I woke up this morning quite short of breath.  My pillows were stacked on top of my head.  No wonder.

Near-death-by-asphyxiation notwithstanding, it was Christmas Eve!   No school, no work.  Not a worry in the…

Piano practice.  Shizzle.

After 50 minutes of piano song covers (oh, and 10 minutes of actually practicing for my Level 10 test), I was finally free to…
Buy groceries.  Wonderful.
About an hour and 42 Euros later, I was back home with a bag of incredibly Christmas-y pita chips and some new snow pants.  And some light frostbite.
Lunchtime!  Bok choy-infused Spaghetti.  An Asian Christmastime favorite.  Yumm-o.

Done with lunch!  I spent the rest of my afternoon holed up in my room with my dear friend Stumbleupon.  How productive.

Dinnertime!  My whole family headed for our clubhouse’s restaurant for their Christmas Buffet.  While the rest of my family dined on platters of ham and pies, I was given the frigid, hard antler that had fallen off the reindeer ice sculpture piece in the middle of the restaurant.  Lovely.  (Okay, not really.)

A game of Wii tennis!  I kept unintentionally acing my younger bro.  He still hasn’t realized that simply shaking one’s wiimote is adequate for a hit.  Not that I’m telling him.

So ends Christmas Eve.  Where did all the time go?  I don’t know.  But I sure am loving Christmas break!

Merry Christmas, guys!  I love all of you!  In an internet-like way.  Which means superficially.  Which means not at all.

Name:  Eric Y.
Date:  12/16/08
Teacher:  Mr. Weiss
Period:  B1

My environmental SMART goal for science is to cut down paper cup usage to <3 cups/week.

Specific strategies I will use and actions I will take to accomplish this goal:

-Bring in a water bottle/bottled water from home.
-Buy other drinks at school.

Things that could prevent me from achieving my goal:

-Forgetfulness, laziness

What global/local environmental issues this goal relates to:

-Deforestation/waste of paper and other resources

What global/local environmental issues this goal relates to:

Our hero’s fingers trembled violently, threatening to loosen their grip on
his white rectangular gun, his precious only means of survival.
Hee began to lose control of his limbs, all of them shaking in mild,
involuntary convulsions.  A quick look to his left assured him that
his conscience was still there.
The door came closer…closer.  Was it moving on its own?  He couldn’t
feel anything below his neck.  The door continued closer…
Realizing he’d been holding his breath for the past minute, he
gulped down all of the house’s acrid, musty air his taut windpipe
would allow him in one rapid gasp.
He watched his hand reach out towards the doorknob, ever so slightly
slackening his grip on his gun.
It slipped out of his damp, cold hands, and lodged itself between two
loose floorboards.
Shizzlesticks.
He could now hear the previously imperceptible sounds coming from
behind the door.  It sounded like clawing…
Clawing.
Clawing.
Clawing on his sanity.
He had to get his gun back quick.
Keeping his eyes level with the door, he slowly bent down, feeling
the cracked floorboards for his only weapon.
Something nicked his palm.  The zombie?!?
Nope.
Just a very confused dung beetle.
The protagonist allowed himself a quiet chuckle.  He picked up the
dung beetle and hurled it through the fourth wall, hitting you square
in the face.
After continuing to gingerly paw at the ground beneath him, he
finally found the gun, and leveled it towards the door.
He was ready.
After a deep breath, he gently rested his non-gun hand on the
doorknob.
And twisted.
He’d practiced this many times in his head; on the car ride to the
house, while doing pullups to Rocky Training Montage music.
He quickly pulled the door wide open and jumped backwards, as deft
as a ninja who was as fast as a snake who was as lithe as the dung
beetle that has crawled back onto your face without your prior
knowledge who is as fat as Santa Claus who is as nonexistent as a
politician’s conscience.
BRIIIAAAANZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzz!!
Not expecting the sudden movement of the door, the zombie fell towards
our fearless protagonist, landing on the floor in a heap.
*Screamz.*
Karl could take it no longer.  He dropped the Wii remote and
scrambled for the door as fast as the snake from
the previous simile.
THE END.
(dramatization.  Most of it anyway.)

Yesss, I wrote this on an impulse.  It’s the epic (fail) of my friend playing Resident Evil 4 for Wii.  It’s quite fun.  Try it.
The play-on-words is sheer genius^
…Yeah.
I’m quite tired now.  No time for self-deprecation tonight, folks.  Chao.

