These days, I'm always living on the edge; I get distracted by something, usually because of the Internet, and then I realize that it's late at night and I still haven't done my homework. Then I have to make a mad scramble to finish it, which is annoying not only to myself but to my parents, who feel that I go to bed too late (compared to my classmates, I actually sleep pretty early...still, I do think I'd feel a lot better if I slept more), and particularly my dad, who insists on staring at me angrily until I'm inside the bedroom. (He actually goes to bed earlier than I do on most nights, though. He gets tired early because he wakes up too early. But I don't think he's become healthy, wealthy, and wise from it...)

I used to live by the motto of "Work hard, play hard", but I seem to have lost the "work hard" part...My efforts nowadays are concentrated on things that are not urgent, such as Tumblr. I really do enjoy looking for high-quality pictures to share on my Tumblogs, though. (I do fear yet that some artist will storm in yelling at me for putting up their pics without permission, although it has not happened yet)

So I suppose there isn't much difference between how I spend my time on school days and how I'm spending it now, on my week off. I'm still on the computer much of the time. I visited Crunchyroll the other day (though I meant to quit, somehow I'm still hanging on by my fingernails...Now I'm thinking that I could just make a new account instead, and have waaaaay less buddies on it) and spent a lot of time looking at the groups (it's like a club or guild). I figured I'd request a new avatar if I found a group that didn't charge for graphics. There's technically no currency on CR except for CR points, which you can't give or receive anyways, but some groups say that you must invite all your buddies, upload X number of photos, post X number of comments on the group wall, etc. So it is refreshing when you are able to find a group that makes graphics quickly and for no charge.

Seeing all those graphics has made me long for the old days when I made graphics more actively. I think I've made a total of two graphics this school year so far and haven't taken many photos compared to last year - but at least since it's springtime I have more photo opportunities again. Anyways, though, the last graphic I made was an avatar for my Crunchyroll account, around December...



At the time when I first made it, I thought it was really great, but now I think it doesn't have quite the right amount of pizazz toward it. Maybe less of the sparkles and some other kind of brushes or textures would've been nice. (Not that I would ever go back to fix it. In my book, once something's done, it's done. That doesn't sit too well in Writing for Publication class since we have to make many drafts of almost everything we write.)

I really feel like making some graphics right now, because I want to practice and improve so that I can keep up with the times - lots of amazing graphics-makers these days, after all, and the number will keep growing - but I'm using my dad's laptop, so it's a no-can-do. Not sure if his company would appreciate me overloading their computers with programs and brushes. Guess it's time to brainstorm. I'll see if I have the chance to make some graphics once I'm back home again.

Labels: account, avatar, break, crunchyroll, distraction, father, free time, graphics, group, internet, motto, payment, pictures, plans, price, share, sleep, time, tumblr

It's supposed to be a play on the title of a movie, No Country for Old Men. Not sure if you caught the reference, though. (I haven't seen the movie either.)

The old man in particular is my father. (No offense intended to him, but he is getting on in his age.) My math teacher sends newsletters to the parents of his students about what he's been teaching, and lets them know about upcoming tests. My dad had stopped receiving the newsletters, so I brought a piece of paper to the teacher with the information needed for him to resume sending emails.

My father's memory and concentration seems to be off, because he didn't write his email address properly (missed three letters of it) and the teacher told me, "This email doesn't work." It's kind of sad that my dad doesn't even know his own email. (It's true that I sometimes forget my passwords, but that's because I keep so many of them.)

I wonder if anyone really writes letters anymore. I mean, my parents said they used to send Christmas cards, years back, but they don't any longer. (In fact, they don't really send Christmas e-cards either, which could mean they are losing their holiday spirit or are just getting lazy.) I remember when I was younger sometimes we would have a pen pal activity - each person would write a short letter to a person in another school that they were paired up with. I remember that it was a lot of fun...But we usually only exchanged one or two letters, and that's about it. It'd be much better if we could send them actively all year long. It might help improve our letter writing skills and it would be fun.

