Saturday June 20, 2015 {Dance Recital}

1. Got up and ate a bagel, then got ready for the day.

2. Didn't do too much for most of the morning, then did hair and makeup in preparation to leave.

3. Left for the dance studio.

4. Spent an hour getting ready for the recital, getting everyone into their appropriate costumes, and waiting while many parents and siblings squeezed into the studio and lines the walls.

5. Our Irish groups had three dances, one for each class. I danced in the advanced class's dance, and the intermediate class's dance as well, since they didn't have enough people for the choreography.

6. After we danced, we watched through the rest of the recital, which was fun.

7. After that, we went home and hung out for a while. We are dinner, and then I went babysitting.

8. Babysitting was fun, while tiring. I learned that 6 year olds get very grumpy when they don't eat their dinner, and also that they won't want to eat their dinner if they could play with the neighbor kids instead.

9. I came home, and spent a long time talking with mom and Isabelle, read Sense and Sensibility, and went to bed around midnight.

Saturday June 6, 2015 {Sleeping Beauty}

1. I got up late, probably around 8:30, and got ready for the day.

2. I really didn't do all that much until 12:00, when I went to YARC at Village Books. It was a pretty small meeting, only six or seven of us, and we finished early. I got some pretty good books though, including the new David Leviathan book, and a new book by Avi.

3. L. and I hung out after YARC for a while, and watched a wedding party taking pictures in the village green. We decided that my wedding colors should be teal and yellow.

4. I went home and worked for a few hours on a paper for my Geology class about the history of the PNW over the last 200 million years or so. I spent most of the day doing that.

5. We had dinner, then went to the Mt. Baker Theater to see Sleeping Beauty. It's a production put on by the studio I dance at, so I knew lots of people in it, but Hailey and HW were the ones we were most excited to see. I sat with L. an C. for most of the show, which was fun. There was lots of snarky commentary going back and forth.

6. After the show, we stayed outside and hung out for probably close to an hour. We then went home and went to bed.

Tuesday, May 26, 2015 {Teaching Irish Dance}

1. I got up and got a slow start to the morning.

2. I worked on my English paper for a good chunk of the morning, and then did some other miscelanious school things that needed doing.

3. In the mid-afternoon, Gloria took me to the bus, which I rode to the dance studio downtown. I hung out there for a little bit, and then I taught a beginning Irish dance class!

4. Heather, our teacher, is out of town right now, and so she asked if I could fill in for her for the beginning kids. It was fun, albeit challenging. The kids are young ,and their attention span is short, but it was still a good experience for me. They didn't really learn much new stuff, but they got to practice some things, and hopefully have some fun.

5. I ate some dinner that I had brought with me, then went to Chocolate Necessiteis to get some gelato, since I had a gift card there. Flavors of the week: lemon and watermelon. I did my geology homework while I was over there.

6. I headed back to NW Ballet for my ballet class. I hadn't been in two weeks, so I was glad to be back. I am still having a lot of frustration with my pirouettes. I can hold a balance in retire for about 4 seconds, which means I should not have trouble doing double (or even triple) pirouettes, but I can barely do a double. Gah.

7. Mom picked me up and we went home. I finished up my English homework, and submitted it online. I debated doing a bonus assignment for Geology, but ultimately decided against it.

8. I read Jane Eyre, and went to bed, totally exhausted.

Tuesday, April 28, 2015 {Pirouettes}

Today would be a little boring to go through in strict chronological order, so instead, here are the things I did today, grouped so that they make more sense.

1. I spent the majority of the day working on an essay, the rough draft of which is due tomorrow. I knew what I was writing about, and I had lots of pieces written (about 2000 words actually), but it was in little chunks I needed to find a way to piece together. I decided to go the index card and color coded note route, which is always fun and worked pretty well, though I feel like it could still be more cohesive.

2. I worked on a world map for Geology for a while. Each tectonic plate had to be colored a different color on a double page spread world map handout. That was actually super fun. Next step is to label a bunch of fault lines and active volcanoes on it.

