rest area) and got out and made me drive.
So we get up to the exit ramp, I had managed to pull out of parking without hitting anything, and now we are supposed to be going much faster than is humanly safe. 40 was fast. I was flying! After all, this is roughly twice as fast as I can sprint, and I raced several sprinters over the last year, and only one of them beat me consistently, but that was fine, because he was supposedly the fastest kid in Yemen according to the books. So here we are just rocketing up the exit ramp at 40, and Dad tells me I'm not going fast enough. You need to be going 70 he says. 70! I mean, that is almost double what I'm doing now, and I'm already freaked out! So I slowly press the accelerator... 50...60... and then all of a sudden, Semis were screaming down out of the blue to my left, but I managed to get in. Scary. So we are doing 70, and the world is about to end. Utterly and completely in a flash of light and sound. And then the car gives a lurch... and a little light comes on somewhere on the left of the dash display that says "Service Engine soon." I nearly cried right there. That was when I decided that I was driving the devil car. Dad says "don't let up on the accelerator like that, you need to keep it depressed" So I said, "That wasn't me. That was the car, and we have this light on that says service engine soon." That threw him for a little bit of a loop. "We do?" He asked. So then he puts on his best I-have-made-my-way-right-with-God-I-can-face-death-without-fear voice and says "I'm very sorry this had to happen your first time out here, signal right, you are going to pull over to the right onto the shoulder. We are having transmission problems, and need to stop quickly before we wreck the car."
Well, needless to say, that nearly did me in. I gripped the steering wheel tightly white knuckled and pulled off the road and put on my emergency flashers. I experienced deep seated fear, true death fear for the second time in my life right then. The first time I was with Talle and my brother, and we were on this raft that was sinking, we were dead tired, about a kilometer from shore, being dragged over a coral reef, and seeing sharks. True story. At any rate, I was seeing visions of the transmission blowing out all over the road behind us, jamming the gears, locking the tires, and throwing us into the traffic behind us, starting a gigantic 70 vehicle pile up. Fortunately, none of that happened. We managed to get off the side of the road without incident, except for the fact that the shoulder was covered with debris and truck treads half the size of the car that I had to dodge.
So we got stopped without further incident, but I hated that evil car right then. Dad pulled out his cell phone and called Grandpa. This is supposedly a normal problem. Just keep going. If hate could melt anything, that car would have been done for. So I started back up, and merged back into 70 mph semi traffic. Fun. *heavy sarcastic voice* So the vehicle is now lurching and bouncing and I am holding that wheel like its the only thing that was going to save me, which is odd, considering the fact that I hated that car, and thought it was about to kill me.
When we got back, I went to drivers ed, which was dull, and Grandpa and Dad came to pick me up.... and they were driving that evil green station wagon. I was not as pleased to see them as I had thought I was going to be. Any other car. It turns out that I had actually driven home on three cylinders. Something had happened more than was "normal" and I had wrecked it. I'm not sure how they figured that one, but whatever.
Since then, I have had a chance to drive it after it had been repaired, and we have become more reconciled to each other. I still would prefer to drive any other car, but I will if I have to.
Meeting fellow bloggers has been cool, and exciting for me, but I can't turn it into anything really fun for the rest of you I doubt. The first blogger I met was Charity. I saw her about two weeks ago now at an after church youth session in Indianapolis. We had a really fast conversation before we both got distracted. It went something like this:
Charity-Hi! My name is Charity!
Graham- Yes, I read your blog.
This other guy - Who are you?
Charity - He comments on my blog.
This other guy - oh.
Charity - Ellie and I heard that you were here, so we were looking for someone with big hair.
Graham - Yeah I just cut it. I need to post pictures some time.
And that was sort of the end of it. There may have been something else that I missed, but I don't remember it. I still haven't really met Christina, but since I have talked with her on the phone (just tonight actually) I'll throw it in. She had called me, but it was probably during my drivers ed class, and I had turned my new cell phone off, which I am still acclimating to, and then didn't turn it back on while I watched Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with Tyler. So it was about midnight by the time I turned it back on, and I found a voice mail from her. So today I woke up and essentially immediately went to work cleaning Faith Missionary Church here in Martinsville, (my aunt and uncle's church) and then went to drivers ed again, and finally called her after I got home.
Its fun to find that stories and posts that I have followed all year actually turned into real people. It was kind of fun to experience. Thanks to both Charity and Christina for bearing with my weird comments.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Monday, July 09, 2007
Busy
I don't want to do this, but I don't want to write a million posts that are a foot long each either. So you're gonna hafta vote in the comments which item you want me to post about. Here is the list
My new amp
Driving on the interstate in the devil car
playing music with my cousin
My trip up to Lafayette
Dad's introduction to the Frapicino
Finding real people on the ends of blogs
or alternately if you are really plugged in with my life you could suggest something else, but I think I have everything that is vaguely interesting up. I've been busy, but its been good. So let me know what I should post about. If you really want me to post, you should probably comment sooner rather than latter, because with posts like this if they don't get comments I sorta forget that I have a blog that people might be interested in reading and it gets dropped for long periods of time... So comment soon!
My new amp
Driving on the interstate in the devil car
playing music with my cousin
My trip up to Lafayette
Dad's introduction to the Frapicino
Finding real people on the ends of blogs
or alternately if you are really plugged in with my life you could suggest something else, but I think I have everything that is vaguely interesting up. I've been busy, but its been good. So let me know what I should post about. If you really want me to post, you should probably comment sooner rather than latter, because with posts like this if they don't get comments I sorta forget that I have a blog that people might be interested in reading and it gets dropped for long periods of time... So comment soon!
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Concerning Large Tin Boxes With Very Small Uncomfortable Seats, Of Textile Travel Containers, and Other Strange Things
I am sorry I haven't managed to post about my flight now that its almost a week behind us. I have had a maniacal schedule for the last week, no time for jet lag or anything else like that, and most of it is post worthy, but I will only cover the flight in detail now as it promises to be a long enough post. I should be able to get around to some posting this week as things seem to have slowed down slightly, which is good because it gives less things to blog about, and more time to blog in. Both of these are blessings now.
