6:08 p.m. - 2002-06-25
Lauren's high school graduation (!), and an update for 6/12-6/19
Quote of the Day:
One of Jessica's many LOTR-related AIM accounts: "DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE!"
SmarterChild: "I'll have to think about that one for awhile."
If you haven't IMed SmarterChild, it's a very good waste of time.
Day four of going to bed after midnight. Actually, this was the latest. Lauren M's Sweet Sixteen, around 12:30; Katie's goodbye party, 12:45; Lauren coming home, 12:15; Lauren's after-graduation-party, 1:45! Eeep. And I can't sleep late, I don't know why, but it sucks.
Spent the morning getting organized for France. Mom dropped Lauren off at the train station an hour away -- you know, I won't see her until August. That is just so weird. Lauren's the persun I go to every night just to hang out with and talk about anything and everything -- school, guys, family. I don't know what I'm going to do, and there's practically no way for us to stay in touch. She doesn't have her own pay phone; even though I had my own phone at Skidmore last summer, I won't at Siena; both of us will have very sporadic email access; and if I'm not great at writing letters, she's awful. So I guess we'll just stay up for hours talking in Nantucket. I hope we get to share a room.
At CTY my first summer (2000), Lauren was in Spain, and she was the one I missed the most. When I had that whole complicated five-persun-love-thingie going on, which I will write about sometime, I just desperately wanted to call her and explain, but there was no privacy. And of course I couldn't talk to her in Spain and I couldn't even write because there was no guarantee of her getting it, since she was moving around a lot. Then my second summer I got to talk to her some, but you know who I missed the most? Alexa! Alexa's letters preserved my sanity. She was so cute. She'd decorate them with stickers and be completely honest in them, and they were just so much fun. Once she even sent me a four-leaf clover. Adorable.
The graduation was unbelievably, ridiculously hot. We got there at a quarter to five and had to sit around for an hour. We did, however, get seats in the second row. :) It went ok, I guess. The fact is that it sucks to be third in the school. (That sounds weird, but let me explain...) It was incredibly close between her and Carolyn for second, but Carolyn got second, and Laura got first, and they both made speeches, but third? No one even knows! So that was kinda sucky, especially since Laura's speech was awful and Lauren is good at writing and delivering speeches. Oh well. I don't even need to worry about that, since I'm going to make sure they don't give me a ranking.
Gramie and Grumps and Aunt Dale and Uncle Jon came to the actual ceremony with us. David too. Alexis couldn't. We were all just sitting there sweating like... well, pigs don't sweat that much, so, um... we were sweating like horses.
Actually, we were sweating like really sweaty people.
Saw a bunch of people from band, which was nice. Also saw Mrs. H., my French teacher. We had found an unbelievable parking spot, where we just had to walk up this steep gravelly slope and then we were at the cars, or if you walk down, we were right where the ceremony took place! Amazing. So we definitely saved at least twenty minutes with that, which was good for Mom, who was panicking about having enough time to set up for the party. Mr. T. came, Lauren's AP Calc teacher, and his wife; Mrs. M., her art teacher and my digital media teacher, and her adorable daughter Sophie; Jane; Dr. Joan; Maggie and Ken; Aunt Dale and Uncle Jon; Gramie and Grumps; Dr. M., the principal (not by mutual agreement, grrr); Lauren's friend Rachel from way back elementary school at Fieldston, and Rachel's parents; Alexis; and some other people who I'm forgetting. We had vastly too much food, because Mr. D. (Lauren's 10th grade English teacher) didn't come with his wife, and Mrs. M.'s husband didn't come, and neither did the G. family because Renee's mom got sick, and some other people, we were just kind of guessing. But dinner was amazing, filet mignon, pesto, salad, apple pies, frozen fudge whipped cream cake, and then other yucky stuff like fish. I hate fish. We will be eating those leftovers for days. It's good though, because with just Dad and I for two days, we won't have to cook. :)
Alright, now I'm going to take you back two weeks.
6/12: Anne Frank was born on this day in 1929.
It was the last day of classes at my awful public school! WOOOOOOT! Needless to say I was thrilled. It hasn't been the best year. Academically, I've done better than ever before, but after CTY, I just spent the entire year trying to hide myself. Walking up against the wall, making myself shrink. I need to get away from here, to have a good summer at CTY and remind myself that there are other people in the world. I only have one more year here. Then a gap year, which could be amazing or boring as all hell, and then college.
