Snowy Holiday

It snowed right before Halloween, and there was still snow on the ground on the night of the thirty-first. It sleeted on Veteran's Day. (Much to our dismay, as we had to march in it....) And then it snowed on Thanksgiving. If the trend stays, we'll have a white Christmas. (Speaking of Christmas.....the holiday playlist is up, and soon I'll host my annual carol contest- check back for that!) Or, as my luck usually goes, it will be green on Christmas. And if I'm REALLY unlucky, it will rain. That would be a jolly Christmas....NOT. 

Anyway, we got quite a lot of the white powdery stuff here in Vermont, and it made for some really nice picture taking. 

Of course, it isn't quite as pretty now, a lot has melted. It's ok though, because I'm heading home today and I'd rather not drive in a bunch of slush. Driving in slush is awful. I wonder how much snow we'll have at home.....probably not as much as here because we're on the coast, and Vermont is landlocked. Whatever the case, I hope it stays.
Did any of you get snow over the holiday?

Irene

Yesterday was an interesting day because of the hurricane, and as you can tell, we made it through OK, because here I am typing out this post :)

It actually wasn't too bad here all things considered. For one, it really didn't rain much at all. There were some spurts with heavy rain, and a lot of light showers, but the brook didn't flood and the marsh didn't flood, and the little hill that my house sits on didn't become an island, so that was good. It WAS really windy though! I was glad that we had moved all of the porch furniture and the badminton net and stuff because if they had been out there....they would be gone. It was actually pretty cool and a bit scary to see the trees across the street wave and bend, and our weeping willow became much more like a whipping willow if you ask me. Also a lot of people around us lost power but ours just flickered several times but didn't go out for more than 30 seconds. I guess we were lucky!

My mom and I were able to make it up to church in the morning which was nice, although there were NOT a lot of people there at all! No more than thirty, and that's streching it. Our church was actually one of the only ones that stayed open too.

I got another good chunk of homework done, just a little bit left for today and tomorrow...

And my friend Lucy decided to have a hurricane party with me and our friends Anna and Mackenzie. We ate a lot of junk food, especially brownies and doritos, and because we're marching band geeks we watched National Treasure. It was really entertaining even though I've seen it a couple times before because Lucy was talking the whole time, Anna was like "Shut up Lucy I've never seen this movie before and I wanna watch it" and Mackenzie and I payed close attention to the music and shouted things like 'OOOH!!!! That's like measure twenty-five in our opener!!!' Oh what marching band geeks we are...

Anyway, it was a pretty fun day all in all, and it is beautiful out today which means we'll be able to have rehearsal outdoors as planned- which is good.

How did those of you also in Irene's path fare?

Whirlwind

It certainly has seemed like a whirlwind this past week- hence my not posting which I apologize about. Must get better about that. Sorry. Anyway, there have been three big things happening this week.

The first is, of course, marching band. Naturally, I'm totally loving every second of it....well...not the seconds when my water bottle exploded but pretty much every other second. We have worked hard for several hours every day this past Monday-Friday usually around 4 to 9 in the evening. It's been a lot of fun to get back with the family (and oh what a crazy family we are) doing slides and flip-flops and jazz runs in advanced technique block, frantically memorizing music, marking and re-marking sets with chalk and soap, marching and playing and getting yelled at and singing and marching and getting yelled at again. It's been good. Really really good.

The second thing has been nowhere near as much fun. Summer homework. I've been working like crazy reading biographies, textbook chapters, articles, and novels, answering questions, doing reading logs and taking an AP practice exam. Thankfully, I am nearly done and should finish tomorrow or Monday. I have made great progress the past couple of days, for example I just sat down today and wrote a two and a half page essay on why John Brown was an influential person in American history.

Not cool.

Very very boring.

