Rain of Fire

Ugh. I can just tell I’m going to be sore tomorrow.

Water polo was painful =/ First, I almost couldn’t swim, but I decided to anyways because I wouldn’t be in the water for very long. Almost wished I hadn’t. I’m not used to treading water for even a few minutes at a time, let alone chase a ball, take down Peter (he’s even too tall in the water), and not drown. We also didn’t use goggles. I don’t like the chlorine or the head-above-the-surface freestyle swim to get back to our side of the pool.

x—-x meep.

Posted by Alina at 6:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[CS, Thanksgiving, Black Friday]

Mood: content
Today: not telling! XD

Starting with Black Friday: Tansen and his friends camped out at Fry’s so that they could catch all the discounted stuff. While he was there, Tansen was supposed to buy me a whole bunch of new computer parts, but they wouldn’t let him buy more than one set of discounted items. So after he came home he ordered a graphics card online, and when that one comes he’ll give me his.

Hopefully that’s the end to my gaming problems, but I guess this just means I’ll have nothing to blame my suckiness on.

I stopped playing Half-Life 2, or at least until I get the new graphics card. Meanwhile, in CS, Andrew and Timothy are getting as many kills out of my graphics-card-less-ness as they can. Tansen’s playing too now. I think we got him re-hooked on CS.

Go study your SAT’s, Tansen! D:

Despite the map’s inability to load, and severe lagging during point-blank shooting, I think it’s getting better. Two days ago I got 6 kills from Timothy, marginally better than my usual 0. Of course, that changed immediately after switching maps. Eh. x__x

Thanksgiving wasn’t that special. We drove all the way to Sacramento (I think, I was asleep for most of the ride). The leaving part involved crashing into a car while going reverse, getting hit by an automatic gate, and crashing into something on the way out of the gate. No this was not our car. No insurance problems, kthx.

My dad took me to Daiso, a Japanese houseware/stationary store in Daly City on Black Friday. Everything there is pretty much only one or two dollars, maybe three. I got a bunch of random stuff, including poster paper, three sizes of funnels, a chicken kitchen timer, two dozen tubes of acrylic paint, and a mechanical pencil with square lead. Randomest Black Friday ever. 8D”

Hmm. Anyways. XD

Posted by Alina at 9:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mood: content; a little nauseous
Today: a senior in our class tried to rap a passage about frogs in Mandarin today, with Raymond beatboxing - then vice versa. Another senior recorded it on her camera.

Antigone rehearsal yesterday was hilarious. It was the last rehearsal, since on performance days they don’t have practice after school, so they did an urban-gangster version of it, where everyone acted out their parts differently or changed parts of their lines. For example:

• Ulysses sang his parts like an opera and actually lapsed into one at the end his line
• Erin played a hooker
• Lyla found really thick-rimmed glasses somewhere and said all her lines like an old woman with a really high, accented voice
• Senator became Obi-Wan
• the chorus rapped their lines
• the sentry kept hitting on Creon
• they sang Happy Death Day on Antigone’s death scene

Also, people in the light booth were dumping water on Richard.

Posted by Alina at 8:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Events Cram 1: TIC Leopard Party, ICE volunteer event, Antigone
Events Cram 2: ERA potluck, TIC Da Vinci Exhibit Trip

ERA potluck

So the plan was to make Indian food with Connie, Sharrie, and Jackie. Connie found a recipe online for samosas, We crammed all the cooking until last minute, so we were missing some ingredients that we couldn’t find in Ranch, and Jackie couldn’t come. It started off pretty well - we were having fun destroying the carrot, onion, and potatoes, everything smelled great and went fine during cooking, and we came up with a nice system for wrapping them. And then I turned on the oven and baked a hotplate that was inside. Everything sort of went downhill after that.

We brushed the samosas with egg instead of oil, and they stuck to the cookie sheets. We unwrapped them (we were about an hour late to the party by then), put all the stuffing in a bowl, and cooked a mixture of white and brown rice. The rice took about a half hour to finish, and by then we were REALLY late, so we grabbed everything (Sharrie took my sunglasses, a fob tourist hat I got in China, and some bling made from gold Ferrero Rocher wrapper, and Connie taped the poem to her shirt) and Dad drove us to Richard’s house.

The party was fun. There were about thirty or so people there. We got there just in time - they were about to start eating - and we got in a “few” guesses for the clay-face-look-a-like contest. >3> Anyways.

The dishes all turned out pretty great. We were watching the other people play Wii while we were eating. Afterwards, Eric got all the groups to do a rap battle with assigned topics. We got Confucius. I’m pretty happy to say I got out of participation of any sort :D

It was pretty late when they announced that the people still there were going down to Ocean View for Capture the Flag. After a lot of debate, Dad drove me, Connie, and Sharrie back to my house, then we brought Sharrie home and Connie and I went to Ocean View to join in. Playing in the dark is fun, if confusing. It’s kind of hard to tell who’s on your team until you get close to them. It was definitely easier to sneak around, even if I didn’t get far.

After about an hour or so, they changed the rules to make the field the entire school. We left around then because nothing was really happening. Strange rules.

