11th Grade Highlights

Since I am now officially done with my junior year of high school, I thought I'd share some of the year's highlights, in pictures! The rest of this post is all pictures, with captions. Enjoy a little taste of my year, in mostly chronological order.

Going out to dinner with friends before school started

Steampunk Halloween!

Performing in Dracula! I'm in this picture, can you find me?

Visiting the Lights of Christmas with friends, none of whom are in this photo :P

Curling Isabelle's hair before the Nutcracker.

Backstage selfie from the Nutcracker.

On stage in the Nutcracker.

Buying 12 boxes of tea for C. for Christmas!

Awesome early morning sleepover selfie.

My friends and I have our own shelf at Village Books!

Visiting the University of Victoria.

Hailey painted my nails at the Superbowl party

Our awesome current events to find out what we value most. For me? Community.

Visiting the University of Portland over spring break.

Seaside, OR

Pacific Lutheran University

Baking cookies at a sleepover

Teaching Latin

Painting this little guy was fun :)

Visiting the Pompeii exhibit at the Pacific Science Center

Lots of Geology homework that tested my drawing skills...

Mother's day selfie

My 17th birthday!

Working with friends to get C. a birthday gift he sorely needed.

Performing at the Scottish Highland Games!

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*

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.

Friday, June 5, 2015 {James's Graduation}

1. Woke up a little late, and was scrambling all morning to get out the door on time.

2. When I got to the Cordata bus station, I took a detour to the Co-op to buy 6 potatoes, then ran to class. I still got their 5 min early.

3. Geology was good. The quarter is clearly winding down, and everyone is so ready for it to be over.

4. After this, C. and I went by his uncle's office, but he wasn't there. We stayed there for a bit, then headed to Syre to our usual spot. I ran to the bathroom where I put two packages of candy apple rings in the bottom of a gift bag and filled the rest of it with potatoes on which I had written things like "Happy Birthday" and "POTATO." I presented this gift to C., which he seemed to appreciate, though that might have just been him being nice. :P

5. I went through some practice SAT problems with him to give him an idea of the process I would go through for the English ones. We both headed off to class.

6. In English 102, we did an exercise I love where you take an index card for each paragraph of your paper, and write the main idea of it on the card. You then shuffle up the cards and rearrange them physically until you find the best order.

7. I missed the first bus, but caught the second one back home. Mom picked me up, and we headed home to change, and then to Stanwood to pick up my grandma, and then all the way to Seattle for my cousin James's high school graduation.

8. The graduation itself was good, though long. It started at 6pm, and was over around 8ish, and we left the school around 8:30, maybe 8:45.

9. James was going off to a school sponsored all night party, but his parents and brother went with me, Isabelle, mom, and my grandma to Cheesecake Factory for dinner.

10. We finally left Southcenter around 11pm, and dropped off my grandma at her house, then finally got home around 1am.

11. I finished the blog post for yesterday, published it, started this one, and went to bed around 2am.

Thursday June 4, 2015 {Rehearsal}

1. I got up, ate some breakfast, and worked on my Latin lesson plan. I took a shower and walked to Gloria's in time to meet H. for Latin. We're starting to get geared up for our grand adventure translating Harry Potter this summer, which I'm really excited about.

2. After I got home and ate lunch, I worked on school stuff for a few hours including math, some history reading, a geology lab, and a paper for English.

3. I wrote a blog post for my main blog, and took a walk with Isabelle to obtain part of a birthday gift for a friend (more on that later).

4. I got ready to go, and when Mom got home from work, we went to a dance rehearsal.

5. We got to rehearse with the musicians who will be playing for us, which was really great. I love dancing to live music.

6. We came home, ate some pizza, and then I frantically finished the homework I had due for both English and Geology.

7. Read Sense and Sensibility, and went to bed.

Saturday May 30, 2015 {Geology Fieldtrip}

1. Got up around 7:30. Mom and Isabelle left around 9, cause Isabelle was selling her knitted dogs at the farmer's market.

2. C. and his dad picked me up at 9:30, and we headed to WCC. A little after 10, we packed into a van, and headed to Larrabee state park, stopping on the way in the Happy Valley neighborhood to look at a giant rock there.