I am now in America as I write this. Getting here, however, was something of a trip. I was up for about 9 hours before we drove to the airport, Dad and I, and we got checked in, sat around for an hour, got on the airplane and watched some idiot music videos on the flight. Completely unoriginal. Utterly. There were repeated elements in every video, it was pretty bad. Funny though. So we got to Frankfurt, wandered for a while and got on our second flight about two hours after we got off of the first plane. So far so good. We were on a big huge Boeing 747 with something close to 300 other passengers and attendants and such. It was a big bird, and she was full. Very full. So we find ourselves lugging our cary-ons down the aisle, to arrive at our seats having been claimed by some mother dressed up like a nun, the hair thing was perfect. Kinda funny. At any rate, we didn't really care, so we stood there and a stewardess came up and realized that the lady had our seats, but we weren't fussing about it, and so went out of her way to get us some new seats. Being nice counts in airports. It really does. So half an hour latter, we are sitting in some seats, but the plane isn't going anywhere. Apparently what had happened was we had missed our slot, and in a huge airport like Frankfurt, that means you are in trouble. So we waited to the next available opening, which was another half an hour late. Our flight took off an hour late, and we had scheduled only an hour and fifteen minutes to get on our connecting flight, and it was domestic, which means we had to go through customs, and I had a bag of dried hibiscus flowers with me, a substance that always gets through eventually, but has to be declared. The reason I bring things like this is because coming from Yemen requires that we be "randomly" run through agriculture anyways, so you might as well give them a reason to do it.
The flight was mostly uneventful. There were two movies on the flight, one of them was Wild Hogs. Do not watch this movie. Excessively dumb. Excessively. The second was called Music and Lyrics or something like that. It was about a musician from the eighties or something who is coming back to do a single with a huge pop star, needs to find a lyricist, eventually finds one, and writes a song. I loved this movie, the pop star was a wreck and way over done, but everything else was fantastic. Ironic, without rubbing it in, witty, musical with a reason to be musical, and intellectual, with the exception of the pop star. No action, so this must have been a really good movie, because I usually only really like action movies, but this one was somehow more than just a drama even though there was no action to speak of in the movie. Highly recommended, moving on.
So we land an hour late, fifteen minutes to get to our next flight. This is where the story gets interesting. We dash through customs and immigration, streak down to agriculture, get everything waved on after we had opened one suitcase up, and sprint back up to catch the bus to terminal three to catch our airplane. World record for getting through Chicago O'Hare airport. Amazing. Then we realize that we are holding the tracking tag to one of the suitcases... Uncool. Very uncool. That was the bag that had my entire video game collection, half of my library, all my memorabilia, my entire DVD collection (hardly worth mentioning, it is composed of The Matrix.) and about half of my wardrobe. I pack light. And its gone. Dad says for good. So I am freaking out. Very much freaking out.
At this stage, we had lost the more valuable of my two bags, missed a flight, and missed my drivers ed class that I was supposed to be there for. Bad. So we wandered around, and found that the flight had been rescheduled. All well and good. Only thing is that we have now missed that flight as well due to the fact that our bag is missing some where in the bowels of O'Hare international airport. The place is huge. Gigantic. Enormous. Big. Enough said. So we managed to reschedule another flight, by this time we had learned that we needed to file a missing bag statement once we had gotten to our destination, and they would work on finding the bag and getting it to us, and we sat down to wait. We had about three hours of lay over time between frantic-get-on-next-airplane rush and the time our flight was actually scheduled to take off for Indianapolis. So Dad fished out a phone and started calling people. I got to talk with Talle then, and have been able to communicate several times with him since. That was a lot of fun. He hasn't changed very much at all since we lit off our last explosion...
So we eat, wander some, and vaguely meander over to the terminal where our flight is supposed to be. We looked up the gate, and it was gate 16. So we went to gate 16. Nothing happening. About ten minutes latter, I got up to check it again, and it had switched to gate 18. Fine, could have been misread or something, so we moved to gate 18. Then 11B then gate 10. By this time I was starting to wonder if they were just playing musical gates with us for the fun of it, or if there was a reason for it, or if it was all just to the cause of universal misunderstanding or what, but it was kinda funny. So this gate actually says that it is going to Indianapolis, it was the first gate to actually have anything of the like anywhere, and it started calling numbers, and one of the numbers was ours, so we made it all the way onto the plane without further mishap.
It was a short flight, only about an hour, and the plane flew low compared to the other two birds I had already been on, and we had window seats for the first time, so I could see the ground and all the cars sliding across the endless black pavement lines. For some reason, this was far cooler than just looking at pictures on Google Earth. Google Earth is good for maps and its 3D at times, but this was all real, not just a computer screen. Perspective shifted to allow us to watch shadows shiver across roads as we buzzed over. I don't remember the last time I had been on a really low flying bird for so long. It was fun.
When we finally (I'm starting to get tired of this post...) got to Indy, somehow, that lost bag had made it too. In fact, looking at the tag that had supernaturally appeared on it, it had arrived several hours before we had. Certain proof of Divine providence. I have no other explanation.
More later, I have been having a very eventful life these last few days, life promises to be enjoyable and full for quite a while. So goodnight, Mom, the comment button should be just bellow this last line. (Amazing what Mothers are willing to do to communicate with lost sons... lol. I should see if I can get her to get a blog... If you have a blog, you should tell her that its not all that hard.)
I am now in America as I write this. Getting here, however, was something of a trip. I was up for about 9 hours before we drove to the airport, Dad and I, and we got checked in, sat around for an hour, got on the airplane and watched some idiot music videos on the flight. Completely unoriginal. Utterly. There were repeated elements in every video, it was pretty bad. Funny though. So we got to Frankfurt, wandered for a while and got on our second flight about two hours after we got off of the first plane. So far so good. We were on a big huge Boeing 747 with something close to 300 other passengers and attendants and such. It was a big bird, and she was full. Very full. So we find ourselves lugging our cary-ons down the aisle, to arrive at our seats having been claimed by some mother dressed up like a nun, the hair thing was perfect. Kinda funny. At any rate, we didn't really care, so we stood there and a stewardess came up and realized that the lady had our seats, but we weren't fussing about it, and so went out of her way to get us some new seats. Being nice counts in airports. It really does. So half an hour latter, we are sitting in some seats, but the plane isn't going anywhere. Apparently what had happened was we had missed our slot, and in a huge airport like Frankfurt, that means you are in trouble. So we waited to the next available opening, which was another half an hour late. Our flight took off an hour late, and we had scheduled only an hour and fifteen minutes to get on our connecting flight, and it was domestic, which means we had to go through customs, and I had a bag of dried hibiscus flowers with me, a substance that always gets through eventually, but has to be declared. The reason I bring things like this is because coming from Yemen requires that we be "randomly" run through agriculture anyways, so you might as well give them a reason to do it.
