Heh heh... just a few hours ago, there were flying ants all over my backyard. It looked really cool. I would have gone and took another picture, but my dad told me that they might be of the biting variety. So I was content to watch from my kitchen window. Flying ants are strange.

Verni says "Hi Carrot." Don't ask me.

She also said to say that the spider was actually 5 inches in diameter. It wasn't. But she said to write that.

About the spider, my dad pulled down the web. With one swift hand movement... it was such a beautful web. And very strong, too. It survived a thunderstorm with no apparent damage.

Today was another pointless day of school. Yes, all school days are pointless, but this one stood out, probably because it's today. Tomorrow it'll just be yesterday, and nobody cares about yesterday. I sound like Timon and Pumbaa.

We started with TAP. TAP should be outlawed. Not only is it a waste of my time and the government's money, but it's totally unfair. the grade nines and tens have to endure this thing for 45 minutes a week, while the rest of the school gets a delayed start. They get to sleep in. I'm considering protesting. Not seriously, but I am considering it. I'm also considering archiving this junk, but that's not going to happen any time soon. But watch me eat my words tomorrow. Or possibly the day after tomorrow.

Anyway, TAP. We had to summarize an already oddly short passage into a ridiculously short passage. I say, if there's anybody who can't pass this literacy test that we're supposedly studying for, it's probably gonna be pretty obvious to that kid's teachers.

I'm finding that school is more and more of a waste of time. Almost half of my courses this year are easy credits. Really easy credits. Including science, careers, and computers. Especially careers. I find it hard to believe that so many students have actually endured this for half their grade ten years without going insane.

We had a math test. It seemed simple, but I probably made some really stupid mistakes.

I don't know what to say about music. We played. That was about it. It's weird, though. Last year we had enough kids in the class to pretty much fill up the band, but this year it's about half the amount of students. We had to all move around and make one row instead of our usual 2 or 3.

In computers, I forgot to do my homework. I don't know how. The boredom on Friday must have made me just tune out everything he said - I was incredibly eager to get out of that classroom. So I got a minus next to my name. I really want to drop the course, but I don't know what to take in its place. I don't want to mess up my whole timetable and end up with something weird like gym.

In history, we had our assignment, and then our teacher left. For the rest of the period. It was very curious. He stayed for about 10 minutes, and then we didn't see him again. I don't mean that he's a bad teacher - he's a very good teacher, in fact. About 45 minutes after he left, a guy in the class buzzed the office and asked where he was, and then they asked for him over the intercom, and everyone was telling the guy that he was going to get the techer fired or something. I don't think he was fired, though. I hope he wasn't.

Life after school is good. I can watch the old Boy Meets World eps, and DBZ, and best of all, Reboot. Life in school is painful... painfully boring.

I just realised how long this entry is. I'm going insane... I wonder if one can see my progress to insanity in these entries.

Just had band rehearsal... meh. I didn't play much, except in 76 Trombones and the Recessional March from Aida or something like that. 76 Trombones is funny. I hate the Hut of the Baba-Yaga and the Great Gate of Kiev. They should die... slowly. And painfully. The first clarinets have a cool copy of Pictures of an Exhibition, (which includes Baba-Yaga and Kiev) because it has all these crazy comments from fake critics all over it - e.g. "Painful to listen to." and "Sharply contrasts good music." The Baba-Yaga is a Russian witch-monster that lures children into its hut and eats them.

We watched the end of the Lion King today. Now I'm happy and sad at the same time (whoa, how complex) because I saw the end of one of my favourite movies that I haven't seen in ages but now we're not going to watch it anymore. And we have to discuss it now. Isn't that the most idiotic thing ever? Discussing the Lion Kion in Careers? I'm for the Lion King in schools, but not Careers. Careers should be banned. Heh heh, "What do you want me to do, dress in drag and do the hula?" That's the best part of the whole movie.

I'm too bored of this to write more. Maybe tomorrow.

There is the coolest spider in my backyard. Actually, it's just a common barn spider (Araneus cavaticus - I looked it up.) but it's still probably the biggest and coolest spider I've ever seen. Meh, that's what you get in Toronto.

