How I Became A Convict

OK, so, this is where my dirty little secret comes out.

Shhh....are you ready? OK, here it goes....

i'm a convict.

 i have committed an illegal crime against the United States of America.

In chemistry class.

Now, you probably are all like "WHAT?!" right now and wondering what awful thing I did in chemistry. Trust me, it wasn't that bad. 

Here's the thing. I have defaced federal currency, which apparently is a crime. There goes my perfect record....

Anyway, the whole thing is sort of funny because it's all part of a lab we did this week in honors chem. It all started when our teacher rocked our worlds by telling us that by 1982, copper had gotten so expensive that they couldn't afford to make pennies out of it anymore. So they started making zinc pennies and just coat the outside with a thin sheet of copper. Crazy, right? I mean, WHO KNEW?

So we did a lab to figure out how true that was, and in the process ended up defacing several pennies.

FIRST- we sawed four chinks into the sides of the penny.

THEN- we dropped the pennies into hydrochloric acid

And lo and behold, this morning when we entered class, all that was left was a copper shell. The zinc was dissolved by the acid leaving just a very very paper thin sheet of metal with zinc dust still clinging to the inside. It was radical.

And that, my friends, is the story of how I became a convict.

*takes bow*

Oh Biology!

*SMACKS HEAD ON KEYBOARD* qefoGUQEUWhuiw3n09crc2tuy3ehjrw

OK. Done now.

Have any of you taken a course in biology? And I mean an INTENSIVE course. Well, that's what I'm taking.

Our 10th grade honors biology class is widely proclaimed as THE hardest class in the entire school....but it's totally worth taking. Why? It's fascinating! It's my first actual, like, GOOD science class ever.

But, boy, is is hard. Tests are nearly impossible (NOT looking forward to finals and biology SAT), and homework takes hours. In fact, that is what I'm slaving over now.

However, I am taking a little creative liberty with this homework. Why? It makes it more bearable.

We're learning about macromolecules and this homework happens to be on the subject of proteins.

Here was one of the questions and my humorous answer:

10. Summarize the different amino acid “personalities.”

Amino acids that have a charge simply love water. Seriously, they're attracted to it like flies to rotting fruit. These charged particles are usually quite large, just like the water molecules so they can throw some pretty extreme parties in the cytoplasm. Non-charged amino acids don't like them so the charged ones prefer to stay away and have fun with their other charged friends.

Amino acids that don't have a charge hate water so they hide away in the middle of the protein, the introverts that they are. They are small and average sized, which may account for their shyness, though they can be quite haughty towards amino acids that have a charge by completely shunning them, but they are always pulling their non-charged friends close in their evil little clique.

Haha. Oh biology!

Just Sitting...

So I've got some random stuff for you right now. Enjoy!

{1}

Public schoolers, do you KNOW how loud a pep rally is? The marching band played the Star Spangled Banner and before all that it was just SO EXTREMELY CRAZY LOUD. I probably wouldn't do very well at a rock concert. ;) Anyway, I was really happy when I found out that we didn't have to stay and that we could just hang in the band room for the rest of the school day. Thank goodness!

{2}

 The past few days we have been doing this AWESOME project in biology. We've been working with the microscopes and different lenses and we just finished this cool project today. We chose five items of the natural world and then looked at them under the different objectives and sketched them, etc. It's super cool when you get to 400x and you cannot only see the individual cells, but the organelles inside them as well! Just think....the 3rd smallest thing in the universe. Cell organelles. (After sub-atomic particles and atoms) But the best part? I've used my camera to take pictures through the microscope, and it's totally rocking. I'll share them soon :)

{3}

I'm off to Olive's party soon, but I still need to wrap her present, write her card and pack.....shouldn't take me that long. :) I probably won't be able to post tomorrow, due to the party, show, and dance, but I promise to post pics on Sunday.

Happy Weekend Everybody!

