I WOKE UP WITH A SORE THROAT AND A HEADACHE on the 23 of April!!! It was so horrible! My mom thought I was faking sick so I could stay home and read Outcast, but I was REALLY sick!!! The sickness went from sore throat/headache to sore throat/runny nose and then went to clogged up nose. I was having trouble sleeping at night because I couldn't breathe and then I developed a cough. I had an orientation to go to for college last Wednesday, and I nearly fainted when I got to the college because I wasn't feeling good. Dawn told me she'd never seen me look so dead before. Turns out I have a sinus infection. I was so sick that I'd forgotten the Astronomy trip was this weekend!!! My dad reminded me on Wednesday, and I was afraid I wasn't going to feel well enough to go.

But I did go!!!

AND IT WAS SO TOTALLY AWESOME!!!

Steven and I sat on the bus together for the 4-5 hour long drive. We made two stops before we got to the Griffith Observatory. One stop was at a rest stop to let people stretch and use the bathroom, and the second stop was at a buffet restaurant called Souplantation. While there, I burned my entire upper lip on a baked potato. It feels like I've been stung by a bunch of bees!!!

Once we got to the Griffith Observatory, the teacher told us that we would be seeing a planetarium show at a certain time. So Steven and I walked around and looked at the museum and the displays that they had. We'd already learned about tons of the things that was saw, like the moon phases and how the moon affects tides and stuff.

The planetarium show was WAY COOL!!! We went inside a HUGE dome and sat in seats that were bent back so we could see the dome ceiling better. They had this huge black globe thing that cast the pictures of the show on the ceiling. There was one scene where it showed the entire night sky with all the stars and then the constellations were outlined. The lady told the story of how the universe was thought to be created. Everything on the screen shrank into this tiny ball and then exploded in a flash of bright color and sound. IT WAS SSSOOO COOL!!!!!!!

When the show was over, we got back onto the bus and headed to the hotel we were going to spend the night in. I was roomed with two girls who were really nice about my coughing situation. They told me that I actually didn't cough too much during the night, which was a good thing. We watched a little t.v. before going to sleep.

The next morning, we got our wake up call. I'm not sure if it was the phone ringing or someone knocking on the door that woke me up. I just noticed that it was 7:00 and that I needed to get up and get ready. I was the first one out of the three of us who was ready, so I left to go and get breakfast. I had a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios and a Danish with some milk. Steven was up before me and finished just as I got there, so he left to go back to his room and read until we had to leave. I finished my breakfast and then checked my e-mail on one of the available computers the hotel had.

I loaded my stuff on the bus and helped a couple girls clean up some of the trash on the bus. The kids behind Steven and me had been trying to force a girl to eat some gummy bears, but she grabbed the bag and threw it and gummy bears got everywhere. I found a bunch of the bears stuffed into the crevice of one of the bus seats and I had to go digging for them. It was really gross, but at least I cleaned up the place a bit.

Once everyone was awake and all the key cards had been turned in, we all got onto the bus again. Then we headed off to Jet Propulsion Laborotory (JPL). The place was HUGE compared to the Griffith Observatory. It took us all day to look around. We got there at around 9:00 in the morning and didn't leave until 3:00. Steven and I hung out all day and looked at all the neat stuff. Steven remembered a lot more of what we learned than I did. (I have the worst memory ever.) He even told some elderly people some of the stuff he remembered about one of the displays we were all looking at.

I got some pictures of displays. Steven and I were most interested in the Cassini-Huygens stuff because that is the mission we did a project on earlier this year in our Astronomy class. I got a picture of a lifesize picture of the Cassini-Huygens, and I got a picture of a small model of it hanging from the ceiling. I also got some pictures of robots that can climb walls.

Steven and I got some stuff from the JPL stores.

He bought some JPL patches and the astronaut version of chocolate ice cream. I tried some of the stuff and it was okay, but I don't like chocolate ice cream. It would have been better if it had been vanilla.

I got a Cassini-Huygens patch (which I plan on ironing to my I'm Not a Plastic Bag bag), a black teddy bear dressed in an astronaut suit, ooze called Mars Mud, and three alien pens. One of the alien pens looks like a blinking eyeball inside of orange and red ooze. Another of the pens looks sort of like a red Medusa except the snakes are just squiggly things. The last pen is green and is of an alien with one eye much larger than the other, a red beak, and two antenna coming out of his head. I named my teddy bear Castor Prometheus Sponde. The pens are Callisto (the eyeball), Lysithea (the Medusa), and Puck (the alien with antenna).

The trip was tons of fun. The bus ride was the least enjoyable part, except when the majority of the students started singing songs. I joined in when I knew the words, but I didn't sing very loudly because it would have made me start coughing. Steven sang really loud during a few of the songs and even suggested a song to sing when the others couldn't think of any. They sang Hakuna Matata, All Star, Bohemian Rhapsody, and many others. Our teacher actually requested Bohemian Rhapsody so that he could record everyone singing it. They started with the wrong lyrics though and had to sing the song twice!

I'm very happy that I was feeling well enough to go. That would have been terrible if I had to miss the trip!

As for the rest of my life, it's not all that nice. My mom came in earlier and told me that I have to do my senior pictures today even though my lips feel all puffy and dry from being burned on baked potato. I also have to dust the house, finish my math homework, take 20+ pictures for my photography class, and probably tons of other things like send out announcements of my graduation. I have a feeling that I'm not going to be having any real weekends in the next two months...or possibly for the rest of my life.

How does that make me feel?

Like I don't HAVE a life.

These are all things I HAVE to do, so that makes doing them less fun. I hate it when I can't get a break from the chaos. If there's too much stress, I break down.

I better go. I don't want my mom yelling at me again.

Bye...

a sick and tired karia_roses