The flight was mostly uneventful. There were two movies on the flight, one of them was Wild Hogs. Do not watch this movie. Excessively dumb. Excessively. The second was called Music and Lyrics or something like that. It was about a musician from the eighties or something who is coming back to do a single with a huge pop star, needs to find a lyricist, eventually finds one, and writes a song. I loved this movie, the pop star was a wreck and way over done, but everything else was fantastic. Ironic, without rubbing it in, witty, musical with a reason to be musical, and intellectual, with the exception of the pop star. No action, so this must have been a really good movie, because I usually only really like action movies, but this one was somehow more than just a drama even though there was no action to speak of in the movie. Highly recommended, moving on.
So we land an hour late, fifteen minutes to get to our next flight. This is where the story gets interesting. We dash through customs and immigration, streak down to agriculture, get everything waved on after we had opened one suitcase up, and sprint back up to catch the bus to terminal three to catch our airplane. World record for getting through Chicago O'Hare airport. Amazing. Then we realize that we are holding the tracking tag to one of the suitcases... Uncool. Very uncool. That was the bag that had my entire video game collection, half of my library, all my memorabilia, my entire DVD collection (hardly worth mentioning, it is composed of The Matrix.) and about half of my wardrobe. I pack light. And its gone. Dad says for good. So I am freaking out. Very much freaking out.
At this stage, we had lost the more valuable of my two bags, missed a flight, and missed my drivers ed class that I was supposed to be there for. Bad. So we wandered around, and found that the flight had been rescheduled. All well and good. Only thing is that we have now missed that flight as well due to the fact that our bag is missing some where in the bowels of O'Hare international airport. The place is huge. Gigantic. Enormous. Big. Enough said. So we managed to reschedule another flight, by this time we had learned that we needed to file a missing bag statement once we had gotten to our destination, and they would work on finding the bag and getting it to us, and we sat down to wait. We had about three hours of lay over time between frantic-get-on-next-airplane rush and the time our flight was actually scheduled to take off for Indianapolis. So Dad fished out a phone and started calling people. I got to talk with Talle then, and have been able to communicate several times with him since. That was a lot of fun. He hasn't changed very much at all since we lit off our last explosion...
So we eat, wander some, and vaguely meander over to the terminal where our flight is supposed to be. We looked up the gate, and it was gate 16. So we went to gate 16. Nothing happening. About ten minutes latter, I got up to check it again, and it had switched to gate 18. Fine, could have been misread or something, so we moved to gate 18. Then 11B then gate 10. By this time I was starting to wonder if they were just playing musical gates with us for the fun of it, or if there was a reason for it, or if it was all just to the cause of universal misunderstanding or what, but it was kinda funny. So this gate actually says that it is going to Indianapolis, it was the first gate to actually have anything of the like anywhere, and it started calling numbers, and one of the numbers was ours, so we made it all the way onto the plane without further mishap.
It was a short flight, only about an hour, and the plane flew low compared to the other two birds I had already been on, and we had window seats for the first time, so I could see the ground and all the cars sliding across the endless black pavement lines. For some reason, this was far cooler than just looking at pictures on Google Earth. Google Earth is good for maps and its 3D at times, but this was all real, not just a computer screen. Perspective shifted to allow us to watch shadows shiver across roads as we buzzed over. I don't remember the last time I had been on a really low flying bird for so long. It was fun.
When we finally (I'm starting to get tired of this post...) got to Indy, somehow, that lost bag had made it too. In fact, looking at the tag that had supernaturally appeared on it, it had arrived several hours before we had. Certain proof of Divine providence. I have no other explanation.
More later, I have been having a very eventful life these last few days, life promises to be enjoyable and full for quite a while. So goodnight, Mom, the comment button should be just bellow this last line. (Amazing what Mothers are willing to do to communicate with lost sons... lol. I should see if I can get her to get a blog... If you have a blog, you should tell her that its not all that hard.)
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Renovating
I have really started to get serious. I have started cleaning up. An entire two days to clean up my entire life, stuff it into garbage or luggage bags, throw out most of it, keep the keepsakes, Ignore the piles of stuff that has accumulated in my room over the past twelve years of our living in Yemen. I haven't taken my guitar apart yet, I am putting that off as long as I can. The last time I took it apart to go to America I cried steadily for half an hour. I think I associate the guitar with my life... When its in pieces, I'm in for some trouble or something like that. At any rate, taking my guitar apart is a very emotional process for me.
I still haven't packed anything at this point in time, but I have cleaned out a drawer and two shelves that have been full, full, full for the past twelve years. In addition to that, I have burned all my downloaded iTunes music onto a gigantic pile of 6 CDs... I hadn't realized I had bought that much music until I started going through the purchased list in iTunes...
My last few days promise to be full. I haven't started a thing on my room, and it is piled high and deep with junk from my pack rat and at times creative existence. While rooting around it for a book of piano music that I had been practicing out of on guitar (long story) I discovered a fan that I had built from scrap several years ago and that Abe inadvertently ruined by stepping on the wire too many times. I loved that thing before it broke and I threw it on my top shelf some time a year and a half ago...
One last paragraph before I get off. This will freak some people out, make some people cheer and others gasp in despair. Others might not get it. I cut my hair. Ok, good night. Next post will probably be posted in the US of A. (for anyone interested, I fly on the 25th, so as in of well, actually now, mostly just one day from now.) I need to pack. And clean my room. And take my guitar apart. And say goodbye to a lot of people.
I still haven't packed anything at this point in time, but I have cleaned out a drawer and two shelves that have been full, full, full for the past twelve years. In addition to that, I have burned all my downloaded iTunes music onto a gigantic pile of 6 CDs... I hadn't realized I had bought that much music until I started going through the purchased list in iTunes...
My last few days promise to be full. I haven't started a thing on my room, and it is piled high and deep with junk from my pack rat and at times creative existence. While rooting around it for a book of piano music that I had been practicing out of on guitar (long story) I discovered a fan that I had built from scrap several years ago and that Abe inadvertently ruined by stepping on the wire too many times. I loved that thing before it broke and I threw it on my top shelf some time a year and a half ago...
