A lot of firsts

Yep. As long as you're learning something new every day, I say you're leading a pretty good life.

I've learned a lot the last couple days. Yesterday, after so recently reviewing the book The Wikipedia Revolution, I got inspired to become an official "Wikipedian". What this means is that, instead of just using Wikipedia to look up facts and link surf, I'm actually a new member in the community that actually writes and edits all the millions of articles out there! Ooh, it feels so exciting. ^_^ I mean, when you wrap your head around the fact that anyone can edit ANY article on Wikipedia, even if they're not users... whoa!

I've gotta say, I never expected it to be so tough. No, I haven't edited an actual factual article yet. I'm still learning the basics. But you have to use this whole other software language and stuff... I don't know how the original people who developed this came up with it! It's so complicated! My head actually hurt yesterday. 0,o But I'd like to think it was a good hurt, because I was making my brain grow bigger by learning a new "foreign language".

You should see the progress I've made on my User page. I have links to a few sub-pages, including my gallery of User Boxes, which I only found out about when I became a user! User Boxes are these little label things that users construct with wiki-code or grab from others to identify themselves with. For example, "This user loves to write," or "This user is a vegetarian," or even "This user has a channel on YouTube." I guess it helps users know what others are like and if they have similar interests. In just one day, I taught myself how to make my own userboxes. I made one for James Dashner supporters (^__^ hee hee) and one for identical twins, since I am one.

Anyway, if you feel brave enough, you can try writing on my talk page by clicking the edit tab. Just don't delete anything. (Well, if you do, I'd know you did it and could easily undo it, so I guess you can do whatever. ^_^)

Moving on in my talk about firsts, today I learned something big... I need to work on my sit-ups! ~_~ Annette and I went outside with our computer to practice our dance steps for our play, using YouTube to play the accompanying music (clever, no?) and while we were out, we also searched for an old song we used to listen to when we visited with our grandparents and cousins and was always so much fun. Ever hear of something called the "Chicken Fat" song?

It's a great song to exercise to, and it brings back so many memories. It's the first time I've heard it in ages, and it was invigorating. But I'm serious about the sit-ups thing. I suck! Even with someone holding down my feet, I find it extremely difficult to get up. Perhaps with a little practice every day, I'll get the hang of it.

Alright, this is the last thing. And this is really important, in my opinion. Did anyone visit YouTube between 10 AM and 5 PM? If so, did you notice the link on the top that went to a live feed of the summit Obama had gathered together to talk about health care? I think it was also on TV, but when you're watching it on YouTube, there are no commercials! Woot! My family and I watched a couple hours of it while we ate lunch at the table.

Phew! I'm blogged out now. See you later. And remember what I said about learning something new every day! ^_~

Wow, it's so close to the end of February... 0,o

Friend me!

I've finally caved and decided to join Facebook. My mom uses it and says it's great, so I thought, "Hey, why not." Well, it could be useful.

If anyone else uses Facebook, I'm hoping that we can become friends, and perhaps someone can give me a couple tips on how to use it best. Besides sending out friend requests to a few people, I'm not sure what to do with it. But I'm sure when I get some friends, I can have a lot of fun with this site. ^_^

I loved it.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention how much I loved Valentines Day a few days ago. Yeah, I made a post to all of you early on in the day, but still. It was wonderful. Breakfast with my family included heart-shaped pancakes and homemade strawberry ice-cream, plus a valentine poem that I wrote about each person. My mom, my dad, Adam and Annette. Then we went to Sweet Tomatoes (where else?) and had great food at the restaurant that we all loved.

Later on, I also read a couple of blog posts that absolutely warmed my heart. ^_^ Here and here. The second one took a while for me to understand how truly special it was. ^_~

It's gonna be goooood!

Alright, I'm a little behind on my blogging, but I'm telling you, a lot of great stuff has been happening this week. For example, this Tuesday I finally saw The Princess and the Frog, Disney's latest animated classic. Oh my god, I can't even begin to tell you how much I loved that movie! I'm serious, it's my favorite Disney movie of all time now!

I can hardly believe that Disney finally got one right again. I loved a lot of Disney movies that came from the '90s, such as Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Hunchback of Notre Dame, all those good ones, but ever since the 21st century, I've kind of been disappointed by the movies Disney's turned out. Especially since they chose to go 3D. ~,~

But this one film has singlehandedly brought back my faith in Disney's classic touch! Dazzling animation, wonderful and charming characters, show-stopping original songs, a villain you love to hate, and a story that makes absolute sense. ^__^ Every minute that I sat through that movie, I was either smiling or laughing and just plain appreciating all the work that was put into making another old fairy tale come to life in an extremely tasteful way. You guys have GOT to see this! In fact, here's a trailer that might further convince you to go watch it, if my review hasn't already.

I order you to view this. It'll only take up 2 minutes of your time.

Boy oh boy. And if that's not enough excitement for you, here's some more. I think that me and my twin sister Annette might actually be going to Israel this summer!!! Yay! Does anyone remember the Birthright program I've talked about before? I tried to apply last year in September, for a winter trip. That didn't go too well. But this time, Annette and I registered and we got in! I'm so happy. ^_^

The weirdest part, though, was that after we completed the first application process (personal stuff and paying the refundable fee), there was supposed to be a Secondary application that handled which trip we went on, but something went a little buggy and we got emails saying the site was experiencing technical difficulties. Only today have we been able to finally access our applications. Phew! Oh, and we can change those at any time, so that's good.

Okay, here's another reason for me to be really happy. A long time ago, way back in August (wow, it felt like it was much longer ago! 0,o) one of our laptops went down. The reason wasn't very clear, but let's just say that the Simpsons were involved. (Here's the full story) The internet got infected or something, and when we got a shiny new Sony Vaio for our birthday, our sick computer fell out of use and gathered dust.

