7/16/12 Dear Diary, The sun finally came out today! “About time,” I wanted to tell it. Halfway into July, and we’ve had nothing but clouds and rain showers. It really feels like summer—hopefully this keeps up until the end of break. Since we had such nice weather, I went to the beach with Rachel and Catherine. We put on a ton of sunblock, but I’m pretty sure I still got burned. On the bright side, there was hardly anybody there, so we got a really nice spot near the water with lots of room to spread out our blankets, umbrellas, and food. Rachel made a dash for the ocean right away, of course, but Caty and I devoted most of the day to building this huge elaborate sand castle (which we then graciously let a bunch of little kids destroy). We were thinking about going to the mall afterwards, but we were so tired that we just drove back to my house and watched old episodes of Friends until they had to go home. All in all, though, a very enjoyable day. I’m exhausted and I still have sand sticking to me, so I think I’m going to drag myself off the couch and shower, then hit the hay. Until tomorrow, diary! 7/17/12 Dear Diary, My brother is the absolute worst. He’s only ten years old! How can he be such a pain? Earlier this week, he took my iPod without telling me and only gave it back once it ran out of battery, because apparently he can’t be bothered to plug it back into the stupid charging station himself. That’s nothing compared to what happened today, though. We were outside, enjoying this beautiful sun while it lasts, and Gregory (the cute neighbor, not the weird one) came out to get the mail. He waved at me, so I shot him my friendliest smile and waved back. Naturally Kevin decided he just had to butt in, and he asked me in his loudest, most obnoxious voice, “IS THAT THE GUY YOU KEEP TALKING ABOUT?” I tried to pretend like I hadn’t heard him; alas, Gregory did. As soon as he caught my eye again, he turned bright red and hightailed it back inside my house. I wanted to kill Kevin for ruining what could’ve been a critical romantic interaction. The awful part is that it wasn’t even true! I’ve never even mentioned Gregory to him, as far as I know...but it wouldn’t surprise me to find out he’s been eavesdropping on my Skype calls with Rachel and Caty. Hmm. I’ve got some sound-proofing to do, I think. Diary, I’ll catch you later. 7/18/12 Dear Diary, Today started off on kind of a bad note. I woke up feeling congested and achy and generally sick. I think it has something to do with the “allergies” Rachel claimed she had when we went to the beach. Apparently she’s stuck in bed now, too, so at least we can be miserable together. Luckily I didn’t have any plans for today, so I hung around the house and let my mom take care of me. I'll be going off to college next year and I think she's already starting to mourn my loss, because she fussed over my pillow and made me chicken noodle soup just like when I was little (and in spite of the 90-degree heat). After surfing around on Netflix for a while, I found out that season three of The Vampire Diaries was finally put up on instant play, so I've just been watching Stefan and Damon fight over Elena for the past couple of hours, and my lack of productivity is completely fine with me! Starting to get tired of typing and I just reached the midseason finale, so I'm going to get on that. Hopefully I'll feel better and have some more interesting stuff to write about tomorrow!