ninja mode

Ha.

I just got an A+ on a paper for my absolute least favorite class.

I need to start hating more classes.

We were roused from sleep at 0300 hours Friday morning when the call came in from headquarters.
The briefing was short and sweet. Our specific presence was requested for this mission, a
mission which would involve infiltration, recovery, and escape. We were informed that our
ride would swing by at approximately 0400 hours, and that we should be ready.

I rolled out of my bunk and dressed quickly, equipping myself with only the most basic and
necessary of supplies. In minutes I was prepared to move out, but even my best preparations
could not have made me ready for what I was about to endure. I met up with my partner and
we waited for the transport to arrive. When it rolled up, we got on board quickly and moved
out quietly. Our next stop was to pick up the fourth and final member of our team, and then
we were off.

The driver floored it, taking evasive action to make it to our appointed destination on time
and well prepared. We rolled into the infiltration zone relatively undetected at 0430, and
stealthily made our way to the entrance under the harsh neon glow of lights and signs written
in a bizarre foreign language.

Upon arrival, we were greeted by an undercover informant who provided us with recon intelligence of the enemy base.
I could tell by the look in her eyes that we weren’t about to enter a field of daisies and sunflowers.
No. There would be bloodshed here, on this day.

After studying the contents of the intelligence information, we divided ourselves up by specialty,
ready to run in and recover the important items. I was assigned to retrieve the electronic equipment,
located furthest away from our infiltration point. We strategized, thinking that the enemy would be
expecting us to fall into their well-placed traps, and attempting to find the best way around them.
We watched and waited, and before long we heard the clamor and roar of battle, and we were off.

I headed deep into the heart of enemy territory, ducking among barriers and keeping my head down in
order to survive long enough to proceed to the front lines. I could hear the clamor and roar of battle
coming from all around. The sounds were distant, at least for the time being. I’d soon enough be immersed in the screams. The enemy
had set up traps in the area, and I quickly became disoriented. I went in circles for what seemed like days; I could
see my destination, but there were many obstacles in my path. It seemed hopeless, but I quickly discovered a well-hidden
path, probably taken by other before me. I quickly dodged through and pressed onward.

I arrived at the front, on the very border of enemy territory. Enemy soldiers had gathered all around, and I knew I would
have to put my training to the test here in order to do what I could to blend in. I fell in line with them, adding to
the roar of their shouts and chants. My heart was pounding. Would I be discovered? Certainly there were some who would
notice that I wasn’t quite one of them. My fears were correct. I would have to do what I could to avoid interrogation.

“Hey! HEY! These people- THESE PEOPLE WERE NOT HERE!!”

Holy mother o’ boards, I thought to myself. I’ve been spotted…I’m going to die…They’re going to kill me… I
feared the worst. I did what I could to ignore the name calling and act as though I’d been there all along. When in Rome,
do as the Romans do, eh? Best plan I could think of. I managed to wedge my way through the crowd and snag the requested
electronics device. I grabbed it and ran. As soon as I was a safe distance away from the panic and chaos of the line,
I breathed a huge sigh of relief and began to strategize my next series of moves. It appeared that I was blocked in from all sides,
trapped within enemy territory. I slunk off to a safe area beside a wall, grabbing my radio in hopes of communicating with
my teammates.

“Mayday, mayday, I’m trapped behind enemy lines, repeat trapped behind enemy lines, over.”

There was no response.

“I repeat, trapped behind enemy lines. Requiring assistance, over.”

Still nothing. I feared the worst for my teammates. We had been separated, but what had become of them? I knew that they
had been trained in the same survival tactics I had, but I could not help but wonder what had happened to them. I swore to
myself at that moment that I would not leave without finding out what had happened to them, even if it meant my own demise
in the process. Gathering my courage and my newly-recovered equipment, I headed back into the fray, anticipating the worst.

I formed back up with the enemy soldiers, doing my best to look like one of them. No amount of training could have prepared
me for this moment. I followed along with them until we reached the heavily guarded border. It was now or never…

“Please, I need to get through!” I said. “I need to find someone!”

“GO BACK THE WAY YOU CAME! YOU CAN’T GO THROUGH HERE!”

“Please! I need to go through!”

“I’M SORRY, YOU’LL HAVE TO TURN AROUND. GET BACK! GO BACK THE WAY YOU CAME!”

