8:34 p.m. - 2002-06-23

I updated for 5/29-6/3! That's not really pathetic! *cringes*

I have fifteen minutes before we're off for dinner -- it's Mom's birthday -- so I figured I'd do a super-quick update. I had been planning on writing a super-long update today, but Alexis was in the schoolroom almost the entire day and he always stands over my shoulder and reads what I do. So that didn't happen, and then after he left I went and helped Dad write checks in the office. Tomorrow is Lauren's graduation at six, and we're probably leaving to get seats at a quarter to five. Maybe I can update in the morning? We'll see. For certain I'm going to spend almost all of Tuesday getting ready for France because it's Mom's last day at home. Mom, Kelsey, and Alexa are leaving for Utah early Wednesday afternoon.

It's so hot. I can't stand it, I think I'm going to melt. I'm like Elphaba and water (for those of you who haven't read "Wicked," she's the Wicked Witch of the West). She avoids water at all costs and in the end it's her downfall. Maybe I'll die from heatstroke. On Friday I had to walk home from town, which took fifty minutes. When I stepped inside I just wanted to peel off all my clothes and then start peeling off my skin, jump in a tub of ice cream and... wait. Ice cream's sticky. Yuck. Maybe ice water?

Last night I got home at midnight for the second night in a row (Lauren's Sweet Sixteen and then Katie's goodbye party). I got ready for bed in half an hour, but I couldn't fall asleep. Finally I rolled over and looked at the clock, it was a little after one.

Then I realized that...

...I could SEE the clock...

...which meant that I hadn't taken out my contacts.

Pathetic, isn't it? :)

I am completely determined to catch up to the present before I leave for France. This should be interesting.

5/29: Peter left (the English cousin). Did some practice for the chem SAT II, spent an hour sorting through old boxes to find theater programs that I could use for a collage for digital media, wrote my short story in an art form for Carley. I chose a story I'd worked with for the Johns Hopkins writing tutorial, "Call If You Need Me." It's a fascinating story, and it's in this book. Actually, for my last assignment, the one I had to do over February break at the Olympics (I don't have time to link it, but it's in my archive), I had to write a story imitating the style of CIYNM, which was pretty interesting. Anyway for the project I wrote a bunch of random sentences on a piece of paper so they looked pretty, in different directions and all, and then wrote Nancy and Dan and cut a line right down the middle of the and. It ended up looking good, I highlighted some of the words, and it was fun. Great story. Go try to find the book. :)

But, yeah. So I did that in the afternoon. And then I had my last youth group board meeting at Teren's house (she's the president; actually, technically I suppose she WAS the president, since elections were last month and Sara is the new president next year). It was like most other meetings, except at Teren's house. I ate reaaallllllyyyyy slowly so it wasn't obvious that no one was talking to me. We only did real stuff for about half an hour, the rest was eating and chatting. I didn't chat. Teren made lasagna and some icky cake that everyone else loved. I called to be picked up as soon as I thought it wasn't rude.

5/30: Happy birthday to Zoe and to Gramie. Lauren actually skipped school so she could go to these amazing outlets with Mom and Kay (Peter's wife). I wanted to go, but I didn't think I could miss chemistry two days before the SAT II. Dad wrote the school a note saying that Lauren had a temperature, and that's completely true: 98.6. :) Ohhh, how much fun getting around the stupid system is.

It was David's first day at work.

We had our last classes with Carley, and we played Balderdash. If you don't know how to play, it's sort of like this. You pick a card which has five obscure words and then look at the definitions on the other side. You spell out the word for everyone and they have to make up a definition for it. Then you read aloud all the definitions and people have to guess which one is the real definition, and if someone guesses a fake one, the persun who made up the fake one gets points too. Fun fun. The best was "bustard," which we all defined as some sort of explosion involving mustard. I don't remember what the real definition was.

Did more practice tests, studied for a French quiz on possessive adjectives.

