Wow, I haven't been here in a long time, have I? Sorry! Blame the last few weeks of school when they pile everything up on the last minute...But I sorta, kinda procrastinate, so I really can't complain . (Anyway for those of you unwilling to read long blogs, this is one of them, so just a heads up; on the other hand, if you've read my blogs before, then you should be expecting this, especially since I have nothing better to do at the moment...feel free to skim through )

My dad was diagnosed with diabetes last Tuesday . We told him to cut back on the sweets, but...So now, since everything in the kitchen for him are artifical sweetners and sugar-free stuff, we're all trying to cut back. Especially me. I don't eat too well and I know it, so I am forcing myself to eat better since the threat of diabetes in my immediate family now popped up. I do not want to get diabetes at my age. My paternal aunt and my maternal grandmother already have diabetes, so I had the threat from getting from both sides, but since my dad now has it, time to be really cautious. But everything's working out okay, he doesn't need to check his blood sugar or take insulin, and Daddy doesn't seem to mind the sugar-free sweets as long as he still can have something that tastes like it.

As for the referrals to the school office, I didn't get them but I caused two guys to get them. Also last Tuesday, I was in my Tech Ed class doing my work, and then I see this little red light from the corner of my eye. So I look up. Two guys I hardly know are grinning at me from across the room, shining one of those pen laser thingies in my eye. I told them to stop, they did, I went back to my work...They did it again; I was starting to get really annoyed and told them to stop again. They did. Then they did it again. I told my teacher and he gave them referrals to the office. Ha! After that, they came up to me and asked me why I told the teacher on them . Hmmm, I wonder why!...So, because of the referrals (or rather, because of me), they weren't able to participate in the 8th Grade Graduation Celebration on Friday. Serves 'em right!

Last Thursday was the 8th Grade Awards Ceremony. I got 11 awards . Every time you got up to get one, you had to shake hands with the principal when you left the stage...And I think he got pretty tired of shaking my hand, but he seemed happy about it, at least. I went up to the stage the most, I think. After the ceremony, three families I didn't even know congratulated me and said I should've just stood up there on the stage throughout the whole ceremony, which was actually a good idea .

The 8th Grade Graduation Celebration on Friday was so much fun! We didn't have classes all day and we got to sign our yearbooks and everything. A big party was set out on the gym track outside, and there was cotton candy and snow cones and soda...and I got sick from eating too much junk food (I decided to forget about the threat of diabetes for that day ). There were those big blow-up slides and Twister games, and we played tug-of-war (my team lost ) and it was a lot of fun. After that, though, my foot got really sore for the next few days because I think I strained some unused muscles in there. Oh well, it was worth it .

On the topic of graduations, my aunt Melissa graduated from Morehouse School of Medicine last Saturday with magna cum laude. She's a doctor, now; she's the first doctor in the entire family! Now she's going to do a residency program on family practice in Anderson, South Carolina. It's just about 100 miles from my dad's hometown, and his brother and a few of his sisters still live there, so when we visit them, we're also going to stop by and visit her. Titi Melissa bought a house there and everything because the residency program is for three years, and everyone's happy for her, especially since she's the youngest of the siblings of my mom's family. After the ceremony, my grandparents held this huge party for her in a Marriott hotel ballroom, and it was really fancy and everything. My grandfather's whole church was there!  The graduation ceremony was really good, too; even Shirley Franklin, the city of Atlanta's mayor, was there, and she has a huge resume. The Morehouse Glee Club sang, also, and they were really good. But there was one depressing part: a student, Ava-Gayle R. Parkes, died in a car accident only three days from the graduation . R.I.P. Ava-Gayle.

Also on this solemn note, I'm sorry I can't remember his name, but a football player from the school my mom work's at, Brookwood High School (which is also the school I'm going to next year), also died from a car accident. At first, mostly everyone thought, or at least hoped, he would make it through when he was taken off the respirator in critical care at the hospital, but he died anyway. And what's worse is that it was because he had been D.U.I. It's sort of a wake up call, I suppose. Sad Also R.I.P.

And with that out of the way, today was the last day of school for me, or, more specifically, the last day of middle school...THANK GOD!!!! I can't say I'm exactly excited about going to high school (I definitely am nervous), but after four years of middle school, 5th-8th grade, you sort of get sick of it . Actually, down here in Georgia, middle school is only 6th-8th grade, but since I lived in Massachusetts before moving down here in the seventh grade, I had middle school for four years while everyone else had three. Yes, confusing. Anyway, I'm actually not off the hook for long. Next Tuesday I start summer Health and PE class for high school so I don't have to take it during the school year. Either way, I'm glad middle school's done and over with. The future's looking bright . (And yes, I know this is extremely long, but hey, I haven't been here for a good few weeks...maybe even a month - I've lost count, it's been so long - so give me a break )

P.S. I know the chances of this are extremely thin, but since I haven't been lurking around the forums, I feel the need to ask. Any news on the airing of Season 3 for Avatar? Don't kill me? It's natural curiosity for any Avatar fan. It's been so long, I just dare to hope for good news.

