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

I was considering just leaving it as "clones", like it's supposed to be, but I figured that since the enemies looked different (and even had different names), it would be better not to.

Recently, I had the opportunity to play the game Wii Sports Resort. It has quite a few more games than the original Wii Sports (which comes with the Wii when you buy a Wii) but it does require the Wii MotionPlus accessories (apparently it makes the Wii remote's motion more accurate, or something along those lines). I thought the Archery and Swordplay was fun. The Cycling was amusing, but it wasn't very much like actually riding a bike since you just move the Nunchuck (also an accessory for the Wii, you attach it to your Wii Remote) and Wii remote in tandem.

If you unlock it, there is a Swordplay activity where you go around fighting off everyone else. You can only take three hits - if you get hit three times, then you lose. The enemies are pretty easy since most of them only need one hit to keel over. It really looks like Star Wars since your Mii uses a blue sword that looks like a lightsaber, and the enemies all use red swords which resemble lightsabers. But at the same time, the game has an oriental feel since everyone wears a kind of armor (which looks kind of like samurai armor) and because of the background music.

After watching Shirayuki no Kimi play the computer game Starcraft, my interest in it was rekindled. Several years ago, when I was in elementary school, I would watch people play that game, and eventually I got ahold of it myself (I can't remember who bought it for me) and played it at home. I'm not good at fast-paced games, so I'm used to cheating my way through. (This applies to other similar games, like Age of Empires, which has the same concept as Starcraft but isn't so...science fiction-ish.) I looked Starcraft up on Wikipedia, because that's what I always do. It turns out Starcraft was released for Windows in 1998. Whoa! That's even older than I thought. I am always surprised by the ages of things. (I can't really judge people's ages, either.)

On television, I saw some mention of more coffee = less diabetes, or something. Wow, that is so weird. People keep changing their mind about what's good for your health. And there are all sorts of strange diets for people who want to lose weight. It's hard to tell what's really good for your health and what's just bogus. I don't even drink fruit juice much anymore because it has a lot of sugar (but then, various fruits have a lot of sugar because they're, well, sweet). Well, I guess I'll keep eating fruits and vegetables and drinking water, I'm pretty sure that's safe and there isn't going to be a health specialist saying, "Oops! It turns out an apple a day makes the doctor come more often".

I used to have a teacher who really liked coffee. He said he wanted to try to drink less coffee, but it wasn't easy. This year I have a teacher who likes coffee, too. She even keeps it on a shelf in her room, behind the whiteboard. The classroom smells funny sometimes because of the coffee. I wonder if a lot of teachers drink coffee or if it's just a myth.

At my house, no one really drinks coffee. I heard my grandma likes it, but I'm not sure whether or not that's true. My dad drinks a lot of tea. Apparently, it stains his teeth, because my dad said his dentist was complaining. "Ugh! Drink less tea! Your teeth get so dirty." My dad replied, "Yeah, but I give you business." It all works out in the end, I suppose.

I don't think my mother drinks much tea. In fact, I don't really see her drink much in general. I think she's lactose intolerant or just has bad digestion, because she doesn't drink regular milk. But she says it's okay for her to eat a little ice cream now and then (although she complains about it being cold; it's ice cream! What do you expect?).

Labels: age, age of empires, coffee, computer, games, health, ice cream, lactose intolerant, milk, nunchuck, samurai, shirayuki no kimi, star wars, starcraft, tea, wii, wii motionplus, wii sports resort

I've noticed that Mr. Moustakas, the woodshop teacher, has a slightly rough-sounding voice. Also, he tends to cough sometimes during the class. I wonder if all those years of teaching woodshop wore away at his health. Apparently swallowing sawdust is not good for your health. (Or so I believe, because I heard miners die early from being down there inhaling coal.)

I remember one of my friends said that after she watched the Kaleido Star anime, circuses didn't seem so impressive to her anymore. I just thought of this since I'm watching an anime called Gakuen Alice and right now there is a circus going on. It made me remember how I'd watched a Ringling Brother Circus performance back when I was young. I can't remember anything except for acrobats and elephants now...And maybe clowns. But that was probably my mom's company family day, not a circus, hehe.

I recently had my cell phone number changed to a 408 number. It had been a 650 number for a long time because I got my phone through my mom's friend, who happens to work at Sprint (so he can get discounts, and even a free phone, depending). And they live in the 650 area. I remember that I first heard about the Everybody Votes Channel on the Wii from my mom's friend's son. He didn't tell me, but I saw him casting votes on his Wii. So then later I connected my Wii to the Internet and downloaded the Everybody Votes Channel. (I heard you can actually surf the Internet on the Wii, but you need to pay hard cash to download that "channel". The Wii has various channels which contain different features, such as the Nintendo Channel, where you can watch promotional videos or trailers, and the Mii Channel, where you can make or edit people-characters called Miis)

I woke up sometime in the morning, probably pretty early, since it was still dark outside. I was too restless and my throat was too dry, so I couldn't get back to sleep. I wonder if I have strep throat or something. (Well, at least this is the first time I got sick all winter)

Labels: area code, channels, circus, health, internet, kaleido star, phone, sleep, wii, woodshop

...would be the newspaper delivery man. Or woman. I couldn't tell since I wasn't looking at the car window. But whoever it is, was trying to hit me today. I was just minding my own business and walking home from school. Right now the newspaper guy was making his rounds in his mysterious white van (unlike the mailman's truck, it doesn't have anything written on it). I was pretty shocked when a newspaper flew across the path, only a few feet from hitting me. It's a lucky thing I walk a lot slower than the van goes, because every time it passes a house, another newspaper is hurled out of the car window. Doesn't anyone realize it's safety hazard at this time of day? What if it hit some poor little kindergarten kid in the head and she started to cry? (But I guess that's really unlikely anyhow...)

For some reason, my only skill in drawing is copying. If I am given a picture and told to make a replica of it, I might do pretty well, but as for making things up from scratch, without anything to go by, I usually mess up pretty bad. I guess I'll probably be arrested for copyright infringement if I take advantage of any copying abilities, though, so I guess I can only draw pictures and keep them secret.

If you've ever wanted to be a sports pro, I think you ought to get a Wii (it comes with the game Wii Sports). The sports are so much easier on the Wii. For instance, in Tennis, Baseball, and Golf, you won't miss the ball, as long as you time your swing right. (Not to say that you might hit the ball somewhere you don't want to, like off the field/court, or into the rough) And you could easily become a master at bowling, since the ball only weighs as much as the Wii Remote (which is not much at all).

Today one of my friends insisted on tying my hair into a bun. She was bored and figured she'd use my hair, like I was a doll or something. (I don't mind, though. For some reason I like it when people fuss with my hair.) So she tied it in a bun. It's kind of odd not to have my usual ponytail, but not bad either. At least I don't end up eating my hair at lunchtime.

After school some suspicious men went over to the trash dump (on the other side of my house's fence) and put down some wooden things (they looked like the backs of picture frames, or perhaps a painting easel, but who knows what they were). Then they unlocked the "gates" to the trash dump and opened it. Maybe that's what they do for a living or something.

It reminded me of something long forgotten from my childhood, though. Years ago, my grandma was staying at our house to watch over me, and she found a discarded rug on top of the trash dump. We brought it home, washed it, and then put it on the wood chips of my playground (I have a small playground in my backyard. Unfortunately I'm a bit big to use it nowadays). Whenever I use the swings my shoes tend to fall off, so now at least if I want to get off the swing I can step onto the rug and not get my socks poked by wood chips.

Labels: athlete, dump, enemy, hairstyle, newspaper, plagiarize, playground, replicate, rug, wii

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