Overdue-Part I

I have not posted anything in... more than I week, I believe. Probably two. Who knows?

Anyway, the good news is, I'm back from my sort-of-hiatus.

Bad news?

If you count my jittery, hysterical nerves as bad news, then I guess that's it.

As probably 99.5% of people who actually read my blog knows, I was at a school-wide challenge thing yesterday. As for the 0.5%, I'm too worn-out to explain in too much detail. Maybe some day later. Maybe...

Anyway, as Mogley said, "What happened in room 108 stays in room 108."

Yeah right. What happened in room 108 goes directly here, of course.

It all started early yesterday morning, at around eight in the morning, to be exact. My mom had driven me to school, because I still do not have my permit yet (a sad fact that is prone to change). We arrived really, really early. Way too early. In fact, there was only one other car there, and the door was locked.

So my mom suggested we circle the school, which I agreed to, because it was way too cold to wait outside, and there wasn't anything else to do. When we made a circle and came back, the doors were thankfully open, and I departed from my car just as the person in the car in front of me opened the door as well.

Guess who it was?

Reese, of course. Who else would be here this early? (Ignore the fact that I'm early as well.)

We made our way upstairs to the supposed meeting room, and I told him how my mom predicted that no one was going to show up, because, well, I had completely forgotten about the existence of the challenge until late last night myself.

"Oh," Reese said. "I have Joss's (when I named Joss as such I was not thinking of possessive problems) phone number."

But as it turned out, Joss was the last person we had to worry about, because he showed up (despite Argon's remarks of how unreliable he could be) early as well. Something about "I get to miss rowing for this, and I don't want to go to rowing."

Whatever the reason it was.

We were assigned a room (room 108 here, for identity's sake), and we headed over right away to set up. Which included Reese connecting his laptop ("it's way better than Camel's" even though the brand is the same) to the Smartboard. Of course. After moments of flickering screens, plug-in problems, and various other mini-disasters, he gave up synchronizing his laptop to the Smartboard and settled for the projector instead.

By this time, we were set to begin anyway, and Mogley and Ben showed up as well.

We were all here, and excited. We each took a copy of the problem, and half-ran towards our room, closing the door behind us. We were going to begin. Totally.

Right.

Half an hour in, Joss said, "I'm hungry. When's lunch?"

We all stared at him.

"Lunch will probably begin at... noon?" I said.

"Oh, good, because I'm starting to run low on energy."

The minor food episode aside, we returned to focus on the problem at hand. Reducing carbon emissions and water and energy usage? Converting to renewable energy sources? How hard can that be?

"There's this really cool thing," Mogley suggested, "that's a wind turbine, but it's in the shape of a balloon and floats high in the sky."

"Turbiiiine," Reese said.

"What?" Mogley asked.

"'Turbiiine.' Not 'turban.' You said 'turban.'"

"No," Mogley said. "It's 'turbin.'"

"'Turbiiiine!'"

"'Turbin!'"

"Turbans are the thing you wear. On your head. If I searched up 'wind turbans," there wouldn't be anything."

And Reese proceeded to do exactly that. We stared at the Smartboard intently. Right after he pressed enter, a picture of a guy wearing a turban with turbines popping on top showed up.

We all laughed as Reese tried to resume on his argument.

"Well, if I searched it in Merriam-Webster, it would say 'turbiiiine.'"

"Go ahead," Mogley said.

So we waited as Reese went on Merriam-Webster, searched up the word 'turbine,' and pressed the audio button.

"Turbin, or turbiiiiine."

"Ha!" Mogley said. "It said 'turbin!'"

"No," Reese said. "It said 'turbin,' or 'turbiiiine.'"

"But it said 'turbin' first."

"But it also said 'turbiiiiine.'"

"Enough!" I shouted. "We're going to compromise. We're going to call them 'turbies.'"

