It's officially summer, yet I'm still in school. Okay, maybe not officially, I don't know when that is... my calender tells me June 21st. That's too late. I consider it officially summer the first day we get released from school... but realistically the day after Memorial Day should be it, or something like that... possibly June first, June's a summer month... But anyway, the officially summer thing was in reference to yesterday being the first day of summer league outdoor practice. Granted, I didn't go, I had to go to a school board meeting... I'll get to that later. But today I went, and it was good. I like summer swim team. I forgot that I actually like swimming when the coach isn't trying to kill me.

Summer definately isn't about coaches trying to kill you... our coaches don't care whatsoever. It's nice, but semi-annoying because while they don't try to kill us, they also don't really coach... I'm really not even sure why they're there half the time. The entire summer league is very... corrupt, in a way. The only reason our head coach got her job is that her mother's the pool manager... she hires the coaches/guards. But summer is nice because I feel like I'm actually fast. I'm really not that into the whole swimming thing, I like it, but I'm not the rabid "hey, maybe if I stop breathing and completely kill myself at practice and make swimming my entire life I'll cut a tenth of a second from my time" kind of person. At all. People like that actually severely annoy me. Which could be part the reason I don't really like varsity anymore... But that's why I like summer league. Nobody's like that. Nobody even does anything at practice. Our coaches tend to start out the year with the "This team isn't about winning" speech. We'd better not be. We might have won one meet last year. Maybe. But it's great, because not everybody that swims in the summer swims in the winter, so I'm actually among the faster people. Which is bad, because I end up doing IMs (which are rather hellish... one lap of each stroke) simply because I'm one of about three, maybe four people in my age group that can actually do every stroke. Even if not well.

But I did come to a few realizations at practice today. For one, like I already mentioned, I actually like swimming when there's nobody trying to kill me. Another would be the fact that it's probably a good idea to stretch before practice when you haven't swam in about four months. And then the ones I already knew but completely forgot about. I hate butterfly, it tries to kill me. I'm absolutely terrible at breathstroke. This I knew, but I forgot the extent of it. I'm pretty sure the average seven-year-old could swim it faster than me. Actually, I used to know a seven-year-old... well, maybe she was eight... but she was quite a bit faster than me. Granted, she was a really good eight-year-old, but still, you see my point. And the last one would be that while I like backstroke, it isn't fun without lane ropes or flags. Not only can you not see where you're going, you have no concept of where walls/other people are. Not necessarily good. But I think the swimming portion of my random rant is over now.

So the school board meeting yesterday... lots of fun. Not really. Well, sort of. My best friend and I had to go for PJAS, this science competition thing that we do. Dorky, much. Fun, much more. The teacher that sponsors us is completely amazing, she's my favorite teacher of all time. My best friend jokingly calls her "mommy" but it's actually an accurate nickname. We went to states with her, and decided she pays more attention to us than our parents do. But anyway, she occasionally makes us go to school board meetings so they can recognize us... it's a little annoying and boring, but I sort of liked it this time because it gave me a chance to see everyone I went to states with again. Besides my best friend and I, they're all over at the junior high, so I never really see them at school or anything.

Here's the interesting part. I get there and find my best friend talking to our sponsor. So I go over to talk to them, and our sponsor says, "I've got a favor slash surprise for you." Uh-oh. Okay, fine. I ask what it is. Great. We have to give our name, grade and a brief summary of what we did for our experiments in front of the entire school board plus everyone at the meeting. Plus, I'm pretty sure they put the school board meetings on TV. Could she possibly have mentioned this before I agreed to go to the stupid meeting? Okay, I over-dramatize. It wasn't that bad. However, I'm sure I looked reasonably stupid. First of all, I was wearing a black Sugarland concert T-shirt... had I known I was actually going to have to do something, I might have at least made an attempt at looking slightly more human. And besides that, it's me. My friends and I were sitting there right before we had to speak trying to remember what on earth our experiments were. We all managed, but it was funny, because I'm a horrendously awkward speaker, and on top of that my experiment's kind of annoying to try to explain as it is... But as I was trying to explain it, I made the mistake of looking over at my best friend. She was laughing at me. Great. Of course, I started laughing. Not majorly, but enough to make me look more ridiculous than I already did. Then the funny part was that somehow I got a first at regionals, hence going to states, even though my experiment didn't work. Well, we were suppossed to tell our results, and I didn't exactly have any. So I had to say it didn't work. I believe it was something along the lines of, "And... it didn't work... but that's... o-kay?" I can't decide whether the fact that the audience laughed was a good or a bad thing, but I guess I was entertaining.

Wow, it's later than I thought. I guess I'm done. That was a rather long ramble.