7 May 2006 - 11:41 AM
So it's been a pretty eventful week... Sorry I missed writing for the first 7 days of May. I'll try to recount all...
Monday
Today was the AP English Language and Composition test. If you didn't take it, you don't know how incredibly awful it was. It was lucky that the last passage in the multiple choice section only had about 6 questions to it, because I didn't even get to it. I hated the essays, too. Think about writing an essay about an essay about pink flamingoes and an essay that analyzes an excerpt that was only three sentences long, but occupied an entire page of text. Ugh. Afterward, I was gonna just go home or get something to eat or something, but even though Mr. Deming said he didn't care, he said he'd still have to mark us absent, so I ended up staying while we looked at political cartoons in class.
It was more relaxing to go to dive practice than usual, because anything would be better than that AP test. I've like, grown to hate the pool at Baker, because it has so much chlorine in it that my skin starts drying out to the point of peeling. When I got home, I didn't even bother doing homework, 'cause I didn't go to any of my classes anyway, so I didn't have much.
Tuesday
It was a considerably bad school day. My English teacher is officially a mega BITCH for giving us another essay assignment even though we hadn't turned in the previous one and most of her students still have more AP tests to take. I was glad to get out of her classroom as soon as possible, as she was fine with sending people to other classrooms. Niki and I went to Deming's room. Mr. Barnett, on the other hand, took into consideration that people are taking AP tests, and took the courtesy of covering one section of the book over two days. I ended up with one homework assignment from today and one homework assignment from yesterday, but at least I was instructed on the material. In fourth period, French, I received the vocabulary from yesterday and a few assignments from yesterday and today. I don't know why, but the barrage of work just broke me down, and I was just about burnt out by the end of the period. There was still Chemistry and History to go. Yay.
Luckily, diving practice was cancelled because the pump at UNLV broke and the pool at Baker was unavailable, so I was able to sleep all day and do some of that homework during the night.
Wednesday
In second period, Mrs. Christiernsson was going to be presented with the award for Teacher of the Year by Durango's ROTC. As her second period students, we were given the option of attending the presentation down on the football field or going to another teacher's classroom. Obviously, Niki, Dallas, and I went to Mr. Deming's classroom. You may be wondering, "Why didn't you go to the ceremony?" Well, let's just say that I wouldn't think it right to watch one of my least admired teachers of the year get presented with the award for Teacher of the Year.
Diving was going kinda shitty. I couldn't come out right on my back 1½, no matter what position I tried it in, so at the end of practice, I made my last dive a back double. It had a pretty good top, and made it around, so I decided to make it one of my dives for the upcoming meet on Friday, along with my reverse 1½, which I hadn't thrown since spring break.
Thursday
I didn't take many of my classes seriously because I knew that I'd be skipping them tomorrow for the AP US History exam. At diving practice, I was doing really shitty. Remember how I told you that I hadn't thrown that reverse 1½ since spring break? Well, it ended up being a really shitty dive. I could barely get it around and it was extremely far out. I spent the rest of practice trying to get even a reverse somersault to go up as opposed to out. When I went home, I downloaded a couple videos of divers doing reverses so that I could understand what I was supposed to be doing.
Chris came over for a little bit to make a few CDs so that he could reformat his computer because it was acting like shit and Nicole needed to use it the next day. I was half asleep the entire time he was here, and after he left, I slept through the whole night. I felt like I slept longer than I had, too, because whenever I woke up and thought it was time to get up for school, it would still be hours early.
Friday
Now who wouldn't want to end their week with another AP test? Well, me, for one. Haha! I was going to study in first period, but we ended up doing something for a change. It's always just my luck that that happens. We were supposed to go to every room in the 200 hallway and put zip ties on the computers so that it was a little harder to open them up and take shit. Yeah, I know what you're thinking... It doesn't really stop anybody, so long as they have a pair of scissors. I guess you'd prefer the school district to buy a few hundred Master locks for the computers. Fuck that. Anyway, I had to walk around to some rooms and go "Hi, I'm working for Mr. K, and I need to put this little piece of plastic on your computer." I told my classmates, or my 'team', as I liked to call them, that I was gonna take the first hallway. They didn't listen, and started doing it as well. Then, as I started doing a few other classrooms, they disappeared. It turns out one of the guys went upstairs, even though we were supposed to start in just one hallway. The entire thing got fucked up, and I only got a little bit of studying done.
I think I was confident in answering 2 of the 75 multiple choice questions. The DBQ killed me, but I think I did better on the free response essays. That ten minutes of studying in first period gave me information on the Plessy v. Ferguson case, which I was very fortunately able to fit into my second essay. After the test, I was dying to relax, so Dallas, Niki, Erica, and I went down to Palermo's to get some pizza. It had to be take out, because we were still planning on going to sixth period, but we had half an hour, so it wasn't much of a rush. We came back and ate in Mr. Deming's classroom, because he didn't care, considering we just took the AP test for his class and it was sixth period on a Friday. After lunch, everybody got bored and started writing and drawing on the board. While a couple people played Hangman, I went up to the adjacent board and started drawing. I was determined to finish my drawing, so I stayed about 5 minutes after the bell. This is what I ended up with. I thought it was pretty good.
Not only was today the day of the AP History test, but it was also the first 11-dive meet of the year. You didn't get invited because it was in Henderson, so I pretty much knew that you wouldn't be able to come. I didn't have many options for a ride, so I rode around with my dad while he delivered products until we came near the area. It took awhile to find the place, and when we finally did, we were stopped at an intersection, so I just hopped out and ran over.