We quieted down (slightly) after that. Ben declared that he would be responsible for the "food unit," whatever that meant. I sat down on the ground (because I hate the school's chairs, and Reese wouldn't share his squishy chair), and Joss sat down beside me to let me use his shoulder as a pillow. Mogley resumed his wind turban searchings. Reese dedicated one of the cows to be a "music cow," opting to play piano music.

"Can we play something else?" Ben asked. "The piano's good and all, but it's putting me to sleep. We need something to energize us."

"Okay," Reese said. He fiddled with the cow, and soon heavy metal music filtered out.

"Come on, seriously?" Joss said. "Anything's better than this music!"

"It's not my fault," Reese said. "It's an online radio station." But soon he changed it to Kesha's "Tik Tok."

". . . brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack," Mogley sang. I stared at him.

"What?" He said. "I've heard that song all night at Counties."

"That's so disgusting," I said. "Why would you brush your teeth with Jack?"

"It kills all the bacteria," Mogley said, matter-of-factly.

"So do you spit it out, or do you swallow it?"

"You swallow it, of course."

I wanted to ask, And you would know this because?

But all I said was, "That's still disgusting."

"Yeah," Mogley said. "It is. But at least you get rid of all the bacteria."

We went back to work afterwards. Ben tried to find the energy budget our town had, but failed. Reese tried next, but failed as well. So I tried next, obviously. And failed as well. In frustration, I wrote on one of the blackboards, in huge letters, "Life sucks. Why can't our town's budget papers be clearer?"

"Nice handwriting," Joss said. "It looks like graffiti, but more legible."

And he promptly added "SPARTA!!!" under my words.

"Hey guys," Reese said. "I've plotted water usage by year into a chart. It's steadily rising."

"Good," Mogley said. "How about you plot it as a function to population? Because obviously water usage is going to increase with more people."

"Okay," Reese said. "A ponction--function--a ponction to fopulation."

After a while, Reese said again, "Hey guys, I don't think this is working."

"Why not?" Mogley asked, but then he looked up and realized. The "ponction" for water usage per person was actually... decreasing.

"Well, it needs to decrease MORE then!"

I started cracking up, and we all started laughing, and I started laughing more because everyone else was laughing more, and soon I couldn't catch my breath.

"I--I need to go outside--to calm myself down."

Joss agreed and followed me outside. We went down the hallway, while I tried to talk about unrelated things to stop laughing.

"Pink, fluffy bunnies," I said. "Pink fluffy bunnies under purple clouds, with green rain and..."

"Somehow I doubt that's your solution," Dino said as he walked past us.

We ignored him and kept on walking while talking about pink bunnies and purple clouds. As we reached the end of the hallway, we turned around, and that was when we saw a picture of our cafeteria tables on the school's TV.

What?

Joss and I started laughing even harder. I don't even know why we started laughing. I guess the enormity of the situation was just too funny, or that was what I thought. Joss took out his phone and videotaped the cafeteria tables "as proof," but to what purpose, I have no clue.

We laughed all the way back, and when we passed by the math office, we went in to grab some more water.

"They're in the corner," Mrs. MacDonald said, pointing. "Would you like some snacks as well? We've got lots of cookies and brownies and other treats."

We each took some treats, and then walked to the corner to grab our water, when I discovered that there was tea as well.

"Hey, organic tea!"

"Oooh," Joss said. "Let's get some tea as well."

So we each took a can and walked--or more like ran--back to our room. I had a piece of brownie half in my mouth when I opened the door, and Mogley spotted me.

"Where did you get the food?" He asked.

"Mhmm-mmphm," I said.

"The math office," Joss added.

"They have food?"

"Yeah," I said, having swallowed the brownie. "They've also got tea as well."

Mogley, Reese, and Ben immediately ran out.

(I was going to write everything in here, but I'm running out of time, so I shall have to compromise, and write more tomorrow. I'll get to the Team Darkness part tomorrow, as well as all the other parts that eventually turned me into a laughing mess by the time everything ended.)