Daily Outlines 11/6 and 11/7

Like Spencer, I'm having trouble at the moment with even outlines, so I'm going to go even more minimalist and do just greatest hits, leaving out anything not too important. Hopefully that'll help me get around to blogging a little more often. I do like having these daily records.

November 6th

-In math was in class group problem sets involving using logs. No one finished, and I went to the math center with another guy from my group to finish. I ended up helping him with the stuff I'd already done and left as confused as I arrived. I have since continued to try to figure it out, but I don't even have any idea where I went wrong, much less what I might do to fix it. I think I'll go to my instructor's office hours on Monday.

-Philosophy was kind of boring. Still didn't grade our quizzes from last week.

- German, talked about noun cases. They have Nominative, Genitive, Dative, and Accusative, all of which mean just what I would expect. My teacher made me kind of infuriated when he used the sentence "The man threw the football to the kid" as an example of an indirect object. I know why he did, I totally get it, but still. That is an object of the preposition. Not an indirect object. Luckily I contained my frustration and didn't say anything, but I was thinking of Heidi the whole time (she is known in our Latin classes for getting annoyed at the textbook for making that very error).

-I hung out and ate lunch then when to the library to volunteer. Got a ride home with Gloria.

-Wrote, ate dinner, watched Lost.

November 7th

-Got up, did some math homework (I have gotten kind of behind and I need to get caught up before the next test).

-Went to the YARC meeting, another small group today. Got two books, one of which I'm pretty excited about.

-Went to my grandmother's house for lunch, because my aunt was in town and it was recently Isabelle's birthday.

-While we were there, I interviewed my grandmother for my Philosophy class, which was very interesting.

-Went home, did a little more homework, wrote, watched Doctor Who and Lost.

August 30 - September 5, 2015

Sunday, August 30th

Sunday morning, we woke up and there was power! Yay! Mom tried to clean up the tree debris a bit, then we went to pick up my friend HW. Mom dropped us both off at NV's house. For a few hours, we played some games (including The Resistence!) with N and his brother and his brother's friends. Then the three of us hung out for a while and chatted about stuff. I love hanging out with them, but there were a few moments when I distinctly noticed the fact that I was the only girl there. It doesn't bother me to hang out with boys all the time, and most of my closest friends are boys, but there are rare moments where I feel a little out of place. 

Carolyn picked H and I up and dropped me at the house where I was babysitting. For the next three hours, I played with the kids, then the dad dropped me off at my house. When I got there, Lydia was there! The Winslows still didn't have power, so she was staying at our house.

Monday, August 31st

I got up and didn't do much for most of the morning. I did some random chores around the house, read, played some games on the computer. Lydia and I went to the library to volunteer at 3. When we were done there, we walked downtown to get drinks at Cafe Adagio, then took a bus back to Haggen, where mom picked us up. Because the Winslows still were out of power, Lydia stayed another night.

Tuesday, September 1st

Again, a pretty boring day. Lydia left in the early afternoon. 

Wednesday, September 2nd

The morning was pretty slow. I went to park day, where there was a torrential rain storm, thunder, and lightening. That was exciting.

Thursday, September 3rd

The morning was again rather quiet. In the afternoon, we went to our dad's house for dinner. We had some left over cake, since it was our step-brother's birthday on Wednesday. 

Friday, September 4th

We spent the morning cleaning up all the debris from the tree. We hauled a bunch of stuff in our neighbor's trailer to a place the city had set up for people to dump storm debris. We went to Boomer's for lunch, then came home to do stuff around the house. Mom and I went to WCC to buy books before realizing they aren't open on Fridays in the summer (augh!). None of us were at all hungry for dinner, so we just ate popcorn while watching Lost.

Saturday, September 5th

The guy who was doing our carpet came back to finish. I was at YARC, where we had pizza and cake, because it's our one year anniversary! Mom couldn't come pick me up til the carpet guy left, so I had to wait for another hour and a half after the meeting ended. On the bright side, I read 135 pages of the book I got! It's super fantastic.

Sunday August 24, 2015 {A Graduation and a Birthday}

1. Sunday morning we got up and headed out pretty quickly. My mom dropped me off at Village Books (our wonderful local independent bookstore) and then she and Isabelle went to the "Dog Days of Summer" event at Lake Padden.

2. I looked around for awhile before buying socks and fudge for my friend L, whose party I was going to go to, plus a card and chocolate for Emma, who just had a birthday. I also bought a book for myself (The Book Thief).

3. I ran into a person I knew vaguely (a friend of my dad's who I have been friends with on Facebook for a long time) and had a brief conversation with him about college and books and such. It pained me greatly to have to turn down an ARC he offered to grab for me (I can only have 4 out at a time, and I didn't have any to return, so I couldn't take another one). I don't know if I can say what book it was, but it's the book I'm most excited about that's coming out this fall.

4. Mom and Isabelle picked me up and we headed to L's graduation/birthday party. All sorts of people were there, and it was great.

5. We came home and watched the two last episodes of Gravity Falls. I'd seen the whole series before, but now Mom and Isabelle are caught up too.

