Under the very same sun at the very same time

2003-10-14 - 3:06 p.m.

So I've been thinking a lot about NaNoWriMo lately. I think I've finally got a fairly decent plot idea for my story. I also just heard that the Nanoers in the Sacramento area are going to have a kick-off party at the end of October. I was thinking it would be fun to go. But then, of course, I remember I'm me. I can't go to a party where I don't know anybody! How scary is that? I mean, come on, I'm so not outgoing I rarely even leave messages in people's guestbooks here in Diaryland. So I was thinking about who I could bring with me and I re-discovered that I know no one in this area who would be interested in such a thing as NaNoWriMo. Are any of you out there participating in NaNoWriMo?

Just this morning I was laying in bed thinking about how much I sucked at English in high school. Don't ask me why I was thinking about that. But just a few minutes ago I was searching for a particular file I've misplaced and I came across a floppy disk full of old letters I'd written to friends. I decided to read a few of these letters and the first one I read was written when I was a sophomore in high school. I was talking about how my English teacher read my essay exam answer out loud to the class as an example of what he was looking for from everyone. In that same class we would occasionally have contests where we would write short-stories and then print them out without our names on them and everyone would read everybody else's and then vote on which one we liked best and apparently mine got voted as best in the class. I have absolutely no recollection of either of these events taking place. But I know I wouldn't have lied in the letter. So maybe I was better at English class than I remember. I can definitely say I never enjoyed English, though. When I was a junior in high school my school switched to block scheduling, meaning that we had four classes for a semester in which we learned a year's worth of stuff and then the next semester we had four new classes. Prior to then we just had seven classes that lasted all year long. When I was a senior in high school someone decided that AP English could not be taught in just one semester, so if anyone wanted to take AP English we had to take two semesters which would be like taking two years. I hated English and had no intention of majoring in anything in college that would require AP English so I decided not to do it. The only problem was that in my school they only offered AP English or bonehead English. So I took bonehead English senior year while all my friends took AP English. Seriously, mostly we played cards and watched "The Price is Right" in that class. Also, of all my high school friends, I was the only one who wasn't involved in either newspaper or yearbook. So maybe that's why I was thinking I was horrible at English.

In another letter I was a college freshman very excited about my brand new computer. Apparently it had a 166 megahertz processor as opposed to my old one that only had 44. Yeah, the new computer also came with 32 megabytes of memory and a whopping 1.7 gig hard drive. Can you imagine? My god, I grew up in the stone age.

Well, today I, once again, didn't do much. I put gas in my car not so much because it needed it but because I had nothing else to do and it was a reason to get out of the house. I also dropped by the post office. My family recently signed up for Netflix. Right now we're in the middle of watching "Shogun" because I wanted to see it after having read the book. It's a mini-series that was made for TV in 1980, but it's still good. And Gimli is in it! Yeah, the guy who plays the dwarf in Lord of the Rings. Also today I washed my car and raked leaves in the backyard. I raked up enough to fill our whole "green" can. Then I called the Washington Board to see what's up. Turns out my applications for the NAPLEX and MPJE haven't been sent yet due to some oversight. So now they are on their way. OK, the ball is rolling again.

And just for those of you who are in need of some mild amusement, you can help this little dude save his world!