Yesterday was the first student council vote.  Now we have to wait until Monday before we get the results of who the top six out of the twelve people running are.  The people running in 8th grade are: Me, Alex D., Brian, Charlotte, Christian, Claire, Emma, Grant, Jeff, John, Terry, and Trevor.  I really hope I make top six.

Saturday was Char's surprise birthday party, which was cool.  Sunday was Cody's birthday party (he invited all of the 7th and 8th graders).  He had it at Bimbos, a really famous club in SF that hosts a lot of high profile events.  Monday was community service day, and my advisory went to a park to dig up bad grass/weed type stuff.  We went to lunch at Pasta Pomodoro afterwards, and then came back and watched Super Size Me.  Tuesday was our only full day of school, and we had the elections during lunch.

I went to the chiropractor after school... my back should not be this bad at age 13.  I figured out I'm more aware of my body then most people, so I can always feel it when something is wrong.  It's does have its benifits though, because I notice pains or sicknesses right away in my body, if I had a serious problem I would probably know to get it fixed before other people might.  For people who have little awareness of their body, they might only figure out that they have a problem once its gotten really bad.

Yesterday was grandparents/special friends day.  I was kind of weird because we only had 4 people in my PE class, me, Mai, Alex D, and Shana.  Mai's brother and grandpa were there too.  Everyone else was either out of town, on tech crew, or rehearsing to sing in the little performance thing.  The only classes we had were math, humanities, and PE.  Then we had the performance and went home.  Yay.

At like 9 or so at night, I went bowling for a really good deal.  My dad was nice enough to take me, even though his hip is hurting him so he wasn't able to bowl.  I kept getting nines in every frame.  There were some older hooligan teenagers in the lanes next to me, and the guys were throwing the bowling ball like a shotput, high in the air trying to get it as far down the lane as they could.  Must not have been very good for the ball, the lane, or their brain.  Another girl threw it one time like a discus, swinging it around and around right as I was about to come up.  I was scared for my life.  Funkytown saved me though.

At like 8:30 in the morning we are leaving for Thanksgiving in LA.  We are going to have a Thanksgiving dinner tonight (wow it's tonight already!  Even though it's 1:30 in the morning) with my moms side of the family, tommorow with my dad's, and then a saturday brunch with my dad's side and the Gershon family (reunion woo hoo).  I get back Sunday night, so I guess I'll see everyone at school Monday... yuck... school.

~Adam

PS. Like the Thanksgiving colors?

This week has been fairly hectic, sorry I haven't posted in a while.  I have seen a few plays; I went to BHS's dinner murder mystery play (since there is construction going on in the main building, they had their play in the cafeteria, and had it catered and everything), the next day I think it was say Benjamin Franklin: Unplugged, a one man show that was actually pretty funny, and Friday I saw Crystal's play, Curious Savages (Graham Toben was in it).  Saturday morning we took the SSAT at Nueva, I think I did alright, the synonyms and analogies are tough, but I'm sure they;re tough for everyone.  Then I went to Crystal's open house... their gym is huge, they have resort like tennis courts, and they have pretty much a fitness center room with tons of equipment.  The open house itself didn't really impress me very much though.  Later that night I saw The Incredibles with Grace, Cecile, Trevor, Arielle, Marlowe, Andreanna, Kathryn, Alex D, and Kenji.  It was a really funny movie, I recommend it.  Last night a group of us had a study session for tomorrow's science test, and today I shadowed at Crystal, had an orthodontist appointment, and got a haircut, which I really needed.  My hair grows really thick really fast, and the guy that cuts my hair (Matt, he's a young guy that took over Jack's Barber Shop next to BHS) told me today I have one of the most unusual hair growth patterns, and he's never seen anything like it.  How it goes up in front almost naturally, and my hair grows in all different directions from the back.  It kind of moves up from the back and too the side.  Exciting huh!?  So my hands aren't the only unusual part of my body!   My shadow at Crystal went well (I saw a lot of ex-nuevans too), especially my interview.  I really nailed that lol.  BHS is definitely still my first choice though.  I need to decide if I want to apply to Crystal or not.  I might as well, since we already paid for the application and shadow thing.

