Electric Lib

Lord of the Rings

Also I realize that I had promised a full review of "Lord of the Rings," but now I feel that I really can't give you that because you need to see it on your own. All I can say is it was a great movie and you should see it.

Mt. Hor

So we had a ski meet today at Mt. Hor and I was pleasantly surprised when I had a good time! Although it required getting up early on a Saturday morning during vacation, I thought the long trip there was well worth it. The Montpelier nordic ski team travelled via bus with the U32 team to Mt. Hor. Upon arrving we had to carry our ski's uphill quite a ways (ok it wasn't tthhaatt bad). The boys B race (a jv race) was the first to take place. Alex, Dillian, Spencer and James (all freshmen) participated in that and did well. Next up was the girls B race. Alice and I were the only girls to participate in that (it was a small group today). The original plan had been for us to stick together and take it slowly. Although we soon found that we would be starting at different times (approx. 8 minutes apart) and decided not to wait for eachother. The trail was very beautiful and the snow was great, so the race was pleasant. I was very pleased that I passed two girls and no one passed me (staying in the posative numbers Ruthie).

After finishing, and being greeted at the finish line by Ruthie with a water bottle (thank god), we waited around a bit and finally found our scores. Alice had placed 16th out of 50 girls with a time of 11:33 minutes, and I had placed 21st our of 50 with a time of 12:01 minutes. Compared to last year when you could usually expect us to be bringing up the rear, we were extremely pleased. I think that if we work hard in practice and actually try at the races, this progress could continue! I should mention that Ruthie place 25th out of I think 62 girls! She race the A race which was 5K (ours was 2K). So all in all it was a very successful day!

Funny

I thought this was pretty funny.

Christmas

Merry Christmas!

Music

I often complain that there is no good music nowadays (as opposed to the 60's and 70's). But I actually have recently realized there's a lot of music I like from now. My main example being Outkast, because I'm listening to a cd of theirs (courtesy of Martha) right now. One of my favorite songs of their (I don't know the name unfortunately because the names aren't listed on the cd Martha burned) is a duet with Norah Jones. I was pretty surprised to hear that they did a duet with her because I wouldn't have expected it, but it's really pretty. She's another example of good music today.

Oh and also, keep your eyes out here because I plan to post some pictures to the site in the near future. And tomorrow I will be seeing "Lord of the Rings," so I will be sure to update about that. Don't worry though, I won't give anything away for those of you who haven't seen it.

College

First off I would like so say congratulations to Molly for getting accepted to Connecticut College!! Nice job. This news kind of kicked off an excellent weekend. Soon after hearing that Molly got in, I saw my Dad downtown who had just arrived home from Antarctica. That night I went to part of a basketball game and watched part of Charlie's Angel's with Kate, Alice and Sam (it was so bad we had to turn it off in the middle).

Later that night I played with Loukas and Zoë and visited with Emmett and Myrto. The next day, I played with them some more and then we got our Christmas tree! Yay! Later that night I spent Hanukkah with Abra and her family and a few other people which was very fun.

Today I went to Burlington and did some Christmas shopping. So basically I had a great weekend. Although everything will be much better when these next two days (mainly tomorrow) are over. Because I'm not exactly looking forward to all the quizzes.

Hubbard Park

I have nothing really new to add for today except that Hubbard Park is beautiful right now and if you live in Montpelier you need to see it.

Nightmare

I just had the worst experience of my life. I had just walked in the door of my house after getting a ride home from Alice. I checked the mail, let the dog out and all the usual things. Then, I walked into the kitchen to get a snack... This is where the nightmare began.

I glanced at the wooden kitchen floor and to my great dismay the dog had had an "accident" (to put it simply) all over the floor. Needless to say it was disgusting (I don't think disgusting is a good enough word for it, try replusive, something along those lines). Usually, I would have pretended not to notice it and then wait till a parent got home to clean it up. This time however, I wasn't so fortunate that I could do that. My mom is picking Martha up at Bennington, so I'm on my own till about 9:30 tonight.