The situation looked hopeless. I was surrounded. I was trapped. Just then, I saw what seemed to be a familiar face in the
distance. Could it be? I slowly made my way back towards what appeared to be one of my teammates. We quickly met and tried
to sneak away from the ever-moving troops. I questioned her about the whereabouts of the others, but neither of us had seen
or heard from them since we broke off at initial infiltration. It would be up to us to rejoin with them and make our way to
the extraction point.

We slowly made our way towards the point where we had last seen our comrades, fearing death all the way. The crowds crushed
inward, waves of human bodies pressing ever closer together. The clusters slowly dwindled down to groups of three and four,
the casualties of the battle seeking safety away from the front lines. The deadly results of the operation were apparent everywhere.
There was more than one tear-strewn face to account for the horror we had all witnessed on this day.

The situation seemed hopeless. We decided to retreat. There was nothing else we could do. We paused for one last look into
the broken and injured soldiers following the same path we had taken. I thought I saw a familiar face in the distance… After a
moment of coded signalling, I was greeted with a positive response. It was in fact one of the missing two of our foursome, and
she knew where to find our last remaining comrade.

We swapped information, sharing stories and waiting for the arrival of the last member of our group. Upon her arrival, we
slowly made our way towards the border and the extraction zone. We’d have one last ordeal to go through, and that would be
safely getting the recovered electronics out of enemy territory. It was a long and nerve-wracking time while we waited for
our teammate, an expert in espionage and covert operations to sweet talk the enemy into letting us pass through.

“Oh, you know, it was on sale. This other thing wasn’t in the ad, so I don’t know how much it cost. It’s free, then?”

Our last remaining hurdle was getting through the gates themselves. We sucked up our courage and looked ‘em straight in the
eye. Our training had paid off; we were allowed to pass. We hurried through to the extraction point, boarded the vehicle, and
sped off toward our next destination for debriefing.

Some time later, we emerged from the depths of battle to see the oncoming sunrise.

“Hey look,” I said. “The sun’s up.”

It would be the first positive moment after a long and arduous battle. I don’t think that any of us will ever forget the
horrors we had seen that day, and we certainly are all grateful for having escaped with our lives.

I see something pretty. D:

Don’t get me wrong, I adore Tomato, but this thing is like Lycopersicon Esculentum (“juicy wolf peach” in Latin – the scientific name for a Tomato! ) in comparison.

Also I did extremely well on my biology lab that I got back today and that makes me a happy person because I’m doing better with it than I thought I was. I think what got me was the whole throwing in of foreign chemistry like concepts in the beginning that got me. But now we’re covering things I know and understand, like evolution and cells and things and all is well.

Tomorrow I have a million sculptures to work on which I am none too excited about. Sculpture is not my thing. Never has been and never will be. Even less excited about trying to figure out plaster. Ick. I like drawing, I like painting, I like digital things. I do not like having to figure out how to construct impossible objects. Hopefully this will be over soon. Actually, it will. Monday. And then I have Thanksgiving break which shall be wonderful. Brief, but wonderful. Next I hear we are working on “wearable” art, in which case I very much want to make a hat. Becuase I like hats. Yes.

It rained a lot today and there were ducks wandering around outside of Subway when I went to have lunch. Yes, ducks. In the rain. It was wonderful and I wished I had camera batteries. I swore I bought some, but I think I’ve bought mass amounts of them only to have them disappear repeatedly. So somewhere I must have tons of batteries squirreled away. That’s it! Squirrels. There are squirrels in my room frittering my camera batteries away into holes and corners. I’ll post photo evidence when and if I ever manage to get my hands on some.

Well I meant to go to sleep, but apparently laying down results in me drowning in my own snot. So I guess I’ll blog instead.

Ah, the internet, providing me my own personal platform to discuss my nasal fluids with the entire world. Now that’s a true advancement in communication.

I haven’t written anything meaningful or serious in a while, so I guess I’ll do so now and see if I can’t wear myself out sufficiently enough to want to go to sleep.

This week was fairly uneventful, aside from the stacks of homework I’ve had. Monday was Halloween, so because we couldn’t think of anything better to do Cliff and I went to go see “Saw 2″ which was gory, gory, gory. So gory I had to say it three times. I’m not a big fan of the whole horror genre, but there really haven’t been any times I’ve physically had to cover my eyes while watching a movie until this one. Still, I liked the concept, though it wasn’t quite as much a shock as the first one was.

