Goodnight.

On a happier note, I started reading Little Gamers today. They're cute, and kinda funny for a 3-panel strip without much there.

Got up at 1, did the crossword over a breakfast of water, did Nothing Much for a long time, and eventually went canoeing with Anja. Around most of the lake, took about an hour. Fun fun. State Fair tomorrow!

Currently typing this while Anja watches a movie. Also e-mailed someone at YFU-Hamburg regarding a job for next year. Nothing else too new.

25:43 Just finished the first anime movie I have ever (that I recall) watched start to finish. Akira doesn't count, 'cause I saw that in parts. And I still don't get it, quite. All I have to say is (besides a comment on the gratuitous nudity) that being cut in half the long way just isn't as cool in anime as it is in live-action movies. (though I admit they don't even really do that then. But still. It's more cool without the bursting open and anime guts (not as cool as real ones) exploding all over. Just looks better in "real" life, methinks.)

26:10 I just spent the last half hour IMing my best friend Jenny, who is in Boston (MIT). When she logged off, I started to feel incredibly sad. This is odd, as I was only IMing her and she's only been gone a week and two days, as yet. Do I really miss her that much, or is this my subonscious telling me that she will be gone for much longer and the implications of that are rising up and bothering me already? Or perhaps my subconscious telling me that she was the first of many? Maybe I just miss her and want to let her know that, since I think she's the only person that really reads this regularly.

I love you, and I do miss you.

24:31 Too tired to learn JavaScript. So that plan took a whole two days before I ditched it. Though I will try to go back to Lesson 3 tomorrow when I'm less tired, and try it again. WSS how that holds out.

24:49 Why is it that I have read (what I deem) a decent amount of manga, yet have so far never seen any instances of the famed "tentacle sex"? Except for this Exploitation Now comic, of course... but that doesn't exactly count.

12:49 Got home from a sleepover around noon. (We had Fat Pie for breakfast and I got a Powerball ticket on my way home. Nothing else interesting happened before now.) Having tried to do a mousover by teaching myself how to do it, rather than copying Angelfire's code (again) to do it, and messing up and ending up copying code anyway, I have decided that it's time to teach myself JavaScript. (I know, I decided this before. Well, I'm doing it again. And maybe this time it will work. Though I stopped with the Latin after 5 days... though that was due to busy-ness. Believe what you will.) We shall see how it goes.

Need to mail that package to Whitney

I bet Anja can't wait till school starts.

After I had managed to wake up and get dressed and all that, we (all of us 'cept Sam) left for Stillwater. First we had to drop Martha off at work, then dad drove me and Anja to the HS to register her for classes, and he went on to Peter's violin lesson where he would wait till Peter was done, at which time he'd pick us up and then Martha and we'd go home. Well, Anja and I had to wait 45 minutes to see the counsellor, so we toured the school first. Then we got her scheduled worked out, and she got all the classes she wanted except for painting, but she settled for Commercial Art instead. So it worked. Then we came home and I had breakfast on the deck while doing the crossword puzzle. Which I finished, yay me. And that brings us up to now, so since I have time and no access to either Sims game, I think I shall work on my old journals.

On Friday the 17th, Anja and Tim went climbing and I had some time to kill. I went wandering around downtown Stillwater and ended up doing something I had wanted to do for a while: I bought myself a pack of Tarot cards. Unfortunately, the pictures and names were in Italian (though there were instructions in English) so I had no idea what the Major Arcana were. I had to look them up on the web, and only got around to doing that today. The second site I looked at had a Harry Potter Tarot set, which I thought was quite cool, even if the artwork isn't necessarily the best. That's what I thought was so cool I needed to tell you all.

What else did I do today? Hmmm.... Ah yes, Tim left, as I said, and I stayed home and put together a package for my penpal. Then, since there wasn't nearly enough fun stuff in it, I took Anja and we went to Target and got more fun stuff, and Anja got a cheap $20 camera. Then we came home and had dinner and watched The Simpsons and Malcom in the Middle, one of the funniest shows on television today.

I got an e-mail today from my very best Japanese friend, Ranko! I'm so happy! And Katie gets home tomorrow! Yay!

At some point today Anja and Tim went tubing on the lake, and I went with in the boat as the lookout. I think they enjoyed it. Riding in the boat reminded me of the party I still have to throw, though... so if anyone's reading this, e-mail me and tell me when you're free next week, 'cause this needs to get done before school starts for most people.

20:24 Mom and Dad took us all out for dinner (except Sam, who didn't want to go, and Martha, who had to babysit) because Tim is leaving tomorrow and had never had Mexican before, and Anja had only had it once (those poor Europeans). The problem was, Mom had ordered appetizers and we had lots of chips before the food came, so none of us were very hungry by the time our dinner arrived. After one taco, I was quite full. Mom and dad, of course, were well on their way to actually finishing, so the four of us wandered off. The original plan was to wander around downtown Stillwater, but we ended up in the parking lot of the indoor climbing center where my sister's friend was working.

When we got home, dad took Anja and Tim to launch a rocket and then the antique car show up at the Withrow Ballroom. I went upstairs, where my brother told me that Justin and Miriam had both called. I called Justin back, who had discussed doing something with Miriam, but then found out (after he called me) that he had to be up early the next morning and couldn't do anything after all. So I called Miriam. She, naturally, could definitely do stuff, and suggested going down to the Dreamcoat cafe. I asked if I could bring Anja with, she said sure, and then left to come pick us up. We made two stops: one to pick up Anja, and one to get Powerball tickets (nothing won). We went in the back door of the Dreamcoat, and thus passed by the Doherty twins with their boyfriends. We ordered what we wanted, then wandered back to talk with Anna, seeing as her boyfriend had been occupied with talking to someone else at the moment. We had a lovely conversation which Anja, sadly, was quite left out of, then went home.

