weeks fly by
Mood:  caffeinated
Topic: latest news
last night was our second competition and as usual, we came home an hour late. lol. we were supposed to get home around midnight but it was more like 1:00 am instead. we placed second in our group but we also took home the best auxiliary percussion award. we scored two points higher than the next band for that one. but we finished second and the first place band beat us by about three points which is a huge loss for us. and it's the same band that beat us last week at the other competition. we also had a point and a half penalty for going over the allotted time for being on the field. we're gonna have to work on that.

the hurricane moved through friday night and a few tornadoes moved through this area. one of them came within one hundred yards of kristi's house. it was only about ten feet wide but it took the roof of a barn and uprooted some trees. boy good thing a tornado didn't come near our place.

today i went and got a new hacky sack because my old one developed a large hole in it and died. it's flat as a pancake now. and i also got a black shirt for our uniforms for band. a football that was scheduled last friday is now tomorrow (because of the hurricane) and we're playing for that game. we're doing the pregame show. oh and next weekend's competition is on saturday. the same band that beat us the past two weeks for first place is in that one so we're gonna try to throw them down. again and again and again...

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where has the time gone?
Mood:  lazy
Topic: school
boy when school starts, you don't have time for anything. we started last monday and things have been going well. i have about an hour and a half of homework to do each night. right now, i'm taking spanish 2, biology, algebra 1, and english. it's a lot of work. and i'm also taking after school driver's ed from 2:25 to 3:00 pm on monday's through thursday's. whew!

tomorrow is our band's first competition and i hope it goes well! we played last week at a football game with our rival school. boy did their field band suck. i mean really bad. there were a lot of people out of step, a lot of hesitation, and a lot of wrong rhythms. it's sad i think. we played pretty well. that is, a lot better than they did. our football team did a great job as well. we won the game 44-16. our rival school is always bad at football. oh well. sucks to be them. these past two weeks of school have brought a lot of hard work, great times, and hacky sacking after school. i'm getting good at that!

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red moon
Mood:  caffeinated
whew! i had to work a lot on the stinking lawn mower today and it still doesn't work. we took everything apart and cleaned it and cleaned the end of the spark plug but nothing seemed to help. i guess sometime we'll have to go all the way deeper into the engine to figure out what is wrong. and the problem is, my dad and i don't really know much about lawn mower engines lol. but we'll manage.

after that i had to clean the turtle tank and then i got on my new shoes and practice my hacky sack a bit. i'm getting a little better at it day by day. practice makes perfect! then after dinner, i went over to the pool for one last time because the day after tomorrow, school starts. the water was nice tonight and the moon rose up over the trees and it was redish in color. then i left about 8:30 pm. the last day of the pool! wow what a good year it was, all the games of football, wall ball, kickball and hand ball you can imagine. along with swimming and diving. i hope i am still a member next year.

school seemed to have snuck up on everyone this time. oh well. all i have is a book bag and that's all i need for now until we get our syllabuses which tell us everything that we'll need. at least i'll get to see a lot of friends that i haven't seen over the summer (like the ones not in band). but speaking of band. tomorrow i'm gonna go up to the school around 2:00 pm and help out with the props. i hope that goes well. that's all for now. tomorrow is the final day of summer vacation so let's make it a good one!

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no work tomorrow
Mood:  bright
Topic: latest news
first i will begin with yesterday since that's when i had the get-together at my house. there wasn't a lot of yard work to do, just mow half of the lawn. i was just about finished and then the lawn mower died so we have to figure out how to fix it in some way. oh well. then i had to buy snacks for the get-together and that consisted of a lot of soda and chips and, yes of course, famous amos chocolate chip cookies (only the best).

i had practice at six and that went pretty well. our closing to the show will be just like the beginning accept that we're running off the field instead of onto it. we've got the entire thing down and i think that all we really need to work on is our marching style, playing the right notes, keeping in time, and hitting the formations. okay so maybe that is a lot of improvement to make. and our first performance is only a week away! gosh. i think on sunday i will go up and help with the prop-making at two 'o clock and i want to help out with that. a lot of cammo netting and stuff.

