Tomorrow is Whale Watch! I’m leaving at 3pm from school and I’ll be back around 8pm on Monday (So I probably won’t post until Tuesday or Wednesday). I’m really excited, but I’m mad that none of my friends are on my bus. I’ll have to sit with someone I don’t like (well, I have semi-friends on my bus, but I don’t like ‘em very much). I’m all packed up and ready to go. I bought plenty of snacks for the bus ride and both The Restaurant at the End of the Universe and Life, the Universe and Everything to read. Plus my iPod of course. And my NEW DIGITAL CAMERA! It’s mucho awesome and I’m very excited to use it. I’ll be sure to take plenty of pictures for you all.

8th period- I waited with Michaela in Berg’s room while she had her singing lesson. Afterwards I called my mom on the payphone to ask her to call Brighton Rec. to see if there was a BYT meeting today. I told her I’d call back in 10 minutes. So then we headed to the snack line and I bought a slice of pepperoni pizza and a Dr Pepper. And then I called my mom back. She said there was indeed a meeting. So Michaela and I walked to the middle school and went in the front door. We went to room 311 but no one was there. So we walked downstairs to the cafeteria where we’ve been doing our mural. There I found Katie and JP. Mrs. Fabrizio (my old PE teacher) yelled at me for being loud during sports study hall so Michaela had to leave and I had to shut up. Turns out the point of the meeting was to tell us there was a meeting next week. Oye. So then I walked back to my school and got my jacket out of my locker. Then I went to Dr. Smith’s room to ask him about changing buses, but he said no. So I walked outside to my bus (after being stopped by the student council as they practically forced me to buy a bracelet with “Barons” written on it, but I was able to resist) and saw that the buses were leaving. I didn’t want to be that kid that the losers on my bus makes fun of for running after the bus, so I walked casually towards it and was lucky that the light turned red and the buses were moving very slowly. And then I went home.

The design site is temporarily closed. Here’s the plan:
 • add required field* code to download form
 • add code in each template to hid navbar
 • upload all the images into one place
 • make download page easier to understand
 • use FTP and clean account (load faster?)
 • redesign the site
 • make a new template?
 • triple check all validation
 • and if I have time, recode dumb old templates

I finished The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and now I’m onto The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

I had batting practice today at the sports garden. I hit 4 rounds, 0 hits the first round, 9 hits the second round, 9 hits the third round, and 12 hits the last round. Which isn’t bad considering I usually practice on the slow pitch machine, not the fast pitch.

Afterwards Lori took Kate, Liz, my mom, and I to Don Pablo’s. The host guy was cool. He wasn’t wearing a name tag so we asked him what his name was. He answered it was stitched in his shirt, Don Pablo. So we called him Don or Mr. Pablo for the rest of the night. He sat us at a huge circle table, but then Lori and my mom decided they wanted their own table so we got a huge 8 person table to ourselves. The three of us got [virgin] piña coladas, and they were awesome. We were pretty loud during dinner (as usual), but it was past 9 on a Tuesday and no one was there/cared. Yeah, later we blasted “Blister in the Sun” in the car and sang along until our mom’s turned it down so they could talk without yelling.

Now I’m tired and I need a shower.

I’m totally bummed that school is happening again this week.

Yuuumm, my mom made pudding.

Puff, the magic dragon, lived by the sea. And frolicked in the autumn mist, in
a land called Honah Lee. <– stuck in my head, thanks Kate.

I had softball practice today (duh, it’s Sunday!). It was freezing out, literally. There were only 6 of us there, just enough to play a makeshift game, one first basemen, one second basement, one shortstop, one third basemen, one catcher, and one outfielder. Coach played pitcher. Guess where I played? It’s freaking hard to cover the whole outfield, but I managed to catch every pop-fly hit to me. And I bunted. Not well, but I did it which is a big improvment. Mom was 45 minutes late picking Liz and I up. We were cold as we waited so we sat on the blechers singing camp songs and doing hand jives to keep our fingers moving. When that stopped working we square-danced.

Cast:
• Lanni, a.k.a. Lan
• Katie, a.k.a. Kate
• Kate’s mom, a.k.a. Lori
• Lori’s friend, a.k.a. Cindy

Scenes:
• “Lan’s casa”: Lan sits at home on the computer with her dad on the computer next to her. Kate calls and the following dialogue is spoken:

Kate: Hey Lan. So can you come?
Lan: I don’t know, hang on. *to her dad* Can I go with Katie to the store and then do stuff?
Lan’s dad: Uhh, okay…
Lan: Yeah, I can go.

Lan gets ready to go and waits for Kate and Lori to come get her.