Mrs. H. gave us our summer reading: TARTUFFE by Moliere! I was so happy! We all saw "Scapin" years ago, which was hysterical, and then Dad and I got a bunch of his plays and read them together. I have a wonderful book of his one-act plays, "The Flying Doctor" is my favorite. He's like the French Shakespeare! I saw "Le Bourgeois (sp.?) Gentilhomme" at the Comedie Francaise last summer with Emma and her grandparents, which was a lot of fun. So I'm excited to read this play, and I also have it in English, and she gave us a stack of background and supplementary information about an inch high that I have to read as well. I'll probably leave the whole thing for Nantucket, when I can get Dad's help too. But yeah, for summer reading, I was pleased with the choice. I'm also going to read "Catch-22" this summer, which is one of the requirements for English 11 honors. Even if I don't take English at school, I like reading what they read, and besides, I've wanted to read that book for a while. Lauren loved it.
During journalism Ms. M. let us go (as usual, we've done nothing for the past two months, and the issue of the paper with my Day of Silence article and Gary's article on America as a Superpower, which I gave him research and quotes for, will probably never come out). I went to the art room with Maya and finished my project, which I described in the previous entry. Yay!
In chemistry we made ice cream with liquid nitrogen, which was lots of fun. It was vanilla and had the consistency of cottage cheese, but didn't taste too bad, especially with the toppings he brought in. Mr. C. is the best. Definitely my favorite teacher at the high school, and one of my favorite teachers of all time. (The others would be... hmmm... Maggie, Holly, Mrs. P. who was my science teacher in seventh grade. Carley too, probably.)
Spent the rest of the afternoon frantically studying for the French final and mentally berating myself for not having started on Tuesday. Idiot! No, actually, idiote! (I doubt that's French. But whatEVER.)
6/13: The French final was at 10:30. I had to walk, so I got there at 10:25 and didn't have time to get my questions answered, but oh well. The test was actually not too bad.
The reading selections were from the midterm. Unfortunately I got 88 on the midterm (curved, by the way), but at least we were familiar with the pieces, even if I still wasn't sure of some of the answers.
The grammar section was from a National French exam, not one that we did, but it was pretty straightforward anyway. None of the nitty-gritty stupid little grammar rules that I'd been making myself memorize.
The essay topic was from the Barron's review book, and I was pissed at myself for not having written one as a practice! It was about what concept of work attracts you the most, so I wrote about being a teacher and having the opportunity to express my creativity and shit. It might sound good but it really wasn't! At least it was long enough, two pages single-sided (handwritten, not typed; I'm not THAT good). If anyone wants, I can type it up, but it's upstairs, so sign my guestbook if you're interested. (Actually, just sign my guestbook anyway. *grin*)
I finished the exam and checking the thing and copying over my essay in an hour and a half. 12:00, and I didn't really want to hang around an hour for a chem review. Lauren had to come over to school anyway to clean out her locker, so she brought me home, I had a lunch, and then went back for the chem review. Honors only, I finally semi-understood that it's the SAME thing when you favor one side of a reaction or shift to oen side of a reaction. Mr. C. definitely told me they were opposites, the two questions I got wrong on the equilibrium test were because of him. Grrr. Oh well. Anyway, I spent the rest of the afternoon doing pretty much nothing, I was so happy that French was over. In the evening around 11:30 I called in for my SAT II score because I'm a loser and couldn't wait a week. :) I discussed the SAT II score and Kelsey and Alexa's SAT scores in the previous entry. (Gosh, three entries in three days. I astound myself sometimes.)
6/14: K&A called in early for their SAT scores. There was an honors chem review at 10. I was not there.
We went into the city to do the food-shopping, like on May 23rd. Kelsey ran into Barnes & Noble's and got me the Arwen bookmark. I don't have Bilbo or Gimli, and if there are others that I don't have, well, I don't know about them! But I want to get Bilbo and Gimli. *sniffle* (These are the bookmarks with the rings on them.)
Shopping was fine, got a whole lot of yummy apple-smelling shampoo and conditioner that's good sizes for the summer, and Mom got some food for Kels, Lex and I to eat while she and Lauren were in Vancouver. We had lunch at a yummy French bistro. (Please note that the bistro was not yummy, the food there was; same with the shampoo, it smelled yummy, but I did not taste it. Just to clarify things.)
I had a carpaccio, basil, and parmesan sandwich, and we all shared a cheese platter with different breads and a giant chocolate-chip cookie. I hadn't had carpaccio since, um, the first time I had carpaccio. That was after seeing the Moliere play at the Comedie Francaise. It was after midnight. Dinner after midnight... this amuses me.
Did a bit of work after I got home, I read those six pages for global studies. Mostly just hung around. Did I mention that I finally caught up on all my email? Well, sort of. I caught up on all the jokes, and vocabulary, and stuff like that. I got below 100 emails, which I haven't had since before the school year started. I was thrilled. I did not, however, catch up with persunal emails or emails with links to check out, but maybe I'll have time at the end of the summer.
