Hey everybody!!! I know that I havent written in the longest time, but I have been SUPER busy. School started 8 weeks ago, and my B-Day was 7 weeks ago. I'm 14 now!!! The trip I was supposed to take to Tennessee was canceled, and we went to Williamsburg, Virginia instead. When I went to the Duke TIP summer camp in North Carolina, I met TONS of new friends, and I keep regular correspondence. My psychology teacher was ironically a teacher at the Imagine Academy downtown, although I can't give you guys my teacher's name. On the way back from there, me and my mom went to our nations capital, and stayed for a whole night. We took a tour, and I got to see all the monuments, although I didn't actually go inside some of them. My mom took a picture of me in front of the 'Missouri' pillar in the WWII memorial, but I can't access it on this account because my stepdad put it into a different program instead of the public pictures file. I got to see the White House, and the Washington Monument, though I didn't get to go inside of either. We went to the Vietnam War memorial at dusk, and the Lincoln Memorial at night, around 9 o'clock Eastern. We stayed at a nice hotel, and we almost got attacked by pigeons, which was fun to me but not so fun for my mom. I tried flourless chocolate cake, which was INSANELY rich, though I think I probably should have tried the creme brulee, in hindsight. But I tried the cake when we stopped in Lexington, Kentucky, for a special girls weekend. I got an awesome facial, and a cashmere robe, for which I am grateful, because it is getting cold outside in the mornings. I went to my school's back-to-school dance in September, and I wore jeans, which was a mistake because they tried to cram way too many people into our gym. I have an awesome algebra teacher who makes everything fun, and makes sure that nobody fails. I believe that she is the reason that I haven't just dropped out of algebra, even this early into the school year. My brother is getting married to this awesome girl in about a week. I am so happy because I have this awesome dress, and these awesome shoes, and an awesome headband. I really like the girl he's marrying, so it all turns out all right!! I am going to start taking Italian, as soon as we find a school for it. Does anybody know of a tutoring place that teaches Italian? When I Goggle Italian language +stl it usually shows up as Italian restaurants. In SIGMA we are playing the Stock Market Game, where you get $100,000 for pretend and invest it. The goal is to make more money than you came in with, so with the economy it is difficult. I have already lost almost $3,000. In my Social Studies class we are starting our election unit, where people who were previously divided by party lines will finally understand what that means, and if they still want to be in that party. As for me, I am my own party, since I differ on my views from Obama and McCain equally. This is a really long post, but the next one will be longer because it will be the full text of a debate that I have had with a classmate of mine.
Cya!!
hey i was wondering if anybody could help me? My dog Riley, who is a miniature dachsie, is really sick. I can't figure out what is wrong with him and neither can my mom or stepdad. He has bloody stool, he is throwing up a lot, and he won't eat. Can anybody help me?
This article is copied straight from the Yahoo News website..
BERLIN (Reuters) - German academics believe they have solved the centuries-old mystery behind the identity of the "Mona Lisa" in Leonardo da Vinci's famous portrait.
Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a wealthy Florentine merchant, Francesco del Giocondo, has long been seen as the most likely model for the sixteenth-century painting.
But art historians have often wondered whether the smiling woman may actually have been da Vinci's lover, his mother or the artist himself.
Now experts at the Heidelberg University library say dated notes scribbled in the margins of a book by its owner in October 1503 confirm once and for all that Lisa del Giocondo was indeed the model for one of the most famous portraits in the world.
"All doubts about the identity of the Mona Lisa have been eliminated by a discovery by Dr. Armin Schlechter," a manuscript expert, the library said in a statement on Monday.
Until then, only "scant evidence" from sixteenth-century documents had been available. "This left lots of room for interpretation and there were many different identities put forward," the library said.
The notes were made by a Florentine city official Agostino Vespucci, an acquaintance of the artist, in a collection of letters by the Roman orator Cicero.
The comments compare Leonardo to the ancient Greek artist Apelles and say he was working on three paintings at the time, one of them a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo.
Art experts, who have already dated the painting to this time, say the Heidelberg discovery is a breakthrough and the earliest mention linking the merchant's wife to the portrait.
"There is no reason for any lingering doubts that this is another woman," Leipzig University art historian Frank Zoellner told German radio. "One could even say that books written about all this in the past few years were unnecessary, had we known."
The woman was first linked to the painting in around 1550 by Italian official Giorgio Vasari, the library said, but added there had been doubts about Vasari's reliability and had made the comments five decades after the portrait had been painted.
The Heidelberg notes were actually discovered over two years ago in the library by Schlechter, a spokeswoman said.
Although the findings had been printed in the library's public catalogue they had not been widely publicized and had been received little attention until a German broadcaster decided to do some recording at the library, she said.
The painting, which hangs in the Louvre in Paris, is also known as "La Gioconda" meaning the happy or joyful woman in Italian, a title which also suggests the woman's married name.
(Editing by Giles Elgood)
Its been a very long time, and I for one am happy about such a momentous occasion.
