Cousin Bruce brought a couple of pictures with him this weekend and said that this picture is a "promotional" picture of him at the studio where they film his yoga show. He just started this show in July and he still is promising to take me there one day when they are making his show. He said that it is going well and he is on 5 different stations around california, usually early in the morning. I said that now 3 of our family members have been on television since Dad does commercials and Grandpa Jem's movies have played on the Western channel before. Cousin Bruce says that actually 4 have been on TV because cousin Mat was on ESPN in a bodybuilding competition. He brought a picture of Mat, well actually 3 pictures of Mat, and I will put them on the blog next time. I asked him what yoga is exactly and he said something about "harmony and balance" and "purifying the body" and stuff like that but I decided to look it up in the dictionary anyways. Yoga is "a Hindu spiritual and ascetic discipline, a part of which, including breath control, simple meditation, and the adoption of specific bodily postures, is widely practiced for health and relaxation". Ascetic means "characterized by or suggesting the practice of severe self-discipline and abstention from all forms of indulgence, typically for religious reasons". An example of its use is "an ascetic life of prayer, fasting, and manual labor". "That doesn't sound very fun", I said and I asked Cousin Bruce if he lives like that and he said "not so severely". He did say that he often fasts, which he told me means not eating very much food for a few days in order to "clean out" his body. I said that I would miss eating too much, especially ho-hos, but that I might try yoga once to see how I liked it. He then showed me a couple of easy positions to try in order to help me wake up in the morning. I said "sure" and then tried them this morning and felt a little strange. Grandpa asked what I was doing and I told him that it was yoga positions that cousin Bruce showed me. Grandpa actually was speechless, but seemed to doubt its usefulness by the look on his face, but maybe considering the shape his back is in now, his silence may mean that he wishes he had taken better care of it when he was young and that there could be a very small chance that what I was doing in the living room might actually help me later in life. I still felt weird either way.

Things are moving kind of slow on my ancestor project. Grandpa is having trouble again with his back so I have been afraid to ask him about our relatives. Cousin Bruce is coming to visit this weekend and I told him to bring the picture of our cousin that he met and one of himself since my report needs some pictures. He did say that our cousin from austria is named Mat and he is a successful weightlifter. I also asked my Dad and Mom about old pictures of the family and they have said that some are in the attic and some of my Mom's family are at her sisters. My Mom's Father, my Grandpa Jesse, passed away 4 years ago, but my Mom's Mother, my Grandma Sylvia is still alive and lives with my Aunt Gloria in Minnesota. I also have an Uncle Ronnie who lives not far from my Aunt and Grandma in Minnesota. I also have cousins from the Michaels side and they mostly live in the midwest. One of them, according to Mom, lives in New York City and is an artist. I hope anyone reading this isn't completely confused by all this. I am hoping that finding some pictures on both sides will help keep everyone straight.
I will be writing my first movie review for the newspaper this weekend also , but I am not sure what we are going to see yet. Dad promised to take me on Saturday afternoon at the theater in town. I really want to see the Fantastic 4 and hope it is still playing. We came up with a name of our newspaper on Tuesday, but really I guess it is the same name as last years paper though since no one could think of anything better. It is called the Red Hill Reporter named after the hill near our school.
On Tuesday Mr. Grady's cat followed him all the way to school. He came outside for a break during the morning and his cat was waiting for him. I guess Mr. Grady walks almost 2 miles to school some days when the weather is nice which is almost everyday because its california. I asked him why he does that and he says its the only way that he can wake up "without drinking 4 cups of coffee". So, he didn't notice it but his cat was following him all the way and since he didn't know what to do when he saw him there, we brought him inside the classroom. Digger, the cat, was a little frightened by everyone and just hid under Mr. Grady's desk. No one could stop giggling for the first 15 minutes of class so Mr. Grady decided to tell other stories about his cat instead and then told us all to write any funny pet stories we could think of in our writing journals. I thought of one about one of our dogs named lulu and it involved the dog getting muddy and running through the house. Grandpa was so angry and yelled "get that damn thing out of here!!". I guess lulu was too strong for the screen door and crashed right through. Lulu was a big dog that was "part shepherd and part something else big" as Mom put it. The house was a real mess, but I couldn't stop laughing. Well, time to finish my spanish homework before bed. Buenos Noches.