I'm uploading a picture of it from my camera onto the computer. For some reason, the thing only works if you plug it into the top port.

This thing's web is cool too - it's about 2 and a half feet across. And it's a classic orb web, which I don't see a lot. All I ever see are those unimpressive things built in corners.

I had to tweak the contrast and sharpness just a little bit. I applaud myself for working up the courage to get so close to the thing. I think it was asleep, though... I read that they were nocturnal. It's about an inch long, I believe. I'm not gonna go out there with a ruler to check. You can see the trees and cables behind it... that's because I was looking up at it, since it's at the top of the deck stairs.

My dad wants to take down the web... but it's so cool...

YAY! It's Friday! And Friday the 13th, no less. My lucky day... well, actually not so lucky. But not entirely unlucky, either.

Actually, it was a pretty normal day. Math was normal, (except that I hadn't known about a certain part of a homework assignment...) then we listened to a piece in Music but we got cut off by a 30-minute-long assembly about pretty much nothing, and it wasn't even funny, and then I had to buy lunch, and then we talked about cool stuff in History, and then we were bored out of our minds in computers.

I wonder why I switched from 'I' to 'we' somewhere in that paragraph.

The cool stuff we talked about in History was about JFK and all the evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald didn't kill him. And all because they cropped the picture.

Hi. I should be in bed now. I always sleep in. But the Simpsons episode when Homer becomes a missionary is on... that one's funny.

Today was pretty bad. On a scale on 1-10, 10 being best, it might have gotten a 4 or 5. However, most days fall in that range. Maybe I should change my scale. Anyway, French was boring again, we went over object pronouns. With a big table... with five columns... yeah. Then TAP came, and we didn't watch Lion King! I was heartbroken. But that's okay, becaue we'll watch it next class, which is Monday, and it'll brighten up Monday because Monday is the worst day there could possibly be.

Right. So, we went outside and wrote "journal entries". It was really bad... I made some stuff up about making decisions without thinking them through and stuff like that. Then we had to share affirmations/mantras with each other. I would have said "Aum", but they probably would have said that that's not really positive. But it is. "Aum" is the primal sound that all other life forms arise from and return to. It is alpha and omega. But enough about that.

English was fun becuase we read a weird story about a kid who's bullied by some other kid. I didn't get it. I know that makes me sound a little simple-minded, but it's a really weird story. Then we had science and we talked about some stuff like food chains and stuff. See, I always get low participation marks, because I raise my hand to talk and others just say stuff. It's programmed into my brain... I just can't talk without being called on. But it's good in English, because the teacher only lets us talk if we raise our hand.

I went to school. They actually didn't know that I had missed the first two periods. (My friends, I mean. I'm that quiet at school.) So I saw a boring movie in computers about the creation of computers or something (there was some cool stuff about ENIAC and UNIVAC, though) and then we looked at a painting in History. Our sub teacher was pretty good for a sub. Very good for a sub, actually. He didn't even seem like a sub.

I thought the buses wouldn't be running as a sign of respct... but they were. Faster than normal, too; I made a trip that's usually a little under an hour in less than 45 minutes.

I have to remind myself to bring a note to school tomorrow. I know, I'll write it on my hand.

There. I had to go find a pen in the drawer because the one on the desk doesn't work. I'm not sure why it's still there... oh yeah, to press the button on the mouse when the battery runs out. That's my band-aid solution.

It's 10:19, a weekday, and guess where I'm not? Yeah, that's right. I didn't go to school because I woke up, and I had a cramp, and I couldn't even pull myself up to get dressed. I just took a shower and then sat on the floor in my bedroom. So I missed my usual leaving time, but now I'm dressed and actually ready to go, but I'll leave at 10:45 just because I want to get there at lunch. I have this weird phobia about attracting attention by coming to class late.

It seems ominous that I feel unwell today of all days... the even weirder thing is, my sister stayed home too. Freaky.

I'm going to go play neopets now.

Hello.