• “the car”: Kate and Lori pick Lan up via car and they travel approximately 3 miles to Buffalo Wild Wings. The conversation is fairly light and a certain incident involving 99 cent kid’s entrees and middleage Irish women is discussed. Lan’s new hair color is also brought up.

• Buffalo Wild Wings: Kate, Lori, and Lan arrive at the restaurant and wait a few minutes until a table is free, for it is Friday and it’s happy hour so the place is fairly crowded. They are soon seated and later Cindy arrives. Prom dresses are discussed, and also something about a diamond-studded cake knife available at the nearby JoAnn’s. Drinks are served. Kate and Lan are bored to death by this “adult chit-chat” and resolve the issue by obtaining some trivia handholds. They both score poorly and end up in 9th and 10th place. Nachos are then served followed by chicken wings for Lan and a chicken sandwich for Kate. After approximately 38 minutes, they depart for David’s Bridal.

• David’s Bridal: Lori runs over to buy a cake knife at JoAnn’s and leaves Kate and Lan to fend for themselves. They browse around the few dresses that are left and manage to pick out a few for Kate to try on. Cindy assigns Kate a dressing room and Kate tries on the first dress, a pastel pink ruffly thing. She doesn’t like it, nor does Lan. The second dress is pink and white and lacy. It too is given the boot. A few dresses later and Kate comes out in a wonderful scarlet dress with a nice tie thing-a-ma-jig up the side. Kate looks very thin and pretty and that dress is chosen. Lori has still not arrived. Cindy keeps calling Lan “Lan”, which confuses her because grown-ups call her Alanna. She soon adjusts and helps Cindy pick things out for Kate while she changes. Cindy requires that Lan pick out some necklaces for Kate to try on with the dress to see if it will match. The choices are: pearls, diamonds, or really ugly pearls. Lan is luckily wearing a scarlet necklace to match with Kate’s dress, solving this ridiculous problem. Lori arrives and makes Kate try on all the dresses again so she can see them. Then Kate tries on a pretty white dress, and throws on the matching TACKY pink translucent poncho adorned with pink and white butterflies. Bleach. Lori loves it. After much convincing, Lori sides with Kate and Lan and agrees to buy the scarlet dress. During all this Lan has retreated to the car to retrieve her red umbrella and her new red sunglasses (soaking herself in the rain also). Kate tries on the sunglasses and models in front of the mirror with the umbrella. Photographs are taken and soon the three take leave.

• Blockbuster: They pass by Blockbuster and decide to rent a movie. Kate and Lan pick out The Amityville Horror and Meet the Fockers. They purchased the movies and continue on their way.

• Mark’s Pizzaria: On the way home they decide that they are still hungry and stop by the local pizza place, Mark’s, and order a large cheese pizza with one quarter pepperoni and a dozen mild wings (because Lori and Kate are wusses). After waiting 15 minutes the pizza is done and the finally go home.

• “Kate’s casa”: After eating their pizza at home, Kate and Lan sit down on the couch and watch The Amityville Horror. Kate falls asleep before it is finished and Lan shuts it off at 12:30am. Exhausted, she then attempts to go to sleep but is not asleep until after 4:30am.

• Dollar General: The next morning at around 9am, Kate wakes up and watches TV until Lan gets up at 10am. They eat breakfast and see off Lori, who is going to see some friends. They are soon bored out of their minds so they get their shoes on, grab some money, and head to the Dollar General. They are fairly disappointed with the selection and end up buying only a can of hairspray for Kate and a sour apple blowpop for Lan.

• Tops: They arrive at Tops and decide to go the the bulk section for some candy. On the way to the bulk section they pass through the fruits/vegetables section and Lan spots smoothie mixes. Not finding a banana-flavored one, they decide to make their own. They grab four bananas and a cup of yogurt. They check out and head home.

• “Kate’s casa”: Kate and Lan get home at last and whip out the blender. Being a dinosaur, the blender wouldn’t blend very well and seemed so smell of burning, so they opened a window and spent 20 minutes blending their precious smoothie. But before they could unplug the air freshener in the other room, Lori arrived home. The following lines are very important:

Lori: What’s that smell?
Kate: Uhhh… ummm… I farted.
Lori: It smells like something is burning, either that or it’s permanent markers.
Lan: Oh, well… uh…
Kate: OKAY! We were making a smoothie and burned, all right?… it burned!

It was the worst tasting smoothie ever. Lan soon leaves and returns home. Everyone’s lives move on.

And today I watched The Emperor’s New Groove. Pull the lever Cronk!… WRONG LEVER! [later] Why do we even have the lever?

I dyed my hair Fishbowl Blue today. It’s aqua-ish. Actually, it’s the exact shade of my mac. It’s kind of cool. I do wish it was a bit brighter, but it’ll do. When I get around to replacing the batteries in my camera I’ll post a picture.

