After we arrived on Cape Cod:
What do you get when you put, big groups dancing in unison, two boys doing cool karate stunts, a stand-up comedian, singers, a boy playing the bag-pipes, an ethnic dancer, a girl who "Thinks she could be a poet," some bands, a group of boys doing gymnastics to the mission impossible theme song, lots of pianists and a bunch of sweaty middle-schoolers in to a gym? Jam Day of course! I've mentioned all of the acts of note but I guess I'll just name some groups for all of you our in the blog-o-sphere. Alena, Casey, Clare, and Kate sang "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" with Shayna playing piano. (no good pictures of them), Alex W. (a family friend) performed "I Think I Could Be A Poet,"
Surprisingly enough, none of these pictures were taken by me. The first four were taken by dad, and the last two were taken by Chetna (on my camera). I lent my camera to her so she could take pictures during the races (she broke her thumb so she can no longer row, but she came to the race to watch). Here are the results (note: I'll only write down what I know for sure)
| Experienced Boys 1) ? 2) ? 3) ? - | Experienced Girls 1) Shen A 2) Niksy A 3) Nisky B 4) Shen B | Novice Boys 1) Nisky A 2) Shen A 3) Nisky B 4) Nisky C | Novice Girls 1) Nisky A 2) Nisky B 3) Shen 4) Shen |
Yesterday's practice was... really, really, bad (and that was trying to put it nicely). I won't say who was in my boat, but I'll definitely say that I was pulling the entire weight of the boat! (My coach even verified that) Three seat kept catching crabs, two seat had a back injury, and bow had no excuse (I was stroke seat).
But things are looking up. Today, we have a race against Shen and I'm really happy with my boat. I'm still in stroke (which, BTW, I've only just started doing and I really like), Cora is in three seat, Gabby is in two and Kate is in the bow. Our coxswain will most likely be Clare and I really hope that we will get to row in the new boat (which is still un-named). We don't really know about their team this year (as to how good they are) but there is one thing I do know about Shen, they are notorious for being late to races or not coming at all! I hope everyone works really hard out there!
The weather these past few days has been very wet. Humid all day long but no rain at the beginning. Then as we were getting on the bus to go to crew on Tuesday, it got a little more overcast. Once we're at the boathouse, the clouds are dark. Then, thunder and lightning off in the distance. We mods put away our oars and a few boats come back to the dock but for whatever reason, a few boats begin to boat out. Then, the lightning gets a bit closer, the thunder, a bit louder. Then, BAM! Lightning cracks and thunder roars at almost exactly the same time. The rowers are now leaping out of their boats, rushing to take out oars and bring up their boats. Then, it begins to rain. About now is when every rower on every squad tries to cram in to the boathouse. Thankfully, dad is there right away to take Clare and I home. A crazy (and very short) day at the river.
The weather wasn't as crazy today (enough rain and lightning to get crew cancelled though) but some really crazy stuff happened right here on Dean Street. I'll write more later. Adios!
Since our crew is getting a new boat, my coach Chris set us the challenge of coming up with names. The only thing we knew(and know) about the boat is that it's a quad and that it's black. Read this e-mail I sent to Chris to get the whole story:
Chris-
This morning, my family and I had a lot of fun coming up with names for the new boat. Here are some of our favorites:
Bubba
See ya!
Black Beauty
No cream, no sugar (like black coffee)
The Raven
(and building on that theme) Nevermore
Open water
The "Chris C------"
and if you wanna' suck up The "Matt H------"
and to quote my mother "Since it's for modified rowers, how about The Black Crab!" :D
The Hawk (you have to say this one a certain way)
The Dark Force
The Vader
Darth (all a la Star Wars)
Back in Black (we think this is a winner)
The Blitz
Tanto (the Lone Ranger's sidekick)
The Apocalypse (my parents think this is hysterical as well)
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Blackjack
Voodoo
Hermes or Mercury (for the Greek/Roman God, he was very swift)
Wicked
the Avenger
Ninja! (the exclamation point is necessary)
Checkmate
Stealth
Black Knight
Knight
You could also just name it after your favorite rower ever. :)
Or, you could go with the standard option and name it The Black (brand name)
My family clearly had too much fun with this!