3. For history, I mostly did map work. Those maps were a little frustrating, and I ended up changing the directions because A) I didn't like them, and B) they weren't doable with the information I had. Granted, Google exists, but I didn't have the time or patience to bother looking the stuff up. Maps are fun, though, and I love doing them for history. Getting to do one for Geology too is awesome. I also did some reading for history.

4. Those things took up the majority of my day, but I also did a bit of SAT math prep, and listened to the new Hello Internet episode while I worked on map stuff.

5. Those things were basically my entire day from 8 to 5. After that, we had dinner, and I left for ballet.

6. Ballet class was good. I've been getting a little frustrated with my turns lately, and today I had the same problems. Today in pirouettes and piques, I could easily do a single, but consistently fell out of it 1.5 times around, never being able to hit a double with out falling out of the turn.

7. After dance I came home and tried to make the Works Cited page for my essay, before realizing I didn't have all the information I needed to do that, and so turned in my draft online.

8. Did random stuff on the internet for a little bit, instead of working on more Geology homework like I probably should have. I was too burned out from doing work all day. No more!

9. Wrote this post, read Jane Eyre, went to bed.

Weekend Review #4 {The End of Summer}

This week really felt like the end of the summer. The weather's been getting slowly cooler and we've had some rain. Today is the last day of the Summer Reading Program, which really means that summer is over for me. Plus, Mom was back at work all this week (except for Friday), and all of that adds up to mean that Fall is pretty much here. The only thing left to make it official is for school to start again, which won't happen until next week.

Monday, I took the bus to the library from my house, and volunteered there. This was the first week after the girl who volunteered with me for two years left for college, so it felt very quiet. I also taped stakes onto the last of the yard signs, which is a sure sign that summer is coming to an end.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday all included Dracula rehearsal, plus Park Day, and visiting with friends. 

Friday morning, we left for Leavenworth, WA, a cute little Bavarian themed town just on the east side of the mountains. We used to go every year, usually for just the day, but we haven't in a few years. Leavenworth is fun, but there isn't much to do other than wander around the shops in town, which we did a lot of. We stayed in a little hotel that night.

Saturday, we did some shopping, played miniature golf, ate (one of the best reasons to go to Leavenworth is the food), and headed home in the evening.

This week, I finished Daemon by Daniel Suarez (which I really liked, and promise to review when I can), and started Freedom, the sequel. I also watched the movie Men In Black for the first time. I've also been listening to a lot of Welcome to Nightvale. I've been kind of slow about it, but now I'm finally catching up to the current episodes.

Weekend Review: Dancing, Shopping, and The Giver

It's been another busy week.

On Monday, I went to ballet class, volunteered at the library, and went to Irish dance class. This week was the last week of summer dance classes, and so Monday was my last day until fall.

Tuesday, I had Driver's Ed.

Wednesday was park day, and then I had rehearsal for Dracula.Then, because my mom was hosting a "Mom's Night" at our house, my friend's dad picked us both up after Dracula, and we went back to one of the other family's houses, where we joined a bunch of other kids and dads, and we ate dinner. Then, most of the kids and dads went to the driving range to for some golf lessons, but some of us stayed behind and hung out for a few hours.

Thursday, I had another rehearsal, and my mom and I went driving before that.

Friday, my sister had soccer in the morning, and after that my mom and I tried out the city buses. We took the bus to the college,  from there downtown, which is where the library and my dance studio are, and then from there back to where we started, which is a few miles from my house. There isn't a convenient bus stop close to my house, but there is one a few minute drive away. Then, we had an Irish dance performance Friday night in the beautiful Birch Bay state park, on a stage overlooking the water.

Saturday, we went shopping with our grandmother.

Today, my sister is doing a mud run, and then I am going to see The Giver with a friend this afternoon. I'm a bit nervous about The Giver, because I've heard some not so good things, and the trailer wasn't promising, but I promise to write a blog post about it tonight after I see it.

This week, I read two books I really liked: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, and Thirteen Reasons Why. Thirteen Reasons Why is a book I read for the first time probably five years ago, but it was fascinating to read it now, and connect with it in a whole new way. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry was a beautiful book that made me so happy and so sad at the same time. I am writing a review of it right now, and it will be published later this week.