Pictures... just a few from a while ago

 Note the incredible power of color and pose in creating mood. My dog goes from "I would look at that thing you're holding but I'm lethargic" to "wait, did person say FOOD?"

Spring church camp was highly entertaining due to a dual slackline system. When the guys weren't doing flips off of them they used the set up like a giant hammock. Other highlights of the trip include rock climbing, ping pong, and tasty grub.

 The view from behind the cabin on the church retreat. Standing above a deep valley at sunrise I could see how the river pinched the campgrounds.

Who knew that Franconia Minnesota had a delightfully strange sculpture garden?

My foreign exchange buddy snapped the Wizard of Oz-ish photo.

Oh, Canada...

This is going to be my first time out of the country. Ever. I love flying with a window seat. If you've ever flown out of Las Vegas on a cloudless night, you know how it looks like a glowing galaxy of its own. And airplane pretzels are wonderful. I haven't written in a while, but here's everything I'm thinking about in no particular order. (Oops, that probably should have been the intro sentence.)
So, my family is flying out to Whistler for some epic skiing through epic powder. Full of epicness. And there's a pool and hot tub there. In Canada. I'm going to Canada. And I'm freakin out about it and I have to wake up at regular school time tomorrow to hop on a plane but I really don't care and I want to go fishing there sometime to catch a whopper and I want to go to Prince Edward Island because it's the setting of Anne of Green Gables and I just love travelling so much!
I should post pics of the trip on here, and I should post more pictures in general. Have I ever put a picture on here? One, maybe. That's a fail considering that I'm in photo club and all. And it's a fail that I've neglected the blog for so long. Sorry AP Comp teacher.
Anyways, photo club rocks, so here's a sample of what I've done with the masterful instruction of the photo club leaders...

That's a special motion setting photographing Anna and a hoola-hoop. Epic, right? No special effects needed.
Well, my little bro needs the laptop now, so bye.

a late-ish freewrite

I am totally disregarding freewriting suggestions because I feel rebelious today. Instead I would like to talk about something random that I actually want to talk about. I have an email buddy in Germany! (No Avi, she's not a nazi.) She'll be coming to WHS in April, and she's staying for three weeks. She's friends with my mom on facebook. I should probably get a facebook.

Her name is Lisa, and we email eachother every other day. Learning about another culture has made me want some aspects of it to be transfered here. Free college, for example. Or lots of castles, or lots of language program choices that start early in school, or a steady economy, or more soccer and less football. Probably all of the above.

I have never been out of the US. However, I'm working on getting a passport right now so that my family can go skiing in Canada over spring break (in April). April is going to be culture shock month for me. The day after my family gets back from Canada, Lisa comes over for Easter, which is also when all of our relatives come over. In the middle of the three week long exchange program my dad is flying to Paris for a business meeting . I hope he brings back fancy hotel shampoos... and french magazines... and maybe even chocolate or tea.

My dad travels a lot. Every time he goes to a fancy hotel I get some of the fancy soaps/ shampoos that he brings back. I haven't been able to use them up fast enough and I have an entire shoebox full, even though I donated some of them when the box started to overflow. That was random. Anyway, my dad is the main reason that I chose to take German in high school, because he recommended it based on his experience in high school. In case you aren't in the class (if you are a girl you're probably not, I'm a rare exception) it is not about the world wars or Hitler.

We stereotype Germany based on stereotypes of Germany. I saw the new Cars movie and I was instantly scarred by the Colonel Klinck-ish monacle and dreadfully fake accent. And the german car was a rust bucket who loved gas. Two things are wrong with that: Germany is a land of BMW's, Audis, Opels, uber fast trains, and epic engineering. Secondly, Germany is a ridiculously green country. We Americans are the outdated clunkers who should feel like we're being passed by.

Getting a global perspective is refreshing. Each country has its flaws and its achievements. Every culture is worth exploring.

A pep talk for a monster test?

I am so not the pep talk type, but here goes...

Class time makes you feel brilliant, test time makes you feel stupid. (uh, I'll try again)
Watching a mystery test coming closer is like watching an old horror movie where a pretty lady sees a scary shadow coming closer, but she just screams and doesn't run away. And then you yell at her that she needs to get the (beep) out of there. But she doesn't hear you, because she's a character in a movie, and so you watch her get eaten or pass out. (that wasn't helpful)
Your #2 pencils miss you. (that was cheesy)
At least you won't have to fake being sick before the test. (grrr)
Being stressed burns calories, so now you have an excuse to eat more cookies! (I want to smack myself)

Just because it's awesome...