And finally, the hurricane. In a few hours Irene will strike my area, and who knows what's gonna happen then. As one of my friends posted on facebook today, 'I live in Maine! I should be worrying about moose attacks and blizzards, not hurricanes!'. Hurricanes are kind of odd for us out here, I mean we were supposed to be hit by Earl and Kyle last year but they both went out to sea, but Irene isn't going to do that. She's going to be tearing into here tonight, so tomorrow and Monday should be interesting. For those of you also on the East Coast where the hurricane has already hit or will hit, good luck and my prayers are with you! I will try and give you an update of how I am doing through the storm tomorrow, but if the power is out I'll have to wait on that :)

Um...Tornado?

Once upon a time I was obsessed with the weather.

I wanted to be a meteorologist when I grew up.

This no longer really appeals to me, but I do still check the weather often because it does change so rapidly around here. I'm always on the hour-by-hour forecast, especially in the winter when I'm trying to figure out whether I actually need to do my homework because the next day might be a snow day.

I use it all year round too though and I find it really helpful. 

In the summer I'm frequently checking the thunderstorm forecast map, and the severe alerts map, and sometimes the doppler radar, although not as much.

This morning, I heard there where going to be some thunderstorms tonight, and sure enough the hour by hour and thunderstorm map told me as such.

I was excited because I happen to enjoy these storms very much, although not the really really bad ones. 

I was sad today in English when we heard thunder, but the storm didn't actually come.

Anyway, so I was it a good mood through school, la-dee-da, I went to driver's ed, then went to my trumpet lesson, no storm yet, la-dee-da, and got home and sat down at the computer and checked weather.com. 

Hour-by-hour said thunderstorms.

It also said that I had a severe alert in my area. Thinking it was about the thunderstorm, I ignored it.

I checked the thunderstorm map.

OK, so severe thunderstorms. Alright, I can deal with that. Thunderstorms, no problem.

Next, I clicked the next bookmark on my nav bar to go to the severe alerts map.

OK weather.com, here's where we come to the problem. Those bright red rectangles there? Those are very scary rectangles.

They mean tornadoes.

And I don't like tornadoes at all.

I used to think they were really cool and awesome and still terrifying, but now they're just terrifying.

Long story short....I almost got run over by one at an amusement park on a band camp field trip last summer. Really scary. Pretty much something out of one of my nightmares. I do tend to have a lot of nightmares about tornadoes......and I'm always in the car and they just keep appearing everywhere and coming towards me....I can vividly picture about five different tornado dreams/nightmares. Eep. Anyhoo...the point here.

Thunderstorms. No tornadoes, k?

*UPDATE* no tornadoes yesterday....but we're still under tornado watch for today

Darkening Clouds

Methinks that a storm might just be on the way.

It's been muggy and hot all day, and a storm would actually be much appreciated. I enjoy thunderstorms so....yeah.

The clouds outside my window have been growing steadily darker ever since I got home from marching band and I thought that I would snap a few pics of them because they were pretty cool.

These pictures were all taken within a time span of like only five minutes and it's pretty crazy how much different the last ones are from the first ones :)

And they just keep getting darker and more and more keep coming. I can't see the blue sky any more!

It'll be like those great summer days where it's hot and humid all day and you can feel the storm hanging in the air, you can smell it....it's great.

I can feel that storm building, and it seems like weather.com agrees with me:

So ready for the storm :)

K is for Ka-boom!

K is for Ka-boom!

I woke up this morning to a great ka-boom. Correction. I woke up this morning to a bright flash of light which was then followed by a great ka-boom. In other words, our first thunderstorm of the year struck this morning. 

I really, really enjoy thunderstorms. For the most part. I did not like that this one prevented me from taking a shower this morning, for an example. I liked every other part about it though, and I enjoyed the one that rolled in during second block today. 

The day has most certainly been thunderstorm filled! We wanted our english teacher to turn off the lights in our classroom so it would be super cool and the lightning would be really bright and it would almost seem like the power was out. He said no, which made me sad. 

Both storms were pretty good though, but not great. They were certainly better than some with several lighting strikes and thunderclaps and heavy rain, but they weren't as intense as I like them.

See, I like them really intense.....without producing tornadoes. *shudders* Tornadoes are scary. I had a close encounter with one last year at band camp and eep! It was very very frightening!

