Camp

My brother left for tennis camp in Florida today. I have never really spent any significant time at home without him. It's always been him at home without me. His room is a real mess. Mine is worse.

Graduate-Finally!

As of yesterday at about 10:30 AM, I am officially a Scarsdale High School graduate. Somehow, though, I still feel bound to that school. It's gonna take a while I think before I really feel free. Probably once I start college in the fall, I will feel different about it. Until then, though, I, and I think a lot of my classmates, will still feel that they belong to SHS.

Photographing Food

I just read about how people at restaurants obsessively take pictures of the food they're eating. I can't imagine how anyone would allow their dinner company to take pictures of their food. It's like recording a movie in a theater: it interrupts the experience of eating the food because you become obsessed with the pictures instead of the food. I have never seen anyone taking pictures of food in a restaurant, and I hope I never do.

Update: yesterday, since I was early for a reservation and my family had reserved the "party room," and since the appetizers were already on the table, I took a single snapshot of the dishes with my phone's camera. I was alone, though. Not even the waiters were there.

Traffic Presentation

Today, I gave my presentation on a traffic study I did over the past 6 weeks on a frequently-clogged corridor through Scarsdale. I also sat in on a presentation on neuroscience and vision, and on the servicing and repair of fire trucks.

Jeez, I really have to start writing longer posts...

Spanish

My brother and his friend are studying now for their spanish final tomorrow. They have conscripted me in their last-ditch effort to memorize every single vocab word they encountered over the year as well as all of the grammar rules and verb tenses they studied. There was a lot I learned in 10th grade spanish that I don't remember at all. Words like dehydrated, summer vacationers, and dam just don't have any real use in everyday conversation. The teachers really need to figure out how to streamline the curriculum, or at least how to make it more interesting.

Rhode island

We just arrived in Rhode Island for my cousin's bat mitzvah. The car
ride up was unusual, where conversations about traffic jams and
Spanish vocabulary competed with both top-10 pop songs and classical
music for our attention. Of course, I forgot my dress shirt so I had
to buy one from the hotel's gift shop. My dad didn't seem too mad
though...

Livin' on a Prayer

Over the past few days, I've heard Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer" at least once per day on the same radio station (Q104.3FM). I'm lucky it's such a good song because it's been stuck in my head since the beginning of the day (and it's now 11:15PM). I heard somewhere (possibly the Freakonomics blog) that the best way to get a song out of your head is to either listen to it all the way through or to do some math problems. I never get to hear it all the way through because I keep tuning in in the middle of the song. And school's over, so math is not at the forefront of my attention right now.

On another note, I'm trying to exercise my over-140-character writing skills here, so I know these posts are short and not too deep, but bear with me! They'll get better.

Excited

Tomorrow I'm going to get up early and go to Star Diner for breakfast. That makes me very excited. Then, I'm going to go to Arielle's Senior Options presentation on painting. That's also very exciting. Then–oh boy–to the office to finish up my traffic proposal for fixing Post Road. I can't believe how exciting tomorrow's gonna be! Sleep now though.

Rant #1

Today I got into a car crash. Well...actually, a car crash happened to me. My car wasn't actually moving (and I wasn't in the middle of the road). These two young guys were in an SUV making a left turn (so was I--it is a divided road and there's a clearly delineated region for making left turns from both directions at the same time). They stopped for a second to check for traffic, then BAM! right into my car at like 5mph looking straight at me. Then they back up and drive away. To add insult to injury, our cars were already pointed in opposite directions, and I couldn't look back in time to get their license plate #. So now I'm stuck with a giant dent in my mustang convertible. Great.

Picture