The Magic Encyclopedia

No, it's not an encyclopedia that is magic, it is an encyclopedia OF magic. Magic tricks, that is. It's got all sorts of crazy string, card, coin, hanky, rope, and ring tricks. It's absolutely wonderful. Especially when you have nothing to do.
My favorite tricks are the card ones. Most of the time, all you need is a deck of cards. Every now and then you may need to get an extra one, or you may need an old deck that you can write on, but most of the time, all you need is one deck. New cards work the best because you can bend and shuffle them well. Card tricks normally involve guessing a card or finding one.
Rope tricks, those are fun. All you ever need is a rope and a ring. A couple ropes might do it, because you might be cutting one in half. Rope tricks involve tying and removing without taking out the knot, untangling it, or getting it through the ring. Fun fun.
Coin tricks are not all that easy to come by. I mean, sure, there are some out there, but most of them are not all that good. It's rare to actually come by a REALLY good coin trick that nobody can figure out. Cause coin tricks are easy to figure out. But they're still really fun.
I love magic tricks. It's especially fun when you have an audience of little kids because they're all like "How did you DO that?!" and they almost never figure it out. Wheras big kids (*cough* Moby) want you to do it over again until they know how to do it. Or they just ruin all the fun trying to examine every bit of equipment. My fun tricks have been ruined that way. Next time I'll just have to do everything on a table and not let anybody come up to it without permission.
I also love mind tricks. You know, the ones where you guess what the person has written down, or what they're thinking. Especially ones that involve math. Love those.
I remember one time a couple years ago, it was some school break, and I did this big magic show thingy for all my brothers and sisters. They weren't enthusiastic volunteers, but I bribed them with one of those M&m dispenser machines. The ones where you pull a lever and out pops a couple m&ms. We have two, which are both in my dad's office at work. One of them was the yellow M&m guy sitting in a chair with a remote. If you lift the hand holding the remote, the bottom of the chair opens and lets out a few m&ms. The other one was the blue M&m guy playing the saxophone. If you lift up the sax, the floor opens up and lets out a couple candies.
Time to publish this and go. Two minutes left. See ya'll Wednesday, cause Monday and Tuesday is a break! Hopefully! Bye bye!

Aluminum Foil

Is it aluminum foil? No actually, it's not. It's a ginormous chocolate bunny rabbit wrapped up in aluminum foil. It was three dollars at Wal-Mart. They were having an Easter candy sale, and almost all the good stuff was less then three dollars. Except there was this foot-long solid chocolate rabbit for fourteen dollars, but nobody could ever eat that.
We may not celebrate Easter, but who says we can't eat the Easter candy? Candy is good. I got Reese's eggs, Dove truffles, and this chocolate rabbit. They were selling Pez and Pez dispensers too. Some people wanted to get Fun Dip, but that stuff is just pure flavored sugar. Pure.
The problem with candy is that it is so good, but it's not at all good for you. And then you have the vegetables that are nasty, but very good for you. Why can't they ever make the good stuff taste good and the bad stuff taste bad? I guess it's because you can't get everything good.
I also like potato chips and onion dip. Now that is a totally horrible-for-you snack. Lets see, it's got sour cream, potato chips, onion dip mix, what could get worse than that?!
I'm tired again, which is weird because I went to bed at midnight. Oh well. What may be a part of it is that Sham sleeps in my bed every night, and she wakes me up at exactly 6:11 every morning cause she's hungry. And then she needs to go out. I don't know why it's at that specific time, but it always is. She nips really hard.
Guess what tonight is... LOST!!!!! Hahahahahahaha!!! And in this one, somebody is going to die. Only I hope it's not Claire. If I'm going to be able to watch this, I need to take another nap. And tonight I need to really try to go to bed at 11 or 11:30 so that I won't be tired.
I cannot believe that my mom is leaving for Africa on Saturday morning. And I'm not going. Grrrrr. Not fair.
What else do I write about? I've still got 10 minutes. Of course, I could gripe about how boring my life is, but that's not interesting at all. I could gripe about how my brothers and sisters make random comments about me when I didn't even do anything. Moby: "Nobody likes you." Maryam: "You're mean." AND I DIDN'T EVEN DO ANYTHING!!!!! Agh, I hate being the oldest. Not to mention that I can't relate to either of my parents.
I need a good book to read. I just finished The Butterfly Revolution, and I thought that it was kind of like Animal Farm. Those books freak me out. I hate reading about dictatorships and stuff like that, cause I'm scared it's all gonna happen to the US. And I'd rather it not.
I'm so tired. I'm about to fall asleep right here on the chair. I think I need to publish this and turn in for an hour. I only have five minutes left anyway. Yep, I think it's time to go. Bye bye.