So I started to clean it up using napkins (I had already put on the yellow rubber gloves just so you know). So I cleaned and put all the napkins in the toilet with hopes that I could just flush the whole mess away. Well, in doing so, I nearly clogged the toilet. Uhhh. So I used the toilet scrubby thing to put all the napkins into a trash bag. Then it was over, luckily.

Anyways, that was the most disgusting thing that's ever happened. Even worse than the time Martha and I found a nest of ants living under one of our plants, ick, but that's a story for another time....

This Week

So far, even though it's only Tuesday, this has been a fabulous week. It was started with a fantastic snowday that involved shovelling, sledding, and stringing pop corn on a string for Alice's Christmas tree. I forced myself to finish typing for my global project and was pleasantly surprised when, in class today, Mr. Castle said we could hand in the project on Thursday. Phew. I also handed in my biology project, so it's nice to not have to think about that anymore. Then in ski practice today, we all decided to abandon our ski's and play capture the flag in all the snow! (We have over two feet by the way). Now I'm getting ready to head off to dance class. There's a possibility of a delay tomorrow, and a chance of another snow day on Thursday. I won't count on it, but I'm not ready to completely disregard the possibility.

Entry

For some odd reason, my last entry got cut off. I'm not sure exactly how this happened, but I'll ask Josh when I get home. I hope to get it fixed before tonight. Update: problem solved, thank you Josh.

Saddam

Well as I'm sure you've all heard by now, they caught Saddam. Which, as my brother pointed out isn't great news for Dean, but there's still plenty of time for Bush to mess something up before elections.

In other news, it turns out Dad won't be returning home until Thursday. It's gonna be quite a change having Martha home on Wednesday, Dad on Thursday, and Emmett, Myrto, Loukás and Zoë home on Friday! It'll go from having two people in the house to eight people in three days. But it'll be a welcome change.

Yesterday, I was unable to update my website or pursue any other types on online activities because there was a problem with the cable modem. Luckily today, while out running, my Mom ran into two Adelphia cable guys who were able to fix the problem and I am once again connected.

Though I was able to have a fairly good time yesterday, that is after I found a picture of the cell wall. I had to make a model of the cell wall for bio and I was having an extremely difficult time finding and understanding a good picture. Without Dad around, I had to resort to making a long distance call to my back-up scientist - Josh. He was very helpful and reccomending Biology by Helena Curtis, which was very helpful. After that I danced around the house for a little while to Swedish Christmas music (seriously, I did) looking for a glue stick.

After all of that, the internet was still not working so I made some little figurines out of clay. I did not make an effort to get to bed on time because I was very confident that there would be a snow day today. I was right, although I must say it wasn't a difficult thing to predict. Well, that just about fills you in for the enthralling events of Libby's life.

Oh my, did I mention I also shovelled this morning? Well I did - at 9:30 (early for a snowday), and I can say with confidence that there will be no coal in my stockings this year!

Returning

So apparently my Dad called tonight and he will be returning on Wednesday. That's pretty exciting. I'm also looking forward to next week because I'll be handing in a lot of projects and stuff, and it's nice to have those things finished.

Due to bad conditions (ice), our ski meet at U32 was cancelled. I actually was looking forward to it and was plannig to race (which for me means skiing the trail at a leisurely pace while other people are racing, haha). But I do plan to go cross country skiing this weekend, so that should be fun. Well that's all for now. I'm off to bed.

Christmas Cookies

I am pleased to report that for the first time in my life, I have all the Christmas cookies to myself! Minus the few that go to Mom. Anyways, I have no brothers to eat them all in one sitting, no sisters to save them all for her boyfriend, no other sister to... Well Melissa never actually stole any cookies from me, no Dad to eat them all when I go to bed... Yay! So by the time everyone does come home, I'll have had my fill of Christmas cookies. So everything works out perfectly.

Skating

We did skating today and ski team and it was a lot of fun. We spent the first part skiing around and helping people out who hadn't done skating before. Then after I was skiing with Dan and Evan which required putting forth a little more effort. So I did two full laps without stopping (except in between the two laps) and I was very pleased with myself.

I have a pretty busy night tonight because there's a dance performance with the jazz band, a jv boys basketball game and a varsity boys basketball game. I'm going to at least part of all three. So that updates you on the adventures of Libby.

