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I got back late last night (around ten-thirty) from the St. Johnsbury tournament.  It was awesome.  We started in the B division, and since we won all four of our games on Saturday, we moved into the A division.  We lost to Four Rivers Sunday morning, but then won our final two games, putting us in fifth place in the A division, which is pretty impressive.  I am exhausted and sick, but it was a great experience.  I’m home from school today recuperating, and tomorrow we have two away games, one after the other, at Four Rivers, and then we are having a big party, which I think will be a lot of fun.  Four Rivers, and the other school we’re playing, Compass, are both really fun teams to play, and just nice people in general.

The members of the Mock Trial team who are on the competing team for the AMTI (not me) are in New Jersey right now.  I don’t know how they’re doing, but I’m hoping to here from them soon.  They’ll be back very early in the morning tomorrow, and I will see them on Wednesday or Thursday at school.  We have no school on Friday, and that night is the prom.  I will be wearing tails.

We lost to Amherst JV A today on a universe point; it was 5-5, game to 6.  It was a pretty awesome game.

Tomorrow, I am biking to school (as I did yesterday) with a ton of other people.  It is Community Day, so we have no classes, and there are activities and free food (Chinese and Jamaican) all day.  A friend and I are performing a Talking Heads song at the open mic later.  Then the frisbee team leaves for the St. Johnsbury tournament after school.  That I am really looking forward to.  We’re in the B division, which means that some of our newer players should get to play a bunch more.  It also means that I am planning to win the division, which would be pretty awesome.  The tournament lasts through Sunday.  I will be bringing my megaphone.  Enough said.

Last night I finished the first draft of the one-act I’m writing.  It’s a collaboration between my Playwriting class and my school’s Holocaust Studies class, which I took last year, and will be used, once completed, in the Holocaust Rescue unit.  We read it in class today, and I got some very useful feedback on it.  I am very excited to see how it plays out when completed.  The Holocaust Studies class will do at least one reading of it, hopefully public.  This will be the first time I’ve ever had any of my work read outside of class.  WAHOO!

We got fifth place at the Greenfield tournament yesterday.  It was an awesome day.  Very tiring, but very fun.

I just got back from Sin Nombre at Amherst Cinema.  It was really good, but extremely scary.  I would not recommend it to anyone who can’t stomach violence.  That said, I didn’t find the violence to be gratuitous.  I dislike movies where the violence is for no purpose other than to sell, and I didn’t feel that way at all about this one.  It was a scary story, and one that needed to be told in the way it was.  I think I will write a longer review of it soon when I have more time.  Tonight I need to finish a paper for school tomorrow.

Also, I now am the owner of a megaphone.  Very useful.

We lost to Four Rivers, but that is okay.  Especially because a friend and I have organized a game of Calvinball tomorrow during lunch.  It is going to be awesome.  We have flags, bags, hobby horses, masks, a croquet set, and I am bringing all sorts of other things.

This weekend is the Greenfield ultimate tournament.  We are in the A division again!

My academic load is finally starting to lighten up, for a variety of reasons.  This morning, I turned in my joint honors paper for Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, under the title “British Finance and the Development of the Gold Standard”.  Having that off our backs leaves us with having to plan the simulation we are going to run with the class to demonstrate some of the principles we studied.  Students in the class will take on the role of merchants, buying and selling goods and currency, and attempting to make profit as regulatory and financial systems change.  The simulation is pretty complicated, and we are turning in the plans for it on Wednesday.

I have, after much thought, decided not to do the AP Physics C exams.  There is too much work remaining, and I have not done enough this year.  I’m still going to try to finish my independent math study, but since that doesn’t have an AP exam attached to it, it should be significantly easier.  I will need to kick it into gear, though, because I graduate in less than a month (AAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!).  As of Friday, I will be done with Spanish, when I will have my presentation/evaluation with the head of the World Languages department and a Spanish teacher who will be assessing my independent work.  I am expecting that to go well.

Up until now, I’ve been assigned to write a one-act play as a normal part of my Playwriting class, an another one-act for Honors in that class, as a collaboration between the Theater and History departments.  That one-act would be used as a curriculum piece in the Holocaust Studies class in the Holocaust Rescue unit.  However, after consulting with the teachers of those classes (who are the department heads), we’ve decided to make those two one-acts the same.  In other words, the normal one-act I do for Playwriting will be the collaboration.  The Playwriting teacher has also said that if it works well, he will not have a problem giving me Honors Credit, because of the collaboration and research aspects which would not be required in the normal one-act assignment.  Once I get a good plot locked down, it should be pretty easy to write.

We have a Frisbee game tomorrow against Four Rivers.  They are an excellent team.  So are we.  It is going to be an epic game.

