Okay, the first day of school is done, that means I don't have to go back again, right?

...RIGHT?!

My classes all seem pretty good, except maybe for French and Statistics. French I am not looking forward to. I have the same teacher whom I had last year...and the year before that. We have a sort of on and off liking relationship. That is, she doesn't like me when I don't do my work, but loves me when she realizes that I'm good at French. Anyway, she has this annoying habit where, every term, we have one, huge, overarching project, or test, or essay, or something that is worth a lot more than the rest of the grades that term. Basically, this one thing can make or break your grade. First of all, I forgot that she did that until today. Second of all, if I had remembered that she did that, I would have never thought that the ultimate assignment would be the summer work.

Yessir, I have screwed myself over for term 1 French due to my laziness with the summer work. Joy.

Anyway, Stat. Stat was weird. He insisted that we all get this application onto our calculators that only two people had in the classroom in five minutes with only one connector cable. Yeah, so didn't happen. He kept asking questions about how much we knew how to do on our calculators, and I knew how to do everything because obviously I'm a calculator GENIUS. No. I attend math team. And that's about all I can attribute my calculator knowledge to. I think he thinks that, since I'm good at my calculator, I can't do math without it. Whatever. Oh, and, by the way, that program he wanted us to get? Doesn't fit on my calculator. I have too many USEFUL programs. If he ABSOLUTELY INSISTS that we get it, I'll have to archive stuff. Grah.

Anyway, I've decided to be studious this year. I've done my homework for tonight, planned everything out, even started a book that's due in a few weeks. Yeah. I'm awesome. We'll see how long this lasts.

OMG UPDATES TWO DAYS IN A ROW!

I'm sure you're just wetting yourself from ecstasy.

Anyway, today I went on a magical library adventure. I hope you listen to this story better than my mother did, she rushed me by impatiently saying, "Uh huh, yeah, uh huh," every few seconds.

So today after work, I thought, "Hey! I have these two SUPER overdue books to return and one book to get from the library! Since it's on the way, I'll stop in for a few minutes and take care of it!" As it turned out, a few minutes equals about an hour and a half.

The first thing that my brother and I do is to drop my SUPER overdue books into the book drop. SQUEAK, THUMP, the action that will haunt us for the rest of the night is done. So we go to the computer catalogs and look up this book I have to get for my summer work, A Summer Life by Gary Soto. The computer informs me that there is one copy in the library. Cool! Let's go get it!

Five minutes of looking later and we determine that we can't find it. So we go the reference desk where this nice but a little spacey woman repeats the looking process and determines that somebody must have crammed it on the wrong shelf or stolen it. But hey, the library in a nearby town might have it! So she goes back to her desk, calls them up, and yes, they have a copy! But wait...have I incurred any late fees on my card?

Errr......

Okay, well, I'll just have to go to the main desk and pay them. No big deal. It's just that the other library doesn't like to give books to people who have late fees. So we go to the main desk.

Hi, I'm just here to pay some of my late fees.

Okay, it looks like I have $1.75 for returned books from years ago, but also $2.50 for two books that haven't been returned yet.

Oh, I just returned those.

Okay, but they haven't gone through yet, so I can't pay the fee yet.

But I need to pay the fee now so that the other library will allow me to take their book.

Did I use the drop box? Yes. *sigh*

So the other desk lady bumbles off downstairs to search out the books I dropped in the drop box. Twenty minutes later, she returns with an armful of books that are irrelevant to my situation.

Well, the whole floor was covered in books from the book drop and she was NOT going to paw through them to find my books.

But I need to pay this fee and go to the other library!

Luckily, the nice but a little spacey woman from the Reference desk is there.

Oh, she'll go get the books so that we can check them in. We'll just go with her to help her look.

She opens the door, and the annoyed Circulation Desk lady was right: the floor of the maybe three by three foot room is covered in books. After a minute and a half of searching, my brother and I locate the proper books and bring them upstairs, where, after several more minutes of, "Fees over two dollars need a receipt," "Where are the receipts?" etc, I leave with a library card with a cleaned slate.

I turn to my brother and say, "This is exactly why I wanted to use our sister's library card to get this book."