6. Read the Time Traveler's Wife, and went to bed.

July 6-12 {Catch up!}

Monday

I went to the library to volunteer, to Chocolate Necessesites, and then to Irish Dance. It was the first day of the summer session. Gelato flavors of the week: chocolate, strawberry, and lemon. We've had a number of wildfires in the area, and early this week, the smoke was really bad. Monday in particular, I could really feel it effecting my breathing. It looked like we had full cloud cover Monday and Tuesday, but really it was all smoke!

Tuesday

This was the first day of Homeschool Academy classes! I got there around 1:30 and helped Spencer set up before his math class, which went very well! I then taught a literary analysis class in which we dissected the song American Pie, and then I had an Irish dance class. The dance class was a little underwhelming, but the rest went quite well!

Wednesday

I taught a Latin class and we did some Harry Potter translating, and then we went to parkday in Lynden. Grace and I did some planning for our Geology class we're teaching and then we hung out for a while with Hailey.

Thursday

Thursday was pretty quiet. I mostly did schoolwork that needed doing and read, and played a bit of Don't Starve. That game is really fun, but also endlessly frustrating. My best score so far is 17 days, and in that last one I was killed on Day 17 by a spider I was trying to kill because I had forgotten to put on my armor. Gah. If you don't know what I'm talking about, google "Don't Starve." It's pretty great. Mom went out for dinner with friends, and Isabelle and I made a pizza, and hung out.

Friday

Another low-key day of school, reading, and such. Mom, Isabelle, and I took a walk around after dinner.

Saturday

I had a YARC meeting in the morning. It was another very quiet meeting, and another where all (three) of our boys were gone! That makes two in a row. In the evening, I babysat some kids, and ended up watching the neighbor kids for part of it as well, making for 5 kids under 10!

Sunday

It was my dad's birthday, so we went to breakfast with him and my stepmom. When we got back, we headed to my grandmother's house for her 80th birthday. Both my aunts and all my cousins were there, and we had lunch/dinner, and hung out for the day, which was fun. Two of my cousins are going to college in the fall, and one is going to the University of Edinburgh. She'll be home for Christmas, but we probably won't see her before then and it was weird to realize that the next time we'll see her, she'll have been living in Scotland for a few months already!

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!

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.

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.

Stranger by Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith {Book Review}

*This post may contain affiliate links, and if you make a purchase after clicking them, I will receive compensation.*

For the first time in I don't even want to know how long, I have a book review for you! I have been doing a lot less reading lately than I would like, and most of the books I have been reading are advanced readers copies (ARCs), meaning that they have not yet been released, and that I can not yet review them. I want to get into the habit of reviewing them as I finish them and having the reviews go up as they come out, so hopefully there will be more book reviews coming soon.

Plot Summary (from Amazon.com):

Many generations ago, a mysterious cataclysm struck the world. Governments collapsed and people scattered, to rebuild where they could. A mutation, "the Change,” arose, granting some people unique powers. Though the area once called Los Angeles retains its cultural diversity, its technological marvels have faded into legend. "Las Anclas" now resembles a Wild West frontier town… where the Sheriff possesses superhuman strength, the doctor can warp time to heal his patients, and the distant ruins of an ancient city bristle with deadly crystalline trees that take their jewel-like colors from the clothes of the people they killed.

Teenage prospector Ross Juarez’s best find ever – an ancient book he doesn’t know how to read – nearly costs him his life when a bounty hunter is set on him to kill him and steal the book. Ross barely makes it to Las Anclas, bringing with him a precious artifact, a power no one has ever had before, and a whole lot of trouble.


My Review:

Stranger was recommended to me by a friend who said it was the best book he'd ever read. While I wouldn't put it quite in that category, it was very good. The characters were well developed and unique. The book has five main characters who alternate narrating chapters (all in third person), and they each manage to have a unique voice. There are a lot of characters to keep track of, and it can be easy to forget who some of the minor characters are and how they relate to the story, but overall that wasn't too much of a problem.

The plot is enjoyable. While it is primarily action driven, the action was interesting enough that I did not mind too much. As I know I've said on this blog many times, I'm usually a fan of character driven plot over action driven. The plot kept a good pace, never getting slow enough to be boring, or fast enough to be confusing. There were quite a few subplots, mostly of the romantic variety, and while some of them lost me a bit, the main ones were interesting. There was a good balance between the action driven main plot line, and the romance driven subplots.

The writing is very interesting. While it at first seems to fit pretty well into the easy to read/well-written slot where books like Harry Potter reside, something about it makes me hesitate to put it there. As I read, I never found myself particularly noticing the writing, but it was a slow read, which I also wouldn't have expected. I think that maybe that is because of the density of action and nuance that it is not a super fast read. You do have to pay attention to understand what is going on.

One of the best things about this book is the fictional world it resides in. While we hear very little about the world as a whole (there is very little exposition, which I appreciate), we don't really need to. It's a futuristic, post-apocalyptic world, but it still manages to feel unique and fresh, and the important elements of this world aren't at all formulaic.


Who should read this book?

I would recommend this book to young teens and above. The writing and plot might be challenging to grasp for some younger readers, but it is well written and should be engaging to most. There are romantic elements to the story, but there are is nothing that would get probably about a PG rating, and there is no swearing that I can recall. Even violence, while it exists, isn't particularly graphic.