One last paragraph before I get off. This will freak some people out, make some people cheer and others gasp in despair. Others might not get it. I cut my hair. Ok, good night. Next post will probably be posted in the US of A. (for anyone interested, I fly on the 25th, so as in of well, actually now, mostly just one day from now.) I need to pack. And clean my room. And take my guitar apart. And say goodbye to a lot of people.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Last Youth Group and a Glimpse of My Future
Tonight was my last youth group. I love my youth group. It would be hard to find a better batch of people anywhere. I'll probably be back at some point in the future, I'm not sure when, next Christmas is the soonest possibility I think. At any rate, they gave me a shirt that they had all signed, a card, and a certificate of commissioning. Somehow, all this is worth far more to me than my diploma and dunce hat & superman cape and all that.
At the moment I am importing all my lost cds that have been sitting in a drawer somewhere for eons past now. I know this sounds funny, but there is a solid logical reason they went missing, and another reason I found them again. They disappeared, because we had them all on our previous computer, and on my iPod (or so I thought). I found them all again when I went looking for a certain song: Thrive by Newsboys. An awesome song which I haven't heard to the best of my knowledge for more than a year. Don't ask how I remembered it. I did, went looking, and found this rack of cds that I don't have on me iPod. So I have some great new/old music, including the stuff I went looking for in the first place.
Tomorrow looks like it will be a full day. The plan is to wake up sometime about 11 am and head off to the old city with Jason and maybe Hannah. We'll see. The old city is something like exploring a well populated heated and lighted cave. There is little air to breathe, but there are many things to see and do as you wander between piles of exotic spices, raisins in 50 gallon barrels, sculptures of Yemeni houses, traditional clothing and knives, guns, gold, silver, paintings, camels, donkeys, salt, carefully piled on squares of cloth on the cobbled pavement. The best thing at the old city remains the firework section. I am a hopeless pyro. I haven't actually burned anything down yet, blown any fingers off, or burnt my fingers in the process, and I have enjoyed countless explosions.
After the trip to the old city, I come home to my open house. Apparently, no aspect of my past life will remain secret after this. I think mom is trying to do some sort of slide show of my life, and all the certificates of success or participation or anything else, medals for races or field events will be heaped in a great pile on my table some where for the world to see. Oh well. I'm leaving. It can't hurt anything at this stage... I hope.
Things I want to do before I go to America include going shooting. Shooting what you say? well, guns. Not at anything in particular, just for the experience. I hear tell its good fun. Lighting off a grenade or two would be fun as well for that matter. By the way: Thrive is fantastic. I'm listening to it as I write. Amazing song. I'll try to post it sometime in the near future. Being graduated does give you a little more time to do things.
At the moment I am importing all my lost cds that have been sitting in a drawer somewhere for eons past now. I know this sounds funny, but there is a solid logical reason they went missing, and another reason I found them again. They disappeared, because we had them all on our previous computer, and on my iPod (or so I thought). I found them all again when I went looking for a certain song: Thrive by Newsboys. An awesome song which I haven't heard to the best of my knowledge for more than a year. Don't ask how I remembered it. I did, went looking, and found this rack of cds that I don't have on me iPod. So I have some great new/old music, including the stuff I went looking for in the first place.
Tomorrow looks like it will be a full day. The plan is to wake up sometime about 11 am and head off to the old city with Jason and maybe Hannah. We'll see. The old city is something like exploring a well populated heated and lighted cave. There is little air to breathe, but there are many things to see and do as you wander between piles of exotic spices, raisins in 50 gallon barrels, sculptures of Yemeni houses, traditional clothing and knives, guns, gold, silver, paintings, camels, donkeys, salt, carefully piled on squares of cloth on the cobbled pavement. The best thing at the old city remains the firework section. I am a hopeless pyro. I haven't actually burned anything down yet, blown any fingers off, or burnt my fingers in the process, and I have enjoyed countless explosions.
After the trip to the old city, I come home to my open house. Apparently, no aspect of my past life will remain secret after this. I think mom is trying to do some sort of slide show of my life, and all the certificates of success or participation or anything else, medals for races or field events will be heaped in a great pile on my table some where for the world to see. Oh well. I'm leaving. It can't hurt anything at this stage... I hope.
Things I want to do before I go to America include going shooting. Shooting what you say? well, guns. Not at anything in particular, just for the experience. I hear tell its good fun. Lighting off a grenade or two would be fun as well for that matter. By the way: Thrive is fantastic. I'm listening to it as I write. Amazing song. I'll try to post it sometime in the near future. Being graduated does give you a little more time to do things.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Da Matrix
Yeah, I finally got around to finishing the Matrix with my mother. I don't think she liked it. Something to do with the language, the violence (which is one of the reasons I like it so much) and the brainbender effect (the other reason I love it.) Anyway, she said that she now feels like a good mom... for watching an incomprehensible movie with her teen... or some such thing.
I have a lot of free time on my hands during school hours, what with having only one class left: Calculus. I took a test today actually and passed, so I am now mostly finished with that as well. After school hours aren't quite so empty. My entire week is packed full of visits and things I have been wanting to do but haven't quite gotten around to doing yet. I will probably have one last play time with this berserk kid named Yuri who likes adrenaline almost as much as I do. The guy is a lot of fun to be around. Tonight I am busy designing a board game with my brother, and I may have a guitar session with my youth leader some time this week. My open house is Thursday from 4 to 6, and my last youth group session for quite a while is this Wednesday. So things are busy this week.
I have a lot of free time on my hands during school hours, what with having only one class left: Calculus. I took a test today actually and passed, so I am now mostly finished with that as well. After school hours aren't quite so empty. My entire week is packed full of visits and things I have been wanting to do but haven't quite gotten around to doing yet. I will probably have one last play time with this berserk kid named Yuri who likes adrenaline almost as much as I do. The guy is a lot of fun to be around. Tonight I am busy designing a board game with my brother, and I may have a guitar session with my youth leader some time this week. My open house is Thursday from 4 to 6, and my last youth group session for quite a while is this Wednesday. So things are busy this week.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Graju8shun
I r done graju8ed. I am told the ceremony was dull... But! I was prepared for the worst and brought my handy dandy iPod video with a brand spanking new movie on it: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
The day started off fairly well. I did almost nothing for the first five periods of the day or so. I came in with shorts on for the first time that year. Shorts and flip flops. I had convinced several people that I was going to graju8 in shorts and flip flops... I had the students who were coordinating the whole thing climbing the walls for a short time. That was worth watching. I think Yasmine was ready to kill me at one point in time.
So two o'clock finally rolls around. I'm wearing a tie and shoes, and Yasmine is ready to kill me again for stressing her out like that. We waddle our way on stage in our retarded costumes. The super man capes had been made here, and none of them really fit anyone. I think they were all to short, with maybe one exception. We looked kinda funny. So. On stage. Mr. Blakie, our Principal, winds up for a speech. I wind down to watch my movie.