Hello Fall

Happy Autumnal Equinox everybody! (I said that to everybody in school today and they're all like 'Autumna-whata?') In other words, it's the first real day of fall! This makes Cornet Crazie happy. *psycho look* Now this is the really ironic thing: it's been like real fall weather the past few days. Sixties, mild, windy. very cool, very fall. And then there's today, the equinox, and it's EIGHTY degrees outside. Crazy!
Anyway, here's an update of what I've been doing:

I have my first tests tomorrow

I've had a couple French quizzes already, and a math quiz every day, but my first real tests or tomorrow in honors bio and geometry. I've been studying a lot so I think I'm ready.

We have a full marching band show

At practice on Monday we finished our show! (it wasn't complete before) We did a run-through of the whole production at the end and it was AWESOME. I can't wait for this week's show, which is a three hour drive away!

I'm running for Class Vice President

The winner will be announced on Friday morning and I'm really excited!!!!

Ahh....I love fall. It makes me happy :)

Plus I'm liking this fall better then last year's so far. Remember last year? Asthma attacks, balancing field hockey and marching band, not great teachers, swine flu...

And there's only a couple months until it'll have been one year since I got my pro horn.

Now that's something to be happy about :)

The New Routine

After four days of high school, I'm really starting to get it.

Leaving at seven, first block starting at 7:30, school getting out at 1:50, catching the bus home, diving into my homework for most of the evening, (usually broken up by an activity such as trumpet lesson, bell choir, or marching band) and then crashing on my bed by 9:30. 

And today, my backpack weighed SO MUCH.

I had 4 binders, 1 homework organizer, 2 thousand page, hardcover, 15 lb each textbooks, 1 pencil case, 1 paperback copy of Of Mice And Men, and my planner. It was heavy!

But the nice desk I made this summer works great! As shown above, it's great for storing my binders and textbooks,

And I do seem to this miscellany corner where lucky pencils, earrings, coasters, bobby pins and my cactus end up...

And as it's a desk, it's perfect for doing homework! (which we have a ridiculous amount of)

I like most of my classes, I really do! I made a copy of it in Acorn with comments so you could see:

 So the biology is an honors sophomore class.

World history and English are CP courses, but I'm doing this thing called 'honors challenge' and so if I pass with that it goes on my transcript as an honors class.

French II is the sophomore class; I took French I last year.

Geometry (Math II) is a sophomore class too, because I took Algebra (Math I) last year. I get honors credit for this too!

So that's that. That's high school.

*pictures taken in photobooth and are not my highest quality*

Just a quick post...

So I don't have a lot of time because I'm in workshop (study hall) and school gets out in 11 minutes but oh well. This will be quick.

Today was a good Friday. We had two subs.... :P but it wasn't that bad. In fact- I strongly preferred our science sub to our regular teacher! Haha.

But there were no band classes for me, so sadness....

After school I've got a pizza party with all the jazz members from this year...and 8th graders all get special awards. And they are HILARIOUS. I can't wait to see which one I got!

Another great thing is that our laptops were supposed to be taken away today but there was a change of plan and they are really being taken away on Monday. :)

So I guess I'll wrap up this sloppy, choppy post and I promise I'll post something better either later tonight or tomorrow morning.

See ya!

*note to self* pick up 8th grade social permission slip in office after school.....

My life is CRAZY!!!

Insane. Crazy. Whatever you wanna call it- that's my life. This will be a kinda random post about what's happened since my last post.

The first two days of spirit week have gone well! Tomorrow is 'grade color day' and the eighth graders have to wear gray and purple. Blah.....boring colors.

So this morning when I woke up (at 5:30 as usual) I rolled out of bed when I wasn't really awake yet- and I slammed my head on my doorframe. Just lovely. And painful.

Science class is driving me INSANE. He treats us like we're 3rd graders. I mean, honestly! We're in 8th grade, we shouldn't be watching Bill Bye movies all the time!