I just thought I would share this with you beforeI make a real post.
I've been posting about other things I guess. Here is my report on sectionals. I worked at the finish line for about two hours so I got to see the finishes up close. That was cool. Now I know where to tell my parents to go when they watch my races. My dad was over at sectionals almost the whole day. What a way to spend a birthday! Since I don't remember all of the race results, here's a site with all of the results from every race. Here are all of my photos (that I uploaded) from sectionals. Speaking (writing?) of crew we chicas have our first race this week. This Friday, us vs. Schenectady. Nick, Clare, Eric, and Zack won't be there though, they're going on the French trip to Montréal.
There has been very little knitting going on. I still haven't gotten around to sewing up my shell and my sock is just started.
Not too much to report about school either. We went to Union College to see Professor Berk talk about the Holocaust and as I said before, the "Frenchies" are going to Montréal on Friday.
We had a chorus concert last night. It was so hot! Nick and I had a nice little duet at one point, that didn't go to well but I'm fine with that. We only had a few days to learn out parts anyway. After this very short and very choppy post, I say "Adiós!"
I found this funny quiz via a knit blog. I don't know much about the Golden Compass but I found this kind of cool. When I took the quiz, it said I was an ocelot, but you can decide if this is accurate or not. If it's not still an ocelot, that means it's already changing because of what you're putting in. Have fun!
No, not the Beatles song that I love but yesterday, May 4. We were table-topping people when we went outside during advocacy. Nick and I table-topped Clare (he was the table) and she hurt herself. In true Clare fashion, she's being very dramatic about it. I feel pretty badly about it already though and I think Nick does too. I guess we're not going to be allowed to table-top anymore, it's like Faye said, "it's the end of an era."
The modified boys raced against the home schooled kids yesterday. Us girls didn't race because the home school team doesn't have any girls. There were two races, each with one home school boat and two of our boats. In the first race, Nick's boat came in right behind the home school boat (there couldn't have been more than a few seconds between their times) and our other boat was a few boat-lengths behind. In the second race, one of our boats won, then the second home-school boat, then our second boat came in pretty far behind (one boy caught some crabs). Sadly, I have no pictures. I forgot to bring my camera to school yesterday but today, I will have it all day as I'm participating in 24 Hours of Flickr.
Sectionals are today and I will take lots of pictures there. Go Nisky!
p.s. Happy Birthday Daddy! Hope it's a good one (even though you'll be at sectionals all day)!
EDIT: Woah, we're now totally out of old blogger. That's some exciting news! Look here on Blogger Buzz to check out the full time-line of eveyrthing that made this possible.
"We Didn't Start the Fire"
"We Didn't Start the Fire" Music Video (this involves downloading the video)
This week, everyone has had this song stuck in their head, or at least, everyone that has Mrs. L for English. We've been assigned a research paper about a topic mentioned in the song "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel. In case you don't know (and didn't look at either of my links above), the song lists major events from the years 1945-1989 (when the song was written). There are lot's of good topics to chose from, I chose Watergate, Kyle chose "British Beatle-Mania," Kate chose AIDS, Michael chose "space monkey," and Faye chose the weirdest, grossest (and one of the saddest) topics there was, children of Thalidomide. I've decided to try to memorize the entire song before the report is over, I already have the chorus first four verses down. It's not the best song there is, but it's very fun to sing. Speaking of Michael, he recently hurt himself pretty badly. On Saturday, he was playing baseball and he slid in to home, his foot stayed on the plate but his leg kept going. He broke his tibia and fibula and pierced his growth plate. He's currently in a full-leg cast and is getting around primarily by wheel chair. He's going to be in a cast for a long time, he'll even be in a wheel chair when we go to Boston! That should be fun...
In other news, crew has been fun. The water is really low and the current has been strong everyday this week but I'm enjoying myself just being on the water. Today, I'll be going to sectionals, probably volunteering with my dad. That should be interesting too. I'll be sure to take pictures if I can. Adios!
