Argh....

I have been a very bad person and not blogged until now. In my defense, it was NANOWRIMO and that was very stressful.
In hindsight, I should've blogged about nano at the beginning of the month instead of at the end.

Anways....NANOWRIMO is an annual "competition" in which aspiring writers attempt to write 50,000 words in the month of November. More info here: http://www.nanowrimo.org/

I "won" on Wednesday, but I was busy with other stuff until yesterday (when I crashed). Like last year, it was blood, sweat, and tears. This time, I was wiser and actually planned out what I was going to write, which made it easier-ish. Still, I'm glad it's over. It's fun, but it's insane. I plan to do it next year.


Christine wants me to make this funnier.
Well, laugh at my misery. I usually go to bed pretty early, but I ended up staying up every night frantically writing to make word count. For the first couple weeks, I tried to churn out 2000 words and then write my hw, but then I realized just how stupid that was. I think grades are more important; I can't be sure though. So I ended up doing my hw (and procrastinating...oops...) and then typing away. Every day, Jared, Bing, Kati, and I would compare word counts. Kati was ahead until the second week. Bing tried to murder me when she heard what my word count was. Fortunately, I'm still alive, and she finished as well.
It got to the point when I had to drag myself up every morning because I was so sleep deprived that I wanted to just collaspe.
In the words of a very dear friend, "Nanowrimo is the closest thing I came to having a life"
Dang, I suck at descriptions. Nanowrimo withdrawl. *Twitches*

~'Cilla

Don't Panic!

In the wise words of Douglas Adams: don't panic! This is possibly the only thing that saved me from being stranded in Copley without any money and no way of getting to a dentist appointment that was scheduled for that day. You see, my mother had scheduled a dentist appointment for 11:15 that day, but thought that she had as per usual scheduled it for 8:15, not realizing that they hadn't any appointments available at that time. She also had several meetings, and couldn't drive me to the dentist. So instead she brought me to work with her, and I was to take the T to the dentist. (If I took the T from home it would have required going all the way into Boston and all the way back out, because it is on the wrong line of the green line.)

So she goes into her meeting, and around 10:00 I set off to the T stop that I only have vague directions to, in an area I do not know well. Halfway there I realize she didn't give me any money, and I had not thought to bring my T pass. Oops. So I headed back and scrounged through her coat, digging up about a dollar fifty. Well, it costs two dollars to get on the T, so I asked one of her coworkers for fifty cents and then set off on my way. I managed to find the T stop without getting lost, which was good since I was already a bit behind schedule.

So I got on the T, and headed inbound, because I was on the wrong line of the green line, a few stops to Copley, where all the green line lines meet up. I get off at Copley, hoping to transfer to an outbound C train. Across from me I can see the outbound trains going the other way. Except, there is no way to get over to that side of the track without exiting, crossing the street, and re-entering. I'll admit, I did panic a little bit. I had no money to get out and back in. How on earth was I supposed to get to the dentist? But, the one thing I did do was suppress my immediate panic instinct to go out and attempt to get on the other side, knowing that if I did that I'd never be able to get back in.

Instead, I rationally got back on the next train going inbound and switched at Park. All in all it took me five or so more stops than I was expecting, but I made it to the dentist on time. The moral of this story is don't panic and never go anywhere without a CharlieCard.


Sachi

The Mysterious Beeping Noise

This morning I woke up and realized that an alarm had been going off for a while. It stopped, and a while later, started again. It sounded kind of like the carbon monoxide alarms that just go off by accident sometimes in my house. I looked at my clock: it was around 5:30. I heard out in the hall my mom saying something about carbon monoxide, and I'm thinking that perhaps the alarm (which has stopped by now) is one of our carbon monoxide alarms.

The funny thing is that instead of just going "meep! meep! meep!" like our carbon monoxide alarm, it's doing a "dee-dee! dee-dee! dee-dee!" as if there are two alarms slightly offset from each other. Now why would it be that both our carbon monoxide alarms would go crazy at the same time, unless there really was carbon monoxide in the house?

However, I knew that if there really was a problem, my parents would have woken us up and gotten us out of the house. Still, I wanted to just go downstairs and ask my mom what was going on so I could sleep in peace. But I was so tired, plus getting out of bed now would make me even more tired when it was actually time to get up. Meanwhile, the alarms were starting and stopping.

I thought about what I had learned in chemistry class about how carbon monoxide kills you: it's shape is similar to oxygen so the things that cary oxygen to your cells pick it up. But your cells refuse to take it and you can't pick up more oxygen because you can't get rid of the carbon monoxide and you have no oxygen!!!!!!!

Deciding I was too tired to get up, I thought about how I already knew that if I went downstairs and asked my mom what was going on she would have some reasonable answer. I decided to just pretend I knew what that reasonable answer was and just go to sleep.

