Fried Food on Christmas Eve

So, when I went upstairs today there was a few inches of fresh white snow on the ground. The snow was falling pretty heavily, and the wind was also blowing. My niece Natalie was kind of freaking out about it a little because my sister went to the store and it took her a while to get back because it was so crazy. She was afraid she got in some kind of accident or something. My nieces and I watched Poahontis 2, and also watched a few episodes of "Pound Puppies". I have no problem with watching stuff like this with them sometimes because I always get to watch what I want downstairs in my room. I had fun hanging out with them, drinking herbal tea, and also watching the snow.

Here is a video of the snow. :)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SK-ygoMRXjc]

 

I had a little bit of trouble sleeping last night. It was one of those nights where you wake up like every 2 hours. I always have trouble sleeping around Christmas, everything is so exciting. I ended up sleeping for 3 hours in the afternoon, I felt like a heavy brick. I don't expect to be able to sleep better tonight with all the excitement about the presents and Christmas day in general.

I got all cleaned up and ready for the evening fun we had tonight after I woke up from my nap. We played the present game tonight, it's a tradition we have every year. I grew up playing the present game, some years have been better than others.  What we do is a few people buy presents that are under 5 dollars each. Each person makes sure no one sees the presents they bought and wraps them up. All the presents are then put in a pile and we each pick a number. Sometimes we use the dice, you have to roll either a 7 or 11 to pick a present. This year we didn't use the dice, we just went around in order of number. What happens is you go around by order of number and you either pick a present, or steal someone else's present. If you steal from someone they get to pick a new present out of the pile. This just goes around until all the presents are gone, and then if you want you can trade presents afterwards.

Here is what I got this year. Apple cider mix, cheese puffs, air freshener, pretzels, and candy.

After we did the game we ate. We had a lot of stuff tonight. We had chips, cheese and chocolate fondue, salsa, angel food cake, fruit veggies, tempura, pigs in a blanket, etc. Here are the pictures. By the way, never fry an apple in tempura batter, it is gross. haha.

 

It was really fun, we all had fun using the oil to fry things. One of my brothers did something extremely weird and fried a little weenie wrapped in a marshmallow that was also wrapped in some dough. It was both hilarious and disgusting. There were people that tried to roast marshmallows in the oil, and others that dipped fruit in the tempura batter and then ate it. I tried that, but thought it was gross. It was lively and everyone enjoyed themselves the whole evening.

After we got done eating and everything winded down, we read the Night Before Christmas poem, the story of Jesus's birth from the book of Luke in the bible, and this story called "The Littlest Angel". We all went and did our own thing after this, and I have just been surfing Xanga ever since and watching stuff on Youtube. I don't think anything else is going to happen tonight. My family started watching "Merlin" upstairs, but I haven't seen season 5 yet, so that is why I came down here. Anyway, today has been fun and exciting. I have no doubt that tomorrow will be the same.

I got to talk to Ronnie tonight, he has been having a good day today. I was hoping he would have a good Christmas. I think getting to share my day with him, the pictures and the videos was definitely one of the best things to happen today. I love sharing stuff with Ronnie. We always have the best conversations and always have fun when we talk to each other. He definitely brightened up my day, even though it was already pretty bright.

I don't think I missed anything, but we will see. :)

Brighter than Usual

My day today started in quite a hurry. Right after I woke up I had to get in the car to go to the eye doctor. I woke up about an hour before we were supposed to be there, but it takes about that long to drive there. I didn't even have time to eat breakfast, or change my clothes. I just got out of bed, turned off my radio alarm clock, grabbed my backpack, my phone and my purse and headed out the door. The sun wasn't even up yet by the time we left, the mountains were still blocking it. It was around 8am.

I just took out my phone and my ear buds, and turned on dubstep radio on Pandora. I was trying to wake up. I was still a little dazed, because I had only been asleep for 5 minutes by the time we left. My mom and I didn't really talk very much on the way there. I was mainly half dozing, half sleeping, just caught between being awake and asleep. Everything went by me so fast and time seemed to just zoom past me. The car ride didn't seem that long, but we were in the car for probably 45 minutes driving up to the office. By the time we got to my eye doctor's office the sun was up. 

We went inside, and and told the person at the front we were there, signed a couple things, provided the info for my insurance, and boring stuff like that.  We then were told to wait, so we sat in some nearby chairs. I was doing something on my phone, don't remember now, but I remember it wasn't a game or anything like that. I try not to do anything that can strain my eyes before I go to the eye doctor. I try to avoid anything that will mess with my eye doctor's ability to give me a good prescription for glasses. I don't war glass very often, but it is always good if I have an accurate pair just in case.

I was called into the office about 10 minutes after we sat down. He put that funny contraption up against my face, the one they use to see how far you can be corrected. He used that to do the right eye / left eye test where you read the letters that are a certain distance away first. Without correction I could only read the first letter with both my right and my left eyes. He then did the correction to the best of his ability and I had to go through the process where you hear a lot of "do you like 1 or 2 better". It's kind of hard for me to tell which one is clearer when I look through that thing because of my nystagmus. My nystagmus makes my eyes move around and it's hard to focus. I am glad he knows how to accurately tell my perscription even with my troubles. 