Fifteen minutes of driving later, we arrive at the other library. We walk upstairs where we see a desk and ask if the woman there is holding a book for me. No, but she'll go check at the other desk, and, SUCCESS! The 150-page and otherwise generally insignificant book is sitting on the shelf with my name on it!

My brother and I return to the car discussing our dire need for War and Peace written in Czechoslovakian for our Czechoslovakian class in our Czechoslovakian school with our Czechoslovakian friends to prepare for a Czechoslovakian college and how we must get it from the library.

We are broken, tired, and hungry, but our mission was a success. Gary Soto, thank you for ruining what could have been a perfectly pleasant evening.

I hope you noticed the change in layout. It only took me FOR-FREAKING-EVER. I almost used a different f-word in the middle there, but I don't really like swearing on my blog. The other, more profane f-word would have been more appropriate, though. It drove me crazy. Sure, at first it was simply looking through the code and deleting stuff that I didn't need, but then once the stuff was deleted other stuff needed to be moved around. Then it was simply changing widths and padding. But then I had a line down the middle of the entries.

I began the process at 10:00pm. I ended the process at 12:15am. It took about an hour to delete stuff and changing widths and padding. The other hour and a quarter was spent trying to get rid of the line. I thought that the line was a border for something, so I changed around a ton of borders...then changed them back. I changed around a ton of widths...then changed them back. Nothing was working. I basically searched and read through lines and lines of code over and over and over and over and over again for over an hour. It was infuriating, but I knew that I couldn't give up or go to bed until I finished.

It's still sort of not quite right, which bothers me. For one, the line that I had to delete through the middle I was hoping to move to the side to separate the entries and the side bit, but it turned out that it was a picture that couldn't be moved. Also, the header is too far to the left. And the side bit is short and the horizontal lines further down go all the way across and look kind of weird.

Of course, I could get rid of the horizontal lines too to be rid of that awkwardness. At the moment, however, I feel that I have butchered Terka's fine work enough. If this stuff bothers her as much as it bothers me, perhaps she will go through and fix it. Or perhaps I will go through later and fix it. I know that code forwards and backwards now. I'm slightly literate in HTML and CSS again. Not that I could ever possibly write it, but I know how to read it and tell what stuff does.

Okay. So. I'm in a weird sort of fed up mood. I don't really know. After searching through lines of code for hours, I'm rather irritated.

I'm listening to the radio right now. It's basically like, current hits. And they just announced a song as "New music," so I was all excited. Are they going to play something new and interesting that I can get into?

No. They're going to play a song that they play pretty much once an hour. I don't think a song counts as "new" if you play it that often. Just a memo to KISS 108. It's great, after listening to this station for only a few hours, you can learn the words to every song they play. The repetitiveness doesn't usually bother me: only when I actually pay attention. They have quite a lot of commercials too. There is this one commercial that I particularly love about a mango. It's a hoot.

This entry is kind of rambling and poorly written, and I apologize. But I think you can live through.

As an ending note, The Stranger by Albert Camus makes no sense and I do not look forward to writing my notes on it.

That is all. At ease, soldier.



EDIT: I've gotten the hang of this CSS/HTML thing again. I fixed up the layout to my liking. I hope you like it too. If not...too bad.

I remember a time when checking my friends' blogs was a long process, and how my folder of bookmarks of their blogs was rather large. Now, it only takes several seconds to glance through them. The latest peak was three blogs besides mine to check up on, but then one of my friends got so frustrated with his comments (or lack thereof) that he moved his blog to an unknown location. Then there were two. Then another one of my friends got so frustrated with her layout that she replaced her entire blog with the word "gah." (Not that gah is really a word. It's more of a sound, really.) Thus, being left to check a single blog that has not updated since February, I have resorted to posting my own entry.

In the good ol' days, blogs were popular to have in my group of friends. Everybody had one, everybody updated regularly. If you check out my links just below that nifty hit counter, those were all the blogs I checked up on in the prime of the blogs' lives. Now, two don't lead anywhere, one leads to an old blog (I could update that link to her new blog...but she doesn't update that one either), three lead to forgotten blogs that haven't been updated in so long they probably never will be, one leads to a different person's MySpace page, and the other...well, that one leads to Gah.