3. We spent the day around Chuckanut Drive, looking at various sites at Larrabee and Clayton Beach.

4. The weather was awesome, and it was actually pretty fun. We saw a layer of coal in the bedrock in a few locations, and we saw some pretty awesome fossils, including some of palm fronds!

5. We have to write an essay about the geologic history of the Pacific Northwest based on what we saw on the fieldtrip, so we also spent some time trying to put the "events" we saw in the correct order.

6. We got back to school around 4, and my mom picked me up there and we went home. We went to the bus that sells fish and chips in Fairhaven for dinner, and then came home.

7. Watched Doctor Who, read Jane Eyre, and went to bed.

Wednesday May 27, 2015 {Lots of Rocks}

1. I woke up at 6, very tired and very sore.

2. I got the bus to school, and was early as usual for Geology.

3. Geology was fun today. We got our tests back from last week, and I was plesently surprised with my grades, particularly the lab test. We then had the opprotunity to do some more lab work for bonus points. The lab was just IDing more rocks, which I really like doing. We also talked a bit about the field trip this weekend.

4. C. and I hung out on our usual bench. L. was there for a bit, and we talked about her weekend, and then C. and I talked about the current goings on for a while before we both had class.

5. At English, we talked about connotation of language, and did some fun exercises related to that.

6. After class, I met up with C. and L. again, and then played a game on my iPod for a while and ate lunch while C. was in class. After he got out, his mom and sister picked us and we headed to parkday.

7. Parkday was strange this week with two of the main families absent, and C., G. (who is home for the summer) and I spent most of it on a bench, observing some interesting kites.

8. We left pd, and headed home to eat dinner, and then I did some math and stuff.

9. Watched Doctor Who, read Jane Eyre, worked on a blog post for the main blog, 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.

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.

Wednesday May 20, 2015 {Geology Midterm}

1. Got up at 6am, got ready to go, and took the bus to school.

2. From 8am to 10am, we had an exam in Geology. Half of it was an 80 question multiple choice test based on lecture material, and the other half was a lab test, in which we had to identify 10 rocks. The two combined are worth 190 points out of the 540 possible this entire quarter! This exam is worth twice as much as the final.

3. Once that was done, C. and I hung out for a while. L. joined us for a bit, and we discussed the nature of our lives.

4. C. had to leave to make some changes to his fall schedule, and L. and I hung out for a little while, then walked to class.

5. In English, we did peer review work on the drafts of the background sections of our research papers that we had just turned in.

6. After English, I went to find C. at our usual spot, but through some bad luck we managed to again miss each other.

7. I went to the Co-op to eat lunch, and then my dad and Isabelle met me there and we drove to park day.

8. Park day was beautiful! The weather is so awesome right now. I lay in the sun for a while waiting for people to get there. When C. got there, we talked for a while and then started walking in laps around the park. We estimate we probably walked multiple miles over the afternoon.

9. We came home, ate dinner, and then I wrote the post for yesterday and started in on this one. I wrote this post for my other blog, and then did some math.

10. Watched Doctor Who, read Jane Eyre, and went to bed. I actually feel asleep around 10:30, which is the earliest that's happened in ages. I was really tired.

Tuesday, May 19, 2015 {The Evergreen State College}

1. Got up at the ungodly time of 5:45, got ready to go.

2. Left the house at about 6:45, and ate a bagel in the car. We were on our way to visit The Evergreen State College, about 3 hours away. I did some studying in the car.

3. Made it to Olympia around 9:30, and found a place to park. We then walked to find the admissions office.

4. We listen to an hour long admissions presentation. It was one of the better ones I've heard. They talked a lot about the unique academic situation at Evergreen, and it was well done. I have a feeling that as a homeschooler, they would be very nice to work with application wise. They are certainly used to non-traditional transcripts and such.

5. After that we went on an hour long tour of the campus. It was very similar to so many campus tours I've been on. We saw the main academic buildings, a dorm room, etc.

6. After that, we ate lunch hurriedly, and then I went to sit in on a class. The class that day was seminar style, meaning that it was broken up into groups of 15 or so, and each was doing student led activities and discussion. It was a three hour class, but I could only stay for the first hour, after which point I met back up with mom, and we headed home.

