Allergies and Other Stuff

Well this past Saturday I got the results back from my allergy blood test. The day before I had been completely freaking out cause the doctor had called and said for me to avoid all nuts, and I was guessing that meant peanuts. (If you don't already know I absolutely loooove peanut butter. It is one of the best foods ever. Okay I can stop now :) Anyway, the next day I got the actual results back. Cashews, of course, were off the chart, and I also found out I am highly allergic to almonds as well. But I am not allergic at all to pecans, walnuts, or peanuts. You can guess I was pretty ecsatic when I found out that peanuts were okay. The only problem is that my bro is highly allergic to peanuts, so we can never keep it in the house. I was pretty sad about this since right after I found out I wasn't allergic to peanuts I really felt like getting into some peanut butter. Turns out, the next day our church had a Memorial luncheon and some wonderful angel brought peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. (I have not had one of those for a year or more probably.) I'll be forever in that person's debt. haha.

Well I hope everyone is having a great very relaxing Memorial Day. We aren't doing anything special, but relaxing doing nothing is okay with me anytime. :) Unfortunately, I have to do a tad bit of math this afternoon (I have to work through some kind of algebra 1 honors program we never got done in the regular year.) But hey at least we only have to do it twice a week. If it was more than that I might have to rebel. :)

Time Flies

Well my grandparents left this morning after spending almost an entire week with us while our parents were gone on a retreat. (Time really does fly. This week just sped by) We had a great time just relaxing, playing awesome games like Connect Four (which I can sometimes stink at), and last night we bought Night at the Museum on paperview. It was a hilarious movie and if you haven't seen it you should. It is really really good. Also during this week I've gotten a lot of reading done, and since I don't really have anything else to say about my life I thought I'd mention some of these books.

First I read a quaint book from the early 1900's (I think) entitled What Katy Did Next which was about a girl traveling to England with a woman and her daughter. I admit it got a bit boring at times due to the very loong descriptions, (it described almost every little detail about every place that they went) but it was still pretty good. Then I read a murder mystery called Angel's Gate which is about a miner who was murdered and the mystery surrounding his death and his two children who supposedly run wild around the countryside. It was very interesting, but a bit odd at times. Currently I'm reading a book called Annie which is based on the true story of the Rowlands family who sailed from England to America immediately following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The book moves a little bit slow at times, but is still very entertaining and enjoyable.

Well I am greatly looking forward to next week due to the fact that there is absolutely nothing coming up. Hopefully I won't get too lazy over this summer. :) That's it for now.

Book Review

Here is a review for the novel "The Mysterious Benedict Society" by Trenton Lee Stewart.

This book centers around an orphan, Reynie Muldoon, who takes a number of special tests for gifted children. After just managing to pass three puzzling and extremely complicated tests, Reynie meets Kate Wetherall, and George "Sticky" Washington (two other children who passed.) Later on, they travel to a strange old house to meet Mr. Benedict, a very intelligent gentleman who send the children along with a fourth child, Constance Contraire, on a very dangerous mission. Strange and dangerous messages have been transmitted by children throughout the world, and Reynie and his friends must travel to the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened; the school where the dangerous messages seem to be coming from. They must pose as students to attempt to thwart the scheme of the evil genius in charge of the school, before the messages begin to overpower the world.

This story surprised me as it had a very interesting plot and the characters were very endearing. The whole message concept, however, was a bit confusing at times and some of the finer points of the story weren't exactly the clearest. Still, I personally enjoyed it and I had it read in three days cause I simply couldn't put it down at times! I'm giving this book 3 3/4 stars out of five.

Random Things

Here are a few random things that have happened lately around here:

*Yesterday was the day I have been waiting for for two years and three months. I got my braces off. *screams exuberantly* I have to say it is one of the best feelings in the world being able to rub your tongue over your teeth again. Never take that for granted folks. :) For a few hours I enjoyed the freedom of having absolutely nothing on my teeth. Then I had to go get the retainers that I have to wear for one year. They're a bit uncomfortable, but I do get to take them off to eat and brush and all that. They're kind of a hassle, but hey at least the braces are gone.

*Yesterday was also the day that I finished my freshman year of high school. It's hard to believe another school year has come and gone. I had to take one very stressful math exam yesterday plus a big science test. I'm done now, however, and am completely free! We are getting out wayy earlier than we usually do. (The schools here aren't getting out till June 8th.) But hey you don't see me complaining. :) Also my grandparents are coming in on Saturday, so I'm very excited about that as well.