Unfortunately for me, my subconcious is not so good at being rational. As I drifted into sleep I had a dream in which I went downstairs to find that my parents were neglecting the fact that our house was filling up with carbon monoxide. I woke up and realized that was silly. Then I went back to sleep and had another dream of the same nature. This time I went outside to breathe the fresh air. Outside was a wierd Dr Seuss combined with Teletubbies world with almost neon green grass and small yellow houses with roofs that looked like submarines.

I woke up, and before I was finished waking up I felt like I couldn't breathe properly because I was in that wierd stage where I was only partly aware of myself. Naturally, I jolted awake with the fear that I was breating carbon monoxide!

At this point I felt there was no way to get a good rest-of-my-sleep unless I found out the truth. So, I went downstairs and asked my mom what the alarm was. She told me it was three connected smoke-detectors in the basement that were detecting dust inside them, but that they were fixed now. This turned out to be wrong--they beeped one last time that morning before I finally fell asleep.

-Rebecca

What are those things that you listen to called again? (Another substitute teacher story)

My history teacher is away this week (or I guess I should say last week by now), and a week is enough time to merit a "long-term" sub.

Let substitute teacher = Ms. A.

As class started, Ms. A asked us if someone who knew their way around the school could help her find the stuff so we could watch our movie. They returned eventually with a box, and she looked in it and said, "This isn't the right stuff." They quickly realized that though it had said her last name on it, it wasn't refering to her. So, off on another expedition around the school to find the movie.

Eventually they gave up, and someone in the class decided to read Macbeth aloud in different accents as a source of amusement. (It was amusing, unlike other times when kids have taken it upon themselves to amuse a class.)

After a while, Ms. A realized that the movie had been in the classroom all along, so we started watching it.

A funny thing about Ms. A is that every time she saw someone listening to an ipod, she would look at them and make a gesture like she was pulling something out of her ear. The first time she did it, I had no idea what she meant. Then she just said, "unplug! unlplug!" while doing that motion and I realized she meant "take out your headphones". The weird thing was that she didn't seem to know any word for headphones or earphones or ipod, and she would just say, "Take out your--" and then make her motion and say "unplug!" as if we were turning into robots by plugging ourselves into electrical outlets.

You know how people used to say if you make an ugly face for too long your features will get stuck in that position? Maybe someday adults will scare kids out of listening to ipods too much by telling them that having wires in your ears for too much time will cause you to fuse into the ipod and become a machine. :D

-Rebecca

Middle School has Substitues - Unfortunately

"My name is Mrs. Winika. As you all know, I am substituting for this class because your teacher's wife is going to have a baby. My name is Mrs. Winika." That is how a class of eager seventh grade students was introduced to their long-term substitute teacher, Mrs. Winika. It wasn't exactly an amazing first impression.

She went on to collect our homework. Every once in a while her glasses would fall down and out of position, and she would swing her head so that her glasses would get into the right position again. However, this swinging of the head was not very subtle, and as she was checking my homework, she swung her head so violently her glasses actually flew off, and she was forced to turn around, bend down, and get them. As she was lecturing the class on the election, I couldn't help thinking that she sounded like Sarah Palin, and when she said "You bet I would," I almost started laughing out loud.

The next day when our class was entering, she said, "Welcome, Monday and Friday extention number one. Come and sit down in your chairs." She had mistaken the schedule. I don't know, but I thought it was funny. She proceded to ask if anybody had trouble with any part of the homework. Nobody raised their hands. "I know some people had trouble with question number six," she said, staring at me.

I don't remember the context of this, but at one point she said in an overly sweet voice, "that's what we do when we learn!"

At one point we were reading from a textbook and somebody had a question. She called on him to read. "Actually, I was going to ask a question," he said. She told him to read. "But I don't want to read," he complained. She called on somebody else to read. "What about the question?" he asked.

"What's your question," she said, slightly angrily.

"Does modern day egypt take up this whole area?" he asked, gesturing to a map on the page that showed egypt and most of Sudan in order to show the Nile River.

"No, it doesn't," she responded. "The Red Sea technically isn't part of Egypt - it's water."

I hate being smarter than the teacher.

-Marianne

I'm More Interesting than the Real Squirrel!

As usual, my Fringes of Chaos class at MIT with Zandra was full of amusing surprises and lots of craziness. But today's class was surprising and crazy even for Zandra's standards. I will focus this account on one episode, but keep in mind that this is just a glimpse into the absurdity that is a class with Zandra.

Zandra was talking about binary and information theory. In the middle of her lecture, someone peered out the window and said, "Look at the squirrel."