7. We drove home. I was tired and feeling kind of weird, so I attempted to sleep on the way home, and did a little.

8. We stopped and got dinner at Chipotle on the way home.

9. When we got home, I finished the draft that was due the next day in English, and attempted to study for the test in Geology.

10. We watched Doctor Who, read Jane Eyre, and went to bed.

Saturday, May 16, 2015 {BA~CON}

1. Got up and did very little productive for several hours, though I did look over the study guide for the Geology exam next week and do some of the practice questions.

2. I finished listening to the new Hello Internet, in which I learned a lot about politics in the U.K. I also listened to the new Welcome to Nightvale.

3. Ate lunch, then headed to WCC for the Bellingham Anime Con! Also known as {BA~CON}.

4. Spent the next four hours as a volunteer at the event. I'm not really into anime or cosplay, but it was still pretty cool to be there.

5. I spent the first two hours at the Peacebonding/Cosplay First Aid booth, where I helped one person superglue something back onto her costume. People occasionally asked me questions which I usually didn't know the answer to, in which case I just directed them to the registration booth to ask someone who actually knew what they were doing.

6. I spent the next hour doing "crowd control." My job was to stand in one of the panel rooms and make sure that everyone who came in had a badge, and that the room didn't exceed max capacity, which was somewhere around 50. I don't think there were more that 15 people at the most.

7. I then was sent to start an anime showing in another room, which took all of 3 minutes. I also was one of the judges of the art contest at somewhere in there.

8. I spent the last hour picking up trash, and handing out glow sticks. That, it turns out, is the way to get a building full of strangers to suddenly love you. The two of us who were wandering around handing out glow sticks were remarkably popular very quickly.

9. I left WCC, and headed home for dinner and such.

10. Ate dinner, ate some cake, watched Doctor Who, read Jane Eyre, and went to bed.

Friday, May 15, 2015 {Pizza and Ice Cream}

1. I got up at 6, and got ready for school. I took the bus to WCC, and got to class early as usual.

2. I had decided the night before to not even attempt the bonus assignment, and as it turned out, only one person actually did. We had a quiz (which I think I did okay on), and then the rest of the class period was finishing up the rock identification lab from a week or two ago. C. and I barely had time to finish the lab before class was over, and actually, we stayed a few minutes late to get the the last two or three rocks. The lab and postlab worksheets were actually due today, but since I don't think a single person finished in time, he said we could turn them in on Monday morning instead.

3. After that, C. had to work, so I went to find L. to hang out for a while. After she left for class, I had to go the the library to print some things out for my next class. I went to go meet C. in the math center, but got caught up talking to Jake about Age of Ultron, which I haven't seen yet, and he's seen twice now. I eventually just had to leave the conversation because of spoiler reasons, but by the time I made it to the math center, C. was already gone.

4. I went to English. We had just turned in proposals for our research project, which included a short annotated bibliography, and we spent much of the class in peer review groups reading and discussing other people's proposals.

5. After class, I rode the bus downtown, and walked to an appointment I had. After that, Connie gave me a ride to Current Events class at my house.

6. The meta-topic of the day was "debate", and it was an interesting one. Lots of good discussion.

7. After class, most of us went to a pizza place downtown to eat and hang out. Despite my "no gifts" edict, I did still recieve a few, most notably from C. a sonic screwdriver that is an actual working pen that writes in normal ink and invisible ink. And the screwdriver lights up with ultraviolet light, letting you read the invisible ink.

8. After a few hours, we walked a few blocks to Mallard's for ice cream. Once there, HW. and I (and sort of C.) spent a while trying to figure out how much dirt you eat a day if you, as HW. claimed an old saying said "eat a peck of dirt before you die." Using a conversion app on his phone, we did some calculations, and after a lot of error, we came to the conclusion that if you do indeed eat a peck of dirt (which is about 2 gallons) of dirt before you die, and you live for 80 years, you eat about 1/3 of a cubic centimeter of dirt each day. I love my geeky friends. :) 

9. Ted got the rest of them to sing happy birthday to me not once but twice, once at Rudy's, where I was sort of expecting it, and once at Mallard's, where I definitely wasn't. 

10. We went home, read Jane Eyre, and 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!

Sunday, May 10, 2015 {Happy Mother's Day!}

1. Slept in until 8, then had breakfast and got ready.

2. Left for my grandparent's house at about 10:30. We had to make a few stops on the way, so we didn't get there until around noon.

