Entomology Trip!

beetle mating

banana slugs (on tire, by the bottom of the slash mark)

banana slug carried by my friend elena

I had my entomology trip yesterday! It was awesome!!! :) What we did was we set up two lights in different areas: a blacklight, and a big light bulb. As we waited for the beetles to gather around the lights, we wandered around the creek bed, and the uplands of the region. The stars were bright outside, and almost no light pollution (except with the occasional flashlight blinding everyone.)

Michael Jackson's Unreleased Song - Take Me To A Place With No Name

This is pretty cool, I found it just a few seconds ago. I wonder if it would have been a hit if he released it....
Do you recognize the song? Take a look at the vid below:

See? See? Eh? Eh?? Hahaha :D
Love you Michael!

AWW CRAP!!! High School Freshman Sports Mess-Up

So I had been busy all summer. I had assumed that try outs for Girls Basketball at my new school was at mid or late August. I was wrong. It was only a few days ago...well...if July 8 & 9 were only a few days ago. THIS SUCKS SO BADLY!!!! Now I have to take boring P.E. (:oS) NOOO!!!!!

I heard that the general P.E. is boring. Crap, I am so horrible at this!!!! I swear, I looked all over the school's website to find when the tryouts were, but I couldn't find them! Now I decide to check it, it's too late. (BEEP)!!!!
I wish I could have kept track of it sooner.... I'm so mad at myself! (BEEP)!!!!

ALERT ALERT!!! Controversy with Babysitter

HOLY CRUD!!!! DX THIS IS SO HORRIBLE!!!!

Not only is this horrible, but "The Young Turks" the authors of this video, had a little debate of which seems more right. (In my opinon, either way is just plain wrong.) Is it right for a 28 year old man to abuse a 14 year old girl? Or is it better for a 28 year old woman to abuse a 14 year old boy? Which one seems better to you? To one of the reporters, it seems "old school" to have an older woman "fall in love" with a younger boy. But it's just plain not okay to have an older man fall in love with a younger girl.
So odd isn't it??? I'd like to hear some of your opinions on this offense and sexist controversy.

Animal Vision and Teacher Pride

Okay, if I haven't blogged about this yet, but my astronomy teacher has been frustrated with us last class since it seemed that we didn't read at all, or we just didn't read enough. He threatened us that we will be kicked out of astronomy, and taken points off. (Explain that later.)
After today's class, he was extremely "proud" of what we had done this time. We had a lot of good information, but the only problem was that we never related our information to our everyday tasks and lives. He led from that topic to our assignment.
"You are to research an animal."
What do animals have anything to do with astronomy? I thought.
"But you are to research their eyesight. Their vision. Give full research of their vision, eye structure and composition, and the difference and likeness with human eyes."
I chose to do a bat. But... it's very hard to find something about their vision. It's always like Bats are blind! or They use echolocation in place of sight.... and such. URGH! So, I switched to butterflies! Butterflies are interesting. They sense not colors, but polarized and ultraviolet light. Ultraviolet light is beyond our sight in the visible spectrum, so we only see up to red and purple and black.
If you have any information or websites that could help me, leave a comment!
Thanks! All information is appreciated!!! :)

Sunshine's Music: Sufjan Stevens - Sister Winter

I love the quietness of the song, and its lyrics go so well with it!

Artist - Sufjan Stevens
Song - Sister Winter

Rating - * * * * and 3/4

Entomology Trip Soon!

In a few days, I'll be going with my classmates somewhere (they haven't told us where) to collect bugs and beetles for a museum's collection! Everyone my age and my level (Freshman) is going, and so will two other sophmores (sp?).

We'll be hiking or walking around for awhile, and the counselors and my boss want us to be safe and totally pinched-free and bugbite-less. The post will come up on somewhere Saturday or after. :)

Stay tuned!

Sunshine's Music: Jason Mraz - Lucky

Artist - Jason Mraz (Featuring Colbie Callait)
Song - Lucky
Rating - * * * * and a half

Sunshine's Music - Radiohead: 15 Step

I'm making a new music section of the blog: Sunshine's Music.

I'm starting off with a newly heard favorite song of mine!

Artist - Radiohead
Song - 15 Step
Rating - * * * * *

Britain's Got Talent - Russian Trio Acrobats

Holy Fudgin Crud. I'd be like screaming like crazy!!!

Awesomeness: * * * * *
Comment: Uhm.... It's amazing how a board so thin can carry a full grown woman. And take the force as she flips and twirls and dances.

Video - Japan Binocular Football (Football meaning Soccer)

XD FRIGGIN HILARIOUS
Hilarity: * * * * *
Comment: Hmmm.... The brilliant japanese. What hilarious T.V. show will they think of next?

SCANDAL ALERT! SCANDAL ALERT! - Teacher gives wrong (WRONG) website!

Okay, so.... if you have read the title, you should have an image in what happened. My astronomy teacher gave us a couple of key words and websites to look at for our class. It was somethign like venganza.com. Oh my goodness, no one had looked it up! But then, one day, deciding to look it up, there it was. A porn site. A horrible site. God, it was disgusting.

I had kept the secret for a few days. Until I had to tell someone. So I told my friend (changed name) Lola. Lola was in my class with the same teacher. She was shocked when I had said those two words: porn site. She was like, "Oh. My. God. Are you serious Michelle?"

"I am perfectly serious."

Now that she's in it, I feel better. But I don't know what to do necessarily.... Should I tell my boss? Or should I keep it to myself.

