Criminal Masterminds

The Last of the Blogians?

The Last of the Blogians?
Wow, looks like I'm the only one left posting around here! This is weird.

Hello????

*~*~*~*Echo

*~*~*~*Echo

*~*~*~*Echo


Well... in order to keep the spirit of our blog stirring, I just suppose I will have to post another Adventure.

So...For the last two months, I have been planning to take the SAT today: October 14th, 2006.Two days ago- I found out I wasn't.The search started out innocently: I was organizing my papers for the test today, scanning through a pile of papers for a paper that had never been piled in the first place. Being my usual, muddled self, it took me about 20 minutes to realize that it actually was not there. I proceeded to rummaging through every carboard box, inbox, outbox, and shoebox for one Admissions Ticket or another to no avail. I called my mom (then training in Ohio) and between the two of us and her credit card company, we arrived at the harsh realization that I was Not Registered. Somewhere, something had gone terribly wrong.

Now, I'm not one to get THAT caught up in little things. I knew there was a November 4th test coming up, in Brainerd, much less, that could still be easily accessed. Also, I'm plenty fine with my first score, but I wanted to raise my old math score. Unfortunately, I had missed the Late Registration Date by approximately 18 hours. Life is beautiful. In addition, I had made arrangements with my mom and Amanda O. to get a hotel room and drive down the night before. As they said about 128 times in Apollo 13, "Failure [was] not an option."

Being as Student Congress was yesterday, I didn't have very much time to really consider the situation. I'd come across an acception for "Stand-By Testing," so I grabbed the SAT paper form before we left for Duluth and filled it out in the car on the way there. Now, yesterday... Friday the 13th, was absolutely hellish. I'm not superstitious, let me promise you that much, but days like yesterday DO make me wonder. I'll leave the better (or worse) part of that story to Kara, as she had the absolute worst of it, but, either way, it was a bad day. For one, when we got to Duluth, we found out that Student Congress didn't actually go from 2 to 6, but 4 to 8. That dashed our plans of being home by 8 (the approximate time that the pep-band would be free) and switched our return time to 10. Bad for me and Amanda. That meant we wouldn't be getting to St. Cloud until 11 o'clock, which completely defeated the purpose of going down the night before for sleep, anyway.

Student Congress was a pretty good time, speechie, but forgivably speechie. Kara and I passed kept the page busy passing notes for most of the four hours. It took the edge out of those painful, speechie cries of "My grandmother always said," and "you know, this one time my teacher..." The trouble began again, however when we pulled out to go home. We didn't have time for dinner (I'm still sorry about that, Kara!) We had to get back because of the SAT mess I still had to figure out, and Kara had to pack, yet, for Florida, so both of us were in a severe time crunch. The Fates, however, were not yet through with us. Precisely the time we began to leave, the snow began to fall. Actually... the freezing rain began to fall.

We got home closer to 11 than 1o. Through a series of phone calls and a little bit of schedule juggling, the SAT crew managed to get the hotel canceled and a new 5:30 a.m. plan set up, which worked out for the benefit of all, after pep-band was called off. Seriously, though, poor Kara was being cosmically targeted. Again, I'm leaving her story up to her, but, it's a pretty good one. I think the only way we made it home was by talking to Rianna, who was a definite sanity-saver. Speaking of which, Maxwell, you have to check out the link she added, just for you: Create a Boy/Girlfriend from gurl.com. Rianna must share more on that, though (this is my secret way of forcing other people to post).

So... 5 hours of sleep and 1 SAT form later, Amanda and I are on our way to St. Cloud for 4 intense hours of "Mathing and Englishing". By that point, I was beginning to wonder if maybe I would just be better off leaving my scores the way they were and spending those four hours in the park across the street throwing bread crumbs to the geese. Looking back, though, I'm glad I stuck with the test. It was too cold to spend that much time outside, and I didn't have any bread.

The lady at the desk was pretty nice about my runny-inked "Standby Tester" Form. She actually laughed at me- flipped her blond head back and giggled- when I told her I'd had a problem with my Registration. I would have let her laugh for hours, as long as she let me in. She did, so I laughed with her. Later on, when she read off the bubble instructions for "Standby Testers" she winked at me. I've never met a winking, giggling proctor, but she was an anomaly of sorts.

Afterwards, Amanda and I did get to spend a few minutes in the park, but, like I said, we didn't have any bread and I wasn't about to feed any unsuspecting geese my peanut M&M's, so we headed off to feed ourselves at Olive Garden. Pasta is an SAT tradition in my family, as of... well, last April. (We momentarily adopted Amanda just so we could feed her pasta. It was good pasta, too.)

The cosmos repaid all recompense for the frozen-late-night-flames of Friday the 13th by sending us to B&N for a few hours. According to another family tradition, Manda, Mom and I parked ourselves in overstuffed chairs to guzzle books and coffee for a few hours. I've picked up an odd custom of my own at that store. I've started a long-distance relationship with a certain book of short stories by a certain cigarette addicted cynic of the Political Science Fiction realm. I've always read books too quickly, so I never feel like I get to spend enough time with them. Short Story Collections are terrible for that sort of thing, because, say, if you read five stories in a day, not even reading that quickly, the chance that you'll remember even half of them by the end of the week is Hollywood thin. I didn't want to forget anything about Welcome to the Monkey House, so I elected not to buy it until I'd finished reading it. Every time I go to Barnes and Noble, I read another short story. Good stuff, let me tell you. It's a strange way to go about reading, but, hey, it keeps things interesting.

That's about all I have to say. I'm just taking up space now. I'll leave you all with a fairly amazing Fox-trot comic, because, after all, this is the Criminal Masterminds' Blog, and we are destined to rule the world.

http://www.msnbc.com/comics/daily.asp?sFile=ft061009

posted by Sara Ann @ 8:24 PM