It’s been a while since I wrote.  I have been very busy and very tired.

The NMH tournament was awesome.  We got destroyed (we were 0 and 5), but we won the Spirit of the Game award, with an unprecedented-at-that-tournament perfect score of 50/50, receiving a 10/10 from each of the five teams we played.  We got a nice plaque, and everything.  After the tournament, me and some friends, including one from NMH, went for a quick dip in the river.

That night I went to a late show at the Iron Horse, Gokh-Bi System.  They are a sort of funk/hip-hop/fusion sort of band, with members from around here, and Senegal.  They were great.  They had three frontmen from Senegal, who would rap, sing, drum and also dance.  They also had this sort of designated dancer dude who would come up onto the stage at certain times and do incredible dances.  We danced a lot in the audience, and people were coming up on stage all the time to dance with the band, and throw money all over them.  It was fabulous.  I think I may buy some of their music from iTunes, now that it is DRM-free.

Sunday I went to see that same friend from NMH’s senior honors recital, which was also fabulous.  He played two pieces with piano accompaniment (on violin and viola), and played viola in the string quartet he wrote.  This was the first time that piece had been performed, and it was really good.  He wrote it mostly this winter, immediately following the unexpected death of a friend from leukemia.

Two other students played at the recital, one on drums, and one on piano.  Both were excellent, and after the show there was a reception with those sort of round wafers with chocolate filling in the middle, and strawberries.  Also there was confectioners’ sugar to dip the strawberries in, which I had never done before, but which was great.

I have been getting very little sleep in the past few nights because of mounds of homework, which will continue tonight.  With that in mind, I will say that Arlen Specter is a very brave soul.

RIP, Frankie Manning.  We will miss you.

On Friday we had a double-header game, first playing NMH and then St. Johnsbury.  In the NMH game, we both fielded two teams, and A and a B.  On the A field, we won 11-4, but over on the B field, we were kicked 11-3.  We beat St. Johnsbury though at 6-6 with next point wins, by which time it was completely dark.

Today we played Amherst College B.  Technically they won, but by the end of the game it was a total farce anyway; we made a cup-o-saurus, which is pretty much the best move ever.  It was very muddy, and we played Miniature Tanks afterwards, which was awesome.  Basically what you do is everyone gets on their hands and forearms in a shoulder-to-shoulder circle.  Then everyone starts crawling in towards the center, chanting “Miniature tanks, miniature tanks, miniature tanks…”.  You have to keep going no matter what.  Everyone ends up crawling all over everyone else.  Then a friend and I layed out into some mud, which was also excellent.  However, in the course of the ensuing chest-bump, my right big toe was cleated, and now my nail is coming off, which is extremely painful.  So it goes.

I have no regrets.

We won our first game of the season!  It was an awesome one, against Longmeadow B.  It was pretty great that it was not a pushover; we were quite evenly matched and the game was intense.  Also, I layed out for the first point of the season!  I am extremely proud.  And dirty.  My glasses are pretty destroyed, having been stepped on and dirtified rather well.

Today I played an excellent game of Apples to Apples.  I won.  Here, then, is a list of my qualities, as expressed by the infallible and omnipotent logic of Apples to Apples:

1. Crazed
2. Masculine
3. Smooth
4. Influential
5. Misunderstood
6. Wild
7. Important
8. Offensive
9. Primitive
10. Hilarious
11. Nerdy
12. Frightening
13. Powerful

The Mock Trial team is entering an invitational tournament in New Jersey.  We got the case today.  It is negligence!

I am now able to moonwalk.

We got home earlier than expected, at about four or so.  I have been doing some yardwork, and am heading up to see Will at the farm.  I will stay there tonight, and we will catch up on our math and physics work, on which we are extremely behind.  I may also bring the LC(A) to show off.  Will has told people about it, but I don’t think they’ve ever actually seen it in the flesh (plastic?).

Our first Frisbee game is on Thursday.

Today was the first day of tryouts for the boys’ ultimate team.  It was mega-cold.  My hands were in excruciating pain by the end of the game.  I CANNOT WAIT for the weather to be uncold again.

I realized that the most scary part about skydiving will definitely be the falling.  I mean, that’s obvious, but think about it like this: In real life, when you jump off of something, or fall, you are never in free fall for more than about two seconds, usually probably less than one.  When I go skydiving, I will be in free fall for  between thirty seconds and one minute.  Apparently you reach terminal velocity pretty quickly, after something like twenty seconds, and at that point, there is so much air resistance, that you feel as though you are standing on something, but that is still twenty seconds of free fall, far longer than I have ever experienced before.  It is going to be awesome.

Someone I know who has gone skydiving says that once your chute opens, you feel as though gravity has reversed and you are falling up.  I am SO PUMPED!