6:43 p.m. - 2002-04-29
Update for 4/8-4/14! I guess I can't finish April before May...
Well, my goal was to catch up April before May. But that is OBVIOUSLY not going to happen, seeing as it's May on... Wednesday. I do have a reason, which is that I created a fanfiction account, and have been on that a lot. In two days, I posted ten things. :) Please go read some of them and review them! (Just don't say that you're from diaryland or anything, since my sisters read them. And you may need to refresh the page several times.)
So... ok. Back to the beginning of April.
4/8: Happy birthday to Deb, from CTY 2000, and to Dr. Joan. Three people were missing in French so we played Pictionary *in French.* It was so much fun. Hahahaha. We were going to divide up into girls & boys teams, Petra/Maya/Jaci/Jess vs. Pablo/Jason/Gary (Ashley & Andrea weren't there) but then Pablo left. So I went on the guy's team. (Maya was mad at me because she wanted me on their team, so when she wrote up the scores on the board, she called my group "Guys," so I had to add "Guys + Jess.") Since I can't draw, I just guessed. It was so funny. We won by one very disputed point. :) Then I had classes with Maggie, and afterward I went to a chemistry extra-help session for acids & bases.
4/9: Happy birthday to Sophie, Joanne's niece. (Joanne is my Hebrew teacher, and Sophie's really nice.) Dad left Moscow for Paris. Justine, Ashley, and I gave our oral presentation on the Oslo Peace Accord in journalism. I was kinda the only one talking, but oh well. Easy French quiz. I did so much better on the acids & bases quiz than I thought I would, 26/25! Oh yeah! :) (of course, that was only the Arrenhius theories; if he'd included Bronsted-Lowry, it probably would have been harder. But oh well.) Mom took Kelsey, Alexa and I out for lunch at this local bar & grille which has incredible chocolate souffle. Yum yum. I had to email Judy my revisions on the Olympics article for the F-H News, which meant that I had to actually REVISE it, plus I had to do an assignment for Carley (choose an object that describes myself and explain why), so I couldn't go to the GSA meeting after school. :( For Carley, she brought an article about the recent surge in popularity for patriotic art, and we had to write our responses to it.
4/10: In 1972, the Beatles officially broke up. :( It was the National Day of Silence at school, and there were 50+ people, which was pretty awesome. (For some reason I don't think the link is working; go to www.dayofsilence.org). The National Day of Silence was created in order to protest the silence (and harassment) faced by gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth. Then after school we all went outside and screamed. :) I had classes with Judy, and we went over my revisions on the Olympics article, took a look at her interview, and did some revisions on my Harry Potter vs LOTR editorial. God, she moves so fucking slowly, it drives me crazy. I stayed after school to work on my digital media project. It's so haaaaaaard! We have to make a series of three stamps, but it's so much harder than it sounds. So for any of you that know Photoshop 6.0: You scan in an image, then create a new layer above that image. You have to go back to the original image, use the magic wand on an area, use the eyedropper to get that color for the area, go to the other layer, and paint with that color. It is a pain in the ASS! It's so hard to remember to switch layers so you don't paint on your original layer, and the colors are never quite right, so it ends up looking really weird, and when you're done you have to take off the original picture.
For my series I decided to do Hobbits. :) I had an image of Merry/Pippin/Sam, one of Bilbo, and then one of Frodo. The problem was, the one with Bilbo was too dark, and the one of Frodo was vertical, and I wanted horizontal. So I found a different one of Bilbo and moved the one of Frodo into it, then found another one of Merry/Pippin. I've pretty much finished the Merry/Pippin one (we're in the present, by the way), but it was such a pain, because the background is all this foliage and stuff. Then I realized that I might finish Bilbo/Frodo by the due date, but never Bilbo/Frodo AND Merry/Pippin/Sam. So I moved Frodo to his own image, because I'd done a lot of work with him, and got a background of hobbitholes. Sorry, Merry/Pippin/Sam (and especially Sam, since now he isn't in my series at all). But the hobbithole background is really hard too. Bilbo's going along pretty well, Frodo/hobbithole is going along ehhhh, and they're... due tomorrow. Great.
Oh, but one good thing happened when I stayed after school. There was this teacher, a guy with a ponytail, and he saw my hobbits and started talking about LOTR and the Ring around my neck... then he got his cd of the movie and started playing it!! Apparently a student had made him the cd, and I tried to find out who, but he said he'd burn it for me. EEEEEEEEEEE! So I went back after school on 4/17, and he was there, and he said he was going to the car to get it, but I had to leave before he came back! :( And then on 4/24 I couldn't stay because I had a doctor's appointment! Maybe this Wednesday. Oh yeah, but I don't want to be in the present... so back to 4/10. I finished ALL my global homework for the WEEK, I was so proud of myself. Mom and Lauren went to a dinner for people who had just been accepted into Middlebury, and Dad was in the city, so Grumps came over with Zip to keep us company for dinner. He's a lot of fun. I hope we do it again sometime.