"What," said Zandra, insulted. "Is the squirrel really more interesting than me?" Soon she decided to act like a squirrel in the hopes of diverting attention away from the real squirrel. She also pushed a button, and the windowshades came down. Zandra held her arms in to her chest with her hands hanging squirrelishly, and said, "If I hop, it means 'yes.' If I don't hop it means 'no.'" So the binary and information theory lecture went on that way. I could hardly hold in my laughter as Zandra hopped around the room. Someone pointed out that not hopping is ambiguous because it is unclear whether she simply hadn't hopped yet, or if she wasn't going to hop. He suggested that she raise her tail for "no" instead. Zandra looked at herself and noticed that she didn't have a tail. "Oh, no," she said, "why did you have to point out that I don't have a tail? Now I'm embarrassed." And she stood against the wall, hiding her lack of tail.

Later she was the squirrel again, and she kept asking people if she could have their nuts. She would then steal their pencils and hide them in a cart in the corner of the room. When she got to me, I grabbed my pencil and held it tightly to my body. Squirrel Zandra just looked at me with big, sad eyes. I resisted for some time before I decided that it would be to everyone's advantage if I would just give her the "nut" and let class resume. So I did, and she took it and hid it with the rest.

When it was the end of the alotted time for class, Zandra had no intention of ending. At about fifteen minutes after class should have ended, a man burst into the room and said, "This is getting to be a habit, isn't it?"

Zandra responded: "Get out of my class." He didn't. "I'll give you three seconds," she warned. "One...two...three..." And then she started throwing chalk at him. He took some chalk and started throwing it at her. What a perfect distraction, I thought, hoping to retrieve the "nuts". So while Zandra was busy fighting the man, I ran over to the cart and took out the pencils. I then distributed them around the room to their rightful owners. When Zandra successfully expelled the intruder, she noticed that we had taken the "nuts" back. "It was all him," someone said, pointing at me.

Class resumed. Then, while Zandra was talking, there was a loud boom from outside of the classroom. We tried to ignore it, but a second, louder boom caused enough disturbance to disrupt the class slightly. "Oh no, they have a battering ram," someone said. "Pay no attention to the sounds from outside," said Zandra. Next came periodic clapping sounds, and then a pause of silence. When we finally finished and I exited the class, I saw to my surprise that nobody was there. I went back in and told Zandra, "It appears that your next class has mysteriously disappeared."

I later found out that they were all hiding, and that the sounds were part of their diabolical plan to disrupt the class. Apparently, they thought that they had had no effect at all. Then they decided to pretend to sleep, and eventually decided to hide on a stairwell.

-Philip

Two English Classes in a Row

When my History class was cancelled today, I joined Marena's English class. It's not a long story but I don't feel like telling it now. Anyway, the teacher was talking about how hard writing is, and he said, "What do most writers do?"
"Give up" guessed a student.
"Become alcoholics," answered the teacher. "What do all the best writers do?" he continued.
"Drugs!" said a student.
"Commit suicide," said the teacher.

I don't know--I thought it was kind of funny. :)

After that, I went to my real English class. I sat down, got ready, and looked to the front of the classroom where I saw someone who was not my English teacher writing "D-block Agenda" on the blackboard. Do we have a substitue teacher? I was thinking. That would be strange, since the school doesn't have any substitues anymore. Then my English teacher walked in. She looked at the front of the classroom and a confused expression came over her face. After a few seconds, it cleared into a smile and she mouthed to the class. "Oh--student teacher!" The entire class started laughing a little bit as the student teacher, unaware of these goings-on, finished preparing for her lesson.

-Rebecca

Wait...what's your name again?

My name's Marena.
It has an 'E', but you say it like an 'A'.
I don't know, don't ask. Blame my parents.
My name has often caused confusion, as it's spelled how Marina, a much more common name, is pronounced.
At the beginning of freshman year, I decided I had grown tired of correcting pronunciation. Additionally, with my stutter worse than ever, I stumble over it anyways.
I decided it would make everyone's life easier if I just let it go. People eventually catch on when they hear my friends talk to me. Unfortunately, in the microcosm that is The Newtonite, I don't really have any preexisting friends.
One day, one of the guys was looking at the schedule of when we're assigned to be in shop.
"Marina, is your name spelled with an 'i' or an 'e'"?
"An E."
"So then it's...Mar-ay-nuh."
"Yeah."
"Wait, is that actually how you pronounce it?"
"Yep."
I leave to go to the bathroom. When I return, more people have come into the shop.
"It's Mar-ay-nuh??"
"yea...."
"WHY DIDN'T YOU CORRECT US!!"

One day, one of the guys was listing why every member of The Newtonite is strange.
"And Marena's....name is MARENA."
Another girl: "Can't we just call her Marina. That's just what we call her. I don't care."


So yes. Call me....whatever.