After graju8shun, we go home, and I tried to finish my movie, but I had to help with making supper. When we had finished eating, we headed out for youth group. Today is the day that they start to let all the little kids in to see if they like youth group. A sort of trial run you might say. There are a lot of little kids coming this year, including my brother Peter! I can't believe it. I really can't.
Youth group wound down, and so I headed off to my graju8shun party. Which was at the Movenpick hotel. High class: very high class. The son of the Yemeni president was in my graju8ing class, and he decided to pay for the whole thing. Nice. At any rate, the party was open to graju8s as well as all secondary students. Not a teacher or adult in sight. Fun you say? I think not. The music was so loud my ears are still throbbing, and the lights were off. If there was any socializing, or even any human contact, I missed it in the dark and noise. I knew most of the songs I am sorry to say, none of the ones with lyrics were any good... I actually have most of the songs that were played, but they are all from the boring side of my hours of dance on my iPod. At least one person was chain smoking, while several other people just had an occasional smoke. My clothes stink as a result.
I don't understand parties like that. If the purpose is to get laid, all well and good, have fun, leave me out. Otherwise, why would you want to go ruin your ears for music that you own, and can reproduce more accurately at home at more polite levels? You can't talk, you can't see, you can dance, but nobody was doing that really... And these "parties" are common here. Or fairly common at any rate. If some one understands these things, I would appreciate an explanation.
The day started off fairly well. I did almost nothing for the first five periods of the day or so. I came in with shorts on for the first time that year. Shorts and flip flops. I had convinced several people that I was going to graju8 in shorts and flip flops... I had the students who were coordinating the whole thing climbing the walls for a short time. That was worth watching. I think Yasmine was ready to kill me at one point in time.
So two o'clock finally rolls around. I'm wearing a tie and shoes, and Yasmine is ready to kill me again for stressing her out like that. We waddle our way on stage in our retarded costumes. The super man capes had been made here, and none of them really fit anyone. I think they were all to short, with maybe one exception. We looked kinda funny. So. On stage. Mr. Blakie, our Principal, winds up for a speech. I wind down to watch my movie.
After graju8shun, we go home, and I tried to finish my movie, but I had to help with making supper. When we had finished eating, we headed out for youth group. Today is the day that they start to let all the little kids in to see if they like youth group. A sort of trial run you might say. There are a lot of little kids coming this year, including my brother Peter! I can't believe it. I really can't.
Youth group wound down, and so I headed off to my graju8shun party. Which was at the Movenpick hotel. High class: very high class. The son of the Yemeni president was in my graju8ing class, and he decided to pay for the whole thing. Nice. At any rate, the party was open to graju8s as well as all secondary students. Not a teacher or adult in sight. Fun you say? I think not. The music was so loud my ears are still throbbing, and the lights were off. If there was any socializing, or even any human contact, I missed it in the dark and noise. I knew most of the songs I am sorry to say, none of the ones with lyrics were any good... I actually have most of the songs that were played, but they are all from the boring side of my hours of dance on my iPod. At least one person was chain smoking, while several other people just had an occasional smoke. My clothes stink as a result.
I don't understand parties like that. If the purpose is to get laid, all well and good, have fun, leave me out. Otherwise, why would you want to go ruin your ears for music that you own, and can reproduce more accurately at home at more polite levels? You can't talk, you can't see, you can dance, but nobody was doing that really... And these "parties" are common here. Or fairly common at any rate. If some one understands these things, I would appreciate an explanation.
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Done with Research
And I got a B. Not bad. The whole episode was quite intense, and I would never have gotten through without God. I discovered something this last week: God answers prayer, what do you know! The project went from being a 17 minute boring presentation, to being 28 minutes (the minimum was 25 minutes) and grade worthy.
There were several events that really allowed me to get everything done on time. First was the fact that I was sort of last. I say sort of because there was one girl who goes after me, but she didn't do her presentation this week because she had special clearance to do it the week after when her parents were back in the country. The week leading up to the presentation had interesting occurrences, such as some of the stricter teachers in the school giving me free periods to work on my presentation, and some teachers just getting sick resulting in free periods to do my work. In the end, I had everything done, but it wouldn't have happened without Divine intervention.
There were several events that really allowed me to get everything done on time. First was the fact that I was sort of last. I say sort of because there was one girl who goes after me, but she didn't do her presentation this week because she had special clearance to do it the week after when her parents were back in the country. The week leading up to the presentation had interesting occurrences, such as some of the stricter teachers in the school giving me free periods to work on my presentation, and some teachers just getting sick resulting in free periods to do my work. In the end, I had everything done, but it wouldn't have happened without Divine intervention.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Terrorism...
I have my research presentation tomorrow... Talle knows exactly what this entails, having done it almost exactly a year ago now... Prayer would be appreciated, cause I'm really freaking out. Its a 25 minute long presentation that people in the research class have been working on for most of the year. I get one chance to pass it. I really want to pass it.
On a slightly different topic, mom went out and had me measured for having a suit tailored to me. To all you Americans out there, this is going to sound really extravagant, but the total cost only came up to the equivalent of 40 USD, and had it not been tailored, mom said it would have cost something like 200 in the States... not that I actually know anything about it. I get to wear it tomorrow for my presentation...
On a slightly different topic, mom went out and had me measured for having a suit tailored to me. To all you Americans out there, this is going to sound really extravagant, but the total cost only came up to the equivalent of 40 USD, and had it not been tailored, mom said it would have cost something like 200 in the States... not that I actually know anything about it. I get to wear it tomorrow for my presentation...