My little brother got me the 20th anniversary edition of "the princess bride" for Christmas. I tried to hug him. He hates hugs. Anyway, I noticed something epic about the front cover...

Yeah, epic. It reminds me of the time in "pirates of the caribbean" when they flip the ship upside down and it ends up rightside up. Kudos to whoever designed the title.

Visual Argument

Click for my visual argument on biomimicry.
claim: We should care about the relationship between nature and technology.
reason: Because nature offers inspiration to engineers wanting to improve their designs. Improved designs mean a higher standard of living.
warrant: Assuming "we" are interested in science and engineering.

1. I chose the pictures because they are successful examples of biomimicry, and they are more recent than, say, Da Vinci's sketch of a flying machine inspired by birds. My examples are of things that can be seen today, which makes them relatable to the audience. My target audience is modern, cares about the future, and is interested in both technology and nature. The pictures argue that the audience should care about the topic of biomimicry.
2.
shark skin and swim suit: The new olympic racing suits are made out of a material that reduces drag. It was inspired by the pattern of microscopic scales in shark skin.
leaf and solar panel: Solar panels absorb light for energy like a leaf absorbs light to indirectly produce energy.
kingfisher and train: The noses of fast trains were made into the elongated shape of a kingfisher's beak. The bird's beak allows it to smoothly dive from air into water. The train's new nose allows it to zoom from open air into a tunnel without making a big "splash".
whale flipper and wind turbine: Like the ridges on a whale flipper are hydrodynamic, ridges on a wind turbine are aerodynamic. The ridges make turbines quieter and more efficient.
termite mound and building: The design of a termite mound creates ventilation and a constant temperature naturally. An architect applied nature's design to a building and decreased heating and cooling costs by 90%.
burr and velcro: Velcro was inspired by burrs. In this case a natural inconvenience inspired a synthetic convenience. (Now if they could only get rid of the annoying sound...)
hummingbird and robot spy hummingbird: This is perhaps the most recent, expensive, and cool example out of all of my pictures. Rather than taking a single idea from nature, nature was painstakingly copied. This example functions as a sort of grand finale of awesomeness.

I included two birds, two fish, two plants, and one structure. The repetition of similar organisms for different uses is meant to show just how much there is to learn. A fish doesn't just teach us how to swim, and a bird doesn't just teach us how to fly. While all examples benefit people, the solar panel, wind turbine, and building also deal with clean energy and the conservation of it, which benefits nature. For many examples, I found an image that had both the creation and the inspiration on it. For the others I put the inspiration first and the creation following. Two separate image examples are put at the front to act as an intro, and one is put at the end to be a conclusion. The first image of the shark is unique because the bubbles show the real skin on the shark and the fake skin on the suit. If the skin had not been magnified, the audience wouldn't understand the connection between the shark and the suit.

3. This is one of the animoto songs. The lyrics go perfectly with the images. "Our world is beautiful" for the shark, "it moves my soul" for the train, and "I'd be nothing without you" repeated in a kind of fading echo. Unfortunately, the tinkling (I don't know how else to describe it) is really annoying. An instrumental might have been a better choice. My computer wouldn't let me put my own music on, did that happen to anyone else?

