Metal Water?

Hey everyone!
So today is Mardi Gras! And I had my very first....oh gosh it's going to be fun to spell this...Paczki? I don't think that's right and my computer says its wrong but it doesn't think that I'm talking about that amazing desert. Of course the chocolate ones taste exactly like a giant boston creme from dunkin donuts but still. Also I have yet another thing. Why on earth does the water at my school taste like pennies?? I know that sounds really weird but if you go to my school you will understand that it does actually taste like pennies. Well, I'm not sure if its exactly pennies but just...metal. You know what metal tasting water is like right? Well, if you don't you know the smell of metal? Imagine the smell of that metal as a taste and then that being the taste of your water. It's so weird and everyone of the people that I've talked to about it agree. How does that even happen though? Maybe that's like a specific kind of well water. At my home we have tap water, but my friend LeAnn has well water. So it's like I can't drink water at her house because I'm so use to the tap water at mine. I don't usually have the school water. I mean in the summer I have to because its during colorguard and metal tasting water is better than no water right? Of course I'm right! Water is apart of your life! It's what...75% of your body? Something like that. Alright alright maybe that's not exactly right but I've never been a fan of the human body stuff. That for me is the creepiest part of Health/Science classes. Which is funny because I wish to become a Marine Biologist. But that's not human bodies those are fishies! Speaking of fishies you know that inflatable shark that I spoke about in a blog a while ago? Sure you do just scroll down!.............Alright now that you're back from reading that blog post....you probably didn't read it did you. Zut! Tu est penible! No translations needed. ANYWAYS that inflatable shark is finally set up! It's hiding in my closet right now but I've been flying it around for days. I have an 18 foot ceiling in my living room so it's very fun to fly it around in there haha. And it's looks exactly like it does in the picture that I put in the blog post that you probably never read when I told you to read it. Alright so this somehow all ties together with metal water. Because today is Mardi Gras! And luckily I had french class today so we had a little somewhat party with a king cake which has a very weird story. Apparently when you buy a Mardi Gras King cake it comes with this doll. And it's a naked baby that you are supposed to stuff in the cake after its baked, and then put frosting over the top. Whoever has the piece of cake with the baby has to host the next Mardi Gras party! It's really weird I know and we didn't hide the baby in the cake. My french teacher just threw it aside. But because of that king cake my mouth was really dry and so I got a drink of water and it tasted like pennies! And that's the wonderfully weird life of Tinkerbell.
Sincerely,
Tinkerbell

Ramble Ramble!

Hey everyone!
So all of you should probably know by now that I am on the Open winter guard for LC. If you don't, read older blogs! But anyways because I'm on the open guard there are a lot more performances to worry about. This saturday is going to be one of the scariest so far. This weekend is Indy regional in which case we sleep in a hotel just like we did in color guard. But because of this Indy regional, our coach, Mr. B, is getting incredibly nervous. He gets super duper nervous about these winter guard competitions especially for the open guard. Meaning that he is going to yell at us a whole bunch. Confession: I hate being yelled at. It's a horrible feeling even when it's not you getting yelled at in the first place. You just get that feeling in your stomach and it just doesn't feel very good at all. It almost feels like guilt when your not even guilty. So that's my major worry this week, Mr. B screaming at us every practice and then being super stressed out about this competition. What stresses me out the most is the fact that its prelims and then finals. It depends on how good you are whether or not you make finals which is obvious and I shouldn't be explaining that. Anyways I'm really nervous because some people don't have the emotional connections the same way that others do. In my case this winter guard show is about my dad. He passed away from colon cancer before I even got into the 2nd grade and I barely got to know him. All I remember now is silly things like Disney world or piggy back rides or silly nicknames. For other people this show is about a breakup or a boyfriend cheating on you and breaking your heart. I've never actually had that feeling. I'd rather not have that feeling for a very long time. I don't really understand dating in middle school or high school. Mainly because there's so much other drama going on that you don't need anymore about whether your bf's tie matches the color of your dress or that they hugged some other girl or stupid things like that. I don't understand any of that kind of stuff. I guess that makes me a ton different than any other girl. I mean I'd rather be different than just like everybody else. Everyone wants to be "normal" but what exactly is the definition of normal. NO ONE IS NORMAL! Especially in high school. Not everyone is on the guard, not everyone is on the dance team, not everyone gets straight A's, not everyone gets straight D's. Everybody is different. And if you think that everyone being the same is cool, then you are thoroughly disturbed. Well, back to the fun stuff. I seemed to get a little serious there which rarely happens haha. ANYWAYS I finally got my loft bed installed and it's amazing! The only problem is I'm having trouble getting use to not sitting straight up in the morning haha. I've already done that a few times where I've hit my head on the ceiling. My mom and I started decorating my room too. We got a new rug, new curtains, new pillows and bed sheets. It's so much better than it was before! Before everything was bright blue and it had to be that way because otherwise things would clash! So now my room's walls are neutral color and then I have warm colors so it doesn't feel so cold. It's a lot more relaxing I have to admit. I will probably get a lot more homework done without the distraction of the bright blue walls. Well, I believe this is yet another edition to my series called "Ramble Ramble!" see you guys later!
Sincerely,
Tinkerbell

