It's Raining, It's Pouring...

It's raining, and I just love it! The only bad thing is that we have puddles on the porch for me to mop up. It's a never-ending job. Still, it's raining a lot. I like it.

I finished reading Great Expectations. The end was a little dissatifying, but I don't know how I would have changed it. I really like Dickens when he makes a book really good at the end. Usually the first half of the book is just to set up the story, but then he brings everything together in such and exciting way. I never would have believed Magwitch to be Estella's father. That was just awfully interesting to know that Estella was in fact not of noble birth.

MAACS was great, the retreat was great, and the testing was okay. I'm glad it's all over. Lydia and I would be going to Nationals with the duo in April, but AACS took the piano event out this year. It was disappointing. :( We still have a recital a week from Saturday, then I think I'm accompanying Eric in a recital in less than a month. I really need to work on that! In a little over a month, the music class will be putting on Psalty's Camping Adventure. I don't -- I mean, I know -- we're not ready for that.

I depart to continue mopping...

All the way home I'll be warm!

Testing went well today. I thought the hardest test was the Reading Comprehension, but the others weren't bad. The vocabulary test was super easy. The science test wasn't as easy, but it wasn't bad. I'm glad I'm taking chemistry this year; it helped a lot on the test. Since Dad drove us down (the roads here weren't all that great this morning), we had to squeeze three people into the backseat of the car. I'm sure we all stayed warm. :)

We finally got the schedule for MAACS. Yay! We only have to go down one day. Yay! That's pretty cool. However, that one day is Friday, so we will be late arrivals to the retreat. I'm pretty sure we won't get there before 6:30.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful...

It's snowing. We didn't go to testing because the roads are so bad. I actually don't think it looks terrible outside right now, but it looked that way this morning, and it's supposed to get worse. However, I still don't believe that we'll get the 12-16 inches of snow that were predicted.

Hey, cool, this means I can get lots of school done today and be even closer to finishing school on time. Wouldn't that be great??

Sad News

Unfortunately, Eric and I are not going to TFY this summer. Since over thirty applied, they turned down all the sophomores so that they would trim the attendance to 26. It's disappointing, but this way I can get a job this summer without taking a month off. Also, I can use this year to grow in my walk so that next year I will be more prepared than ever.

Atchison Auditions went pretty well. I was not overly impressed with anyone's performance--myself included--but nothing went wrong. The judges were very nice, and they didn't say anything very bad (almost everybody got all excellent scores). It just wasn't . . . stellar. Everybody got 1 ratings, but nobody got a 1+ rating. I don't know if those still happen anymore, but it was kind of disappointing. It was just my opinion. However, the event earned everybody a chocolate ice cream cone afterward!

Story!

Today at dinner, Dad was was trying to tell Eric what happened in a movie. This was a heated discussion over a girl's name because nobody remembered what it was.

Dad: Her name was significant.
Eric: Significant? Why was her name Significant?
Lydia: No, Eric, her name was not Significant!! Her name was significant.

the great outdoors...and school

I finally wanted to go outside today. I never really have wanted to before, but it was so nice outside that I couldn't resist. Unfortunately, I had loads and loads of school to do (and still do). So I hastily scanned my chapter in chemistry, called it read, and went outside to play for a couple of minutes. I suppose that means I will be utterly confused in about an hour and a half when we talk about the chapter . . . my fault completely.

One of the reasons I wanted to go outside today was that we have a new mower. It's a Grasshopper, and I love it already! The deck is about 10 inches wider than the John Deere, and the mower has a zero degree turn radius. Sweet! I even got to drive it around some, and that was pretty cool.

Proverbs 23:12--"Apply thine heart unto instruction, and thine ears to the words of knowledge."

Only about 17 days until the retreat. That's coming up really fast! It's kind of scary, I don't know how we're everything's going to be done by then. I know it will work out just fine, and the pieces are starting to come together, though. I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone then!

Skiing was a lot of fun Friday. It wasn't very difficult, either, although I didn't really stay upright well. :P I also have a few bruises here and there and sore muscles, but I want to go again sometime. Maybe we can get the homeschool group to go.

Some of the things I really need to do today include a chemistry test, and English paper, a history paper and test, and practicing the piano. That should last me all afternoon!

I have this really long list of all the things I want to do. Unfortunately, I will never even dent the list. Some of my desires include the following:

• Finish school. I am so close to being done with Typing, and that's cool, but I'm not seeing the end very well in the other subjects.
• Finish reading Pilgrim's Progress. I knew I was bad about starting classics and then never finishing them. I think I'm on chapter 7.
• Write. I had this grand planning at the beginning of the semester that I would write all these papers, enjoy revising them, and they would all be great. The few papers I have written are still hard to read, and they are far from great. I guess I'm still just an aspiring writer.
• I want to research. I want to find out the story behind St. Patrick's Day, I want to know about leaprosy and if there is a cure for it, and I want to criticize Johnny Cash's life. I watched Walk the Line today, if you can't tell.

On a nice note, I get to go skiing tomorrow. That will be fun. I've never been before, so it should be an adventure.

My link of the post is this. It's a link to a website that gives you a bunch of music that is similar to a song or artist's style that you provide. Pandora's pretty cool. I've never heard of some of those artists that they give!

As to my being gone from here for a long time, I've decided that my website is more fun than my blog. On my website I keep lists--lots of fun. You should try it sometime. :) Also, I write very short essays every once in a while that I don't want to get lost in the jumble of a blog. They would fast disappear into the Archives where I would never find them again.

This is Martha's Sister

I didn't take her password or anything like that. It was already in the computer. So, I got on here to change her links, but you know how I am. I can never figure blogger out. I didn't have it long enough to figure it out, so I can't change her links.

All in favor of people who have broken links on their sites change them raise their right hand...never mind...post here and tell us. Great!

Have a nice day! :)

Martha's Sister.