All Sorts of Exciting Things Going On!

Today is just a day of accomplishment! I went outside and took these pictures of my dad's garden, and then compiled them on an MS Paint page! Granted, it's not the best one out there, but I figured out how to do it, so I get a point!

While we're at it, let's go through the week...

I took my driver's test on Tuesday. I wasn't terribly nervous on the way there. When my mom and I got to the DMV, I started to get just a little edgy-- more so from anticipation than from nervousness. It was okay until I got to a little spot like this:

Okay, so you’re that little red car on the bottom in lane three. The Driving Test Administrator tells you to turn left. Which lane do you have to get into?

If you said, “Go to lane one!” you’re absolutely correct! Do you want to know what I did? That’s right. I stayed in lane three… stupid, stupid… I knew I did something wrong, but I knew it after I did that something stupid. Oh well.

Do you want to know something though? I’m kind of glad that I didn’t pass the first time. I was talking to my dad that night when I got home, and he was saying that more people should fail their first time (or something like that). That way there would be fewer horrible drivers out on the roads endangering other people. So I guess for now, I’m one of those slightly dangerous drivers, and I should be prevented from driving by myself (for now) by keeping my permit. My new date is November 11, so hopefully everything goes just swimmingly then! I know what I did wrong, so now I can work on those things.

That same Tuesday, we started a project in French class. Our job is to go to the Mac lab (the computer lab filled with Mac computers) and make a music video to a French song in iMovie. I can tell you what song I’m making a music video for. I can also tell you what kind of music video. Did this last statement confuse you ever so slightly? Never fear. Answers are on their way. My song is ‘Dernière Danse’ by Kyo (they are absolutely amazing!) and my music video is going to be in the style of a Stop-Motion film.

I’ve never done a Stop-Motion film before. I now realize what a huge endeavor I am pursuing. I will tell you why. Since I haven’t started taking pictures yet, I was merely experimenting with how exactly I would accomplish this project. I did a few Google searches and found out how to start. The article was quite helpful. If you’re interested in trying this yourself, click here to get an idea as to how!

Any way, I did the math while in the computer lab. I wanted to know how much work was going to be involved in this. Each picture that I take is going to last .1 (one tenth) of a second. ‘Dernière Danse’ lasts for 3:49. That’s 60+60+49 which equals 169 seconds. Time ten, that’s 1,690 pictures. Hmm… I think I did my math wrong and added another minute, which put me to 2,290 pictures. Both are quite a daunting number of pictures to take, but the second number that I got is actually quite a relief! I’m really quite excited. I have to get everything done by Tuesday so that I can put all of those pictures in iMovie and then my French teacher can help me export it to QuickTime. Since it’ll be in QuickTime, I’ll try and put it on my jump drive so that I can come home, upload it to YouTube (because the school district bans YouTube and all things awesome), then I can put my finished project up on this blog for your viewing pleasure! Now we have something to look forward to (or not… whatever applies!).

I got Sadie Hawkins tickets this week! It was really a relief. They tend to run out pretty quickly if you’re not careful and get a move on. But Jack and I have them and we’re all set for another fun time! It’s next Friday, and we (along with everyone else that’s going) are pretty darn excited!

This week was also my friend Teo’s birthday! To celebrate, I made him enormous cupcakes (so big that the batter I had could only make about seven or eight of them as opposed to 12 standard sized ones). There was just one teeny-tiny problem: Bike to School Day just happened to occur on the same day. There was no way that I was missing out on getting one of those little green stickers that say, ‘I Biked,’ so I put the cupcakes in a food transportation unit and put them in my basket on the front of my bike. Everything was fine. They seemed to stick to the pan in their wonderful, sticky, deliciousness. As I soon found out, those poor little cupcakes weren’t invincible… I went over one uneven part of the sidewalk and they all fell upon each other. It was the most sad thing that I had seen all day… and the day had just started… Teo still liked the cupcakes, but I felt bad that I couldn’t get them to unstuck from each other without messing them up further.

I finished my PSAT/SAT prep class! Now I just have to sign up somewhere so I can put that newly acquired knowledge to the test!

This weekend, I’ll be working on my Stop-Motion video, reading a little, recuperating from my cold (this thing is killing me… I’m a bit of a Zombie right now because I’m so tired and I can’t breathe… complaining over…). I’ve also found a recipe for apple muffins, so I’m going to wash my hands really, really well and gargle in Lysol, then I’m going to attempt to make them. But of course, that all depends on how everything else is going.

So now, I’ll leave you with some wonderful pictures that I took before the sun went down today. It was a beautiful day today. It got to be 85 degrees Fahrenheit—in October!

Have a good weekend everyone!

--Jude

P.S. I also have a concert next week on Thursday! If I know you personally, and you happen to be in town and are interested, send me an email and I'll be happy to give you details!