Note: This is definitely not an attempt to squeeze in some posts at the end of the month to avoid what would otherwise be a 43-month low. Nope. Totally not one of those.

On an unrelated note, why does February have to be so short?

To recap: This week, the 9th-, 10th-, and 11th-graders have been taking the FCAT in the mornings, disrupting the normal class schedule. There's no real reason for 12th-graders to even show up in the mornings, but they've been making us do stuff to keep us busy. Those 12th-graders who showed up on Monday and Tuesday mornings would get to go on a free trip to (as the field trip form put it) "Aetna Rx plant and local mall." Fun? Well, it would be better than sitting at school, and I was eligible to go, so...

Well, the form said that we would leave at 7:30, but apparently there was a change of plans. When 7:30 rolled around, we went to the auditorium for the staff members to judge our presentations that they made us do on Monday while the other kids were testing. That made me nervous. My group's presentation was bad. Like, really bad. As in, kind of insulting to the school and, overall, a poor effort. The best presentation would be shown to incoming freshmen to introduce them to the school, but our presentation didn't even really try to tell new freshmen what they need to know. In fact, it was mostly filler.

I enjoyed watching other people's presentations, which were mainly slide shows and videos. Many of them were insanely funny because they made fun of the teachers. One presentation that specifically warned of the Health teacher and urged new students to take Health online instead elicited a wild applause from the audience. (Taking Health online was the smartest thing I ever did.) Another included headshots of teachers that were humorously defaced with MS Paint. A science teacher was given a white moustache and hair like Albert Einstein; another science teacher was saying "Touch my neutrons"; a math teacher was surrounded by "2 + 2 = 9" and "1/2 = 4/5"; an administrator was given the Mr. T look and, of course, pitied the fool. It's always funny when students make fun of teachers. It's not always right, but it's always funny.

My group's presentation was last. It was in Flash, so I wasn't sure if it would work right. It didn't. The music didn't play. The background was white instead of black, obscuring some information. The videos we included at the end as filler didn't play. I was very relieved. I would rather have a confusing presentation than one that the administrators didn't like.

Then it was time for the field trip. But we were going to have to go in shifts, and guess whose group had to wait 40 extra minutes before leaving? That's right: mine. But we were finally on our way to what turned out to be a mail-order pharmacy run by an insurance company. The purpose of the field trip was to give us information about careers? We toured the facility, and it was very much like an assembly line for filling prescriptions. In fact, that wasn't what it was like; it's what it was. There were lots of conveyor belts and things. I couldn't imagine working in a place like that. I guess I'd feel more comfortable on the white-collar side, which we saw briefly. Also, the whole place smelled really bad, except for the actual assembly line, where it was all white and sterile.

Then it was time to go to a "local mall" for lunch. They wouldn't say which mall it was, which made me certain that it was the outdoor Pompano Citi Centre (formerly the Pompano Square Mall). If we had known we were going to the Pompano Mall, most of us probably wouldn't have gone on the trip. But we were there, and due to that two-and-a-half-hour delay for watching presentations and doing nothing, we had about a half an hour to buy lunch before having to go back to school. Since I was sure we were going to the Pompano Mall, I was set on going to Pollo Tropical. I did, and the food was amazing as usual. Then we had to go back to school, which wasn't so amazing.

"Thing" is a very common word. Where did it come from? I'm glad you asked. The word once meant "assembly" in Scandinavian languages and is still used in the names of parliaments in the region. For example, you have the Law Thing, the Land Thing, the General Thing, the Great Thing, the People's Thing... all kinds of things.

Here are some Truly Awful Star Wars Collectables. Who would have bought this stuff?