As of late, we've been studying the Constitution in my history class. In one of the articles, I saw the phrase "yeahs and nays". I thought it kind of reminded me of the neighs of horses. I mean, the people at the time were kind of like horses anyhow. They even wore wigs which sometimes have "ponytails" on them.

Nowadays, instead of yeah and nays, it would be thumbs up or thumbs down, or just raising your hand to vote for something (while everyone's heads are down on their desks so they can't see who's voting what), wouldn't it? It might be fun, though, to be asked an opinion, and then to have everyone say either "Yeah" or "Nay" all at once. I suppose it would be considered a waste of valuable class time, though.

Speaking of which, I caught sight of something which I wasn't supposed to have seen. It's not something inappropriate or anything, so don't worry about that. I forgot to print out my homework for language arts class, but I had my USB drive, so I asked my teacher if I could print it out with her laptop. While I was preparing to do that, I noticed she had a Skype window. She was chatting with my history teacher. At first I thought, "Oooh! Busted!" but then I realized it was probably work-related since there was some mention of a meeting. Besides, I'd be in trouble if the teacher realized I was snooping, hehe. So I guess that rumor about my history teacher spending time chatting with his girlfriend (who is a teacher as well, in a different school, wouldn't they both be fired then?!) is not true, it's just my language arts teacher.

For a long time I was meaning to post a drawing that I made, except I kept on forgetting about it, so now I'm only posting it practically a month after I drew it. XD (If you've been actively checking up on my DeviantArt you may have seen it earlier) This is a drawing, or, two drawings, of the character Haruhi Suzumiya. I am currently working on a piece of Hatsune Miku (using GIMP to digitally make lineart and color it in). I will post the original sketch and the finished version up when I'm done.

Just the other day it was my mom's birthday, so we went out to eat at a buffet called Tatami. It's in a mall, and it used to be called Todai, but apparently it was sold. D: My mom got her food free since it's her birthday. (You have to be accompanied by two "paying adults", though. But I count as an adult now, so it's fine. Too bad there's no more kid discounts. I have to wait until people believe I'm old so I can get the senior discounts on things like museum membership) I am a plain sort of person, so I just like to eat kappamaki (cucumber sushi) and Philadelphia rolls (basically, sushi with salmon and cream cheese in it).

Ah, but what I really liked was the cookies they have there. When I used to visit Todai, I always ate those cookies. The light-colored ones are the best. I thought they were supposed to be sugar cookies, but I'm not sure. My parents say the smell of milk is strong, so maybe they're just "milk cookies". I would like to be able to buy them, but I have never found them. (They're not Nilla wafers, anyhow) My mother thinks that they could be a personal recipe of the restaurant that was passed on when the owner sold Todai and it got changed to Tatami.

The restaurant has a chocolate fountain and a vanilla fountain now, you know, those miniature ones you can plug in. It's pretty cool. The kids were fond of it, of course. I tried dipping the milk cookies, bananas, and big marshmallows into it. What was funny was a sign that says, "Please do not dip your ice cream into the chocolate fountain". It must mean someone actually tried to put their ice cream cone in there. I wonder how they reacted when they were trying to hold the cone and there was chocolate sliding down it.

I have been thinking that although the town I live in has a hefty population, it's still not all that exciting, because of something we were talking about in French class... My teacher said, "We don't really have a downtown here, do we?" And another student replied, "The library!" If the library is our downtown, then we can't say much for ourselves, can we? XD All over the USA, though, not many people go to the library regularly, it seems. It's kind of saddening. My parents say more people go to the library in my town because they're frugal and don't want to buy books. (Rather, they waste their money on brand name things and cars. -_-;; )

Labels: birthday, buffet, chocolate fountain, constitution, cookie, downtown, drawing, gimp, haruhi suzumiya, ice cream, library, skype, spending money, sushi, tatami, teacher, todai, yeahs and nays

This is apparently a phrase from the famous story The Three Little Pigs. (I may not have gotten it down exactly right.) I had a similar experience to this recently.

On Tuesday, where I live, there was some surprisingly stormy weather. It rained and poured until nighttime. I hadn't brought my umbrella, nor had I brought my raincoat, and so my not-so-waterproof jacket was my only protection. The rain started to become a hassle because my shoes weren't so waterproof either, and so my socks became soaked. It's a good thing that a teacher had her classroom open and I went indoors to eat my lunch.