Sometime I might get around to fixing those links (basically getting rid of them) but I'm very out of practice with HTML and CSS. Not that I was ever extremely good with them...It was like being in a foreign country where the only words you know are "Hello," "My name is Carolyn," and "Will you please direct me to the nearest fish market." Some of my knowledge was useful, the rest was not, and I hardly ever got to where I really wanted to go. Which was why I always "travelled" with one of my friends who knew the language fluently. She'd step up and say, "No, what she really wants is to get to your nearest hotel. Isn't she silly?"

I think that that simile has gone far enough.

Anyway, the gist is that today I am feeling nostalgic for a time when the blog was king. Do any of you remember that month when I updated every single day just to see if I could? I believe it was October 2005, or maybe 2006. A lot of the entries, albeit, were "I'm tired. I'm going to bed now." Sometimes I even faked the dates when midnight passed and I had forgotten to update. Then again, it wasn't really faking. It was more like rounding down.

Speaking of math...I've been working on my math summer packets. I finished one for my upcoming Statistics class, and let me tell you, that packet is a travesty. Some of the answers given in the back are wrong, the directions are unclear, and some of the answers are missing. Basically a waste of time. My Calculus packet, though...that I can get into. I've finished most of it, and it's easy and gives me hope for the upcoming class. Hope for Mrs. L to viciously slaughter as she laughs giddily. Puts the laughter in slaughter...

Anyway, I hope you have enjoyed this refreshing dose of a new entry. Heaven knows I have. The only way I can get one nowadays is by writing it myself.

I have not updated for a long time, and just recently (like five seconds ago) I realized why this is. I always figured that I had to write something interesting, something that's more than just documenting my day-to-day life. Of course, nothing came to mind to me that seemed exciting enough to share with my beloved readers.

Slightly before this realization, I had discovered my aunt's blog (located here) and was reading about her prolonged vacation with her two-year-old and three-month old. Then I realized that my day-to-day life WAS interesting: to the right people. Then, BAM! the realization I initially told you about.

That's right, dear readers, I have rediscovered blogging.

So I'm going to summarize my day-to-day life so far this summer. Are you ready? It's pretty intense. I get up, sometimes go to work in the morning, play video games with my brothers and sister, swim a bit, eat s'mores. The last bit is my favourite. This summer I have discovered an addiction for s'mores. They're quite tasty (or, if you're Fergie, tastey).

I'm going to take a moment and discuss my job. I work at this place called Kumon Learning Centre. It is a place that Asian parents send their children to train them while they are still young to be smarter than everybody else. Just kidding. Mostly. There are also non-Asian children. Anyway, they go to the centre, and they do worksheets. These worksheets range in difficulty from counting objects to calculus, or from recognizing pictures to dissecting literary passages for relevant symbols and concepts. I grade these worksheets and occaisonally aid the students in their never-ending search for higher knowledge.

All the kids hate Kumon. And who can blame them? It's school outside of school. There's homework, grades, instructors. Hell, the GRADERS hate Kumon. Today, there was a call from a woman asking at what age the Kumon program began, because her son was turning three in November and she was thinking of enrolling him. That's right, there are kids as young as three at this centre. They will never know anything EXCEPT Kumon. I can't imagine how depressing that would be: never remembering a time when you weren't enrolled at Kumon. As a grader, I am not technically "enrolled" in Kumon (since Kumon pays me and not vice versa) but I am still required to complete levels of worksheets. For instance, I am working on level H in math. There are two-hundred sheets per level, and the levels gradually get more difficult (math goes from 7A through O). I have completed a little more than half of the level since I received it in April. When one of my co-workers noticed this the other day, and was told that my sister has already completed a level, she said, "Wow, no offense, but you guys have no life."

Gee, thanks. I definitely take no offense to that. It's not like I sit at home all day and do work. And since when was it a bad thing to do work? I don't really understand that. Besides, I do most of the worksheets while I'm at Kumon, when I'm not helping a student or grading their work. I can usually get about ten pages done per day that I work. And when I don't work? Let's see, I've seen three movies in as many weeks, gone out to lunch at the same place so many times that I think the staff will soon know me by name, gone to a few parties...and that's all in the time I've been back from vacation, a little over a week. I so have a life.

Haha irony. I'm defending my life on my blog.

