Yup, we picked him up from the airport yesterday at precisely 4:53 pm. His plane was delayed about 23 minutes, it was going to land at 4:30, which was annoying. Anyway, we're all very glad he's back. And he brought presents! I got a CD of Handel's water music, which I'm going to have to listen to...maybe while I do quizzing...that would be cool.
Youth was last night, and it was table-top game tournaments. Ping-pong, pool, air hockey and fooseball. Oh yeah, and Golden Eye, an N64 game. I entered all of them, and got to the second round of ping-pong and fooseball and then lost. Air hockey and Golden Eye I didn't even make it to the second round, and in pool (which I have never played before in my life) I made it to the third round because the second guy I played (a sponsor) sunk the eight ball off his first shot! It was...amazing. I rather like pool, I've decided. Anyway, it was fun, and the winning people got cool trophies Brian made that light up.
Today is theory class, which I have mixed feelings about...we have to go over modes again, which I really don't like, and probably some other stuff. Terms might be fun though, and we will get cookies. I really want to go shopping tomorrow! I hope I can...
~Sil
30 September 2006
27 September 2006
Odd?
Here I sit, at the computer, with a fleece blanket and a Slurpee. Does that seem odd to you?
But that's not what I sat down to say.
Several interesting things happened today, the first of which being - my piano lesson. My teacher gave me a little band pep talk, which cheered me up, and we tried unsuccessfully to get through my whole lesson. It didn't work. It never does. I did, however, show her my Davy Jones and Two Hornpipes PotC pieces, which she liked, and my Emma and Pride and Prejudice pieces, which she also liked. We took a quick look at Sonata in G major (Beethoven) but not a real long one, and then I sat down to do some quizzing outside while my sister had her lesson, which I'm afraid didn't go as well. I always feel bad for her, because I don't think she really likes piano that much even though she's obviously talented. She also super super SUPER sensitive to any type of criticism and my teacher will not hestitate to criticize you until there's not tomorrow. Which is the mark of a good music teacher, but not really very good for my sister. Anyway, I never know what to say, because I'm quite different from her and I don't really experience it the way she does.
Band was awesome, I had a really good time. We got a new piece called Early One Morning in which I get to play tambourine, triangle and crash cymbals (yay) and I'm going to do two duets at the Christmas concert with our main percussionist, whose name is Dylan. He's autistic. They're a song from the Muppets and Accidentally in Love from Shrek. So that was pretty cool. We rehearsed Cold Snap, which was SO awesome because I have a piano part and it sounds really good, especially with the saxes. Thankfully, we did not rehearse Air For Band, which I am not very good at, or Modal Song and Dance, which I am okay at but not real good. I also learned that we actually have an imbalance of high instruments to low, not low instruments to high as I had originally thought. So I need to rethink some of those piano parts, to make it so that I play more low stuff. The director brought a keyboard for me this time, which was good except that the chair was too low and the keyboard was too high, so I had to sit on my knees, which isn't the best posture for playing. I also learnt, to my annoyance, that a piano is considered part of the percussion in a band. I mean, please. Can you have a career playing the triangle? No. Can you have a career playing piano? Definetely. All our trumpets are guys and they goof around a bit.
On a bit of a more serious note, we went to McDonald's for supper today (that's not the serious thing, even though I don't really like McDonald's) and I read in the newspaper an article about a 20-year-old woman who got sentenced to ten years in jail for murdering her newborn baby. First, let me point out the inconsistencies here. So, you can get sentenced to ten years in jail for killing your newborn baby, but if you'd had an abortion a DAY earlier, not only would you have gotten off scot-free but the government would have paid for it. Does anyone else see something radically wrong there? As you should be able to tell by reading this, I am rabidly (okay, not rabidly, um...avidly) pro-life and I think all that pro-choice stuff is...ahem...how 'bout I don't finish that statement. How is it okay to murder a baby, whether it's inside a woman or not? How is that baby not a person? How come one day it's free to kill a baby and the next day, apparently after it's been born and is officially a person, you can be sentenced to ten years in prison? Can SOMEONE in society make sense of this whole pro-choice worldview? Because I think it's a feeble attempt at justifying something that can't be justified, by people who are too ashamed to own up to their mistakes. Pretty soon it'll be legal to suffocate a two-year-old because they stole your last chocolate bar. Pathetic.
