A Temporary Title

Okay, I went camping this week. I scaled mountains and cliffs and swam in icy-cold rivers and sat around campfires playing guitar. I will write more about the camping aspect when I get my pictures together, because I have stories to tell. However, at the moment I feel a more pressing urge to recount this year's International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Out of the entire camp (70 or so people, not counting camp staff) I was one of two people who had heard of International Talk Like A Pirate Day. This lent itself to a small, perfect moment during breakfast.

I was not having a good morning. I had arrived at the mess hall too late and thus had to sit at a table with people whom I did not know and converse awkwardly with said people. Upon getting out of bed I greeted my cabin-mates with "Avast, ye scurvy bilgerats!", and with every person who gave me a strange look or said "Did you just say 'yarr'?" I slowly realized that my schoolmates are terribly unenlightened. As I stood in line for breakfast, the drama teacher drifted past, quietly singing "We massacre Indians and kill little boys..."

In retrospect, it wasn't that funny. Still, it made me happy. The hike that day KILLED ME. DEAD. So dead, in fact, that I used proper English for the rest of the day. Ah, well.

Here's a bit of history from the dorm in which I now live.

Thacher: rejected. (I have a feeling that it was the crappy essays. Also, the admissions officer seemed iffy during the interview when I mentioned that I skipped seventh grade.)


Cate: accepted. (YAY!)


Whew. At least I don't have to choose.

I am finished with the applications! All of them! They're in the mail and I don't have to worry about them until March. Yay!



(16 days until I turn 13...)

Happy (kind of early) birthday, davidd!


Tonight was Seibo Tai Kai, the annual Bodhi Day celebration, at church. It might be the last Seibo Tai Kai we attend with that particular sangha, or maybe at all. Mother has become increasingly irritated with the members of the sangha. The last straw was this year's Halloween party, where Kai was beaten up (browbeaten? He didn't exactly want to tell anyone how) by a bunch of other boys. Rare is the over-10-year-old there who is not snobby and vapid. (It doesn't really help that all but two families in the entire church are related to each other, and one of the two is my family.) Mom made us (the kids) go to church because she wanted us to be schooled in morality before we decided for ourselves which philosophy/religion we wanted to follow, and since one has already made that decision and the other two have decided that they simply don't care, there's not much use in going.

Application materials have arrived from Cate, Thacher, and the Ojai Valley School. On Monday, Mom and I shall go to Thacher for a tour/interview. Appropriately preppy clothing has been excavated and appropriately charming expressions have been practiced. (I really really do want to go to Thacher.) Oh, and I'm an eighth-grader now. Whoop-dee-doo!


I guess that's all for now. It's raining very heavily and my toes are cold. There is an admissions test (the ISEE) that I have to take on the 16th, so I've been trying to study for it and getting discouraged because of insanely tough geometry questions. When I get around to getting a YouTube account, I will post a video of my father explaining his philosophy of life (numbers, to be more specific.) Happy Bodhi Day.

Harry cornered 146 Komodo dragons in the backyard. Jennet cornered 5 times that number in the side yard. How many Komodo dragons did they corner altogether?


I love my new math book.

Gar.


Today is Oak Park Independent School's Picture Day.

Gar.



Ålsø gar-worthy:

I live in room 2 of 3 rooms in a hallway. The occupant of room 3 seems to make it a daily morning ritual to spray canned evil-ness (a freak mutation of deodorant) throughout the hall. So whenever I venture outside of my bedroom before 1:00 PM, my olfactories are ruthlessly assaulted. (The occupant, of course, is already at school, so he doesn't have to suffer from it at all.)


Gar.

I started school today. It was the first day of 6th grade. *waves flag* The brothers start tomorrow. Today school was pretty disorganized, but in a week or so I'll start following my schedule.

Lessee...today I made a schedule for an average week. All the days are mostly the same, except social studies and science alternates. [sarcasm] I'm sure I'll have an outrageously exciting year. [/sarcasm]

Also today I took up fencing. Steve was indescribably excited at the prospect of me fencing, so he's teaching me now. Tis fun. I won several duels against the Younger Brother, who had been taking fencing lessons (at the park, not from Steve) for a couple of years. *yay*



And that was about all I did the entire day.