Lovely Rita

I probably shouldn't post on my blog after reading people's xangas, the reason being that most people's Xangas read like this: "school sucks. i dont want to do my homework so im going to go hang out with people. I LOVE ANIME." Etc. My writing is always affected by whatever I've just been reading; I usually get in a writing mood after reading something good, like Sylvia Plath or ZZ Packer. But lately I always browse the Xangas of people I know when I go online, having recently discovered the things.

Tonight my whole family is at the Auburn-Jefferson football game, where my sister is playing in the band. I was supposed to go, but my mom suggested that I stay home, and I always enjoy being home alone in the evenings, when I can eat a lot and watch TV and spend much longer online than I'm ever allowed to when my mom's home. It's especially nice tonight because I don't have to do any homework, although I probably could, maybe should, get started on that English fractal packet... I remember the seniors complaining about it last year, and now I know why. It's not particularly boring so far (I've done about half a page), but the type is small and it's about math. I've had enough already with physics and stats.

Today was a bit embarrassing all around; in psych I laughed inanely when Mr. McCoy asked me whether I felt my underwear (we were doing an activity on sensory perception), and later I made a fool of myself with Austral-Ian. I see him every day as I walk between the library and Mr. Harnish's room during C lunch (during my newspaper hour); he sits alone, drinking a Pepsi and staring off into space. My sister and her friends have that lunch, so I tried to make them welcome him into their group, but she said their table was full, and then these other freshmen from my world history class ruined my attempt at forging a friendship between them by calling poor Ian "gay" (in the middle-school sense of the word, roughly synonymous with "dumb"). Today I just kind of went too far; I was walking back and forth past the cafeteria a lot, since I was transferring the contents of the old newspaper room to the new one off of the library, and I kept waving stupidly, and then I realized how idiotic I probably was acting, and entered the cafeteria to apologize profusely. He just smiled, slightly patronizingly, but I'm sure I was being incredibly annoying. There were other, smaller moments of shame as well.

Speaking of incredibly annoying, I've always known I hated this year's juniors, the class of '07 (since sophomore year, when a huge crowd of those then-freshmen used to crowd the second-floor hallway by standing outside Mrs. Heisel's classroom in little clumps), but last year I was a bit more tolerant of them, having befriended various members of the class like Emily, Brittany'n'Megan, Jendaya, Mickey, etc. This year, though, they're driving me insane, especially in physics. I had expected physics to be pretty hard; so far, though, I seem to be one of the few people in the class who understands it, maybe because almost everyone else spends the entire hour talking and making fun of the teacher (who has the undesirable task of succeeding the beloved Mr. Keyzer). I should have known something was amiss. Apparently the class is too easy for some whiny idiots, namely Jeremy Tatar, who apparently called up a bunch of his friends to get them to call the school board and complain about this teacher! Okay, it's the second week of school. Ya think it could get harder? Right now we're just doing the basics, mass and distance and velocity and stuff. And physics is hard for some people; if it comes easily to you, that doesn't mean that you should attack the teacher! Stop being so self-righteous! I want to slap your pathetic whiny junior face!

All right, got that out of my system.

School really hasn't been so bad. I am looking forward to the weekend...but that's mainly because of On the Waterfront, Rockford's annual Labor Day weekend festival. I found out that you can take a shuttle downtown from Target for a dollar, which sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me, so I'm probably going to ride down there with Gloria and April tomorrow afternoon. Last year was my first year of attending the Waterfront, and it was marred by an embarrassing incident in which I met up with some boys from church, who pretended not to know me and ran away from me; in following them, I separated from April and Sonya, and had to call Sonya's cell phone to discover that they were, in fact, right across the street. Other than that, it was great fun. This year, I intend to reserve any greetings of people I know to a simple nod and smile, which can stretch into a brief conversation if they seem so inclined. No more chasing random freshman boys.

The highlight of my week was an incident in my freshman class (which is coming, I'm realizing, to dominate my year). There's this kid in there who's really greasy (literally; his hair is brown streaked with yellow, which looks disgusting) and always has a smarmy answer for every question. I think I already wrote that he typed a full page for an assignment that produced a handwritten paragraph at most from everyone else. The other day, while Mr. Longhenry was lecturing, a girl walked by and threw a bottle into the room, apparently aiming for the trash can, though it clattered to the floor. Mr. Longhenry said, "Different people, different historians, have different perspectives for the same events. Someone throws a bottle in here; I can go around the room and ask everyone what just happened, and I'd get twenty different stories." Greasy kid raised his hand. "Incidentally, someone threw a bottle in here just now." Cue pursed lips and raised eyebrows from Mr. L ("Uh, that's why I just said that") and loud laughter from Colleen.

By the way, if you're reading this, please leave comments...I love getting them. And try to leave your name or at least some clue as to who you are. Otherwise I'll be pestering people like Emily and April to see if they left random anonymous comments.