Wednesday June 17, 2015 {Geology Final}

1. Slept through my alarm again, and was once again scrambling a bit to get out the door on time. I rode the (surprisingly full) bus to WCC, and was, as usual, early to class.

2. Took the Geology final. I feel like I did pretty well on it, and I know I didn't need a very high grade on the final to do well in the class, so I wasn't too stressed about it. I feel like I did well on the multiple choice questions and short answer/calculation problems, but I'm not so sure about the essay questions. I'm kind of wishing I'd tried a tad harder now, but more on that later...

3. After Geology, C. and I hung out for a while with L. and then Spencer showed up! C. and Spencer played giant chess for a while, and I played with this little 3 dimensional cube puzzle for a long time. It was endlessly frustrating to me because even when C. showed me how to do it, I could not figure it out for some reason.

4. After Spencer left, I followed C. to the math center where he had free pizza for being a tutor there, and stood around awkwardly for a while talking to him before leaving and walking to meet my dad and Isabelle.

5. We headed to park day at Boulevard Park, which was great. I mostly hung out with various friends, and had a good time.

6. While we were at school, C. and I decided to make a bet on our grades in Geology, since we went into the final with the same grade, and have both been doing quite well in that class. What exactly the bet is will be revealed in time (it is a rather contentious issue at the moment :P), when one of us wins.

7. We got a ride home, then made some pizza for dinner. I listened to the new Hello Internet podcast. After mom got home we ate some cake she brought back from the party she was at earlier.

8. Read Sense and Sensibility and went to bed.

Monday June 15, 2015 {Almost Done}

1. Got up 20 minutes late (gah) and had a hard time getting out of the house on time.

2. Made it to school, and went to Geology. We got lots of old assignments back, and then went over them.

3. C. and I hung out for an hour and a half, and then headed off to our separate classes.

4. English was mostly an open lab day, so I spent most of the time working on my paper. We also did a fun brainstorming exercise to help come up with a title.

5. After that, I met up with C. again for a while, then hung out with L. for about an hour.

6. I took the bus into town and volunteered at the library for an hour, cleaning books and toys.

7. I went to Chocolate Necessities w/ Julie and the boys, and hung out for an hour and a half or so. Flavors of the week - Lemon and Pink Grapefruit.

8. Irish dance! I went to class where we practiced hard shoe dances, and briefly rehearsed for the school dance recital which is this coming Saturday.

9. Came home, ate dinner, had some strawberry pie, listened to a podcast, read Sense and Sensibility, went to bed.

Sorry for the brief post. Finals week is here and I'm kind of exhausted. I'm also not thinking very clearly. I had written an entire draft of this post before I recalled that I'm not using full names.

I also asked Bernice, my volunteer coordinator at the library, to sign an affidavit for how many parking passes I've gotten in total. When she looked at me oddly, I realized that I had said parking passes where I should have said volunteer hours. *shakes head*

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.

Friday May 22, 2015 {Western Washington University}

1. Got up and got ready. Took the bus to school. Stopped at Cafe Avellino (a little coffee shop right by WCC) for a chai tea latte on my way to school. I love that place, but I don't go there often because I don't have that kind of money.

2. Despite stopping, I still got to class 15 minutes early. The door was locked today, so I had to wait outside the classroom for Bernie, the teacher, to get there. Geology class today was about "mass movement:" landslides, rock slides, mud flows, etc. Apparently we aren't allowed to call them "mudslides" because mud is a liquid, and liquids can't slide, they flow. So it's a mud flow, and a rock slide.

3. After class, C. and I hung out as per the usual. We talked about various things, including this game called agar.io. Click that link at your own risk. Seriously, it's an odd game, and because people get to choose their own names, very often not at all family friendly. We also talked about lots of other random things.

4. C. left for class, but my English class was canceled, so I sat in Syre for another hour. I saw my friend Jake multiple times when he walked by. Once, he told me about a hilarious (and not appropriate for young audiences) tarot reading he had just gotten, another time he showed me a glass eyeball he had found in the lost and found, and then the last time I was staring at him as he walked down the stairs and he threatened to throw quarters at me. Hey, free money! :P I have weird friends.

5. I left WCC and headed to Western. We started by going to meet with an admissions counselor, and then went on a campus tour.

6. This is the part where I should probably talk about how I feel about WWU, but I am so conflicted about it. In a lot of ways, I really, really like it. They have a good English department, their travel opportunities are good, and as a homeschool student, I feel like it would be pretty easy to apply there. The problem is that it's literally 15 minutes away from home. I do know that if I go there, I don't want to live at home, but that seems kind of irresponsible. Why spend another $10,000 a year if I don't have to. After visiting today, I can say Western is certainly in my top three or four, and might even be my top choice if only it weren't so close to home.