Sorry. Got ranting there. I could have gone on for a long while yet, but I won't.
~Sil
But that's not what I sat down to say.
Several interesting things happened today, the first of which being - my piano lesson. My teacher gave me a little band pep talk, which cheered me up, and we tried unsuccessfully to get through my whole lesson. It didn't work. It never does. I did, however, show her my Davy Jones and Two Hornpipes PotC pieces, which she liked, and my Emma and Pride and Prejudice pieces, which she also liked. We took a quick look at Sonata in G major (Beethoven) but not a real long one, and then I sat down to do some quizzing outside while my sister had her lesson, which I'm afraid didn't go as well. I always feel bad for her, because I don't think she really likes piano that much even though she's obviously talented. She also super super SUPER sensitive to any type of criticism and my teacher will not hestitate to criticize you until there's not tomorrow. Which is the mark of a good music teacher, but not really very good for my sister. Anyway, I never know what to say, because I'm quite different from her and I don't really experience it the way she does.
Band was awesome, I had a really good time. We got a new piece called Early One Morning in which I get to play tambourine, triangle and crash cymbals (yay) and I'm going to do two duets at the Christmas concert with our main percussionist, whose name is Dylan. He's autistic. They're a song from the Muppets and Accidentally in Love from Shrek. So that was pretty cool. We rehearsed Cold Snap, which was SO awesome because I have a piano part and it sounds really good, especially with the saxes. Thankfully, we did not rehearse Air For Band, which I am not very good at, or Modal Song and Dance, which I am okay at but not real good. I also learned that we actually have an imbalance of high instruments to low, not low instruments to high as I had originally thought. So I need to rethink some of those piano parts, to make it so that I play more low stuff. The director brought a keyboard for me this time, which was good except that the chair was too low and the keyboard was too high, so I had to sit on my knees, which isn't the best posture for playing. I also learnt, to my annoyance, that a piano is considered part of the percussion in a band. I mean, please. Can you have a career playing the triangle? No. Can you have a career playing piano? Definetely. All our trumpets are guys and they goof around a bit.
On a bit of a more serious note, we went to McDonald's for supper today (that's not the serious thing, even though I don't really like McDonald's) and I read in the newspaper an article about a 20-year-old woman who got sentenced to ten years in jail for murdering her newborn baby. First, let me point out the inconsistencies here. So, you can get sentenced to ten years in jail for killing your newborn baby, but if you'd had an abortion a DAY earlier, not only would you have gotten off scot-free but the government would have paid for it. Does anyone else see something radically wrong there? As you should be able to tell by reading this, I am rabidly (okay, not rabidly, um...avidly) pro-life and I think all that pro-choice stuff is...ahem...how 'bout I don't finish that statement. How is it okay to murder a baby, whether it's inside a woman or not? How is that baby not a person? How come one day it's free to kill a baby and the next day, apparently after it's been born and is officially a person, you can be sentenced to ten years in prison? Can SOMEONE in society make sense of this whole pro-choice worldview? Because I think it's a feeble attempt at justifying something that can't be justified, by people who are too ashamed to own up to their mistakes. Pretty soon it'll be legal to suffocate a two-year-old because they stole your last chocolate bar. Pathetic.
Sorry. Got ranting there. I could have gone on for a long while yet, but I won't.
~Sil
Annoyed!
I keep losing jewelry! Last night I took off my jacket when I got home and my necklace got caught and the clasp came off, so I know it fell somewhere in the house but I can't find it. It's annoying. So today all I wore was earrings, and I might wear my little treble clef necklace, just because piano is today and band is today and the only way that thing's falling off is if someone comes at it with a pair of scissors.
