Jasmine kicks major ass for several reasons right up-front. first of all, she had the very good sense to be a pisces (and not just any pisces, but one born exactly a week after me) and she also had the fortunate luck to be left-handed. (genes or blessing?)which of course, are major plusses. i ought to be buds with her forever and ever just cuz of that. but no, she had to love
octopi so much that i, i suppose, osmosed the love so much, than she's converted me to an octopus freak as well. (i currently
have seven plush octopi, one octopus magnet, one glass octopus, and whole bunches of drawn octopi scattered throughout my
notebooks from the past four years or so.) wanna know more reasons why she's supercool? keep reading...i believe that i met her in seventh grade, same as karen. (no, i know that i met her then, i'm just being strange.) we were assigned the same spanish/homeroom class (back before they assigned homerooms by last name) (my spanish name was mariana, and i believe--again, i know-- she was juanita.) and we soon started doing the partner worksheets together in the spanish portion of class, and drawing octopi and talking in the homeroom portion of class, when we were avoiding the flipping pogs and such. (remember pogs? was that not the most absurdidly strange fad of all?) we each created our own octopi "clan," or such. she had Georgie, Gina and Clark, and i had Fred, Alex (a girl) and Tinkerbell. ah... i should try and dig up some old pics of 'em and see if i can get 'em put up on here...
also that year, i was in her geography class. that was one fun class, especially third quarter, i believe, when she and i, along with 4 others that we talked to, were all placed right next to each other, in the back corner by the window. we got reminded rather often that we ought to keep quiet. unfortunately, our teacher didn't keep us in the same spot for the next quarter.
during that summer, i didn't really do anything with her. (karen also signed her yearbook "karen is a dork, signed by karen.")but what i did do was send her letters, with octopus pictures scattered in the margins, and she did the same.
come eighth grade, we were placed in the same spanish class again. this time, i was rosalia and she was cecilia. again, we had mucho fun drawing octopi in the free time, and it was most amusing to find that our teacher had a bit of a crush on pierce brosnan. hmm..
in ninth grade, we were, yet again, in the same spanish class. i was rosalia again, and she was sofia. this teacher regaled us
with tales of having a mexican friend who bought her old beetle, supplied it with a porche engine, and could cruise; and she
had lovely leather pants. (in case you couldn't tell, i'm being sarcastic.) this teacher was extremely hyperactive, and also had the
nickname of being a witch. (or something else...) i became more and more frustrated and annoyed with spanish, and
decided to not take it the next year, and take latin instead. jasmine was rather pissed, and thus ended our spanish-class
streak.
also in ninth grade, we both signed up for freshman volleyball. (it's no-cut, so i knew i'd get in. heh heh.) we ended up on the same team, with the awesomest coach. our team (#5... i think the color was white) was the best of the non-blue or gold (they were the specifically selected teams that were the highest up) and we only were beaten twice, i believe, out of lots of games, and both times was when we played against.. one nearby high school's #1 team.. once in a normal game (our first loss... breaking our incredibly great winning streak) and another time when we played another team, at the finals. where we played practically non-stop from about nine til four thirty. half hour sets, 2 games per set. we won division b at this tournament. (the 4 local high schools all had several teams.)
tenth grade... we had second semester gym together.. i got her in trouble several times by talking to her when our teacher
was speaking to the class. she, of course, was listening to him and ignoring me, and it was she who got yelled at
("Jas-mine!") and not me. this was not a one-time event. hmm, what other lovely gym tidbits might i be able to think of?
playing scatter-dodge (a form of dodgeball...where we were playing scatterdodge, "not sitting duck" or "not statue of liberty") and floor hockey. floor
hockey and volley ball kicked major ass. soccer wasn't all that bad either, especially when i realized that it gave me wonderful chances to accidently kick/shove/trip people i didn't particularly care for at the moment. 
also in tenth, we had a same history teacher, alebit a different hour. i had history right before gym, and she had it the hour before i, so in gym we'd be able to share the amusing things that our teacher did that day. and these weren't the dumb-teacher things you discuss, this teacher was seriously funny. before tests you could rub his lucky meteorite (a lump of clay that was glazed blue and used as a paperweight. it supposedly fell from the sky.) and his tests always had a couple of outright strange/funny questions and/or answers. like one, on a final, "what will you do as soon as you finish this test" and the answers were something like "graciously thank my teacher for such a wonderful test," "consider the rack as punishment for my teacher," "jump out the window" and some other answer.. unfortuneately, they didn't count on the grade. sigh.
Ah, and eleventh.. second semester brought us many in-school sightings. I'd get to walk between first and second hours with her, and since I was in her lunch and fifth hour class (yay! The hilarious social studies teacher, teaching us about the Middle East. Christianity is boom-squish-squish, whereas Islam is boom-boom-boom. Long story) so I'd get to spend quite a chunk of time with her everyday. (Dear lord, no.. heh.) And then, next year? We'll see what it brings.
recently, jasmine and i attended a semisonic concert, along with phoebe and meg. read all about the concert.
jasmine and i both have seen some PBS special called "incredible suckers," or something of the like. twas all about octopi and other related species. one that interested us was the cuttlefish, which appear to communicate with each other by tentacle movement and changing their color and pattern. they taped one cuttlefish and showed it to several others, and they all had similar responsed. so jasmine and i decided that we would be marine biologists who would crack the cuttlefish code.
i have a habit of giving nicknames to people. however, they never seem to stick. a list of things that i've called jasmine:
