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 beautiful orchids are reaching their demise. I used to have three of them. One was purple, one was a lighter purple, and this one is white. The plants are still alive but the flowers have fallen off. They've kept their petals for at least a couple of months, but now they're shriveling up! Maybe I should try to get the seeds if possible, and fertilize them, and then plant them in a new pot. The problem is, orchids take a lot of time and patience to raise. After all, I heard it takes 5 years for them to reach their mature, beautiful look that people prize. It's hard to believe they are so cheap at the farmers market and flea market.
I need to put a stop to my dad's evil schemes. My mom went grocery shopping and she came back with a pack of Bud Light beer. I got really mad at my mom since I disapprove of my dad drinking alcohol (yeah, I know, beer doesn't have that much compared to whiskey, brandy, and stuff like that, but still). Then my mom said if she didn't buy it for him he'd buy it himself for a bad price. No wonder my dad has a Computer Science major instead of Economics, he isn't exactly a bargain shopper.
One time I managed to foil his plotting. I saw that he'd bought some cigarettes, he said it was because a colleague wanted them, but I was feeling doubtful, so I secretly snuck off with them and hid them. My dad and mom are displeased with me but I don't even remember where I put it so if they torture me (like they did in the Spanish inquisition if they thought people were hiding something) I won't be able to reveal anything.
I'd like some suggestions for my next blog theme. I was thinking something seasonal or anime-related, but who knows. (I already have some blogskin users bookmarked so that I can easily access some spiffy layouts) Seeing as I am too lazy to make an image and code a blog layout I figure I will have to use a pre-made. So if you have an idea of what to look for, please let me know in the Cbox. ;)
My mom thinks that bikers are weird. Whenever we drive to piano class on Sunday, we always see a bunch of bikers. The male ones usually wear this odd biking outfit which flaps a little when they go fast. They all look like they have sharks or pieces of rock on their heads because of the helmets. Because they keep biking even in the blazing hot sun, my mom thinks they're really addicted and perhaps have no life. I was kind of jealous of them, actually, since they seem happy and they make friends because they have a "common hobby".
Here's today's lesson. Last time the whole post was basically me lecturing about Apocalypse type happenings. This time I want to point out the difference between principal and principle. I have noticed some people write principle when they are talking about the school headmaster. It seems like no one paid attention in Mrs. Weber's third grade class. :( Anyhow, here's the difference between them.
PRINCIPLE - This is basically a guideline or idea which people generally accept. For instance, a person could have good moral principles.
PRINCIPAL - Someone who is the head, for instance, a school. Don't forget, he is your pal! (That's a cheesy phrase I heard somewhere. XD)
Labels: addiction, alcohol, beer, bike, cigarette, flowers, hide, language, lesson, orchid, principal, principle, purchase
My school's principal is going to become the principal of some elementary school I've never heard of next year. I feel very strange since back in elementary school, our principal also moved to another job in the school district, so then we had to have a new principal. The new principal was not well-liked since she made us wait at the lunch tables to be dismissed. It was pretty annoying, and also, she didn't really solve the problem with trash we have at our elementary school. (Trash isn't everywhere, but there is quite a lot of plastic wrappers and bent forks and stuff like that. Same thing at my current school) Anyhow, I was sort of relieved when I moved to middle school but pretty intimidated too. I had the misconception that several hundred kids where in one big room, with the teacher at the front talking, and she/he had to have a microphone otherwise we couldn't hear. So boy was I surprised to see we had regular classrooms. ^-^;;
Anyhow, back to the principal. In my first class my teacher said there was going to be an important announcement. I thought he meant my other teacher getting married, but nope, turned out the principal was saying that after 7 years of being at Kennedy, he would be moving out. So he played rock paper scissors with everyone and he picked scissors, so I beat him with rock (so did many other kids). Then the principal said how all the Kennedy students rock. How corny. (Note that I usually say cheesy or cliched but I wanted to say something different for once.) Still, I do feel kind of sad. He wasn't a mean principal or anything. Even though where I sit at lunch, we usually block the aisle and when he comes by he tells us to move to the sides, I've never seen him throw a fit.
Right now I am eating a bagel. I used to eat them a lot when I was young, either with regular cream cheese or strawberry cream cheese (I don't know for sure but probably the flavor was artificial). This bagel is oddly sour but still tasty. My school sells them too; however, I usually don't trust the school food. Nowadays at the place I get lunch, they have small pretzels (no, not the crunchy kind that is like chips). I tried them but they taste disgusting unless you dip it in sauce or eat it with seaweed. (Someday I will patent my new invention, seaweed pretzels!)
I feel like playing Dance Dance Revolution nowadays. I only have the Mario Mix kind at my house, which is not that good since all the songs are, well, Mario game songs. Still, playing DDR is fun. I just have trouble stepping back. (You know, the arrow that points downward.) If you don't know what DDR are is, here's a quick rundown. It's a game that is basically stepping on parts of a mat to the beat of music. When a moving arrow is overlapping exactly with the nonmoving arrows near the top of the screen, you step on the mat. (There are arrows on the mat, too, to help you out.) Hard to explain so you should just try it yourself in an arcade or at someone's house.
My parents' companies are major cheapskates now that the economy is tough and less people are buying their products (Broadcom, my mom's workplace, had a major customer before, but that company has shut down, so people at Broadcom are worried). But I don't think the situation is really bad since at Broadcom, when they finish a project, sometimes they go play lawn bowling. I've only played a simulation on the Internet so someday I might want to move to San Francisco and go to the Golden Gate Park to try it. (There's a wikipedia article about lawn bowling, so go ahead and search it up.) Also, I heard one of Apple's products will use Broadcom chips, and you know how popular all that iTouch, iPod, blah blah blah stuff is. And I even heard that the Wii Remote uses a Broadcom chip.
Anyhow, though, the reason why I say they are cheapos is because they no longer provide water bottles. They used to always have those but now they only have soda! So you have to get water from a fountain or something. This is annoying since I like being able to carry around water bottles, not one of those weird plastic cups. They should encourage people to drink water, not sugar and caffeine (my definition of soda). Otherwise the workers will get all hyper and not be able to concentrate. I heard if someone gets distracted at work it could take them maybe 15 minutes to get back on task completely.
Still, though, my dad thinks my mom's company is the best company in the world (I bet he's the only one who thinks so! Broadcom is so unknown most people have never heard of it, whereas a lot of people in my area know what Cisco is). I mean, right now, my mom came in with a slice of cheesecake. Apparently someone had some leftovers. I guess that's why she works here and not some other job.
Labels: bagel, broadcom, cafeteria, career, cisco systems, DDR, disposition, food, lawn bowling, principal, rock paper scissors, school, seaweed pretzels, surprise, video games, water bottles