Keep the comments coming, guys! And for those who asked (or maybe it was just one of you...), here's some info on middle children. The writer of the book, Kevin Leman, says that middle children are conundrums, and he even has a chart that describes how their personality traits can be contradictory. So, for example, on the one hand, middle children can be lonely, quiet and shy OR sociable, friendly and outgoing; impatient and easily frustrated OR laid-back. It's quite interesting, and a combination of all the traits he lists fits my sister (middle child) perfectly. And I mean perfectly. She's sociable and friendly, but shy at the same time, impatient and easily frustrated but not very competitive. It's amazing. According to him, middle children are the hardest to read of any birth order.
Youth last night. We played a game that was, for lack of a better name, called "Who's my Neighbor" which basically meant we all sat in a circle and made sure we knew who was sitting beside us, and someone was in the middle. So the person in the middle points at a person sitting down at random and says, "Who's your neighbor on your right/left?" and if they don't answer within five seconds, they're in the middle. But if they do answer, then the middle person says "Do you like your neighbor?" and if the person sitting down says yes, then everyone has to get up and switch seats, and the ensuing chaos means usually that a different person gets left in the middle, because there's one more person than there are chairs. BUT, if the person sitting down says NO, they have to give a reason ("She has glasses" "he's wearing a hoody") and all the people who fit that reason (who are wearing glasses or a hoody) have to get up and move.
So that was fun. Then we did Bible study, which was really thought-provoking. I quite enjoyed it. We also got our 30 Hour Famine prizes (FINALLY) and I got a baseball cap. It's cream-colored with 30HF on the front. Which was good, because I needed a hat.
And we almost have our youth band organized! So that's exciting.
I'm looking into a couple of computers, one an Apple IBook and one a Macbook. The Macbook one costs $30 more, but I'd get free shipping, and according to my uncle it's a really good deal. Except I don't have as much money as I need yet - it's $1079. So I'll have to do some saving, but I think I only need another $100 or so.
Dad's home in two days!
~Sil
Keep the comments coming, guys! And for those who asked (or maybe it was just one of you...), here's some info on middle children. The writer of the book, Kevin Leman, says that middle children are conundrums, and he even has a chart that describes how their personality traits can be contradictory. So, for example, on the one hand, middle children can be lonely, quiet and shy OR sociable, friendly and outgoing; impatient and easily frustrated OR laid-back. It's quite interesting, and a combination of all the traits he lists fits my sister (middle child) perfectly. And I mean perfectly. She's sociable and friendly, but shy at the same time, impatient and easily frustrated but not very competitive. It's amazing. According to him, middle children are the hardest to read of any birth order.
Youth last night. We played a game that was, for lack of a better name, called "Who's my Neighbor" which basically meant we all sat in a circle and made sure we knew who was sitting beside us, and someone was in the middle. So the person in the middle points at a person sitting down at random and says, "Who's your neighbor on your right/left?" and if they don't answer within five seconds, they're in the middle. But if they do answer, then the middle person says "Do you like your neighbor?" and if the person sitting down says yes, then everyone has to get up and switch seats, and the ensuing chaos means usually that a different person gets left in the middle, because there's one more person than there are chairs. BUT, if the person sitting down says NO, they have to give a reason ("She has glasses" "he's wearing a hoody") and all the people who fit that reason (who are wearing glasses or a hoody) have to get up and move.
So that was fun. Then we did Bible study, which was really thought-provoking. I quite enjoyed it. We also got our 30 Hour Famine prizes (FINALLY) and I got a baseball cap. It's cream-colored with 30HF on the front. Which was good, because I needed a hat.
And we almost have our youth band organized! So that's exciting.
I'm looking into a couple of computers, one an Apple IBook and one a Macbook. The Macbook one costs $30 more, but I'd get free shipping, and according to my uncle it's a really good deal. Except I don't have as much money as I need yet - it's $1079. So I'll have to do some saving, but I think I only need another $100 or so.
Dad's home in two days!
~Sil
26 September 2006
Little bug?
