Got back from Governor's School for the Humanities a little over a week-and-a-half ago. It was so much fun. At the beginning, the staff members were all like, "By the end of the month, you will not want to leave." And I was thinking, "Yeah, yeah, sure." But then, I ended up being completely predictable and not wanting to leave by the fourth week. I'm not going to write a whole bunch about it, because I'm not in much of a write-y mood, but I had a great time. My classes were awesome and I learned a lot, but it wouldn't have been so great if it weren't for the people there. Anyway, I am very glad that I was given an experience like that. The way that I think about and approach things has changed in small ways, and that's pretty cool, considering that GSH took place in less than a month.

I finally got my AP scores back. I was very pleased to see that I got 5's for both U.S. history and English language. I'm actually starting to not mind the College Board and their stupid tests too much (I absolutely refuse to pay them extra money to give me my scores early, though.. that's ca-razy).

I've been trying to read Frankenstein, and it's actually good, despite the fact that I was completely not looking forward to it.

I've been all hermit-ish this summer, except for being at Girls State and GSH. I just might possibly be the worst when it comes to returning phone calls or not making them in the first place or emailing to keep in touch with people. If you think that includes you, then I apologize for my passiveness.

Hmm.. I'll try to write more when I'm feeling more verbose. Later guys.

Many thanks to Aadel, Bryan, Allison, Jesse, Rebecca, Kinjal, Molly, and Larry for humoring me with my little recommendation survey.

Exactly seventeen years ago today, I entered this world, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (off-topic--who came up with that expression, anyway?). Yes, folks, it’s true --today’s my birthday. No school today, so I unfortunately couldn’t celebrate it with my wonderful peers and classmates. However, I did get to sleep in, and that was fabulous. I haven’t really done much else today, besides going out to eat with my mom, brother, and my brother’s girlfriend tonight. I got the book The World According to Mister Rogers, a t-shirt that has a picture of Mister Rogers that says “You are special” (notice the weird Mister Rogers theme.. my mom’s big on gift themes, I guess), and some other little things, like Burt’s Bees lip balm and chocolate. My mom also left some purple tulips in my room before leaving for work today, and they’re gorgeous. I also got a pink t-shirt that says, “Lost: Ruby slipper [etc.].” It’s cute and sort of Wizard of Oz-ish, but it’s almost a little too “Princess”/”Don’t hate me cuz I’m beautiful; hate me cuz your boyfriend thinks I am” for my taste. I may end up returning that one. I guess when my mom asked me to name specific things that I wanted for my birthday, I should’ve actually given her some ideas. It’s still fun to be surprised and see what my mom saw fittin’ to give me for my birthday. But enough about gifts… I had a nice birthday. It was kinda anti-climactic, but I was able to relax, and sometimes that’s truly the best gift you can give yourself… yup.

Since I last wrote in here, much has happened to me! Actually, that’s false. School has been pretty normal. The weekend before last, I went to the Model UN conference. That was really fun. My resolution on tobacco control from India’s point of view had been chosen for the docket of resolutions that were supposed to be debated that weekend in my committee’s meetings. The problem with that was that I was completely unprepared, and the resolution was really vague and didn’t really resolve to do anything against tobacco control. So I did a little bit of internet research once I got there so that I wouldn’t sound like too much of a moron when the diehard Model UNers would inevitably swoop down upon me and rip my resolution to shreds like a pack of vultures. My resolution ended up failing (even I didn’t vote in favor of it), but, all in all, I did hone my speaking skills a little, and I learned more about how the United Nations actually works. Besides the actual Model UN stuff, I had a lot of fun as well, doing the typical school trip kind of stuff. Elizabeth and I ended up with a hotel room with just us, and it was very spacious and accommodating, which was nice. Anyway, Model UN is a lot of fun... if any of you have ever been interested in doing it, you should look into it.