Monday, May 21, 2007
Graham Goes Live
Yep. I had my first concert last night. It was horrible. Very horrible. Yeah. Asyraf (this awesome Malaysian kid) and I composed the entire band. It was just the two of us, and we both played guitar, so it sounded kinda bad. No drums, no bass, no nothin, just two guitars and me singing. Not a treat, believe me. At any rate, it was a song I had written. You think I would know it fairly well by the time I got on stage, but you would be wrong. It was a song about procrastination, and believe you me, it was utterly a child of the aforesaid crime, so I didn't know it as well as I should have. So I get on stage, I strike a chord, and we're off. First verse, so far so good. Mic system was a little weird, but we are in Yemen, we must make some allowances. This is where the story goes down hill. The chorus started well enough, but I had written three choruses that only differed by one line, and somehow I sang the second chorus. Crud. Oh well, next verse went ok, but then I sang the first chorus. Ok, fair enough, the order is off, but it doesn't make that much difference. So then I am trying to remember how the third verse goes, and I suddenly wandered off on the riff that was supposed to go after the third chorus and before the final chorus... Yeah, Asyraf wasn't so happy with me I imagine. So then that gets done and I have remembered the third verse and then I sang the final chorus, played the riff where it should have been, and my guitar dies. I hadn't had a single problem with that cable ever before, but it decides to die on me right there of all places. So we start in on the final chorus, which was supposed to be the first one, but for some reason I got the second one again, despite the fact that by that time I wasn't even playing guitar to distract my thinking... So that was the catastrophe that was my first concert. Interesting that I made my own concert before actually going to a real one... Quick update on my life: I get the rest of the week off! Yeah! and I joined facebook. The security stuff is rather disturbing... Legally allows them to give my contact information to the highest bidder while denying that they will.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
AP tests
I have survived two very intense days. Well actually the second one isn't quite finished, but I doubt that anything really strenuous is going to happen between now and the time I go to bed. I could be wrong but I doubt it.
Yesterday was AP calc. Long, tiring, intense, and hard. Maybe a 3, hopefully a 4. Could go either way. Today was AP lit and composition. Probably a 3. I wasn't nearly as well prepared for that class as I was for the calc test. For calc we were assigned 4 sets of free response papers and three sets of multiple choice problems. For lit, we glanced at one set of multiple choice problems without actually having access to the answers or explanations and we did maybe 2 sets of free response papers before hand only checking one of our essays. This past year I had homework every day with possibly 10 exceptions. AP lit we had to read several books. No discussion time or feedback or homework or anything. The only reason that I might get a decent score on the lit test is because I have studied English for the past 18 and a half years now while I have only had one year of Calc. Bah. I don't like my lit teacher. Oh well. That's over with now so I should have an extra 2 periods free come the start of the new week.
Yesterday was AP calc. Long, tiring, intense, and hard. Maybe a 3, hopefully a 4. Could go either way. Today was AP lit and composition. Probably a 3. I wasn't nearly as well prepared for that class as I was for the calc test. For calc we were assigned 4 sets of free response papers and three sets of multiple choice problems. For lit, we glanced at one set of multiple choice problems without actually having access to the answers or explanations and we did maybe 2 sets of free response papers before hand only checking one of our essays. This past year I had homework every day with possibly 10 exceptions. AP lit we had to read several books. No discussion time or feedback or homework or anything. The only reason that I might get a decent score on the lit test is because I have studied English for the past 18 and a half years now while I have only had one year of Calc. Bah. I don't like my lit teacher. Oh well. That's over with now so I should have an extra 2 periods free come the start of the new week.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
A Short Update
We now have a house. 1305 S. 18th St. Lafayette, Indiana, 47905. 1300 feet above, and 1000 below ground. Not that I have ever seen it or anything, but these are the statistics they feed me, so I figure somebody must be interested in that kind of thing. This is good because we will now hopefully be allowed to be domicile in Indiana which will allow me to get an Indiana drivers licence and hopefully get through Purdue at about half the price.
Other things going on in my life at the moment are three different classes. The first is AP calculus for which I test on Wednesday. Secondly is my AP literature and composition test. Judging by the quality of work on my blog I may be in some deal of trouble on that account. Thirdly and possibly most urgently, I have a practice presentation for my senior project tomorrow and I have been horribly lax in preparing for it. At any rate, prayer would be appreciated for all three of these events.
Other things going on in my life at the moment are three different classes. The first is AP calculus for which I test on Wednesday. Secondly is my AP literature and composition test. Judging by the quality of work on my blog I may be in some deal of trouble on that account. Thirdly and possibly most urgently, I have a practice presentation for my senior project tomorrow and I have been horribly lax in preparing for it. At any rate, prayer would be appreciated for all three of these events.
Monday, April 30, 2007
APs comming up
As if I had nothing better to post about. Anyway, I have calculus and literature coming up May 8 and 9 I think. One of those days is MY weekend, but after those are over, I should have plenty of time to relax and have fun, or so I tell myself. I will probably wind up working harder than ever. Oh well. More importantly and despite the title, Dad is leaving for the States tonight. He is going to the airport in about 30 minutes, but the plane doesn't take off until after midnight, so he technically leaves tomorrow. He is planning on buying a house somewhere close to Purdue University... hopefully. Anyways, that is the plan. He is taking most of my science fiction collection... All I really have left here that I want to take to the States is my guitar. I imagine that when it comes down to cleaning out I am going to run over more memories than I can handle, and will wind up cracking up all over the place, but I will deal with that when it happens. I haven't really had to say goodbye to a place before, and I may as a result want to bring my shrapnel collection and all my art supplies as well as books and books of random creativity that I have somehow managed to fill with all sorts of abstract things that are about as organized as this sentence is becoming... but again, that is then. Meanwhile, I have APs to freak out about. Prayer would be appreciated.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
You Will Never Guess...
I was quarterback today. All of a sudden. Surprised? I at least pretended I was QB anyways, in all reality, Andry was the QB cause I was so bad at it. The French team QB wasn't as bad as I was, but he can be excused on the grounds that he isn't an American. I guess Andry figured that as one of two Americans on the team, I should be good at football. Wrong. So I handed off to him and then blocked for him. It worked. We won. 24 to 0. Not very fair teams I guess, even though Andry's brother (who is the French team's coach) played on their team and we never had even one practice. He is a terrifying person to have trying to kill you. His shirt said I'm not short: I am built low to the ground for improved speed and accuracy. He did everything his shirt said he could. In addition to that, he could bull his way through our line and destroy me. I had about 2 seconds between the time I got the ball to the time I had to get rid of it. Needless to say the result was funny. Also, I had a bunch of people who had never hiked a ball before in their life as linemen, and I had several balls go over my head, and another bounce directly off of it. But this sounds like excuses. In reality, none of us really knew what we were doing, but we had a great time doing it.
I have still not finished the Matrix with my mother.
I have still not finished the Matrix with my mother.
Sunday, April 08, 2007
My Manic Weekend
I still haven't finished the Matrix with my mom. She hasn't acted like she really enjoyed it, but then I guess that was sorta to be expected. I will give you an update when we finish if I remember. Anyway, these last two days have been jam packed full of all sorts of insane activities. Yesterday started the day off by going to the Sheraton (the only swimming pool my mom likes in Sana'a) with most of the youth group. I don't like swimming much, but we played water polo, ping pong, sat in the steam room and the sauna, and had quasi wrestling matches the purpose of which was to get as many people other than yourself into the pool while you yourself remained outside. Fun. Except my hair gets in my eyes when it's wet and then I can't see anything.