Anyway, that's my annual post on how much I loooove my storms :)

AND it looks like there's another one rolling in around ten PM this evening.....YES! 

SnowDays

SNOW•DAY (n) 

1. A day you get out of school because of excessive amounts of snow.

Ex: I was really happy because today was a snowday.

As mentioned previously, we get a lot of snow up here (usually) during the winter. Just happens to be one of the perks of living here. (Although SHOVELING the snow is not an added bonus.)

Unfortunately, these past couple of years, though we've had good snow, it's come at un-opportune time.

On weekends,

Vacations,

During the day,

During the night....but stopping well before dawn....

We haven't had our share of good 'ole snow days, lately. 

I used to hate snow days. Now I love them.

Something about them makes you want to squeal with excitement and act like a little kid again.

Which is fun...I mean, when you have a snow day, you just HAVE to follow:

The Snow Day List

1. Squeal with excitement when you wake up and see lots of snow on the ground, and realize your parents turned you alarm clock off 'cause there's no school.

2. Don't go back to sleep but run around the house a couple times.

3. Eat breakfast slowly while playing video games with your brother.

4. After getting mad at your brother for always beating you, take your time and read the comics.

5. Beg and plead your parents to let you have a friend over- they always relent in the end.

6. When said friend is over, challenge your brother and his friend to some sort of competition whether it be on the Wii or a ping-pong challenge, etc.

7. Declare you will most certainly win, if you do, rub it in his face, if you don't, stick your tongue out at him. 

8. Eat something warm and yummy for lunch, like mac'n'cheese. 

9. Make popcorn for you and your friend and go upstairs to watch a movie.

10. After the movie, go downstairs and go outside to play. Say that your brother and his friend are welcome to join you, but hope that they won't.

11. Go outside and pelt each other with snowballs.

12. When your brother and his friend finally DO follow you outside, say your cold and go back inside. You don't want to have your face continuously pushed into a snowbank.

13. Make hot chocolate, and drink it quickly before your friend has to go home.

14. After she leaves go upstairs and blog about your awesome day so far.

15. Your shirt's still wet from outside so you take a warm shower and your mom yells at you for using up too much hot water.

16. Curl up by the fireplace with a good book, something that never gets tiring. Like Harry Potter.

17. Eat a nice warming dinner, preferably your favorite soup. 

18. Play games like Apples to Apples with your family.

19. When your parents say it's time for bed because you've had a busy day and you have school tomorrow, complain.

20. Go to bed and wish for tomorrow to be a snow day so you can do it all over again.

Yep :)

  

 

Can You Spell Blizzard?

BLIZZARD OF CHRISTMAS 2010

Breathtakingly beautiful,
Limits of its power? There are none.
Incredible, in every aspect.
Zealous in wreaking havoc to those it strikes,
Zapping its victims with wind, ice and snow.
Awesome, amazing, and astonishing.
Raw, brutal storm.
Dangerous and sometimes deadly.

The Blizzard Is A'Coming

First, I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas! I know I did. 

Now, we're getting ready for a doozy of a storm. Some of you living in New Jersey or the Carolinas may know what I'm talking about because this particular storm has probably already hit you.

Not snowstorm. Not flurries.

A good 'ole fashioned nor'easter.

BLIZZARD.

 Yesterday that said heavy snow with wind. Now, it says blizzard.

When this is yellow, it means severe, but not too bad. Orange is like medium. RED IS BAD.

And just look at this! They're expecting 10-16" of snow....guess Hannah Marie and I will be able to play out in the snow this week like we've hoping. If you live on the East Coast, why not share your story of this storm in a comment? It's sure to be a good one!

Meeting Earl

They say that Earl could be here any time between now and 4:30. In fact, looking out my bedroom window, I can see that he'll be here sooner rather then later. But Earl isn't a family friend, or someone I'm meeting for the first time. Earl is...a hurricane. And soon enough, we'll meet. Right now, this is what Earl is tracking as:

Still a hurricane when he hits us, not a tropical storm. 80mph winds. 80mph. That's windy!

