Errol

Hello everyone!  Boy, it sure feels like I just posted, even though it was a couple weeks ago.  That's a weird feeling – it hasn't felt like time's gone by that quickly, but now I'm not so sure.

I pretty much only have two things to talk about this time around, so let's jump right in so I'm not stuck trying to write a boring intro :)

First, there's a family of owls that nests in our neighborhood every year, and because I got a new camera, every now and then I've been going down to the nest to take some pictures.  I will brag and say that my camera, my little point and shoot, has a better zoom than my mom's huge expensive zoom lens.

Haha

So anyways, I've dubbed the baby owl Errol, and he's super-de-duper fluffy.

You may have moose, but I have baby owls.

Now I move on to the second part of what I wanted to discuss, which is my classes for next year!  I'm not totally sure what I want to do, but here's what I have picked out so far:

English Class: Pre-AP English 2

I'm excited for English.  I don't get to take AP Language & Composition or AP Literature & Composition until my Junior and Senior years, but English is English, so...

Social Studies Class: AP World History

We have to take World History next year, so even though taking an AP history class again isn't my top pick, I definitely don't belong in the Honors class, so I didn't have much of a choice.  It's a good thing to have though because Ii'm shooting for an AP Scholar with Distinguished Honors, which is passing 6 AP exams with a three or above, I think.  So I'm planning on APHG from this year, the two English classes that I have yet to take, this class, and two others.  We'll see :)

Science Class: Pre-AP Chemistry

I had the choice of taking Pre-AP Biology (which I'm in right now), Pre-AP Chem, or Pre-AP Environmental Science (which kind of sounds boring in my opinion).  Everyone I know is taking Chemistry, which I think is what most counselors, people, and colleges expect me to take.  

Math Class: Pre-Calculus

Normally next year I would be taking Analysis of Functions with the rest of my Algebra Two class, but I've heard from a lot of people that it's kind of a repeat of Algebra Two, so, with the consent of my teacher and mi madre, I (with two or three of my classmates) are bypassing the class and moving right to Pre-Clac.  Hopefully it shouldn't be too hard...

Foreign Language Class: Spanish 4

Woohoo.  I feel proud to be the only Freshman/Incoming Sophomore signing up for Spanish 4 :D

Elective One: Digital Video

I actually get paid in this class.  How cool is that?  I "learn" (in quotes because I already know how) to edit film and use Photoshop to edit pictures, and am in charge or going to some of the JV and Varsity sports games and filming them.  And for every game I film, I get $25.  Pretty neat!

Elective Two: ???

I'm not quite sure what I want to do with this elective yet.  In a perfect world, I would fill it with AP Psychology, but it's a popular course for Juniors and Seniors, and I hear there's a waiting list.  I'm not sure if there's a set amount of upperclassmen and a different set number of sophomores who can take the class, so maybe I'll be able to get in.  I get an appointment with my counselor to pick what classes I'm going to sign up for, and because here we are assigned classes going from highest GPA to lowest, and I'm #4, I might be able to snag a spot.  If not, I'm not really sure what I want to do.  I know a lot of people are doing AP Biology, but it sounds really hard and I don't think Biology's really my thing.  

I was trying so hard not to get stressed that I stressed myself out.  I have to remind myself to set aside a little bit of patience and this time of year and reserve it for choosing classes, because even though I tell myself it'll all work out in the end, I just hope I'm not choosing classes that will just bog me down with homework.  Yuck.

But to end on a lighter note, we learned how to draw with our graphing calculators in Algebra yesterday and today we had a drawing contest.  The bad thing about the drawing mechanism is that there's no erase button, so if you screw up, you have to start over.  Needless to say, the perfectionist in me couldn't draw a person or the mountain scenery I was attempting without screwing it up, so I settled on drawing a rectangular prism, which I turned into a really crappy iPhone drawing and entered under the "Creative" category.  And I mean, my drawing was bad...

But not as bad as the other people's in my category :)

I won a doughnut.

For the scenery category, someone drew an underwater scene:

And for the people category, someone drew Leonardo DiCaprio:

Mine was nowhere near this good.
Don't get any false ideas.

