Wow, so this place is still looking incredibly dead. My school life hasn't improved much except that I've since entered and left Driver's Ed.

We're approaching the semester's end though, so maybe I'll get some salvation. My only class change is into Ancient and MidEvil History though, everything else is the same class. Same Calculus, Honors, and Field Biology.

Right now I'm on Christmas break though, so ENOUGH thinking about school for one night.

Why is it all fading away? That's rather cryptic, I know, but everything seems sorta fuzzy to me. Only one GD week left until I find out if I've been accepted into NYU and I'm about ready to explode. I've never been so nervous in my life. Brett already knows that he's in and now I'm stuck knowing that he's in and I've got nothing to go on. NOTHING AT ALL. They haven't even e-mailed me to say that they've processed my application. I keep telling myself not to get too excited and not to make plans but I want this so much. Of all the things in life that I've ever truly wanted I think that this comes in second. I NEED this. If I'm stuck in Richmond at VCU I won't get the experience I need so it's either NYU or I'll have to start saving and move to California to get training there. I really don't want to go to California. I'm not ready to be on my own yet like that, so far from home. I just need to know. It's not knowing that's killing me. All I can do is wait, and wait some more, and chase the mailtruck every day and call my mom from school every afternoon to see if it came. Here's the odd thing though: Wes got a letter today about summer classes at NYU. Wouldn't it be odd to advertise your school to someone who had a family member rejected? All the what-ifs running through my mind are going to be the end of me. I can't wait til Christmas.

Wow - it's been a while. I'd love to say that I've been too busy working but it's more like I've been too busy fighting off the disease I like to call senioritis. The symptoms of this common ailment include an addiction to AIM, a complete lack of focus and motivation, and the urgent need to drive far far away whenever possible be it by bike, bus, train, u-haul, 3 wheeled skateboard, shitty old honda, or conversion van. It also seems that I've become nocturnal, sleeping by day during classes and having fun by night (if fun is defined as staying up til 4 and talking to Allison and Casey, the only people up at that hour, and eventually collpasing on the keyboard into a deep deep sleep unpenetrable by alarm or human touch). Plus, I have become even more of a procrastinator, sometimes daring to write 4 page papers during the block before its due date. Good LORD I can't wait to go to college - I can hear New York calling my name.

Wow, this place sure is dead looking, maybe I outta start writing for it again.

Due to the wonders of the internet I've discovered that I can now write blogs with my aim client. ANY aim client. Now I don't have to login anymore to blog, this is super-cool and will hopefully revitalize my blogging habits. I always have aim open, I don't always have a browser open (or enough time to deal with a browser). Check it out.

School has gotten very, very hard. I've also noticed that school is a lot like running. The harder you push yourself the better you do. I used to think running was about taking it slow when you could and then running fast when you passed people so they would think you're fast.

I now realize that everything is about pushing yourself really hard all the time. You have to push it up the hills and then push it while you're running down the hills and then push it up even more on flatland. That way you just continue to get better and better.

Lots of lessons can be learned from Cross Country.

I think everyone else on earth has finished their chapter 8 outline. I have not, all signs point to this not being a good thing. I'm going to work on it, because I only have a bit left. Then I'll go work on some of the optional work, which isn't really optional. It once made sense, to do optional work even though if you didn't do it you got a D. I think... it made sense around last night, when I was dreaming, when the meaning of the universe had something to do with the squareroot of negative one over zero, or something.

Today nothing makes sense, and I have a headache, and I'm tired.

I'd always wanted a column in the newspaper, and now I finally have one. I haven't actually written anything for it, and I haven't been published yet, but I have the column I've always wanted. I had a horrible writers block for most of the day, but recently, ideas have started flowing again. I suppose I'll try to make the most disorganized organization of the ideas I can, and then stick them all together into a column.

In other news, there is a wooden cone in the back of the Calculus room, where I sit, that we affectionally call Conics Man. You see, his power is that you can pull him apart to make different conics. Conics are parabolas, hyperbolas, and ellipses, and circles for those of us who aren't informed.

Playing with paperclips and toilet paper gave him a quick do-rag and some bling-bling. He's changed is name to "Big Baby Conic", and he 'smokes that conic all day long'. His parent's are starting to wonder/worry about him, and are always mention that he "smells like pencil shavings".

I think that running 8 miles a day is pushing the limits of human expirience. I would like to say that I run 8 miles every day, but well, no one really does that. I ran 8 on Wednesday, then Thursday I had to get up at 4:30 to go on a field biology trip. The trip was educational, but I think spending time with some people I hadn't spent time with in a while was even better. I hadn't talked to Mae in ages, which is weird, because, well, I don't think I ever really talked to Mae all that much. We seem to know each other well though. She was in my second-semester gym class of my freshman year. That was a while ago though.

Also learned a lot about birds, and I like birds, but not as much a some of the people at the Kiptopeake Banding Station. I'll be really happy if I find a job that makes me as happy as these people are with their jobs. When you stack what they do compared to say, writing computer programs like what I do, their jobs seem more important. I don't think I'd want to be a bird bander, but they're important people.

We also stopped at a gift shop, which was pretty boring. I don't really like gift shops, and the stuff they sell at most of them isn't even original. For example there are wodden picture frame magnets, that say "Chesapeake Bay" on them, but some of them had pictures of Mountains. There aren't any mountains, I looked outside the gift shop, lots of water, lots of fish, lots of old men fishing, but no mountains.

Speaking of fishing, I was walking along the pier adjacent to the gift shop with Nichole. Most of the old men on the pier were fishing with normal sized rods, about one and a half times their height. There was this one guy, with a rod that was as thick as a baseball bat handle, and three times his length.

So as a joke I said "I dare you to ask him what he uses that rod for" to Nichole. She didn't bite.

When we made it to the end of the dock there was another, friendlier looking guy fishing.
"What are you fishing for?"
"Flounder mainly/"
"What do you think that guy with the big rod is fishing for?"
"Frankly I have no idea"
"Do you think it's just for self-esteem."
"Probably."
"I think it's for self esteem"
(or at least that's as well as I can remember the conversation).

Back to the pier, back to the bus, long ride home. Buttocks very worn out by the overly bumpy bus ride, legs worn out by the awkward positions necessary to sit two-to-a-seat. Buses aren't made for tall people, and I don't even concider myself to be tall. I think I'm big boned.

So I got home, skipping cross country for the sake of my legs (and eight miles the previous day), and decided to go upstairs to lie down on my bed and read. I had the magazine open for maybe 5 minutes before I decided to "lay it down and close my eyes". I slept from 3:30 to about 6:30. I wish I could sleep that well when I actually have to.

Of course that made the rest of the day seem like some sort of dream. I'm not used to sleeping mid-day. There were some really intersting conversations though, and I hope that I've retained most of them. I tend to pay attention during conversations but then totally forget about things later on, which sucks when the other person remembers telling you about stuff.

Today...

We burned lots of interesting chemicals that make crazy colors in Chemistry, and I bombed a history quiz in honors.