Waking up isn't fun

Hey everyone!
So today was the hardest day to wake up this morning. I have no idea why because it's a friday and you'd think it would be easier because it would be like "Hey, one more day of this and then you get to sleep in a little" What I mean by sleep in a little is I have guard practice in the morning tomorrow. From 9 to 5. Well, I guess that's more sleep that I would usually get waking up at 5:45 every school morning. Ugh I really don't want to get ready for school or even go to school today. But of course I have to because of this weird thing about my school. At my school we have white days and blue days and today is a white day. Which doesn't make much a difference as to why I wouldn't wish to go to school. But the reason that I HAVE to go to school is because the last time that I missed a day 2 classes went from A's to C+'s. It's amazing how that all works right? Well, another reason is that I haven't exactly been sick this year at all. The only reason that I have missed school days it because of colorguard. I'll be missing a lot of days when WGI comes up. WGI is like our big big championships where we go to Dayton, Ohio. I just hope that nothing too crazy happens and I end up failing my classes. That would be HORRIBLE!
Sincerely,
Tinkerbell

Lexile measures flawed continued...

Hey everyone!
So I thought that it would be nice if I just added a couple more things to my belief of a flawed lexile measure. First off, after doing a little bit of research, I now believe that I MUST turn all of these facts into my english teacher. I just hope I can channel my inner lawyer. Well, here's the facts. Those of you who have heard of the author John Steinback or any of his books such as "The Grapes of Wrath" or "East of Eden" should be thoroughly disappointed because Lexile.com believes that those books (which by popular belief are pretty much college books) have a lexile of 700. Yup, lexile believes that they are 7th grade books. Also another story which I could not stop laughing at was when I was doing research off of google about lexile and I found this article on Wikipedia.com. It stated that a 32 paged children's picture book has a lexile of 830. I went straight back to lexile and.....it was completely true! The only difference was at the beginning it showed an NC and then 830. What the NC stands for is non-conforming meaning they make the score higher than usual to that high ability readers are able to read it. So apparently a children's book has a higher reading level than a college book. Also have you guys ever heard of Black Beauty, no not the movie but the actual book. Well, even if you haven't it's apparently a 10th grade book. It's this small 210 paged book with really big lettering and a picture taking up every other page. Take out all the pictures and you probably have only 100 pages or less. The book that I wish to read for my English project is "Jurassic Park" and, before you say anything, yes it was a book before it was a movie. I just thought that it would be interesting to see how the author's life ties to dinosaurs haha. Except I can't use the book because of this Lexile problem. Lexile believes that this very very small lettering 399 page book with tons of vocab in every single page is a 7th grade book. So if I don't turn all this information into my English teacher, I'll be stuck writing about a horse. Wouldn't that just be a wonderful essay to read about? Answer: Absolutely not! I'm prepared to fight for lexile to disappear off the face of the Lake Central databases. It needs to because there's no way anyone in the 7th grade can read a college book that takes years to comprehend.
Sincerely,
Tinkerbell

Lexile Measures flawed?

Hey everyone!
So there has been a lot of things on my mind lately. First of all, you all remember that I was put onto the Open guard yes? Well we had our very first competition yesterday! I think it went really well for our first show and home show. Problem was that because it was our home show we couldn't actually compete with the other Open guards but we still got judged. I have no idea what the judges thought of us but we certainly made a lot of people cry which was our whole plan anyways so it was a good thing! I also currently have a project that I am doing in my Honors English class. It's where we research an author and then read one of their books and then see how the author's lives tie to the book. The twist is that we have to have a lexile range of 960 or higher. Which brings me to my main subject: Lexile measures. I strongly believe that lexile measures are incredibly flawed in almost every single way. Because of these measures we had to go from book to book trying to find one high enough. The problem is the way that these people determine the lexile measure of a book. Here's a little bit from the lexile website Lexile.com:

"A book, article or piece of text gets a Lexile text measure when it's analyzed by MetaMetrics. For example, the first "Harry Potter" book measures 880L, so it's called an 880 Lexile book. A Lexile text measure is based on two strong predictors of how difficult a text is to comprehend: word frequency and sentence length. Many other factors affect the relationship between a reader and a book, including its content, the age and interests of the reader, and the design of the actual book. The Lexile text measure is a good starting point in the book-selection process, with these other factors then being considered."

