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Saturday, August 28, 2004

Well, school started and Thursday, and you know what? I don't really care. After a whole summer of being busy, I can say that I can almost wecome the new school year with open arms. And even though its a new school year, it doesn't feel like it at all. The first day of school felt like any other regular day, except with less work, but other than that, I wasn't able to tell much of a difference. People still hang out in the same places, I see the same people walk around the halls (minus the old seniors, but I didn't know many of them anyway, and the new freshman, but I seriously can't tell who's a freshman or not... everyone looks the same), etc, etc. The only difference is that it seems a hell of a lot more crowded and the lunch lines are hellishly long. But its nice to know that people still hold the tradition of cutting to the front of the line. I suppose that you're gonna want me to describe my teachers like everyone else is doing in their blogs. Let's see...

Mrs. Watson - I wasn't originally supposed to have her for math, but some change made Mr. Matson's entire first peroid math class get transferred into Watson's class. She seems somewhat normal. Math is supposed to get harder according to her, but then again, all we're doing right now is review.
Mrs. Talle - Talle is out on maternity leave for the next month or so, so we haven't met her yet. Instead we have a substitute named Mr. Gibby, who if he is our long term sub, I can't imagine how we're gonna keep up in this AP art class. He's old, mumbles when he speaks, has no clue what we're supposed to do, and talks a lot about his "childhoon living on the farm."
Mr. Currie - Quite possibly my favorite teacher of this year. Compared to Mr. Pacilio, my freshman English teacher, he's just a teensy bit weirder, so a bit funnier, but in a pretty damn cool way. Besides that, the two are almost identical in personality. Looks like English teachers will have my "favorite teachers" spot for two years in a row.
Mr. Raskin - Mr. Raskin is a sick, sadistic bastard in his own little way. But that's what makes him funny. He says that he hates all of us equally and so will pick on us all, but atleast I know that I'll be singled out just as much as everyone else will. Former students of his tell me that he's pretty cool though. APEC seems like a pretty difficult class from what we've already done in the first 2 days.
Mr. Torns - Everyone already knows about Mr. Torns, the music director. He hasn't yet shown his fiery side, so that means that the freshman haven't actually seen the real him yet. Just remember to count while playing music and use longs bows and hope that you will never have to meet his other personality.
Coach Jolk - Eh, all PE coaches are the same. Coach Jolk is no exception.

There you have it. People can stop telling me that I'm darker cause I'm fully aware that I have a tan. You don't spend 2 hours in a pool everyday (4 hours per day before school started) and come out without getting tanned. Now, what else have I missed in this post? Ahh, yes, Eamon jumped head first into a trashcan on Friday and made 9 dollars for it.

Good times.

Saturday, August 21, 2004

There's not really that much to say about this week except that its probably the most tiring I've had in my life. Just all the waterpolo training and such (commonly known as "hell week" by a lot of people) is getting to me. The 2 hours training everyday in the morning and then another 2 hours in the afternoon... gah, I don't do anything but sleep in between the 2 sessions, and everynight I already get atleast 9 hours of sleep. And do you know what the worst of it is? Its that I'm training with novice. On the first day, I jumped in the pool with JV, realized that I could barely keep up, and joined novice instead. Several other people also did that, and on the other hand, some people from novice switched to JV. The first day of training was absolute hell. Practice started at 6:30 in the morning and I was terribly out of shape. But as the week wore on, each practice session got easier and easier until the point where it wasn't difficult anymore, but just kinda boring. Boring because the majority of what we do is just swim laps, and its not exactly the most exciting thing ever to be staring at the tiles under the pool and wondering how much further until you hit the wall. Actually, the warmup is probably harder than the actual swimming o.O. 3 sets of 20 pushups, 3 sets of crunches, and 3 sets of "thinkers" (I'm not going to explain here) alternating. The first day everyone did them without much of a problem, but when you do it each and everytime before practice, you get sore, and with only a few hours until the next practice, you're already sore before you begin. The worst are the thinkers. When we're doing them, the sweat is literally dripping off our faces, everyone is silent except for their heavy breathing, and you can see people's bodies trembling to stay up. I'd much rather be in the pool. As I said, the swimming is kinda boring now, but when we get the balls out, it gets more amusing. So far we've just done a lot of passing and ball handling drills, but hey, this is the novice team, we gotta learn this stuff first. And when we actually bring the goal out and start practicing shooting, its a hell of a lot more fun. Unfortunately, we spend the least time on that, and when we do, its always after the hours of swimming just laps. I'm not really in the mood to write anything else. I really only did this to keep up with the weekly update. I'm hungry. Bye.

