pale people, unite!

this morning i decided that i wanted to wear shorts today. so i put shorts on and looked down at my legs. you know what, i am quite pale. why is this? this is because i do not go fake tanning. and it has been winter / gross weather for the past many many months so i haven't been able to frolic around outside getting a tan. because of my paleness it is obvious that i do not go fake tanning and i have no inclination to do so.

i tried to show you a picture of fake tanning gone wrong but blogger does not want to cooperate at the moment. so i'll just link it instead. she is orange. nice tan right there. what is the point of fake tanning-- especially during the winter. everyone can tell that you have been fake tanning because you are unnatural shade of orange during the winter. all you are doing is killing yourself.

fake tanning causes skin cancer. i will not feel sorry for you if you get skin cancer because you're the one that chose to go tanning. do you know what a nice tan is? a nice tan is a whole bunch of dead, damaged skin cells. so please, continue to go off and get your wonderful tans. according to cabrito my information up there is wrong but hey you know what? that's okay. no one reads my blog. and anyone that happens to stumble upon it probably won't care that my information is not correct.

the american society is too obsessed with looks and looking "perfect." and cabrito is obsessed with his xbox. but to the american society you are accepted if and only if, or iff as my calculus teacher writes, you are thin and tan. and to them, thin is a size 0-2. if you aren't those sizes you are fat. sucks to be you. we live in such a messed up world.

i have ran out of steam with the pale people, unite! post and i have about 100 words left. embroz is watching elmo vidoes. cabrito is word counting and getting very excited about his two blog views. rbetta is fanning herself with her ap bio prep book. speaking of ap bio, we're taking our FINAL exam today and tomorrow. we have 30 days left of school. and we're taking a final. the ap test isn't until may 11th. i cannot wait for may 14th, you know why? because as of may 14th i will be done with ap tests for the year!

huh?

today is physics we were in a computer lab. as we're working on our lab some kids decide to be real cool and play some ultra sonic sounds. for the most part i couldn't hear them, they were much too high for my ears. but a lot of the class could and there would be a constant grumbling every time one went off. now i have a headache. cooool.

it's no secret that i'm very likely to ask you to repeat yourself. my hearing isn't the best. especially in the morning. and when people are mumbling. my dad also has not good hearing. he's even worse than me. he used to drive the open cab tractors around without earplugs.

bucket list?

before i die i want to travel. the whole planet. minus antartica, i don't wanna go there. it's cold there. there are penguins though; i like penguins. i want to visit the states, just kinda drive around the country side; see the sights; get lost in the hustle and bustle of downtown.

i want to cross the border and go to canada; struggle with the french/english language barrier; find the beauty of the land. to mexico and not drink the water. not going there until swine flu is no longer an issue though. the carribbean islands. swim with the dolphins. south america. i wanna go to bolivia. i wanna explore rio. climb some mountains. go to peru.

europe. stay the summer. or maybe a whole year? spain. las fallas. el prado. barcelona. france. paris. the efile tower. the city of lovee. go see some german castles. laugh silently at all the angry sounding germans. berlin, the site of the wall. italy. rome. florence. eat some good italian food. explore austria. off to england. pretend i'm british. pick up an accent. big ben. walk in the rain. drive on the wrong side of the road. sweden. visit toby for real. hahahaha.

asia. see the wall. and the rest of china. india. gandhi. experience buddhism and buddhist teachings. the flea markets. the traditions. japan. vietnam. korea. i could go on and on.

australia. the coral reefs. the outback. kangaroos. new zealand. indonesia.

i just want to explore. escape from america and see how the rest of the world lives. i want to get out of my box and broaden my horizons. the world is such a big world.

my brother

my brother has an unhealthy love for his xbox. i think he loves it more than life. it's the first thing he does as soon as he gets home and then you never see him again. even though you don't see him you know he's home because of all the yelling your hear bouncing up the stairs. yes, that is right, yelling. cabrito also has this strange obsession with the xbox and xbox live.

yes, i have played xbox before. yes, i had fun. no, i was not any good. but i don't understand why this is all some people do. my brother is addicted to his xbox. he needs his xbox like a heroin addict needs heroin. if he does not get to play his xbox he throws a fit. he is as sullen as the little kid in the candy store who can't get any candy. he pouts. he complains. so what does he decide to do? he goes to sleep. he does not know what to do with himself when he can't play xbox.

when he goes to over to a friend's house you know what they do? they play xbox in big groups. they have no concept of how to spend their time. it's all they do, stare at a TV and yell at the random kids from all over the world. they waste their lives sitting in front of a TV.

he is supposed to only play xbox for two hours after school on weeknights. do you think he follows this rule? nope, everyone else has to keep a watch on the time for him. he is incapable of making sure that he only plays for two hours. then on weekends he can play for as long as he wants. meaning he tries to play all day. and if he's not at a friend's house friday or saturday night then he's in the basement playing xbox. he will play until 11:30 or 12 at night and then come upstairs and go to bed. my parents go to sleep between 9 and 10. my dog barks every single time he comes upstairs. my parents yell at him for waking them up. yet, every week the same exact thing happens.

xbox live is over the internet, meaning when he's playing xbox the internet in the rest of the house moves impossibly slow. no one can use the internet when he's on the xbox. if we get on this is what he does. he sends you a text message. he's in the basement and i'm upstairs. if i get on the internet when he's on the xbox he sends me a text message. i have to have my parents forcibly remove him from the xbox when i have homework to do. otherwise he just keeps telling me that his game is almost done and he'll get off soon but he never does.

i never see him do any homework at all. maybe that's why he doesn't get good grades and often gets his xbox taken away from him because of bad grades.

