My posts seem to be coming few and far between. I just haven't made time to get on here. It seems like my attention should be going in a thousand different directions. So let me brief you on that, whoever "you" may happen to be.

My uncle is the swim coach at my school; he has been for a while. Now, I love my uncle, of course, but we don't really connect. About the only things we have in common is videa games and swimming, but we have different definitions. He likes "blow up the other guys" games (and some racing ones that look much harder than podracing) and I like more vehicle-oriented stuff like Rogue Squadron and, like I said, podracing. As far as swimming, he thinks of competitive, stay in the lanes and do specific strokes stuff. I'm not all that competitive in anything physical, so swimming, to me, is being in the water and moving around, mostly without touching the bottom, and generally having a good time. So now he keeps bugging me about e-mailing him, but I don't know that he realizes how little time I've been spending on the computer. I still have an e-mail from a friend in Ohio to answer. I've got over four hundred e-mails in my inbox and over one hundred I haven't read. Wahoo. So I did it once already, but I had the wrong e-mail address. Argh.

In anohter direction, I'm still unfortunately in Girl Scouts, but I'm fairly certain that this will be my last year. As nice as Mrs. Branby is, she's pushing me in a direction I don't want to go. The way I see it, GS has very little to offer me. Yeah, knowledge, but it's not the in-depth, science or writing oriented stuff I like. It's people-oriented, and I don't particularly like people. I think God should come first, and GS is all trying to be politically correct and not step on any toes. Besides that, I'm the only one in my troop who's not Roman Catholic. I understand them about as much as I understand Mormans or Muslims. Not much. The only reason I still hang around is that my friend isn't allowed to drop out. Actually, there's another reason: GS looks good on college resumes, but I figure two years in HS will be plenty. I don't need something else distracting me while I'm trying to work through senior high.

Mom wanted me to join an afterschool activity this year, so I'm in forensics. (Boring.) I don't know what I'm doing there, but it's a little late to leave. I should be out picking a piece to read that's around ten minutes long. Hm... I've got all those scifi books sitting around up there. Maybe something from LOTR.

Oh, BTW, I'm also supposed to be practicing guitar. I need it this week. But there's always the weekend... before Stargate starts and after I finish homework....

So, as you're probably thinking from taking a gander at my many websites, I don't have much of a life. Never mind that I'm trying to fully devote myself to God, keep up the straight A's, and please every person I respect in my life, maybe with time to spare to be kinda social. Novel idea. In some of my spare time, I'm trying to get ready to learn to drive. I'm on page twenty-seven of the online driver's manuel. Figure that one out. (I'll give you a hint: I think it's in FTP format, 'cause you need Adobe to read it.)

Now that it's second semester, the teachers are figuring we need more homework, more pressure. Apparently, we've not being learning as much as we could (really! took 'em long enough), so they're all turning up the pressure.

My second semester elective, a programming course known as CHS Visual Basic 2, now incorporates a number of Pitt programming challenges, tests, and the Pitt final. I've had my taste of living on campus and going throughout a routine there; now I get to find out what the finals are like. (BTW, it's because of that campus experience summer before last that I got this website.) We're working on some crazy program about cleaning house. There I was, today, staring at the papers Miss Teacher handed out. And I knew that there were a hundred ways to accomplish the same end. How am I supposed to know what she wants? So I did some redundant programming, because her grading scale insisted that you must have a nested if then statement in the code for a command button in order to prevent the user from entering both square footage and length and width. But I'd already coded it so that it was physically impossible for someone to enter both; if you typed in txtSquareFootage, txt's length and width cleared and vice versa. Redundant? Repetitive? Rediculous? You betcha!

I can see from the blank looks on most of your faces that you're unfamiliar with programming, or VB at any rate. You don't know what txt means or what a command button is or exactly what I mean by coding, but you get the gist of it.

Chem isn't that much worse now. I kinda feel over my head, because it's such a fast-paced class, but I get it. Some of it seems so pointless. He wants us to write out everything. In doing mole to mole conversions (which aren't as pointless as they sound), he insists that we write the word formula then go directly to chemical formula to a balanced equation, but I don't see why I can't just go from ionic charges (which I'll write down when I see the words; it's much shorter) to a chemical formula to a balanced equation, all on the same line. It's much more efficient and saves my hand for study hall, where I'd get writing or reading done if anyone'd give me peace.

How's this for fair: Last night, Mrs. English assigned four chapters of a book previously known as "Im Western Nichts Neues" (the title of which they should've kept; it's much more accurate than "All Quiet on the Western Front"). Tonight, you'd expect we'd have another seventy-five pages. No. We have just chapter five to read. But that's okay; the other classes made up for it.

Trig's not that interesting now that we're doing it. It reminds me of chem. But our class had a great discussion about blood today. And hamsters chewing off their own tumors until they bled to death. And bloody noses. And other critters that bled to death. Mrs. Math's reactions were hilarious. I was greatly amused as I finished my homework that period.

History's got a tad more homework, but I don't expect it will continue. The one girl I know in class won't talk to me much; she's got too many friends. So I suppose our common interest goes down the drain. All well. David's still on my side of the room, so I bet I'll be getting to know him better. Two classes a day... Hm... I suppose he's not a person I'll want to despise? Not that I usually think like that, but it's an interesting point to consider. If I see him so often, I'm not going to want to dislike him. Good thing I can't hold a grudge while people will still talk to me. It's a great thing to not have.

Gotta go cook. BRB Cooking done. Socializing: check.

So I was almost done anyway, I see... kinda.

German was half study hall today. People seemed surprised that I didn't have my homework done, but when I had to read four gimungo pages from the history book and seventy-five from some German classic, I wasn't going to waste the last hours of my night finding foreign words in a huge word search. It was too much. Give me conjugations and translations, and I'll settle down. (I still have a German fan fic to decypher. It doesn't help that I'm only in German II.)

Then I get home and feel the pressures of my favorite pastime: literary pursuit. I'm constantly thinking: Do I have too much dialogue? Am I reading enough? Is it improper for me to go back and read these children's books in order to catch the religious significance of the storylines? Do I still read well if I don't read long books? Is my sentence structure too simple? Is my storyline too transparent? Am I writing too much fan fiction and not enough original fiction? How much longer should I press myself to continue this story if I've got two good reviews but I find it boring and my ideas have defenestrated themselves?

Some pasttime, eh? While I've only ever gotten one bad review and a whole bunch of really flattering ones, I know that the reviewers were comparing my stories on their own; they didn't compare them to authors I respect. (NOT JK Rowling, please; her sentence structure is too near my own for me to really enjoy it. I like noticing the differences between where I am and where the author is.) I want some reviewer to come on and say whether they like the story then point out specific things that I could work to improve. Maybe use some comparisons between my story and books I own and enjoy.

That was a nice lead-in for my next rant(?)... informational speech.

I've only three chapters left to go for Reeses, if even that many. I came upon the revelation yesterday that I need to end it with some joke or three, so I'm batting ideas back and forth. (gtg food) I'm also trying to work on original stories. I think I have eight or so up on fiction press (yeah, eight), and only three are done. I've momentarily/permanately given up interest in four of them, so even though I have only one review, I'm trying to add to the 512, which is kind of a crossover of Countdown, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate, Star Trek, and maybe Star Wars. It's got my attention this week. Next week I might work on Reeses more.

Did I mention that I feel that I should get a job soon and Chick-fil-A is about full?