I'm not actually going around hollering outside, nor have I read the book by the same title. But I thought it was pretty fitting.

The weather is just crazy these days. It rains on and off and huge gusts of wind blow. I keep worrying that it'll knock over something. Quite a few years ago, there was a windy day and a vase we left outside hit the ground and broke. I am also concerned that it might get my wind chimes tangled up. This is always happening because one of my wind chimes (I have two different ones) has a lot of thin strings which tend to get caught together.

It seemed like the weather was clearing up, because the blue sky was showing again and the rain had pretty much stopped, but then I was driven home by my dad and it started to rain again. In fact, when I stepped out of the car, I heard a rumbling noise, and looked around for the source. I realized that it was thunder when I saw that grey clouds had returned again.

The weather was so bad that my street was out of electricity. The post office lost power too (I saw that it was dark and there was a vehicle outside, probably someone who was trying to fix the power or whatever). And I heard from a friend of mine who lives in the street "across" from mine that she suffered from the blackout as well. But not that far from our streets, the traffic lights were working just fine. It is really annoying, and ironic as well. My dad says the houses in my area cost more because they are closer to the mountains (and houses on the mountain are considered to be very expensive and nice) but the houses closer to the mountains tend to lose power first...And it's hard to get it fixed. It's not like everyone has power generators or backup power at their homes (though businesses, like my parents' offices, do) and no one is going to trek up the mountain just to fix a few mansions' power. (Well, we don't live on the mountain, so at least we get it fixed within a reasonable time. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to shower or do homework tonight, but it turned out that it got fixed while I was at school.)

This morning, I went to school early, because I heard the school had power and I figured it'd be better to at least have lights. Also, I hope that my teacher would have gotten there early and perhaps opened the classroom, but alas, that was not to be. My teacher was sick and couldn't come, so we had a substitute. I was disappointed since I was ready to take the Chemical Symbol Quiz (we were memorized the letters for thirty common elements, like O for Oxygen) and now that it's been moved back I have to take both a history and a science test on Thursday. I was hoping I could just concentrate on the history test.

Anyways, I saw a bunch of seagulls this morning. It was really scary. There must've been all of the seagulls in the neighboring towns and our town put together in the grass field. There were more gulls than I've ever seen together in one place in my lifetime.

It's not a good sign that all these seagulls are here. It means that there must be food and so the seagulls are getting lazy. Why live by the ocean and have to actually fish when you can stay here and eat leftover trash? But it's really unhealthy for them. It's kind of like how raccoons eat people's trash instead of eating forest food.

My household used to be visited by raccoons. A couple of times, in the nighttime, the lights would go on. (We have lights outside which will suddenly shine on if they sense movement. But if we "turn off" the lights they'll stay off.) I looked outside and there seemed to be some moving shapes. They were awfully big, and animal-like by the looks of it. It turned out to be raccoons. They were so huge! I always expected them to be small and kind of cuddly. But I guess you can't really assume things about animals you've never seen. (Really, I haven't seen raccoons much. Only pictures, and it's hard to tell from that.)

Labels: blackout, electricity, elements, food, hear my cry, power outage, raccoon, roll of thunder, school, seagull, size, storm, test, thunder, trash, vase, weather, wild animals, wind chimes, windy

On Monday, I returned to school after having been away for several weeks. Winter break isn't all that long, but it seemed long to me because I didn't go anywhere this time. I usually travel somewhere during the breaks. Nowadays, I am concerned about saving money for retirement, and besides, I didn't want to have to adjust time zones, so I decided not to go on vacation over the winter break. Over the break, my father and I went exploring the neighborhood.

For quite a while, perhaps several years, a local place, which is called a farm (but has other things, for recreation, like a swimming pool and a golf course), had been under renovation. Sometime in 2009, the changes were done and it was reopened to the public. It was the first time I had seen the place since before it had closed for the renovating. In fact, I hadn't been there for many years, so it was like going there for the first time, practically.

It turned out that two bocce ball courts and a volleyball court had been built. There was also a trail, leading to a place that actually was like a farm (there were farm animals, like goats, cows, and I believe I saw a pony). There was a swimming pool, but it was closed because it was wintertime. It was nice to see the creek with water in it...It's depressing in the summer since the creek tends to be dried out. One of the parks near my house doesn't have water in the ponds either. My dad says that the people of my town dried it out on purpose to try and drive the birds away.

Speaking of birds, the place where I live is really infested with them. My house has birds, which is nice (though some of them look just like the finches I saw at the petshop...). But the park has many Canadian geese, which should not be; the geese already ought to have migrated by now. There's also seagulls and a few crows. My school also has this problem, especially after it rains. I like the birds, except for one time when a seagull pooped on my math homework.

When my mom's friend's family came over to our house, on New Year's Day, the TV was turned on and I started flipping channels. (There seemed to be several Educational Programming channels...Hmm.) Eventually I reached a channel where exceptional moments in music were being played, and so my mom's friend's daughter said we might as well stop there. Some singer (I forgot her name, unfortunately) was singing when a bird flew by and pooped diagonally onto her mouth! It was disgusting. But that bird had good aim.

I was pretty freaked out because I saw a dead bird today. It was pretty well squashed, something disgusting on it as well as blood... It seems like another bad sign. But it could just be my imagination. There is a lot of roadkill nowadays.

Birds aren't the only animals all over the place, though. There are also plenty of squirrels. I have some in my backyard. My mom pointed one out to me, so I ran over to the window to see. It began digging up the grass and apparently found something to eat - perhaps a nut? Then it started eating, before holding it in its mouth and climbing up the tree. The squirrel looked pretty fat. It was a greyish one (maybe that's because of the winter, it could have actually been a squirrel with brown fur). I had seen a black squirrel earlier which was quite a bit skinnier than that one. It didn't find anything to eat in my backyard. I guess the early bird - or squirrel - doesn't always get the worm (nut).

That nut looked kind of like an acorn. Was that from my yard? Or a neighbor's place? Or somewhere far away, like near my school? There are plenty of acorns there. I've always thought acorns were cool nuts. I would like to make some acorn mush, or acorn pancakes, but I'm not sure how. And what would it taste like, anyways? D:

Labels: 2010, acorn, birds, blackberry farm, bocceball, break, creek, death, explore, food, neighborhood, nuts, poop, roadkill, seagull, singer, squirrels, television, water, winter

I was planning to put up a post yesterday, but I failed to. My parents wanted us to all get a flu shot. I never liked shots, even though they are not a fear of mine. It really felt bad last night, like I had pulled my muscle. But this morning the pain is all numb. I hope I don't get sick because of the shot. It's my first flu shot ever, I think.

I walk home on Tuesdays and Fridays, and carpool the other days. So every time I walk home, there is this small house at a corner. And above it are many electric wires. On this wires perch so many pigeons there are probably dozens, maybe even hundreds! They sit on the wires crammed side by side, and their tail feathers wag up and down, almost like a see-saw. Really weird.

On the other hand, my school also has a bird infestation. Crows. I always wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that one of the school counselors is called "Ms. Crowe". We had a seagull problem last year, but now it's crows instead.

Labels: birds, carpool, counselor, crows, flu, pigeons, seagull, see-saw, shot, tail, walk, wires

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