It was all the talk at school yesterday. "Earl's coming." "Hurricane coming tomorrow!" "We won't have to evacuate, will we?"

But then again, we've known we might be hit for a while now.

We've known it's a fairly big storm, with a clear eye, or center. And if you don't know what a clear eye means, just check out this quote.

Sure, we are talking about Hurricane Andrew here in this quote, not Earl, and Earl is really no comparison to Andrew. But the eye is clear. It is still a serious storm.

But this is all in the past week. THIS is today.

"Hurricane Earl skirted North Carolina’s Outer Banks, with the eye of the storm staying 50 miles offshore. However, the Outer Banks were still hit hard by flooding and hurricane force winds.  Some local highways were closed, scattered power outages reported, and at least 400 people spent the night in shelters.

Now, Earl is moving towards New England.  Millions more people could be affected by this storm."

The hurricane is coming, that's for sure. The wind has been picking up just as I type this. We can expect Earl, very, very soon.

Pain, Tornadoes, And Other (More Cheerful) Points of Interest

Hey everyone! I'm back! (Well, of course I am! I'm writing this post, aren't I?) I missed you guys so much over the past week and there were several moments when I really, really, wanted to post about something- but I didn't have a computer, :( , so I guess I just have to squeeze it all into one big post!

From the title, you may conclude that my week may not have been very good, but on the contrary, (aside from a few things) band camp was excellent! I'll start with the topic of the music.

I'd been working on my audition pieces for the concert band and jazz band since May, so even though I was nervous going into the audition, I was not a complete wreak or anything. Anyway, it went super well, and I ended up getting second chair in concert band and second chair in the top jazz band! (You might remember that it was my goal to get 1st or 2nd chair in both) I was soooo happy. That meant I would be playing the first part (in concert band) and if their were any solos/duets I would have a really good shot at them. There did end up being a duet in our second song in concert band that I got to play with another trumpeter from my school, and it went really well. All the songs were really fun to play in both jazz and concert band and it was awesome playing the top first parts in everything! (Although {and this is the pain part} everything was *super* high and so my face hurt SO bad!)

Now, that's the music summary, and here's a story:

It was Tuesday night and I could not sleep at all. Evidently, camp food was making me rather sick. I finally drifted off around 4am, but I missed all the rehearsals on Wednesday because I was still sick. (sadness) By the evening however, I was feeling reasonably OK, so I was able to accompany the rest of the camp to Funtown. (You probably remember this place from when my 8th grade band went) anyway, we got there at around 5:30 and started having fun! I couldn't eat anything or go on many rides, but I still was having a good time. It was a beautiful day! It was warm and there weren't many clouds; the only thing to make it better would have been if I was feeling better.

I was on the bumper cars with a bunch of other camp kids and the ride was about to start when the camp director whips out his iPhone, checks the Doppler radar and says "There's a tornado warning in {insert name that campus is in}."  (in my state, tornadoes are, like, terrible storms that never come near us.) Anyway, after hearing this news I'm a little edgy, and some of us go off for food. We're eating and drinking out sodas, and talking when the thunder begins. (As a side note- through this whole experience I am furiously texting my parents, because things are starting to get a little freaky...) At first it's just a little rumble here and there, a booming sound in the background. But after about twenty minutes or so, there's a little flash of lightning. Through texts, I've found out that there's a really big storm heading towards us; all red on the Doppler. Counselors are talking urgently on cell phones, while the rumbles and flashes become less random. Finally we all end up under a large tent covering one of the picnic areas. I'm looking out over the parking lot were the clouds are boiling in the sky- black and as ominous as death. I try to breathe deeply and relax but it's impossible with the given climate. There are several tornadoes that have touched down. One went really close to campus, so they had to close it down. And the scariest of all- There are tornadoes coming towards us. Everything is getting so intense and scary, I just want to be at home, or at least back in my dorm room, but we're not even on the buses yet! The mega storm is about to strike when a Funtown employee comes barreling around a conner screaming "CODE BLACK! CODE BLACK! EVACUATE FUNTOWN! THERE ARE TORNADOES; GET YOUR KIDS OUT OF HERE!!!!" It was pretty crazy. We ran like crazy to the buses and as soon as we got in it was upon us. The rain came down so hard it was like we were at the bottom of a lake. The thunder was constantly there, and the lightning continuous. I was so afraid that a tornado was going to come out of nowhere and run us all over. I prayed so hard, and somehow, amazingly, it narrowly missed us, and the storm passed over. We drove back and stayed in safe place until we could go up to our dorm rooms. We didn't have power, but that didn't matter. We were safe.