Today, my history teacher started talking about how us students aren't taking the opportunities that are given to us to sharpen our skills. He said that many kids are members of social networking sites and use instant messengers, but often they use chatspeak and don't bother to capitalize or punctuate properly. When they do add punctuation, it's probably a bunch of exclamation points. My teacher said that he had practiced typing and gotten really fast at it. But here we have plenty of chances to practice what with the time we spend on the computer, and yet we don't take it. (Reminds of this quote: "Opportunity comes knocking more than once. You just have to ready for it." I think it was in an old school planner)

I spent time in two different history teachers' classrooms recently - my regular history teacher, and another one who I've never had before. The reason is the rain...My PE teacher decided he would teach us about the cons of smoking, alcohol, and drugs while the weather was bad. We would go to that teacher's room (let's call him Mr. T) since it was his prep period (each teacher has one period where they don't teach, but are supposed to be making preparations for class or grading tests). Mr. T seemed to eat a lot of the kind of food called Cup Noodles.

Today my PE teacher left two minutes early, leaving us in the "care" of Mr. T, because he needed to go to the classroom for the next PE class (he uses a different classroom each period since the teachers have different prep periods). Mr. T decided to ask us what we had learned during our time of having PE inside.

Student: I learned that D talks a lot. (D stands for a different student's name)
Mr. T: You didn't know that before?
You know what's really amazing? D talks so much, but none of what comes out of his mouth has any meaning. The ratio of how much he speaks to how much of it is important is staggering.

Mr. T had brought in some food today, as well, in Whole Foods bags. Someone said they had seen cake and pizza. "What happened to your diet, Mr. T?" piped up D. (I did hear that Mr. T wanted to lose weight...) Mr. T said, "Hey, I'm fairly skinny, right?" (Well, I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But he ought not to have that attitude. Otherwise, the pounds will pile up again.)

Labels: christmas card, cup noodles, diet, email, father, letter, memory, newsletter, no country for old men, opportunity, password, PE class, pen pal, practice, skills, talkative, teacher, typing, weight

Recently, part of my science homework was to find where the real direction of North was and to mark it on a map of the sky. The North I had originally labeled was not "true North" because I had kind of guessed where North was. (I didn't really know, since I lost my magnetic compass, and my parents only gave me a vague idea of where North was.) So I searched for the constellation of the Big Dipper, or Ursa Major, whatever you like to call it, because you can use it to find the North Star, which is always North or at least very close to it. To find it, look for the shorter side of the Big Dipper and go up (and diagonally?) five times the length of the shorter side, and you should find the North Star. (To confirm it is the North Star, look for the constellation the Little Dipper, or Ursa Minor. The North Star is part of the Little Dipper)

I was unable to find the Big Dipper, since I haven't really gone stargazing for a long time and I've never actually located a constellation before. (Sad, but true. According to the Everybody Votes channel on my Wii, the majority of voters could locate more than one constellation) I had my dad give me a hand finding the constellation. He saw something which he thought might be Big Dipper and showed me. I couldn't figure it out at first, but eventually I realized it was indeed the Big Dipper. And there, shining quite brightly, was the North Star, Polaris.

I think I have underestimated my dad for a long time. He has his uses, even if they're not exactly...the most useful or obvious things. For instance, he sometimes says the phrase, "It's not over until the fat lady sings." (This is not meant to be an insult to overweight people. It's a reference to opera, since there is a woman singing at the end, and supposedly bigger people have stronger voices?) I heard this quote at school, on the announcements. One of the girls' sports teams was not faring too well. I think they lost 7-0 in a game or something. The announcer was saying that they shouldn't give up, and then said the very quote I had heard from my dad not long ago.

Recently I obtained a video game from the library. My library has Nintendo Wii games. I came up with a scheme...I can check out all the games I want and play them on the Wii, and so I won't ever have to buy them, I can just keep requesting them from the library, over and over again. It'll save a lot of money and that will benefit me, as well as the environment (though it means less profit for the game makers, sorry!). The video game was Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility. Actually, it was my mom's idea to get that, so kudos to her. Or brownie points. Or whatever you want.

If you haven't played the Harvest Moon games, I'll explain a little bit... Here you can play a boy (or a girl, depends on what game; some let you be both and others only have one). You're a farmer, but you can do other things like fish and mine. And there are other characters you can interact with...You can get married and have a child eventually, too. o_o;; Some of the games sort of have a story, which usually has something or other to do with the Harvest Goddess.

