SOL 7- Mathematics

Math, oh math,
good ol' mathematics,
filled with multiplication,
formulas and quadratics.
My love of you,
like an exponential expression,
goes low and high quickly,
always filled with aggression.
Like in everything,
it can be an art,
serpinskis and fractals,
the one glorious part.
While I am not great,
simplifying is fun,
but when I see a cosine or tangent,
I decide to be done.
Some may say,
"you're in Algebra Two,"
My TI-84 responds,
"He still doesn't have a clue."
Geometry is my one strength,
angles and shapes, in an endless plight,
I somehow understand them,
but unlike Euclid, I'm not always right.
While I don't get all of the topics,
I understand graphs for the most part,
this is  very shocking,
to the chagrin of Pythagoras and Decarte.
Much like my fractions,
my math stays in line,
I keep things organized,
but my efforts seem benign.
I hope to get better,
Unlike the bridges and Euler,
But I don't think I'm getting anywhere,
and that comparison is a spoiler.
Well it is time for this to end,
I enter the final parenthesis,
maybe I will understand tomorrow,
what the formulas have in store for me.

SOL 6- DMNS

          The Denver Museum of Nature and Science is one of my favorite places in the world. As I mentioned in a previous post, my family has DMNS days, just for the sake of going to the museum. Personally, I really like the dioramas. They offer a really cool opportunity to look at a unique environment and notice things about it that you would normally not notice unless you were in the environment. I love how they are like a 3D picture of an area in nature. I am always astounded at how in depth and realistic they are. Also, if you ever go to the dioramas with me, I will be more than happy to point out every single interesting detail in the dioramas and tell you where all of the hidden gnomes are.
          Personally, my favorite dioramas are the Savuti Waterhole Diorama and the smaller Brown Bears Diorama.  The Savuti Waterhole Diorama is basically a massive 3,000+ square foot diorama filled with African animals posed around a central waterhole in the middle of an outcropping of trees. I have actually been inside of this diorama, so seeing all of the animals is really cool to me because I remember seeing them from another angle and learning more in depth about them. The small Brown Bears diorama is one of my favorite dioramas because of how detailed and beautiful every element of it is. Brown bears in and of themselves are cute and look cool in the wild, and in the diorama they are surrounded in flowers, and who doesn't find flowers beautiful.
          Other exhibits that I enjoy in the museum are Ancient Egypt, Gems and Minerals, and Prehistoric Journey. Ever since I was a kid, I have loved the Ancient Egypt exhibit and all of the artifacts. I always hated the manatee diorama, and I kind of have an irrational fear of the diorama. My sister absolutely hates the Ancient Egyptian exhibit as irrationally as I fear the Manatee diorama. In some ways, we have both always ended up torturing each other with our favorite exhibits. The Gems and Minerals exhibit is one of my favorites because of how cool all of the artifacts are and how there is so much attention to detail in all of the exhibits. For example, the crystal cave at the beginning is just a series of mirrors reflecting the walls repeatedly to create a seemingly endless cave. Prehistoric Journey is just cool all around.

          I don't really know why, I just love everything about the museum and can ramble on for hours about literally almost everything involved.

SOL 5- My Army of Geese

An army of geese,
that I have created,
a creation long awaited.
I made all of them out of paper,
staying late up in the night,
to finish my final plight.
They are ready to be hung,
on a crappy project,
an addition to expect.
I folded them all by hand,
they are ready to migrate,
a trip that is fate.
Now they are created,
and sitting on the table,
a half-done diagram to label.
This poem was pretty crappy,
and barely describes the geese,
but now this poem must cease.

          Basically, if you could not derive this from that very poorly constructed poem, I had to make a crap ton of paper geese for a project. Basically, I had to create a mobile that describes the migration patterns of birds. For a fun, different visual element, I decided to create a hanging model, that somehow turned into me making 15 origami geese to be hung in a v. Yes, I actually stayed up until past midnight to fold these geese. And to make bread, but that is another story. After searching for approximately half an hour, I found a tutorial on how to make origami geese. The pattern required equilateral triangles, so the entire project took way longer than it probably should have. Besides, I had to take an intermission to bake bread. This slice of life was pretty boring, other than that crappy poem, the fact that I have a small army of geese staring at me from a pile on my dining table, and the three loaves of banana blueberry bread sitting on my kitchen table.

SOL 4- Traditions

         As a group, my family has a lot of traditions. Most of these traditions evolved from some strange, unknown past, so here is a brief list of these traditions.

