Dentist and Dime Hockey Board

I started making the first set of Creek Connections fundraiser candles. I started with sage and citrus, because it was a good number for the amount of time I had. The color turned out really nice. I now have them finished. They only took me one night to do so they were not that hard. The color that I had to make them in is a pale hunter green.
Today I went to the dentist. It was a normal cleaning check up. Like usual I didn't have any cavities so that was good. I had to go directly there from when I got home. I basically walked in the door and turned around and walked right back out.
Also starting today I had PSSA testing. They are just the regular state tests that everyone has to take. It is really easy and really boring. They last all the way until Tuesday. I am not looking forward to taking them first thing on Monday.
The last day of the grading period has passed so I am now in a different class for my 7th period. I was in a class where you make a dime hockey board. I put a picture of it below. I got a 98% on it, but I didn't get to put a clear coat on it. I was able to put whatever laser engraving I anted to in the middle.

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.

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.

Little Bit of Everything

I have been really busy lately so this post is like a combination of two or three posts. The first thing is that my family had a memorial day cook out. It did rain for a while but it stopped and then it stopped and we went swimming. The next thing is that me and my aunt went on a hike along some old rail road tracks by my house. We thought they were abandoned because they are in such bad shape but a train came while we were hiking along them. The picture is of a map of the tracks. It was also fun because there was a creek that fallowed it.



















The third thing is the frogs that lived in my back yard laid eggs and had tadpoles. I have some inside and I am raising them. The next thing I did was I went on a trip to Lake Erie with my school's Creek Connections group. This was the trip that I did the fundraiser for. It was really fun. First we went to a conservation place and looked at all the displays. Then we went to the beach and we were allowed to do whatever we wanted for a few hours. After we went on a hike and we went fishing for a little while. Last we ate dinner a went home. It was a really fun day. Also I got in the honors roll this year and the ceremony was on June 2nd. I had got all As and one B for the first two nine weeks then straight As the third nine weeks. Also I have been staying after every Wednesday to help in the outdoor garden in my school. We are doing good and we are almost done. The pictures below are of my Erie trip.

Creeks and Rivers

On Thursday I went to River Quest which is a program that takes kids out on a boat and they go and test the water they are on. You do chemical tests, take mud and look for living things in it, and take some of the water and look for plankton under the microscope. I liked that a lot. Then on Friday I am in Creek Connections so we went down to the creek and you would normally do chemical tests first and then go and play in the creek, but it was like 80 degrees or something so they decided to just let us play in the creek and look for stuff. Only if we could identify it after we were done. Everyone got soaked and we all came back to school and had to go to 9th period. So everyone who was in Creek Connections went to 9th period wet I think some one was even dripping still. It was fun. This weekend I am going on a ten mile backpacking trip. I leave in about half and hour so I will write about it when I get back.

Science Symposium

Today I went to the Creek Connections Science Symposium. Creek Connections is a program that takes kids to different creeks to do water testing like pH. You also go to lakes and my group is going up Lake Erie. Today I went to the symposium. I made a tri-fold board with a group about the eight chemical tests that we do at the creeks and ponds. It was pretty fun and I got to miss school for it. Also yesterday I got to miss school because I was chosen with about 30 other kids to go to a baseball game. The game part was boring but we all could go around the park and buy food and play games. My Easter was really good too. I got a new scale to weigh wax for candles with. I also got a lot of candy. Also i got straight As on my third nine weeks report card.