Book Update

I finished Allegiant the other day.  My friend Sarah S. and I looked up when the movie release date for it was and found that it had been split into two movies (a shame, but no real surprise to anyone) and that the second part came out the year we graduated.  No joke.  Allegiant Part Two comes out March 2017.  I also finished a book called Panic by Lauren Oliver (the author of the Delirium trilogy).  It's about these high school graduates who participate in a stunt game (called Panic), which involves people crossing between water towers on wood planks, standing in tiger pens, and walking blindfolded across six-lane highways.  It's an okay read, but it's not as intense as I make it sound. :) 

I'm reading the Hobbit now.  Well, I haven't started it, but I plan on it.

Alex's Swag-Tastic Photo

Alex trying to touch the top of the doorframe.
I think he thinks he's closer than he actually is :)
Photo courtesy of my new camera...

Days Until I Visit PC

79 :)

Whoops Here's a Post

Yes, I am still alive.  I hope that you didn't get your hopes up by checking my blog too much.  I even had spring break all this week and waited until 8 o'clock on the last Sunday before school to make a short post about what I've been up to.

Whoops.

Okay, so despite me not posting in almost a month, you may or may not be surprised to know that not a ton of things  have happened to me that I deem blog-worthy, hence my pro-procrastinating skills.  but there are a couple things, which I will list really quickly to you so maybe I can wrap this up before I go to bed. . .

State Championships
Jeez, this was a long, long, long time ago.  We lost, to keep it short and to the point, and kind of by a lot.  The team we played was a private school that specifically scouted girls who were soccer gurus, so, yeah. . .they've been state champs for like four years running and we really didn't stand a chance.  But I did play the last ten minutes and did pretty well, so that was a lot of fun.

I also got my letterman jacket.  Super-duper lucky me didn't have to pay for it because we have a soccer booster club that buys them for us! :D

Aww I look so much better in pictures I take myself. . .

Chloe, me and Calley at the soccer banquet

Gatherings with Friends

Over the week or so of spring break that I was on I went on a few outings with some of my friends.  I'm so popular *popular girl hair flip*

Seeing Pompeii :)

Lunch with Sam, Emily, Gabi, Caitlyn, Calley, me and the other Sarah

At the beach with Calley

DRIVINGGGGG

I also got my permit over the break.  I don't know about Utah, but here we can get our learner's permit when we turn fifteen and after we complete a four hour online drug-and-alcohol course (alcohol is a gateway drug that destroys everything it touches, you know, aannnd that's pretty much all I learned....four hours of my life I'll never get back).  And then you get to go to the DMV and take your nifty little permit test and then they take your picture – which they SHOWED TO ME TO MAKE SURE I LIKED IT.  What nice people!

So over the course of this week I've driven maybe four times.  And I'm happy to say that I'm not half bad.  

You know, once you get over the bad parts of driving, which include:

1. Turning

2. Not giving everyone in the car whiplash

3. Remembering which way to push the turn signal if you're going left or right

4. Parking

5.  Knowing which way the steering wheel is turned so that when you get in the car to go onto A1A to go home you don't drive off the road into the grass and almost give your mom a heart attack

6. Everyone else on the road

. . .

Driving is pretty easy.

My New Camera

On Friday I went to Best Buy and decided, kind of on a whim (like, I had been planning on getting one but didn't think it would be on that day) to get a camera.  It's a Canon 280 Shot-something-or-other and I really like it a bunch, minus the fact that the battery dies within half an hour of it being fully charged.  But it does take really cool action shots and so I spent some of today taking pictures of Alex while he played basketball and then went swimming in our 70º pool. . . what a nut.

This one's my fav

Okay, this isn't Alex, but I liked it enough to include it here :)

Book Update

I've read too much to recount for you in the amount of time between postings, probably, but I finished Catch 22, read the Fault in Our Stars (OMG guys, if I hadn't been in school while I was reading it, I would have cried), and the first two in the Divergent Trilogy, which I had read before but wanted to reread before I read Allegiant and then saw the movie (which was okay by the way – read the book before  you see it or you will be utterly confused).

Alex's Swag-Tastic Picture

He had to sell onions for a Jazz Band fundraiser. . . so we set up a booth at the entrance to our neighborhood.  No, I am not joking; they had to sell onions.  No, I don't know why onions and not something like oranges.

Only playing guitar upside-down behind his head – like a boss.

Days Till I Visit Park City!!!!!

91