I think there might be a little flu bug going around - my sister's stomach wasn't feeling that great last night and neither was mine, and apparently my brother wasn't feeling too good either. We all seem okay now though, so it must have been just some weird little thing.
And sadly, my other little blue star earring is indeed lost. It's really too bad, I only wore them for about a month. And they were from this cool place called The Plaid Giraffe where I went with my aunt and uncle. And what good is one earring? I did have kind of a cool idea that I should get gold hoops and wear them with my Elizabeth Swann costume at Halloween, to make me look more piratey. She doesn't actually wear them in the movie - call it artistic license.
I came up with a design for our new quizzing shirts this year, and I personally think it's kind of cool. I don't think any quizzers read this, and they're not supposed to know whose is whose, so I think I'm safe to say what it is. It's CIA in big red letters, and then underneath in smaller ones it says "Christ In Action". I also had a neat idea for this upcoming quiz meet - The Little Orange Book Awards. You see, all our little Acts booklets this year were plain orange, whereas in past years they've had pictures on them and there wasn't much opportunity for decoration. So I thought it would be fun if people entered their decorated books and we decided which ones we thought were best. The only thing is, I don't know if people would enter. I would have to make it pretty simple, I guess.
Oh, and I finished The Lost Colony! I started reading it again, too, but I'm reading this book for school called The Birth Order Book, about how your placement in your family affects your personality. According to it, firstborn children are: conscienctious, well organized, serious, goal oriented, achieving, people pleasers, believers in authority, perfectionist (haha), reliable, list-makers, critical, scholarly, self-sacrificing, conservative (of course!), supporters of law and order, legalistic, and self-reliant. That pretty much describes me to a T! I would post a review of The Lost Colony but nobody I know has read it and it would be really hard not to spoil it. So I'll wait.
Dad's home in three days! If he were on the phone he could tell me exactly how many hours until he's here. I think he misses us just as much as we miss him!
And last but not least...I was rather proud of my outfit today. I've become quite creative lately. Just thought I'd say.
~Sil
And sadly, my other little blue star earring is indeed lost. It's really too bad, I only wore them for about a month. And they were from this cool place called The Plaid Giraffe where I went with my aunt and uncle. And what good is one earring? I did have kind of a cool idea that I should get gold hoops and wear them with my Elizabeth Swann costume at Halloween, to make me look more piratey. She doesn't actually wear them in the movie - call it artistic license.
I came up with a design for our new quizzing shirts this year, and I personally think it's kind of cool. I don't think any quizzers read this, and they're not supposed to know whose is whose, so I think I'm safe to say what it is. It's CIA in big red letters, and then underneath in smaller ones it says "Christ In Action". I also had a neat idea for this upcoming quiz meet - The Little Orange Book Awards. You see, all our little Acts booklets this year were plain orange, whereas in past years they've had pictures on them and there wasn't much opportunity for decoration. So I thought it would be fun if people entered their decorated books and we decided which ones we thought were best. The only thing is, I don't know if people would enter. I would have to make it pretty simple, I guess.
Oh, and I finished The Lost Colony! I started reading it again, too, but I'm reading this book for school called The Birth Order Book, about how your placement in your family affects your personality. According to it, firstborn children are: conscienctious, well organized, serious, goal oriented, achieving, people pleasers, believers in authority, perfectionist (haha), reliable, list-makers, critical, scholarly, self-sacrificing, conservative (of course!), supporters of law and order, legalistic, and self-reliant. That pretty much describes me to a T! I would post a review of The Lost Colony but nobody I know has read it and it would be really hard not to spoil it. So I'll wait.
Dad's home in three days! If he were on the phone he could tell me exactly how many hours until he's here. I think he misses us just as much as we miss him!
And last but not least...I was rather proud of my outfit today. I've become quite creative lately. Just thought I'd say.