and after practice, kristin, laura, justin, and i walked home to my house and we picked cameron up on the way. and then upon arrival at my house, we hung out in the living room and then we moved to the backyard (it was dark by then) and we started a fire in the fire pit. and it got hot enough that we stuck this glass bottle in the fire and it melted and then we took it out and it was all warped and flat. lol that was pretty far out.

we let the fire die down a bit and then we all went for a walk around. that was pretty fun. it was probably the last get-together of the summer but there will hopefully be more sometime soon. i dunno with school and all because of all the work.

today i had to clean the back yard out a little more and oh i forgot to mention that we moved the computer over onto a different table and fixed the tangle mess of wires and everything. and we have this old swivel chair that we use for the computer chair now. i went shopping today for shoes and a bookbag (because school is suddenly upon us!) and i went to old navy and i found this great canvas bookbag sack type thing and i really hope it lasts. it looks like it will. i go through a bookbag every three weeks because someone always messes with it and breaks a strap or something. geez it's like a reflex. "i think i'll try to pull on this string here...weee!!..ooops oh crap...." it happens all the time. oh well. and i got a new pair of vans to wear and there were some shirts on sale at the store so i bought three of them. i spent a little over a hundred dollars today. wow that's like the most i've spent in a while. i was supposed to work tomorrow (and make more moolah lol) but charlie called and said he doesn't need me because the schedule is messed up. there would be too many people there so he gave me the day off! ah yes that means i can sleep in...

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form check!
Mood:  cool
Topic: band practice etc.
whoa i totally love this new format for editing my blog. it rocks! well anyways we had practice tonight from 6 pm to 8 pm and my dad came and video taped the show and i watched it earlier this evening and it looked okay. we only have till next friday for our first performance and that's only three more performances. whew! i hope we make more progress.

today i had to work on cleaning out the back yard some more and that meant a lot of raking and moving of big sticks and brush. after that i went to the pool for an hour and then it was time to get ready for band practice. all that raking really helped gather some more new firewood and i hope we can use that thursday night

see thursday night, the posse is thinking about having another get-together and this time at my house so we may have another fire in the fire pit. hopefully as huge as the last one! this is all very tentative so it may change so i dunno. i hope it works out though.

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p.s. i also have to work tomorrow which isn't a big deal, i just get some more moolah for my wallet lol

old home week pictures! lol
Mood:  caffeinated
today wasn't very eventful except that i had to clean out some of our back yard because there's all these sticks around. it was the area where the old skateboard ramp used to stand (that was dismantled a few months ago) and there were a lot of wooden pieces of it all over the place. i also found this old rotting wooden box and when i flipped it over i found the biggest slug that i have ever seen. it had to have been at least seven inches long and i found another just like it on the other side. wow i had no idea we had slugs on our property. you learn something new everyday i guess.

we got our old home week pictures back and the entire photo is as long as our couch. it's the longest one yet and i believe it is the most people i've ever seen in attendance. i am in both ends with my friend david. yay! also today, i worked on some drawing and i am just stuck on how to draw hair properly. the technique is just not registering in my brain so i stopped drawing hair and decided to draw a dog instead. and that is coming out better than i thought it would. maybe i'll post it on here sometime. tomorrow is another field band practice and my dad is going to film us so hopefully i can finally get to see what we look like!

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nothing much
Mood:  a-ok
not a very eventful day today folks. just had to get myself up at 7:00 am and walk over to take care of roxy (my friend's dog) and then it was back to bed. and nothing else really happened today. tomorrow we get our old home week pictures back. yippeee! i can't wait to see myself in it twice. i've always wanted to do it. i also had a nice talk with my friend kendall in new zealand and i introduced laura to her. hopefully, tomorrow will be more eventful!