TIC Da Vinci Exhibition Trip

YAY :D

Tansen, Sy and I got there first, and Dennis was on the same train, so he came a few second after us. Janvi and Sarah came next, and we went inside to sit down while we waited for other people. Time was spent 1) sneakily shooting pictures of P, and 2) eating. Cindy got there as we were getting food, and Max was pretty late because he missed his bus…and then we spent about 15 minutes running around, trying to find Frank inside the station. We also got occupied by dubloons, pirates, and treasure chest. ‘nuff said.

The exhibition itself was much shorter than we’d been expecting. Most of it consisted of models of sketches in Da Vinci’s notebooks. My favorite one was a clock that was powered by a weight on a string that spun around two rods, back and forth. I was also sorely tempted by the catapult. >.>” P and I were slightly distracted by a poster with Latin writing on it. The end was about The Mona Lisa. This painting’s been through some bad times. Water damage from Napoleon’s bathroom, a rock from a madman (o.O), acid, and orange paint on the nose from a construction worker? They also had an example of Mona Lisa after the varnish had been digitally restored. Da Vinci’s unique painting style made actually doing it too risky, but the genuine version was much more beautiful.

Afterwards we hiked over to take a bus to Japantown. We raided the shop with the really trippy school supplies - their origami paper is SO expensive - and stopped for some food and drinks on the first floor. I think the bookstores traded locations. And now they DO actually have the large Copic set…grrrr…

Coming home, P and I stopped at Starbucks. ‘Tis the season to be jolly! Thanksgiving isn’t even over yet, and Starbucks has moved on to holiday drinks and cups. Not that I’m complaining. The Cinnamon Dolce I ordered was gooood. :P

Posted by Alina at 9:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Because I was too lazy to update after they actually happened.

11-2-07: TIC Leopard Party

Anyways, Tansen and I dumped our backpacks at home, then BARTed to Berkeley and arrived at People’s to find Alex, Max, Dennis, and Tiff. Of course we hadn’t though to keep our backpacks just so we could use waiting time to do homework. Alex, Max and Dennis had laptops, and Tiff was writing something. Tansen occupied himself with a sandwich that was, like, rapidly deteriorating inside the foil, and…I forget what I was doing. I know I got a drink. o.O

Brandon came next, and kudos to Janvi, who got lost on the way. XP Frank came too. We spent about an hour:

• on the holiday Coke can tower (our Christmas tree)
• watching Brandon, who ordered a regular chicken wrap and a spicy chicken wrap that somehow came as another regular, eat the first and get partway through the second before swapping with Frank
• watching Alex’s laptop manage to cause hardware to malfunction

Rofl.

After that we went to Vivian’s and crashed for a while. I was hecka tired, so I dozed off while they were playing Settlers. I woke up when Alex walked by and said, “Hey, Alina fell asleep!” I have an automatic wake-up response when I hear someone say my name. From class, you know. XD Trev dropped by too, with frozen yogurt ice cream. He didn’t finish, and asked us if we wanted some. Next time bring real ice cream, Trev. Then we’ll help you finish it ;P.

It was fun! My favorite event of this get-together was just seeing everyone again. I’ve been pining after the summer so much this school year, so it was nice just to be able to get a little part of that again.

11-10-07: ICE volunteer event

ICE’s first volunteer event of the year! I think nine of us met up at school, but we only had rides for 8, but it turned out okay because one guy volunteered to stay behind. We drove down to Oakland, I think to the west side, and for the next few hours we packaged food in boxes. They already had all these jars and bags, ready to be packed. All we had to do was stack boxes one on top of another, 9 per layer, and make sure one of everything got into each box.

At first, Dijnee and I worked with another group from Berkeley High. I can’t say we were very efficient - more than once, we had to reopen sealed boxes because they were missing things. At the end, we had two jars left, so we had to go through every box to find out which ones were missing those two things. When we finally finished, Dijnee and I went to help the rest of the ICE people finish their boxes. That went much more smoothly - we only had to do everything once, and it went by fast.

I think it went well. It felt productive anyways. :)

11-10-07: Antigone

I’ve never actually seen the entire play through. I’ve only run the sound board once during practice, but it was only about 3/4 into the play when I had to leave.

It was fantastic! It’s a big change from watching it during rehearsal to watching the real thing. I’ve seen the scenes so many times, but they were just as enrapturing to me as to anyone in the audience.

Richard got a big kick out of watching me jump when Erik jumped out behind me and shouted.

Luckily I didn’t miss my cue this time. I was late once, but it was a vague cue, so it didn’t really matter whether it came before or after the line. This weekend I only did the first half of the play - next week I should be running the second half.

Hopefully some TIC people will be watching? ;P

Posted by Alina at 12:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Happy birthday, Vivian and Marcus! naknaknaknaknaknaknaknak:D

[Marcus, if you don’t log on soon I’m going to email you a brick instead of an ecard.]

Posted by Alina at 8:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Haha, today is also our Homecoming Day. Like, our actual Homecoming, both game and dance.

Happy Fifteenth, Andrew and Timothy! Have fun with your Nerf guns. :P

Posted by Alina at 3:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)