Open letter to the 1998 Ford Contour sitting in my driveway

Dear car,
Dad cleaned you, posted you on craigslist, then fell in love with you again because you were so clean. Someone wanted to buy you, but Dad turned down the money just to be with you. You are very special to him, and you are a sentimental part of the family, but I have to tell you how I feel about your place here.
You have competition. The Van goes on long trips, the Sonata goes on errands, and the new BMW goes to church and other fancy places. You sit in the driveway, often stubbornly blocking the other cars, and you rust.
You have to acknowledge this. You do have endearing qualities, but you need to be aware of your character when compared to the other cars. I am not trying to hurt you, I just want to prevent future heartbreak by blurting out the truth in advance.
You are valued by Dad because of the cat-like purr you sing when he drives you. You have been his loyal companion through the years, never breaking down completely, even in harsh conditions. You cooperate when Mom drives, but in all honesty we both know that you work better with Dad. I know that you'd rather not talk about our recent drives together, but I have to tell, or else we'll never get better.
I'm not used to a stick shift like you. Multitasking, watching the road, the rpm's, and the spedometer, while feeling the clutch and the right gear, does not come naturally to me. I apologize for the times when I drove you with the parking brake on. And the times when I killed your engine (not on purpose). And I apologize for the embarassment I caused you when the light turned green and my skills failed to get you up that little bump before the intersection. If you meet the cars that were waiting behind us, it would be o.k. if you blamed it on me.
While I recognize that I'm often at fault, you aren't exactly helpful. The rusty polka-dots on your roof are embarassing, your rusty door hinges sound like a dying duck when opened too far, and your non-aerodynamic figure is old fashioned.Even though black is a timeless color, it doesn't hide rust well. On the inside, your left turn blinker signal clicks unnaturally fast, and reminds me of a cartoon time-bomb. The little section of your ceiling that has the light and sunglasses holder is falling out. Your suspension might be described as non-existent. Your gas mileage might be average if you were drafting a semi (which Dad did, but with the Van, sorry to break it to you).
Your future at our house is not over, however! It is impossible not to overhear David as he begs Dad to surrender you into his service. Hauling around unicycles, ramps, and plywood is not what you are used to, but you will come to enjoy it in time. David hasn't even been through driver's ed yet, so you'll get to spend more time with Dad before you're handed down.
Wishing you the brightest future possible, Kaitlin

On being a writer (?)

Of course being a writer has made me look at the world differently! I am now comparing unicycles to lollipops, lollipops to model solar systems, and model solar systems to a game of marbles. What is wrong with me? I am also looking for logical fallacies and Orwellian terms in EVERY SPEECH THAT I LISTEN TO. (the pastor's sermon, the history presentation, Obama's interviews, etc.) I probably re-write things and over-think stuff way more than I used to, too.

I read differently, as well. I pay attention to parallelisms, word choice, and other rhetorical devices more than I used to.

Thoughts on Santa, Religion, and surviving the Relatives...

It's almost Christmas. Almost for most people. I had one of my Christmases this weekend. It lasted from brunch well into the night, and I was totally burned out afterwards. Being an introvert, I lose energy when I am around large groups of people. Don't get me wrong, I love my relatives, but enough is enough. I also celebrated my mom's, grandma's, and mom's-cousin's (does that make him my uncle or my something cousin?) birthdays this weekend. From my recent experiences with I-hardly-ever-see-you-and-to-be-honest-I-don't-know-your-last-names kind of relatives, I have learned a few tips and tricks. 1. Have a generic game, like ping-pong or ice skating ready. 2. If you really don't want to talk to people, or you need a break, suggest watching a movie. 3. Volunteer to help with food. It scores you major points with the moms and it gives you something to do so that you aren't just standing around. 4. Don't shoot a Nerf gun at your brother unless you plan on starting a war.

Also, if you are around younger relatives, be gentle with the Santa topic. I have never believed that Santa existed, but many young'uns do. I find it sad and somewhat heartless that parents will lie to their children. What do they mean to accomplish? Do they do it for their own pleasure, to see their kids being adorably gullible? Do they do it so that their kids will not feel "left out" when they look back? I have never felt like I was missing anything. In fact, when I was younger and more outspoken, I crusaded against Santa. To my mother's horror, I told her best friend's kids that Santa wasn't real. Don't do that. Let the parents tell their kids the truth so that the parents can take all the resulting tantrums.

Santa and religion. Religion and santa. Regardless of what some people think, the two have nothing to do with one another. Christmas is a celebration of Christ's birth, not a commercialized holiday dedicated to shopping and brainwashing little children into believing that a fat guy dressed in red gives them presents. That's so creepy. I am grateful to my family for giving me happy holidays celebrating the arrival of the Savior on Earth. To me, three wise men traveling to Bethlehem is a much more romantic picture than one sleigh pulled through the sky by mutant reindeer. 

nerdy nerd (me)

