Yesterday... after spending two hours volunteering at a nursing home, I almost slept the rest of the day. Things have been rather hectic, and I've been getting not a lot of sleep. I think my health is failing, which is definitely not a good sign since I need to be really robust and healthy in order to get anything accomplished. I've downed like, 200 ounces of gatorade/powerade to replenish all that lost minerals/electrolytes from excessive sweating.

There is so much stuff to do, and so little time, but it is not even September yet. Am I worrying too much?

Sleep-deprived.

I never seem to get lots of sleep lately - around 5-6 hours/weeknight. The thing is, even if I do have time to sleep, I...don't. It's quite strange. I must have an addiction to reading, which, considering the alternatives (drugs, alcohol - read the Newsweek issue about meth), it sounds rather good and rather nerdy. Like, last week, I couldn't stop reading summer 2005 back issues of Newsweek (I wish I could write/have the knowledge of Fareed Zakaria), even though it was around 12am. Of course, there's the constant studying because I don't get home until 5pm three days a week and I have to leave two hours for nap (and shower, and a short dinner) because standing in the sun for two hours is really taxing on the body. Like my good freshman buddy Jaime says, I "sweat like a dog." Thanks.

I love my freshmen! They're so funny.

I just sweated about 10 pounds of of me.

Tonight was the first football game of the season. I am guessing the humidity index was like 2450% because I've never sweated so much in my life. Ok, how about this - all the practices I've been to so far amounted to this one game. YIKES. Not to gross you out or anything (I want you to come back), but I looked like I took a shower. Except, uh. I didn't.

Shuaib is awesome - when we band kids (dorks) were kneeling for the halftime show for the other band, I saw him and Vikas (these are my two brown friends, woot) walk by. I said hello and complained about the utter humidity (UGH), and he went and bought me a powerade, which I had to drink after the halftime show. Awww, thanks for spending $2 on me, that means a great deal, especially how I was dying of dehydration out there. :) I got to hang out with my Indian guy friends (and my girls, ZAHEERA and ISHITA) at third quarter, which was nice. I usually don't see all of them congregate in one area (I wish I had more Chinese guys my age/grade... cool Chinese guys anyway. The little we have I don't really associate with them). Ah, I love my friends, but why do I have to have this stupid antisocial part of me that seems to kick in at the wrong place, wrong time, everytime?

We played lots of cheers. I screamed a lot. I played an octave higher on the piccolo, and everyone knows that the piccolo is already high enough :P I misheard those cheerleaders' chants... they were spelling L A K E S I D E and I always caught the last part, but I didn't understand what they were spelling, so I thought they were spelling S T I C K E R. My friend and my sister almost died laughing. Eh. Funny things happen when one is delirious, tired, and dehydrated.

I finally stepped in the Lakeside bathroom for the first time in my four years there. Wow. Stadium bathrooms are horrible.

Well, to wrap it up, after many frustrating "so close, yet so far" moments, surprise surprise, we lost 20-10.

And now I'm going to eat something. :)

I love cheesecake.

When I was little, I was repulsed by the very idea of cheese + cake. One salty thing and one sweet thing? How in the world did they ever go together? I tasted some, and I thought what a weird combination it was. I felt like I was eating soft, sweet cheese... you know, some items just don't mix together, and I almost gagged.

I'm not sure what I was thinking because now, I'm addicted to that stuff! Maybe the strange sweetness of cheesecake finally grew on me. We bought this no-bake cheesecake that required just milk and mixing, and after freezing it to firm it up, I already ate almost 1/4 of it :D ... wow. The graham cracker pie crust is absolutely divine with it. You know how fat I am going to get? :D No wonder I'm so, uh, well endowed. I grew up with all this milk and good food, and I'm adding cheesecake to the list. If I grow up to be featured in one of those Success Stories in Shape magazine, that will be a sad day indeed. You know, the classic "she was skinny in high school but in college she gained 200 pounds and finally got back to a healthy weight" articles that are fun to read. I love the before/after pictures. I hope I don't have any drastic ones, though.

