Dad says that when HE was growing up, in the summer time kids played outside all day, until they got called home for dinner at night. Well, that's pretty much the OPPOSITE of the way MY summer went this year. I spent July and August at film camp, where All I did was watch movies in an air-conditioned theater for eight hours a day. The Main reason I signed up for film camp was because I thought it was for people who are SERIOUS about movies, like ME. But I found out it was REALLY just a place where parents could dump their kids off for some cheap babysitting. The downside of spending that much time in a dark theater is that at the end of the day, it took a half hour for my eyes to adjust to the sunlight. The other reason I signed up for film camp was to get out of the HOUSE. Ever since we got a pet pig, it hasn't been a lot of fun being home. Especially not at DINNER. For the record, I think it's a TERRIBLE idea letting the pig eat at the table, because it ALREADY thinks it's a human being. And the last thing we need is for it to think it's on equal footing with the rest of us. Right after we got the pig, mom thought it would be fun to teach it some tricks. So she would give the pig a cookie when it stood on its hind legs. But the pig learned to WALK like that, and it hasn't been on all fours ever since. To make matters WORSE, my little brother, Manny, put a pair of his shorts on the pig, so now it's like we're living in the house with a disney character. Mom used to take the pig out side, but after it started walking upright, it decided it was too good for the leash. Mom was worried that if the pig ran off we'd never find it,so she got a collar with one of those GPS tracking chips in it. But every time Mom put the collar on the pig, within five minutes it would be OFF. And don't ask me how the pig did THAT, since pigs don't even have THUMBS. So the pig just comes and goes as it pleases, and who KNOWS where it spends its time. What really stinks is that I have a curfew, and the pig DOESN'T. I think giving the pig too many privileges is a REALLY bad idea. One day pigs will rule the world, and it'll be my family's fault for starting it all. I wouldn't really have an issue with the pig if it didn't interfere with MY life. I was late on the first day of school because it was hogging the bathroom. With the pig in the house, I was actually looking FORWARD to school starting. But once I got there I really it was just the same old thing. And to be honest with you, I feel like I've been in middle school FOREVER. I needed to mix things up a little or I was gonna go crazy. So in the first week of school, I volunteered for the homework buddies program. But the main reason I signed up was so I could skip third period, which is music class with mrs. Garziano. To give you an idea of how long mrs. Graziano has been a music teacher, DAD had her when he was MY age. And apparently spending thirty years teaching middle schoolers how to play musical instruments actually DOES something to a person.