~Sil
25 September 2006
Earrings
I have good earring news and bad earring news. The good news is - I bought two new pair of them. One pair is dangly and silver with little blue stars (I'm a sucker for blue and stars) and the other pair is just dangly and silver with little sparkly bits. The bad earring news is that I think I may have lost one of my glow-in-the-dark blue star earrings that I got for my birthday. I haven't looked in the van yet, so it may be there, so I guess there's still some hope. I need to buy an earring holder, they're getting all tangled up with each other in the little box I use.
I also bought the fifth Artemis Fowl book yesterday! Well, actually, my friend took me shopping - it was her birthday present to me - and bought it for me. I'm about three-quarters of the way through, and it's pretty good! Artemis is finally experiencing adolescence, which is amusing, but he should be fifteen - he was fourteen in the last book and I'm older than him now. Holly is Captain Holly Short again, and I was pretty scared that Butler was going to get incapacitated for a bit there but I think he's okay. There are two new characters, Minerva (who is another genius, aged twelve) and N-degree-1. He has a little degree circle in the middle of his name but I don't think Alt codes work for Mac so I can't make one. He's a imp, and hopefully he'll get a real name soon! Mulch doesn't have much of a part in this one, which is relieving - his explosive flatulence, luminous saliva and multipurpose beard hair were getting annoying. Foaly is, as always, the technical consultant that sits back at base and manipulates the cool technology. Root is still dead, which is sad, I was hoping he'd come back to life, but Wing Commander Vinyaya has more of a part. She's cool.
Quiz practice on Sunday went well - I think I may have talked too fast while I was doing the summary, which makes me glad I don't have to do it every week. I sent the quiz directory to my coach but it came out wrong on her computer and none of my nice formatting worked, so we need to redo that because much as I know we needed a quiz list, Futura and a nice equalized table is much better than Courier with a haphazard sort of table. Plus I have my pride! If I'm making a quiz list, it's going to look GOOD. Anyway, we did some scorekeeping, and I learned stuff I didn't know, which was fun. Then I went shopping with my friend, which was also fun. I saw some nice earring holders at Icing (by Claire's - apparently it caters to the 'mature teens and young adults' more than Claire's, which could also be called Cheap Jewelry Central) and I want to go back and get one.
Oh dear, it's almost ten and I haven't done any school. Oops.
~Sil
I also bought the fifth Artemis Fowl book yesterday! Well, actually, my friend took me shopping - it was her birthday present to me - and bought it for me. I'm about three-quarters of the way through, and it's pretty good! Artemis is finally experiencing adolescence, which is amusing, but he should be fifteen - he was fourteen in the last book and I'm older than him now. Holly is Captain Holly Short again, and I was pretty scared that Butler was going to get incapacitated for a bit there but I think he's okay. There are two new characters, Minerva (who is another genius, aged twelve) and N-degree-1. He has a little degree circle in the middle of his name but I don't think Alt codes work for Mac so I can't make one. He's a imp, and hopefully he'll get a real name soon! Mulch doesn't have much of a part in this one, which is relieving - his explosive flatulence, luminous saliva and multipurpose beard hair were getting annoying. Foaly is, as always, the technical consultant that sits back at base and manipulates the cool technology. Root is still dead, which is sad, I was hoping he'd come back to life, but Wing Commander Vinyaya has more of a part. She's cool.
Quiz practice on Sunday went well - I think I may have talked too fast while I was doing the summary, which makes me glad I don't have to do it every week. I sent the quiz directory to my coach but it came out wrong on her computer and none of my nice formatting worked, so we need to redo that because much as I know we needed a quiz list, Futura and a nice equalized table is much better than Courier with a haphazard sort of table. Plus I have my pride! If I'm making a quiz list, it's going to look GOOD. Anyway, we did some scorekeeping, and I learned stuff I didn't know, which was fun. Then I went shopping with my friend, which was also fun. I saw some nice earring holders at Icing (by Claire's - apparently it caters to the 'mature teens and young adults' more than Claire's, which could also be called Cheap Jewelry Central) and I want to go back and get one.
Oh dear, it's almost ten and I haven't done any school. Oops.
~Sil
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