***an update***
the xbox red ringed of death. i'm heartbroken. not. for all of you that don't know what the red ring of death is, it means that the xbox is broken. oh darn. too bad for him.

earthh :)

happy earth day! today is the day where there is actually a big focus put on helping save our planet. i don't know if i like the idea of earth day or not. now, i'm not saying that i hate the planet and do all i can to ruin it; what i'm saying is do we really need to devote a single day to focusing on saving our planet? why can't this be an every day focus? nonetheless, i do like earth day. in the spirit of earth day here's a few tips for you:

• lower your thermostat. you don't need to have it up around 80 during the winter or down around 60 during the summer. every year our air conditioner stays off until the temperature gets around 90. you have windows, open them. turn on a fan, but don't leave it on when you're not there


• reuse water bottles. avoid buying bottled water, keep one good one and reuse it.


• switch your lightbulbs to compact flourescent bulbs. opt for energy efficient appliances.


• when you're not in a room the light does not need to be on. the fan does not need to be on. unplug your outlets, especially at night. not only does this save energy but it saves you some money too


• recycle all you can. especially newspapers


• drive less. carpool to work. walk, run, jog. there's a reason america is the fattest country and it's because we eat fast food and drive everywhere. short rant coming: two houses down from me is the Bills family. two houses up and across the street are the bills' grandparents. it is common to see the big white escalade drive up the street and park in grandma's driveway. the whole family except for mr bills is fat. they have two kids, do they need an escalade? really?


• reuse your plastic bags from the grocery store. they're great doggie poop bags. they're great trash can liners. at the grocery store, pick paper bags. sure they may be an inconvience to you at the time but in the long run they're so much better


• go paperless with your paycheck. direct deposit. talk to your managers and get your paperstub switched to online only.


• shorten your showers. only do full loads of laundry. run the dishwasher when it's full. and for pete's sake turn the water off when you're brushing your teeth


• plant a tree


• instead of google, use earthle

reduce, reuse, recycle

work

my new address is 345 collins road. please come visit me. okay, that is not where i live it's just a reference to something one of my friends said to me. he told me i worked so much that i basically live there. i, of course, protested and said that i did not, but truthfully, at the time i did. now i work one to two weeknights and saturday and sunday. it's roughly 15 hours a week, 30 hours per paycheck. oh shoot, i forgot to pick up my check. i'll get that one of these days.

i like work. it's not hard work once you know what you're doing. i have worked since school started so for 8 months at the end of april. but my favorite part of work is the people i work with. when i first started i was the only one from my school that worked there. then over the holidays kate got hired and we're the two kennedy kids. my first day was a scary experience, i do not like being thrown in to situations where i know no one. but now that i have been there for eight months basically, i'm glad i knew no one when i first started. it forced me to open up and meet new people. strangely enough, i love meeting new people but it's not something i like to do. if that makes any sense. let's try this, i don't like being in a group and not knowing anyone and having to make all the awkward introductions but in the end meeting new people is one of my favorite experiences.

i have made some of the best friends i could ask for at work and if it hadn't been for work i wouldn't have known them or made friends with them. a few of them i probably wouldn't have talked to if i knew. here is one specific example, we will call him larry. larry goes to metro high school. for those of you that don't know, metro is the school where there are plenty of drug addicts, public school drop outs, pregnant teens, those who flunked out, and those who had attendance problems. i do not normally associate with people like that. i used to see that they went to metro and immediately stayed away with them. why was i so quick to place a label? because past experiences had all resulted in that label so it was easiest to lump the whole school together. meeting larry has been an eye opening experience for me. he was originally sent to metro because he never went to school when he was in the public school system. for the final trimester of his senior year, he is taking half of his classes at wash and the other half at metro. larry is nothing like the kid i expected him to be after i heard he went to metro. i'm very glad i was wrong about him, i wouldn't trade his friendship for the world.

done for the year

i am done with contest for the year! you have no idea just how good it feels. now i can kinda slack off until all state starts coming around.

i was in five events at state contest. i am extremely happy with most of them and just happy with a couple. my piccolo solo was just okay, and i'll be surprised if i got a one. i feel that it shouldn't deserve a one, i could have played it better. the duet markus kritzer and i did went well and i am pleased with how it went but we both agree that the best we ever played it was when we ran through it on friday. woodwind choir, eh i don't really care, we got a one. celtic celebration was good. really good. but my favorite performance was the very first of the day; my flute solo. i played the first movement of martinu's sonata. i am in love with how the flute and piano sound together. of all the pieces i have played before that is my favorite.

contest is a day that makes me extremely nervous. i have a nervous habit of biting/tearing at my fingernails on my pointer finger on both hands. i am proud to say that i did not bite or tear my nail once on saturday. that doens't mean that i wasn't nervous, it just means that i have a greater exercise of self control than i used to. why does contest make me nervous? i was playing pieces that i had practiced for months and was ready to play. okay, so my piccolo solo may not have been as ready as it could have been, but it was ready. the only people that were going to hear me were my parents, my lesson teacher, pianist, and a judge i didn't even know. my parents know what i sounded like when i first started playing and are subject to all the wrong notes and rhythms of practicing. my lesson teacher is the same. she hears my play for an hour every single week. she knows that i'm not perfect and little things always happen when i'm playing. my pianist also knows that i make mistakes. i know that if i mess up in front of those people they will not have that as their only image of me. they have all seen my highs and my lows. it's the judge that i have never met before that gets me. how i play in front of them is the only thing they have to know me by. i try to tell myself that i don't care at all what people think about me but you know what, i obviously do. my nerves show that. i think everyone cares just a little at least.