He put some numbing drops in my eyes, and then he did a pressure test. I then had a few other drops put in my eyes to dilate my eyes. I was then told to wait outside for a few minutes until they dilated.  I went outside the little room I was in and I waited there for what I think was 8 to 10 minutes. By the time I was called back into the little room it was very bright and I had put my sunglasses on. The doctors assistant or something turned the lights down, but it was still pretty bright.  After this we did another pressure test, and the doctor checked my eyes with this really bright light, actually he used more than one bright light, I think he did like 3 separate things. I have no idea what he was doing. One of those times he used that funny thing they use to check what your glasses prescription is and checked my eyes through there. It was at this time he checked to see what my correction was again. I think I only had to answer the 1 or 2 question like twice. He adjusted my prescription a little bit.

We were done after this. My vision with correction is 20/ 300 in one eye and 20 / 200 in the other. My prescription this time is a little bit stronger, but not much.  We left right after this, well right after we gave him this form I needed to have filled out for school proving m vision impairment so I can use the accessibility office at school if I need to. After we gave him that, he said he would fill it out and give it back to us sometime soon. We left after this. I grabbed some of the plastic shades first of course before I did this so it wouldn't be so bright.

I just listened to music and dozed off again while we were driving. When we got close to the school we started talking about where we wanted to go for lunch.  We decided on this little place called "Mimi's Cafe". I had never been there before, and my mom said it was good. I had their french toast a few years back at some kind of food fair, but that was about it.

When we went in they asked us if we wanted the breakfast menu, or the lunch menu. I had been wearing both my sunglasses, and the plastic ones I got at the office at the same time because it was so bright, I took off mine when we got there though.  We picked the lunch menu, and then they brought us to our table.  We sat down and I started looking over the menu. I decided on the strawberry banana shake for a drink, and it took me a few more minutes after I ordered the drink to decide what I wanted to eat.  My mom just got a water, and she ordered some kind of dipping platter for an appetizer. I ordered the sweet and sour chicken meal, it had sweet and sour chicken, rice, and vegetables. My mom got this pot roast dish, I forgot what else it had on it. After a few minutes we were brought our water, and the appetizer, and I was brought my shake. My shake was in a really cool tall glass and had whipped cream on top.  I should probably mention that it was made by a bartender. I thought that was kind of cool.

The appetizer had crispy chicken sticks, and some kind of zucchini sticks.  There was also 3 kinds of sauces, tomato, ranch, and I'm not quite sure what the 3rd one was but it was great. After we waited for a while longer we were brought the food we ordered.  Both of our dishes were great. I loved everything about my sweet and sour chicken, rice, and vegetables, and my mom's dish looked pretty professional looking as well. I was very glad we decided to g there, it was obviously high quality and they all did their jobs well. We just sat there talking and eating for a while, really enjoying our food and talking about a sports team that was sitting nearby us. We were trying to figure out what kind of school they were from. Later after they started to leave we noticed they were from another local school besides the one I go to.

After we were done we put the rest of our stuff in a take home box, paid, and then left. I got out my pair of shades and put them over the plastic ones again. 

We drove to school and my mom dropped me off at the library. I was wishing I had brought my cane right about then, because things were a bit more blurry than they usually are when my eyes were dilated, plus I had 2 pairs of shades on, so it was pretty different. I somehow managed to walk to my class without tripping or running into anyone. When I got to class we just discussed our essay and stuff, nothing that interesting.

Astronomy was awesome today, we talked about stuff like the movement of planets, more stuff about orbits, comets, and stuff like that. What really got my interest was when we went off on a tangent at the beginning of class when someone asked something about warp speed. The professor proceeded to tell us more about how warp speed works, and that they are getting closer to being able to achieve it for space travel. He explained what anti-matter is and how it works and stuff like that as well. My mind was so blown by the time class ended. I have a whole new level of hope for space travel in the future now. We also talked about other possibly inhabitable planets that are 40 or less light years away from us, and a few other space travel related things.

The room that astronomy is in is pretty dim, so I actually took off my sunglasses for a while, the plastic ones were starting to bug my ears a little. I was glad I got to take them off during astronomy, I was a lot more comfortable.  Also, there is usually a chair in the front I sit in, but I decided to sit somewhere else in one of the other chairs. I chose a really good spot and it was awesome the whole time I was there.  We are going to be using the planetarium again on Monday and are going to be simulating more stars and stuff. I think if it is anything like last time we used the planetarium it is going to be awesome. 

After class ended I walked to the library where I usually wait for my ride and called my mom. I was going to go to Jamba Juice while I was waiting, but changed my mind. I was craving a smoothie but decided to make one myself when I got home.  It took my mom a while to get to the school to pick me up, I was only wearing one pair of shades by this time, things weren't as bright by the time school was over. 

I dozed off again on my way back home, I was pretty tired. Nothing much happened after school. I ate some pineapple, and just hung around the house looking through our new cable channels, watching anime, and working on homework. We had bought the pineapple a few days earlier and it was getting to be a little too ripe, I was the only one that noticed this, and it was just in time too! 

It took my eyes another hour or two for the brightness to wear off.I am a little bit behind in English, so I am mostly going to be working on catching up and working on my essay and upcoming astronomy quizzes. I really hope this will not be a boring weekend.  Anyway, I am probably going to go back to reading manga or something, so I'll write more later. Sorry for the lack of updates.