But yesterday we turned that around. ^_^ We reformatted the hard-drive (after backing up important stuff like old pictures and movies and other files), installed Windows XP, and got it working on the internet again! Yeah, I make it sound like it was all easy, but it WASN'T. There were a lot of loading screens, and waiting was involved too. But we couldn't be happier with the end product. Now we have 3 computers that can function and go online! 3 kids, 3 machines, perfect!

It's Valentine's Day!

I love this day, because it means I get to say I love people without feeling weird about it! ^_^ Well guess what?

I LOVE YOU!!!

And I love you, and you, oh yeah, and you too. Don't think that I'd forget about you there.

Thank you all for being such a friend to me. You are just... awesome. Words can barely describe my feelings.

I hope you all have a wicked Valentine's Day! Enjoy a day full of love, surrounded by people who love you for who you are. That's what I'll be doing. ^_^

Another Superbowl, plus other stuff

This year's Superbowl, #44, was pretty fun. I sure do like the one time of the year I can pretend that I watch football all the time. Instead of going to a huge party where we probably would have loaded up on the junk food, my family simply gathered around the TV, had delicious veggie burgers and laid back to enjoy the show.

It was the Indiana Colts vs. the New Orleans Saints. Since I don't know anything about the teams or the players or anything, I decided I'd root for the Colts. I guess I thought their horseshoe emblem would make me lucky. At first this seemed to be the case, but it wasn't meant to be. I believe the final score was 31-17. Well, too bad. I still had a good time.

Yesterday was awesome, because I went to the Miami Metro Zoo with our homeschooling group and had a blast. I saw sooooo many animals. We went around the entire zoo and saw almost every one. There were many species of birds and horned quadrupeds I'd never even guessed existed. Man, you wouldn't believe the amount of pictures and videos Annette and I took of these creatures. Both cameras were charged before we left, and by the end of the day, one of them was out of juice while the other's battery was in the red. I don't think we've ever used our cameras so much in one day!

Oh, the memories this trip created. The last time I went to the zoo was when I was real young, like 3 or something, so this was a very cool trip. No way I'm going to forget this. My favorite animals, based on which animals we could see the best and which were simply awesome, were the flamingos (tall, pink birds!), the camels (both the 1 hump and 2 hump variety), the kangaroos (so cool!), the African elephants (I've always wanted to see elephants. They're huuuuge!) and, best of all, the giraffes. Boy, the giraffes. We were actually able to feed them! Yeah! We bought branches of leaves from this stand, they ate them right out of our hands and we could touch them! It was quite a popular thing, really. I loved it.

Valentines Day is next Sunday, so I'm pretty excited for that. Need to get started on preparing cards and stuff! ^_^

About a month ago I remember being quite sad that one of my closest long-distance friends (how's that for an oxymoron?) was not available on the internet. Well, this has once again happened to the same friend, and I feel even worse than before. This friend has neither blogged nor emailed me since January 22, which means I've had absolutely no contact with him for nearly 3 weeks. If 3 days was bad for me, then 3 weeks has been absolute torture!

I wish so badly that I knew how he was doing. It's hard for me to do anything, because I know he won't be able to answer my emails, let alone read them. But I need to hold on to the hope that, eventually, perhaps very soon, he'll surprise me by popping back up online and I will be able to connect with him again. Then I will smile and laugh with joy and everything will be alright.

You know who you are, my friend. I don't need to say your name. Please don't forget about me. It's so hard to forget about you.

Edit: OMG!!! I can't believe it! My friend just emailed me this evening! What a surprise! I'm so happy!!! Wow, can you imagine? This happened last time too! I write a pitiful post about how I miss my friend so terribly, and then very soon afterwards I hear from him! I don't know. The universe works in mysterious ways... but I don't care. ^_^

He still doesn't really have internet, but I know that he'll be back. At least I know that he has certainly not forgotten about me. ^_~

February Fun

It's that time again! A new month is upon us, with many reasons to celebrate! There's Valentines, the Superbowl, President's Day, it just seems to go on and on.

February is also very special to me, because it was the month that I came up with the idea for my Imazia story, when I decided that I wanted to be an author. This was 4 years ago now! Un-freakin'-believable! In addition, the Taglit Birthright program's registering date for visiting Israel in the Summer is on the 16th! You've got to be very quick about signing up. First come, first serve. I really really want to go this Summer, so I've got the day marked on my calender in underlines. ^_^

Other than that, I'm not sure what this month will bring, but it can only be good. I've got so many things to be busy with. Toastmaster meetings, this play called "Once Upon a Broadway Dream," learning how to use all the dozens of programs in Adobe CS4 (part of our ongoing digital education), writing my book, and lots of other stuff.

I should tell you that despite my optimism the last time I wrote, I haven't gotten any further in my story all weekend. ~,~ It's really been busy though. This Saturday was especially wild! Annette drove us to Fort Lauderdale and we attended our second rehearsal for Broadway Dream, which was again full of singing and hard dancing. I believe we're getting better, though in the middle of learning the dances this time, I was just about ready to quit! 0,o

Then after that I drove us all the way to Miami where we had a baby-sitting gig. It was our second time sitting these 4 kids, the first time being New Year's Eve... oh man, I never got to telling you about that! Well, doesn't matter anyway. The children were really great. There's 10-year-old and 7-year-old girls, plus a 3 and a half-year-old pair of boy/girl twins. I love sitting them! The only problem is that they live so far away from us...

So yeah, in honor of the anniversary of my start as an author, I'm going to be a lot more focused on my writing. Among other things, of course, but I want to definitely focus on writing.