Electric Lib

Nutcracker

After stuffing myself on Thanksgiving, enjoying the company of my ever growing family and all that good stuff, I got to go to the Nutcracker today with Hannah and Alison. It was just delightful. It was really fun especially since lately I've been doing tap dance and thinking about hip hop and it was a nice flashback to my days of focusing more on ballet. Anyhoo, now I'm off to go see my alternate family (aka my friends) who have returned from their various trips to visit their families for Thanksgiving. That's all for now folks!

Vacation So Far

Vacation has been treating me well so far, apart from a slightly sore back. I've spent a good amount of time the past few days dancing, partly because I've been working on Alice and my tap independent study. We finished our first dance to Sonia Dada's "You Don't Treat Me No Good." So it was very fitting tonight that Alice and I went with Becky and Tyler to see "Lord of the Dance" in Burlington. Becky, Alice and I all take tap lessons together, so it certainly got us in the tappy mood. So thanks Alice for getting us all tickets! Now I'm off to bed.

Women in Vermont

As this is very pertinent to the feminist unit we're doing in my interp class, I thought I'd include a link showing the recent report for the best and worst states for women. Vermont ranked number one overall, just adding proof for what a wonderful state this is. The feminist unit has been very interesting so far. I've always been interested in these types of issues, so it's been fun. And interesting point was made early on in the unit when the class came up with a definition of feminism that pretty much said that feminism was about women having the same respect, opportunities, etc. as men. Everyone in the class agreed with that. However, no one wanted to wanted to say they were feminists, which brought Mr. Arsenault to his next point that feminists are often thought of as men hating, manly, bra-less women. I thought it was good point.

So I've been enjoying all the stimulating conversations this unit has provoked, and the overall awareness of feminism as a good thing. However, it then feels rather hypocritical to go home and listen to all these songs that are like "I got 99 problems but a bitch aint one," or "girls: to do the dishes, to clean up my room, to do the laundry and in the bathroom." There are plenty of examples of songs that refer to women in that kind of degrading way. I'm sure there are plenty of songs that stereotype men as well, and I think for the most part people don't take those songs to be offensive, because they weren't meant that way. But then one also must wonder if having those terms (that should be offensive to women) becoming a regular thing that's not a big deal at all kind of undermines the respect that women have worked for. I believe I'll end my pondering here however, because I enjoy being a feminist and listening to hip hop.

Answering Machine

Ring, ring...

'beep' "Hi, you've reached daghlian.net/lib. I am currently unavailable to update, if you leave your name and number I'll have no way of getting it. Please remember the site and check back later, bye!"

'beeeeeppp'..... 'click.'

That was my creative way of saying I've been busy, but don't lose faith, I'll update in the near future.

NHS

I can't believe I forgot to mention that I also got quite an honor last night when I was 'inducted' along with a bunch of my classmates to the National Honor Society. After hearing a series of speeches about how wonderful our class was and what great leaders we were, we made a fabulous exit when Tyler (who was in the front of the line) started to walk out the wrong exit and everyone followed him, so we had to back up and try again. And then Kate spilled juice on Dan's NHS certificate that Mrs. Yes (the leader of NHS) had been telling us we could keep forever and bla bla bla. Not to mention everyone was having slight giggling problems during the cermony, mainly during the oath though. I don't mean to make us sound terrible, because we certainly aren't (I don't need to be modest, my class is terrific), I just thought it was pretty funny.

Mathy McMathnerd

So for all those of you who have been so terribly missing my entries lately, I suppose I owe you an explanation. To start, this past weekend I spent a good portion of my day Saturday watching the boys and girls soccer teams play extrodinarily close games for the state championships. Unfortunately, after triple overtime (boys) and quadruple overtime (girls), they both lost (3-2 girls, 2-1 boys).

For the past two days, I've been working hard at a math modelling competition. I was teamed up with two other kids from my school to solve one of two problems. Four groups from my school (made up of three or four people each) went up to the Central Vermont Chamber of Commerce with two of the math teachers to work on these problems. I decided to do it because I've been enjoying math a lot lately and because it just seemed like fun. I felt like it gave me a glimpse of what it would be like to have a job (involving math). Because the problems were such that they could be applied to real life. The problem my group chose had to do with arranging portable walls in an art exhibit to maximize the security of the paintings. So we came up with a rating system to rate the various models and found the best one. But tomorrow, it's back to school for me.

Election

So along with most (probably all) of this space's readers, I'm very disappointed with the results of the elections. I was also surprised by how many red states there were on the maps. Although, compared with past elections (they showed the map all colored in from past elections in the New York Times), I wasn't as surprised. It seems like it's not that weird for there to be so many states of one color. However, the map Josh pointed us to makes it a little more understandable. I must also say that it's pretty neat to be studying the history of the United States at the same time all the election stuff is going on (or was going on), because Bush was very popular in the South and not to much in the North and generally I think the North and South have pretty opposing views on things. And we're currently studying the events leading up to the civil war, so it's just kind of interesting to see that there is still some lasting tension between the Northern states and the Southern states. I say this time if they try to secede, we just let them.

In other news, both the boys and girls soccer teams are going to the championships!! Nice job!

Vote

Hope you all voted today! (Those of you who are eligible to vote that is)

What an Honor!

I am pleased to say I was accepted today into the National Honor Society! I've been fretting about this since the day I turned in my application. There was some really rough competition, which was really apparent when everyone who applied was accepted. Then again, I guess that just goes to show what an exemplary grade I am a part of.

In other news, I actually had a somewhat intellectually stimulating conversation today. On my way from interp (interpretations of literature) to math class, Emmett and I engaged in a conversation that had been sparked during our class about all the conveniences available to people and their negative effects on the world. After an entire precalc class, the conversation was started up again during lunch, and spread to much more broad topics that I don't really care enough to repeat here. Anyhow, I think Mr. Arsenault (our interp teacher) deserves some credit for making my lunch period slightly more interesting than most days.

Speaking of interesting, I had a very interesting weekend visiting Martha at Bennington! All I really have to say about that is, I think I'm going to like college.