4/11: In 1972, "Let it Be" reached #1 on the charts, the Beatles' last single. :( (Ok, there was some AOL special, and I wrote it in my agenda! I am so *not* a dork! Haha.) We started reading "Rhinoceros" in French, a very weird play. Right after school, Mom and I dashed off to Lord & Taylor's to look for a dress for Pilar's sweet sixteen. I tried on about fifteen dresses, but I didn't like them, some didn't fit, some I didn't like the pattern. We wound up getting a black dress with white flowers. It wasn't gown-length, and it was black, but I really liked it, I thought it fit well. Then we also got her a bag for her birthday. I don't really know her that well, so I figured she can always exchange it, I put in a gift receipt. With Carley, we started compiling our end-of-the-year portfolios. I made a list of EVERYTHING we've done this year, which took quite a while, but was pretty interesting. We use the portfolios for our records, and I think sometimes we submit it to the State of New York or something because of the homeschooling, not sure. In any case we have to submit our final evaluations, and Carley needed copies of everything we had done so she could write about it, and it was just as easy to print everything twice. I was extremely productive, I actually STARTED on my math, plus I added some articles into the F-H News (the one on dry ice and the one about summer 2001), and I did the revisions on the Olympics article and the Harry Potter/LOTR editorial. Wohoo.
4/12: Caroline W.'s birthday from the writing tutorials, not still in touch. End of 3rd quarter. The day when you could start preordering copies of the August 6th DVD of LOTR:FOTR. :) Joanne came instead of on Thursday for Hebrew class. I had an appointment with Marsha, and we went to Borders first. I got two collections of short stories: one is short stories by censored writers, edited by Judy Blume, the other has all stories about prejudice. Mom, Kelsey & Alexa went back the next week, I gave them a book list, and they only got me one, but oh well. "Was" by Geoff Ryman is an adaptation of "The Wizard of Oz" that I've wanted to read for a while, "Wicked" got me so interested in that. Oh, and Dad came home! :) He didn't bring me any coins for my collection :(, but he did bring us chocolates, and the BEST kind. Some Russian, which are good, and then French... mmmmmmm... Fauchon and La Maison du Chocolat. These are the best truffles you can get. Fauchon truffles have real flecks of GOLD on the top! Ridiculously expensive, but ridiculously delicious. Unfortunately, currently, they've all been eaten. :(
That Friday was also the 5th anniversary of Lauren's Bat Mitzvah. God, that was such a hard time. Gramie had just been diagnosed with ovarian cancer and given three weeks to live. It was so hard, trying to stay upbeat. Lauren started crying in the middle of her speech. It's a miracle that Gramie's still alive.
4/13: Happy birthday to April, also from the writing tutorials, also still not in touch with. :) Kelsey, Alexa, and I had our "Barnum" performance. Peter changed the physically impossible brick-throwing scene so that Michael was on my other side picking up bricks and stacking them, and I could stay on the floor kneeling instead of bending up and down twice a second. It went pretty well. The Ringmaster forgot a lot of her lines, and I got out of breath and had to stop singing for a line, but overall it was okay. David came home!! He brought me a CD, I was so happy, I hadn't even been expecting it. It was a burned rap mix. Here's the track listings: Jay-Z, "You Don't Know"; Naz, "Got Yourself A Gun"; Timbaland, "Y'all"; Eminem, "I'm Back"; Dr. Dre, "What's the Difference"; Timbaland, "Night Rider duo"; Eminem, "Criminal"; Bone Thugs, "Close my Eyes"; Jay-Z, "H to the Izzo"; Ludacris, "Rollout"; Jay-Z, "Big Pimpin'"; Jermaine Dupri featuring Ludacris, "Welcome to Atlanta"; Someone (not DMX), "Party Up"; Fat Joe featuring Ashanti, "What's Love"; Busta Rhymes, "Dangerous"; Bone Thugs, "Notorious Thugs"; Vita featuring Ja Rule, "The Murderers."
Now, currently, I actually prefer more "rockish" music than "rappish." But see, here's the thing. In May 2000, I heard the song "The Real Slim Shady" on the radio and I loved it. So I had to get the cd, not knowing anything else about him, and since my parents didn't either, they didn't realize that it wasn't really appropriate. I was extremely unhappy at the time, and Eminem was my outlet. I didn't like most of the things he said -- well, he's a sexist, homophobic bastard -- but I just liked his ANGER. I needed that anger.
Then my parents found out more about Eminem, and after a long, long argument, I had to give them the cd on October 22nd, 2000. In exchange they bought me his two cds, but both edited, not that it makes much of a difference.
Ok, I know I'm getting a little sidetracked here, but while I'm on the topic of Eminem, last Friday (4/26), Lex told me that Z100 was going to play his new single at 3:07 PM, but I was at Marsha's and missed it, I was so pissed. So the next day, I was working on my global studies downstairs, and suddenly I decided I wanted to go upstairs and go to the bathroom. So I go up into my room and decide I want to flip on the radio, and... it's playing the song. THEN, that night, I go upstairs, and I'm talking to K&A, and I tell them I'm going to go into my room and put on the radio, maybe it'll be *the song.* Of course, it is. I must be psychic. :)
4/14: I worked in the office for an hour and made $5. Did I mention I paid off my debt for the watch? I mean, this has been going on since August! I kind of cut them short $30, but that's okay. See, I realized that I'm just too honest. A couple months ago I paid them $70, because my box was getting full, and they thought we were all settled, and I should have just said "oh yeah we are"!
We spent pretty much the entire day cleaning and switching the closets. It was an absolute pain in the ASS, but necessary. We haven't really done a huge switch since we moved in (Christmas Day in 1995). So there was some old, TINY stuff! I can't even describe the magnitude of this task... I have three closets (they're all tiny, but still)... shelves and shelves of pants, shirts, tee-shirts, jeans, socks, underwear, sweaters, shoes... multiplied by four... it's insane. So that took the entire day. The only good thing was that I had been really good with my homework, I didn't have anything left, and that we got double allowance for it. :) $20! Wohoo!
So since I'm updating a week at a time, and this has taken me over an hour, I am DEFINITELY going to end it here. If I don't spend the entire day at digital media tomorrow, I'll try to update another week.
-Jessica
