14. Ziv Just Applied To College

Dear New England

You’re welcome for the firewood!

Love, Mother Nature

On Thursday, October 27, it snowed. To some, this may seem strange. However, I live in New England, so October snowstorms, while unexpected, are not unheard of. This Saturday night it snowed about 6 inches. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem (last January-February there were 6 feet of snow on the ground at times) but there are still leaves on the trees. The snowstorm did more damage than “Hurricane” Irene and the earthquake this summer combined. The added weight of snow did a lot of damage to trees, power lines, and the spirits of children who can’t go out on Halloween. Halloween has been rescheduled for Thursday November 3. Since my neighborhood doesn’t have power, I am reporting to you from my friend’s basement. The snowstorm came on the weekend before Early Action/ Decision deadlines for college applications, which was a slight inconvenience. Because my friend was fortunate enough not to lose power, I came here to send my college applications. So I sent two college applications from my friend’s house. On the bright side, it beats having to send college applications from Starbucks. And now the post-application fun begins, until everyone realizes that Regular Decision deadlines still exist.

 

Firsts This Week:

• Had a Halloween Party/Snowball Fight
• Sent College Apps
• Blogged from a new location

(Thanks to CH for the title of this post)

13. Nail Polish Pen

With all the craze of nail marbling, newsprint nails, and more, this week I felt inclined to liven up my bare nails. Despite being ambidextrous and a sometimes-painter, I find nail painting to be a difficult task. When I happened upon a nail polish pen at the drugstore, I decided to give it a try.

Unfortunately, even a supposedly no-skill-required “Fast Dry” pen proved to be too much. The concept is simple enough– the pen works like a ballpoint pen, and dispenses nail polish when clicked. However, I apparently have not learned the proper technique for pen clicking, as the pen would ooze color from the top of the brush without prompting. This made it difficult to control the thickness of the coat. The crimson polish ended up streaky, and it took a layer of topcoat to make my nails presentable. Or semi-presentable. To distract from the streakiness I lacquered my nails with gold glitter topcoat.

(Sorry for the washed out webcam image!)

Also, today is post 13 of 52. This means that I’m a quarter of the way to my goal! To those of you who have stuck with me from the beginning and to those of you joining now, thanks for your support!

A summary of what I’ve learned so far:

• Not everything I write will be brilliant. Some days I’m more inspired than others, more comedic, more thoughtful, engaging, etc. Some posts are as dull as watching paint dry. It’s okay not to be perfect, as long as I’m myself. What matters is the exercise of writing for writing’s sake. Over time I’ll get better.
• Blogging takes planning. I can’t expect new things to fall upon me. I have to actively pursue new experiences and explain them in an interesting way. Otherwise, I start falling into a “this is what I did at school” rut (ahem, robotics). Or I resort to a post about as dull as watching paint dry nail polish. This can try the patience of even the most dedicated readers.
• Time Management. Too often I’ve stayed up late agonizing over what to write. I need to remember to allot time for blogging, and recall that I tend to underestimate how long each post takes to write.
• Profound quotes are much more interesting when one happens upon them by chance.

Firsts This Week:

• Used a nail pen
• Read and understood Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy
• Started assembling a robot

12. Built a Light-Controlled Musical Instrument

This week, I am happy to say I built a musical instrument. Or to be more precise, built a circuit using a photoresistor (light sensor) and piezoelectric speaker that altered its pitch based on how much light it received. In this circuit, the photoresistor controlled the frequency of the piezoelectric speaker to be between 1000 and 5000 Hz. As my partner and I cast shadows over the photoresistor, the pitch of the note became higher. Granted, the speaker was basically just making lots of high pitched beeps. And when one is in a room full of Robotics students tinkering with speakers, the result just sounds like noise.

As for this week’s task? We have to figure out how to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb”…

Firsts This Week:

• Built an “instrument” out of a photoresistor and piezoelectric speaker circuit

11. Elevator Shenanigans

This week for a physics assignment concerning Newton’s Second law (Force= mass*acceleration) my friends and I went to a tall building and weighed ourselves going up and down in an elevator. After getting clearance from security, we entered the elevator, bathroom scale in tow, and proceeded to weigh ourselves going from the basement to the 50th floor and back down. In the span of ten minutes, we traveled up and down the building about six times while gathering the data. Needless to say, we got many strange looks from other elevator patrons. Due to the acceleration in the elevator, your normal force (what we feel as our weight) fluctuates. Though we were expecting slight changes in weight (+/- 5 to 7 lbs.), we were shocked when my friend’s weight suddenly jumped twenty pounds. It turns out a gentleman in the elevator was resting his foot on the scale to play a joke on us! So much for preserving the integrity of science.

Fun fact: In some elevators, pressing the door close button while selecting the floor will take you directly to that floor without any stops. However, note that you will get angry stares from people if you close the door as they are approaching the elevator.

Firsts this week:

• Spent an excessive amount of time riding an elevator

10. Autumn, Apples, License, and Life

Fall is upon us. Depending on the way one measures time, fall may have already come, is just now beginning, or has not yet arrived. To some, fall arrives on September 23, when the direct rays of the sun pass by the equator, marking the autumnal equinox. To students, fall begins when school begins and shorts are traded in for jeans. For New Englanders, autumn arrives when the leaves begin their ostentatious display of crimson, yellow, and deep orange hues as the chlorophyll breaks down. As for me, I measure the seasons by the changing produce.

These past few weeks I have noticed a dwindling of summer fruits in my household. As peaches, plums, and nectarines, were being phased out, they were gradually replaced with apples, oranges, and bananas, when this week, the summer fruits disappeared altogether. As apricots became apples, I was reinvigorated by the promise of crisp weather and crispier fruit: Macoun, Macintosh, and my favorite, Cortland apples. Aside from their natural sweetness and crunchiness, Cortland apples have an unparalleled aesthetic appeal. Their deep red skin contrasts with bright white skin run throughout with subtle pink veins. With its beautiful apple orchards and blazing foliage, autumn in New England is breathtaking.

In New England I am privileged to have the seasons alert me of the passing time. But time is measured in many forms. The months and days I measure by name. As a blogger, I measure the weeks as a string of passing Mondays. And as I grow older, I measure age by milestones, and today, birthdays.

Last Saturday, I passed my road test and gained my driver’s license. The plastic card finally came this past Thursday, fully marking my transition into the world of vehicle operators. And today, I turned seventeen. In all honesty, I’m a bit apprehensive about all these new experiences. While seventeen seems young and naive from one who has surpassed it, seventeen to a one who was sixteen just yesterday feels old. In a year, I’ll (hopefully) be in college, and from there who knows. Only thirteen years until I’m thirty, the dreaded age when society tells me I should be worrying about wrinkles and children and mortgages. And so, for my final year before the legal age of adulthood, I’ll try not to grow up so fast.

Firsts this week:

• Received license in the mail.
• Turned 17.
• Learned how to type addresses onto envelopes (a very useful skill)