Student council is really moving along!  This week we are in the first campaign process, and a week from today we have the first vote, where we narrow down 8th grade to 6 people out of the 12 running for 8th grade representative (12 out of 33 running! 3/19 girls and 9/14 boys, and some of them are the same people that were even against the student council in the beginning *not naming names, remember, no mud-slinging! *).  I just wrote up a whole thing, but I think I'm actually going to save it for my speech... if I get a speech.  And I better , I've done a lot to get this going, and I think I deserve to get the chance to write a speech (only the top 6 get to write a speech, or as people not as committed would put it, "have" to write a speech ).  That's all for now, no hate mail please.

~Adam

PS.  I changed my background to a picture I took from my back yard on 11/2/2004 at 5:44:10 PM.   This is the picture:

I will spare you all my political rant, I'll make it a private entry instead.

Thursday I went to BHS's play.  It was pretty interesting, their stage is being remodeled, so they used the cafeteria, and they did a dinner murder mystery type show.  Everyone sat a table and we were served food by the actors, and that was part of the show.  It was pretty cool.

Friday was Bingo Night at school and the All City Dance.  So I went to the first hour or so of Bingo, and then I went to the All City with Grace, Kelly, and Niko, and at about 9:30 we saw Emma there.  The dance wasn't that great, the worst of the three I've been to so far.  The DJ was bad, the stereo system was really screwed, and they had this performer come and rap for like 20 minutes.  80% of the people left the room during that, it was pretty bad, and people wanted to dance, not listen to this guy rap.  I got to talk to some of my old friends during that though, so at least some good came out of it.  Afterwards Kelly's mom drove me home, and she had Jamba Juice for us!  As usual my ears were ringing the rest of the night.  More people have to go to the next all city!

~Adam

PS.  I changed my backround to one of the pictures Claire suggested.  I think I'm also going to try some different colors of text and backround for the entries, since a number of you say you can't read the red on blue.  Tell me what you like.

Wednesday I met with my mentor for my recital project, Mike Cavanaugh.  I found him through Riley's mentor (Cort Worthington) who was at school filming a documentary for Nueva.  I got his e-mail, e-mailed him what I was looking for in a mentor, and asking him if he knew anyone who somewhat fit what I was looking for and might be willing to help out.  So he forwarded my e-mails to Mike, Mike e-mailed me with his resume (which not to mention is EXTREMELY impressive), and now he's my mentor!  He's a really good guy, and it is so nice of him to be willing to help me out so much, he's even going to draw up a schedule for me so that I keep on track, and he has a 1 1/2-year-old baby!  Before my meeting, while I was taking a shower (It's a proven fact, people think up the best ideas while in the shower [It's not really a proven fact, it's just fun to say that something is a proven fact so that you sound smart {It also makes you sound smart when you put parenthesis inside parenthesis inside parenthesis, it makes it seem like you really know what you're doing <I know I'm going to have to repeat the first part of the sentence before the parenthesis since I'm sure you forgot it by now, so don't tell me this is a fragment sentence>}]).  ...Before my meeting, while I was taking a shower, I thought of an idea for a story, and a few characters.  During the meeting, I said my idea, but it wasn't a fully formed story, so I didn't want to get stuck on it.  I started talking about the characters, and I just kept thinking of new things about each of 4 main characters, and I figured out how to have them relate and mix with each other.  My idea is based around these four characters, that are in a pretty bad situation in life.  I don't want to bore you with the whole idea, but I'm pretty excited about it .  I've got a good idea for the begining, middle, and end, and I'm kinda shocked at how formed it is in my head, I didn't expect myself to think of something I'm so confident about.  Mike has even set up a schedule for me and possible meeting days, so I stay on top of things.  I'm going to start writing this week I think.

Like last year, I went to "Pick of The Litter" which is a Goodwill type store to put my Halloween costume together.  I started with an afro wig and and a pimp hat that says "Big Daddy" on it.  I got an awesome pimp outfit, 180 degrees from last year's proper lady costume.

