The Morris team went to Toronto for an ale the weekend before school started, which was fantastic. Mom teaches school and couldn’t come, but Dad and the rest of the team and I went. We didn’t get there until late Friday night, and I ended up getting to the pub that was sort of hosting the whole thing about an hour before my dad because he stayed behind at the airport to wait for someone else’s flight. In Canada, the legal drinking age is 19, but there are a lot of bars and pubs and things where you’re not allowed to even enter if you’re under legal age. So one of the three main rooms in this place was off limits to me for another two years. I didn’t mind the not drinking part, since I think the stuff’s vile, but it was a bit depressing spending my first night in a foreign country hanging around in a hallway, surrounded by people who were mostly strangers, listening to throngs of singing Morris dancers in the next room.

When health teachers and guidance counselors talk about teenagers pressuring each other to drink at parties, I just laugh. The only people who’ve ever pressured me to drink were some middle-aged Canadian Morris dancers who kept saying “Go on! Get yourself a beer, they’ll never ask! Or steal somebody else’s!”

But once that was over, it was a great ale. I hadn’t realized what a fantastic city Toronto was – it’s like New York, only friendlier, not all paved over, and without the crime. I’ve got to figure out some way to spend a summer there or something. I’ve decided to join Americorps when I get out of college. Not only will it pay part of your college tuition, but you spend a year doing volunteer work in different parts of the country. And I want to see other places. So what could be better than to travel the country with free transport and lodging, help people there, and get tuition money? I had been thinking about Peace Corps, too, but maybe I’ll do some of both. The only problem being that Toronto isn’t in the US, but doesn’t really need any help from the Peace Corps, so I couldn't go there with either of those. Hmm. I’ll have to find some other cheap way of spending time there.

And school is back in session. It feels strange to be a senior – I haven’t been looking forward to it as much as most people seem to. None of it seems real, somehow, and I keep forgetting it's not still summer.

Last night I saw Mulholland Drive with six or seven girls from school, which was fun. That was the scariest movie I've ever seen. The scary parts usually weren't things you'd expect to be frightening, but just so surreal and unnatural that they were. By the end of the movie Amy and I were cowering together behind a sofa cushion and shrieking, "No hobo! Please no hobo!" The movie was hooked up to a projector and projected onto Kendra's living room wall, so when people got up for drinks and brownies we had fun making shadow puppets. That part wasn't terrifying, at least, although Bridget can make some very dirty shadow puppets with her shoe.

August 23
September 16