The mention of Saturday school would normally bring a different sort of image to my mind. Saturday school is sometimes given as a punishment to students. Some teacher will be supervising the students attending on a Saturday and you can do homework or read a book or something like that. I have no idea what it's really like, nor do I have much knowledge of detention, but although it doesn't sound too bad, I think it would be a pain to have to go to school on a weekend, and it'd also be a blemish on your record (supposing that you had committed a offense to have gotten into Saturday class, right?).

Well, this was sort of a voluntary Saturday school. It had been mentioned briefly on the school announcements that there were flyers in the office regarding a language arts workshop. At first I had not been particularly interested, because my language arts teacher attended a workshop for teachers, but the info taught didn't really apply to her teaching because it was a little too basic (better for elementary school than the upper grades, anyhow), and this gave me some distrust in the ability of a workshop to actually be a help to me. But at urging from my mother, I dropped by the school office to look for a flyer, and found that there were none.

My mother took it upon herself to look up the workshop, presumably on the Internet, and so she registered me for the workshop. As I have said, I was rather reluctant, but I think my mom has inherited my grandmother's stubbornness, and there is no point arguing with her. She insisted that it would be a good experience, and I had decided to try new things in my life (I am not much of a risk taker, but I thought I would miss a lot of good things out there if I didn't...) so I ended up being won over.

This morning I was still groggy. Waking up around seven or eight o'clock in the morning is not unusual for me, but since I was sleeping poorly lately (due to me being sick with a cold) I would wake up and then go back to sleep until about nine. I have never been one for sleeping in that much. My brain always seems to think it is a school day so I often wake up around eight or so, since my mind must be unconsciously saying, "AHHHHH!!! We're late for school!!!" and forcibly getting me up. And sometimes I have to use the bathroom in the morning. If it is late enough in the morning I will not be able to fall asleep again. (But I can't just not drink water. I get dehydrated easily and if I don't drink water I will wake up with bad breath and an icky feeling in my throat.) I can't wait until we go on vacation this summer. Once I get home I plan to not adjust back to Pacific Time so that I can do what I did last summer after my vacation. I would wake up in the afternoon, and go to bed at midnight or some other late time. In this way I got more sleep than I could ever have gotten if my body was following Pacific Time. I hope I can do this again this summer. I have a small chance of growing taller if I can get a ton of sleep.

For the workshop, you could choose two out of three classes offered in the morning, and everyone attended the same class in the afternoon. I picked blogging and oral storytelling for my morning classes. The afternoon class featured comedy. I suppose I should not reveal too much of what I had heard or else anyone reading this right now would not have much reason to attend such a workshop.

I will, however, say that the instructor of the blogging class, who is a professional blogger himself, says that it's easier to get the attention of people with a shorter post and having the text in the beginning be related to the title of the post, whereas having a longer post is to the benefit of people who are already readers of your blog.

He also said that there are different kinds of bloggers - people who write for the sake of writing (who just have to write, it is their passion) and people who write to get read (because, let's face it, it's kind of rough if you're writing and no one ever cares. It's like shouting at a wall or something.). But there are also a few who are a mixture of the two, who write both for writing's sake and for people to read it. I guess I would be the mixture type of blogger.

The instructor seemed to be much more supportive of Wordpress as a place to blog as compared to Blogger. He said that as Blogger is part of Google, even if you asked them a question you wouldn't get a response, but if you need to know something about blogging, you can just drive over to San Francisco and ask the Wordpress folks. Although I have thought about making a Wordpress blog, I am not sure if I want to switch over because I have kept this blog for such a long time...It would be such a pain to make a change.

Labels: blog, blogger, brain, classes, dehydration, help, insomnia, language arts, plan, punishment, saturday, school, sleep, summer, time zone, vacation, water, wordpress, workshop, writing

When people say that, they usually mean that there are a variety of ideas and cultures and races in the United States of America. But in this case I am taking the phrase more literally. Right now, it is extremely hot outside. Sitting in the car makes you feel as if you're a cookie baking in an oven. It's a relief that we've gotten our Saturday schedule over with. (A typical Saturday for me is waking up, being lazy for a while, then we go to two libraries, maybe go shopping or eat at a restaurant) Now I'm just at home sitting in a rolling chair, with the ceiling fan on. (Because apparently the air conditioning uses more energy...So it's better to use the fan if you're just in one room)

Recently while I was at the San Jose Library - Calabazas Branch, I discovered another section of books that I never before tried to exploit. It's called the Young Adult section and it has some mangas, along with a bunch of novels. This section seems pretty popular even with children, mostly because of the manga, though there are some people perusing the books that aren't just mostly made up of pictures. I never cease to be astounded by how many books are about some cheesy high school romance or something like that. The adult section is not much better - mostly murder mysteries, or books about people falling in love in an unlikely way. Blah, blah, blah.

So far I have not gotten very far on the story/book I am writing (I am not sure how long it will be when I am finished). It's possible I could change the names or add more characters or remove characters or change the plot. Mostly I am wondering what in the world I should name the book. (A hint is that this is not a fantasy or sci-fi book, it is more like a modern day sort of "real life" fiction. The main character is currently supposed to be around 13 or 14 but I could change it) If you have a good suggestion, I'd really like to hear it, since I don't want to call it something really lame. My previous writings have rather odd titles, like The Factor of the Opera, Diary of a Dolphin, and The Timeline of the Ancient Immovables. (I may have incorrectly recalled the last name)

My mom seems to have a strange way of dealing with problems. Since she is a rather assertive and self-assured person, she sees nothing wrong with complaining about something she finds inconvenient or pulling on someone's hair. I am seriously considering cutting my hair so she has less of it to pull on. Since I usually have my hair in a ponytail, if she's mad, she'll yank on it, which I don't think is very nice. Other times she does what you'd call "boxing ears". I am concerned that this violent approach may get out of hand and she'll land herself in trouble with the authorities. (I notice that she rarely hits me or her husband in public)

Labels: adult, books, heat, library, manga, melt, mom, name, pulling hair, romance, saturday, story, violent, weather, writing, young adult

Top ↑