Come fifth period, multiple kids were drenched from having to go through the rain to get to the classroom. The math classroom is a "portable", I think, since it has a ramp and the ceiling is not so high and such. And whenever someone stomps you can feel the room shake a little bit because it's not as steady as the "actual classrooms". (But schools still insist on having these "portable classrooms" for some reason) We were being punished for talking too much - for some reason, my math class has a lot of people, and so it is even louder - and we were not allowed to speak to each other. It was eerily quiet in the classroom, except for one sound...The sound of the wind. The wind was beating very hard on the classroom and it sounded like we would be blown in, like the Three Little Pigs' houses, but nope, it didn't happen. In fact, the teacher never even looked up. I guess not much can faze him.

PE was canceled that day because it was far too rainy. We were all hustled into the gym, which was muddy too (it being the last period of the day, and many shoes having already been in and out). We watched some Comcast Sportsnet videos, which were showing the "science behind sports". Apparently a golf ball can go farther if it is warm than if it is cold. So, couldn't you become better at hitting long distance by simply incubating your golf ball and then hitting it? (Though why you would incubate golf balls, instead of incubating chicken eggs like you should, is beyond me)

Does good handwriting matter a lot in life? My math teacher always stresses that we need to work at having neat handwriting. He said that sloppy handwriting is NOT a "style" of handwriting, and that teachers grade less harshly when you have good handwriting. "And don't go running to your parents saying how unfair it is! That's life! That's HUMAN NATURE!" he'd say. "If you have messy handwriting, then I have the urge to pick it apart for mistakes. I might overlook a mistake or be more lenient if you have good handwriting." I am going to try and work on mine. I think it is legible, but someone said I didn't "write like a girl". That's so sexist. Not all people write the same. I even hold my pencil differently. D: I started holding my pencil that way when I was young and I don't think someone corrected me, so now I'm stuck that way since I feel awkward if I hold pens and pencils the way almost everyone does.

Nowadays I sometimes draw things with pencil, then scan it, and color it in with the most basic of GIMP brushes (in other words, plain old circle brushes which come with GIMP when you download it). It's always so messy, though. In fact, I think my drawings might look better in black and white... o_O;; I've heard of something called Copic markers and I've been curious to see what they are. Does anyone have them, by any chance?

Labels: art, classroom, colors, copic, drawing, fantasy golf, gimp, handwriting, human nature, incubate, life, markers, pencil, portable, rain, storm, story, three little pigs, weather, windy

Usually the term is spring cleaning. But it's not spring here in the Northern Hemisphere, and so I have changed the term to suit my needs. My mom suddenly got it in her head to sort through old, unworn clothes and decide whether to give it away or keep it. Because of sentimental reasons (and because I "don't have a charitable bone in my body" D: ) I still insist on keeping clothes, but my mom eventually persuaded me to give away some of it to my relatives or donate it. I know no one in my family can wear the clothes since there is no one young in this house, but it's still kind of sad.

I remember one time I was suddenly interested in the bathroom sink. I grabbed a rag and started cleaning it, as well as the two knobs for the temperature and the spout. I have been planning for a while to do some interior decorating in my house but I never got around to it. I wonder if this is yet another plan that is going to be put off again and again?

Apparently there is one person in my class at school who has a job, but it's not really an official one. Since he plays golf, he cleans up the ranges by picking up the golf balls. It takes maybe forty-five minutes according to him. And then he gets free golf that week. It actually saves his parents hundreds of dollars. I think he gets free drinks too. Sounds pretty nice to me, having a job like that.

Another good job to have (I am talking about when you are young, and don't have a college degree, and can only work part-time) would be the movie theater. My teacher's son used to work at the theater and I think he got to see movies for free... But I heard he wouldn't eat the popcorn there ever again after he saw how it was made. My teacher says it is very unhealthy since they dump a lot of butter on the movie popcorn. Are you allowed to bring your own popcorn? Carb free popcorn helps you to relax, according to a book I glanced at back in cooking class last year, so that would be a good idea.

I had been thinking of taking on a job at Jamba Juice when I am old enough, because you can get a free smoothie every shift or something like that. But I am a little worried about how loud it would be, what with several blenders going at once. Still, the smoothies are a real temptation. I will still consider it for possible part-time jobs (like during the summer, I am too lazy or too busy to work during the school year).

In French class (yup, yet again) we were given the assignment of making posters that said J'aime le Français, and I wasn't sure how to go about it, so I decided to use my trusty GIMP and the computer. I'm so glad that GIMP works. Too bad it doesn't have anywhere near the brushes it used to. (I keep them backed up on my hard drive so if I want to use a brush in GIMP I can simply copy it from my hard drive to the GIMP's folders. That way my computer doesn't get too slowed down) But I found out something cool - that you can use the Photoshop brushes in GIMP. Just download and move the abr file into GIMP's brushes folder and voila! I wouldn't have been able to use the Eiffel Tower brush I found otherwise. You can see the poster that I made if you CLICK HERE. Click on the image to expand it to the full view. By the way, J'aime le Français means "I like the French" or "I love the French".