Last year at this time, I was probably thinking, "Next year is going to be so fantastic! I'm taking classes with my friends and the courses will be a good challenge blah blah blah..."

I think that it's good that people don't have precognitive abilities. It's nice that I was so blissfully ignorant back then. If I had known how hellish this year was going to turn out to be I probably would have killed myself. See, I think that the thing is that I have a tendency, when I'm happy and having a good time, to be under the impression that it can go nowhere but up. In reality, though, when you're at the zenith of your school career, you can't really do anything but drop.

It's like climbing a mountain and believing that it goes on forever. Eventually you're in for a nasty surprise.

The thing with this school year is that it's so much work and stress that I did not see coming. I guess I should have, but I really wouldn't call myself particularly bright when it comes to expectations. I'm really much too optimistic for reality. See the following chart.

Class/Activity	Initial Expectation	Reality
Chemistry	I'm good at chemistry! With my friends there, it will be a blast!	Brutal and horrifying mind-rape. With chemicals.
Math	I'm good at math! This will be a good time!	I'm good at math! This is a good time!
French	I'm good at French! It will be great to not have Ms. D!	Altercations with an evil French woman who enjoys torturing students...and getting paid for it.
History	...Well, at least I won't have to deal with a really strange teacher in AmThought.	Involuntary mental nap-time! This might sound pleasant. It's really not.
English	My English class this year was awesome! There's nowhere to go but up!	Oh no! I seem to have fallen off the peak of the mountain and am now crashing on the pointy rocks of death!
Drama	I got a role in Shakespeare and worked hard stage-managing for the One Acts! I'm a good actor, I'm sure I'll get a part next year too!	Stage managing for Shax + acting for One Acts = ehhhhhhhhhh.

As you can clearly see, this year so far has been beating the crap out of me. More emotionally and mentally than physically, but I have been having some problems with spontaneous bruising. My big problem is that I no longer have any control over my emotions. There was a time back in like...grade eight and nine when I was basically extremely stoic, mostly because I didn't really have that many emotions. Now they're all over the place and very intense. I've cried during chemistry tests. I'm not ashamed to admit it.

If I'm lucky, I'll last the rest of the year without being towed away giggling by the men in white coats. Depending, of course, on your definition of lucky.

I am so frustrated with life right now. It's pretty ridiculous. There are so many things that just aren't going my way and it makes me angry.

I'm really bad at chemistry all of the sudden and it feels like it's impossible for me to get good grades. I've done extraordinarily badly on tests and quizzes that most of my other classmates considered easy and "a joke." They look down at their seventeen out of twenty quizzes and think, "Man, I must be slipping," at the same time I'll look down at my own thirteen out of twenty and think, "Awesome, I passed this one!" A twenty out of twenty is pretty much beyond even my wildest dreams. This is the second year that chemistry has been messing with my GPA. Why did I ever choose to do AP Chem????

My parents repeatedly crush my dreams of getting a car. It's been my dream for the longest time, and I thought that it was possible, but all of the sudden they're telling all of these ridiculous things like the insurance is too expensive and that it's never really significantly more convenient for me to have a car. I mean, I wrote them an e-mail a while ago about it, where I basically condensed all of my arguments for getting a car. I addressed the money situation by saying that, even though I only make minimum wage, I could help pay for the insurance or help pay for the car. I pointed out several instances in which it would be more convenient for me to have my own car, and continue to point these situations out when they arise. They keep telling me that they're listening to me, but I just don't feel like they are. It's sort of like they keep falling back on these same arguments even though I offered solutions to the problems and pointed out flaws in those arguments. I mean, I understand that a car and insurance for me would be ridiculously expensive, and they don't fail to tell me this (they even make up big numbers for the cost to discourage me). The thing is, they tell me this, then turn around and discuss hiring an interior designer to redo their bathroom. It simply makes me very frustrated and angry. I mean, if you had dreamed of something for years and years, would you be able to accept that it will never happen?

I am just so tired of life. It's too bad it's inescapable.

The Woman of the Winter Fields

NOTE: This story is fictional and told from the point of view of a man.