In math class our final big grade is our toothpick bridge project. My friend Liam and I are a team and we began building our supports today. We've got a really strong design :)

Band sounded really good today especially our LoTR medley. And I got a solo in chorus! I'm so excited for the concert- it's in exactly ONE WEEK!!!!!!

On a relative topic, after band I had to figure out some logistics of the song I'm conducting (solos, background parts, cuing, etc.) with Mrs Barry and I think I've got it down now; which is good. Conducting at a concert is gonna be fuuuuuuunnnnn.

And I filmed for my French skit today, and I went to a trumpet lesson, and I did some homework and now I'm eating dinner. Good night to you all. 

To My Sometimes Annoying Brain-

Dear Brain,

Yes, I love you dearly. I truly would be nothing without you. However, to put it bluntly, you can really get on my nerves sometimes. Sorry. It's not that I don't appreciate all that you do for me, it's just that when you keep speaking 'textbook' language to me when I'm trying to play my trumpet. Unfortunately, you've been speaking 'textbook' quite a lot today. Can't remember? Well, you know how you've been stuck on memorizing all those verbs for the past couple of weeks? I love getting hundreds on all my verb blasts, but don't you think that chanting 'nous avons, vous avez, nous avons, vous avez' over and over while I'm trying to concentrate on other stuff is going a bit far? And all these strange facts and notes to self that you keep flying past me. The Battle of Midway was the turning point for the Pacific front in World War II, pH scale- percentage of hydrogen scale (defines base or acid) 0-3: Strong Acid, 4-6: Weak Acid, 7: Neutral, 8-10: Weak Base, 11-14:Strong Base. Turn a trinomial (sometimes called polynomial) into a binomial by factoring down- make sure to have +/- signs correct! The theme of the first chapter of Mein Kampf was that Hitler had a great opposition to being a civil servant. Can't you see how this might drive me totally insane? I'm going utterly bananas. So would you mind going off of overdrive for the time being? You will probably thank yourself for it in the end.

My Kindest Regards,

Cornet Crazie

A Rap Song For A Post

Doing this a little differently today...a rap song about my day for my post! This should be interesting...

So the day started out

With a little of jazz,

But Mrs Barry said the mallet part

Lacked pizazz.

So I switched to trombone,

And she liked that better,

But then I was late to French class;

Don't do that ever! 

Then we had science testing,

All throughout the morning.

And won't lie,

It was very, very, boring!

With period four,

Comes my best class: band.

Where we play lots of music,

A trumpet in my hand.

Lunch was fun,

Eating salsa and chips,

But then it's back to science testing,

Question about an eclipse.

Finally we had free reading,

And I finished my book,

And then I ran off to chorus,

Where we do not learn to cook.

So that was my day at school.

First Softball Games and Marching Band

Ohhhhhh I am aching ALL over. We had our first softball games today (A double header) and we lost them both. The first one was awful, 21-4, but the second one was better, 8-6. All and all not the best games, but oh well. My shoulder hurts, and I am ready for some olive and green pepper pizza for dinner!!!!

Other news is that our first marching practice for the parade is tomorrow morning from 9-10:30. I get to miss my very *favorite* classes, Social Studies and Science! (I really hope that you caught the sarcasm there...) The forecast is calling for scattered thunderstorms tomorrow...not during practice!!!!!!

Anyway, that's about it, just don't forget to join in with the blog parade fun! (by the way, the questions should be answered on your blog :D )

A Post of Many Topics

First I'll say sorry for not posting yesterday- Je regrette, mes amies!