One thing's for sure, I'll never look at him the same way again.

P.S. If you suggest that I report this to my boss, well I dont' know. I probably don't have the guts to do it.

P.S.S. My boss would probably have watched that kind of stuff too.

P.S.S.S. It's so awkward and such a creeper feeling coming from my teacher. Urgh. It gives me shivers being in the same room with him.

Star Party Drama and Knowledge

On Saturday, we had a Star Party where I work. [If you don't know what a star party is, a star party is where scientists or an astronomer at a museum bring multiple telescopes of various models and types. Each telescope is focused onto different objects in the sky: Antares (sp?), Saturn, M13 (Hercules Globular Cluster), Polaris, Arcturus, Altair, Deneb, etc. Visitors can come to the Star Party and look through the many telescopes and learn about astronomy.] The Star Party lasted from 7-10 p.m. My parents didn't like the time that it lasted, since "it was too late at night". And they asked me why it had to be that late. Star? Party? Star. Party. To be able to see stars it has to be late at night. Derderder! XP It kinda irritates me how my stepdad is always cynical and asking me, "Why are you so busy? It wasn't mentioned in the schedule that you would do this or that" or blah BLAH. God, I have my own life now, now that he can't handle that he has to get all mad at me for nothing.

Okay, so during the star party, in the observatory, a staff member noticed that one of the locked cabinet doors were left open. Someone called the cops and brought them to check and see if anything had been stolen from the museum. Other than that, I was hanging out with very smart people that showed me different things in the night sky. I felt surrounded by knowledge! Haha!

If you have a museum in your town, you should definitely check it out, you'll learn so much just by looking at different part of the night sky, and you'll learn how to work your way around stars and clusters and galaxies. :)

Huntington Library and Griffith Observatory trip!

Okay, so on Friday the 10th, I went with my classmates and friends to the Huntington Library and Griffith Observatory! :D I'll tell you all about what happened in my counselor's car, during the trip, and on the way back.

From Work to Huntington

We all left at precisely 9:00 a.m. (It takes around 2/3 hours to get to L.A.) And so on the way, I was in my boss' car. We listened to the radio, sang along with the tunes, and talked about random stuff. There are many reasons why you had to be in our car to have the most fun:

1) Horrible yet amusing singing!

There are many people who are good at singing, some people just have the natural ability to be amazing and leave you in awe when they sing, and others just have the natural ability to be just plain horrible.

2) Good music

From what I've heard, the other cars only listened to music that most teens hate.

3) Games!

Sweet and Sour (Wave to people and see if they wave back *Called a Sweet*. Person who has most "sweets" wins.) ABCs (Find an A, B, C, D, and so on, in every license plate in order *no random letters like A D B G I*. First person who gets to Z wins.)

4) Dances in the Car!

Yes, we dance in the car. That's the whole reason why people are looking at our car, because we all are dancing like wild animals! XD

Huntington!

Huntington was amazing and beautiful. When we left the car, it was extremely humid! I walked into the office/lobby just to cool off. We ate lunch since food isn't allowed in the botanical parts of the museum, and walked with the whole group to the Library Exhibition Hall, where there was exhibits of history (From modern times to the medieval ages) and astronomy (they showed constellations and books from Euclid and Galileo) and more. After checking out the Library Exhibition, we walked around on our own for three hours. With my group, we tried going to the Mausoleum, but we weren't sure if it was open to the public. Then we headed to the Chinese/Japanese Gardens, which was so beautiful. There were koi fish in the pond, little trees that were only past 5/6 feet. They looked like bonsai trees! There were bridges that were significantly designed, a chinese restaurant (i think, but there WAS a restaurant!) and little hallways covered by canopies designed like hallways in a palace. After that, I went to the "Conservatory" or Greenhouse. There were sections made for different types of forests like Bog, Tropical Forest, or ____ (I forgot what it is). It was misting every minute, and it was hot outside so I put my face in the little mister fountain....whatever you call it.

From Huntington to Griffith Observatory

So my boss had a GPS, which was a TomTom. It was bestowed the nicknamed Maddie. Maddie took us to the right place, we made it to Griffith park. But once we got there, we turned right instead of left, and we were driving through different parts of the park and the observatory was still along ways away. Maddie took us from one place to the other, and eventually, being confused, she decided to change our destination back home. So we turned the GPS off. Goodbye Maddie! So we went to the left side of the park, and we finally got there, and the other car groups have been waiting for us for the past 20-30 minutes already. But we were able to make it, and boy it was worth it! Griffith Observatory was a three domed building with many turrets and telescopes. It was perched on a cliff overlooking L.A. You could see all of L.A., and the Hollywood sign was not very far away. We bought tickets to a planetarium show, and we watched (I forgot what the name was) a show about the beginning of the science of astronomy, and how big the universe is, and what dark matter is, etc. It was amazing! But the guy there was a paid actor, and at times he overdid the enthusiasm and sounded totally fake. But other than that, it was very exceptional show. After, we were released at the observatory, and we walked around in small groups to different exhibits. We gathered at the cafe at a certain time, and ate our dinner. Soon after, we got a ride back to our car (Our car was parked way downhill. It took like 15 minutes to get from our parking spot to the observatory.) and we headed back home.

From Griffith to Home

It's basically what we did on our way to the Huntington Library, but with excessive singing and dancing and games. :)

So it was a good day, and I loved being with my friends and going to all those beautiful places and learning more about astronomy.