I just got back from a birthday trip (not my birthday; my friend's) to Boston Paintball, where I played (surprise!) paintball for the first time ever. It wasn't full-fledged paintball, though; they had some strict rules and they weren't using the really painful paintballs. It was indoors in this big room with all sorts of bean-bag "bunkers" you could hide behind. Some were in the shape of right triangles (called "Doritos" by the people there; i.e., "there's one behind the left big dorito."). Others were cylindrical. We all got helmets and wore especially thick clothing as protection.

Some guys had REALLY fancy guns, with custom paint jobs, double barrels, scopes and laser sights. The people running Boston Paintball separated those with rental guns from those with special guns in order to level the playing field, but a rental person was allowed into the non-rental game if they wanted to. We ended up playing in all the games.

The game started off with each team crowded behind a barrier of netting on either side. As soon as the ref said "go," you had to spread out across the bunkers -- you weren't allowed to stay behind the net. When a lot of people got playing -- sometimes we had ten or more guys on each team -- it got really crowded, really loud, and really chaotic.

I'd say the best part was the teamwork involved. Before the game started people told their friends "okay, we'll go to the big left dorito first, then you cover me while I move up..." Once the game started, everyone was yelling out enemy locations and requests for covering fire.

The other three people "at the party" (for lack of a more appropriate phrase) all got bruises, but I pretty much stayed behind the bunkers the whole time and thus came out perfectly alive, with no real bruises and only four or five hits. The more experienced people we were playing with, even though they were clearly verterans, were still really nice to us. (You can tell they're veterans from the *literally* eight bottles of refill paintballs strung around their belt, the mohawks, the special helmets and guns and the fact that they carried their equipment on IN TWO OR THREE SUITCASES.) Also, they weren't really way way way better than us -- we could hold our own against them.

In conclusion, it was really fun, but I would NOT want to try serious paintball. I've seen some of the giant bruises that can cause. ;-)

Hi there!

Beaver had this past Monday and Tuesday off, Monday for Patriot's Day and Tuesday for some teacher work day thing. On Monday we went out to the marathon, where I counted the first thousand male runners just for fun. :-)

Yesterday I had a pleasant surprise when I signed into Blogger and found, to my delight, an offer to join the Gmail beta-testing. What is Gmail, you ask. It's a new Google-powered free email that gives you ONE GIGABYTE of storage! Yippee! It's really cool.

Yesterday was also the Beaver Spring Concert. Congratulations to everyone involved (especially the middle schoolers, who I actually know)!

The whole 8th grade leaves for Washington D.C. this Monday, where we'll be for a week. We have to get to school at 5:30 in the morning, and it's a 10-hour bus ride! Since time flies when you're having fun, we have a really "fun" event planned: watching Schindler's List!

(That was a joke, by the way.)

We've watched a little in History class, but we haven't had time to finish it -- it's over 3 hours long! (Of course, with our 10-hour bus ride we could watch it three times and still have time to spare.) It's just about the least "fun" movie I've ever seen.

Random coincidence: we're watching a Liam Neeson movie in both History and Science. In History we're watching the aforementioned Schindler's List, and in history we're watching the PBS series Evolution, narrated by Liam Neeson.

Random Rosie Comment of the Day:
She loves playing with all her doggy friends! Casey, who's a black lab in our neighborhood, is one of her best friends; she also enjoyed play-time with fellow golden retriever Dante while at the marathon.

Just got back from the Sox-Yankees game. The Red Sox won! :-D

Manny hit a homer, Schilling had an awesome first game @ Fenway as a Red Sox player, and the whole stadium had lots of fun chanting "You use steroids" to Jason Giambi. :-)

GO SOX!!!!

Today is the first day of my four-day weekend -- yippee! :-) We get Monday off because of Patriot's Day, and Tuesday off because of some teacher work-day thingy.

Today we're going to the Red Sox game! Wish them luck! :-)

Oh, wait! I almost forgot!

Today was "Service Learning" day at school. So, my advisory & I went to Shattuck Shelter to stuff informative folders for a legislative fundraising meeting Friday. On the bus ride there we watched Teletubbies, and on the way back we watched Barney -- how much better could you get!?!? ;-)

(The bus was REALLY nice!)