Labels: autumn, brushes, cleaning, clothes, french, gimp, golf, interior design, j'aime le français, jamba juice, job, movie, photoshop, popcorn, sink, smoothie, theater

Yesterday I saw a terrible, terrible thing. Why, it was so perfectly dreadful I had nightmares for weeks. (Nah, I'm just exaggerating about that. If I saw it yesterday, I could only have nightmares for one day) It wasn't rape. It wasn't murder. It wasn't a kidnapping either. It was... PEOPLE BOARDING A CAR IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD!!!

Sorry for the caps lock use. It's not often that I do that. Well, I should explain what I saw in more detail. As I was walking home, I was almost at a crosswalk when I noticed some familiar figures in the middle of the road. It was my parents' friends' son and daughter, getting into their father's car. By doing so, they were blocking the cars behind them, since you're not supposed to board in the middle of the road, you should pull over to the side so you won't be causing a line to slowly build up behind you. (Otherwise people like my mom will honk at you. Like my mom honked at someone in the morning who was behaving strangely, because they could've moved forward but they just stayed still, and when I got out of the car I could feel pairs of eyes on me) It was even worse that I knew the offenders. I mean, it's one thing to see strangers committing a dastardly crime but it's quite another if it's someone you have actually had conversations with in the past.

Speaking of other crimes, theft seems to be something common at school. Recently a classmate of mine was acting suspicious and then the Weepul my friend had (Weepuls are basically pom pom type things with faces on them. This one looked like an ice cream cone! Was pretty cute) had vanished. There is no real evidence whether the suspicious boy stole it, but who knows...They say that theft frequently happens among middle school students...Also, I haven't been able to find two of my pens. (I'm pretty sure I dropped it or it got lost in the black hole called my backpack, but still, you can never be too sure these days.)

I can now officially celebrate the rebirth of my GIMP. It had not been working yesterday. Probably I had too much brushes or accidentally deleted a file that was crucial to it. So I ended up having to back up my brush files and then delete the GIMP and remove the files belonging to it. Then I reinstalled it and used the backed up files to restore a little of the brushes that I used to have. Now it is working right as rain and I am quite relieved. What else would I use for graphics if I didn't have GIMP? Photoscape? (Doesn't have enough brushes) MS Paint? (Doesn't even have an airbrush tool or anything complicated) Photoshop? (Costs money except for 30 day trial and I don't know how to use it)

Guess what? This is the 200th post! Wow, I can't believe ◆ k a i s o u m i z u has managed to get so far. Bring out the beer - er, I mean, Calpico. (An artificial drink from Asia which comes in various flavors. My favorite is strawberry)

Labels: 200, blog, brushes, calpico, celebrate, crime, file, gimp, honk, middle school, ms paint, pens, photoscape, photoshop, post, road, rules, theft, traffic, weepul

Today I was sorting laundry, as is one of my very few chores (I mean, doing too much work would cause my creative juices to stop flowing! I assure it is very, very bad if that happens). I saw two socks of mine. I thought they must be matches since they are both plain white with a heart on the part of the sock which will be on the "backside" of your foot. It turned out they were not a match after all. When I inspected the socks more closely I realized the two hearts were different colors! So I had taken two unmatching socks out of my drawer one morning and not realized it! (I always try to keep the matching socks close together in the place in which I keep my socks, but sometimes they drift apart from me fumbling through my socks so often) Luckily I have managed to allocate the real matches for each sock. (But there are sometimes unsolved cases. I just leave the single socks on top of the dresser. ...Wow, I sound like a detective or some other investigator)

My GIMP program has been suffering a lot these days. Maybe it's because I've installed too many brushes. (Hey! I had no idea how many there were until I took a look!) It takes a long time to load (at first it just looks like a window with nothing inside it, just that top bar which says GIMP startup, but then it recovers) but it's okay after it gets loaded, unless I try to refresh my brushes or it just gets stuck on an action. Today I got a pop-up from GIMP which said that the program had to terminate in an unusual way. That's freaky. Perhaps it is true that GIMP has a grudge against me just as my fellow PE students do (check the post ◆ do my school's teachers know my dad? in the archives of the month of May).