What is the most important thing in the world? Some people say love. Some people say money. Some people say sex. Others say different things still, but I feel like I am the only one around with the right idea in life. The most important thing in the world, obviously, is snowmen. Those rotund men who sit in yards until it comes time for the melting of their packed crystals in the springtime give me a reason to live. Never have I felt such joy as when I am poking a corn-cob pipe into the hard, dense snow of the man’s head, nor as when I locate the perfect arms for my new friend. There is no other perfection.

As any good things do, snowmen also come with their downfalls, of course. For instance, they can unfortunately only be seasonal friends; come springtime, all which is left of these loyal comrades is a puddle of cool water soaking in the grass. It is quite sad. That is the circle of life, however, and each and every season I must enjoy all the time I have with my snowmen until they perish in the unrelenting sunshine. As much as I attempt to prepare myself for the inevitable demise of my friends, it is always a new pain within my soul as I watch them slowly (and probably miserably) die.

During the short winter season, of course, I must build as many snowmen as I can, and shower affection upon them. I spend my entire year waiting for the moment enough snow falls to create new companions. I build plans in my mind. I decide the ratio of males to females. I decide how each one could look. I build rough outlines in my mind to create better friends than I had last year. I am always improving my technique. One thing that I have never planned beforehand, however, is how I will name each of my snowmen. They choose their own names, you see. What would I ever do with myself if I were to build a snowman, intending the entire time to name him Charlie, only to discover that once he is built he is an obvious Jerome? I do not think that I would be able to live with myself if such a thing occurred.

This past year, I built many friends. There had been many flurries and small blizzards, so there was plenty of snow to use for crafting. I spent hours meticulously molding the perfectly sized snow balls, but whenever I finished, there seemed to be something off or missing from the newly created man or woman. Unfortunately, I could never quite put my finger on what. Many of my comrades, therefore, lived and died incomplete. There was one, however, whom I seemed to complete more and better than I had ever completed a snowman before.

Her name was Flora, and she was lovely. I made her absolutely perfect. Whenever I glanced at her out my window, I smiled and sighed with contentment. There was nothing she needed added. I would not have changed her for the world. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever sculpted. I think that I fell in love with her. In fact, I know that I fell in love with her the moment I stood back to admire my work. Admire it I did. Possessing more beauty, purity, and poise than any human woman I had ever known, Flora stood approximately five feet tall. She wore a lovely flowery hat I had found at a garage sale that summer. Her carrot nose was the most perfect cone I had ever seen. I spent more time on Flora than any of my other snowmen. She was fantastic.

However, I had also crafted a husband for her. Eric was the jealous type, and seemed to always be glaring at me starting from when I had first finished Flora. He stood roughly two feet away from her on my front lawn facing my home, and I swear that his coal eyes could see right through me. I spent a large amount of time attempting to explain mine and Flora’s relationship, but to no avail. He suspected us, and he was not about to change his mind. Logic was no use. I would tell him that it was impossible for me to be having an affair with his wife because he was always standing next to her, watching intently. I would tell him that I spent all my time either at work or crafting more snowmen relatives. I could tell that he never believed me. He was a very cold person.

The truth was, of course, that I was in love with Flora, and I am sure that she loved me back. She loved me more than she loved that jealous, untrusting husband of hers, anyway. Whenever we talked privately she would be very kind with me, and I with her. We did not get many chances to speak privately, though. Eric was always watching. Our relationship progressed no further for a very long time. Flora had been built in late December: it was not until three months later that our relationship had a chance to grow, but by that time it was coming to a close. March is a scary month for snowman building. There are very warm days and very cold days. All that one can do is hope that the warm days come at the end of the month where they belong and that the cold days stay at the beginning in order to preserve my companions for as long as possible.

One night, in early March, just as I was losing hope for Flora and me, a terrible thing happened. In the middle of the night, I heard a commotion outside of my window. I looked out, and there was a deer apparently attacking Eric! I ran outside to help him, but it was too late. His nose was eaten, his eyes had fallen out, and he had several gouges in his chest where the wretched animal’s hooves had torn. Seeing that he was already dead and nothing could be done for him, I returned to my bed. The next morning, I dissembled Eric’s remains and sent some of his remaining particles to fly with the wind to the four corners of the Earth, just as he would have wanted.