I can't believe I wrote for two minutes about cheesecake.

Marching band practices are hell.

They're so hot and blistering. Sweat beads drip down constantly from my face and neck. It is a most disgusting site. The grass and mud beneath my feet don't help, either.

Two hours of hell... Three days a week... This had better be worth it.

Anyway, you are now reading the entry of a girl who got one hour of sleep last night. That's right. This idiot ended up taking four tablets of Midol. If you don't know what that is, it's an OTC pain reliever for menstrual cramps (in particular), and it contains 60mg/tablet of caffeine to perk up the average bloated, cranky menstruating woman (like me, except I might be above average when it comes to cranky). 60 x 4 = 240mg of caffeine for me in one day = no sleeping from 12:30AM - 5:00AM.

Wow. I had to turn on the rap station full blast this morning to wake myself from this dazed mode. So strange. Everything felt surreal. I had to chant (more like scream) vocabulary words and song lyrics to wake myself up on the way there. Thank God nothing happened because if I were any more tired, there could have been a serious accident.

Time to shower, nap (for once), and study, study, study.

I better get into a good college. Preferably with financial aid/money, too :D haha... unlike the rest of my school, I am rather anti-UGA.

This is the first time in a long time that I have gone without a personal website.

Granted, a lot of the pages I hadn't touched in awhile and were in need of major updating/touch up, but hey, they were still there, and I spent some hours typing (or c + p) the HTML coding and messing with Photoshop. Keeping a blog is fun, but it's kind of... well, empty! I've been so used to seeing "ABOUT SITE," "DANI," "GUESTBOOK," and so on, that with just the blogging in it (notice how my entries seem to vary in length?) is a bit unsettling. Nadine offered hosting to me, which I am ever grateful :) but I'm on "hold," sorta, due to school. Maybe in a week or two (or three), I'll get my life back on track and start HTMLing/Photoshop-ing once again! Haha, I've been doing websites since like, 2nd-3rd grade, however rudimentary they are/were. It has been awhile, yes indeed.

I looked at my list of prospective colleges. Most of them are very selective, and I'm wondering if I should put more good schools but for my profile, a "safety school," you know, in case I get rejected from everything except GA Tech and UGA. Ahhh. Am I just throwing $300 of fees down the drain? Well, if you hope for nothing, you will never be disappointed, so if you get something (good), then that's great because you weren't expecting it, and good surprises are usually, well, good! Sometimes, I don't know if I agree with that 100%, but what kind of mentality am I supposed to have towards this issue?

Ahh, everyday at band practice, I look upon the flute/piccolo section. Most of them are new freshmen, and when I see them, I sense the "innocence" and the, eh, vulnerability of being the youngest and the newest ones on the field. Yes, I was there once, and totally clueless :P but I ended up making friends and being commended for my playing (Erica, Heather, and Leanne, if you're out there, hey! I miss you all!). Quite an experience. I am not a leader, though, because I rejoined marching band a bit late in the summer, but I still feel, I don't know, protective of these kids, especially the three that are near me on the field and very awesome indeed. Except for my younger sisters, I have never really felt this kind of feeling towards younger people because I used to be one of them myself. Plus, I'm not too satisfied with leadership this year, but I don't want to, like, comandeer the position and upset some people. Maybe if there is an appropriate time, I will step in. Actually, I need to teach them some cheers/stands music.

AP Physics C actually requires thinking! It's not TOTALLY math. We need to get out of this spoonfeeding, cookie-cutter mold like people tend to be in math class. I just hope I don't fail Physics this year :P or make a *gasp* B.

So much on my mind!