Another iPod!!!

Except this time it's smaller, and colored. Yes, it's the brand-new iPod Shuffle. Okay, so maybe it's not all that new, but in my standards it is, because I've been walking around with a long iPod for 3 years. Let's see how I ended up with this.
Well, when I was 10 or so, I needed something to carry music around in, and, unfortunately, what else is better than the company that does all the advertising? Apple. They advertise iPods a lot. You almost never see any ads for mp3 players. So anyway, I bought mine, took it home, installed it, registered it, put music on it, and I was listening to it 24/7. Well, almost. So then I went to Africa, and I was allowed to bring it, but only for the plane.
After we got back, I barely ever used it. I was so used to not listening to music. I just sort of, gave up. But then I saw my Dad. He won two iPods by doing some sort of survey or something for his job. He won a black iPod nano, and an orange iPod shuffle, this one. Now, when my friend's dad comes over, he's always trying to make a point about how you shouldn't have more iPods in the house than you do people. So I'm thinking, "You have two iPods, so you can't really talk." So two days ago he brings back up a topic which we've been discussing for awhile. Or I brought it up. He says that if I give Moby my iPod for Quran, he'll give me his orange one. So I go and erase the music on both of them, and give Moby mine. So now I have an almost brand new iPod, which I listened to for the first time yesterday.
The thing is, I'm a neat-freak. If this iPod gets all scratched up, I'm gonna be way mad. Oh well, too bad. Nothing good lasts forever.
My left pointer finger is very tender. Yesterday I was playing the guitar, and trying to get the D7 chord, and boy oh boy, that chord is tough to get to. You've got to squeeze your fingers together, and the whole note is on skinny strings. Skinny steel strings. Owwy wowwoww!!! I thought callusses were supposed to form, not tender fingertips, although I can kind of feel some callusses.
I'm tired. I stayed up till 1:30 last night watching The Kingdom with my parents. It was a good movie. Kind of scary. But kind of weird too. It was kind of like Rendition, but then again, not really. They were both about war. And trying to solve a mystery. And suicide bombings. Ouch.
I cannot believe I still have 11 minutes left. Why do I have to do this for half an hour?!!! There's not even anything left to write about. Nothing! Oh wait, I know!!
My brother has recently gotten into the Harry Potter books, when before, every single person, including him, thought I was crazy for liking them so much. And now I think I should hide the Half Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows until the movies come out so that he has to wait. He never liked them before, even after seeing the movies. He only liked it after my dad made him read the first one. He hates reading, so he was moaning and groaning the whole time. In a month, he has almost finished five books. In a year, I'd read them all about three times. Which is why I got banned from them. =(
We finally got our hard drive for the other computer that broke. Now we just have to fix it, DADDY!!! And then we have to install everything all over again. Annoying, but hey, at least we'll have a computer.
I'm really wanting to go somewhere fun today. I don't know why, because I usually despise going anywhere. But I guess today is different. Maybe it's because Daddy's on spring break.
Time to go, publish this post. It's getting too long. And now I have to sleep for an hour cause I'm TIRED!! Then I'm gonna read The Butterfly Revolution. Tata!!