1. Even though I got over 100% on my last big math test, I made corrections to gain half of a point. The test was 50 points plus extra credit.
2. Ping pong is awesome.
3. I own (and sometimes even use) a unicycle.
4. I knit and crochet.
5. I shop online in the clearance section.
6. I have a blog.
7. I love animated movies and old TV shows.
8. Books are sweet!
9. I am pestering my parents to start a mini-library upstairs.
10. I have a well-stocked pencil pouch.
11. I get out all of my #2 pencils during a scantron test. (usually 5-7 pencils)
12. I get ticked when someone doesn't give my pencil back.
13. The longest I have gone without looking at Skyward is a week.
14. I always bring a lunch from home.
15. I have elbow-sized bandaids in my backpack.
16. I wear glasses sometimes.
17. I take AP classes mostly because I like the students in them.
18. I don't play school sports.
19. I have never been to a football game.
20. I have never sent a text.
21. I hate parties.
22. I avoid social events at all costs.
23. Dodgeball is torture.
24. Fuzzy socks rock.
25. I'm an introvert.
26. I don't have any games on my graphing calculator.
27. Several people have asked me if I am a teacher.
28. I am easily amused. I don't really get bored.
29. I used to have a pet fish. He chased a laser pointer. It was awesome.
30. I like baking cookies.

answers to Abstraction

1.description
2.cause and effect
3.narration
4.classification/division
5.example
6.comparison/contrast

Abstraction

1. When you are afraid, the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Your heart beats faster, faster, faster. Every muscle in your body feels spring-loaded and ready to snap. Your mouth is dry and you cannot stare at one thing. Your glance shifts around the room relentlessly. Every sound is magnified, but the sound of your heartbeat against your eardrum is perhaps the loudest.
2. A grizzly bear stands on its hind legs not fifteen feet away, and you stop dead in your tracks, your heart pounding. Your little brother pops around the corner and yells "Rawr!", and you nearly wet your pants. Your pen stops working in the last 10 minutes of an FRQ, and you nearly fall out of your chair when reaching to snatch one off of the floor. You walk through a haunted house, and as you turn a corner a hand grabs you, so you punch the crap out of whatever creature is attached to the hand. You experience something frightening, and so you react based on fear.
3. I sat crouched near the deck, not daring to move as my enemy moved ever closer to becoming my victim. Capture the flag was played in the dead of night at my cabin, and it was a full moon. I feared that my brother, who was unwittingly crawling under the deck towards me, would see my silhouette near the overturned wheelbarrel and turn around before he crossed over onto my side. As he slowly army crawled nearer, my heart pulsed and I thought that surely he would spot me. He was well past the line now, and still I waited as the muscles in my neck tightened. He stopped, and quivered, "Kkkaitlin?". I sprung up, ran to the side of the deck, crouched down, and lauched myself underneath it. I army crawled through the dirt to my now scream-laughing brother who had curled up into a fetal position. I tagged him and he went to jail.
4. Fear is either rational or it is irrational. Rational fear can be logically explained, while irrational fear cannot. Rational fear is created when you believe that something will be dangerous, painful, or threatening. Irrational fear cannot be explained.
5. FDR once said "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself". Fear has been feared as a sign of weakness, but it is not usually that simple. Even if David feared Goliath, he defeated the giant in the end. Surely David feared the Lord more than his mortal enemy. In this case, David's fear of the Lord was a sign of strength. Machiavelli argued that a ruler in the ideal situation would be feared and loved, but in the real world he said that it is better to be feared than loved.
6. Is it really better to be feared than to be loved? While being feared may be an advantage in some unfortunate political situations, being loved is clearly an advantage in normal day to day scenarios. Both fear and love can generate respect, but respect based on fear is much different than respect based on love. Respect based on fear can disintegrate into hatred, but respect based on love is capable of growing into loyalty.

Stories from the kids table...

Every Thanksgiving the adults in my extended family sit at the big dining room table while the kids sit at the smaller kitchen table. We don't mind. Because the adults can't see us we can pull off some awesome shenanigans. This year I asked my brother and cousins to think of a noteworthy story for this blog. We couldn't remember one that stood out from the others, so here is our list of memorable moments:

• When I was little (and evil) I would ask my brother "Hey David, wouldn't it be cool if_____?". He would then proceed to do _____, and I would get in just as much trouble as he did because I was a bad influence on him. These _____'s included my brother shooting a squirt gun up his nose and hitting a ketchup packet with a hammer.
• At my cabin, while out on a kids-only fishing trip, we were boating back home as the sun was setting, when... One of my cousins made a bet with his twin brother that he could hit a ski bouy with a sunfish as the boat was moving past it. He grabbed a little sunfish out of the live net, took aim, and sent the poor little fish flying towards its target. The fish hit the bouy, then to our surprise it bounced back towards us with alarming speed. It hit my cousin Stephanie, and she shrieked. We laughed our heads off as the fish flopped around in the bottom of the boat. We decided that it had earned its freedom, so we tossed it into the lake and it swam away very quickly.
• The night before April Fool's Day, my brother and I snuck around the house putting tape around sink faucets so that the water would spray out horizontally at an unsuspecting victim. In the morning we found out that that victim had been our mom, who had been sprayed several times at different sinks.
• My cousin's golden retriever, Sophie, was a fluffy cream colored runt when they bought her. She was so small that we dressed her up in Build-a-Bear outfits!
• At my house, hide-and-seek is a hard core game. My brother has hidden pressed against the cieling beams in the basement, I have sandwiched myself into a linnen closet, and my little cousins have found containers and cupboards that they can squeeze into. In my living room, there is a decorative chest that we keep blankets in. My brother took out the blankets, folded himself into the chest, and shut the lid, but as the lid closed the latch swung shut, trapping him inside of a ridiculously tiny space! He thought that I was sitting on top of the chest (really, David?), so he panicked and broke the latch in his escape. 

National Geographic photo

I am in love with National Geographic, and I have the entire Planet Earth series on DVD, and I have so much respect for the camera people and photographers who show perfect moments in nature to the world. This picture has a very obvious argument, but I chose it mainly because I can't get over the size of that thing's head compared to the size of the shell. The baby crocodile looks trapped and mass produced. When you see an incubation tray with eggs in it, you automatically think "chicken", but by putting a crocodile head in there instead of a fluffy yellow birdie, the photographer makes you think "That is sooo wrong! Run away and be free! Don't let the humans eat you!". The crocodile looks so wild with its teeth bared and stripes showing, but it has been put in an orderly grid. The grid itself looks dystopian, or communist, or something of that nature.
Agent: Sukree Sukplang/Reuters took the picture (I swear I'm not making up the name!)
Act: "Thou shalt not put cute reptiles into egg trays."
Agency: Photography is the medium.
Scene: The picture is on the National Geo website, for all nature lovers/people haters to see. The photo was taken at a crocodile hatching festival.
Purpose: The photo was taken to provide a visual argument against a shady zoo in Bangkok. The zoo is suspected of involvement in the illegal animal trade, and it is infamous for its treatment of animals. The zoo has over 100,000 crocodiles already.

X2 page 113... spellingz

I have a hard time remembering how many letters to add in some words, too. Words like psychotic make me crazy because why is there a P in there? Nobody pronounces the P. (Try it, I dare you.) It is like a stupid wad of gum stuck to the bottom of a desk because its user wanted to annoy whoever came across it. Sometimes I look at a word that I just spelled correctly and I think, "That can't be right....". Spell check is wonderful, unless you have a weird name like, I don't know, Kaitlin. I swear, some engineer took the soul out of a walking dictionary (remember that kid with buck teeth who corrected everyone in a nasally voice) and molded it into what we call spell check. Spell check acts like a kindergartener with a crayon whenever you try to write in another language. But even if spell check can be a pain in the popo, it is a lifesaver when you are absolutely clueless. What if everyone could spell words out like they sounded? This scenario reminds me of a restaurant called Zorbas where every S is replaced with a Z. Zpelling  like dat drivez peoplez up wallz. If evryone speld like thay spoek, no un wood bee aebel to tel tha difrence between "choose" and "shoes". When advertisers mix up spellings, or turn letters backwards, product names can be easily recognized. "Dubble Bubble", for example, takes advantage of a misspelling to make the double look like the bubble. "Froot Loops" does the same thing.

Would you like some random with this random?

Random thoughts regarding high school:

• I wish that WHS had a few "Paternoster" (old fashioned German elevators, not totally dangerous).
• It would be awesome if there was a randomness club at the high school, where members could try something new each week. (for example: sushi one week, then hang gliding the next)
• To eliminate traffic problems on the stairs, the right hand side of the stairs should be converted into a slide so that nobody attempts to move against downward traffic. Going down a slide would be so much faster, not to mention more entertaining.
• On late starts, none of the study rooms are quiet. On one late start I was caught studying in the peaceful hallway, and I was ordered to go to a forum room for "quiet study". Even the teachers in charge of the room were blabbering! Why not send all of the noisy kids and trouble makers into the gym or a forum room while quiet, responsible students can be allowed to go to the library or the hall?
• At lunch one time, every person at my table brought in a dish of something to share, and it was awesome! We saw another table doing the same thing a while later.
• I am so glad that there was an anti-tanning article in the school paper. Tanning is unnatural. Why do "hot" girls like to be orange? Even though orange is a hot color, a hot color on the color wheel does not translate to mean a "hot" person. It seems odd that tanning ads can be found in the school paper while students are told in health class that tanning hurts skin.
• If hallways were arteries and students were plaque, the school would have had a heart attack long ago. Masses of students seem to become immobilized at every inconvenient place in the hallway, and their presence causes other students to try and squeeze their way through.  
• Why do girls buy tiny, thin, expensive clothes? I know. Clothing companies save money by using thin material, or just less of it. Some girls believe that tiny and/or transparent clothes are stylish, so they buy them at ridiculous prices. In reality, dear "stylish" girls, this is Minnesota, which means it is cold outside during most of the school year. The girls that have good fashion sense are the ones that buy sweaters and cuddle duds, rather than investing in bare skin and shivers.