Saturday, August 14, 2004

Everyday for the past week I've been at Palomar College from 9 AM to 3 PM for the Civic Youth Orchestra summer workshop. 6 hours of orchestra a day, 5 if you take out the lunch break, but still, that's a hell of a long time to be sitting there playing an instrument. I used to think that the 50 minute orchestra period at school was long enough -_-. We paid $165 to put me through a week of this, and guess what classical piece we spend the most time on in the workshop? Something something Glinka's Russlan and Lumilla. People from the MC orchestra know what I'm talking about... its the piece that we played this year at one of our concerts. So basically, I was in an orchestra that was playing stuff that I already know. That does take some of the fun out of it, but it was amusing to see everyone around me struggle with it while I was playing through with ease. In the end when we were performing it for parents we didnt even play it at the speed its supposed to go cause no one (except me) could handle playing it at it's intended speed... yet. But then you have to keep in mind that people can only learn so much in a week. I was pretty damn amazed at how far we got, actually. We also did some other stuff, but we a great majority of it on Glinka. I was a bit dissapointed, but not much. What was cool was that I thought I'd be going into the orchestra knowing no one, but as soon as I step through the doors to the music room Agnes from WV is standing next to me. Then later Neima strolls in. The 3 of us stuck together during the breaks the whole week. I also met a few people who I'm not going to name cause I don't exactly have "nice" things to say about them, but then again, they're not entirely negative either. There was this one girl who played viola who is extremely smart, but she just wouldn't shut up and stop showing off how many damn words in other damn languages she damn knew. Then there was another kid who played viola who pretty much whenever we weren't playing, he was wiping down his instrument with a cloth. On the first day, Mr. Gilsen, our director, did tell us that we should keep out instruments tidy by wiping the rosin off after each session, but this kid wiped his whole instrument down practically every moment that he wasn't playing it. I thought that was odd. Then there was a kid who thought he was funny, when he really wasn't, and he drop off dumbass comments, then laugh at his own "witty-ness" when the rest of the orchestra just sat there wondering what the hell would cause a person to be so unaware of how not witty they are. This same kid later started talking to be about bombs and blowing things up. Once during a rehersal he said something, and Mr. Gilsen gave him a glare and said, "Okay, now you're starting to annoy me. I have an extremely long fuse, but its starting to burn down, and you do NOT want to see what happens when the fuse runs out." I remember thinking, "THANK YOU for putting this kid in his place." This same kid had the worst playing technique of anyone in our group and when Mr. Gilsen tried to correct it he would reply, "This is how I've always beeen playing. I'm not chaning it." C'mon, you don't sign up to be in the advance symphony group if you don't even know how to hold a damn violin. Then there was this other guy who Agnes knew that I thought was pretty cool, although I shouldn't really judge because I only talked to him like 3 times and for very brief moments, but he smelled a bit musty. That's all about him. Dude, we were the advanced group, and there was a Chinese cello player that was 8 year old. I'm not kidding, she's entering 4th grade, but she kicks ass on cello. She was right up to par with the principle cellist, but her age and lack of experience prevented her from being principle, so Mr. Gilsen made her second chair, instead :P. During breaks she's climb around the school campus like it was a jungle gym. Yeah, and I signed up for my audition into CYO for 12:45 on September 11, whooooo.

I forgot what I did today... wait, no I didn't. I Went to MC and stood in like for almost 2 hours to get my sports physical for water polo. I had Chris and Katie to keep my company the whole time :P. And you know what, they didn't even check my prostate. I mean, whenever anyone hears "physical" the first thought they have is of a doctor sticking their hand down your pants, cradling your balls in their palm, and telling you to "cough." But they didn't do it this time. Huh.

Water polo starts on monday, and then each day after waterpolo training I have orchestra camp thing in the bandroom.

Sunday, August 08, 2004

This entry is riddle with typos. Sorry.

Thursday was Carly's birthday so.. Happy Birthday Carly! lol, yeah.

Friday was the last day of summer school, and here's how it went down for shizzle: (im using 'shizzle' as a noun, by the way, so its grammaticaly correct to put a colon after it) For the past year, first year in high school, I've gotten nothing bug A's in all my classes, including last year's summer school and Chinese school on the weekends. I think this is the longest run of straight A's I've ever had. I middle school I would get like straigh A's for one semester and then the next one my grades would be scattered. But having straight A's for the past year really got to me and I felt like I had to hold it up. First semester chem, I ended it with a 94% without really trying. I guess this 'not trying' mentality carried over to the next semester, and within the first week, my average was a 78%. So realizing that I had to get my ass into gear, I started working toward's an A, and within the next 2 weeks, I had aced every test, quiz, and homework assignment we had, getting 100%'s and sometimes even more because of the extra credit. But even then, the last day of summer school chem I had a an 89%. Exactly 89%. So it all came down to what I got on the final. The first 2 hours of school was just screwing around with Thomas, Wes, Kevin, and Scott while we were supposed to be studying. When the final came around, I felt like I did 'okay,' but I knew I wouldnt get a perfect paper... I predicted my grade to be a B+ or A-. Later that night I went on learningpoint to check my grade, and under the last set of grades that my teacher posted he wrote "I've given 2 students with B+ above 89% an A-. I load up my grades to see what I got, and I GOT AN 90% ON THE FINAL SO MY AVERAGE WAS NOW AN 89.12% YEEEAAAHHHH!! So I pulled off an A this semester, but it came a hell of a lot of work and a little bit of luck.

