Man, I haven't posted on here in ages. ... 11 months, to be exact. Who still reads this?

Anyway, life's been... a little hectic I guess, coming up to the end of the school year. Leaving early, so I had to take all my exams early, although I'm done with them all now :). Still have to write my final paper for english, though, and I am currently procrastinating. Big surprise there. I do have my theme and thesis and a general idea of what I'm going to say, though! So that's pretty far, by my reckoning.
Oh, and tomorrow's final assembly. Damn. I hate final assembly. So boring and I don't like getting awards 'cause then I have to get up in front of everyone. And we have to march over and play pomp and circumstance. Oh, but I didn't get my folder with my music in the box that was sent over in time 'cause I was redoing my exam song 'cause the teacher forgot to tape it, so I'm gonna have one of my friends carry it over(I can't since I'm marching), which makes it even easier to sneak a book in. I was gonna hide one in my folder, but this is easier :).
Then saturday morning I play for graduation, then saturday night/sunday morning I leave for camp! :)

Just saw the Mammals. Mmm, amazing. And then afterwards we hung around by the cd table being hyper. And they gave my friend a free soda can holder thing. And they were awesome. And I didn't actually say anything to them. But they waved goodbye to us when we left :P

I did not disappear and not tell anyone. I definitely mentioned it a few times.

Anyway, Thursday through Sunday I was at a music festival. It was... well, to be honest it was kind of disappointing. The weather sucked(raining all friday morning and super windy the whole weekend). Normally it's hot and I'm in tank tops and skirts the whole weekend. This year I hardly ever took off my sweatshirt(which... heh, I kinda forgot mine, so I got one when we went shopping friday morning xD). And most of my friends were kind of being idiots, or more so than usual and it was all kinda... meh. It was still fun though. Good music.

I'm at math camp now. It's pretty fun. I've been playing a lot of frisbee :P The food here kinda sucks, but ah well. I'll probably survive solely on pizza, ice cream and cereal. Like I have the past two years.
So anyway, yeah, today's only the first day(not counting last night), but so far I've payed attention in some classes and worked on our problem sets through some others(where I knew everything already), walked about three miles(dorms/dining hall is 20 minutes from the classroom), ran around a lot playing frisbee, and not learned peoples names :P Well, I probably know about half the guys' names from playing frisbee or cause I knew them before, but I only know like... three of the girls xD. heh, I haven't actually spent much time with them. I haven't even talked to my roommate except asking each other what time we were going to get up.
And then... later in the week we get to build bridges, and go on a field trip on wednesday to look at some and then go to the beach, and... stuff.

Today was fun. I went to a party. See, I actually do sort of have a social life! Well, sort of a party. Not really a party, I guess, but to me anything outside of school where I gather with more than one or two other people is a party xD

So anyway, we played risk, and it took forever, but I won :) And it was very fun with everyone insulting each other (in a very good natured way, of course). My friends are crazy. It was fun.
And then we played DDR until rides came.

I got my bottom braces on today.

Ow.

So today was a pretty good day, I guess. In french we walked into town and got creemees, which took up pretty much the entire block. And then when we were walking back along the train tracks, the train came. It was kind of awesome. We stood off and watched the train go by about ten feet away. And the conductor waved to us :P. There were 31 cars. I counted xD
Then in math we basically did rubik's cubes the whole time, since that was someone's presentation, and you can't teach a class how to do a rubik's cube in a half and hour.
English we acted out our scenes from Macbeth, so basically we sat and pretended to pay attention for most of the class.
All in all a good day.

Except that tomorrow I've got two(maybe three) presentations, two of which I'm pretty much ready for but one of which I'm really not, and a huge english paper-type thing due, that I've barely started, and I'm procrastinating, and I'm going to get, like, an hour of sleep tonight.
Why can't wednesday be a weekend?

heh.