5/31: Happy birthday to Emily. Emily was my best friend in kindergarten and first grade, then I went to a different school and then I started homeschooling. We stayed in touch for a long time and we still see each other now and then, but we're definitely not as close. It's also been tough for her because her dad announced he wanted a divorce completely out of the blue, he has a much younger girlfriend. I always liked her dad, he was playing in the orchestra at Jekyll & Hyde and we got to go backstage... that was nearly five years ago... wow. But I haven't seen him for a REALLY long time, Mom has lunch with Vicky sometimes, that's Emily's mom. But yeah. Back to Friday.

Got 100 on the French quiz, whoop-de-do. After chem I went to the mentoring program luncheon and got pizza and cookies, then hung out at lunch, which I rarely do. Usually I go straight home.

After school, Missy, Na Lee, Jackie, and Pilar came over for a chem review. It was helpful, especially learning each other's mnemonics (sp.?), and we also had lots of fun. Wohoo. Jackie wrote "Entropy" and "Enthalpy" up on the board and drew little things to remember them. (Entropy is mess and disorder, so she wrote RANDOM under the R in the word. Enthalpy is heat energy, so she wrote HEAT coming down from the H.)

My sisters came into the room later and drew big hearts around "Ent."

I love my sisters.

6/1: Dum-dum-dum-dum... dum-dum-dum-dum... *insert opening chords of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony* The chemistry SAT II.

I was lucky, not too far away, Katie was going to the same place too so we picked her up on the way. Kelsey and Alexa were taking the SAT, and they were in some bizarre place really far away, and they had to leave the house before seven, which definitely would have sucked.

The test was Not Good. See, I'm really not good at math, especially not mental math. I looked at the answer keys throughout fifth grade so I never learned long division and long multiplication, and they don't allow you a calculator on the exam.

So the chemistry SAT II doesn't really test your knowledge of chemistry, it tests your ability to answer 85 questions in 60 minutes, your ability to do math, and your ability to remember to pee BEFORE going into the test room. And no, I'm not a good test-taker. I left over fifteen blank. I finished the test in fifty minutes and then went back to some of the ones I left blank. It was Not A Happy Test.

But then, and yes, we're skipping ahead in time a bit, I called in for my scores late on June 13th, and I got a 710. How did that happen? I definitely wasn't going to complain (or ask them that), but, dude! I left fifteen blank! MORE than fifteen blank! I was pretty happy. Kelsey got a 620 verbal (!) and a 470 math, Alexa got a 580 verbal and a 570 math. So Kelsey was happy with her phenomenal verbal score, but not with her math, and Alexa was good all-around, but she had a higher combined score than Kelsey, which did not make Kelsey Happy. It really sucked that they had to take the same test at the same time.

Once I got home, I wasn't in the mood to do ANYTHING. Just kind of hung around the house all day. Kay left, which was okay, because she's really really nice and sweet but she expects to constantly be entertained which can get a little annoying. Cassandra was staying with us too, by the way. Did I mention that? She came on Thursday night and didn't leave until Sunday. That's David's girlfriend, for those of you who don't know, and we don't like her.

Well, actually, I did one thing during the day. I made a collage for digital media. I had spent two days scanning in a zillion programs and CD covers and then I made them into a collage. This was the self-portrait project, and I was going to use that as a background and then put a picture of my face and put a hand over my face like in Tommy. Of course, I ended up deciding I didn't like the collage, even though I had spent four hours on it (including scanning), which was annoying, but c'est la vie. More on the project later.

In the evening we watched "Harry Potter," which I had gotten Kelsey as a Bat Mitzvah present. (Hey, get them what they like, right? Everyone else got religious gifts, so I told Kelsey I'd get her something that she really wanted.) That was lots of fun. Unfortunately we haven't had any time to watch the extras and deleted scenes and such, which I hear are hard to find.

