283A — You're casting your spell all on me...

Wow, today was a long day. I really want to get to sleep early, but the table of contents for this blog is clearly not going to allow me to do that. At the very least, it was a pretty good day, so I'm satisfied with that at the very least.

I got up early this morning, at around 5:15 AM, and quickly got ready, making it to the park where the balloon launch was occurring at around 5:45. Unfortunately, it took a significant amount of time for the team launching to get the actual balloon launch, but fortunately I got to play a role I've never been able to do before because of the stress of previous launches (namely, stand there and help the balloon not fall over on to people or the grass). Eventually, the balloon launched somewhere around 7 AM, and I made my way directly to the school afterwards, where I spent some amount of time in the library until AP Psych, socializing with robotics kids and whatnot.

In AP Psych, we went to watch AP Chem presentations, which were uninteresting for the most part (0/10 not enough actual chemistry), and then in Spanish we played some review games, which was quite fun. (During this time, I was also obsessively watching the balloon trajectory. The transmitter had some moments where it would cut off for long intervals, but the team got very lucky and got a ping very close to the ground, unlike yesterday's launch, and they actually recovered it this afternoon.)  In Orchestra, we continued to review terms and music theory that I'm pretty sure I've known since at least 8th grade, if not earlier. Finally, I got to go home afterwards, stopping for gas on the way.

My plan for lunch was to read before lunch and then eat, call the travel agency for the Presidential Scholars trip, and then edit essays. What actually happened, however, was that I read Leah on the Offbeat before lunch and finished it. Then, I had lunch, and then spent the rest of my lunch break reading Crazy Rich Asians.

My thoughts on Leah on the Offbeat were primarily that it was at first depressingly relatable and then depressingly impossible. There's something about a story about a bi girl in love with a perfect but clearly straight girl that is unfortunately exactly the same as my current situation (after replacing girl with boy), but seeing it all work out in this story simultaneously made me happy and sad as continued mitigating factors in real life when compared to this fictional situation means my life is still harder. It was good to see representation-wise though, both in relation to race (as in just POC in general, although I can't possibly claim to bear the full weight of that label) and sexuality, although Albertalli's writing style is still depressingly pop culture and stereotypical teenager to the point where it's cringey at some points. Two quotes:

"I'm pretty sure this is the kind of crush you can die from."

"That comment sucked. It's just super hurtful. And I get it all the time. So then I get obsessed with the idea of proving people wrong and being, like, unimpeachably perfect, which probably isn't healthy, and it's just really exhausting. I hate it...but I also hate conflict...so I don't know."

After lunch, I went back to school and sorted music for a while, eventually hitting the Bloch Concerto Grosso, which I played two years ago for small group at contest, and which was distributed across four full music folders. I finished sorting it eventually, but it was just kind of massive. I'll definitely finish it tomorrow, and then move on to the next drawer.

I went home, and instead of sleeping or doing work, I proceeded to read Crazy Rich Asians for the two and a half hours, eventually finishing it off. It was so detailed and kind of overly allusive to all sorts of insane artistic concepts, but the way it was written to split between characters and narrative arcs made me really seek out the next interesting section and dash through the book to some extent, making it deeply interesting. I haven't read a book that engrossed me so much for a long time, and although the Asians I know and will know are certainly not the type in this story, there was something about the occasional Mandarin-ish Canto and just general atmosphere of the story, as well as some of the Singlish like the ever-present lah I heard so much at RSI, which made it feel vaguely like home. I'm sad it didn't resolve as well as the movie did, but I've borrowed the sequel, so I guess I'll start that soon. I've now read more books in the last three days than I did in the first four months of the year. God. I didn't have any poignant quotes, just two funny highlights (I suppose I was too engrossed in actually reading and getting through it):

"...Last time we had to sit through a whole piano recital by that Ling Ling guy." "Michael, it's Lang Lang...one of the world's top pianists."

"They only use the right hand to eat, of course. The left hand is used for purposes better left unmentioned."

Anyways, I went to pick my sister up from a debate workshop, and then came home and ate dinner. After dinner, I began work on editing one of the two essays assigned to me. Eventually, after over an hour, I finished the editing. Now to approve the almost 400 changes tomorrow...maybe it can wait until I edit the other essay.

Tomorrow, not much of anything, as far as I'm concerned. A robotics get together! That's maybe the only exciting thing.