Florida, Les Miserables, and stuff. . .

I'll go ahead and vocalize what everyone is thinking now: "Shame, shame, Robyn! Thou hast entirely neglected the month of February - thou hast deprived all future generations of viddying what happened in February 2011." But I have a response to your accusations in Old English and droog-speak: I've had a difficult time remembering my dreams as of late, and I've been occupied with a monstrous French project, with a monstrous Civics and Economics project (which is still going on), and with the beast of a book by Monsieur Hugo, Les Miserables, which was fanstastic, by the way. If you decide to read it, go all out and read the unabridged version. . .the Waterloo part is enormously interesting (I had to go back and read it, because I skipped it earlier in order to be caught up with the rest of the class for a quiz on a later part of the book. . .again, shame on me), as is the life story of the Bishop of Digne, as well as other things which were cut out in the abridged and/or Wrap-it-up-Victor-Hugo version of the book. At the end of the book, my two favorite characters still have not changed. I will always adore the Bishop, and I also love Monsieur Gillenormand, the grandfather of Marius. In fact, it took me a while to actually appreciate Marius as a character. For the longest time, I thought that he was dreadfully flat, but his inner devotion to his father, and, eventually, his love for Cosette finally animate him. De toute facon, de retourner au sujet de M. Gillenormand: He's a very quirky, crochety old man - a devout supporter of the monarchy and Old France. He hates revolutions, and he hollers at anyone near him when he reads the newspapers. I love him. . .I don't know why. It would be so neat to be able to talk to Victor Hugo about all of his characters; they're all so round and so. . .human - three cheers for good characterization! Chapeau, Victor Hugo!
So, now to February happenings. . .there was Valentine's day. I don't recall doing anything in particular on that day. Oh wait! Lancy and I took a romantic walk around the park to celebrate the holiday. The choir resumed its rehearsals in preparation for Holy Week, which shall be in late April, I believe. We're singing a couple of songs from the "Messiah," like "Surely He hath Borne our Griefs," "And With His Stripes," "All We Like Sheep," "Hallelujah," and the one which is currently stuck in my head, "Worthy is the Lamb." That Handel fellow was really quite the Baroque-and-roller. On the 8th of March, Alexis and I went to see an old film on the big screen, "Swing Time." It was a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie, and it was excellent - I printed out the sheet music from one of the songs, and I love to play it in half-time. I just had a great time and hope that we can hang out again soon! My birthday was also quite swell. I had a few school friends over in the afternoon after school (I skipped), and we hung around the house for a while before leaving to go to dinner at the Olive Garden. Unfortunately, we weren't the only people with this idea, and so we got stuck waiting for an hour - but we passed the time by wandering around the mall, where we avoided being arrested by the youth-hating Javerts of the garde-du-centre-commercial by speaking in sophisticated British accents (Aaron's idea) and crowding around Chloe, who must have seemed to the garde to be our youthful mother or aunt. The mall, by the way, apparently now has a black-light golf course. . .why? I don't know.
In any case, we all ate dinner and returned to the house that night (earlier in the day, when my mom and I ate at Pancho Villas, she told our waiter, "My daughter's turning 16 today and she loves sombreros." I was then publicly humiliated). At the house, the Keegan sisters Saoirse and Kiki joined us for a showing of "Paper Moon" which was never finished due to the necessity to have girl-talk about halfway through the film. Then, Aaron and the Keegans had to eventually leave, and the other two girls spent the night and left in the morning. Tonight, I am very excited because tomorrow is the day that we pack and prepare to leave to go to Florida for a little over a week. I shall get to see my grandma T. as well as the grandparents on my father's side; I shall sit in their backyard and watch their colony of ducks in the pond behind the house. It shall be warm enough to wade in the ocean. The majority of the greenery will exist in the form of palm trees. We're leaving to go to the airport around 3:00 on Thursday morning. . .I shall be a grumpy girly indeed. I am not made to be awake that early in the morning. However, I am still immensely excited to return to my paradise. And on this note, I shall leave my brethren to go study for the Civics quiz tomorrow.