3. The rest of the day was spent at my grandparent's house with my mom's whole family. Both of her sisters and their families were there.

4. There are five of us grandkids (Isabelle and I plus our three cousins) and of the five of us, two are graduating from highschool right now, and two have birthdays in the next week or two. So it was part graduation party, part birthday party, and part mother's day party. Of the five cousins, only poor Isabelle didn't have a particular reason to celebrate.

5. The five of us are close in age (ranging from 18-13), and have always lived relatively close to one another, so we've always been pretty close. There was a push at Thanksgiving by some of the adults to move us all to the main table instead of giving us a kids table. That was the case today too, though when desert was served, we all headed to the back yard. We all loved having a kids table, and the parents want us to integrate in with them, but it's not happening. :P

6. We ate lunch, had some cake, hung out for several hours, and opened some presents.  I ended up with a good deal of cash and some gift cards.

7. We got home around 7pm.

8. After we got home, I realized I hadn't done my Geology homework yet (oops), but luckily it only took me about 30 minutes (the assignment was just to define a bunch of words related to glaciers). I briefly panicked that the post-lab was due Monday also, but I texted C. who reminded me that it's not due until Friday.

9. We watched some Doctor Who, and read Jane Eyre. Then mom and I got into this discussion about Charlotte Bronte, which involved some googling, and we found out that she died at the age of 38! Of the three famous Bronte sisters, she died at 38, Emily died at 30, and Anne died at 29, all within a few months of each other, except for Charlotte who survived her siblings by several years. Their brother died around the same time (was was a similar age). All of the Bronte siblings (including the two oldest sisters who died in childhood) died of tuberculosis.

10. Off to bed, school tomorrow.

Saturday, May 9, 2015 {Babysitting}

1. Got up a little after 8, and did nothing useful for a while. Talked with some friends, added my vote to the new Nomic rule suggestion, read some blogs, and the like.

2. Got ready for the day, ate some food.

3. Spent the vast majority of the day laying around, listening to music, trying to brainstorm some ideas for the research paper that I'll spend the rest of the quarter writing in English, and working on my Geology post-lab.

4. Ate pulled pork sliders for an early dinner, than went babysitting.

5. The kids and I had an awesome time playing outside. The weather was so awesome - it was still warm and light out all the way up until I left at 8:30. First the kids played out in the yard, but when the hose with the mist attachment came out and people started getting wet (well, when I started getting wet, the kids loved it) it was time to find something else to do. We took the dogs for a walk around the neighborhood, played a bunch of hide and seek in the grass, and threw around some styrofoam airplanes. Those planes became my nemises, as one first went into the neighbor's yard, and I had to go talk to the neighbor kid (who did not look happy that some random teenage girl with no shoes and dried grass in her hair was trying to get help from him) who eventually got it back for me. It them went into a tree, and I had to climb up and retrieve it. Then, it went into the chicken inclosure which was full of poop (and empty of chickens because it needed cleaning. After that, I directed the kid's attention elsewhere.

6. Playing outside with the kids gave me a weird feeling. We were playing hide and seek in this big stretch of tall grass above the dog park in Fairhaven, and it reminded me of the places my sister and I used to play growing up. When I was running through the grass and throwing myself down in it, and looking up at the sky, it took me right back to being seven or eight years old and playing these kinds of games with Isabelle, which I realize now was nearly ten years ago. It's a strange feeling.

7. When my mom and Isabelle picked me up from that, they surprised me with a Chocolate Almond donut (my very favorite kind) from Rocket Donuts!

8. I came home very tired from playing with the kids, and read a little on the web before writing this, reading Jane Eyre, and going to bed.

Tomorrow's going to be an interesting day that I will write about once I have the chance. Also ,a very happy belated birthday to Spencer!

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.

Sunday, May 3, 2015 {Plate Tectonics}

*This post has an Amazon Affiliate link in it, which means that if you click on it, then buy something, I'll get a small cut. You won't pay any more than normal, but Amazon will pay me a few percent of the purchase price.

1. I slept in until 8:30, then got up and ready.

2. I organized all the stuff I have to do this week (a lot), and figured out what I needed to do today. 

3. I ate some grapefruit and a muffin while working on a Geology lab that is due tomorrow. Most of the morning was spent working on that lab.