Graduation was yesterday. No, I didn't graduate. I got to play pomp and circumstance ten times. Yes, I counted. Then came the speeches from the valedictorian and salutatorian. which were alright. But then I got to sit and listen to ten billion people get scholarships. And then I got to sit and listen to ten billion people go get their diplomas. Well... not ten billion I guess. Only about 150. But still. And they have a very weird idea of alphabetical order. They went backward at some points...
Friday was final assembly. Bleh. I don't like final assembly. Well, classes were super short because of it, which was good. But I don't like the assembly itself. We got to play pomp and circumstance a billion times. And we had to march over, which is never fun, although at least we didn't have to wear our uniforms. We did have to wear black and white though. So I had to wear my black long pants, and it was about a billion degrees outside. And I kind of don't own any white shirts that fit except the fancy one I wear for concerts. And even that doesn't really fit. So I stole a t-shirt from my brother xD. I looked like an idiot though since for one thing it wasn't even a good t-shirt, it was one of those ones you get in three packs that are super thin and don't hang right. And I look stupid in white, since I'm pale and have light hair. And yes, I don't particuarlly care what I look like. But if I'm going to have to go up in front of the whole school, I don't want to look like an idiot.
So yeah. I got, like the first five awards. Well, pretty much. The first one was the top score in the school on the uvm test(math contest put on by uvm(the college)). Which I got. And then they had me stay up there(which is really embarrassing, by the way), and called up everyone who got in the top 10% on the uvm test. So then I got to go back to my seat, and there might have been one award in between or maybe I only got to sit for the time it took them to announce the award. So then they called up the top scorers on the amc 10 (not me, since I took the 12) and the amc 12 (me). And then they made me stay up again to get an award for making it to the aime. And then they made me stay up there again to get an award for making it to the usamo (and afterward at least four people came up to me and were like, "did you really take a nine hour math test?").
And then I got to go back down and watch lots of other people get awards for two hours. And I couldn't even read since we'd marched over so I couldn't bring a book. So then way at the end when they were announcing the department awards I got the math one. Big surprise.
Bleh. I hate awards ceremonies. Everyone makes a big deal about me.

Today was my piano concert. One of my little brothers played the same song as me (and the other played a different arrangement of it.) Which I wasn't exactly happy about. And we were going to be in different concerts, but there was a third person playing it, and there were too many people in the second concert, so we had to go in the same one. At least I played it better than him :P
We stayed for the second concert anyway, and a couple of them were amazing. And then the person playing the song I played kinda sucked. Heh, my teacher told me afterward that part of the reason she'd had me and my brother play in the same concert is that we were so much better than him and she didn't want him to feel bad xD.
And then afterward I got to feel all helpful and important because I served the punch :P

Eh... school tomorrow... I should work on the projects I've got due wednesday =/ *sigh*... one more week...

It was fun. But seriously, whatever could go wrong did.

The bus broke down. 9 miles before picking me up, too, so I had to wait three extra hours at school. It wasn't too bad, I guess, since I missed most of french before finding out that it broke down, so I just went to math and band and the very beginning of choir, and in math all we did was watch presentations. And then I got picked up around one and driven out to where everyone was waiting on the side of the road. Thank goodness, because then we were there for another 2 hours, so if I hadn't, I'd have had to go to english. And I didn't have my work done.
Ever wondered what 20 of the smartest kids in the state do when they get bored? :P
We killed a lot of time throwing rocks across the railroad trying to hit a sign on the other side. And then we stood on the train tracks and tried to push people off(I was good at that :D). And then a couple of them threw rocks at a bee...
We finally left at around three. The bus van ride was pretty fun. I was in the "cool bus". :P But yeah. Our bus was way cooler than the other one, and had way cooler people. We talked about random stuff(I mostly listened), played tetris on calculators, did rubik's cubes(one of the people had a 5x5x5), etc. etc.
Got in at around midnight and missed all the stuff that happens friday night. I don't know exactly what that is because this was my first year. But anyway.
Got up insanely early(well... 6:30), down to breakfast around seven. We had a bit of a delay getting to our testing room since we couldn't find one of our people and we weren't exactly sure which way we were supposed to be walking. But then we found him, and one of our coaches who knew where we were going. So we got there at about 8:27 ish, and everything was good.
Except not really, since we didn't have a proctor. After about 10 minutes some of the other proctors came in and called some people trying to figure it out, and finally they sent over a replacement proctor, and we started about 25 minutes late.
Then after team and power round, we walked over to the huge stadium for the individual round, and were one of, if not the last team there, since we'd started the other round so late. And guess what? We had no proctor again. Finally two of our people went down and talked to them and we got a new proctor who didn't disappear and was pretty awesome. I got four of the 8 questions(one of each set of two :P), which was fourth on my team(Mike and Colin got 7, which was the most anyone got, I think, unless one person got 8 at a different site, and David got 6). And I didn't make any stupid mistakes, which was good. Oh, and haha, there was one question with an answer 132. I guessed 312, the person next to me guessed 133, and I think the person behind me guessed 131 xD
Then luckily some of the people on my team knew what they were doing, since after that was lunch, and everyone in the place was going there at the same time. (and there were like, 70ish teams of 15, plus alternates and coaches and everything, so a lot of people). So our team ran the whole way back to the cafeteria and were(along with half of two other teams, I think) the first ones there. Haha, I was so exhausted after that, since I kind of can't run, but if was definitely worth it. Since we had to wait in line for a few seconds, and about a minute after we got there the line was back to where you couldn't see it. And we didn't have trouble finding a table :P
Heh, it's kinda funny that the biggest workout I've had in ages I got at a math competition :P Or maybe that's just sad.
The relay was after lunch. I was the second person on my team(out of three), but I was on the team with Mike(the smartest kid on the team). So that was cool. We got the first relay question at the 6 minute hand in. If I hadn't been stupid we might have gotten it at 3 minutes, but ah well. And then the second one I didn't even get an answer, which turned out to be a good thing, since the answer the first person handed me was wrong, so if I'd gotten an answer it would be wrong, and then Mike would've used that to get a wrong answer. But he just guessed, and got it right. It was awesome.
And then the super relay was fun. Haha, my answer was root 4t-7(where t is the number the person before you gives you), and I was given 0. I just kind of stared a it horrified for a moment, and then started laughing.
There was a tiebreaker round for all the people with 7, but neither Mike nor Colin got it. Our team got fifth though(... in the B division. shhh), which we weren't expecting, so that was awesome.
The ride back was bad. Well, the first two hours were alright. Then we stopped for dinner, which was fun. I had subway for the first time ever. It was pretty good... but it made me sick. And I had to wait in the van for two hours before we stopped for a bathroom break. >_< It was pretty miserable.
And then I slept the rest of the way. Got home around 2.