          For example, at Christmas, we have meals at each person's house, and we travel between the houses. This is kind of a massive pain, but at least you get to see everyone. Of course, this means a crap ton of scheduling, as each family needs to make and plan a meal, clean their house, and figure out what times people were coming to the house. I guess the idea of it was that each sector of the family  to do equal cleaning, but other than that I really do not know where this tradition came from.

          A family tradition that just includes my direct family is what we call pizza and a movie night. Basically, every Friday night, I join my mother, father, and sister, at our TV and we all eat pizza, or occasionally a normal dinner, and watch a movie. Just last Friday we watched Wonder. Basically it keeps us up to date with movies we want to see and is something we can do every week with the four of us. This tradition came from my childhood where my parents could introduce movies, especially Disney  movies, to the young versions of my sister and I. This tradition has been around for as long as I can remember. Originally, my parents had my sister and I sit on the floor while we ate, instead of with them. I still remember the day when they let us sit with them on the highly exalted basement couch. We still don't know why we were originally sequestered to the floor, but it certainly made for some fun memories.

          This one is not quite a tradition, but every time a new traveling exhibit opens at DMNS our entire family goes and sees it, at some point during its run. These aptly named "museum days" always turn into a massive day long trip where we look at every exhibit in the building. Everyone in my family loves the museum, so it is a fun day that everyone looks forward to. This tradition does not have a specific beginning that any of us can locate, but it just evolved from all of our loves of museums.

          This tradition is a lot more common between most families than the other ones. On most, if not all, big holidays, like Easter and Christmas, everyone in my family goes to church. My close family and my grandparents go to the same church every  Sunday, but in many ways it is a tradition that everyone shows up to church on these special holidays.

          My grandparents own a condo in vail, and for a long time there would be a week in August where everyone would go up to the condo and spend time together shopping and exploring, but never skiing. This tradition has not been upheld recently because of how hard it is to schedule around that many people's jobs, as my cousins now have jobs. My inner family still makes time to go to Vail once a year, but it rarely happens where everyone makes it.

          Other than these distinct traditions, my family just gets together as a group and is rather close. I don't know if all of these technically count as traditions, but they are all things that my family does together as a large group.

SOL 3- Music

          For those that do not know, I listen to a very strange and peculiar range of music. It ranges from soprano opera to hard rock. The one downside to having such a diverse range of
music is how jarring it is to switch from an orchestral piece to loud electric guitar. I don't really know why I picked these two seemingly random genres, I just really enjoy them both and the style of music. In terms of hard rock I listen to Amaranthe, which is an interesting, unique band. I have several favorite operas and pieces, but my main favorites are Die Zuberflote and L'Europa Riconosciuta. The main other thing I listen to is the soundtrack from The Phantom of the Opera. I'm kind of addicted to this musical, I mean, I only know every line from the highest soprano to the deepest bass. Yet again, I don't know why I am so drawn to the musical, I just really like the music. I saw the show once and understood none of it then, but since them it has become somewhat of an obsession.
          Other styles that I appreciate include musical theater (I wrote this blog listening to Wicked), rap (rarely), classic rock (like the Beatles), and the occasional pop song. Personally, I have never understood new music styles, specifically rap. This misunderstanding is especially true for the songs that sound like someone sat over a computer and created a poorly constructed beat and then quietly talked about sex and drugs with the occasional meaningful topic mixed in. This is a personal opinion, but I have never understood this style of music. One other genre I do not understand for the most part is pop. Pretty much all of the songs are about romance and only contain the same six notes. I do not understand why I would listen to this, or why it is worth playing five times per hour on the radio.
          Music is highly personal, and personally what I mainly listen to are podcasts and silence. Podcasts are highly entertaining to me because who would not want to sit and listen to random people talk about random and weird topics that in many circumstances are not commonly brought up topics. Silence is another one of my favorite things to listen to. When I am working on something I find it nice to not specifically listen to anything. Even though it is never silent, it still helps me to get lost in whatever I am doing. When I am not doing something that needs concentration, I still enjoy silent because it allows me to get lost in the patterns of sounds that come out of whatever I am doing.

SOL 2- Personal Pet Peeves

          Personally, I have many pet peeves. I don't know why, but many small things bother me, even though I am probably guilty of many of them. Here is a short list of these annoyances:

          Passive aggressiveness bothers me. If you are going to say something rude, just say it to my face. I know I am very guilty of being passive aggressive, but I try to just be outright aggressive if I am going to be rude.

