New School Year

So the new school year started on Tuesday last week (due to not having power on Monday), and I feel like I had a productive summer. I had my first second earthquake and a nice hurricane that never even turned off our power. I went on trips to upstate New York, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. I went to a training camp for environmental activists and tested dissolved oxygen in the Mattawoman Creek for DNR. I went to a baby shower, I went to a funeral, I hung out with friends. I even managed to squeeze in two college tours.

This year I got all the classes I wanted. This year at my school they're really pushing doing activities during lunch so they issued ID cards that you scan and one of the administrators said that if she never saw your name scanned in she'd hunt you down and choose something for you to do. Thankfully I won't have that problem this year because my first meeting for the National Honor Society this year is tomorrow.

For my spring break my parents and I are planning a trip to Germany and Poland. We're going to visit my cousin Hallie who's studying in Berlin, and then go to Krakow where I can tour Auschwitz and go to the hometown of my great-grandmother who I'm named after. I'll have to miss at least two days of school but I'm assuming (and hoping) that my teachers will be forgiving of an international trip.

The Tudors

Some of my favorite blogs are about one of my most favorite topics: The Tudors. And I'm not talking about that historically inaccurate show on Showtime. I'm talking about England's most infamous family. And the one Tudor that I am most enamored with is Anne Boleyn, King Henry VIII's second wife and mother of Elizabeth I.

The only thing I love more than Tudor fact is Tudor fiction. I own seven novels on Anne Boleyn, plus every book Philippa Gregory has written on the Tudors and "The Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII" by the renowned David Starkey. I think that the reason I like them so much is they're like fiction, but it all really happened!

The first time I read about the Tudors was in sixth grade when I borrowed "Doomed Queen Anne" by Carolyn Meyer from the library. After reading it I thought it was the most amazing story until one day I found out it all happened.

Anne Boleyn, a nothing in the court of England, was the sister of Mary Boleyn, who was the mistress of King Henry VIII until he tired of her. The king was famous for having many mistresses while still married to Queen Katherine. While the king was so worried about not having a son (all he had was princess Mary), Anne Boleyn beguiled the king and held his affection for six years while he worked out his divorce and separating from the pope to lead his own church, even without being his mistress.

Unfortunately, the honeymoon ended soon after they got married, for Anne had a daughter Elizabeth (who we all know now was one of the greatest monarchs of England). She had three miscarriages after her and the marriage only lasted three years. The king was ready to get rid of Anne, so he had someone devise a plot. Anne was accused of having carnal knowledge of six men, including her brother, which is treason. She was arrested and beheaded. The king went on to have four more wives after her.

I still can't put my finger on why Anne Boleyn intrigues me so, but I think she was a strong woman, who wasn't afraid to risk anything to be powerful and spoke her mind. She was very intelligent and got an education most women didn't get back then. Unfortunately a strong-willed woman is what the king wanted in a mistress, not a wife, and Anne wasn't able to have children after her Elizabeth.

As I creeped out of my room this afternoon, I had today's Washington Post shoved in my face by my dad. On page A9 was the news we all secretly knew was going to happen but never wanted to think about: Borders closing.

NEW YORK — In a story on July 19, The Associated Press, relying on a company statement, reported erroneously that Borders was expected to ask a federal bankruptcy court to allow it to be sold to liquidators. Borders plans to ask the court to appoint liquidation firms to conduct going-out-of business sales. They will not buy any assets of Borders.

To me and my friends, Borders was way more than a book store. Every Friday after school we would go and discuss colleges, what happened during the week, new hairstyles we were considering, and just joke around until it closed at 10pm.

As my dad said, bookstores are for books you didn't know you wanted. I doubt I would've bought a book on double standards between men and women or a one where the revolutionary war had been fought with dragons had I been perusing Amazon. And I'm glad I found those books, especially the many college books I looked in at Borders. You can't just look through books in an online store, but at Borders my friends and I would gather them and bring them to our table in the café and point out interesting ones and talk about what we liked about them. When we went through a bridal gown phase, we would get wedding magazines and share the dresses we loved and laughed at the ridiculous looking ones.

After we ate lunch at a restaurant today we walked to the grocery store, passing an empty storefront that used to be a Blockbuster. My dad said people don't use DVD's anymore since they get everything off the internet. Although I admit there have been times when my sister and I or my mom and I have huddled around a monitor to watch a missed episode of Glee, watching things on a TV is just better. One day after a rough week at school, my friend came to my house with a DVD of the seventh Harry Potter movie and microwavable popcorn, which kind of goes along with my ramble in the second paragraph. It's all about sharing. My friends lend their books all the time. I don't know of anybody who would give away their Kindle willingly, but you already know what I think of Kindles.

All in all, I think the situation that's going on is ridiculous, since it seems people would rather stay in their houses than venture out into the world to get a book or a film. It's either that or people aren't reading anymore, which is worse. When my Borders closes, there will be no bookstore in the county. I would have to go to Baltimore to get my fix in the Barnes & Noble (which I hear is going down too).

Steamboatin'

For the past 12 days I was on the Erie Canal in New York on my grandparent's steamboat. I was with my grandparents, my sister Andelle, my cousin Hallie, and my aunt Innes. It took us two days to get to Little Falls, which was the first stop for the Great International Steamboat Flotilla. Little Falls was a cute but dead town, which was what I found in common with Canajoharie and Amsterdam, which were two other towns we stopped in along the way to our destination.

