It's the Last Day of School! (Plus: My Year in Review)

Next week, I'll have my graduation ceremony, and then I'll be done with eighth grade and on to high school. It's so odd... I feel like we just started school. Almost like my life is flashing before my eyes. Like one day I'll blink and I'll be 82 years old with twenty five cats and a parakeet named Polly.

Since exams are over and there isn't anything to do, I spent four hours playing poker with my friends.

Yes, four hours. It was great.

(We didn't bet actual money, don't worry.)

(If we had, I would be bankrupt by now. To put it simply, I did not win.)

So what has eighth grade been like? I think it was pretty good, overall. I liked all my classes, though I struggled in Geometry (I'm more of an algebra person. Proofs? Not my strongest suit). Theatre was probably one of my favourite classes, although my teacher is TOTALLY obsessed with Elvis. I mean, we spent an entire class period talking about the King of Rock and Roll, and I know SO many facts about this guy now that I didn't know before. Not sure if this is a good thing...?

For our final exam, I did a scene from Waiting for Godot, the absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, with a partner. It's a really, really weird play. I loved acting every second of it.

I made new friends, which is never a bad thing.

I went camping with Girl Scouts... twice. The first time we stayed in air conditioned cabins where the biggest sacrifice we had to make was a lack of wi-fi (which somehow I survived). The second time we were roughing it, and at night we could hear coyotes howling right outside our tent. Fairly terrifying. Extremely cool.

I read an amazing book called The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender which was, as the title suggests, both strange and beautiful.

I ate the best Thai food I've ever had in my life.

I wasted an absurd amount of time on Pinterest.

I learned how to play three different card games, and have overall played about 16 hours of each (which might be an exaggeration, but not much of one).

I wrote a book, which was a very stressful but very new experience. I'll definitely be doing NaNoWriMo again next year (and you should too!)

So that's my year in review, pretty much. No real adventures, but lots of new experiences. And, as Albert Einstein says, "The only source of knowledge is experience."

Love, Emily

Did You Think You Had Seen the Last of Me?

I'm back!

Wow, it's been awhile, hasn't it? I'm sorry to say that when I stopped writing on this blog because of the business of NaNoWriMo, I totally fell out of the routine and just never really got back on track. But here I am again. :)

School is drawing to a close, and both teachers and students are starting to wind down. Exams start this week, and next week I have only two days, which are devoted to the graduation of the eighth graders, so basically everyone's suffering from an extreme case of summer fever wherein very little work is done and lots of movies are watched.

Well, everyone's winding down except for my geometry teacher, who assigned us 160 problems to do over the weekend. I somehow managed to get them all finished, miraculously, but I was seeing equations in my dreams afterwards. Oh, and speaking of things I did over the weekend...

AGE OF ULTRON!!!

Let me tell you, I had sky-high expectations for the new Avengers movie, and thankfully, they were met. I won't spoil anything here, but it was fantastic, even better than the last one in my opinion, and Hawkeye was a larger character, and the two new characters grew on me quickly. Ultron was a great villain, and the "there are no strings on me" scene was legitimately haunting.

*explodes from geeky happiness*

Who else saw this movie? What did you think? I'd love to know!

I'm definitely going to post more from now on, and I'd like to extend apologies to June from weezasjournal.blogspot.com. You commented on my very last post in November, nominating me for an award, and I'm so sorry that I never responded. Like I said, I completely fell out of routine, and the embarrassing truth is that I haven't looked at this blog since November. Sorry!

An Update on my Life (or, In Which I Muse)

My life is terribly repetitive.

It's an odd thing to say, but I'm sure that everyone has felt thus in their life. I wake up every morning at the same time, eat breakfast, go to school. I sit for seven hours learning about a variety of things. Lately, even the more interesting things have begun to feel dull and repetitive. My schedule never changes. I come home, I write a bit and do homework, and then it's some reading and Internet, and then bed.

And then the same thing all over again. That's really all I have to say on that topic, but it's what's been on my mind lately. So in other news...

Last weekend, Halloween weekend if you want to look at it that way, was the first snow of the year. Which is insane because it was the last day of October/ first day of November and it never snows that early where I live. Typically there's some snow around January (last year it snowed a magnificent five inches one day and it was truly wonderful) but never ever in early November. Not much snow, but it was visible.

I've been writing furiously ever since the beginning of November because of NaNoWriMo, and I'm five chapters into my book. Five, you guys. And I got a good friend of mine to join in, and am very excited to see how that turns out. Unfortunately this means that I've been almost entirely disregarding my Christmas knitting, and I know that eventually I'm going to be in a panic trying to make up for the lost time. Ah well.