Adios for real this time. :-)

Today a couple of other kids from Beaver and I went to the Bowen (my old school) production of The Wizard of Oz. It was really good! Afterwards I talked to the cameraman doing the recording, who I had met the previous year at Bowen's 2003 musical. Here's my rough transcript of how it played out:

ME: Hi!
CAMERAMAN: Hi! Wait a second.... do I know you?
ME: Yup! I talked to you last year. You were the one who filmed the President, right?
CAMERAMAN: Yup.

We then found out that he had filmed every Bowen play since... 1994? Yeah, I think it was since 1994. (Either that or 1996.) That means that he's filmed every single Bowen play I've been in or seen! :-D Pretty cool, huh? As for the president thing, during my discussion with him last year I learned that he had filmed some U.S. President -- Kennedy, I think -- only a couple of weeks before they were assassinated. Yikes!

We all had lots of fun giving out flowers afterwards, even to people to had no idea who we were and/or weren't even in the play! ;-)

Adios.

Yesterday we had a Nobel prize winning scientist guy from NIST (National Institute for Standards and Technology, I think) come and give a little speech at our school. It was really fun! He talked about atomic clocks and the need to slow down atoms by making them really really cold.

As a demonstration of just how cold, he brought along a whole lot of liquid nitrogen for the talk. He poured it on the ground, poured it over his hand, stuck 10 balloons into a container that looked like it could only fit one, shattered a rubber ball and a banana, and so on. It was lots of fun!

Beaver really needs to get a lifelong supply of that stuff. Imagine how perfect it would be in the cafeteria when you need to cool down your drink really quickly! ;-)

Gotta go to school now. Adios!

Updates to my web site have been uploaded.

- The FAQ is now updated.
- The Photo Album has two new albums containing artwork I've done.
- The School section got some minor factual updates.

Random Rosie Comment of the Day:
A little while ago she managed to beat the squeak out of her squeaky frog. A couple of days later she got two new toys: Squeaky Baseball and Squeaky Weird Bumpy Rainbow-Colored Ball (aka "Sweburacob").

Happy Easter (and this time it actually is Easter)!

Howdy! Sorry it's been so long. By now I've pretty much given up hope that I'll ever be able to update this daily. ;-) Oh well. Here's all my updates from the past weeks.

- I'm back at school now -- spring break's long gone. :-(
- Happy Very Much Belated April Fool's Day!
- A few more web site updates are still coming in the next couple of days...
- There have been ten 3-minute episodes of the Star Wars: Clone Wars cartoon on Cartoon Network over the past couple of weeks. This past Thursday was the big, 6-minute finale featuring GENERAL GRIEVOUS, the new bad guy for Episode III. If you missed the cartoons, you can see all 20 (10 for Season 1 from last fall, 10 for Season 2 these past weeks) online. Chapter 20 was by far the best.

Random Rosie Comment of the Day:
She's currently learning to shake and jump over small obstacles! :-D

Happy Easter, everybody!

Today Rosie had her first Puppy Kindergarten class! She played with her new friends (Woody, Logan, Scarlet and more), learned some new tricks, and had a great time! :-D I'll try to get some of the pictures uploaded to her web page soon. Which reminds me.....

In Other News:
- I've just uploaded a bunch of new updates to my web site, including, among other things, a new My Programs page where you can download computer programs I've made!
- More updates on the way, and I've just gotten a great idea concerning what to do for version 4.0, which is (hopefully) coming this summer or fall!
- If you've been having trouble accessing my site the past couple of days, fear not -- so have I. Hopefully it's all resolved now.

Adios for now, amigos!

Spring break is 3/4 over... :-( Very very sad. Oh well, I've been getting a lot done. By the end of this weekend, expect some major web site updates. By the end of this day, expect some new photos and Rosie's page. Speaking of Rosie...

Random Rosie Comment of the Day:
Rosie has this bone thingy that she's totally obsessed with, but we only give these things to her to chew on when we really need her not to chew us. So, last night it was resting on top of Rosie's little cage/kennel, which is all black wire with all the little holes -- well, pretty big holes -- so that you can see into it. I walked into the kitchen and found Rosie inside her kennel with her nose sticking out a bit through the top, knocking around the yummy bone "out of her reach" on top!