6/2: Happy birthday to Carly, who I met through the writing tutorials, and Louise, who I met my first summer away from home. Actually, that's kind of funny. See, Louise and Miriam were these two girls from Sweden, and I stayed in touch with Miriam online (Louise was awful at staying in touch), and I also was in touch with Carly, and then I found out they were going to the same camp... and then they all wound up best friends! I've never met Carly, but Miriam and Louise were really nice.

My youth group went white-water rafting that day. I didn't. I actually enjoy white-water rafting. I went to this camp in Utah for two summers, you sign up for a week at a time, where you do things like rock climbing and mountain biking and hiking and caving. White-water rafting was my favorite, caving was second. I hated rock climbing and mountain biking. I didn't really like hiking, but we went on a two-day hiking overnight that was lots of fun and this guy hit on me so that was all good. The white-water rafting overnight wasn't quite as much fun because I didn't like the girls, but yeah, it was all good. Fun camp. I'm too old for it now. :(

I had an appointment with Marsha, but she couldn't make it. I was going to go to a birthday party for Zip at 1:30 (which we all knew would turn into a combination party for Aunt Jill), but I had way too much work (entire week's worth of math and global studies). I decided that I'd go say hi, and we went to Borders beforehand. I love that store.

6/3: I missed French class and volunteer service and a bit of digital media because we had our awards ceremony. Like I said in an earlier entry, which I'm not going to link because I was in a BAD mood, I didn't win any real awards. I missed French, I missed chemistry (except that if the finals had counted for chemistry, I would have won the award by a LOT, but oh well). I went up there for the Guidance Office Volunteer award, which made me feel Real Special. Then I also got called up to the stage to get certificates for participating in the National French Contest and the International French Test, but these were just participation certificates, they didn't say anything else. (With the NFC, only the people who place nationally get pretty certificates. And I was exactly one question away from placing nationally; they stop counting at #11. Hmph.) Lauren got awards for economics, law, AP English, and science research. Science research was her autism project.

So digital media. I decided what I wanted to do. Dad found me a pretty background of Utah, which I decided was good because, well, we spend so much time there and it's like a second home and I love it and anyway it was a beautiful background. Then I got Kelsey to take a bunch of pictures of my outstretched hand. Then I got a picture of me from when I was almost five, very cute, and Mom let me scan in one of the proofs from the Bat Mitzvah. Actually, I liked how the project turned out, which was good because I usually don't. (I went in two days ago to find out what I got, but Mrs. M. wasn't there. Oh well.) I had a big hand in the middle and a semi-transparent hand behind it like a shadow, and then the little Jessica was on the left side, pretty opaque, and then the Bat Mitzvah Jessica was on the other side, not very transparent.

I didn't mean for the hand to look like Lauren's huge mural commemorating September 11th, which is in the hall at school. She built the Twin Towers out of newspaper clippings and painted flames and the sky and a huge hand reaching out, it's amazing.

I meant for the hand to be separating the two Jessica's. It's there to show that one Jessica can never return to the other.

The hand is there to stop you. To make you look beyond the surface.

Also, ironically, it's there because that's what I do whenever someone comes near me with a camera. I don't particularly want to remember this stage of my life, thank you very much.

But I was too afraid to explain any of that to Mrs. M. So when I handed it in, she said that it was "very cute."

ha.

Back to Monday.

Classes with Maggie. Then we went out to Bloomingdale's and I found a really pretty dress, red with flowers and one of those funky necklines, can't describe it, but Lauren's dress for the Bat Mitzvah dress had a similar one. Anyway it was going on sale in a few days so they put it aside and I was going to get it for Lauren's party. Afterward Mom took Kelsey, Alexa, and I out for ice cream. I spent the rest of the afternoon listening to cassettes from my Barron's review book for AP French.

Back to the present. 6/23. As you can tell, this was NOT all written in the twenty minutes before we went out for dinner! It's 8:30 and I'm going to upload this, read some diaries, and clean up my room, which is an absolute disaster.

Don't forget: join my notify list and/or let me know if you want a password for the diary when I lock it. It'll probably be locked on Thursday, but I'll try to give you a day's warning.

Love, Jessica

Mordor