After the pool, we all went to the Erskine's house, an involved family that hosts the youth group, has great kids, great parents, and are from the UK. Mr. Erskine teaches me Calculus. I think it's my favorite class this year. I have never done such insane things with numbers before in my life. Very very fun though, provided you get at least 2% of it... which I barely do. Anyway, we painted Easter eggs for the Easter egg hunt which was today. Our fellowship traditionally has a sunrise service (to stay awake I pump up on caffeine and techno) with an Easter egg hunt for the kids afterwards which is run by the youth group. However, remembering my pre youth group days I never really remember reading any of the eggs, so I stopped making serious eggs that say things like "he is risen" and filled most (only 2 exceptions) of my eggs with interesting messages like "call me bob" and "throw this egg" I also (this will amuse a select few) made a "Luke was here" egg complete with arrow and dot. I managed (with the help of Jason) to work out the bio hazard symbol, after successfully dying the inside of my radioactive egg green. Fun.
Meanwhile, it is the middle of the rainy season here in Yemen, which means that half of the city gets rain every day for two weeks, and the other half gets rain maybe twice a week for three weeks. Very strange, but you get used to it. Needless to say, it was raining. Not hard, but steadily. We usually carpool with two other families, but everyone was busy so we had to take a taxi. We got a new one, but all sorts of things were busted on the inside for some reason and so the inside of the windows was all fogged up. (A side note: the fog stuff is called nja'a. Learn something everyday.) Anyway, we all got out at Hannah's house (one of the girl's we carpool with) and decided that we should all just run home from there. In the rain. So we did. For some obscure reason, by the time we got home, I was feeling hyper. Hyper enough to feel inspired to write a song with chorus of "I am wired/eight red bull's/ I'm wired!" haven't actually gotten around to writing it, (not that I have ever had eight red bull's) but I think it might have potential.
After the pool, we all went to the Erskine's house, an involved family that hosts the youth group, has great kids, great parents, and are from the UK. Mr. Erskine teaches me Calculus. I think it's my favorite class this year. I have never done such insane things with numbers before in my life. Very very fun though, provided you get at least 2% of it... which I barely do. Anyway, we painted Easter eggs for the Easter egg hunt which was today. Our fellowship traditionally has a sunrise service (to stay awake I pump up on caffeine and techno) with an Easter egg hunt for the kids afterwards which is run by the youth group. However, remembering my pre youth group days I never really remember reading any of the eggs, so I stopped making serious eggs that say things like "he is risen" and filled most (only 2 exceptions) of my eggs with interesting messages like "call me bob" and "throw this egg" I also (this will amuse a select few) made a "Luke was here" egg complete with arrow and dot. I managed (with the help of Jason) to work out the bio hazard symbol, after successfully dying the inside of my radioactive egg green. Fun.
Meanwhile, it is the middle of the rainy season here in Yemen, which means that half of the city gets rain every day for two weeks, and the other half gets rain maybe twice a week for three weeks. Very strange, but you get used to it. Needless to say, it was raining. Not hard, but steadily. We usually carpool with two other families, but everyone was busy so we had to take a taxi. We got a new one, but all sorts of things were busted on the inside for some reason and so the inside of the windows was all fogged up. (A side note: the fog stuff is called nja'a. Learn something everyday.) Anyway, we all got out at Hannah's house (one of the girl's we carpool with) and decided that we should all just run home from there. In the rain. So we did. For some obscure reason, by the time we got home, I was feeling hyper. Hyper enough to feel inspired to write a song with chorus of "I am wired/eight red bull's/ I'm wired!" haven't actually gotten around to writing it, (not that I have ever had eight red bull's) but I think it might have potential.
Friday, March 30, 2007
About to do Something
... Dangerous... theoretically... maybe... um... yeah. What am I about to do? I am about to watch the Matrix with my dear mother who already knows that its my favorite movie, and I might be beheaded for liking something that is as vulgar and violent as it is. This is spoken from her view point not mine by the way. I hope that she doesn't have any informers reading this blog... cause I'm pretty sure she doesn't read it first person. Anyway, I will give you an update on the situation of my headedness or headlessness after the ordeal. I managed to talk her into watching it, now I am rethinking it... Oh well, can't back out now, time for bravado... or the lack there of depending on the situation... life is just full of these little uncertainties isn't it?
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Me Bro got a Blog!
cool. Very cool. I'm gonna have to get him to post some more on it. I put it in the links. His name is Abraham if you don't know him. He has a great post up about his trip to bab al mandab. More soon.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
On Philosophy and other stuff...
I think I am a connoisseur. Of rock. I like and admire all sorts of things in music that drive my parents and friends and siblings, and everyone else as well for that matter, up the wall. I just read a SF short story/novella on the nature of connoisseurs, time traveling and the human spirit. Brilliant piece of work, only problem is that I don't remember who wrote it or what it was called. I have it upstairs, If anyone is really interested, I can dig it out for you. At any rate, one of the themes was that a connoisseur is someone who can really enjoy something that the proletariat can't, or rather, doesn't. Now however, we are all doused in different things to different levels, so while I am a connoisseur of rock, I can't stand other things, such as the twentieth century classic novel. People must like them, 'cause they're classics, but somehow when I read I experience, not just hear, and most of twentieth century literature is gloom, doom, despair, and agony, which I can't say I like.
I doubt I will start a major trend or anything here, but I want to post a list and see if anyone else has come up with a list anything like it. Ok:
Interesting things I have done while the electricity is out:
Burnt my hair (not intentionally)
studied computer programming by candlelight... (didn't notice anything ironic for a while)
made strike on box candles (by wrapping matches in melted wax from candles)
Studied AP chemistry (I felt like an alchemist fooling with archaic symbols by candlelight)
to end on a happy note, I CAN DO IMPLICIT INTEGRATION FINALLY! Yeah! happy. That may be the single hardest math concept I have tried to date...
I doubt I will start a major trend or anything here, but I want to post a list and see if anyone else has come up with a list anything like it. Ok:
Interesting things I have done while the electricity is out:
Burnt my hair (not intentionally)
studied computer programming by candlelight... (didn't notice anything ironic for a while)
made strike on box candles (by wrapping matches in melted wax from candles)
Studied AP chemistry (I felt like an alchemist fooling with archaic symbols by candlelight)
to end on a happy note, I CAN DO IMPLICIT INTEGRATION FINALLY! Yeah! happy. That may be the single hardest math concept I have tried to date...