Lord of the Rings

Possibly some of the best books ever. Only the Lord of the Rings. Those other books I didn't really want in the picture, but I didn't feel like taking them out. I haven't even read "The Art of War." Ewww.
I remember my dad forced me to read "The Fellowship of the Ring" when I was like 7. Obviously, I had no success whatsoever. The first page itself was sooooooooo boring, and there are times I have to read books that I don't understand. Yeah, that was one of those times.
Well, when you're in a foreign country, you get really bored. I think it mostly started when we watched the Lord of the Rings movies in Africa. I had already seen them a million times, but I wanted to read the books. For the first time. So when my mom went back to America, we asked her to get the books. So she got these fancy paperback ones with movie pictures. The text was all the same, though. So I read through them all in about two weeks. I was constantly reading them. And when I was done, they didn't all fit in the box that they'd come in. Cause they'd been thickened out about half an inch each.
When I was done, I read the tale of Aragorn and Arwen over and over again. It was a truly sad thing, but wonderful at the same time. I love love stories. Especially that one.
My dad owes me. He said once that if I read all of the Lord of the Rings books that he likes so much, he'd read all the Harry Potter books that I like. He still hasn't done it. LIAR DADDY!!!!!
Sorry, I had to do that. He he. Anyway, there are plenty of good stories out there, you just have to look hard enough. I was so bored in Africa, and I was able to read a lot of wonderful books. A Wrinkle in Time, Lord of the Rings, Black Beauty, and a few more that I can't remember.
So anyway, let's get into my weekly LOST discussion that I didn't do yesterday cuz the internet was acting up. Yesterday's episode was, unfortunately, one of the worst. It was so boring, and it didn't really answer a whole lot of questions, although it added a bit of backstory. All it gave us was more questions. Grrrr. It did answer one question though, but everyone already knew the answer anyway.
Time to go. Byebye!!!

Another Pirate Book

Here is yet another pirate book. This one is from a series of _____ology books. There's ones about pirates, dragons, fairies, Egypt, mythology, wizards, and more. I've seen them at Sam's Club.
The cool things about these books is that they aren't just for reading. They have all these little pockets, bags, envelopes, and cool things. It's a whole hands-on mania!!!
This one follows the story of a merchant ship. It is basically a diary of the captain, and it contains all the little bits and pieces that he picked up along the way. He is stalked by a pirate ship whose captain is female, only I can't remember who it is. The merchant travels through all sorts of places, constantly followed, and it all ends with his ship being sunk. Throughout the book there are all sorts of booklets, bags, fake coins, and maps. I love the book because it's almost like a real diary, and if I'm ever bored, it's perfect for pretending I'm on a pirate hunt.
I'm so fascinated with pirates. I don't know why. I guess from all the movies and books. It seems like it is such an adventurous life. Although I think I read somewhere that those are just myths, that a pirate's life was really full of struggle, gross food, and lots of fights. Not all the adventure. But hey, we can dream, can't we?
Guess what. This is my 100th post!!! Hahahahahahahahahaha!!!! I hope that I get to take a break from this idiotic blogging. It's annoying!!!
You know the worst thing about cold weather? It's getting the sniffles. Right now I have a cold, and it's horrible. I hate them. I like everything else about winter. But in this warm weather, it's cold at night, and I put on two blankets, and when I wake up in the morning, I'm so hot. Agh, it's annoying.
I cannot wait till this weekend. Free time, we're not going anywhere, (hopefully), and Daddy's coming home!!!