So yeah. A lot went wrong. But it was still really fun.

Whee... leave tomorrow for the ARML(uh... a math competition, forget what the letters stand for :P)
Oh wait. My mom just handed me the sheet. American Regions Math League.

So I'm kinda not doing my homework tonight, since I put it off to watch the national spelling bee xD
And most of it's really late already. Ah well. It's only drafts, not finals. So either my teachers like me and don't do anything or they take off a few late points. I think I'm doing well enough in my classes that a couple points won't matter. Heh, my english teacher's starting to get annoyed though. But ah well. I want to get sleep tonight. Not gonna happen if I try to finish my english.
Heh. I kinda haven't studied/practiced at all for the competition. Oops.

Wish me luck!

I suck.

I knew I had a lot of homework. I knew I was going to have to not procrastinate if I wanted to get it done. And I started off the weekend alright, actually. I didn't do quite as much as I'd have liked to, but I was working.
And then my friend came over last night, and I played music with her instead of finishing up one of the assignments like I'd planned so I could have all of today just for the second. And then I got home from the parades today, and I knew I had a lot still to do. But no. I went and read. So now it's 11:30 and I've got the first draft of a huge essay due tomorrow, and all I've written so far is the introduction and first paragraph(which is actually three, but whatever. first topic thing). And I don't even have the information for half of it. Like oh crap we were supposed to have an example from a movie and the movie she showed us in class didn't work for my topic. And I didn't find another one. And I didn't copy down actual quotes when she had the "expert" come in and I never bothered to find her afterwards so I'll just have to hope I can come up with something relatively close to what she actually said, which might be hard because I took... not many notes. And I haven't even read the articles I found yet. And I've barely looked at anything for examples in the books. And I haven't done an interview-type whatever yet (hmmm... *bugs people over IM*). Heck, I'm not even totally sure what my thesis statement is. I'm screwed. I'm really, really screwed. I knew this was going to happen if I procrastinated, and I did anyway. I suck. I suck I suck.

Ew. I hate marching.
I also hate our uniforms. It seriously took me five minutes to zip my pants up. No joke.

The first parade wasn't that bad, actually. Not too long, and it was still fairly cool out. Not that we weren't hot and tired at the end, but we weren't exhausted and covered in sweat. And one of the restaurants by the end of the parade route had ice water for us.
Waited around, watched the middle school band, played the national anthem to open up all the speeches and stuff, then off on the buses to the second parade. Which was torture. I think I drank a little too much water, so I had to go to the bathroom really bad when we got there. But I didn't even bother asking if there was one anywhere I might be able to use, because I was worried I wouldn't be able to get my pants zipped back up xD
Didn't really bother me once we started marching though. I had other things to worry about. Like the fact that it was about a billion degrees out and our uniforms aren't that cool. I'm fairly sure that the only reason I didn't faint was that I faked pretty much the entire parade.

Yup. Don't you just love memorial day?