Our final destination was Waterford, where they had a weekend full of activities planned for us. We got there on Wednesday, and Thursday was our chill day. Hallie, Andelle and I noticed that other boats had wooden signs that they had on the dock, either for show or to hold their place. Earlier that week a lockmaster gave us Erie Canal coloring books so Hallie bought crayons in Schenectady and we used the crayons and colored on two by fours that we got off our boat. We made one for our boat and for two other boats whose owners we're friends with. Then we started making them anonymously for boats that didn't have any. Soon people who already had signs gave us some of their wood to make them signs on, and two people said they would varnish theirs.

On Friday we called my mom and told her to go to a website that had a live feed of a camera that pointed towards our boat. We all waved to the camera and even pulled in some other steamboating friends. We also had a "parade", where the boats went a few miles down the river and followed behind an old tugboat called the Urger, which dates back to 1901. When we got back to the docks, we had pizza and wings in the visitor center. My grandmother, Hallie, Andelle and I (my aunt left on a train in Amsterdam) were wearing matching French sailor shirts, which impressed everybody. We also got free t-shirts of the Sayonara, whose captain basically commanded the entire trip. For Saturday we got food vouchers to pay for our meals.

On Saturday there were vendors selling just about anything on the docks. The was a lot of people walking around, checking out the boats. The steamboaters congregated in this one area under a shady tree with small fold up tables and lawn chairs. The adults drank gin and tonic while my cousin, my sister, and I played cards. This one boat was firing a cannon and we got to take turns firing it. At night we sat on the boat and watched the fireworks across the water.

On Sunday there was a farmer's market, where my sister bought berries and a strawberry rhubarb pie with the remaining food vouchers. We steamed down to a lock where we parked the trailer in the pouring rain and we were on our way. Two days later we were home where I am now.

HSAs -> Internet

So this past week was pretty hectic with two HSA's (High School Assessment, a 3 hour test required for graduation) and the fact that teachers put caution tape everywhere, blocking off half of a wing so as not to distract the test takers.

When HSAs roll around, my web design class gets kicked out of the computer lab. I find class enjoyable even when we aren't using the computers because the teacher shows us cool videos about things aren't directly related to our lessons. In the lab we're learning about tools in designing web pages, like Flash or Dreamweaver; but in the random classrooms we're moved to we learn about the future of the internet and what it means for us.

Personally I find the internet astounding. So much knowledge and information that can be utilized almost instantly. It's so helpful too, connecting people around the world. Looking at my stats page, I'm still surprised that 22 people in Iran, 9 people in Ukraine, and 6 people in Indonesia visited my blog in the past month. Donovan Leitch, one of my idols, said that the internet is the new 60's.

"The dream of the ’60s, of me and John Lennon and the others, was: How do we speak to everybody on the planet at the same time? The first answer was via satellite, but that didn’t connect to everyone. Then John would say, ‘How about telepathy?' Then we forgot about it until now we realize that the Internet fulfills that dream of communicating with everyone. I’m not afraid of the Internet because it’s that the dream we had. The Internet is the new ’60s as far as I’m concerned."

The Internet has produced many an amazing thing, like WikiLeaks, the hacking organization known as Anonymous, and Facebook which helped the protesters in Egypt. And god knows I'd be lost without Google (I wouldn't even have a blog!). And lately Chrome, the web browser owned by Google, has been putting out commercials that highlight the many fine qualities of Chrome and other things Google owns (Gmail, YouTube, Picasa)

I use Chrome and I love it. It's super fast and the address bar doubles as a Google search bar. And Gmail is awesome too. I can chat with my friends and add cool labs, like one where I can undo sending a message up to 5 seconds after sending it.

Without the internet we wouldn't have been as connected as we are now in the world. The HSAs would take forever without the internet. When I talked to the admissions counselor at the community college, he said computer science has many areas and you got to find your niche. I think I've found my niche right here, with the internet.

P.S. I'm not writing this just because I'm so happy my internet came back on. I'm writing it because I'm angry I missed my web design class because of HSA testing.

It's amazing what fun you can have without the internet.

Yesterday the internet was gone for the whole evening, and since I had no homework I had nothing to do. When I got home I took a 3 hour long nap and ate a whole pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream with my mom after she woke me up.

I typed up a spreadsheet for my dad and downloaded a bunch of music to my mp3 player. My mom and I tried a "face smoothie" to hydrate our skin. We mixed together a banana, a cup of yogurt, a tablespoon of honey, and two tablespoons of rolled oats in a blender and let it soak our faces for 15 minutes before we rinsed it off. Our skin seemed more irritated than hydrated, but you live and learn.

After I played tetris on my cell phone for what felt like hours, I had an idea to install some floppy disks I found of Richard Scarry's Busytown. Unfortunately they didn't work too well and my mom and I were disappointed. Also, she noticed me scratch a red spot on my arm and said it was poison ivy. I insisted it wasn't since it wasn't itchy anymore, and I even put some poison ivy cream on it. Sure enough, today it is way small, less red, and not itchy at all.

Stats

So I've been looking at my stats for this blog after I discovered I could do that (Thank you Google empire!), and here's what I found:

• The most page views I got in the past year was in January of this year with 204.
• The most viewed post of all time is Adorez with 193 views. Runner up is New Book with 43.
• The biggest referring sites are Lona's blog or Google.
• Most of the page views come from America, but the second amount is from Russia with 89.
• 64% of the viewer's browser is Internet Explorer (for shame, internet users!)
• And of course, 94% use windows.

In other unrelated news, I have taken to the couch again since a spider appeared on my ceiling last night. Armed with anything I could find on my bunk bed, I threw odd projectiles at it, ranging in size from cough drops to college books. I finally gave up the fight and retreated to the living room.