book review

The Glass Castle makes readers thankful for what they have, and fills them with hope that hard work can really transform the standard of living in a family. This book reveals a part of American society rarely glimpsed by the more fortunate. In today’s economic climate, this book is a warm reminder that perseverance and sweat allow anyone to improve their condition, and attitude is the main key to change. Anyone struggling with family issues, poverty, or downright hopelessness will find this book to be a reminder that the American dream is more tangible than a mere fantasy. Jeannette Walls inspires dreamers to stop half-heartedly wishing on a star, and start working towards a planet.

Halloween

When it comes to Halloween, my family  doesn't go all decoration crazy or anything. Right now we have one pumpkin sitting on the porch, and that's it. Halloween is an excuse to eat massive amounts of candy. My best Halloween memory is running around the neighborhood with huge pillow cases in which we collected the goodies, then taking inventory of each bag and bartering to get the best stuff. (the best sweets, In my opinion, will always be milk duds, chewy sweet tarts, sour skittles, and anything made of chocolate) Smashing squishy pumpkins in the woods after the holiday is pretty fun, too.

education

I believe that the most important arguments made in "2 million minutes", "I just want to be average", and "For once, blame the students" were on the topics of incentive and culture. In the documentary, Apoorva says she wants to get rich. It seems like all of the asian students are pressured by their parents to do well in school. My parents want me to "get a life". I am beginning to see their point.
Daniel Pink's speech, "Pay for Performance" highlights the importance of intrinsic motivation in business environments. (You have to watch the video to understand what I'm saying about it. http://2mm.typepad.com/usa/2009/10/daniel-pinks-insights-on-pay-for-performance.html ) It would be so awesome if we had "fedex days" at school. They would help students to become interested in what they learn about every day. The candle experiment shows the importance of thinking outside the box and never using extrinsic motivation in an innovative environment. So, it is kind of ironic that east indians look up to Bill Gates (an innovative and intrinsically motivated person), but they are motivated by money and parental standards.
It seems like both American and Asian students have an unbalanced view of education. Americans favor sports to the extreme, while Asians desire knowledge above all else. American culture supports an unbalanced view with "Ferris Beuler's day off", "the Simpsons", and the old tv show "Recess". Peer pressure here deals mostly with sports and physical appearance, while in Asia students desire to be the best in the class. If American and Asian cultures merged, both would benefit by becoming more balanced.  

Another weekend blah

I just read about how we're supposed to have two looooong paragraphs on the weekend blog. Then I saw the comics link/ the oatmeal thing. I read "what it means when you say litterally". Holy guacamole. I will never use the word litterally again unless I have rehearsed how to say it in my head so long that the conversation has moved on. In, other words, I just won't say it. That website has sooooo many swear words on it. They bug me. They have been over used so much that they have lost all originality/significance/meaning. Really truly, they make your intelligence and ingenuity seem a bit lower whenever you use them. The comic characters often don't have completed eyes, so you can't tell where they're looking. I am running out of things to put in my loooong paragraph.
Oh, I know. I spent most of the morning reading "The memory keeper's daughter"....fabulous book! It is probably the only sad book I have ever read that I liked, which is probably due to the fact that this book has so much suspence in it! Who would ever have thought of a sad AND suspenseful book, it's the perfect combination though. I'm about half way through it, and I can tell that every character is at a point where they all go down together, or something starts to go right. I admire the author because she is so good at showing you what is going on, instead of telling you. Everything is connected to everything else, but you can't anticipate what happens next until it smacks you in the face and you're like, WHAT! I really hope that it ends in a way that won't leave me banging my head against a wall in frustration over the lives of made up characters. Litterally.