I’m addicted to hitting.

I really need to watch The Emperer’s New Groove. I’ve looked all over the house for my copy that I taped off the tv, but alas, it’s nowhere to be found.

I went out to lunch with the family today. We went downtown during my dad’s lunch break and ate at the chinese buffet (not all-you-can eat, pay by the pound). It was fun. I love being in public with my family, I can embarrass them much with my smooth (NOT) talking and awesome (NOT) dance moves.

Today I practiced hitting again. But it rained the whole time and was very depressing.

I was going to dye my hair today, but my mom was too tired and said she’d do it tomorrow.

I know what I’m wearing tomorrow: a hat.

SPRING BREAK : )

SUNDAY:
Softball practice at 1:30pm. Katie came. Liz was practicing with her team at the diamond next to ours. My coach couldn’t come so my coach from last year, Allison, ran the practice. I did well. I think I’m getting better this year. During practice, Allison threw some pop-flys to us. Katie was forgetting to use two hands to catch them so Allison explained why it is a good idea to use both. So I said, “And that is why I’m glad I have two hands.” Katie thought it sounded like the end to an essay titled Why I am glad I have two hands… In conclusion, that is why I’m glad I have two hands. So now it’s an inside joke. We had a scrimmage against Liz’s team and beat their butts. Afterwards Lori (Katie’s mom) took us out to lunch at Great Northern. Later we went to my house and hung around. We got bored so we took off on our bikes to Big Lots. I bought a bunch of cheap, but cool, stuff. We also rented Raising Helen (which was, meh) from Blockbuster. We rode home and watched the movie. Then ate dinner (Katie and I had some problems with our pizza, ha ha), watched TV, went to bed. I was in my room for less than 10 minutes, hence the absent post.

MONDAY:
I went to the mall today with Katie. Since I shredded my current pair of chucks, I bought a new pair (finally!). And the color? Neon orange. Totally awesome? I know. I also bought some new hair dye, it’s tealish blueish. Later we rented a new movie, The Forgotten, which I liked much. Later when we got back, Katie went home. Then Liz and I played catch and hit some balls around in the field next to our neighborhood. Later we went home and Curls was there after her first day at her new job. So we watched the movie and ate dinner. Now I’m here.

And that is why I am so cool.

Today Liz and I rode our bikes to Schoen Place via the Erie Canal towpath. It was my idea, I wanted to do something outside. So we got our waterbottles, filled our tires, and took off. It took us exactly 35 minutes to get there. We stopped 3 times to take a drink of water, once at Lock 33, once at Lock 32, and one more time in between Lock 32 and Schoen Place. We made good time. In enjoyed yelling, “ON YOUR LEFT!”, like always. When we arrived we locked our bikes up at the bike rack in from of The Coal Tower Resturant and went inside. We sat at the counter (it’s a tradition) and ordered motzerella sticks for an appitizer and grilled cheese sandwiches for our meals. It was pretty good. Afterwards we went to the shop across the street. I bought 3 Jolly Ranchers and a huge popper. You know, those plastic dome-shaped things that you fold inside out and it pops up. Except this one is huge, like 3 times the size of a normal one. Pretty cool, eh? Then we went to the ice cream place nextdoor and got ice cream. Usually we go down to Bill Wahl’s, but it burned down last year. Afterwards we went to go get our bikes and go check out where the building used to be. So I unlocked the bikes and put my helmet on. But this guy in a truck yelled out his window, “Is that green hair? Can I see it?”, which would normally obviously creep me out, but there were two little boys sitting next to him peering out the window, so I took of my helmet and waved, which delighted them. I love little kids. Yeah, so then we rode down to where Bill Walh’s used to be. Except they had rebuilt it. Why does no one tell me these things? I would much rather have ice cream from there, they make the best ice cream I’ve ever had. I was sad. But then we rode to the Towpath Bike Shop, which had also changed, it moved down the street. Liz and I each bought a cute little Nalgene bottle (because they were so freaking cool), I think I’ll bring mine to practice tomorrow. After this we went across the plaza to the gas station for some gum. And then we rode home. It took us longer going back because it’s mostly uphill and Liz didn’t feel to good (probably too much sun). We did eventually make it though.

My mom rented a DVD with 4 Monk episodes on it. You know what that means…
Stottlemeyer: Mr. Van Rankin, we would like to have permission to search your pie.
Pat Van Ranken: What?
Stottlemeyer: Please don’t make me say that again.

Bingo Player: Wanna rub my lucky troll?
Monk: Uh, no thank you.
Bingo Player: Come on, do it!
Monk: No.
Bingo Player: Can you believe this guy? He’s totally throwing off my karma.
Sharona: RUB THE TROLL!