Pirates of the Caribbean

Okay, what's probably the most famous modern Disney movie? Not movie, par say, but a trilogy. And no, Lord of the Rings doesn't count as a Disney movie, cause it's not! It's Pirates of the Caribbean. With Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley, and Orlando Bloom. That is probably one of the most popular movie series of this age, alongside Lord of the Rings, Shrek, and Toy Story.
What I like so much about these movies is all the different themes. There's romance, action, comedy, and a bit of mystery. For all of you very very very VERY uninformed people, I shall describe each major character.
Captain Jack Sparrow is probably the most famous character. He is played by Johnny Depp. Jack Sparrow is a weird, funny, and according to Tia Dalma, witty person who must always be addressed as Captain or he will get very mad. His desires are first, to get his ship, the Black Pearl back, and next, to kill Davy Jones and save his own soul. Jack is known for using people, conning them, and being sarcastic.
Will Turner, played by Orlando Bloom, is almost like Jack's first mate. He was found as a child by young Elizabeth Swann and her father drifting in the ocean after his ship was destroyed. When he grew up, he fell in love with Elizabeth, but refused to admit it, even though it was really quite obvious. After Elizabeth is captured, he risks his life to save her. In the second movie, he tries to free himself and Elizabeth from jail and the death sentence by getting Jack's compass. In the third movie he tries to help stop the East India Trading Company from destroying all pirates everywhere.
Elizabeth Swann is the governer of Port Royal's daughter, and she was only 12 when she found Will floating in the ocean when she was traveling back from England. After she grows up, she is totally oblivious that Will likes her, but she eventually sees it. In the first movie she is captured by pirates after they see that she has a golden medallion. In the second movie she travels to track down Will after he goes to find Jack. In the third movie she plays a much larger part in protecting piracy from the East India Trading Company.
Captain Hector Barbossa was Jack's first mate, but he led a mutiny and became Captain of the Black Pearl. He found and island which held a chest of cursed treasure, and in the first movie he is trying to get the last piece back that he'd sold. He dies at the end. In the second movie he is only seen at the end, where we see that he has been resurrected. In the third movie he tries to protect piracy.
Now that thirty minutes are up, I'll stop. But for anyone who hasn't seen these movies yet, I highly recommend that you do, or else you're missing out on some films that will be legend in 100 years. Go rent them, watch them, and enjoy them!

The Time Quartet

Or at least, that's what it's called on Wikipedia. All I have to say is that these books are awesome. Truthfully, I'm not a big fan of science-fiction, but I do like the books that I call "A Wrinkle in Time books," regardless of which one it is. I first read A Wrinkle in Time in 5th grade, but I don't think that I really understood it. Then when we were in Africa, I saw it on the bookshelf and picked it up thinking, "You know, maybe I should read this again. Because last time, I didn't get it, and I can't even remember what it's about." So yeah. Then I got hooked on it. It was a very sweet book, very nice, and taught me a bit.
For me, the science fiction didn't stand out as much as the moral. Like I said, I'm not a big fan of it. I like fantasy more because it gives me more room to imagine, but I guess you could say that science fiction is just advanced fantasy. But anyway...
After reading A Wrinkle in Time, I waited till we got home, and I looked everywhere for the second book, A Wind in the Door. I mean it, I searched everywhere, practically tearing apart one of the bookshelves, I was so desperate. We've been back for about 7 months, and two days ago I finally found it, lying on the bookshelf. It was probably there the whole time, but in the picture you'll see that the books are sort of fancyish. Well the book A Wind in the Door that we own, it's kind of tattered, and yellow. Hey, at least we have it.
So I finished that in two days. I'm starting Many Waters because it is the next book chronologically, but not published next.
I also hear that there's another book that belongs with these. I forget what it's called, but hey, at least there's another. And you know what's really weird? Madeleine L'engle died on my birthday of last year. Ouch. It was natural though, cause she was kind of old. A Wrinkle in Time was published in what, the 1950s?
Guess what today is!!!!!!! T-H-U-R-S-D-A-Y!!!!! And why is this the best day of the week? No it's NOT because tomorrow is Friday! Four letters. L-O-S-T!!!! The bestest show everrrr is on tonight!!!! Yay!!!

Finally!!!