In School

I am currently in school with Alice and Molly in the computer lab. It's sixth period and they're both working on homework. As you may recall from earlier entries, Alice and Molly are my two Costa Rica buddies! The first link is to the Cloud forest where we learned all about Costa Rican plants. The second link is to the first hotel we stayed at in Monteverde.

Also, I have been asked to give some information on my dad's trip! I heard from him a while ago and last I heard he was at Beardmore Glacier and they were bored waiting for the helicopters to arrive. From there, I believe, they would head back to the main place and then leave once more to do another fossil thing. Has he found any fossils? Well, I've forgotten to ask everytime I've talked to him. But I'm pretty sure they have. He'll be home in two weeks!

Well, that's all for now, I'm off to lunch! Oh and just an update, I have been doing a good job trying to read the news everyday.

News

I've been making an effort recently (starting today, haha) to read the news. So I just read this article and found it very interesting. It's about giving money to dissidents inside the Iranian government. First of all I think it's really weird how we're trying to make all the Middle Eastern countries Democracies now. There are other forms of government that work and I don't think the U.S should be making decisions like that by themselves. This paragraph I found particularly interesting:

"The United States maintains sanctions against Iran that prohibit funds from being spent on Iranian goods and outlaws financial transactions with individuals inside the country. Meanwhile, in an agreement signed in Algiers in 1981, the United States, in naming Switzerland to represent its interests in Iran, pledged not to meddle in the internal affairs of the Iranian regime."

The current administration seems to think they are exempt from certain rules like this which is really dumb. Then again I guess we have to do anything to fight the "axis of evil!!!" Dun dun dunnnn.....

Jokes

I just read Josh's physic's jokes on his website. To be honest, I didn't get a single one, well except for the very last one. I think I'll stick to knock knock jokes.

Weather

I cannot believe how much snow there is! I don't know how much snow there is elsewhere, but in central Vermont at least it's a lot. This time of the year we expect it, but I did not expect it to come so quickly (overnight)! So it's very neat. I suppose this means we'll actually being skiing at ski team on Monday. Unfortunately though, this does mean that Josh, Kara and Sophie couldn't visit this weekend. But they're coming next weekend which is good. It would take a crazy amount of time to get here with all this snow. I saw the highway earlier today and it's crazy. You can't even see the road, it's all snow. So I guess this will just be a weekend of lots of hot chocolate! Yum.

Left Eye

Today in bio, we were practicing using microscopes. But before we did that, Mr. Sabo had us find out which eye was our stronger eye, so that we could use that one. To find your stronger eye you can hold out one finger to cover up an object that's kind of far away. Then close one eye, whichever eye keeps your finger over the object is your stronger one. I thought it was pretty neat, because everyone else had a stronger right eye, but my left eye is stronger. I guess i'm just well balanced, I write with my right hand and see with my left eye.

Ahora, quiero escribir en español. Puedo escribir español en mi webpage porque el es mio. No hablo español bien, pero pienso que unas personas entenderían. Me gusta hablar en español porque es muy interesante. No sé mas palabras, pero sé bastante. Cuando escribía este, tengé llamar Abra por ayudar. Well, that does it for my Spanish entry. It's probably full of mistakes, but if you speak Spanish, I think you'll get the gist of it. For those of you who don't speak Spanish, use your French to figure it out! They're pretty similar, right?

December

Yay, it's officially December. Time to start counting down the days until Christmas. Or until vacation, they're equally exciting. Also, other important events of the month include at least four birthdays! Abra who, on December 8th, with be 16 (can you believe it? I can't). Maayan, who will be turning 16 as well on December 25 (same as Jesus, what do you know? Haha). Claire, who will be turning... you guessed it! 16 on December 12th (thank you for the correction Kate). Then finally, my dad who will be turning 53. Over half a century old, oh but it's still so young. :)

The first day back to school after a long and restful vacation was pretty nice. The teachers didn't pile us with too much homework, for which I am thankful. Also, I am proud to report that I got a 98% on my biology test! I like to leave room for improvement. So thus concludes my entry of the day. I hope you're all watching Dean right now on "Hardball," MSNBC.