Just as I walked in, she succeeded in knocking the bone so that it fell through one of the cracks and right into her mouth! I burst out laughing as she ran, ecstatic, back and forth with her prize.

That was funny. Very funny. :-)

Random Rosie Comment of the Day:
I now have many holes in my socks, pants, and shirts due to Rosie. Oh yes, and in my skin, too. Sometimes, it hurts a lot. :-( Oh well -- I still love her just as much! :-D Besides, she'll get over it...

In fact, puppy school starts tomorrow! Hopefully there will be some good influences there.

Random Rosie Comment of the Day:
She has by now learned that she can squeak her squeaky frog not only by biting it, but also by hitting it up against various hard objects like the floor, the wall, and your leg.


Answer to last time's quiz: c, a, b, d

Random Rosie Comment of the Day:
Sometimes, if she has a chew toy in her mouth yet decides to go after your foot, she forgets to first drop the chew toy. Of course, she usually notices once she discovers the strange presence keeping her mouth from her target flesh.

Random Rosie Quiz of the Day:
Rank the following chew toys by how much Rosie likes them.

a. Squeaky Frog
b. Tennis-Ball/Bone Thingy (kind of looks like a barbell; mini tennis balls on either side, connected by a "tennis-tube")
c. Squeaky Hamburger
d. Blue Ball with Bell Inside (so it jingles whenever it rolls)

Answer to last time's quiz: d, "All of the Above"

Also Note:
Rosie's web site has been updated with new photos. Check it out!

Random Rosie Comment of the Day:
When she gets really tired, she's REALLY tired, and is prone to suddenly collapse and refuse to get up. Even if she's on a walk, after a particularly hard stretch she might just randomly lie down.

NEW!!! Random Rosie Quiz of the Day:
When she's in that super-hibernation kind of mode, is the best way to wake her up...

a. Hold her up and move her paws around to make her dance?
b. Sing/hum [non-lullaby] music?
c. Talk loudly to her and rub her belly?
d. All of the above

I'll post the answer tomorrow... hopefully.... also, I hope to post some new pictures I took today to her web site, along with some older ones that I still haven't uploaded.

This morning (aka just now) I woke up and looked at the clock. It was 7:55, just five minutes before school should start. My first thought was "Oh no, I've slept too late!" My second thought was "Oh wait, it must be a Tuesday!" (when we start @ 9). My third thought was "No, it's definitely not a Tuesday, it's a Saturday!" My final thought was:

IT'S SPRING BREAK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just wanted to share that happy story with you. I'll report back in later in the day with a RRCotD!

One more thing: I just noticed that I've had this blog for over 8 months now. Wow. Time flies when you're having fun! ;-)

Good night.

After the first (partial) day of Spring Break, I hereby declare it a success! YIPPEE!!! :-D We got out of school at 2:10, then we just did stuff at home for a while, then we went to Hidalgo (good movie, by the way), then we came back, and now I'm about to go to sleep. Fun! :-)

In History class today we saw a very (unintentionally) funny movie about a very not funny topic -- that is, the Nazi party. In it, this history teacher starts a class experiment called "The Wave" (also the name of the movie) that ends up getting WAY out of hand, with everyone doing this weird salute to each other all the time and chanting "Power through Discipline! Power through Community! Power through Action!". Kind of weird, kind of scary, and also kind of funny. ;-)

Anyway, I'll update you later on other happenings. In the mean time, here's something for you to CHEW on (pun intended).

Random Rosie Comment of the Day:
Her little baby teeth are REALLY REALLY SHARP, and have so far punctured everything from socks to pants to shirts and yes, even flesh. Ouch.

Random Rosie Comment of the Day:
She is seemingly anti-claustrophobic -- she loves confined spaces!

Last weekend I went skiing, which was fun. Now, a week later, I've finally decided to update my blog again. Guess what? Only one more week until Spring Break! YAYAYAYAYAY!!!!

In other news...

Random Rosie Comment of the Day:
She's getting very good at letting you know when she has to go the bathroom. She just stands by the door and whimpers a tiny little bit, very quietly.

(So much for getting better about keeping that daily.... oh well!)