I haven't gotten to post to my blog because I have been staying after school all week to help start our school's newspaper. The school bought 2 new computers and a printer for the writing and journalism class and I volunteered to help get it setup and to start to learn a program called Indesign. It is called a "layout" program because you lay out all the writing and the pictures before you print it out on paper. It was really exciting last night when we finally got the new printer to work with the new computers. For awhile it was printing the page sideways and then it would print it too small or too big and finally we just unplugged everything and started over. My teacher Mr. Grady was getting very upset at all the equipment and had to go outside to smoke a cigarette twice. Tom and I figured it out while he was out smoking his second cigarette. Mr. Grady came back in and said "ok from now on you guys are in charge of the computer." Tom and I looked at each other and laughed because just last year Tom and I both got our first computers and we didn't know much about them and now we are in charge of our first newspaper. I also get to write the movie reviews for the paper and since I have been practicing writing all summer, Mr. Grady made me the "editor". I told him that I really have trouble spelling and that the computer corrects my mistakes and he told me that it was ok and that editing is not all about spelling and grammer, but also about how "everything fits together like a puzzle". I said that I am good at puzzles.
I also have to do a project for social studies about my family's history and I thought that would be great idea for the newspaper if we did our first issue about the family history of the students and of the teachers at our school. Mr. Grady said that it was a very good idea and that perhaps we'll have enough room if we only include one interesting thing about the history of every person's family in the school. I said that it might be hard since there are 80 or so kids in the school, but he said that it can be a weekly part of the paper and that I should just start with the people in my social studies class which is only about 15. I also thought that maybe not every student has a family history that they can find out about and some students are adopted. Our teacher told the class that if we cannot find out much or if it isn't possible then we must write about their hero. I thought about that and wondered if having a hero is the same if you don't know that person. Like if your hero is a baseball player, but that you have never met that player? I guess I wonder what it would be like not to have any heros that are a part of my family. My Grandpa, Dad and Mom are all my heroes because they feed me and are always caring about me. I guess a baseball player or a rock star can't feed you or care for you so it must be hard to have them as your only heroes.
I told Dad and Grandpa about it and they said that they would help me, but that uncle Don is the real historian in the family and that I should call him too. I already know that our family came from austria and I also know that I have many cousins that either still live in Austria or have moved here recently. My Dad says that Uncle Don communicates with some of them and that Cousin Bruce also met one in Los angeles. I am looking forward to finding out all about not only the Buckheisters, but also my Mother's family, the Michaels.

School was fun this week as I began 7th grade officially. There was some new kids that I have never met and a lot of my friends that I already know that decided to come back. My school is called an "alternative school" or some people call it a "charter school" and sometimes kids or their parents decide not to come back and go somehwhere else like the big school in town or the private school in the next town over. Mostly, people stay because the school is fun and we go on lots of trips in the big white van, but I hear some people don't like it or that we don't take enough tests to be a good school. I don't like tests so it is good for me, but Dad and Grandpa disagree about sending me to my school because Grandpa says school should be tougher and teach kids to "survive". Luckily, Mom and Dad don't agree with him and they think I am learning a lot there. The teachers always remind me to keep writing and they allow kids to talk about their lives and what troubles they have and that sometimes the best way to learn things is to leave the school and see it "with our own eyes". We also get to watch movies sometimes and I told my teacher about my Grandpa and he promised to show one of his movies in class sometime. I was really surprised and said that we could show it in history class because some of his movies are about real people and my teacher said it is more about "film history" and that is good enough. I told Grandpa about this and he laughed and said that he always knew he was "history" as long as its "living history". After that we talked about one of his movies in which he played a miner during the "gold rush" in San Francisco and that it was about a real person named Henry who liked to sing about finding gold and living in a city where everyone was after one thing. I said "gold?" and Grandpa said yes and he also said that someone should make the same kind of movie about Hollywood. I asked if there was a gold rush in Hollywood and he said slowly "there wasn't then but there is now". I asked if we could see it and he said "you see it all the time". I wasn't going to leave confused this time so I asked him what the heck he was talking about and he said while winking at me "movies my boy movies".