Today has been crazy.  I went to school in my costume (other people were bums, they just changed into their costume for the parade) and walked in the parade with Dave as my hoe.  Had a Japanese test as usual, and Musical Theater (I'm going to do Something's Coming from West Side Story).  After school I went straight to a Halloween tennis clinic (there were a lot of bums who didn't come in their costume there too), and then we just had a dance.   The DJ finished setting up a half hour late, but if we set up a student council that won't happen again .

Tomorrow (actually, I guess now it's "today") I'm going to Paul's bar mitzvah, that should be fun.  Too bad it's the night before Halloween though, I miss out on all the fun parties .  Sunday people are coming to my house to trick or treat though, let me know if you're coming.

Student council meeting Tuesday.  Hopefully it will go a lot better than last week's meeting, and maybe we can focus on talking about how to do elections instead of argueing whether or not it's realistic to get one going this year.  The more negative we are, the longer it will take to get this started, so if you're coming to the meeting, be ready to be positive.

I have so much work to do over the weekend it's not funny.  Uhhhhggg...

Peace,

~Adam

PS.  I'm going to change me backround soon.  Comment and tell me which picture in my photo album (http://img40.photobucket.com/albums/v124/SoleSurvivorAdam/) you think I should put as my backround, thanks.  I'll put up Halloween pictures and such at the end of the weekend.

It's 1 AM, and I'm sitting here with John while he is talking on the phone with Char (and Claire).  We just got back from Grace's Bat Mitzvah party, it was so much fun.  In the morning was the service, and Grace did a great job, of course.  Then after the service I went to the movies to see 'Friday Night Lights' with John, Charlotte, Claire, Corey (who left Nueva last year), Alex Lai, and Grant.  I saw Andrew Morganthaler (friend/family friend) there, he was seeing the same movie with his friends.  Later on, we went to the Bat Mitzvah party (we were late as usual).  There were a ton of people there that didn't show up to the service, I kinda felt bad about it.  It was a great party though, it started off with a bang with me, Kelly, Bob (Lauren), Grace, and Grace's friend Ellen from Chicaago singing 'Help' by the Beatles.  I won the hula hoop contest (of course, I am the hula hoop masta), and did a lot better in Limbo then anyone expected, even with my bad back.  Grace's friends were cool, and I had a great time dancing, especially leading the 'YMCA'.  Congrats and Mazel Tov Grace!

~Adam

PS.  I'll put up pictures from the "Relay for Life" and the few pictures from Grace's party (before my stupid battery ran out) in the morning (I guess it is morning, but later morning).

Edit: Apparently people are too lazy to just scroll down and get the link to my photo album, or click on 'My Website' on the left of the screen, so here is the link... AGAIN: http://img40.photobucket.com/albums/v124/SoleSurvivorAdam/  The pictures are in two of the folders, you can guess which hopefully.

Team Nueva kicked BUTT!!!  We were the youngest team out there, and I'd say the best.  We always had someone walking, and even though we only had a few people on the team, we had so many people walking all the time.  At 4 in the morning, other teams which had 60 people on the team only had about 3 people walking, whereas we had every single person of our team walking, which was 7 at the time (not including my parents).  I did a lot of walking during the day, since people started showing up later in the day.  Out of the 24 hours I probably walked at least 18, if not more.  I walked a total of 38 1/4 miles, likely the most out of anyone there.  Everyone was sooo sore afterwards.  My parents took us out to breakfast this morning, and we pretty much hobbled into the restaraunt.  They must have thought we were crazy, moaning in pain while eating our food.  I felt so much worse after we had finished then when we were actually walking.  I sat down for a few minutes, and my muscles tightened up so much, I could barely stand up.  I got a huge arse blister on my left pinkey toe, so ever since about midnight I had walked on just the side of my foot pretty much.  It was a truly amazing experience though, I think it's something we won't forget for a long time.  There were over a thousand names that people honored and remembered during the Luminaria ceremony.  It was realy something when they read off all the names.  Team Nueva had the greatest spirit and drive, and next year when we are all in different schools, we have to go again as a reuinion.  I think it would be fun to have everyone bring one friend from their new school, and then we will register two teams, Team Nueva and a team with all of our friends.  It would be a fun way to reunite in a way that wouldn't be uncomfortable for people, and to show everyone else the kinds of new people they are meeting.  We could keep tallies of how many laps each team does, and compete like that.  If people bring too many friends from their school though, it could just turn into everyone hanging out with their own friends, instead of reuniting with the rest of us and meeting new people.  Plus, if we do this every year, it'l be enough exercise to last us the year.  Now if you'll excuse me, I need to catch up on the sleep I missed last night.  I'll have pictures up tomorrow.