The meet was fair, I supppose. Overall, I got third place among all guys from both regions. It would've been fourth place if this other guy, Blake, had competed. This was a joke meet though, so I guess he didn't feel the need to come. I'm still proud of myself because my final score was 150 points higher than my highest 11-dive meet last year. The most interesting thing was that the dive that got the highest scores was one that I had never competed - a back double somersault. Everything else was between bad and mediocre. I had one of the other divers record me, and now that I watch those videos... I realize that I really do need lots of work on my entries. When I compile them together, I'll be able to put them on my Myspace. After the end of the meet, we were all doing fun dives for the hell of it, and I decided to go off the 3-meter board and see how many spins I could get in. My hurdle wasn't that great, but I did get about 3¼ spins before landing on my face/chest. I'll try to get more next time.
I got a ride home from one of the divers, because I didn't know if my dad was going to be able to pick me up. When we got on the road, he called, and he was there, about to pick me up. I didn't bother making my friend turn around, so I just had him drop me off at Ricardo's on Flamingo and Decatur because my dad and I were going to get some dinner for Cinco de Mayo. When he showed up, there was still a bit of a wait, so we just gave the buzzer back and looked for another restaurant. All other restaurants were busy as hell too, so we just went to Roberto's and took food home.
I wanted to get drunk for Cinco de Mayo, but nobody had anything, so the next best thing was to go see Mission: Impossible III. It was pretty good. I liked it.
Saturday
After falling asleep at 1:30 the night before, I had to wake up at about 7:00 to drive down to Fremont Street with Bo to participate in Race for the Cure. It turned out well, but my feet got a bit sore. When I came home, I crashed from 11:30 until 3:30.
My feet were sore and my dive coach didn't want me jumping on trampolines because it screws up my feet-first entries, so we didn't end up going to SkyMania this week. Instead, I started talking with Erica, and we decided to bring a bunch of friends to dinner and a movie. I picked up Briana, Chris, and Sarah and we went up to PF Chang's to meet them for dinner. We showed up first, so I called them and asked for a table for 9. It was lucky that we were seated so quickly. However... after we sat down, I got a call back from Erica. It turns out one of her friends invited her friend, who invited like, four more people. Now we were getting scared, because we didn't think we'd be able to seat everybody together. Luckily though, they showed up and the waitress told us that she could move us right away. We started following her, behind the bar but in front of the kitchen, and I thought we were being led to the other side of the restaurant. Nope. There was a private table between the bar and the kitchen for large parties, and we were definitely a large party. Yay!
Dinner went well, and Chris and I managed to converse well with the others. When the check came though, things got confusing. Even though we had a party of 13 by the end of the meal, they hadn't included gratuity. Then, as we collected money to pay for the check... we came up about $30 over. It was nice, considering the mess I got into when I went to homecoming with a large group and ended up paying the $50 deficiency that we ended up having because of all the cheap asses. Though, it was hard to determine where the extra money should go. We didn't want to leave a tip that huge, but we didn't know who paid too much. Eventually, we decided to let people take a couple of bucks from the extra cash if they wanted and then just left the rest for a tip. As we were leaving, I think one guy discovered that he accidentally paid twice as much as he was supposed to, and put $40 in for the total $97 check. Lawl.
When we showed up at the Suncoast to see Take the Lead at 9:25... The dick of a security guard started questioning us on our age. I told the man that I was 18, but didn't have ID on me... even though I was holding my wallet in my hands, haha! The others, however, didn't catch on, and told him that they weren't 18. He asked us to leave on account of curfew, which he claimed to have been 9:00.
W
T
F
!
So then we tried to figure out what to do. I knew that the same movie was going to start in 20 minutes at The Orleans, where the security doesn't consist of a mob of fuckburglars, but it was also at The Orleans, a good 10- to 15-mile drive away, and we were at about the midpoint between my house and the houses of these friends from Shadow Ridge. This threw the idea out the window, especially considering the price of gas and the set curfews of some people by their parents. So then Erica called her friend, who told us where we could find a park to hang out at. It was very close, so we were happy to get there.
You need to understand one thing at this point. I loved this park! This place was the first park I'd been to in years that still had sand under the swings, as opposed to that shitty astroturf junk. There were also water-shooting elephant sculptures, which we would've played around more had we brought bathing suits/ had it been further into summer. I drove my car up to the grass and turned up the stereo, and we hung out in the sand and talked all night. Chris and I dug a hole for fun, and at the end of the night, we buried my legs in it and took pictures. Those will be up on my Myspace soon, after Erica sends them to me.
As the night came to a close, my group of friends said our goodbyes to the Shadow Ridge kids and we went our separate ways. I had been talking all night about how I was supposed to cook hamburgers when I got home, so Briana grew hungry for a hamburger. We stopped at Jack in the Box on the way back and everybody got food. I dropped Chris off at his house and Sarah and Briana off at Briana's house, and then went to Food 4 Less to buy buns for the hamburgers. After I got home, I took a shower. When I undressed, I discovered that there was still sand in my pockets. Haha! After the shower, I was going to lie down for a quick minute before cooking. That minute lasted until about 9:45 this morning. Haha!
Sunday
It's been a long, eventful week, and I'm amazed that I was able to recap the most of it. God only knows when I will write again, so I hope you've enjoyed it. I really need to start writing more often, because covering a whole week tends to take about two hours to write. As for today, I have some studying and a little homework to do, but other than that, it's just another relaxing Sunday.
Take it easy, but strike hard.
Vaniah Schwenoha
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