Well that's all for now.

Tests, Tests, Tests

Unfortunately yesterday I had to go to the allergist due to my horrible reaction I had last month. (If you didn't read my blog about that I reacted to half a cashew sometime last month.) It took us over an hour to get there and when we finally did get there I discovered I had to take two allergy tests. What fun. The first one was a skin test where they put different samples of things I might be allergic to on my back. I didn't see it myself, but my brothers were tempted to play a game of tic-tac-toe on my back. Obviously it must have looked a tad bit strange. (They didn't test nuts on that test though cause they thought it might be too dangerous to do that.) So anyways I found out I'm pretty allergic to dust and to certain types of fish. I can live with that (I despise most kinds of fish with a passion). I'm just glad I didn't turn up allergic to chocolate or milk or I might not have been able to go on living. :) just kidding but it would have been pretty tough.

Then I had to go the lab for the *dun dun dun* blood test which is extremely not fun. (This test was for the nuts) For one thing the lady that was doing me could simply not find a vein on me to draw blood from (I must have really small veins.) She kept asing me, "Do you drink a lot of water?" and I'm thinking "Well yesterday I drank two and a half bottles of the stuff. Is that enough for you?" :) So anyways she finally found one and boy when she pricked it in it sure hurt. But luckily I didn't pass out or anything like that and it actually wasn't half as bad as I thought. So the results will be back in a few days and if it turns out I'm allergic to peanut butter....you don't want to know how I'm going to feel about that. :)

Well I had to take a massive history test today. It was somewhere around five pages long and was pretty darn tough if I say so myself. :) It also had an essay question on it which I didn't particularly enjoy, but I got through the whole test in about an hour which was pretty good I guess. :) I'm just waiting for my mom to grade it, and hopefully I won't see a big F- or something like that. Now that would be some kind of nightmare. :)

Thank Goodness It's Friday

Well the last few days have been a bit on the busy side for me, so I'm definitly looking forward to a relaxing weekend. Yesterday I was forced to take the standardized tests (even though we're homeschooled I still have to take them.) The vocabulary test was a bit harder than I thought it would be. In fact, about 30 minutes after I had taken the test I realized that I had for sure missed one ,because a word I had to give a definition for on the test, turned up in a book I was reading. It was then that I realized its true meaning. *sigh* Oh well. Hopefully that was the only one I missed on that one. :) The reading comprehension test wasn't too bad, but extremely boring in every possible way. There was a very ridiculous poem about some kind of plant that I had to answer questions about, and trust me it was no piece of fun. (I'm not a big poetry fan if you haven't already guessed.) After I got through the rest of the language test, I had to face the math section which I had been dreading for a good while. Two years ago when I took the math part I completely panicked and instead of thinking through things, I got freaked out whenever I saw a problem I couldn't figure out almost instantly. Luckily this year the math section was much much easier. In fact, I feel more confident about that one than the language part, (and for me that's saying something. :) The only problem is one of the choices for each math problem (it's a multiple choice test) is "none of the above". Cruel huh? *sigh* I got through it though, and now we're just waiting for the results.

This afternoon I helped out with a food distrubution process at our church. (Our church gets together boxes of food and sells them to the community at a cheap price.) Right now my fingertips are freezing from touching all those refrigerated foods, and my arms and legs are pretty dang exhausted from running back and forth and packing all those boxes. But hey I still enjoyed it and I was able to eat a doughnut which I only get about once a millenium. Okay more like once or twice a year, but still. It was the Krispy Kreme type with sprinkles, moist bread, chocolate frosting that melts in your mouth...Okay I'll stop there. :) Anyways, hope you've had a great week and hope you have a nice mother's day weekend. All I have left to say is... Thank goodness it's Friday.

Church Stuff

Well it was pretty nice getting to go back to our regular church yesterday after being gone for two weeks. In Sunday School we got in the van and drove by some of our members' homes who don't come to church that often and prayed for them. It was a nice experience, and our group was about the quietest I've ever heard them (except for when the teacher asks who would like to pray aloud) :) I didn't really know many of the people we were praying for, so I just had to come up with a good vision of what they might look like in my head. :)

That evening we had bells, and we had so few people show up that we had what our director calls a "polishing party". Let me tell you it's certainly not what the average person would call a "party". It consists of polishing bells with a special odd smelling polish until the rubber gloves you're wearing turn a greenish-blackish color. (My friend's actually turned yellow which was quite a bit odd looking. :) And we had to go through many many octaves, (I kind of lost count towards the end.) So after all that we had choir, which was a bit more pleasant. We only had six people but I have to say we sounded pretty good for having such few people. Unfortunately next year we're losing three of our key members, so I'm not so sure we'll sound that great next year. :) Oh well. I'm sure we'll make it. After that I think some people were going to stick around to play volleyball, but I can assure you that I wasn't one of them.