Well, thanks to this 6.0 GPA dilemma, I've been wondering if I should take an online course. Registration is until August 20, so I have some time. I am wondering if I can throw in an extra "AP" online (I found Statistics, World History, and Psychology, for starters). I'm guessing it would be after school, but these websites and my own stupid board of education don't tell me where online students are supposed to take the classes! Am I supposed to go after school in a lab or in the comfort of my own home or a public library? The sites say "log on anytime during the day," but I am pretty sure that last year, kids had to stay after school. I don't know. Maybe I can get out of those horrendous (hot) band practices on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. No more sweat-soaked shirts, maybe? -_-

School hasn't been too terrible yet. To my delight, I got a, 84 on the way-too-long Macbeth quote test... although I think I should have gotten higher if I just went back and checked some answers. You know how it is. This is the first time I'm happy with a B! :O ... our class average was a 54.

Methyl - CH3 nonpolar
Amino - NH2 weak base, accepts H+
Carboxyl - COOH weak acid, donates H+
Carbonyl ketone - C=O not at the end, polarity
Carbonyl aldehyde - H-C=O At end, polarity

I thought we were done with orgo back in AP Chem. XD

Macbeth? Act and Scene? What?

I can't do quotes. Especially for those that require labeling of what act/scene they were located.

I think I'm going to fail tomorrow.

Thursday, I had band practice from 3:00-5:00p.m.

We were all about to pass out. It was humid. It was hot. We only had one water break. Every time we had to go get our instruments on the ground, they would yell that it wasn't water break when a few of the dehydrated ones (like me) would trudge to the giant cooler. "It's not water break, you know."

All I have to say is: WHAT. THE. HECK.

I saw one poor freshman who was on the verge of passing out. I could have added myself to the ranks, too, when I was on the stairs coming down to go back to the band room (we practiced on this field that requires steps to reach). Everything blacked out for a second, which was not exactly great news because I was on the verge of stepping down the step.

You know what makes me mad? About 70% of the time we spend out there in practice, we get nothing accomplished. In this mass confusion, I just stand there, conversing with my fellow bored flutists around me, while I wonder why I am not home sleeping after a long day or doing much needed studying.

I know, it's only the first couple days of school. But I've seen better first practices. I wish our leaders were better. I wish we cared more. I don't, but I wish I did.

On another cynical note (copied and pasted and modified from my Xanga):

I'm wondering if I should drop Spanish 3 (not AP) and take some random AP class. Why? This new 6.0 GPA system at my school, where if you have AP classes, those classes goes up to the 6.0 (for a 100), depending on what grade you get. This is very unfair because that can mean that I worked my butt off three years of high school (while being consistently 2nd or 3rd in the class), but then someone can beat me in rank by .02 of a point GPA wise our senior year just because they took one extra AP than me... like ... AP Psychology, which every knows is an "easy" class. Even if the teacher has upped her standards a little, I really doubt that the class has as much weight as, say, AP Biology or Physics C, for that matter. I didn't really realize the significance of this new 6.0 scale (all other non-AP classes are 4.0-5.0 for A's) until I saw what all of my other classmates are taking - 5 to 6 APs ... which can probably boost their GPAs by a mere .05 points, but hey that's .05 points more than me, which is detrimental to class rank. Why are they using this new system when the AP grades already has a 1.05 curve to begin with? By the time I'm done with high school, I will have taken 6 APs total (which is not bad, right?), but there are people that will have taken 9 or 10... but some of them are like, weird classes (like Psych? Env Science? Most of my friends laughed those APs off...). =\ I worked my butt off too much just so I can lose everything I earned for three years in my senior year.

To continue my ramblings: Necesito practicar mi flauta. AHORA. ^_^

My last first day of high school begins...

Tomorrow.

I'm really surprised at how fast time flies. No matter how big of a cliché it is, well, that fact is true. It's a pity that I'm still stuck in the mindset that I am 15. Why can't we ever seem to grow up these days?

I'm excited about this year. Sure, there are going to be days where I hate life. But I've learned how to embrace challenges and just, well, deal with it. Hopefully, I'll emerge as a better person, and one who's definitely ready to take on whatever there is after I'm done with this year. I hope to strengthen some friendships because last year, I was a wee bit antisocial when it came to doing anything. There are some people that are really beautiful gems, and I love them for being themselves! :D I hope to hang out with them more often instead of like, being stuck at home studying Bio all day.

'06.