Then, last weekend, I went to the student council convention. That was also fun. We had to listen to a few motivational speaker-ish people… one even said something to the effect of, “Hopefully, you will take away what you learned this weekend and apply it to your life. And when you face obstacles in your life, you will be able to stop and say, ‘Hey, I learned this at TASC Convention.’” Yeah, kinda lame stuff. Our school group was split up for one of the days into other groups, so I got to know a girl from Elizabethan a little. It’s always cool to meet people from other places and get a little bit of their perspectives, even if I’m not always the most outgoing person in situations like that. We got to take a tour of the Mayfield dairy, and I got my picture taken with Scotty Mayfield!.. or, rather, his cardboard cutout. The picture looks like it’s actually him, though. I get more of a kick out of that than I probably should. Oh well. The only downside of the trip was the motel we stayed in. It wasn’t extremely gross, but it certainly wasn’t the Hilton, which is what we stayed at for Model UN. Hannah and I were in a room, so we got our own beds and it was spacious, but the room kind of smelled like a hospital or nursing home, and my comforter had a big brown hole in it. Heh, anyway, I survived, and hopefully nobody caught any diseases or anything of the like from the motel conditions.

I think Governor’s School letters of acception/rejection will be sent out this week. I’m a bit anxious to see whether or not I got in. I’m not so apprehensive about the School for International Studies, since I got into it last year. I do think it would be funny if I got rejected, though, simply because I’m all overconfident about getting into that one. I also applied to the School for the Humanities; that’s the one that I’m not so sure about. I didn’t begin working on that application until the day that it was due, and my writing samples were pretty mediocre. Granted, usually, when I think I did poorly on something, other people seem to think it’s good, and vice versa. Hopefully that will be true in the case of Gov. School for the Humanities, because I don’t know what my chances are of getting in, considering the state of my application. Oh well, though.. whatever the results are, I’ll deal with it. If I don’t get into Governor’s School, then I can go to M-Fuge, which would be great as well. Regardless of how that turns out, I absolutely hope to be able to go to J-Camp, a journalism camp for minority students, later this summer. Yeah, so I’m not a minority student, but the website says that they don’t limit applicants based on ethnic origin. Only 40 students from around the nation are chosen, and, out of those kids, a very small percentage will be white, so my chances of being chosen are pretty slim. But, dang, I can’t help it that I’m white.

There’s a bet going on amongst the kids in my journalism class; everyone has something that they’re not allowed to do during classtime until spring break. If we don’t keep up our end of the bargain, then we have to pay a quarter each time we do that thing. Mine is that I’m not allowed to use big words (words made up of over ten letters, to be exact). I’ve had to pay $.50 already, for using “strenuously” and some other word that I’ve already forgotten. I now find myself counting the letters of the words that I’m about to say before actually saying them. Heh, it’s actually pretty annoying. But apparently it gets on my fellow staff members’ nerves to have to listen to big words, so I’m determined to watch what I say in there. Gotta love those crazy journalism kids and their opposition to enlarging their vocabulary.

Yesterday, after school, I went to the Young Democrats meeting. Tonight, my brother’s girlfriend was saying that the majority of kids in high school don’t really yet know which political party they want to be affiliated with, and, while I agree with that and am sort of in the same boat, I think that the club will definitely be beneficial to the student body in that it will hopefully accomplish its aims of educating students about their options and encouraging all students who are of voting age to register to vote. While I’m not the biggest supporter ever of the Democratic party (but you're definitely not going to see me at the Young Republicans meetings anytime soon.. heh, sorry, Republicans), I do think that the formation of YD is definitely a positive thing for our school. Anyway, the next meeting is next Wednesday after school if any of you faithful readers are interested.

Last night, I went to see The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) with Bryan and half of the SHS sophomore class. It was pretty entertaining, so go if you can. The last show is tomorrow night at 7:30 at the Center for the Arts.

Well, I’ve run out of things to write about, so I will bid you all farewell. Kudos to anyone who read any or all of it.

I would write an actual entry with boring updates and all, but I'm trying to be productive and write several different papers for school (bleh) tonight, so...

Please recommend to me:
1. A movie.
2. A book.
3. A musical artist, song, or album.
4. An amusing internet site.
5. An interesting quote. (funny, inspirational, whatever)

Any and all recommendations welcome. I'm interested to see what y'all have to suggest. Hope everyone has a nice Sunday night.

So basically I'm trying to delay having to do my pre-cal homework by writing in here. Fundamental identities are annoying.

I received my final semester average for AP online English today, and I'm pleased to be able to say that it did not tarnish my GPA. That's okay, though; I can always look forward to that next year with whichever AP classes I'll be taking (I'm particularly fearful of AP Calculus, as well as AP Physics, which we probably won't have anyway, so I dunno why I'm even considering that). Anyway, this semester in English we get to study the relation of language to the media, politics, and religion, etc. So call me a nerd, but I'm rather excited about it.