Do you have any idea how long I've needed a guitar book? I can't get anywhere without it! It's so hard to watch a DVD that isn't even the whole thing, and actually expect to learn something!!! At least now I have sheet music, songs to play, and fingering charts. Okay, so I haven't played a lot yet, but that's only because I don't really have much time.
I've always wanted to play an instrument, and when I got my flute, I was really happy. I always liked the sound of the flute. What I didn't realize was that there are two different kinds of flutes. One of them has holes in the keys, the other doesn't. The one with holes in the keys is the real and true flute. The other one is just for beginners.
So I got good at the flute, the best in the class actually. Then I went to Africa where I couldn't play at all, and when I came back, my school wouldn't let me back in. So I started homeschooling. But let me tell you, it's hard to teach yourself how to play the flute well. Especially because I hadn't played in almost a year. I was also getting kind of bored. And my flute was kinda messed up and I wasn't allowed to go get it fixed, mostly because it would cost a lot of money. The flute had dents, scratches, and some of the keys were kind of messed up. And let's just say that some necessary pieces were falling off. Not pieces that couldn't be put back, but it's kind of tedious when you have to keep replacing things.
So then we went and bought the guitar. Like I said in my other post, it came with an almost useless DVD, so I couldn't learn a lot from that. And the DVD was for electric guitar, not acoustic, although most of the notes are the same. But it didn't teach me notes or songs, only chords. Ugh.
This book was given to me by my mom's German friend. It originally came with a disk, but I don't care, just so long as I have the book. It starts out, like all instrumental books, with finger placements, starter tips, and in a guitar's case, tuning. Then it moves on into first string notes. So you play a bit with those, and once you can switch between them all with ease, then you go to second string notes, and so on. After the first couple strings you get songs to play. One of them is Ode to Joy. I never realized that you can play almost every note on only the first, second, and third frets. Wow.
The thing about guitars is that they are so easy to take care of. All you need to do is wipe them down with a dry cloth every now and then, and when the strings break, get new ones. And I'm pretty sure that the strings are quite cheap. You need almost nothing to play a guitar except your hands and a place to put it when you're done, and a good guitar doesn't cost all that much. And when you're trying to play a song on hearing alone, at least you can sing the song while you play it, unlike woodwinds.
Music is a wonderful thing. There are so many variations of it, you can use simple household objects to play it, and best of all, when you learn how to play it, you can do many things with what you know. I like being able to play notes that express how I feel. I think everyone should at least know what beautiful music sounds like.

It's a Girl!

TGIF!!! Yay!!! And Lost was spectacular last night! Suspensful and everything. The only thing wrong was that it left with a cliffhanger. I have to wait a wholenother week now! So now that I've got that out of me...
Everyone's got a history, it's just that most people don't realize it. Like, when people brought the slaves from Africa, they probably didn't realize that the Africans had families and histories to go back too. All because of the color of they're skin. I don't really understand why people think that they're better. I mean, if everyone had no skin, nobody would know who was who. But then they'd probably find some other way to persecute different people. "I've got more muscles than you do, so you can't be anywhere near me!" It's so sad.
This is a picture of my baby book. It is loaded with pictures, souvenirs, and what not, all from when I was a little tiny baby. There are even pictures of my parents' wedding, even though that was five years before I was born, but still. In the front pocket of the book is my bracelet. You know, the ones you get at the hospital if you're a patient. My birth certificate is in there too. On the back it's got my little feet. But why do you need a birth certificate? I mean, if you exist, obviously you were born. Why do you need to certify it?
My ex-uncle, (my mom's sister's ex-husband), was a major picture guy. And seeing as my cousin, (his son), was born two and a half weeks after me, there are a bunch of pictures of my cousin and I in a playpen. I think in one of them his foot was in my mouth. Oh, the days when we were a bunch of innocent babies...
I was the only one of my brothers and sisters to have a baby book. Mostly because I was the oldest, and the oldest always gets the most pictures. I feel so bad for my littlest brother. He barely has any pictures of his babyhood. He's in kindergarten though, so he probably doesn't give a care.
Now, let's go through my childhood, shall we? When I was two, my brother was born, when I was four, my sister was born, when I was five, kindergarten, six, first grade and a sister. Seven, second grade, and a brother. Eight, third grade in a new school. Nine, fourth grade, ten, fifth grade. Eleven, sixth grade, new school of course. Twelve, seventh grade. Thirteen, eighth grade, and so on. So, as you can see, my life has been the normal American life. Except for the fact that I went to Morocco when I was seven, and Senegal when I was twelve.
I have to go now. Well, almost. I'm sorta bored and I have no idea why my dad wants me to write for half an hour. It makes no sense. Writing is just so boring, and I'm so tired because I went to bed at 11, and woke up at 8:30, even though that's 9 hours of sleep. Wow, I need a lot of sleep. I want to get this schoolwork over with so I can play Monopoly, sleep, play RuneScape, sleep, and cuddle with my kitten. If only she'd like my bed better than the top bunk.
I'm going now. Too tired, must sleep. Bye!