Uh oh... memory lapse. What happened yesterday? Oh yeah, I remember now.

yesterday was boring because we had math then music then lunch then history and then *ew* computers. Math was boring becuase it's math. Music was boring because since I had never seen the music before, I can't play it so I barely played anything. Lunch was boring because lunch is always boring. History was boring because we listened to the teacher tell us the difference between facts, opinions and arguments. (interesting but gets boring after a while.) Computers was boring because everything about computers is boring.

Then I went home and then I came back at 6:30 for 7:00 band rehearsal (way too early...) and stayed until 9:00 (didn't play anything, too hard) and then I went home.

I'm tempted to leave now and write about today tomorrow. I don't even know why I feel obligated to write stuff here.

Cool, N*Sync's on the Simpsons.

Today was just boring. TAP, the stupidest thing I've ever experienced, was really... stupid. We got math worksheets. Then French, (more review...) then Careers, (we watched more Lion King! Yay!) then lunch, (sat under the same tree we always sit under, ate stuff.) then science, (quiz about safety symbols) then English. (An '80s A&E short story special, about some kid whose mom made him play the piano, but he wanted to be a Finn. Don't ask me.)

I have Math homework... but that never stopped me before! No, wait, it has.

For the record: version update today, right now! I'm so proud of myself. What did I do, you ask? It's a good question, as visually nothing changed to this site (except that I changed the "about me" and "about this crazy stuff" things.)

I won't keep you waiting. I'm not really that evil. If you look to the end of the page, you'll see that the menacing message to deter thieves is more menacing. It'll probably deter less thieves than before, but it's fun. Anyway, what I did was totally re-write this page's layout table. I fixed it so it doesn't stretch out when the junk column is longer than this column. Which isn't usually the case, but still. My layouts must be air-tight.

As I mentioned before, I am very proud of myself. Prior to now, I could always make sense of a table, but I couldn't write one without messing up the rowspans and colspans or doing something else stupid like that. And then I couldn't find the mistake, so I just gave up. That's me! =)

Ooh, today has been good. Days with no school generally are good, but today was even better than most of the summer days.

Agassi and Sampras in the finals! YAY! I don't know who to put my money on... no, you're right, I don't have any money. I do have several belongings of low value, though.

And of course, Reboot: Daemon Rising. See, I don't know why more people don't like Reboot. Especially with movies like Daemon Rising. If you don't know what Daemon Rising is about, (or what Reboot is about, for that matter) then shame on you. Reboot is a digitally animated show about these dudes that live in a computer. It was one of the first totally computer animated TV shows. And it's really good. I don't feel I can accurately explain Daemon Rising... it's that good. I didn't see most of it because my sister kept switching it back to tennis, but that's okay because I saw it when it first came out and I recorded it. I recorded it the first time, too, but it was recorded over...

I began practising the 12 major scales on my clarinet... haven't gotten very far. I've got a month, though.

Saturday rules.

Finally, Saturday has arrived... yesterday night, I didn't do much of anything. I think I'm going to revert back to my old school self, doing my homework at some point in the evening and spending the rest of my time watching TV or ranting here. Or playing Neopets, but that's becoming more and more boring. Neopets is only interesting during the summer. I wish it was still summer. I mean, I know it's still technically summer, but I don't like school.

My desktop is so cool. Just thought I'd mention that. It really is cool. I'm glad that I have Windows XP because the most of the icons and the captions for the icons are transparent, so nothing gets in the way of your beatiful wallpaper. Not like Windows 95/98/2000, with the dang rectangle of solid color behind the words. You know what I'm talking about, right? It's so ugly... you have to make the wallpaper so there's a block of solid color in in, where you put the icons so it's all seamless. But that's only if your obsessive like me. ^.^

Anyway, here it is:

You like? It's the TTC! (Toronto Transit Commission, for you non-Torontonians) It's one of their particularly rattle-y buses. I'm pretty sure most buses in North America look like this, but anyway... I took this picture when I was going to the Ex with my family. We took the TTC because parking there is horrible. I was going to take a picture of the subway, but there were too many people on it and I was afraid someone would run up and take my camera or something. I'm like that. On a different note, if you look closely at the picture you can see the McDonald's fountain drink cup under the seats.