So that's my life at the moment. I know a lot of y'all are participating in NaNoWriMo this year, how's it going for you?

If Days of the Week Were People

Monday is the sort of person who always looks hurried. Its hair is always messy-- though on occasion it manages to find the time to pull a brush through it. It prefers comfortable clothes to fashionable ones and can be seen wearing a sweatshirt and jeans most of the time. Though Monday is reasonably intelligent, this intelligence is often marred by its constant exhaustion. Monday can often be found carrying a mug of coffee. Monday is nice enough, but don’t get on its bad side-- it can snap in an instant.

Tuesday is quiet. The sort of person who never answers a question in class. Shy, perhaps, but don’t be fooled-- Tuesday will talk your head off if it gets to know you well enough. Tuesday’s clothes rarely match but they make a statement nonetheless. Tuesday has a bad habit for drumming its fingers constantly against the desk or table, often irritating others... a sign of its love for playing the piano.

Wednesday is boring. You know the sort of person-- one who rarely talks and doesn’t seem to have much of a personality, who does average in everything. Wednesday wears clothes that don’t draw any attention to anything, except perhaps their dullness. Baggy and grey. Additionally, Wednesday checks its watch obsessively and bites its fingernails to the quick. It enjoys watching TV and eating popcorn (lightly salted).

Thursday is unfailingly optimistic. Notorious for wearing bright colors and getting overexcited about most everything, it constantly obsesses over the books, movies, and TV shows that it loves. Thursday has many friends, around which it is well-loved for its constantly happy demeanor. Thursday is extremely imaginative and has created whole worlds in its mind.

Friday gets distracted ridiculously easily. It can’t stay still and excels in a majority of sports. It dresses in all the sporty brands-- Nike, for example. It gets in trouble most often for not paying attention or being too aggressive in football. Unless playing a sport, it is also easily bored. Friday does not much care for reading, though secretly it has read The Wheel of Time series twice (there are fourteen books, it is quite an accomplishment), and would rather be running or throwing a ball to its equally hyper little brother. It loves many movies and TV shows, and dominates at board games.

Saturday is very laid-back and relaxed. Quick with a joke and easygoing, its favorite pastimes are surfing, rock-climbing, and canoeing. It never gets too competitive about anything, and its laziness can get tiring after a while. However it has a brilliant sense of humor and can often be found lounging on the couch reading or having Netflix marathons. It is the class clown and doesn’t much care about grades or school, though it can do very well if it puts its mind to it.

Sunday is genuinely sweet to everyone, always trying to be helpful and kind. It loves volunteering to help people and works at the local soup kitchen on weekends. It is an artist-- both with paintings and words. Its still lifes are vividly realistic, and it loves writing free-verse poems. One day it hopes to move to New York City, where it will buy a house with a room devoted entirely to its painting.

NaNoWriMo

I'm signing up for National Novel Writing Month (more commonly known as NaNoWriMo) and I'm so excited!!! This is the first time I've done it but I love writing and I'm always thinking about writing a new book.

I'll keep you posted on how far I'm getting. Are any of you signing up (if not, you should)?

Short post, sorry.

Oh, and I've finished 1/10th of my Christmas presents... only 9 more to go!

My Latest Great Endeavor

I know, I know. It's three months until Christmas.

But for Christmas we're having a LOT of family coming over. Meaning, besides my parents and my two sisters, there will also be: my aunt, uncle, and baby cousin; my grandparents; and my other aunt. And I will be knitting ALL of these people a present for Christmas, because all of them know I can knit, and all of them want something hand-knit.

Not that there's anything wrong with this. I'm happy to knit them presents, and I like knitting. But... ten objects (and nice ones, too: hats, mittens, scarves)... it's quite a lot.

• Two pairs of needles
• Eight skeins of yarn
• Two yarn needles

I'll keep you updated on finished projects as I go.

How much have you been thinking about Christmas? What are you planning on giving your family?

It's Autumn!

Today was the first day it really felt like fall. I know it's been autumn for a while now, but it's still been fairly warm. Today, though, it was really cold in my house when I woke up. And I was really cozy all curled up in bed... and only got up to get a hot cup of coffee and read my book.

My dad put on Christmas music to listen to because he says that it's October now and he's waited long enough. And so that just makes everyone feel Christmassy, even though we still have quite a while, but Christmassy is a wonderful feeling.

The leaves are starting to change colors, too. Mostly it's still all green, but there are spots of orange and yellow and red here and there. Not that I don't love summer, because I do, but I'm glad that we're entering fall.

Because there is really nothing like waking up when it's cold but you're warm under quilts, and the sun is warm, and you can wear long sleeves and a sweater but not a heavy coat.