This quote makes me very concerned about lexile measures. Its the fact that the age and interests of a reader determines the measure that scares me the most. If it were really determined by that then why on earth is a a 32 page children's picture book have a lexile of 830 but Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton has a lexile of 710? It's very flawed. Lexile measure irks me.
Sincerely,
Tinkerbell

Seriously about half of this is about grape juice

Hey everyone!
So it's been way to long since I last wrote in this. Thus, I need to update immediately! I had a really great Christmas this year and so far a great 2012! How about you guys? I got a lot of stuff for Christmas but I don't wish to brag. However, I had one new years resolution this year and I have so far kept it all this year. My resolution was to give up soda. It's been fairly easy so far. Rumors say that it takes 21 days to break a habit and its been 8. So I've got a little ways to go. I've been drinking this amazing grape juice called Welch's light. At first I was a little skeptic because I've had normal Welch stuff before and it wasn't the best in the world. So I decided to try a glass. It took a couple sips to get use to but after a while I was hooked. I've already gotten 3 bottles of the stuff! And I keep wanting more! I've had almost 2 glasses a day of this stuff. Which really isn't good because I bought all these other drinks to substitute soda and I have yet to try them haha. Well, I made some pink lemonade tonight though. So I guess that's one out of three that I haven't tried yet. We also got these  smoothie things that aren't real smoothies because there's no ice in them. They're more of a juice than anything else. The only problem I'm having with all these things so far is the obvious, I can't seem to get enough water a day. I mean, aren't you supposed to drink 8 glasses of water a day? If so I haven't done that in my entire life! Which is a very sad 14 years. Anyways I can't seem to find a way to make the water in my town taste good. At my old house the water in that town tasted great! Now I'm still trying to get used to the new flavor. Which yes, different towns have different flavored water. Some are tap some are well. I'm pretty sure my home town had well water. You'd think that after 3 years that you'd get used to a different taste right? That's exactly it! I haven't had enough water lately that I haven't been able to get use to it!...........................Alright I know that this is COMPLETE nonsense and 7 out of 10 readers will not care what I'm rambling on about but hey. I have to get it out of my system somehow? Anyways tomorrow is the start of finals week. Which is completely stressing me out in almost every single subject. What makes finals week silly is the fact that I have a final test in Colorguard, Yes, Colorguard! It is technically a class you know. Except we go outside or we sit around and do nothing sometimes. Anyways our coach had us write down what was going to be on the guard final. It's absolutely ridiculous. One of the questions is "what is the name of the fall show?" Yeah! As if hearing it a million times by announcers and seeing it everywhere didn't get it stuck in our heads! Oh and the "extra credit" is how to spell his last name. Which is okay credit considering we don't go by his full last name. We call him Mr. B but it's really Buzalski. Alright I HAVE to stop rambling now. I have an Algebra final tomorrow and I might need to look over a few things.
Sincerely,
Tinkerbell

Possibly THE longest post yet

Hey everyone!
So today I gave all my teachers cookies. Yes, I might possibly be a goody-goody at times but hey, when you have a giant box of cookies and have no clue what half of them are what would you do? Eat them and find out? Because some of them didn't look tasty in my opinion. Mainly because I don't like the big frosted sugar cookies. Anyways in journalism we presented our court cases. Ours was Morse vs. Frederick. It went well in my opinion except our teacher didn't let us finish the presentation because we put a little quiz on the power point and she didn't want people to have answers for the test for later. While everyone else was presenting though my friend and I ate marshmallows....with chopsticks. A little silly but we planned it earlier in the week to have an "Asian" Christmas. We exchanged gifts too. I got 10 years of good luck through these tiny little origami stars and a origami flower while I wrote a poem about a panda named Tao and a panda peewee pillow pet. You should have seen my friend's reaction to the panda. It was amazing. She kept talking in that high pitched baby voice and was petting it and hugging it all class. That's what I love about Christmas. Giving all those cool gifts and seeing the people's reactions to them. It's the most amazing feeling but so hard to describe. I just hope that on Christmas day I'm on the other end. But of course I gave my mom a really good present. But I can't tell you because she reads my blog xD. So anyways back to the Asian Christmas. My friend and I are planning on watching some movies over the break in Chinese and eat Chinese food with chopsticks. So I thought I should practice a little. However, it's a whole lot easier to eat marshmallows than things like rice or noodles with chopsticks. I just hope that later I'll get the hang of it. There's one thing I'm really excited about though.......ITS FINALLY CHRISTMAS BREAK!! I've been counting down the days since the beginning of November! I've been waiting so long for this because I think its my favorite break with the beautiful snow outside and to relax inside with cozy slippers and pajamas and possibly hot chocolate. Something about it just seems nice you know? Like you just feel....cheerier. I absolutely hate the feeling you get around Halloween though. I just don't really like all those scary things popping up out of nowhere. Of course I say this while being home alone... I wonder what I'm going to do this Christmas Break. Maybe I should go ice skating. I did that a couple years back and it was fun. I've always wanted to learn all those crazy jumps and flips that ice skaters do, but I'm just not coordinated enough yet. Sorry if this is a little ramble ramble but I got to get all this out of my mind. Okay, so what should I get my dogs for Christmas? Last year I got them these little red and green bones that they ate over the course of the day but I want to do something special. Mainly because I feel like giving a lot more this year that usual. I always walk down the Target aisles and see those gigantic bones in the shape of a candy cane. Oh boy that would take them days to finish. Maybe even weeks! That's what I should get them. That way they don't complain about treats so much. It's like every time they do something good they want a treat. So I'll just tell them to go get their candy cane bone. I'm just worried about how much it will cost. Because if you saw them you'd know...they are HUGE. Not just little candy cane bones..no they are gigantic things that come in one big clear bag. I guess I'll have to go to Target soon to find out. I should probably stop writing now xD.
Sincerely,
Tinkerbell