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p.s. this coming tuesday is another field band practice from 6 pm to 8 pm

band camp has finally ended
Mood:  caffeinated
today wasn't too eventful. i just had to get up earlier and go dog sit for my friend's dog and then walk the rest of the way to work. work was pretty busy today and i made my usual thirty-six dollars. i'm noticing that people usually come in in big bunches and not in a steady stream like you'd see in grocery stores or something. a million people will suddenly appear in the story and you're running around grinding coffee, replacing peanuts on the shelf, ringing people up, and dodging the other employees (in my case, only 2 others), and all of this is done at warp speed. and then later in the evening i went out to the fair to collect my winnings which was only fifteen dollars anyways. i think that's strange since i took home four first place ribbons and one second place ribbon. hmph!

but most important of all are the events surrounding yesterday. let's see if i can remember what happened. oh yeah earl's big party for the entire band lol. it started at five 'o clock and i got there a little bit before then to find troy and a few others trying to untangle the volleyball net. it took like five people to get it stretched out and then we couldn't figure out how to put it on the poles. we had one side on but the other side was missing a few strings. so we tied it to a nearby tree and everything was okeedokee. (the pole problem was fixed later).

gradually more and more and more people began arriving as we were playing our feeble game of volleyball. then the guard arrived and more people along with them and it was time to start swimming. and a few of us jumped into the pool and splashed around for a while and then this great big black storm cloud moved over and it started thundering and lightning so we all got out of the pool and began to get stuff to eat since it didn't rain at all.

after we finished, the big rain cloud moved over and it was time to go swimming. and that's when another storm cloud moved over and it really started raining and thundering so we all went in the house. and some people watched "bruce almighty" in the living room, others played cards, and a few played on the computer. that was a blast and i played the most violent game of spoons i have ever been involved in lol. spoons rocks. it's a card game and yet it tests your reflexes too.

and that was pretty much the rest of the party and it was so much fun. but it's always sort of sad at the end of things like that because it's just too bad that time has to fly when you're having a good time. and it was the end of band camp. what an awesome experience. it was some hard work but it was really worthwhile. i am glad that i am doing field band this year. hopefully more fun is on the way!

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hair cut
i haven't had a lot of time to leave a post on here lately. yesterday wasn't that eventful. just pool time from the afternoon till 4 pm and then it was time to go home and get ready for more band camp.

yesterday we learned the opening charts. and it's nothing complicated really. all we do is run out from behind these props on the field and then into our positions for when the music starts. the props were marked on the field with chalk lines but eventually they'll be these things (i'm not sure exactly what they're gonna look like) with camo netting all over the place around it. and the battery will play and imitate the sound of helicopters and then we all run out onto the field and it looked pretty cool. and i got my uniform last night. it's just this army camo jacket and camo pants. it's too bad that we don't get to wear combat boots which i think is weird.

then after band camp, we (my posse of friends) went out to kristin's house and we hung out there and walked down to the bridge and stuff and the camp ground down there. it was pretty cool. and it was dark. we found a few toads on the way.

and then today i got my hair cut for the first time in a month or two and now it feels so much shorter. and after that, i went to the county fair. i got three first place ribbons and one second place ribbon. so i did pretty good! i'm glad i won something. after that, i went directly to my friend david's house and we hung out there for a while and played halo and ate food with a bunch of others. there was ten or twelve there i think. directly from there, we went to band practice.

practice went well tonight and we practiced running out from behind the chalk marked props about a million times and then practiced dying for a while. so that was interesting. and then after that i got back to the house and well, here i am now.

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county fair work
today was mainly a priority type day. first i went to the county fair and after quite some difficulty, finally got the tags and i.d. sorted out. i have 4 photos and 1 drawing in the fair this year and i hope they will all be prize winners. there should be at least 1 that does place somewhere.

and then after that, i went to petsmart and bought turtle stuff. i bought this net for taking out excess food, "turtle clean" which is this stuff that dissolves waste and cleans the water, and some more turtle food. so i hope that "turtle clean" stuff will help keep the tank cleaner longer so i won't have to clean everything so often. at the present time i have to clean the filter every week and the whole tank every two weeks. whew!

then it was off to the pool with saif for a few hours and then i had to come home and have dinner and then go to the evening band camp. we got the end of the show finished and then we did a final run through with the guard and the whole enchilada out there and it looked pretty good. now we just need to set the first opening charts and we're going to do that tomorrow. boy my schedule is going to be filled these next few days. suddenly everyone is planning get-togethers and stuff. i guess it's because of school coming up in 2 weeks. where did the summer go?

kristin wants to have a get-together tomorrow night after band camp and then wednesday david wants to have a party at his house from noon until band camp begins that night and at the end of the week is earl's pool party. we get directions to his house tomorrow. and that new member's parent's orientation is tomorrow night also. so this week is busy busy busy!

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