In the evening Lauren and I went downstairs and we were going to pick the best scenes to watch from "A Fish Called Wanda," so we went to scene 14 where one of the dog dies, and ended up simply watching through to the end. Very funny movie. Dad came home (he was in Paris all week with Dan) at the scene where Archie's standing around naked with the picture frame in front of his, um, cojones, and then the people walked in. He has the worst timing! (During December break, Lauren and I watched "Cruel Intentions" with Emma, and of COURSE he ALWAYS walked in during the sex scenes. Though, however, most of the movie was sex scenes. But that's beside the point.)
6/15: We had lunch at the local Japanese restaurant that catered Kelsey's Bat Mitzvah. Then Lauren and Alexa's dance performance, which I described in detail here. Got home pretty late. Carley came too with her friend Katherine, as did Lindsey (Lauren's friend) and her mom, and Renee.
6/16: Studied for the honors chem final. Mom and Lauren left for Vancouver. Father's Day; we made a whole bunch of pretty damn hilarious cards, if you ask me. I did almost all of them, thank you very much, including the limerick entitled "Fix-It Poem." :) Kelsey and I decorated his place at the end of the kitchen counter with a 16th birthday cup, a birthday halo, a "congratulations" plate, and enormous salad fork, spoon, and knife. He was very amused.
6/17: Happy birthday to Lauren M. from school.
The chem exam was at eight in the morning (morning exams suck!). It was eighty multiple-choice questions. It wasn't as ridiculously easy as the midterm, where I walked out of there thinking, "Was I given the wrong exam?" and wound up getting 100, but it wasn't as ridiculously hard as it could have been. There were a lot of questions where I had to guess between two choices. I ended up doing really well, but I'll write about that when I write about Friday.
Got home a little after ten and had my last classes with Maggie. Discussed the six pages of global reading, and she gave me a twenty-ish page chapter to read in Nantucket, the last chapter in the book. Shouldn't be a problem. We also went over a SAT II math 1 exam, which I wasn't allowed to review anything for, and only remembered how to solve about half the problems. I have to take that exam in November, along with the writing, and the PSAT in October, and the SAT in December. That'll be another thing to do in Nantucket. That sucks.
The rest of the afternoon I tried on a million shirts so I could put some aside that I wanted to take to France. Alexa sat on the bed and played music and commented and folded them all for me. Can that be considered a form of symbiosis?
6/18: I am sure that some students went to the 9:00 chemistry review. Other students, such as myself, slept late. Mmmmm.
Kelsey had her science final, which she said was easy, but she always rushes through things so I hope she did well. She's been getting mostly B's in that class, which hasn't made Mom and Dad very Happy, and doesn't argue her case well for missing two months of school next year to go to Utah.
Finished the twenty-some-odd questions I hadn't done on the chem Regents, and read Time. Doesn't that sound productive? Caught up on more email. Oh, wait, I also did some schoolroom cleanup. I dealt with my "pile" and straightened my "cubby," which I do need to thoroughly clean out. At least it looks neater. Dad, Alexa, Kelsey, and I went out for dinner at a nearby grill, which was good. Kelsey and I split a yummy steak, and Alexa and I split a chocolate souffle with molten chocolate inside. Mmmmm.
6/19: Made sure my room and the schoolroom were clean enough for Mom Inspection. Alexa and I watched 45 minutes of "The Naked Gun," a VERY funny movie. Mom and Lauren came home in the evening with lots of cool stuff from Vancouver. Roots, the company that designed the outfits for the American athletes (Canadian too, I think) during the Olympics, is a Canadian-based company, so they got a bunch of stuff from there. They got us all cute Olympics t-shirts that actually fit, and got Lex a hat, and got each of us two pairs of cute earrings with denim-y colors in them. I don't like earrings that big, but they're cute anyway. They also got me a really nice Roots wallet, black with white stitching, I've been using a little black leather thingie which most people use to hold business cards simply because it fits in my pocket! Flipped out because I found the entire Harry Potter trailer online; I had absolutely NO desire to go see Scooby-Doo! It wasn't even illegal, it was off the official site! Discovered this at 10:00 PM, and watched it five times before going to bed. What a wonderful two minutes and five seconds.
That's enough for now, I did a week. Now I'm only one week behind! YAY! Less than a week, actually! And I'll probably be able to update tomorrow. I may have dinner with Gramie and Grumps, if not I'll have lunch with Gramie on Thursday. There are pros and cons to both dates, I'll write about them later.
Mom's working out right now and I'm supposed to be continuing packing for France (no, I didn't write this whole thing in one go!) so I'm going to sign off now. So far, Missy, Brenda, Ivy, Samantha, and Georgie are getting passwords when I lock this diary for the summer. Anyone else? I'm going to create one account for all the LOTR sisters, so you can share it.
Sign my guestbook and let me know!