When I asked my dad, he said that GIMP is using a huge amount of memory! More physical memory than our computer has! But because we have a hard drive apparently GIMP can "leech" memory off of it. So if I turn on my hard drive then GIMP is more easily able to start. I thought that was really amazing. It was like a symbiotic relationship in nature, except these aren't living things.

Do you all know what today is? It's a very special day! Yes, it's the day celebrating all of our fathers. I know my dad is kind of kooky because he's addicted to PGA Tour (by the way, he's very pleased because he picked a guy called Lucas Glover who is doing very well this week) and he tends to be rather emotional but it's certainly better than having no dad. So you should all at least wish your fathers a Happy Father's Day (or if you aren't with them, just a phone call or e-card would do). I know it made my father break out into a smile. (This is the first year I ever gave him anything. XD Actually, the first year anyone ever gave him anything, maybe.)

Labels: appreciate, father's day, gift, gimp, hard drive, lucas glover, match, pga tour, scatterbrained, socks, trouble

Sorry, Martin Luther King Jr., if you don't want me using part of your speech in this fashion. But it is true. At last the students have been released from the scholarly prison known as...KENNEDY MIDDLE SCHOOL!

Even though it must've been a long year, it feels like it all just flew by. Maybe I was having a good time or something, because I heard that time flies when you're having fun. I suppose next time will be just a pain, then. I have often heard that eighth grade is a difficult, busy year. I hope it is not true. This year was a blast, so next year will be a big crushing disappointment, especially if I turn out to have old geezers as my teachers (seriously, even Mr. Brown, my science teacher, is not fond of them, he says they always complain if his students walk by their classrooms talking too loudly).

That also makes me wonder about the new principal and vice principal next year. The new principal is Ms. Johnston, someone that I have never met. I heard that she had a baby not long ago so she will have to carry it around at work. My mom doesn't believe this; she says it's not allowed, and anyways Mr. Kampp and Mrs. Kampp (both teachers I have had, sixth grade and seventh grade respectively. They are married, if you didn't guess it) make their daughter go to daycare even though she is so little. Well, it is all yet to be seen. Either that or I have confused the principal and the vice principal, and the vice principal is the one with the baby?! The vice principal is a 7th grade science teacher, Ms. Stokes, I think, but not one of mine. Maybe if any of you have been in her village, you can tell me a bit more about whether any of this is true or if Mr. Blair has gotten ahold of the wrong rumors/information. (He told my history class about it)

Lately I have been trying my hand at taking photos and playing around with them. I would greatly appreciate it if you could give me some pointers about them. Sometimes I have trouble taking photos because my camera will try to light up what I'm taking a photo of if the place is not bright enough. But that kind of ruins the photo quality sometimes. So here is the "original" version of a photo I have edited using GIMP, since I had to make it bigger for DeviantArt (it looks just terrible there...). Click on it to see the real size (Blogger can't show something so big) Oh, and before I end this post, I would like to ask you all something. Do you know how to make it so when you take photos, there won't be orange numbers telling you what day you took the picture? It really annoys me since I have to cut that part out of the pictures. Thanks if you know.

Labels: baby, editing, eighth grade, gimp, martin luther king, middle school, orange numbers, photography, principal, seventh grade, teacher, vice principal

My mother is eventually going to catch me and force me to do the extra math work she assigns. I really do not look forward to it. I don't feel any particularly urge to be a hard worker, as I do not have much of that "inner drive" some people seem to think I have. Really I just want to enjoy myself while I'm still...young.

Anyhow, happy Lunar New Year to everyone! (I think it's really tomorrow, but the weekend is a better time to celebrate than Monday, if you ask me.) I didn't really do anything, myself; just got some money from my parents. Some people actually have a feast and people coming over to party and all. But I guess in the USA not as many people celebrate it seriously.

My parents were watching the Lunar New Year celebration on television. My father says that people in China look forward to the new year, like people in the US look forward to the Super Bowl.

Anyhow, the celebration thing they have (it's basically some entertainment such as acting, dancing, singing, etc.). Some celebrity guy called Jay Chou was singing earlier, along with a little boy dressed up in a miniature version of his outfit. The little boy was pretty odd...I think he was singing some kind of rap music. o_O

I was really upset earlier today because my GIMP broke down. (For those who don't know, GIMP is an image editing program which you can download on the Internet.) I was making a banner and I forgot to save it. At first I was in misery, then I went back to the computer and made another banner, which actually turned out better than the first one I made. The only bad thing, I guess, is that I wasted so much time that I could've spent doing other activities.

Labels: error, gimp, holidays, jay chou, math, music, new year, television, torture

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