The rest of the week was spent doing all kinds of homework of varying degrees of excitement, like my biology lab report and a paper on a book that makes absolutely no sense. And several assorted drawings I’m sure I didn’t do spectacularly on because the directions were pretty vague and the variety of things people brought in was pretty broad. I’ll just have to do better on the next one. I feel sort of rotten for turning in something I wasn’t totally happy with, but I guess there’s not much to do about it when you don’t really know exactly what you’re supposed to be doing. I don’t feel like mine was the worst in comparison to some of the others, but I feel like if the project had been explained/written out better, I could have done better. Oh well.

Speaking of which, I have something to say about that particular class. The instructor seems to grade on what he personally “likes” and “dislikes,” which I don’t think is a particularly fair policy. In the morning studio class, the instructor stated that when grading, he tries not to bring his personal opinion into it and grades based on how the finished product jives with the directions, which I think is fair. I (and the rest of my class) find it frustrating that the other teacher doesn’t base the grade on what the project was, but how much he likes it. I guess all I have to do is finish out the semester passing, which I should do easily since I’ve been getting B’s at the lowest all along, and one bad grade won’t help but won’t hurt that much. At least in theory. The unfair grading deal is probably the biggest issue I (and everyone else) has with this particular teacher, but what can you do about it? I mean, among other things, he really won’t answer questions or give examples of anything so we’re all always sort of in the dark about what we’re supposed to be doing, which I can understand for the fact that it’s art and you should be figuring things out for yourself to a degree, but sometimes some concepts are so foreign and abstract (not to mention poorly explained) that some example might help illustrate. And the fact that it’s a beginner-level, first year class which isn’t meant to be quite THIS difficult. I don’t know. I hope we get to do teacher evaluations at some point, because this teacher is definitely not going to score any points with me.

Friday was Cliff hockey night, which I always look forward to. It was a late game, as they have been lately, but I rather like being the only one there, or one of a small handful of people. Crowds of screeching parents and girlfriends make me want to simultaneously vomit, cringe, and harm someone. It was sometime between just before we left for the game and the end of the game that some microbe was all like “Hey! Lookit that! It’s some girl let’s go attack yes let’s!!” and my nose started with the whole sneezing/running thing which was sudden and unexpected. It hasn’t really let up much since then, though I definitely felt the worst so far on Friday night when it started. Although that could have been because I was sitting in a cold hockey arena, but whatever.

Also on Friday before we went to the game, we went to Media Play and I got the new Shinedown CD which I am enjoying very much. Apparently it was some “special edition” and came in a fancy box and included stickers and a little poster thingy, which surprised and impressed me. And it was marked down from the original price, which was ridiculous and I would not have bought it otherwise. :B We also got sour gummy dinosaurs while we were there, which lead to some big long discussion about paleontology and fossils and dinosaurs, which is not a subject to get me on if you have any intention of talking about anything else at any point soon afterward. It made me want to find my old books on dinosaurs and look at them again. And I don’t care how many theories scientists come out with about how dinosaurs had fur or feathers and not scales, because for me at least, dinosaurs will always be scaly and look like the dinosaurs in the book “Dinotopia.” Those remain some of my favorite illustrations, dinosaurs or otherwise, to this day.

Today I went to Cliff’s house and he worked on his hugemongous new airplane and I worked on a little Flash movie I’ve been picking at on my laptop for a while, which is coming along nicely, but I can see it taking me weeks to finish. I think today marks one whole week I’ve been working on it and I’ve only got about a minute and a half of animation, which can partly be attributed to me re-doing scenes after I was “done” with them and partly because Flash keeps erroring out on me for no apparent reason at all. On a side note, I really, really, need to learn Actionscript.

I hear my uncle is coming to visit tomorrow, which should be interesting. I also need to do a little research on some artist I am not particularly interested in or motivated to read about for Monday… Ick. I want to redesign the blog. Much as I love the Fish Tree, I think I need a change.

And when I start writing about redesigning the blog, it’s definitely time to stop for the night.

1,232 / 50,000 (2.5%)

Lost a couple days with homework and such…haven’t yet doubled my previous wordcount. I also haven’t started posting chapters here yet, but I probably will put something up later on.

After some debate with myself on whether to post my efforts for this year’s NaNoWriMo online, I’ve come to the conlcusion that, yes, I’m going to post them, but no, they’re not going to be public. I’m going to keep them all behind a password block so I can have some control over who sees them.

If you’d be interested in reading my novel-in-progress as it progresses, leave a comment and I will email you the password.

Hahaha…230 words…this is going to be one looooong November.