Ride the rocket! ^.^

Yay! It's Friday. I love Friday. I live for Friday. And summer vacation, Christmas vacation, March Break, etc.

I'm tired. I lugged two big textbooks and my clarinet home today... my dad was already home because my brother forgot his key or something. Anyway, I tried to read my Science book on the bus but I got nauseous so I stopped. Weirdly enough, all two of my buses were on time today.

I said that I was "illuminated" on my iMood thing... I'm not, really. I'm tired. But "illuminated" sounds nice. Now that I think of it, the whole iMood thing is pretty tacky. Oh well.

I'm torn... I don't want to drop computers, which I have realised I hate pretty much only because of the teacher and the fact that most of my classmates look like they should have long since graduated and all wear gang clothes. I really really hope there's no group work in this class. The other teachers of the course sound cool, from what my friends tell me. Especially this Mr. Bala guy. (Short for Balasingam.) Apparently, there is physical Bala and metaphysical Bala, and computers are very smart, but they are dummies because they can't do anything by themselves. I wish I had that teacher. I always get the stupid teachers. I hate school.

Heh... I just typed another paragraph tag, but then I remembered I don't have anything else to say. Go figure...

I'm gonna try this one more time, and if this doesn't work, I'm not adding an entry today. I've tried twice already, got shot down twice... the first time my sister needed the computer, the second time I hit some weird shortcut on the keyboard and I went to netscape's site, effectively deleting the entire entry I had typed.

Okay, so I'll start with this: computer class sucks. I don't even use that word that much. But really, it sucks. It may be the first course I ever drop. But then I don't know what to take in its place. But anyway, for now, I will suffer through computers with a dislikable (in my opinion) teacher and material I learned when I was six. I just want to learn Pascal and get out of there... actually, not Pascal. I wanna learn something big. Like C++... I always liked the two plusses in C++. It makes it seem extra special. Anyway, I need to know how to write programs of such complexity that they require C++. Why? Well, why not? The best I can do with basic is a stupid "when will you die" program in which everyone lives to be 84 years old. I can't get menus and labels to work (always with the syntax error) and the same with ifs, ands and elses... I really am pitiful. ^.^ My dad wrote a program in basic that, when you give it a date, tells you what day of the week it was. It accounts for leap years and everything. It's freaky.

Anyway, the reset of the day was good. Computers just messed it up. Math was good, Music was good, (as always - and for once, we actually played on the first day) and History was surprisingly good. The teacher is funny... and quite concerned about pronouncing names correctly.

I want to watch DBZ. I missed it today because I was watching Whose Line is it Anyway?... and it wasn't even that funny. The tall one couldn't think of anything for the hoedown thing so Drew did it for him. O.O I still find it hard to believe that YTV both has new episodes of DBZ and is showing ReBoot daily in primetime. Something right is going on over there... ^.^

I hate school. Once again, I live for weekends. Woohoo! Tomorrow is Friday, which leads into Saturday, which is the weekend!

Hallo. I will now recount my first real day of grade 10. You better read all of this... I'm not writing this to myself. Oh, wait... okay, disregard that.

I started in French... It's in the same room as last year, with the same teacher as last year, so not much difference there. However, the class is quite different... because there weren't enough students, they stuck together the gifted, enriched and the grade nines who had already done grade nine French. So we have 32 kids in our class, instead of the usual 20 or so. Anyway, there's this one girl who's in grade nine but she already did grade nine French, but she's in gifted grade ten french. She's freakily smart.

Then there's career studies. Okay, this is the biggest waste of time I have ever experienced. If the TDSB needs to cut expenses out, cut this out, for gosh' sake... It's just like TAP, only worse. And TAP is a waste of time, too. Ooh, I'm on a "journey" through high school and my goal is to be a successful student... gag me.

Then there was lunch. Yay, lunch.