Friday, March 02, 2007
The Track Meet
Yes. Last Wednesday, seven or eight big schools emptied out into the city stadium, and then chucked flat rubber things around, grunted under the weight of canon ball things, went flying over bars, jumping into sand pits, and running in circles. To the outside observer, we were all bonkers. However, to the carefully trained insiders eye, it was all carefully controlled chaos. It was the city track meet.
At any rate, I helped pile things into a car to take out to the stadium, helped set up all the high jump equipment, rolled shots and discii across the soccer field in preparation for the big day. Then the chaos began. Abe took first place in shot put in his age category and second in discuss. He may have taken other things, but I don't know. I took first in discuss, second in high jump, and third in the relay. I was rather disappointed with myself in high jump. I only cleared 165 cm this year, when I had cleared 170 last year. Ah well, such is life. I also competed in shot, but I didn't place.
We all came home at the end of the day, happy, hungry, thirsty and sun burnt. There was not one instance of cheating reported to the best of my knowledge, which was remarkable. Unfortunately, SIS (my school) lost the trophy to Yemen Modern School, but we lost a lot of brilliant athletes when the seniors graduated last year. I think we would have won the relay had Tarik been there, as well as several other sprints. Additionally, Hazim could have done something about some of the long distance events, and Jeremy could have put me in my place with Discus. We only had two really serious female athletes as well, which is where YMS made over half of their points. Only one or two more girls would have made a big difference on the number of points we had at the end of the day. I doubt we would have won even so, but it would have been much closer than it was.
At any rate, I helped pile things into a car to take out to the stadium, helped set up all the high jump equipment, rolled shots and discii across the soccer field in preparation for the big day. Then the chaos began. Abe took first place in shot put in his age category and second in discuss. He may have taken other things, but I don't know. I took first in discuss, second in high jump, and third in the relay. I was rather disappointed with myself in high jump. I only cleared 165 cm this year, when I had cleared 170 last year. Ah well, such is life. I also competed in shot, but I didn't place.
We all came home at the end of the day, happy, hungry, thirsty and sun burnt. There was not one instance of cheating reported to the best of my knowledge, which was remarkable. Unfortunately, SIS (my school) lost the trophy to Yemen Modern School, but we lost a lot of brilliant athletes when the seniors graduated last year. I think we would have won the relay had Tarik been there, as well as several other sprints. Additionally, Hazim could have done something about some of the long distance events, and Jeremy could have put me in my place with Discus. We only had two really serious female athletes as well, which is where YMS made over half of their points. Only one or two more girls would have made a big difference on the number of points we had at the end of the day. I doubt we would have won even so, but it would have been much closer than it was.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
100! (And other things)
This is very cool: post one hundred. *Bells and chimes and angels singing hallelujah and fireworks and other stuff along those lines* I have also been attacked by a very large and very vicious army in imperia online... 1000 troops I think... not sure there, the read out was this bizarre mix of Arabic, Chinese, English and other bizarre characters and numbers. One of the numbers was 1000. Ok on to more interesting topics. A random fact of life: cat + laser = fun. A tad sadistic, but highly amusing. There are some really pretty animated fractal flames at image savant, I linked it, you really should go there. Amazing stuff, but not for slow Internet, unless like me you just can't stay away from the stuff. Its so... amazingly... beautiful!
To relate a small experience or two from the day. Tonight, I had a mountain of homework. Several evil teachers ganged up on me and decided that they would try to kill me with sleep deprivation. It failed haha! I stoked up on techno (the really really fast kind) and I was somehow able to manipulate my iPod, read my text book and still do my calc homework at about 2 normal speed. I doubt I can do that many times, but it sure was amazing tonight. I also got physics out of the way as well as government. By my teacher's admission, I probably shouldn't be taking the class, but if I drop it I have to leave the honors program, so I won't. A note to those who don't know me well: I hate politics. The only excusable instance of politics is in Frank Herbert's Dune. Amazing stuff that, somehow I have to read conversations through multiple times to understand half of whats going on, but the thorough dousing in it has (I like to think) made me slightly more subtle. Jeffrey and Jeremy are going to laugh in my face here, but then to quote Marvin the depressed robot; (not part of anything Frank Herbert) "Its part of the shape of the universe."
Finally, Mr. George (my lit teacher, notorious for not being very good at much of anything) pulled an awesome stunt today. I asked leave to print off an assignment that I had done, and was granted leave to do so. So I printed it off and handed it to him. He put it down in front of him, and had lost it and was asking me for it again by the end of the period. Fun fun. I made him look for it (politely I think... hope) and he eventually found it again, but all the same, I think he just set a new record for speed of teacher loosing assignment in this school at any rate. Ok, I have waxed loquacious enough, I am now sated with penning my own existence to the Internet.
To relate a small experience or two from the day. Tonight, I had a mountain of homework. Several evil teachers ganged up on me and decided that they would try to kill me with sleep deprivation. It failed haha! I stoked up on techno (the really really fast kind) and I was somehow able to manipulate my iPod, read my text book and still do my calc homework at about 2 normal speed. I doubt I can do that many times, but it sure was amazing tonight. I also got physics out of the way as well as government. By my teacher's admission, I probably shouldn't be taking the class, but if I drop it I have to leave the honors program, so I won't. A note to those who don't know me well: I hate politics. The only excusable instance of politics is in Frank Herbert's Dune. Amazing stuff that, somehow I have to read conversations through multiple times to understand half of whats going on, but the thorough dousing in it has (I like to think) made me slightly more subtle. Jeffrey and Jeremy are going to laugh in my face here, but then to quote Marvin the depressed robot; (not part of anything Frank Herbert) "Its part of the shape of the universe."
Finally, Mr. George (my lit teacher, notorious for not being very good at much of anything) pulled an awesome stunt today. I asked leave to print off an assignment that I had done, and was granted leave to do so. So I printed it off and handed it to him. He put it down in front of him, and had lost it and was asking me for it again by the end of the period. Fun fun. I made him look for it (politely I think... hope) and he eventually found it again, but all the same, I think he just set a new record for speed of teacher loosing assignment in this school at any rate. Ok, I have waxed loquacious enough, I am now sated with penning my own existence to the Internet.
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