Yawwn.  What is yellow and infinitely differentiable?

Book:  Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
Pages:  1-390 (759 total)
NOTE:  I’m going to give away any spoilers necessary to write this reading log.  Don’t read it if you haven’t read the 7th book.  Or the 6th book.  And so on.

What is the main conflict in the book and how is it resolved?  Include specific examples.

The Deathly Hallows is the 7th and final installment of the renowned Harry Potter series.  Continuing where the 6th book left off at Dumbledore’s tragic death, book 7 starts out on a lighter note, before Bill Weasley and Fleur’s wedding.  With some difficulty, Harry, Ron and Hermione make preparations to abandon their final year at Hogwarts in an attempt to destroy Voldemort’s horcruxes.  After the wedding is prompty crashed by the sudden arrival of Death Eaters, the trio quickly abandon The Burrow, and set off on a lone journey across Europe.  After months of fruitless searching and near-death encounters, wills begin to break.  Ron leaves Harry and Hermione in a huff after a big fight.  Low morale notwithstanding, the remaining two continue their seemingly futile journey to locate and destroy the horcruxes.  To make matters worse, Harry loses his wand in an impromptu sortie with Hermione in Godric’s Hollow.  (This is the point I’m currently at.  I’m surprised how the author managed to make about 5 chapters of Harry and Hermione searching without any leads.)

The main conflict in this series has always been between Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort.  However, that conflict erupts into a full scale wizard war in The Deathly Hallow, after the Ministry of Magic falls to the Death Eaters.  The now-corrupt government declares an extermination campaign on all muggle-born (aka inpure) wizards in Europe.  The perfectly aloof muggle world begins to be dragged into this conflict after the mass-deployment of Death Eaters and dementors into muggle villages.  Many pure-hearted wizards sell out their colleagues and neighbors in a desperate bid at protection from the Ministry.  All of the wizarding world depends on Harry’s success at destroying the horcruxes if they wish to survive.

Book:  Contact: Harvest by Joseph Staten
Pages:  396

Contact: Harvest is a futuristic sci-fi story taking place on Harvest, a planet located on the farthest reaches of the galaxy’s Outer Rim.  A routine trip to Harvest by a lonely freighter in the year 2524 turns deadly when the ship’s lone captain makes contact with an aggressive theocratical alien hierarchy known as the Covenant.  The Covenant privateer promptly eliminates the freighter, and is enraged to find humans living on a sacred relic, namely, Harvest.
After surviving multiple terrorist threats by a hairsbreadth, battle-hardened Sgt. Avery Johnson is relieved to be transferred to the “safe” job of training a small militia on Harvest to fend against rudimentary conflicts occurring within the fledgling planet.  However, when the Covenant attack Harvest just months after Johnson’s arrival, he must rally what few troops the planet can muster to defend Harvest until reinforcements arrive.

What is a theme of the book?  How do you know?  (A theme is a principle that applies to all humans, such as:  learning independence, enduring friendship, making choices, survival, values/morals, courage, persistence, etc.)

The main themes of this book are survival, independence, and courage.  The planet of Harvest is larger than Earth, but only supports a small population of about 3 million people, mostly farmers.  During the Human-Covenant crisis, there are very few soldiers in Harvest to defend against the Covenant, bringing the story down to the “individual-level”.  This better shows the acts of courage in individual soldiers and militiamen during the war.  Also, being the farthest planet from Reach (the bustling planet in the center of human-controlled space),  the citizens of Reach are strongly independent and self-sustaining.  They show independence and a need for survival in their darkest hours against the technologically superior Covenant forces.

f-flat-scale-2.mp3

“You played 30 notes correctly out of 30 total notes for a score of 100 percent with 0 red notes at a tempo of 92 for Bb Tenor Sax.  The computer was playing the Accompaniment.  Click was countoff only.”

Motivation:  Ved
Ved was motivated to go to America by his desire for knowledge and accomplishment.

Necessity:  Chu
Chu and his family would starve (or at least be worried to death) without their father, so Chu went to America with his family’s survival in mind.

Personal Challenge:  Harriet
Harriet wasn’t obligated to free slaves, but she felt a connection with the slaves, and made it her mission to rescue them anyway.

Courage:  Dwan
Dwan was alienated from her friends and family due to her acting non-”ghetto”, but she overcame this and lived comfortably with herself.

(That was pretty brief.  The assignment, I mean.  …And the response.)