Halerdo!

I'm trying to post more.

Recently, our swim team ousted the #1 ranked swim team in the state. We want to win states. If you did a little research, it wouldn't be hard to find out who we are. And you may just see my name under diving.

Okay. Yesterday I went to a meet in Flint, where we squared off against a team with only seven members. We left all of our state qualifiers at home and still 1-2-3ed every event. (Including diving, with me taking 1st.) The announcer said my name was Adam Halerdo.

Also, it looks bad for me getting into U of M now that I got my grade report back. Let's just say I don't really want to think about it.

No Movie

Okay, so I couldn't get the movie thing to work. But don't worry, not like you were missing out on anything good.

Tomorrow starts my new schedule of Art, Advanced Comp, and Basic Programming. All of which I'm very excited about. Plus, I'm thinking there should be less homework.

Still no word from U of M as to whether I'm in or not. I check the mail every day for that rejectance letter, but it never comes. (Yes, I know: rejectance=not a real word)

I started a new thing where I write five hundred words for four projects every day. That way I can keep myself from getting bored with what I do, and it'll help with the pacing of the stories. Now there's just the hard part of getting myself to actually start. I need motivation that's something more than sending my first published book to my Journalism teacher to rub it in her face. (I'm thinking I'll write a note in there that says, "Thanks for telling me to clean your crockpot; If I hadn't quit Journalism I don't know what kind of indentured servitude I would be involved in.")

Motivation? Any Ideas?

Exams Done

I just finished with the last exams I will ever take...in High School.

Which means I have about two semesters before I have to take more exams...harder exams.

Projected Exam Scores:

1. Brit Lit - A
2. Journalism A-/B+
3. Trigonometry A
4. Physics B
5. Spain Lang/ Lit B+/A-
6. World History A/A-

I'm about to post a short soundless video that I did....look for it somewhere in this post later today. Since I need to put it online first.

One kid I admire: Ryan Wieber. I need to get me one of those lightsabers.

Last. Column. Ever.

“No, no. Pull your chin up! All right, now slide your head to the left. Hmm, tilt it to the right a bit. That’s it, right there. One, two, three, underpants gnomes!”
He hits the shutter. Lights explode around me, and my eyes close.
“Oh-oh…that’s not going to be a very good one, we’d better do it again. And don’t blink.”
I’ve just gotten to the studio, changed into my first outfit, and started my mission for two wallets and one larger format picture (in other words, the Basic Package). This isn’t just any picture, it’s the “Senior” picture which everyone makes a big deal out of and that is supposed to represent you at your prime for the rest of your life.
Suffice it to say, I’m not very excited.
Not, at least, until my second picture. It’s jeans, and a black shirt. Very casual, very unassuming. My photographer opts for a picture outside, in the alley behind the studio. It had been raining when I’d arrived at the studio, now it was about forty degrees and misting.
“Lean against the brick, real casually, like you were just using it to support your weight. Now pretend like you’re content, daydreaming or something.”
I start to pretend I’m daydreaming about being a model. My photographer wears a beret and smokes a petite cigarette out of the side of his mouth. He has a curly mustache, bellbottoms, and big dark sunglasses. He’s jumping around, taking pictures at a rate much faster than he needs to be, and all I have to do is sit here and look like I’m daydreaming and not standing outside in wet, forty-degree weather.
My real photographer takes a picture, and I hear him chuckling. It pulls me out of my daydream.
“What? What is it?”
He turns the camera around and shows me the last picture.
It’s me, with the absolute dumbest expression on my face. If a gorilla, a penguin, and a tapir all mated and produced one offspring, the look on my face would be equivalent to the look on the gorillenguinapir’s butt.
“What happened there?”
I laugh. “I guess I was trying too hard.”
We go back inside, and it’s time for me to have my third (and last) picture taken. I sit on a chair, with a giant mirror on the table in front of me. I have to lean forward and smile. Not too hard, but I’m distracted by my face in the table. Did it just wink at me? I think, my eyes on the camera. I can see the reflected me taunting me from the bottom of my vision. It did. It did just wink at me. I look down to check real quickly, and there I am, looking back at myself suspiciously. I try to put my head back where it was, but it’s no use. Ten adjustments later and I’m positive my reflection just stuck its tongue out at me.
It’s over before I know it. I’m changing back into the clothes I arrived in, and thanking my photographer. He tells me about the picture he took of all the Seniors at DHS the same day, and says one kid was giving the camera the finger.
“We’ll have to cut it off, of course. So then the kid won’t have a finger.” I hope he’s joking. I wonder if the senior in question would have still flipped the bird if he had known the penalty for his crime was amputation.
I’m excited to see how my pictures turn out, but as I walk back to my van, I’m hoping the photographer won’t see the middle finger I flashed in the midst of all my daydreaming.

A photo taken by a friend in downtown Ann Arbor. If I ever wanted to be a musician, this would be my album cover.

A sketch done in Spanish class. He's meant to look a little warped.

My Dad got a new digital camera....7.1 megapixels. This picture was taken at 1/800 of a second.

Movie Reccommendations

• Garden State (video)
• The Aviator (theatre)
• The Machinist (independent theatre)
• Memento (video)

These are the movies I've seen in the past week and a half. See them.

The Trials of a Writer

She had his picture memorized. Every wrinkle on his forehead, every freckle on his nose. That funny way he smiled, with his chin out and his teeth overlapping; she could see it all with her eyes closed. Of course, she’d looked at it enough over the past three months. Right after it happened she’d cry and cradle the poor substitute for her husband; rocking it back and forth. But it always changed. Sometimes she’d stare at the picture for hours, and talk to it. She’d make up responses for him, and pretend he was sitting in its place. Sometimes she’d argue with it, scream at it, and one week she even threw it against the wall.
Afterward the guilt started to seep in. What if he could see her love for him turn to hate? He hadn’t meant to cause the pain; it hadn’t been his fault. Just one of those freak things, you know? The next day she’d gone and had his picture put into a new frame, a blue one. It had been his favorite color. She put it on her bedside table and didn’t touch it again for two months.

She thought of him less and less these days, now that she was getting used to being alone.

Sometimes she’d make it through most of the day without thinking about him. Then she’d open the door to the dark apartment, flick on the lights and he’d be there, looking at her. She didn’t know how many times his toothy, awkward grin had startled her, sometimes making her spill groceries all over the carpeted floor. However many it was, she still couldn’t make herself realize that it was just a picture, and not actually her husband.

Hmm…..nothing seems to be working.