Today was my last day of summer vacation and it seemed to go by really fast. I am still thinking about all the trips I took during the past month and will have plenty to say when the teacher asks me what I did on my summer vacation. I'll tell them all about how I went to Missouri and saw my Grandpa be the most popular person in his hometown and how everyone was talking to him about his movies he made and how they honored him with a carnival and a new museum. The museum will have lots of photographs and will show his movies on the weekends. They also will have a statue of him in a glass case and other movies and books about cowboys. I will also tell them about how we went to the grand canyon on the way back from missouri and how amazing it was to see such a big "crack in the earth" as Grandpa calls it. I will also tell people at school about my camping trip with my dad and cousin and about the trip to "the city of angels" to hear people talk about water and the colorado river. I can also talk about the trip I didn't get to take to the mountains because my Grandpas back wasn't well enough for him to travel. Grandpa was more mad than usual that the family had to stay home because of him, but we ended up still going to the labor day parade in town even though grandpa couldn't come. It rained during most of the parade and Dad and I got pretty wet because all the good spots under cover were taken. Dad didn't seem to mind too much and actually seemed to enjoy the rain even though our shoes still haven't dried yet.
So I guess I have probably too much to tell everybody at my school and I am sure I won't know exactly what to say and what not to say. Sometimes I think I tell people too many parts of the story that might not seem important to other people or even a big part of the story. Cousin Bruce says that details are good and I shouldn't be afraid to write about all of them and that even though sometimes people don't really like to listen to them they don't mind reading about them. I guess i don't understand that completely, but I will try to remember that tomorrow.
My word of the day is actually a word from last week when I went to Los angeles. I wrote in my journal as alocation, but it is spelled "allocation". It means "an amount or portion of a resource assigned to a particular recipient;allowance" and its use is "the efficient allocation of resources". I understand the allowance part. I think I will now go ask Dad for my weekly "allocation of resources".

Another week of my summer vacation has gone by and I am actually excited about going back to school to see my friends next week. It has been really hot here this week and Grandpas back seems to be getting worse. It has made him and everyone else at the ranch a little grumpy. Dad has decided to cancel our annual trip to the mountains because of Grandpas health, but Grandpa is insisting we all leave tomorrow with or without him because as he says to my Dad, "you already paid for the cabin". So, we might leave later today or early in the morning tomorrow, but we might not go at all.
Meanwhile, (a word that cousin Bruce suggests I use to switch to another story), earlier last week, Dad, my friend Tom and I went to Los Angeles to attend a meeting of people who work in the government that talk about how much water people will have in big cities. There was people there from Las Vegas, Phoenix, Arizona, and other places. Dad is always talking about how there isn't much water where we live and that someday soon people will have to pay a lot of money for it. There were people outside of the building with signs that said "the people own the water" and other stuff like that and some were shouting things. I did learn a lot about the Colorado river when we went to the grand canyon on our way home from Missouri last month and learned even more in Los Angeles about it. My school toke a field trip last year to the Hoover Dam and now I understand how it helps save water for people so that they can live where there isn't much water and as Dad says, without it "folks in Phoenix wouldn't be able to keep their grass green". After a couple hours of those government people talking, Dad told Tom and I to go walking around inside the building because we were getting kind of bored, especially Tom who looked like he was going to start crying. We walked down the stairs and then talked with a security guard who didn't seem interested in the colorado river because I asked him about it and he just looked annoyed that we were talking to him. Then we started talking about movies and he seemed a little more friendly. His favorite movie is a movie called "Falling Down" about a guy who can't stand living in Los Angeles anymore and goes crazy. He said that he sometimes feels like that guy. I said to him maybe he should move to the country where there isn't so many people and he laughed. He said that he would get bored in the country because there is not much to do and both Tom and I looked at him funny and said there is a lot to do. The security guard named Dave didn't seem too sure about that and said "I wouldn't know what to do with all that fresh air. It would probably make me sick." Tom turned to me and whispered "Lets go back to the boring meeting, this guys weird." I said ok then shook Daves hand and wished him good luck. After the meeting, we went out for burgers and milkshakes and it seemed like finally Tom lost that look of pain on his face. When we got back to the ranch later that night, Grandpa and Mom were arguing about one of the horses and Dad had to calm them down. Grandpa took two red pills and I started to tell him about our day in Los Angeles and about the government people and the security guard named Dave and how hot it was there and about our burgers and milkshakes when I looked over and realized that Grandpa was sleeping. Mom looked over at us and said quietly "finally".