~Adam

P.S. We won 6 raffle prizes! And Team Nueva raised way over $1,000 alone!  Props to us.  And I want to thank my parents for helping out with all of this and taking us out to breakfast, you made it really fun.  It was certainly A Walk To Remember .

Hey, Claire is making me write a new entry, so here we go.  Today we had an emergency drill, I was assigned to entertain the Kindergartners with Claire.  Five little kids jumping on your back and demanding piggy back rides can get a little tiresome.  It was a ton of fun though.  I took some pictures, I'll add those to my photo album soon:http://img40.photobucket.com/albums/v124/SoleSurvivorAdam/

Lorri (principle type person of the middle school) went in for surgery yesterday to get a banine (non cancerous) tumor removed.  That means she'll be out of school for the next few weeks.  At first I thought that meant it might put the student council on hold, and by the time she gets back it will be too late, but Tracy (science teacher), is going to keep it going, and I set up with her to have our next meeting Tuesday.  Right now it's seems like it might be a little unrealistic to get elections by November 2nd (Presidential election day), but I'm still going to give it a shot.

Claire (http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=evergreene44) got cast in A Christmas Carol!!! WOO HOO!  Go Claire!  She's gonna be Martha Crachit, I read her script, very intense .  Her little brother is Tiny Tim too!  Oh and I figured out her family... wow is it confusing.

Riley (http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=suriouslyawesome) invited me to use gMail, Google's new e-mail system that isn't even released in it's final version yet, but I get to test out the Beta version.  It's really cool, it let's you search through your e-mails, it groups messages together as conversations, and it gives you 1000 megabytes of storage, 10 times more then what you get on Yahoo! now, and 200 times more then what you used to get.  My e-mail on that is SoleSurvivorAdam@gmail.com.  Send me an e-mail so I can test it out .

Tomorrow is the American Cancer Society "Relay For Life" fundraiser.  What it is is from 9-10 AM, you can register a team for $100.  The goal is for each team to have someone walking at all times around the track for 24 consecutive hours.  It is really flexible though, so they won't enforce that someone is walking at all times, although I think it would be cool to accomplish that.  The opening ceremony is at 10 AM Saturday, and closing is at 10 AM Sunday.  There will be all kinds of entertainment all day, and at night there is a candle lighting type ceremony where you can buy one for someone you know that either survived cancer, or as a memorial for someone who died of it.  Breakfast, lunch, dinner and breakfast is served, and you can sleep out on the field.  I've been trying to round up a team, and I've got Alex D. and Char are going to come for the whole time, Mai is coming at around 2, John at 5, Claire at 6:30, and Brian at 11 PM.  Riley and Kathryn may come for an hour or two, and then we'll see if they can come back later and maybe stay for the night.  Trevor might come at around 7 or 8, but then he'll have to leave at 9 or 10.  The first 4 hours will be the toughest, since we'll only have 3 people.  Remember to bring donations people!   Peace,

~Adam

Sorry I haven't updated in such a long time.  A lot has happened since my last entry.  Classes have started and are well underway, and homework is starting to pile in.  I'm all my classes with Grant and Claire, both of whom I've pretty much always been with, and I'm not in any classes with Trevor, Maya, Marlowe, Kathryn, or Lauren.  Grant is so much fun to be in class with all the time, and I don't know what I would do without Claire, her help in class is going to push me through the year .