That same day, I got Doom 3. Holy hell, that game brings back memories from when I played the first two Doom games back in the early 90's when I was in like kindergarten. But back then, everything was all pixelated and the monsters, while they looked ugly, didn't give me too much of a scare. But now, 10 years later, Doom 3 comes out, and I can honestly say that this game scares the piss out of me. Call me a pussy if you want, but seriously, this game is creepy. It messes with you phsychologically. I know I probably spelled that wrong. There are so many times when you're like "Okay, this room is clea- HOW THE HEL DID THAT THING GET BEHIND ME?!!o!)(*!?!" And, ahhhh.. the game is so damn dark, that it gives you a claustrophobic feeling that no other game does. Then there's the voice com thingy that you can hear people talking to each other in. You'll be running around and someone dials in, "NO! NO! JESUS CHRIST, NO! I DON'T WANT TO DIE! NO! AIEEEEEEEEEEEEADSFKLJ ASD *gurgle noises*" Or you're wakling down a hallway and suddently a corpse drops from the ceiling but its foot is stuck to it so its hanging there in midair and you hear whispers that say to you, "Save me... save me..." It doesn't help when almost every room you go into has blood smeared all over the floor and walls and limps and corpses threwn all around. Then there are times when you're feeling pretty good about yourself, you open a door to enter a room, and then as you take a step towards the door, a jolt shoots through the whole facility and the lights inside the room flicker out and you think to yourself, "fuck.. I don't really want to go in there anymore..." Its time like those that make me wonder whether I can truly stand to play the rest of this game. Some people have clocked the playing time to be well over 25 hours. Can I stand to play in this type of hell for so long? I've never been afraid of a computer game until now. It truly is messed up.

On a brighter note, Carly's birthday party was on Friday night :P. It was pretty cool, with a 50's theme and a hell of a lot of people there. I'd name them off, but there are too many. A lot of people dressed up, but I wasn't one of them. Instead I wear a red shirt. Yeah! Red shirt!

I did almost absolutely nothing on Saturday except get down and dirty with my new car (new used car, anyway). My dad walked me through all the things under the hood, I checked the break pads after taking off all the wheels, stuff like that.

Then today, Sunday, I spent most of time at home until the afternoon when my family went to see the new Costco deep in Poway. I can't say that I liked it better that the one in Carmel Mountain. But hey, it was a chance to get to see a new area that I usually just pass by on the way to the paintball field that I go to. After that, I went to my Grandma's house in El Cajon and me and my uncle went to the local Albertsons to buy some cream soda and strawberry ice cream. Nothing like spending a Sunday evening drinking cream soda and eating strawberry ice cream. Hmm... cream soda and straberry ice cream.. I think I'll go have some now. lol.

Sunday, August 01, 2004

Friday night I went to bed at at 1 AM and I woke up at 6 AM the next morning to go jogging at Lake Miramar. In a little less than 1 and a half hours, I jogged 3 miles nonstop, walked a mile, jogged a mile, and walked a final mile to come to 4 miles jogging and 2 walking. Then I stopped by Albertson's and bought pancake mix cause I was in the mood for pancakes. At home, I made pancakes for the whole family. I made 5 for myself and could barely finish it -_-. After pancakes, my dad started talking about looking at buying me a car, and we browsed some car sites and called a few private sellers. We arranged to meet with this one guy named Frank who had a 1995 Toyota Camry LE V6 up for sale. We went to his house, got info on it, test drove it, and I thought it was pretty good, but my dad thinks a 6 cylinder is too much power for me. Frank's a pretty cool guy. He works with law enforcement and and paintballs. I spent like 10 minutes talking to him about paintballing. lol. After looking at his car and giving him an "I'll call you back when I decide to or not," I went swimming whoooooo. Then I came home and talked to people and wrote my entire Musketeers essay in an hour, easy peasy. The 750 word limit is what makes it so fast. Its hard not to go over the limit :P. So then I'm done with all my summer assignements. We went out to eat pho, came back home and I started looking at cars again. I saw this one deal that was for a 1997 Toyota Camry V6 with leather seats and it was really shiny and the owner was asking for a price of $2900. HOLY HELL!, I thought. The there must something wrong with it if its that cheap. The thing was almost a full 2000 dollars less than its suggested price for a used car of that type. But I decided to call them up anyway and but they said that they had sold it that morning. I called a few more peope, most of them had already sold their cars, even though their ad's were still up. Then I called this one lady who lived in Chula Vista selling her car. Today we went to check it out, and my dad really liked it and he paid $3670 for it. So now I have I have a dark green 1994 Toyota Camry DX whoooooooooo!! Yes, I own a car now. I own a car a full 2 months before I even get my learner's permit. lol. I'll put picture up later.