Then was science. My science teacher is cool. She's so young-looking, she looks more like a student. But she studied neural-something or other... I bet she's gonna do a lobotomy on a rat soon! Wait, maybe not. That would be cool though. Anyway, she had us introduce the person sitting beside us, which I guess was more for her than us since we've all known each other for years. Which makes for some really strange introductions. I introduced my desk-mate by saying she went to the Middle East, where she rode a camel and found some bullet casings on the ground. You get the picture.

And last was English. The new English teacher (new to us, not the school) is okay... but she's not Ms. Blasko. Nobody's Ms. Blasko, except possibly Ms. Blasko. But I digress. She gave us those crazy third-degree sheets where you write stuff about yourself, and then she gave us a package thingy all about connotations and euphemisms... the art of lying but not really. I love it.

Finally got rid of the evil spacers... I think there are still remnants of them, but it all looks pretty good to me. <br clear="all"> is a useful little tag.

I figured out what document type this is, too... Actually, I went through and tested this document with each of them, and this one worked... it figures that it's the one that looks most familiar to me.

And my equipment (yes, my equipment) is failing me... my mouse batteries (it's cordless) just ran out, because they weren't charged to begin with (they're rechargable, which aren't even supposed to use in the mouse) because they were in my camera before. But we don't have any normal batteries or extra rechargable ones, so my camera batteries go in the mouse. I didn't tell anyone they were from the camera, just that they were rechargable. Anyway, they just went dead, and so the other two batteries that were in my camera (I've been keeping it with only two batteries in it, for some reason) are now in the mouse and there are two dead batteries in my camera. Wow, do you even care?

Anyway, my first day of grade ten was uneventful. To tell you the truth, seeing my friends again wasn't spectacularly enjoyable... I mean, we just saw each other and started talking. No squeals or hugs or anything. Well, except from one who went to Hong Kong and that was her present for me... essence of Hong Kong, she said. Yeah, essence!

Moving on, my homeform is so weird... it's Career Studies. I have never met anyone who had a Career Studies homeform. I only know a few of my homeform classmates. But I got my music hall locker, which is good. My homeform teacher almost missed it and gave me a normal locker. Actually, she did miss it, but I saw it and pointed it out. Yay me.

Saja brought bullet casings back from the Middle East. Heh... she's funny. She won't give them to me, though.

This is already an ungodly long entry. Oh well.

If you're reading this right after this post, then you'll see that my "imood" (look to the bottom of the junk column) is achy... and now, you shall hear why. Okay, this anecdote goes to show why public transit absolutely sucks when it's not rush hour. So, I left the school at 11:15. No, actually even earlier than that. 11:12, I caught the bus. So I stand on the sorta-crowded bus to the bus station, where I usually catch another bus that takes me near my house. I look at the schedule. It says the bus will come at 11:38. It's 11:21. I'm annoyed, but I wait.

So at 11:38, there's no bus. 11:48, no bus. I stand there (I was standing for this entire trip) until 11:55, more than half an hour, and then I decide to take a different bus, which would take me to an intersection where I could catch the bus I originally wanted. So, I take this bus, along with many others that were waiting for my bus. So then I'm at the intersection. It's 12:08. The next bus is supposed to come at 12:18. I wait until 12:18. There is no bus. A bus does come at 12:22, but is it packed and I cannot board it.

Fed up, I walk approximately half a kilometre towards my destination. Luckily, there is a bus, and it is not packed. I board it, paying another ticket since I can't use the transfer anymore, and go to my stop. Right before I get off, a child in a stroller looks at me, smiles and waves. That brought my overall fed-up-ness down a few notches, but consider: a trip that is usually about 45 minutes takes one hour and 30 minutes. I'll say it again, public transit sucks.

And that is my entry for today... aren't you looking forward to tommorow when I begin actual school? ~.^

Okay, I think I know how to make this layout work: this column of the table has to be longer than that ---> column of the table. Now I gotta get rid of all these spacer things... dang Fireworks. I'm never using that thing again.

Is this working? Agh, it's all stretched out...