The Thing

Here's another one of my many creative writing assignments entitled "The Thing." The assignment was to tell a story from the perspective of a person from the 19th century coming across a piece of modern technology. Hopefully from the story you can figure out what the piece of modern technology is. :) Enjoy.


I gasped in shock as I stared at the "thing" ahead of me. What could this be? How could this be real? Was I dreaming? Ah I must start at the beginning. On a cold winter day in 1800, I happened to be enjoying an early morning stroll around the small town in which I lived. As I reached Burke Street, eccentric Mrs. Peterson poked her head out of her small home and invited me in for some early morning tea.
"Come right in, Miss Harrison!" she had called in a loud voice. "I haven’t seen you in the longest time!"
Not wanting to be rude, I accepted the invitation. It was when the old woman was in the kitchen, getting ready to serve the tea, that I saw the thing. I, Annie Harrison, love to explore, so I was looking casually around the home by Mrs. Peterson’s own invitation. I saw the thing in a small back bedroom. At first I thought it was merely nothing. It was a small square shaped thing that look almost like a box, except it wasn’t. For one thing the center of it was glass almost, and it seemed at a distance as if one could see right through it. I ventured forward for a closer look and tapped on the glass. I then stepped back in shock. I could see my own reflection! As I continued to stare, I noticed a small row of buttons on the lower half of the "box". Feeling adventuresome, I reached down and pushed the button down as hard as I could. It was then that I had the worst shock I’ve ever had in all of my 17 years.
As soon as I pressed the button, it was as if the little box came alive. A strange picture popped up on the screen. It was a man talking! Can you believe it! My first thought was that a man was trapped in the box but then I realized how ridiculous that assumption was. I jumped back and continued staring. Then a more frightening idea popped into my head. Could this be some form of witchcraft? I mean what else but pure magic could cause a man to be trapped in this thing? Was Mrs. Peterson a witch? It made perfect sense. She was, after all, a very queer sort of lady who nobody knew to well. Someone needed to put a stop to this! Someone needed to help that man! I began yelling in the direction of the box, "Don’t worry, sir! Stay put! I’m going for help!" The man made no indication that he had heard me, however, and went right on talking. I gulped in surprise. Why could I see him and hear him but he apparently couldn’t see or hear me? I’d never thought of that until just now. Something awfully strange was going on, and I was sure it was the work of dark magic.
I became even more surprised when the man started talking about a war that was going on in the year 2002. 2002? That was way in the future. Obviously, some witch had been fooling with this man’s mind. Just as I was about to run out of the room in a fit of terror, I noticed a long thing right behind the box. It was extremely long and looked almost like a snake with a very odd kind of skin on. It also seemed to be connected to some kind of weird place in the wall that had tiny holes in it. Curious, I grabbed the long wire thing and pulled. To my shock, it came out of the wall, and as it did so the man in the box suddenly hushed his talking. Puzzled, I peered down at the strange snake like thing. It had two weird metal like things at the end of it. Suddenly, I noticed a little bit of the skin like stuff was starting to come off. As I began to curiously investigate, I suddenly heard a loud voice yell, "Annie! Stop! Drop it!"
In shock I dropped the thing and saw Mrs. Peterson race in the room and grab the cord. "Mrs. Peterson!" I stammered. "What in the world is this...thing??"
Mrs. Peterson sighed. "I didn’t mean you to find this, Annie."
"Well listen here, Mrs. Peterson. If you really are a witch..."
Mrs. Peterson threw her hands up in the air at mock horror. "Of course I’m not! Come right in my room, Annie, and I’ll tell you the whole story. At least I’ll tell you what that thing is. I can’t tell you how I got it and all. Too complicated if you ask me." She paused uncertainly. "Annie, could we possibly keep this a secret?"
"Of course," I answered readily. And I kept her secret about the strange "television" and am still keeping it today. It’s not like anyone would believe me. They would just laugh and say I was addled in the head. All I know is what I saw was really there, and maybe someday other people besides me will see it too.