8. After that, we came home and had dinner. Then we walked down to the convenience store two blocks away to buy ice cream bars.

9. We went home, I did some homework, then did nothing for a little while.

10. Mom and I spent a while trying out the "net price calculators" on the websites of a few different colleges. I know that you can't put too much stock in those, but it was interesting to see what they estimated I would get in scholarships and such. It's also a bit terrifying.

11. Watched Doctor Who, read Jane Eyre, went to bed.

Monday, May 11, 2015 {Small Town}

1. Got up at 6am, and got ready for the day. Left the house to catch the bus at 7:20, and got to school around 7:45.

2. Geology. Today's topic was glaciers and that sort of stuff. It was actually pretty fun because a lot of it was talking about local stuff. Mt. Baker turns out to be a totally interesting place when it comes to this kind of stuff.

3. After class, C. went to register for fall classes, so I hung out with L. for a while. After C. came back, we talked about random stuff for a while, including local drama, gummy candies, minigolf, what classes we're taking in the fall, and various other things.

4. English. We had to get started on our research papers today, which we'll be working on for the remainder of the quarter.  I am writing about homeschooled students' preparedness for college and the world beyond, which I think should be a fun and pertinent subject. When we shared our topic ideas with the class, everyone seemed to think I was sort of crazy, but that's okay. I don't mind being the crazy one who writes about homeschooling as long as I get a good grade.

5. After that, C. played minigolf on my ipod for a while because the iOS version has more features than the Android one. He left for class, and I worked on homework for a little while, and wrote up yesterday's blog post.

6. I caught the bus to the library, and volunteered there for an hour, cleaning toys, books, and glue sticks (almost the weirdest thing I've done in the four years I've been there).

7. Went to Chocolate Necessities w/ Julie and the boys. Gelato of the week: chocolate, red orange, and pink grapefruit. I did some Geology homework, and ran into my friend Devon from many years back, plus Dad and Beth stopped by as well. Small town...

8. Irish dance. We had an hour of class, and then a little over an hour of rehearsal for an upcoming performance.

9. Came home, ate some dinner, texted a little with some friends, wrote this, read Jane Eyre, went to bed.

I'll post about tomorrow for sure. Today's my last day being 16!

Friday, May 8, 2015 {Last Self Defense Class}

Another backlog, almost back up to the present!

1. Woke up early, went to school. Some of my friends and I have had a group chat on google hangouts and have recently discovered the near impossibility of getting all four of us in the chat at the same time. We were all briefly on in the morning for about 10 minutes, then I had to leave for school.

2. Got off the bus, walked to Kulshan, and waited for class to start. The bus I take gets me there about 20 minutes early, so I usually am the first person there.

3. It was a lab day in Geology, and we spent the day working on what my teacher calls "Geopuzzles." Basically, we get a drawing of a cross section of an outcrop or roadcut of rock, and then we have to say how the layers (and other features like faults) got there and in what order. I actually really like those, and I have a few more to do as the post-lab homework.

4. After Geology, C. and I went back to our normal spot in Syre. L. came and hung out with us for a while.

5. My English class was canceled because of an all-day all English department meeting, so when C. left for his next class, I went downstairs to get food and then finished up my essay. I added the Works Cited and did some proofreading. I recently was introduced to the bibliography tool in Word, and it is awesome. It makes citations so much easier. 

6. I walked to the computer lab to print off my essay, and over to Anna Wolff's office to turn it in in a box outside her door.

7. After doing that, I went back to Syre (the social hub of campus), and hung out with Lydia and her friends, most of whom I know to varying degrees. Matt, a guy from my English class, walked by and we talked briefly about our essays (both of which exceeded the 6-8 page guideline) and the fact that I'm on Anna's tenure review committee (woo! more on that later).

8. I got on the bus downtown, and walked (8 blocks uphill) to an appointment I had. After that, I walked back the way I came a few blocks to the Co-op downtown to do Latin with IP (using 1st and last cause "i" is too confusing to use alone as an initial). 

9. After Latin, Ted picked up IP, and my mom picked me up and we went home to eat dinner. After dinner, we went to the final self-defense class. The first part of the class was roleplaying de-escalating situations in pairs. When we came back to the big group, the teacher asked S. and I to do part of our roleplay again for the group, because we had a pretty realistic situation. That was a bit embarrassing, but we did do it anyway. The rest of the class was mostly review of things we've done over the past five weeks, plus a few new things about getting out of headlocks and stuff like that.

10. We got home pretty late, and I texted with some people for a little while before reading Jane Eyre and going to bed. For the first time in a week or so, I was so tired that I fell asleep pretty much immediately. It was a really long day, the kind where at the end of the day, the beginning of it felt like it had been a week ago.

Friday, May 1, 2015 {May Day}

Today was a long day. I'm sitting here trying to remember this morning, and it feels like a week ago!