Now the weather has been awful strange today. It's rained, a few minutes ago, the wind was gusting like crazy, it's been perfectly sunny and warm, and (so my mom says) there was a short snow squall. (I wouldn't know 'cause I did tons of work in school today)

Anyway, another thing that happened today was that our band director announced section leaders for the Memorial Day Parade. The section leaders are always 8th graders, and well, they lead their section. There are two (usually a boy and a girl) for each section plus one head section leader who oversees everything and does anything the band director tells them to do...to quote Mrs Barry "Immediately, or sooner." As it turns out, My good friend Super Gato is a section leader in the trumpets and another good friend Bella will be co-leading the flutes. And I got quite a surprise when I learned that I was the head section leader! Super cool...I'm really excited.

Finally I should really go because I've got homework to do...starting with science. We have to do these things called Earthweek's every week. This is the topic that I picked this week (they are all about this length, or shorter from www.earthweek.org)

''Pigeons seem to use a flexible system of leadership while choosing what direction to fly, in which every bird in the flock gets a vote, but status determines who are more likely to lead and who are followers. Scientist from Oxford University and Hungary’s Eötvös University fitted the birds with tiny GPS backpacks to plot their movements.
The team then measured shifts in the flight direction of each bird five times a second, documenting changes in direction and altitude among birds in the flock to determine which initiated any given change in direction and which followed.
Analysis revealed that there are well-defined hierarchies and ranks of leadership that determine which birds have the most influence.
Writing in the journal Nature, the researchers said they couldn’t tell if rank was determined by simple motivation or through inherited levels of navigation skills.
They say they also found that a bird's position in the flock matched its rank in the hierarchy, with individuals nearer the front more likely to be responsible for choosing which direction to fly."

Now I ask you this. How do I summarize this in a whole typed page?

A conversation

Elránia and I are in Science right now, and we're all done with our work so we'll have a little conversation here. I'll be in blue and she'll be in dark purple.

Science class is sooo boring........ AHHHHHHHHHH

*SHHHH!!!!* Mr Carter is right behind us!

i can't wait to find out if we made it into our school's talent show!

ME TOO! That's the first place I'm going tomorrow morning. To see the results!

NO, we actually don't find out until Thursday

WHAT?!?!?!? Did I totally blank out, or was I in jazz band?

you were in jazz band hitting malets, or however you spell that. mallets. 

That's TRAINING jazz. Friday mornings. Today was performance jazz so it was just sailing away on the high notes instead.

has it ever occurred to you that everyone seems to be bored silly in science class?

Yep, many times, but for goodness sake, *SHHHHHH!*

*giggles* oh yeah, right. I can't wait for band sectional! I'd better get the solo...

HEY! There's Mrs. Barry now! She just walked in the room!

LOL she just saw us typing and gave me a strange look :)

THE Mrs. Barry look. Oh well.......it's too bad we can never keep a straight face.

Yup. This should be an interesting sectional, wonder what she'll say to us.

If you ask me, it'll be a pretty boring one....

quizzes. oh yeah. i didn't practice, but somehow I always manage to do fine in band

Yep. I'm glad I took it early. Although I'm probably going to retake it. I couldn't go fast enough because I was too worried that my trombone slide would go flying across the room!

i love the piece 'enchanted'. it's so cool! and i want the first solo

I know! I *love* that song. At the beginning I see an image of a girl walking through the woods and  she's very frightened. Then when the tempo picks up it's like a witch comes out of nowhere and it's a heart racing chase through the woods. And then when it gets all dreamy it's like the witch caught the girl and is enchanting her until the very end with that last triange beat the witch casts the final spell and the girl dies.

That's what I picture too! in the middle of the piece I hear the Galadriel theme song.

Cool! Well, it's time to wrap up, cause it's almost time for sectional Bye!

Yawn....

Boy am I tired. Let me go through the day with you:

Got to school wicked early (6:40ish) because I had forgotten my French homework, so I had to go do that.

Training jazz band, with intense piano parts.

French, which was fun :)

Social Studies doing more research on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and trial.

Science, where we  watched yet another boring video on the evolution of the Earth.

Gym, where I ran 2 1/2 miles

Lunch, where I ate everything in sight because I was hungry after all that running.