I noticed that there were a lot of similarities when I compared Harvest Moon to Animal Crossing games, such as...
- Being able to befriend villagers and give them gifts
- Fishing
- Receiving mail (you can get mail in Tree of Tranquility, not sure about other games)
- Putting furniture in your house, and remodeling your house
- Using an axe
- The triangle thing (when you're talking to someone, there's a little triangle sometime which shows they have more to say)
- Saving at your house (but in Animal Crossing: Wild World and Harvest Moon handheld games you can save anywhere, not just the house)
- Having a phone (you can't call anyone in Animal Crossing, though. It's just for changing your settings. And it's Wild World only, I'm not sure about City Folk)
- Seasonal changes (the difference is that Animal Crossing follows "real world time", so it's based on what the time of your console is set to)

Unfortunately, I kind of spent too much time playing Harvest Moon and wasted a lot of my weekend. This is one of my problems. You see, I'm afraid to make accounts on websites or buy new video games because I know what will happen...I will probably be addicted at first because I want to explore the whole thing, and then I'll reach a difficult part or I'll lose interest, and then it'll go to waste. D:

Labels: animal crossing, big dipper, constellation, fat lady, father, harvest moon, library, north star, opera, polaris, quote, sky map, stars, tree of tranquility, true north, ursa major, video games, wii

That would be my house. (Though maybe you think it's the last house on the street if you live farther down the street. But to me, it's the first house, because when you drive to the street where I live, my house is the first one on the right side.) Some mysterious happenings have been going on here lately, and the place that once seemed safe now feels dangerous.

Last night, I had a most unusual dream. Even though it is common for "kids" to get nightmares, when I was young, I never had any. But starting from this year I have started getting them. This was the most major nightmare I ever had. In my dream, I was woken up and was told by my mom that my dad had suffered a heart attack. I don't think I properly absorbed the news since I went numb and blank. Then finally I said, "He didn't have a pulse?" And my mom said, "No." I was in shock for a while. But then, later in the day, my dad walked down the hallway. I thought I was hallucinating. He was alive and didn't look unusual at all. He asked me what was wrong. Before I woke up for real, I was thinking, "But he was dead! My mom must've misjudged! People don't come back to life."

The other creepy thing that happened also had to do with death. Do you remember reading about the dead birds and other symbols that I was noticing/my mind was making up? (If not, refer to the posts ◆ something wicked this way comes, and ◆ the keys to the kingdom. They should be at the bottom of the September 2009 archive) Well, I hadn't seen any for a while since the two birds that had died, but in my backyard on the weekend, we found another one. There was a nice-looking bird on the ground, or at least, the bird used to look nice. Now it just looked gross because it was covered with ants and a few flies. It was really disturbing. My dad and I worked together to get rid of it. I used a big shovel to pick up the bird and dump it into the plastic bag my dad was holding. My dad tied up the bag and took it out to the trash.

Strangely, the dead bird with the ants swarming over it reminds me something my language arts teacher said. We were correcting a sample of a badly written memoir about a person and their dog. One of the sentences was something along the lines of "We where over my aunts house". Never mind the fact that it's the wrong word being used. Think about being over someone's house. Would that mean you're floating over it? Or on the roof? It should be "over at my aunt's house" or "at my aunt's house". My language arts teacher said that if you say "over my aunt's house" it seems like you are a bug or a pest running about the house. The thought of bugs reminded me of that dead bird with the bugs all over it.

I shall try to speak of something positive so the post will end on a good note and won't have you shuddering. It seems that my running seems to have improved (only on the warmup run, but better than nothing!). I used to always pull my PE shorts high up, sort of onto my stomach. Now I let them down a little more, so that it still is covering me adequately (no worries, I'm not going to try and "sag" like some people) but it is more at my waist than covering my stomach. It seems to help a lot with running. I can't believe I didn't figure this out sooner. XD

Labels: ant, birds, bugs, death, down, dream, family, father, flies, heart attack, house, life, mother, nightmare, over my aunt's house, reincarnation, running, shorts, strange

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