And that, my friends, was my extremely frightening Wednesday evening. 


Tomorrow I've got a long tag from Izori, Olive Tree, Elrania, and Bella and sometime this coming week I do have a post that I'd like to do on a couple cool reflections I had this past week. have a wonderful evening!

a taste of summer

I. Hate. Global. Warming. Just saying. It's global warming that brought us an early spring (which I don't mind) and also the uncomfortable weather today. I didn't even know what it was supposed to be like today, but lets just say that I'm glad I wore shorts instead of jeans and put my hair up! I walked outside at 7:20 this morning to leave for school and the humidity hit me. I didn't check the thermometer in the kitchen when I left, but even so early in the morning it was over 70º!!! And it went worse from there. The heat in school was awful, but not as bad as it was outside, and we couldn't open windows because it only made it hotter. Breathing became difficult because of the humidity; it was like up were choking on air, and the air itself felt solid. The auditorium was the best place because it is so big and open, but marching practice was torture. Breathing was bad within itself, but playing an instrument???? I never thought I'd say it but.....I wish we hadn't had band today, just because of the weather. Plus I was having extra problems because of my asthma. :P So I'm waiting for the giant storm that with break this spell, but I don't think it's going to happen for a few days. Yay....

Also I have a prayer request: My grandfather has been battling cancer since last summer and he's not doing particularly well right now, if you could please keep him in your thoughts.

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 )

C'mon. It's APRIL. You've got to be kidding.

It's April. APRIL. And it's been above 80º all day. Craaaazy! The warm weather made me remember how much I love summer! An only 41 school days until it'll really feel like summer. Cause I'll be free and on vacation! Anyway, I really hope this great weather holds, because I'm enjoying it. My French teacher's plant is growing stronger, the grass on the ball field is a lush green, it's 4th quarter, but still. I'm stuck inside taking notes on various subjects all day. Yuck. And speaking of school, I am finding that my classes seem to becoming awfully repetitive. So every day I am going to log what we did in each class. (I'll be excluding the following classes because it's OK to be a bit repetitive cause they serve different purposes: Gym, Chorus, Band. They will be included with just the name though) Here's today's:

French- Went over what will be on our quiz on Friday and did participation points

Social Studies- Listened to teacher review previous notes, and then took more notes

Science- Took more notes

-Gym-

-Lunch-

Math- Did worksheet

Language Arts- Had third day of preparation for job shadowing. This was actually quite fun. Can't wait to get back to regular class on Friday. *rolls eyes*

What I really can't wait for is to see the results after several days and compare to see if they are really as repetitive as they seem! Also, I've noticed lots of comments lately and I've greatly enjoyed reading your thoughts. I'm glad that you've found them enjoyable!

well. i got my thunderstorm.

I went into first period French class yesterday looked out the window and took a deep breath. "I think it's going to thunderstorm!" Was my exclamation. Bella was pretty excited too, and we hoped that it would happen during school. I've got some great school-thunderstorm stories from where the power gets all knocked out, and these are like *huge* storms and the supposedly 'tough kids' are the ones screaming their heads of and anyway.....that's another post. Well it got more and more clouded over but it only rained. :'( When I picked my brother up from his school though, the clouds were definitely storm warners. I was pretty happy because I love thunderstorms. We have this great wrap-around porch which is very fun to sit on during them. But what I don't like is when they come in the middle of the night, while your truly is trying to sleep. You see, I can sleep through thunder- but not lightning. So the storm decided to come at 2 o'clock in the morning, and that is why I am now tired. LOL.