On a more positive note, I managed to do a rollover on my photos page! Yay me, and yay Javascript! I also got three and a half postcards written, and managed to send off an e-mail to Ranko that I've been meaning to write for a long time.

Today was lots of fun. It started out by me waking up, having some water for breakfast and then taking a three hour nap on the porch, all nice and cool. When I got up, I found that my dad had come back from the library and brought with a Sailor Moon manga I had requested! Yay! So I read that right quick.

That evening, I went off to Como Park to go burn stuff with Jenny and some other people. As I had thrown out all my school supplies from 8-11th grades on Sunday night, I brought my two debate boxes. (That's right, I only had two.) I met Jen and 5 other people, who had just finished lauching a Tonka truck (or rather, the enginge attached to the truck) and scaring lots of people. Then we burned lots and lots and lots of paper. 'Twas fun. Then we sat at a picnic table and talked about silly things and yelled things really loudly (sometimes, at least. Mostly it was quietly, though). Then two of the people got tree branches and snuck over to someone else's fire (ours had gone out by then) and tried to place their sticks in the fire and run off yelling "We stole the secret of fire!" Though they didn't actually manage to light the sticks... they ran off too quickly. Still, twas lots of fun.

25:45 Got the pictures up on my photos page. Now I just need to put up the comics I got, and then it's off to find graphics to suit my fancy!

At some point soon after we left, Jenny got into the inner tube. We stopped once and all got out and went swimming, and then Jenny and Aras paddled around while I rode in the tube. We landed across the lake from where we went swimming and went island hopping. First Mate Jenny and I got out and went exploring, while Captain Sara stayed in the tube and guarded the ship. (I was the drunken sailor.) The first island we claimed in the name of love and justice, and then Jenny wandered between the two while I explored the far side of the far island. I found an alien species native to that island, which I named a goolizard. I also found what consisted of its diet, which appeared to the untrained eye to be fishing line. (A goolizard, I might add, would probably make an excellent plastic fishing lure.) I also saw a butterfly and lots of dragonflies. Jenny tried several times (unsucessfully) to catch one. I also found 5 different kinds of flowers. We named the white ones Jawns. We also decided that the island would be our secret lab base for world dominition island, which we named Heljenny. And the first island would be Lovin Justice. Or something like that. Then we returned to our ship and paddled off. We eventually got home, though it seemed to take a lot longer on the return than it did going out.

After we pulled the canoe up on shore and dried off, we got in the car and drove to Nelson's for lots and lots of cheap, high-quality ice cream. Then we took our ice cream cones (or cups) and walked from there to downtown Stillwater. We wandered around the hot main street for a while and then ducked into Brick Alley and wandered around there and got lost for a while. Then we went into an Olde Tyme candy shop and looked at all the neat stuff and even got some and I talked with the clerk, who's the sister of one of my friends. Then we walked back (with an 8-block detour) and drove home.

By the time we got back it was 6:00, so Aras and Jenny called and asked if they could stay for dinner. We sat in the living room and talked and tried to do the crossword puzzle until dinner was ready. We had chicken fajitas, yum. Then Jenny and Aras left, but as they were about to drive away I jumped onto the hood of the car and sat there while Jenny drove around in circles in the cul-de-sac and Sara tried to take a picture with her steamed up camera. Then they left and I went inside and did boring things.

25:27 I was looking through a friend's site (or at least, an aquaintence and someone I think I would dearly love to be friends with if given the chance) and came across something he wrote. "You guys (my friends) being there for me has meant so much to me that I truly can't even describe. I know that when I'm away in college, or off making my millions, or taking hell over with you guys, that you will always be there." Now, this taken alone is probably not as profound as when read at the end of the wonderfully touching essay, but even so I think that having friends who will stick with you while fighting through hell is a thing more valuable than any other on this earth, and anyone who lacks friends as true as these is a lonely man indeed.

I would like to take a moment to thank all my friends, especially those who kept in touch through time and distance, unreasonable demands and self-loathing and neglect and taking you for granted. Over the past year, I think I finally found the true meaning of "love"- not sappy, blind, puppy-dog love or romantic "love"/lust or even desperation, but true, long-abiding, deep-seated, more-satisfying-and-gratifying-than-anything-I-can-name-bring-tears-to-your-eyes care and concern for another person's well-being and knowing that care is returned. Thank you.

22:35 Just got back from the Washington County Fair. It was okay, but not all that great. I did get a free pen, though. But I can get lots more at the State Fair, my annual pen and pencil source.

26:01 Rush Hour 2 was funny and exciting. That's why Jackie Chan movies are some of my favorites- they combine my two favorite genres. Afterward we went to Justin's and hung out for a while. That was also fun, and we engaged in meaningless conversation and random (really random) music listening (unlike Tuesday, where I found the conversation to be quite pleasant and informative) until we had to leave so a) Kyle could finally go to bed and b) Mirriam could make her midnight curfew.

I decided that I need to learn some sort of programming language (HTML won't do) that allows me to make a program to display e-vocabulary flash card type-things. Will get to work on that soon.

Read the Elf's Dreambook Sign the Elf's Dreambook

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? E-mail me!