Went to Montreal today with my french class. It was kind of the most pointless french trip ever, since we didn't speak, like, any french, but it was fun. But seriously, I think the only french I actually spoke and not just finding the names of random grocery store items for a scavenger hunt thing(seriously, who cares what beets are called?) was I said "merci" twice xD
I mostly read the whole way up. There was a movie on that we were supposed to be watching, but I just kinda didn't. Surprisingly, my teacher didn't yell at me for it, although I wouldn't have watched even if she had. I really, didn't want to, it was making me car sick, and technically she couldn't make me because it was rated R :P And then after we crossed into Canada she spent the entire hour til we got there prattling on about whatever random signs she saw. And there were like, two people paying attention.
And then she got us lost on the way to Mont Royal. We had to stop and ask for directions three times xD Ate lunch there then went to the Musee de Beaux Arts. It was alright, for an art museum. We went to the Disney exhibit for an hour and then had a half an hour to go wherever. Evan got a wheelchair so he wouldn't have to walk around on his crutches, Josh predicted right four times out of six which elevator would come, and six of us walked around together acting like... well, like teenagers in an art museum :P Oh, and we sang arrogant worms in the lobby waiting to get in :P
Then we went to the mall. We had this really dumb scavenger hunt to do, where we had to walk around a grocery store looking for the french names for stuff like popcorn and waxed dental floss and looking like total idiots no doubt. We went to a bookstore where I tried to find a book to get, but that didn't really work.
Getting dinner was a bit of an adventure. We found a place and figured out what we were going to get, and then realised, oh shit, we don't know enough french to order. So we stood there for a few minutes trying to get one of the others to order first before giving up, walking around a bit til we found our teacher and having her help us xD
The conversation on the way home was a combination of monty python, complaining about english classes, and whether or not it's possible to wake up dead. Oh, and I'm apparently number four on the list of most... what was it? I don't even remember. Something along the lines of messed up and crazy :P
All in all it was a fun trip, even if we did no french :P

The bus broke down. They said it would be 20 minutes. It was 40. And that's in addition to the 20 minutes we normally have to wait.

Why couldn't this have happened on a day I was walking?

So, my dad's friend lent us one of his clarinets, so I could try playing a different one than mine, or something. This was apparently the one that was "better, but harder to play." So I played it, and it was AMAZING. It wasn't hard to play at all, actually easier than mine(which is apparently one of the better ones in band, although the mouthpiece kind of sucks). And it sounded so good. And then I tried it with a 3 1/2 reed, which normally if I use it sounds like crap... and it still sounded amazing. eee. If only it were mine.
I'm going to bring mine home tomorrow, so I can compare and see how much is the clarinet and how much is the mouthpiece. And then maybe I can get my parents to buy me a good mouthpiece. Because I doubt I could get them to buy me a whole really good clarinet, but I probably could get them to buy me a mouthpiece. And as I said, I've been told that my clarinet is one of the best ones in band, so a good mouthpiece would probably make a big difference.

Heh. So I kept running around this evening, and I kept crashing. I slammed my toes into a door at least once, and I managed to slip and fall on my butt once xD. Luckily I wasn't yet holding the bowl of popcorn I had been about to pick up.
And then I almost fell again while demonstrating how I shouldn't be running :P

Anyone remember me complaining about my library not having Terrier? And how I asked them to get it and it took months?

Around that time I was also looking for the earlier Mercedes Lackey books. Which they also didn't have. I didn't even ask them to get them, I just asked about them since the listing was kind of confusing, then went and bought them myself, since I didn't want to wait.
And now the library's got them.

Why is it that they got the ones I didn't ask for so much quicker?

---
Oh. And it also annoys me that some of her books aren't listed on the library of congress website. It makes it a good deal harder to check publication dates.

... I'm tired. Not as tired as I'd expect, though, given that, me being the bright little girl that I am, I stayed up all night.
I just kinda got wrapped up in my book. And at one in the morning, I was like, "I should go to bed." But then I kept reading. And then at two I thought "I should to go bed." But then I kept reading. And again at four. And then at five I decided that if I was to go to bed then, there would be no way I'd be waking up any time this month, and that I'd be better off just staying up all night. And then at six I was regretting that decision but knew that at that point it was really too late. So now I'm really tired and want to go to bed, but I figure I should at least wait til after dinner.
I did get to be up in the morning, though, which is one good thing about staying up all night. I love the morning, so peaceful and like there could be no one else in the world. Except I'm never up in the morning, since I stay up too late :P

