Saturday, May 21, 2005 - My my my. I haven't written in quite a while. Let's see, where did we leave off? Oh, yes. Yuoo's Spring semester at school ended recently. His grade results are in, and he earned an Orange Mark in both of his classes, which is the minimum grade for passing a class. (Green is the highest grade, followed by Yellow, then Orange, then Red, then Purple.) He's a little bit disappointed, but given the situation, I would say that things went well. I told him, "Just do the best you can, Yuoo, and try to graduate."
After that, he had a week off before he started Summer school. During this week, he dilligently concentrated on being the laziest fox in the whole wide world. Now, he's taking two classes: Intermediate Spanish and Machignosis. Machignosis (mock-e-no-sis) is a beginning course in the study of endowing machines with the intelligence.
While Yuoo's summer classes were just beginning, his poor friend Aurrin Lightpaw was still facing the agony of final exams in his own school. He was drowning in paperwork, and Yuoo tried his best to be a good lifeguard, and eventually Aurrin finished them. (Well, he had to fudge a little on his last paper, but that's a different story. ;-) ) This was a very exciting time for both of them, for you see, Aurrin and Yuoo had been planning to meet each other in person again after Aurrin's classes had ended!
Yuoo drew Aurrin a map to his house in the town of Loblolly, as I said before, Aurrin lives and goes to school in a place called Garnet. Other people might know it as Beige University. On Thursday morning, Aurrin packed and made a five-hour road trip to the town of Loblolly. He arrived at Yuoo's house in the early afternon, and both of them were very excited. After showing Aurrin around the house, Yuoo helped him unpack. Aurrin brought a lot of things, including his computer. Yuoo put Aurrin's computer next his own, and he connected the two together so they could play network games. Yuoo baked some quesadillas for lunch. (Yuoo isn't exactly a culinary expert, but he likes to cook, especially for his friends.) Unfortunately, Yuoo had to work on a homework assignment that was due the next day, but Aurrin was kind enough to help him with the assignment. Aurrin spent the night on the couch, and he was awoken by Yuoo, who usually gets up early in the morning. (Yuoo is a morning fox; Aurrin is a night fox.)
Yuoo got up early to finish up the homework assignment, and he was cooking breakfast (pancakes and fried eggs). As Aurrin was waking up, Yuoo turned on the Playstation and put in a college football video game, letting a mascot-mode game run automatically. A mascot game is where all of the football players are wearing the costume of their team mascot. That morning, it was the Auburn Tigers versus the Georgia Bulldogs! :-)
Aurrin went to school along with Yuoo on Friday, and he attended his Machingnosis and Spanish class. After that, Yuoo gave him a tour of the campus. This was especially a treat for Aurrin because he has been reading this very diary, and he was finally able to see in real life the things that I have been describing in fantasy. They went to see Mortar Abbey, showing him his favorite place to medicate, the belltower. They also went to the Special Collections section of the library to read a 150-year-old copy of The Canticles of Reynard the Fox. It was a blazingly hot day that day! It gets pretty hot in Garnet, where Aurrin lives, but the town of Loblolly is located within a sub-tropical territory that we humans know as "The Sunshine State," so the heat was a little bit too much for Aurrin, who has a thicker coat of fur than Yuoo does. Yuoo's school has a lot of palm trees growing there, but they were all intentionally planted there to make the place appear more tropical. Aurrin was especially impressed with Soup Stadium, a grand football stadium in Loblolly, which, according to Aurrin, resembles Notre Dame Cathedral.
After that, the two foxes decided retreat from the sun, to the shade of Yuoo's burrow. After cooling down with a shower and some orange sherbet icecream, they began a very important task. One of Yuoo's favorite video games is Final Fantasy X. Over the past few months, he has been playing through the game again, and he has been making video cassette recordings of the game. (He did not include most of the repetative fight scenes, but he recorded the dialogue and story scenes.) Yuoo had sent him five video tapes by now, each one containing six hours of gameplay. (And that's without most of the battle scenes!) Anyway, Yuoo had gotten to the point where the two of them would be able to finish the game by that evening-- and they did just that! Over the course of lunch, dinner, several snacks, and several restroom breaks, they played through the story to the very end. The story was a very wonderful, though it was sad, and they both felt very good inside to see it finished. That evening, they played some more video games, this time on computer.
Saturday morning, they slept late. After breakfast, Yuoo taught Aurrin how to play one of his favorite games, Dance Dance Revolution. After a lot of exhausting fun, they took a short trip to town, then they returned home to play one last video game. (If you haven't noticed, Yuoo and Aurrin like to play video games.) By that point, it was Saturday afternoon, and it was time for Aurrin to head home. After some packing, an exchange of goodbyes, and a hug, Aurrin went back home to Garnet. That was last weekend.
Last Wednesday, Yuoo also saw Star Wars, Episode III. Somehow he was able to get tickets to the opening night. He wore his green robe, and he brought a toy lightsaber. (Real lightsabers aren't allowed in the theater.) A lot of other creatures dressed up too. Some costumes were very detailed and realistic, and some of them were downright silly and hillarious! For instance, one haremaiden dressed up as Princess Leia by sticking pastry buns on her ears! One young mouse made an R2-D2 costume out of an aluminum trash can, held together with duct tape! That was great! XD Yuoo told me that he thought the movie was very good but also very sad. It reminded him of the sort of troubles going on in the world today. (Yes, Yuoo's world has troubles, just like ours. It's just that I try not to focus on them.)
Yesterday, Yuoo went to his first day of a jewelry-making workshop he signed up for, and he made a silver ring that day. He's very proud of it, and he has plans for grander projects.
Wednesday, May 25, 2005 - A word of advice: when you buy a used textbook for school, make sure that there aren't pages missing before you buy it. :-( Yuoo discovered that his Spanish composicion book had pages missing from it, most notably the pages containing his homework assignments. Tomorrow, he'll go back to the bookstore and see if they'll let him exchange it. I sure hope they will.
Summer is here, and the weather is getting hot. Every Tuesday and Thursday, Yuoo volunteers to help Mortar Abbey's booth at the new student orientations that they have in the summer. Yuoo assists the weary and confused new students in braving the heat by giving them bottles of water and cans of soda. If he can get the chance, he will invite them to join his beloved Order.
Thursday, May 26, 2005 - Today, Yuoo was making himself useful at Mortar Abbey's booth in the student union when a strange announcement was made. A vole lady handed out fliers to all of the student organizations, spelling out the proper ettiqute for running a booth, and one of the conditions was about the type of soda you could distribute. Apparently, the university has a deal with the Croaka Cola company to only advertise their brand of soda on campus. The sodas that Yuoo's friends had been handing out were made by a rival soda company called Hopsi. Abbot Rains's chief accolite at Mortar Abbey, Eric the otter, was not very happy about this. As Yoda might put it, "Begun, the soda wars have!"