The girls are bowling tomorrow in the district tournaments.. whoo. Our only real competition (and I am not bragging about my skills whatsoever when I say that; we just happen to have some really good girl bowlers on our team not named Jenna) is WCHS, which I believe spends time and resources during the summer break to take bowling lessons as a team. Yeah, so I'll have to get into full hardcore bowling mode tomorrow to do my part to beat them. Although, the last match that we had against them, I ended up going against their best bowler that no one else ever wants to bowl. That basically wasted their best bowler on our worst (a.k.a. me) and allowed for us to get points elsewhere. So I guess it should hurt to be a pawn like that, but, what can I say? I'll gladly take one for the team. It's not like I can blame our coach for doing that... the other team might have thought it cowardly, but I thought it was rather clever. When you get down to the true basics of life (i.e. birth, death, love, bowling), it's all about strategery.

And I guess I should mention that I'm taking down the mullet pic, since it seems to have such an adverse effect on Faye, lol. So up goes Christopher Walken.

I have a church retreat coming up this Friday, which is always fun. I'm missing a somewhat annoying amount of school this week and next, though, particularly in my last two classes, which are the hardest.

Edit: Goodness.. amidst all the inane stuff, I didn't even mention Ellen Dent. I am truly sorry for anyone who knew and loved Ellen. The feelings from my cousin's car accident are still fresh in my mind, and I know that it feels so horrible to lose someone close to you like that. I can remember the days after Jonathan's death, of coming back to school for the first day and spending most the day in the library office, either crying or sleeping, because I couldn't stop myself from crying in class. I feel so much for the people who were close friends with Ellen. My youth group still hasn't really recovered from Jonathan's death; in fact, it sorta disintegrated for a while. So I really feel for the kids at Belle Aire. Whenever someone (particularly a young person) dies, you hear all great stuff about them, how they were beautiful inside and out and always had a smile and were Christlike examples for their peers and such. Sometimes the cynic inside me wonders if that's always true or if people just say it because the person is gone. But I know that that was true of Jonathan, and, although I didn't know Ellen, it seems to be true in her case as well.

And so the wonderful winter break draws to an end...

It was a good break. I'll miss it. I had fun. I relaxed. I got through the first semester of AP online English and its plethora of tedious writing assignments. I even managed to put a desk in my room, so that I may now do homework while sitting at a nice, tidy work area.

My right eye is really sore right now. I'm not really sure why, though. And my neck is hurting. I guess I'm just in a whiney mood. I got some new glasses earlier this past week, which makes me rather giddy, because I haven't had a new pair of glasses in almost four years. They had to order them, though, so I won't get to pick them up until Tuesday afternoon, so that doesn't really help me with the whole having-to-wear-contacts-when-my-eye-is-hurting problem. My eyesight has gotten even worse, unfortunately, but my optometrist did tell me I have great-looking corneas. Been waiting my whole life for someone to tell me that...

How is it that infomercials are so insanely persuasive? Thanks to infomercials, I currently want a Split-Ender, a Tony Little GazelleElite, a Germ Terminator toothbrush steamer, a Ron Popeil Showtime Rotisserie Oven, a Mari Windsor Pilates DVD set, and.. I'm sure there are others that I'm forgetting. I especially would like the Split-Ender, which is this contraption that trims, like, 1/8 of an inch of your hair, thus ridding you of all your split end-related hair problems. Yes, sounds a little risky doing that to your hair, but, somehow, the infomercial does a good job of convincing me that a Split-Ender would make my hair look *and* feel healthier. And recently I've been noticing that I have many split ends. In all actuality, I just need a haircut. BUT a Split-Ender would be nice, too. And I'll probably never purchase any of these products, but the infomercials make it so darn tempting.

So there was a special about Mister Rogers that was supposed to come on PBS on January 1. But, for some reason unbeknownst to me, NPT chose to show some other program in that time slot. I'm rather baffled as to why they would deprive their viewers of a tribute to a man who worked tirelessly for public children's television for over 30 years. I'm so perplexed, I'm thinking about contacting them. It'd probably be a waste of time, but I'm nonetheless interested to see why they didn't air it. The whole scheme that I half-jokingly came up with last year to work at NPT when I'm an adult seems less appealing to me now. And that's unfortunate, because I would work my hardest to bring back Wishbone, which was undeniably edu-tainment at its finest.

Hmm.. I think I am out of weird things to write about. Goodnight, all.