Stayed home sick today. And I was only half faking! Like, I probably would have gone if I wasn't already dreading the prospect of school today, but I was feeling kinda bad. Mostly from the heat, I think. Luckily, mom's gone, since she probably would have been harder to fool/convince than my dad, and probably would have made me go in for the end of the day. And my two last classes(choir and english) were the ones I most wanted to miss. So anyway, only my dad was here, and he was only here for the morning and lunch, so it was all good, I got an extra five hours sleep(which I probably did need, although not as much as some days), and didn't have to rush to try to do my vocab during TA/lunch. And I'm sure I didn't actually miss all that much. Band and choir are just working on our small ensemble pieces, which I can play/sing half asleep(and we were possibly supposed to perform for the class in choir, which I really didn't want to do, especially since the only person in our group on the lead part that can actually sing it is at allstates), math was relax/eat food/watch movie day since the ap test was yesterday, english was just go over vocab and chapter presentations, nothing all that important to be there for, and french is a joke.
I've got tomorrow off as well, so that's happy. And no little brothers home til sunday. Hopefully it'll cool down a little- it's raining now, so that helps.

Well. Yesterday was good. Got home and read the entire day. Seriously. Got home, changed into pajamas, went outside and read til dinner. Then ate, had to help my mom with the garden for a bit, watched Jeopardy, then read til it was past when I should have been in bed. It was good.

But today... gods, today was horrible.
Well, the morning was alright. AP test, it was fine, we got donuts at break, I think I did well. All good. Then got back to school for choir, in which we didn't really do anything because my small ensemble group sucks. But whatever. It was alright.

But the Allstate parade was also today... what a nightmare. To start with, it was three hours away. I don't even know why we went, we didn't go last year and it was closer. But seriously, like, it was pretty much as far as you can go and still be in vermont. Like, 5 miles from canada. We at least had charter buses, although that meant there were movies. But I'll get to that later.
I guess the trip up wasn't that bad. Read, mostly ignored the movies, put on music to drown it out.
And then we get there, and find out there are no bathrooms we can use. So, like, half the band has to wait to use the ones on the bus, and of course I'm last, so by the time I get out they're yelling at us to get off the bus so they can move it. So I have to throw my uniform half on, run outside and try to get it all sorted out and by that point people are already starting to walk over to the starting point, and I have to rush even more and it's all wonderful.
Let me rant about the uniforms for a moment. Ugh. They're the most annoying things in the world. The pants are too tight and the shirt's almost a dress on me, and they always give you a super wedgie and you have to stick all your hair up in your helmet, which is easier said than done, especially when the helmet always feels like it's going to fall off, which mine does because I've got a super small head, and it gets so hot and sweaty but I'm always afraid to take it off because then I probably wouldn't be able to get my hair back up.
So anyway, we're there, waiting around for like an hour for the parade to start, in 80 degree weather,and then we march for like, half and hour. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. I'm not too fond of marching, I always overheat and about halfway through the parade I had to stop playing and just fake it because I was having a hard enough time concentrating on guiding and all that stuff without also hyperventilating. But seriously. Six hours of driving and and hour of waiting around, for a half and hour of marching?
So we get back to the buses. After having to walk, like, 10 minutes after the parade route ended, but at least we could take our helmets off and stuff so it wasn't quite so hot. As a measure of how spaced out I was at this point, I started asking someone about french homework and what we did in class... and she's not in my class. Yeah. So anyway, we get back, get changed, I down an entire snapple in about three minutes. Thank god it's over, and all that stuff.

But no. There's more.
The way back was a total disaster. They put on seriously the worst movie on the face of the planet. And the battery in my mp3 player died.
Now, I knew the battery was low, so I'd brought an extra. But guess what? That one was dead too.
So I'm sitting there, trying to read my book and utterly failing because the stupid movie keeps distracting me and I can't zone it out because the guy's voice is so annoying. So finally I give up and try curling up in a ball and plugging my ears. But no. It blocks out all the sound on the bus... except the movie. I seriously came near to crying a couple times, I was so frustrated with it all.
The movie finally ended, and I got back to my book, but I think I may end up rereading that part since I was so frustrated it was hard to concentrate and the people behind me were bugging me the finish my book and turn the light off so they could sleep. And of course when I did they started talking.

And I was all happy about not having any homework except maybe french that I could blow off anyway, but I'd completely forgotten that we've got a vocab packet for english. Due tomorrow. And I'm really not in the mood to think about anything right now. Ugh. I really, really wish I could stay home sick tomorrow and just sleep. I can't deal with anything else right now.