          When people chew loudly, especially when it is to the point that it is obvious that they are chewing with their mouth open. In my opinion, no one wants to see your unchewed food, it is just unpleasant for everyone involved. If I don't want to see it, I definitely do not want to listen to it loudly during a meal.

          When people respond to an apology that both of you know was more because of curtesy then an actual reason to apologize with "It's OK." As an addition to this, when people apologize by saying, "I'm sorry you feel that way." You could have just said that you weren't genuinely sorry, and none of this conversation would have needed to happen.

          When a teacher has moved on too a more complex topic, and then five minutes later a student asks about how you do the simpler thing. That was already explained a while ago, sorry you didn't get the memo.

          When people repeatedly ask questions about the same thing after it has been explained specifically when it wastes everyone else's time. I find this one particularly obnoxious because I don't want to sit there and listen to someone else repeating themselves for no reason.

          On the same note as the previous annoyance, when people repeat themselves and then never end up finishing their original statement, like finish your statement, but I heard you the first time. It makes no sense to me why someone would say the beginning of a sentence three times and then leave it on a cliffhanger by not finishing their statement. It is a pain for everyone involved.

          The feeling of unfinished pottery. I just absolutely hate it with a passion. For some reason it really bothers me. Even the thought of it makes me want to curl up and die in a hole.

What is this, a bag of lay's chips?

          When people do not remove the air from a Ziploc bag before they seal it. Why are you taking the time to store something in a compact, airtight bag if you are going to make it take up extra space and be surrounded by air? It makes no sense to me, and it makes me mad that someone would misuse a bag like that.

          When people are consistent and then change things up randomly. It is very obnoxious. For example, if someone is always on time and then starts being consistently late repeatedly. It is just a pain for everyone involved. Another example is when someone is very specific and strict about when things are due, and then one day you walk into the classroom and they say something like "I changed my mind, this assignment is not due for another two days." Make up your mind, people. If I'd have known that I did not really need to do the assignment I would not have stayed up until midnight working on it.

          When people use shortenings of other words instead of spelling out the entire word in conversation. I get that it is the modern, hip slang, but if that is where the world of communication is going, I have no want to be involved in it. I refuse to actually say out loud to someone, "LOL!" I just refuse to ever say that kind of thing to another human being.

          When people choose random synonyms to make themselves sound smarter when in reality it just complicates things. In my opinion, at least, saying that he hit someone with his clapper dudgeon (yes, that is an actual word, look it up), does not sound cooler than saying "he hit someone with the hilt of his dagger."

          Now that this unintentionally passive aggressive sounding slice is done, I hope you enjoyed it and can relate to some of them, no matter how weird they may be.

SOL 1- And so it Starts

          As this is my third year doing this, I will try to not get too repetitive in the prompt area, but my first slice from the last two years has also been something along these lines. Looking back, I find it crazy how much has changed since this challenge happened a year ago. For example, last year I did a slice on the potential pros and cons of the language program. The program has now been installed, and I am used to the pattern of it (even if it is not a good pattern, in my opinion). There have been a lot of other changes, a lot of people have left and a lot of new people have entered my life as friends. There have been a few improvements, however, such as my grammar and use of commas. There have also been a few constants, like the general feeling of meh detailed in my blog from last year.
          In previous years, I always have looked back and thought, "wow, that was really cringey. Luckily I wont be like that this year!" Then I look back to when I thought that, and now think, "Oh child, if only you would have known how cringey and bad the posts you will make will be." Looking forward, I know that this blog will be very cringey when I look back at it. Oh well. I guess I just am a cringey person. Now that I have way overused the word cringey in this cringey blog post, I can talk about other things.
          What if I don't make it all the way through the challenge this year, my third year in a row? The worry is circling in my head, but I know I probably will make it or die trying, knowing my personality. Talking more about my personality, here is a brief crappy poem to describe myself to those of you that do not know me:

Perfectionist,

Particular,

Potentially Problematic,

Quirky,

Weird,

and Dramatic.

Unexpected,

Unique,

and Very Confusing,

Enjoys writing,

Particularly Poems,

Though Not Very Enthusing.

          My personality is like that rhyme scheme: strange. Starting into the challenge, I am already out of prompt ideas, which does not bode well. I hope I come up with something by tomorrow, although I probably wont. Now that I have gotten the first awkwardly phrased poem of many out of the way on this blog, I hope that is a relatively decent way to sum up me and start off the blog challenge. Good luck, and I hope I don't mess things up!