A math class that was tiring on my brain.

LA where I finally submitted my DuPont competition essay (Grand Prize is $20,000 and a trip to Disney!)

Band, great as always

Report Cards, let's not discuss it.

And then a performance jazz rehearsal from 2:15-4. But we got pizza after so......yeah.

And now we are going to a high school basketball game that I don't really want to go to because I just wanna relax for heaven's sake!

Why do my post all seem to be before 6 in the morning?

:P................ I just realized that almost every weekday my posts are before or just after 6 o'clock in the morning. Eeks. That's a lot of early posts. I guess it's just due to the fact that I have other things to do when I get home. Homework, reading, writing, IM-ing. (No I sadly can't IM people while on blogger because my blogger gmail is different than my personal one)

Things I know are happening today:

The principal at the high school is coming over to talk to us. ALREADY! We'll get to know what classes we can take and so forth and I'll certainly post about my prospects after school! I'm glad this is happening during Social Studies and maybe a bit of Science, 'cause I am fed up with that Murder in Mississippi stuff.

2nd concert review. Did our chorus one yesterday, band one scheduled for today. :P Only part of band I really don't like. Didn't mind them so much at the beginning but this is my 7th band one and I'm getting sick of answering the same questions after EVERY concert. Seriously. It gets on my nerves.

Training jazz this morning. Oh how I LOVE those 45 minutes before school on Fridays. Always one of the best parts of the week. So what if I'm one of 2 8th graders there? So what if the wind players are just learning jazz and some new notes? So what if I'm way too good to be in it? I don't care. I'm in performance for the challenge. I'm in training because it's fun and I can just go around and play basically anything in the rhythm section that I want. It's wicked fun.....

Today's Slightly Interesting Classes

Sitting in workshop and there's really nothing to do so I guess I'll just write about my classes today :)

Got to school at 7:35, threw everything into my locker and promptly went to the band room. There, Bella and Queen of the Bass Clef hung out talking and helping Mrs Barry get set up for the day before the bell rang. Fun, and it's really good to e helpful to your band director during concert week because they get reeeeeally stressed out. :)

First class of the day was French (Bonjour, mon amis!) and we had fun just telling about our weekends. Tomorrow we get back to work conjugating verbs. Next was Social Studies where we began to watch another 'R' rated movie. It's pretty funny that the 2 'R' rated movies I've seen have been in Social Studies class! (Of course they relate to the subject at hand, we watched 'Glory' last year when we were leaning about the Civil War and today we began 'Murder in Mississippi' because we are learning about the civil rights movement of the '60's)

Science wasn't that bad today. Elránia and I were lab partners doing a little light experiment. Not that bad. Also found out that not only is there Google Earth, but Google Moon, Google Mars, and Google Sky. SOOOOO COOL!!!

After Science was Band!!!! Woot woot! just worked on all our pieces for he concert. C'est trés bonne! Fantastique! (Sorry non French speakers, I'm trying to incorporate French into my speaking more)

Lunch was good, and after lunch I had Math where we reviewed for tomorrow's test, which was nice and then we worked on our research projects in LA. And finally, in workshop, I did this awesome post! YAY!!!!!!!!!

Welcome To Science Class.....

Welcome to science class! This week we will do a convection lab in which you will get water all over yourself....and all the notes you'd been taking throughout the lab. You'll probably have to redo them. In addition to that we will be each making a very cool heat transfer poster. It should be colorful and use LOTS of detail. You should have fun with this big project. It's due tomorrow. Finally don't forget your Earthweek that's due on Friday! Just write summaries of summaries! Don't you just love summarizing something that that has already been summarized? Only here's the catch: It must be at least a page long and it MUST be in ALL of your own words! Doesn't that sound fun? OK let's get ready to have a great week in Science!

Sorry 'bout that. I just HAD to. I, uh, really don't like science. And yeah, that's pretty much what happened this week. In a fun, sarcastic way.