I feel fairly behind on my recital project.  So far, I'm on my third idea, hopefully this one will be successful.  My first idea was to film and edit a second season of Survivor: King's Canyon with the same cast, but I figured there were too many possible problems with that that I could not control, and there was a good chance it wouldn't work.  So I moved on to my second idea, a documentary on creating a student council at Nueva.  All summer I had thought about starting a student council, so I figured I could film and edit the process of that.  After having Claire help me film the first student council meeting, I realized I wouldn't have good enough footage, so that didn't work either.  So now I'm on to my third idea.  Putting together and filming a bunch of monologues that I choose, which I may try to mix together somehow.  It's a way to do acting and film and editing, and not have to rely on other people very much, so I could do it on my own time.  I'm going to talk to Dick Butterfield to talk about being my mentor or finding me someone that could be.

We're naming the flamingo that is going to go on someone's 'spot' each week.  First we had a period where we could come up and write possible names on the board.  Then we voted for our top three choices, and now we are down to the top 3: Flamdango, Horatio, and Pinky Binky, which I came up with.  I have a feeling that if I didn't convince people to put Pinky Binky down as their 2nd or 3rd choice, it wouldn't have even been in the top three.  Just shows how much influence I have on the school .  Right now I'm probably the only Pinky Binky supporter , but I like the name Flamdango.

Last night I went to the first All City dance of the year.  I had a good time.  I knew so many people there from all sorts of different places, so it's really cool to see everyone again.  Some people that I used to be really good friends with seem a little dazed *cough* Anthony *cough*, but it's still so much fun to see everyone.  It's kind of hard to think I'll probably be going to school with most of those people next year.

Well, hopefully I update again soon, but ya never know .  Show me some love and comment *major hint* .

~Adam

*edit* I realized that the guy I saw at the dance, Anthony, that I thought was one of my best friends at McKinley, I actually never went to school with.  It was another Anthony that looked a *little* like him!  I think I was just on a soccer team or something with the guy at the dance.  Silly me...

We will always remember...

http://www.911digitalarchive.org/diganimbackup/americaattacked/index1.html

Tuesday was the first day of school.  Unlike a lot of other crazy people, I was not looking forward to it.  This year, I'm going to try to help start a Student Council.  I've been thinking a lot about it over the summer, and I've got some ideas.  I've already talked to Lorri a tiny bit about it, but it sounded like she didn't really have the time to put energy into getting one started herself, but she said that she would support the idea.  I also started collecting a '6th grade posse.'  I'm going to be the nice 8th grader to the 6th graders, not the bully.  I know what it feels like to be a 6th grader and not want the older kids to pick on you, so I figure they will be grateful if I'm nice to them.  Might even help with the Student Council thing .  The 6th graders are pretty cool, though.

Also, I got home from the advisory camping trip earlier today.  We went with Dan's advisory, which was fun, and there were two other advisories camping right next to us, Ken's and David's.  I had a good time getting to know everyone a lot more.  I also really liked the campfires at night.  That was my favorite part.  I came over to the fire the first night when I heard Karen and Dan playing on their guitars/banjos.  It was really nice just sitting there in front of the fire and listening to the music.  Sure enough, after 5 minutes, everyone else had some over too.  Some stupid people kept talking and it kinda pissed me off, but they left soon, so it was ok.  I stayed there until like one in the morning, just kinda sitting and thinking about life, and just enjoying the peace and serenity.  I've been kinda putting things in perspective lately, and it's really working to put me in a good place.  I feel so mentally and emotionally stable compared to people who are really having problems loving and living life, and I am so thankful for it.  You know, I'm not gonna ruin this moment I just made, so I'm going to stop the story here.  Sorry for being 'sappy' guys .  Oh right, and pretty soon I'm going to put camping trip photos and first day of school photos in my photo album, I've got like 80, so look out for those.  http://img40.photobucket.com/albums/v124/SoleSurvivorAdam/

~Adam