Creek Connections Fundraiser

The fundraiser I am doing for Creek Connections at my school is going on right now. I got the order forms on Friday. I went through them all and it raised more money than last year's did. Around 50 candles were sold with Coconut Lime Verbena being the best seller. Peaches was the second best. The supplies are supposed to arrive on Thursday. I am planning on starting them over the Easter break, which isn't very much of a break. All of the snow days I mentioned in the last post turned my break into a three day weekend, but still I'll take it.
For a camping trip I am going on in the summer I had to take a swim test. It isn't very hard so I passed it. I also had to take some tests yesterday. I got a 60/60 on a science test and a 29/28 (extra credit question) on a math test. The grading period ends on Wednesday so I am happy I did so well.
I recently went to orientation for my new high school. I learned a few things about it. I would get a laptop free because we do all of our work on the computer. I would have windows 7 and the office 2010 programs. It is not a cyber school though. I will have to ride the bus downtown each day. I think the school is really cool. You do have to follow a dress code, but it's not that bad. You have to dress in business casual. I will have to buy some new clothes but other than that I like it a lot. It is better in my opinion compared to the regular high school that I would be going to.
The other day I got another guitar. I got my first which is an electric bass for Christmas, but a friend of the family asked if I wanted this one. It is an acoustic so now I can choose between the two. It is a really nice guitar. I put pictures of it and my bass guitar below.

Spring is Here!!!

Finally freedom from the snow. It's getting warmer and the snow is melted. I am so excited. There was over two feet of snow on the ground for a while. I went two weeks without having a full day of school. The first week school was canceled for the whole week and the next week every day had a two hour delay. Once the snow became bearable, I went to a couple of cool little stores and got some unique foods to try. Some of the foods I got were fresh honey comb and pink rock salt from the Himalaya Mountains. The honey comb tasted really good in tea and the rock salt was outrageously expensive, but it didn't taste all that different. It was interesting though. On my web site I added a comments page if anyone is interested in placing feedback. I have got a lot of good comments so far.
During the period that I had two feet of snow on the ground the back of my house was covered in huge icicles. These are not the foot tall things that people talk about these are 8 to 9 feet tall. They covered the entire back of the house. One of them started at the top of two stories and ended at the ground. When they started to melt they started to slide off. If one fell you would hear a huge crash and shatter. We didn't want to let my dogs outside because you don't know when they are going to fall. When they were completely frozen they were cool to look at. I put a few pictures of their early stages below.
For school I had to do a large science experiment. You were able to choose anything that you want, but you had to conduct the entire experiment on your own. I chose to do if a fish brain can process music and if so how do they react to different types. Th first round I did failed because I got feeder goldfish from Petco which didn't survive through the full experiment. Their feeder goldfish are not meant to live that long since they are just food. I then went to another local pet store called Elmer's. I got a new set of fish which survived through the experiment and are actually still alive. I have two and my sister has the other two. The experiment turned out that yes fish can process different music and they do react differently. What I did to test it is I put each fish in a different bowl, then I got waterproof earphones and played ten minutes of music to each fish. Each fish had a different type of music. I did this once a day for seven days and recorded the results. I got a 97% on my project so it turned out good.
I heard about this old electric vehicle that interested me when I looked into it. It is called the Ev1. It was made by General Motors during the 90s. They only made it because a new law forced them to. The ones that were leased out were selling good and generating profits, but they convinced the California Air Resources Bureau that they were not so they would lift the law. They did lift the law and so General Motors took them back and crushed them. The Ev1 was the only car to ever wear just the GM name plate.
I am doing the Creek Connections fundraiser to send the group to Erie again. I got the orders on Friday of last week. I am going to go through them and place an order. When I have the final count I will post it. This year we are using all environmentally friendly supplies. I am going to use recycled jars, soy wax, and the metal wick tabs are made from recycled pop cans. I am excited to get started.

New Years 2009/2010

I had a great New Year's. My family had a few people over and we just played Wii and board games. It was a nice quiet fun evening. Everyone went to bed shortly after midnight but me. I stayed up for a while after and just did some fun things to occupy myself for a while until I eventually got bored with nothing else to do and went to bed. A few days after New Year's it was my mom's birthday so a group of us went to a nice restaurant. The food there is very good and is cooked hibachi style. There is a huge flame when they cook the food and it is really cool. In school my midterms for the year are coming up and I am starting to study because I hate these tests. They are always long and boring and extremely difficult but I guess there is nothing you can do.

Christmas 2009

The third post in my chain of catch up posts is about Christmas. A little before Christmas this year on the weekend of the 20th some of my family came up from Virginia and we exchanged gifts and had a good time. Then the following Wednesday was my last day of school and I was off until January 4th so my Christmas was stretched out which I enjoyed because I got to have a lot of fun. For Christmas I really only asked for a couple off things and I got all of them which I was very happy about. I wanted a case for the gems I have, the Blue Planet tv series, a board game called Risk, an electric bass guitar, and a phone. Mostly though I just asked for money that I could deposit in my savings because I am saving for something pretty big. I was very lucky to get all of the presents I asked for along with a few other things too. The big goal I am saving for is an old car. Not a restored one just one that preferably runs, but can have other issues like body work or interior problems. I have been reading a ton of articles and books on how to fix different parts of the car so that I can work on the car if I get it. I have liked old cars all my life and I have always wanted one just never though of actually working towards it. Once I reach my savings goal I will start looking in the classified ads for something that fits the requirements that I have set. I am very excited about the idea of having an old car to work on.

