• Published 25th Feb 2016
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Silver Glow's Journal - Admiral Biscuit



Silver Glow takes an opportunity to spend a year at an Earth college, where she'll learn about Earth culture and make new friends.

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May 13 [Friday the 13th]

May 13

I got right up with the sun again, ‘cause today was going to be a pretty busy day. I nuzzled Meghan until she woke up, too, and then we took a shower together which was nice. My wings were a little bit sore from flying in the weather and she gave me a pretty good back massage.

We ate breakfast together and then I went to Professor Sir Doctor Banerjee’s class, where he started the class by giving back our tests (I got a 93% which is pretty good) and then continued to teach us about fractals.

He told us about the Julia Set, the Fatou Set, and the Mandlebrot Set, which are the most famous kind of fractals, and showed us pictures of how they looked. They were really elegant—I’d never thought of math being pretty before, but it was. And then he showed us the equations and how little changes would alter the characteristics of the set, and class just flew by. Then he told us that Google had programs that would draw sets for us if we put in the equations, and I thought that would be a fun thing to play with when I didn’t have anything else to do.

At lunch, Peggy started telling everyone about how I’d been skywatching, and so pretty soon I had to tell them all about it. Humans don’t get to work with clouds but they do a lot of stuff which is pretty amazing, but I guess that it’s so common for them that they don’t even think about it.

Christine mentioned that today was Friday the Thirteenth, which was considered an unlucky day. But I thought that it had been a pretty good day so far, and I told her that I was going to make it a lucky day ‘cause I was going to take my radio test in the afternoon and then I would be able to carry a better radio and even stormwatch on my own sometimes.

Professor Amy congratulated us on doing well on our tests but I hadn’t done as well as I had on the math test. I wasn’t surprised, but I was a little disappointed in myself. I’d studied so hard, so maybe there was just something about me; maybe I wasn’t all that smart about anthropology.

But she didn’t seem disappointed when she gave mine back.

We spent most of the class talking about what we were going to do for our final exams. Instead of taking them in class, we were to write a research paper, and she gave us a whole list of topics that we could choose from. Some of it was stuff that we hadn’t even covered in class yet, and when Rachel asked about that she said we would have to go to the library and get some books, and everyone in the class groaned at that.

She told us that we could also pick a different topic if we wanted to; the list was just a suggestion. But if we did, we would have to tell her what our topic was on Monday, and give her a little bit of an outline of what we intended to do with the paper, and that sounded like a lot more work than just picking something off the list.

I thought it would be smart to go to the library and see what I could find first, rather than choose a topic and later on find out that I couldn’t make any sense of it, which meant I was going to be spending a lot of time in the library over the weekend.

As soon as class was finished I rushed out of the building and flew over to the parking lot behind my dorm. I came over the top of Trowbridge ‘cause it was faster, and saw Sienna sitting there, waiting by the door, so I landed right in front and I don’t think that Mister Salvatore was expecting that.

Miss Cherilyn opened the door for me and then we drove off along Westnedge like we were going to Meijer, and then we went a little bit further until we were right by the 94 Highway. There was a road that took us to a fancy brick and glass building which had a twin building right next to it and he said that that was their temporary office and where I would be taking the test.

There was a room called a conference room and it had a long table with a lot of chairs, more than we needed. Mel was there, and he shook my hoof when I came in and wished me luck, then Mister Salvatore gave me the test.

It didn’t take all that long, except for the questions about electricity. I was glad I’d taken all the practice tests and known that I needed to study for it more, otherwise I think I would have been lost. Even with the practice, I was still kind of uncertain, so I made sure I read the questions carefully and then double-checked my answers when I was done.

He went away to grade it, and Miss Cherilyn and Mel and I just chatted for a little bit until he came back and told me that I had passed the test. I asked him if I’d gotten all the questions right, and he shook his head, but he said it didn’t matter: I’d done well enough. Then he brought out a box that had a new radio in it, and it looked a lot like the other one, but it worked on different frequencies.

Mel congratulated me and I would have liked to stay around and talk some more but it was getting late and I knew that I had to go see the play, so we left and stopped at Taco Bell for dinner and then they dropped me off back at my dorm. I galloped upstairs so I could give the CB radio back, ‘cause I had the new one now.

Peggy was in the room, so when I got back, I told her the good news and I also sent a quick computer letter to Doctor Thomas Thompson telling him and I would have sent one to Ryan, too, but I couldn’t remember his computer-mail address.

I probably could have just met Aric at the theatre, but I flew over to his house instead so that we could ride to the theatre together.

He said that we could sit up in the light booth if we wanted to, or else we could take normal seats. I thought it would be a lot more fun to be up in the light booth, because I liked watching how serious everyone was, so we went up there and when we passed the little room with Chad he glared at me and I stuck my tongue out at him.

There were a couple of hard blue chairs and we sat on them kind of out of the way, and watched the show. A red-haired girl named Beth was using the light board, and Lisa was handling the spotlight again.

The play was called The Learned Ladies, and it was about Henriette who wants to marry Clitandre, but her mother wants her to marry a poet named Trissotin. And they spent the whole play trying to find a way that Henriette could marry the one she loves and not the poet (who wasn’t a very good poet anyway), and finally in the end they trick Trissotin into admitting that he only wanted to marry Henriette for the family’s money.

After it was over we got in Winston and as Aric was driving home I asked him if I could drive. He said that he had been thinking about that and it would be complicated for me because the truck was a stick shift, which meant that there were more pedals to push and a lever that had to be moved into the right place.

But when he turned onto his street, he went right past the house and then went west all the way out to the Maple Hill Mall, and we drove around to the back of it and he said how would I like to steer while he used the pedals and the shifter.

That was a pretty good start, so I sat on his lap and it was a little bit awkward for him to get his hands where he needed to and me to grip on the steering wheel, and he liked it a little too much when I was shifting my rump around on his lap to get into a good position.

When we were all settled he reminded me to start off by only making small corrections on the steering wheel because the truck didn’t drive like a go-kart. And then we went across the parking lot, back and forth, until I finally got the hang of steering and pretty soon I could go around the light poles and put it between the white lines that mark parking spots.

I asked him if that meant I could do the pedals, too, and he said not this time but maybe next time, and so I got back in my seat and he drove us back home, and then he stopped in a little parking lot at the end of his street and said I could steer the rest of the way home. I didn’t bump into anything.

Just before I fell asleep, I thought back to how Christine had said that Friday the Thirteenth was supposed to be an unlucky day, and I thought maybe I should tell her it had been a really good day. Maybe it's only unlucky for humans.

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