As of April 9th, 4:11 A.M., I have officially survived 14 years of life! Let's see how many more I can live

My aunt just had a baby girl today . Another of my aunts just called us a minute ago about it. Too bad my mom's not here at the moment. But, as of now, I have another cousin. I have more of them than I can possibly count and some I haven't even heard of (Mom is oldest of 7, Dad is youngest of 16). And none of them are near my age. The closest is Timothy, who's two years younger than me, but he's a male obviously. Anyway, they named her Hannah Esther. I bet she's adorable . Can't wait to see her!

Today at school was so frustrating, not to mention exhausting. We got out report cards and test scores for the Georgia Grade 8 Writing Assessment back today. I got all A's: 100 in Latin, 98 in Gifted Science, 91 in Gifted Algebra (I hate Algebra), 97 in Language Arts/Social Studies, 99 in Visual Arts, and 97 in Gifted Science Enrichment. And then I got 268 on a scale of 100 to 350 on the writing assessment, which exceeds expectations. Everyone wanted to see what I got because I'm the "smart kid" and then went on to say how I made them feel stupid . Well that didn't exactly make me feel very good...It didn't help when my Latin teacher said to me while I was walking down the hall that I got a 100 on my Latin test today and not that it wasn't very surprising to me. And then two or three kids in my class behind me said, "Yeah," in that disgustingly mocking sort of way.

Then, in my Gifted Math Enrichment class, we had to collect data on the rate of how long it takes for a row of twenty dominoes to fall with different spaces between them. We were put into groups of three, and guess who did all the damn work! None of them helped me at all. The most they did was start and stop the timer. I put the dominoes up, knocked them down, recorded the results, graphed it, found the slope of the line all by myself...and then we realize when the teacher tells us that we were supposed to have another point on the line. Which means we (or rather I) would have to set the dominoes up again at different intervals of space and practically do the whole damn thing over again. And I just felt like crying my eyes out because I was so frusturated and tired and just plain sick of being the smart kid. And I actually did (when I got home)...

My little sister's bike was stolen! (Even though we got it back the same day ) Anyway, Liana (my little sister) was at Sophie's (her friend's) house playing in the backyard, and then she came out front and saw some 11-year-old punk taking her bike and Sophie's scooter away. So she hurries home in a panic and we all pile into the car in practically five seconds. Then we drove to Sophie's house, and a few neighborhood kids who saw the thief (who also happen to be Liana's friends) told us which direction he went. The kid happened to live two houses away from Sophie's, so my parents went over. His parents weren't home, but his older sister (probably in high school) was. So, my parents tell her what happened and she just looks at them like "So what do you want me to do about it?" She certainly wasn't gonna help us... We drove around the entire neighborhood; we couldn't find the little thief anywhere. So we drove back to Sophie's house after about 15 minutes, and there's her bike and her friend's scooter lying in the grass but the thief is no where in sight...Then his older sister comes out, ranting that the neighborhood kids had told her "everything". Some of the kids thought that the thief was this kid on their bus who teased them named Daniel. But it just so happens that the thief's name is Alex. Anyway, they teased him, so he got mad and took Liana's bike and Sophie's scooter...And so his sister went on and on about how it was wrong for them to have been teasing him and that they shouldn't have especially when he was Alex and not Daniel and that she wasn't saying it was right for him to have stolen it either (which she was considering she was trying to justify his thievery) and blah, blah, blah...So she went back inside and slammed the door and we're just all standing there gaping because Liana hadn't even been teasing him! She had been in the backyard when he was being teased; Sophie's father was watching her! She didn't even know this Alex whats-his-face! And, what's more, he was an 11-year-old boy being teased by a bunch of 8-year-old girls and kids get teased by each other all the time...That is so sad. And we were this close to calling the police, too.

So after all that, we come home (with the bike). After we get inside, we realize that my mom's dinner plate has been completely licked clean (she had been leftover Chinese before we left and didn't have time to put it away). Well, Sasha (my dog) had decided to take the advantage of our absence and eat to her heart's content...So we didn't need to feed her that night since she had already fed herself. I laughed so hard

Anyway, this morning, while my dad was dropping Liana off at the bus stop, he mentioned the bike incident to one of his friends, Jeff. And as soon as he said Alex's name, Jeff knew exactly how bad that kid was. He litterally said that kid was one bad@$$. He said he constantly climbed over his fence and made trouble everywhere, and that his parents are so ditzy and such (and I can easily imagine that). Jeff said he once had to go to them to tell them to keep their son off his property and they didn't even care...There are some weird people out there

Wow, I wrote a lot...