Thanksgiving 2009

I am moving on to my second "catch-up" post. This one is about my Thanksgiving. I had a very nice quiet dinner with just my mom, sister, and her husband. I had it early in the day like we normally do, and after, we all just relaxed and digested the food we just ate. I had twice baked potatoes, cranberry sauce, corn, blueberry muffins, stuffing, and green beans which were exceptionally good. The rest of my family had turkey but I didn't because I am a vegetarian so I just made a meal of the sides which was more than enough to fill me up. Around this time I had moved on to a new part of my language learning adventure. I am not moving fast by any means, but the language I chose is extremely complicated. If you take a word there are anywhere from 2 to 37 different rules that can act on it when it is written or said. Nevertheless though I am still working diligently to get through it so I can know the language.

Halloween 2009

I am a little behind on my posts, well a lot behind so I am going to play catch up. For the next few days I am going to put a post for a few things. I will do one each day until I am caught up. This one is about Halloween which I know was a long time ago but who cares. This Halloween was probably my last year of trick or treating. I got a huge amount of Reese's cups but almost no snickers which I though was extremely weird. Especially because every one is freaking out about peanut allergies. I went as a, well I don't really know what I was but I had a blue wig, blue shirt, and blue Elton John glasses. I wanted something that was comfortable and light. I went with some friends on their street and it was fun. On October 13 I had my first surgery on my right eye. It went very well and I can see tremendously better. I was seeing better with one eye without glasses than I was with both eyes and glasses. It took me about a week to recover from it to the point where I could return to school. My work was modified to accommodate for the fact I only had one very irritated and itchy eye to work with, but it recovered much faster than I ever expected.

Biggest Post Ever

Sorry I haven't done a post in a long time but my mind has just been somewhere else. I will start at the end of August. I went to a place called the Caddy Shack. It was amazing it had three go cart tracks, a paintball range, a driving range, an arcade, and a mini golf course that was incredible. It was a really big course with all kind of things in the golf holes. I had waterfalls and hills and dips and swerves and all kinds of things. After that though I went to the eye doctors and they told me I had to take it easy and not do cross country because my lenses were unstable right now. So when I told the coach she offered to let me be the manager for the team. So now I go to them to the meets and keep track of times and places and stuff like that. At the beginning of the next month I went to a Pirate game which they lost of course. I didn't go for the game though I went for fireworks night at the end of the game. The fireworks were great. Then my family had a Labor Day cookout which was fun. We just invited people over and grilled and swam. It was our last cookout of the season kind of thing. Then I started school which I hated to go back to but it's not that bad once I started it. All my teachers are nice and will help me if I need it. I also started Latin. I didn't want to learn any of the other normal languages that they offered. So I chose Latin. Also my history teacher is a big Irish fan so he is teaching me how to speak Gaelic because I have always wanted to learn it I just didn't know any one who spoke it. After school started I used some Kennywood tickets over one of the weekends. It probably would have been more fun if I would have been allowed to go on some of the rides. The doctor told me that I couldn't because it would shake my head around to much and it could mess up my lenses and make them detach and roll to the back of my eye. So other than that it was fun. Also the Steelers started playing. So far my family has had a party for every game except for one because it was a 8:00 game so it would have gone to late. They have all had themes so far and they have all been really fun. In boy scouts I earned three more badges and I am working towards an award the no one in my group has gotten yet. There are eight certain badges you have to have. You also have to have First class rank and you have to do four major service projects. To give you an Idea of how big I will give you an example of one I am trying to get approved by the council. It would involve me handing out two thousand bag to the neighborhoods and collects school supplies then I would have to write letters to 50 schools and ask them for their old out of date textbooks that they don't use any more. I would have to go around and collect the bags and collects the hundreds of textbooks then send them over to Burkina Faso which is in Africa. Once they were over there I would have to get people to distribute them to the schools across the country. Burkina Faso has a literacy rate of 12.8% which is the lowest in the world that is why I would choose them but that is an example of the magnitude that these projects have to be. I have to do four of them. So I am working really hard right now to get all the badges done and all these projects going. It is very difficult. I also got to be an eighth grade helper to the creek connections thing I did last year so that will be starting soon. Then on top of that the eye doctors told us that the only way to correct the lenses was to preform surgery and not laser eye surgery. This surgery will involve them cutting open my eye and sucking out the old lens then putting in a fake one through sewing it in. The procedure will take three hours and they have to wait six to eight weeks before doing the next eye because they only do one at a time. The first eye will be done on Tuesday the 13th which is in one day. As soon as I can see good enough I will write a post about it. I also got my room done. It is exactly like I wanted it and I love it. Now the three adult dogs sleep with my mom the two puppies sleep with me and my aunt's dog sleeps with her. I ahve a water bed in it and a tv a computer and a giant bean bag. The pictures are below.