4. For the purpose of completing the lab, I downloaded and worked in Google Earth for a while. I'd never really used it before, and while there was a bit of a learning curve, it was actually pretty easy to use once I figured out how to use the search function properly. 

5. I spent a bunch of time working on a big world map, labeling tectonic plates, mountain ranges, volcanoes, geologic land forms, and the like. I'm not thrilled with how the map turned out - I think it could have been a lot clearer and easier to read, but it is what it is, and it's not worth enough points for it to be worth the time it would take me to try to make it better. 

6. I went shopping with Mom and Isabelle. By which I mean that they dropped me off at Starbucks, and then went shopping while I read more of the What If? book. I've talked a tiny bit about this book before, but I must recommend it again. It's by the XKCD guy, and it's really awesome. I'm not really a science person, but his descriptions and explanations still manage to both get my attention, and make sense to me. 

7. I came home, and researched and categorized a bunch of mountains and mountain ranges, and, when I finished that, the lab was finally done. On the whole, I think it could be better, but I'm not going to try to work on it more. I do know that I might not have answered all the questions fully, or in the intended manner, but I think I did well enough that I'm calling it good. Also, I have to budget my time. This is an assignment I need to do well on, but I don't have to get 100%, and I don't have to time to try. I have other things to focus on. Coming to the realization that I can't always try to get 100% on everything has been an important one for me. I get stressed out if I feel like I'm not doing well enough, but the reality is that with the grade I have in the class, I could not even hand in this lab, and still be doing well. I might not get the grade on this that I ultimately would like on this assignment, but I'll do well enough to still get the grade I want in the class, while also giving me time to work on other things I need to do.

8. After finishing that, I listened to the new Nightvale episode (episode 67). It was (no spoilers here, I promise), really great. As I described it to my friend E,, "It's amazing. It's one of those episodes that really rewards the people who have been there the whole time, but it also adds a new level of mystery and plot." It's true. If you're up to date on the episodes, you'll know that recent plot developments required this episode to be a bit different that most, and they handled that very well. It's one of my favorite episodes, I'd have to say.

9. I made a few little note cards. These are for the notecard exchange board in the art department at WCC. You can put up 3x5 (or similar) cards, and take ones that in return. They can have any kind of art on them, you just have to have made them. I'll put some pictures up once I have a chance to take them.

10. I spent some time doing random stuff, working a little on an essay I have due this week, and talking to some friends. We ate dinner

11. We watched Doctor Who, I wrote this, read Jane Eyre, and went to bed.

Saturday, May 2, 2015 {SAT!}

1. Got up at 6:15 (fifteen whole minutes later than I do on weekdays!!!!) after waking up at 4, 5, 5:30, an 6, freaking out that I had overslept.

2. Ate a quick breakfast, gathered my things, and left for the high school.

3. From 7:45 to 1, I was in a room taking the SAT. I would tell you about it, except that I signed a statement that yes, I was who I said I was, and no, I would not talk about the test in any way. So, yeah.

4. I missed the YARC (YA Review Committee) meeting at Village Books entirely, but a few of my totally awesome friends stuck around (and saved pizza for me!!). I went to VB after leaving the highschool to drop off the ARCs I needed to return, and C, L, and E were all still there, and we hung out for a little over an hour.

5. It was Independent Bookstore Day, so fun stuff was happening all over the bookstore, including a scavenger hunt. After finding the answers to some questions, and filling out a sheet of paper, you could turn it in for a prize. I got a giftcard, with which I bought fudge. Cause that's what you do with free money and fudge available to buy.

6. I finally got home around 3ish, and spent the next hour or two reading a little (What If? by Randall Munroe), and generally trying to relax. I was slightly productive, I did get a bit caught up on my Geology reading, but I was mostly trying to decompress from the SAT and all that.

7. We had tuna steaks and cauliflower for dinner, and Isabelle made some cookies.

8. We watched the Avengers and ate cookies.

9. I got a little bit of my Geology lab on plate tectonics done. I'll have to do the rest of it tomorrow.

10. I wrote this, read Jane Eyre, and went to bed. Tomorrow I get to sleep in! But I also have lots of homework to do, so there is that.