I gave Flora a day to mourn, but since our time was so limited, I approached her the second day after her husband had been brutally slaughtered. “Flora,” I said, “I love you. There, I said it. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, and if it wasn’t for Eric, I’m sure that our love would have had time to blossom properly. As it is, however, we only have limited time until the defrosting time comes. Will you be with me?” Thankfully for me, she agreed. I was so nervous, putting myself out there like that, but I was sure that she loved me as I did her.

We had a wonderful relationship. We did everything we possibly could together, and I was there with her as she got old and her health deteriorated. I held her hand as she passed on to the next world, and I gave her a simple burial at sea, just as she had wanted. I do not think that I will ever forget Flora, and my love for her will be everlasting. Someday, I will return to her, and we will live in our love for the rest of time in the great snowfields in the sky.

So people blog about their lives, right? And teenagers blog about how emo and depressed they are, right? Okay, well, here goes.

Oh woe is me, blah blah blah DEATH blah blah blah DEPRESSED blah blah blah LIFE SUCKS blah blah blah NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ME blah blah blah.

*Whew* Thank goodness that's over with. Of all the times that I whine to people, I don't really like whining on my blog. No, I don't really know why, because you would think that it would be the best place to whine, no? But whatever. I don't actually enjoy whining, mostly because I think half the time people aren't listening to me. Not that they listen to me when I'm not whining. You're probably not even listening to me, right at this very moment. I bet you're just thinking, "Hm, I wonder if she's going to finish ranting about how people don't listen to her soon. I sort of hope that she does. It's getting rather tedious to read through this huge paragraph. Maybe she'll stop soon."

Before you know it, you're at the end of the paragraph and you have no clue what you've just read. If you're anything like me, you curse your ADD tendencies and go back and try to really read it. If you're not, you'll just shrug and continue pretending to read. I bet that if you do that long enough, you'll trick yourself into thinking that you actually read it. I do that all the time. Sort of. Not really. Oh well.

I realize I'm kind of rambling at the moment. It's just that I like the sound that this keyboard makes when I type. It makes me feel like I'm a fast typer. Really I am, but the noise makes it seem even more so.

Okay, I'm done now. Sorry for wasting your precious time.

What do people strive for through their lives? Wealth? Fame? Love? If I had to hazard a guess as to what weighs (unconsciously) on people's minds most of the time is being remembered, having a solid identity so that when meeting a new person, they can be like "Hello, my name is Bob, and I am a plumber" or whatever their name and desired identity happens to be. Perhaps, "Hello, my name is Glorkon the Third, and I am a bounty hunter, but you may call me Andy." Perhaps with a nametag resting contentedly on their chest, exclaiming "HELLO! My name is...ANDY!"

Which brings me, rather conveniently, to the subject of name tags. And how I don't have one. See, I've been working at this tutoring centre for a few weeks now, and the ever awe-inspiring name tag has become to me a symbol. It is a symbol of seniority, of authority, and of, you guessed it, an identity. You see, all of the people who have been working at this centre for longer than I have have a name tag. They are the ones that boss me around (although technically they have just as much authority as I do), they are the ones that correct my actions that need not be corrected, they are the ones that are younger than me yet feel that I am their underling.

But not for long! It is my goal to attain one of these identity-containing bits of plastic. To the kids that I help out, I am simply a plain blue vest. But if I were to obtain a name tag...I could be so much more. I could be...Carolyn. And not, simply, blue-vest lady. Not that any of them call me that. Maybe they do in their heads, I don't know. I could proudly pin my name tag to the front of my blue vest, hold my red correcting pen above my head in a Beowulf sort of fashion and announce to the world "Hello, my name is Carolyn and I am a grader!"

Yup. This is my life right now. One of the most intense things in my life that I have to look forward to and wonder about is when and if I will get a name tag. Well, I suppose that I have been learning a lesson, inadvertently. I will never take name tags for granted again! I will appreciate the convenience of people being able to stare at my chest to determine my name instead of having to inconveniently and possibly embarassingly inquire it. It is a luxury, kiddies. You should never assume that you will just have the ability to stick or pin a lovely bit of paper or plastic to your clothing or forehead or skin or hair to inform people of your identity.

You should heed my advice. I am very well versed in the pains of a lack of name tag.