1. I got up nice and early (6ish), got ready for the day, and actually ate some breakfast, which is not always something that happens.

2. I took to bus to school and went to Geology class. The topic for today was mountains and mountain building.

3. After class, C. and I hung out in our usual spot. For the life of me, I can't remember what we talked about for most of the time. My lack of good sleep seems to be catching up with me. We did talk about stuff though, most of it random and unimportant, but some of it might have been interesting.

4. C. went off to his next class, and I did the English work we had instead of class today. The instructor is at a conference, so she moved class online. That took me a little over and hour, and then I wandered over to the art department in Cascade to check out the notecard exchange. I don't spend much time over there, but I love checking the cards. The idea is that anyone can put up a 3x5 (or similar) card with their art on it, and if you put one up, you can take one you like. There is some pretty cool stuff on there.

5. C. and his mom very kindly gave me a ride home, and once home I cleaned a little, and talked with my friend E. for a little bit on the phone. We talked mostly about my own social awkwardness and anxiety, but he also gave me my new life tagline, "I am too tired not to be sarcastic." This is me. XD

6. Current Events class happened. The topic was about categorizing people and how/if was can/should do that. It provided some interesting discussion. Ted led wonderfully and was obviously quite invested in this topic.

7. After class, some May Day gifts were dispensed (thanks Julie and Connie!).

8. We ate dinner, and headed to self defence class.

9. At the class, we had interesting discussion, and then worked on more ground grappling techniques.

10. Came home, wrote this, read Jane Erye, went to bed. SAT in the morning!

Monday, April 27, 2015 {Predictable}

1. I got up a little late this morning, but managed to be ready to leave on time for school. I took the bus, and got to school around 7:45.

2. The Geology teacher was a few minutes late, and there was a gathering of the students outside the classroom waiting for it to be unlocked, and debating what to do if he didn't show up. He did, though, and class went on as normal. I turned in the homework assignment that was due, though I'm a little nervous about how well I did the last half of it.

3. After class, C and I went back to the place we always hang out for the next hour and a half. Seriously, we are way too predictable. If you want to find either of us on a MWF morning, go to that one bench. We talked about random stuff for the break, with some expeditions by C in search of fries, which he eventually found and purchased, and which I ate most of.

4. English. We spent most of the class writing an essay, a rough draft of which is due on Wednesday.

5. After that class, I met up with C for a few more minutes during which he listed the terrifying number of things he has to do in the next 13 months. The more I listened to him, the more I realized my future is depressingly similar, though perhaps not quite as bad. Then I ate lunch and worked a little on my essay.

6. I went to volunteer at the library, cleaning books. I debated going to the teen club thingy at the library, but chickened out, and went to Chocolate Necessities w/ Julie and her boys. Flavors of the week: chocolate, pink grapefruit, and watermelon. N and I hung out for an hour while I worked on my essay and talked about homeschooling and my birthday, and other stuff.

7. Irish dance class. Fun class, lots of review.

8. Came home, ate dinner (asparagus pesto pasta), watched the Season 5 finale of Doctor Who, wrote this log, read Jane Eyre, went to bed.

Friday, April 24, 2015 {MINIGOLF}

1.Got up and ready, made food to take with me to school.

2. Left at 7:10, caught the bus, and made it to WCC around 7:40. I was then going to eat some of the food I brought, but then I realized that it was still sitting on the counter.

3. Geology. Topic of the day - metamorphic rocks.

4. C and I hung out for another hour and a half. L joined us for a while and they tried to make me feel better about having no food by giving me their food, which I refused. By this point, I was really hungry and slightly light headed, having not eaten anything at all yet, and at 10:30ish I realized I had $6 (most of it in quarters), which was enough to buy a chicken teriyaki bowl at the school cafeteria. It served as my breakfast/lunch. During this time, C and I spent most of the hour playing on this minigolf app that he has gotten me addicted to, and talking about random stuff.

5. English. We spent the whole time discussing the Cynthia Selfe essay, and it evolved at some point into a discussion of Gamergate (google it if you don't know what I'm talking about). Very interesting overall.

6. Barely caught the bus downtown in time. Also had some adventures with my phone being dead, and needing to call my mom. C's phone was barely not dead, so I was able to use that. It was very exciting.

7. Walked 8ish blocks from the bus station to my appointment downtown.

8. After my appointment, I walked to the Co-op (the downtown branch), and had just enough money to buy hot chocolate. I paid for it entirely in quarters. I managed to get done almost all of my English homework while I was there.

9. Mom picked me up and we went home and had dinner.

10. Then we had self defense class. We talked about bullying, and worked on things to do when you are trapped on the ground while being attacked.

11. Got home, messed around on the internet for a little while, wrote this log, read Jane Eyre, went to bed.