Gah, life as usual. Things to discuss: Harry Potter, summer reading, Math Plus, cheerleading, tumbling, and Wicked. Code for: not much (but wordy, nevertheless). Summer = epitome of boring.

As you all (should) know, the fifth Harry Potter movie and the seventh book have come out. I have not seen nor read the above. I'll see the movie eventually and I haven't gotten the book yet; I've heard spoilers though, like how the epilogue is just like badly written fanfiction.  I'm not one of those fans who would sacrifice sleep for the sake of getting a book. Seriously, midnight parties? What is with the Harry Potter phenomenon? It's just a series of books that get thicker and thicker and document the emotional ups and downs of a boy wizard. I've read better, but I still do like Harry Potter for being Harry Potter. Hey Jo? Ease up on the amount of text you write next time (Harry Potter Encyclopedia... I'm curious. Will it really be an encyclopedia or just a collection of stories?).

Speaking of books, I've checked out so many from the library this summer only to return half without reading them.  Blah, where does time go? I haven't even finished my summer reading assignments. I have to read The Odyssey, Animal Farm, Night & Dawn, and some of "The Best American Essays of the Century" *cough*hack*choke*cough* ...so far, I've gotten nowhere. Only a month 'til school. I'm already freaking out.

Math Plus. The name alone is terrible. The method is stupid. They give you old "contest" worksheets from like, 10 years ago. 30 to 40 questions to be completed each time (I go on Sundays) and a homework binder with daily worksheets to tide us over until we come back next week! *sarcastic squeal* It's so similar to Kumon. I'm working my way up to become a celebrity in both places. Behold! The Girl Who Fails Miserably At Everything. Check it out:

Which of the following can be factored into two quadratic polynomials with integral coefficients?
A)  x⁴ + 1
B) x⁴ + 4
C) x⁴ + 9
D) x⁴ + 16

Don't ask me, I don't know the answer. I got 20/30 WRONG. Doesn't that tell you something? Shouldn't people be concerned? Apparently not. The TA's just calmly come over and help me. My explanation to them: "the guess and don't check method is not working for me." I'm not a stupid person. I know I'm not. My IQ is exceptional. It just makes me so upset when I am forced to do pointless exercises and PAY for it. I won't try when I do not feel the need to. Math sucks a**. Doesn't take a genius to figure that out.

On to cheerleading. It is truly pitiful when only four people show up for practice. Add the coaches and you have a grand total of 6 bodies in the gym. Goodness. Where is everyone? Vacation, camp, the beach, and probably at home avoiding us, that's where. Too bad. They missed the making of the oh-so-awesome Rock 'n Roll t-shirts for "theme day." Couldn't they have picked a better theme? We have to spend one of our camp days wearing a tie-dyed shirt and carrying an inflatable guitar. AND MICROPHONE. Yay for cheer camp. One week!

I must admit. I am not terribly fond of Rock 'n Roll. A friend and I were put in charge of the t-shirt planning. Part of an email I sent to her:

"My first thought was to put drumsticks in everyone's hair and be done with it, but we would probably end up hurting someone ;)

Things that rock stars have in common:

- Black. Lots of black.
- Accessories like metal, zippers, and such. And boots.
- Leather. Not that I'll wear it, I'm just saying... they like leather, lol.
- Crazy hair. Not really crazy, but abundant use of hair gel.
- Make-up... we could have sooooo much fun with that.
- The color silver? Maybe.
- Guitars, drums, microphones.
- Tattoos! How could I forget? But scratch that. No tattoos."

So Rock 'n Roll isn't my thing but I ended up designing the t-shirt. Make the best of it, right? On Monday, we did the tie-dye. It looks hideous. Seriously, like, really awful. Splotchy, with green spots (primary colors! What do you get with blue and yellow?!). Today we painted guitars and music notes but my shirt got messed up, as per usual. Last year's "decades" theme day was so much better. We were the Pink Ladies and T-Birds from the 50's. At least I got to be girly. Yay pink!

Hmm... What else do we do at practice with less than half the squad? A little bit of stunting (OMG. We are nowhere near being prepared for camp! *scream*), some tumbling (still working on that forward roll but at least we made progress on our cartwheels), jumps (what a joke), dancing (we spend so much time on this one dance but we still need to learn all of the band dances), and of course, cheering (we haven't even learned half of the material ). *sigh* It's no use complaining. To work!

Monday's cheer practice was three and a half hours long. We FINALLY started conditioning (running, sit-ups, push-ups, etc.) even though it killed. My leg muscles hurt (especially the quads... I can't walk up the steps!). I had tumbling yesterday and we did conditioning there too. Add on today's three and a half hour practice w/ conditioning and you get one really sore cheerleader. Serves me right. I should be working out on my own but hey, I'm busy with my Math Crap and summer reading!

So this long monologue is drawing to an end. Oh wow. Practice on Friday, then I get to see Wicked, the musical! I am so excited! We ordered the tickets a while ago and they sold out after we bought ours. It's so popular (haha... nevermind ) that they extended the run in our city. Yippee! I get to see Wicked! Wait, didn't I say that already? Oh well. I'm excited, I can repeat myself. Closing thoughts: quizzes are fun to take! Too bad they're not accurate.