Just Another Typical Weekend, Except Not.

The young man takes a small sip, and slowly replaces his beverage onto the napkin. His eyes return from their glazed-over state to watch the bubbles take their turns popping near the surface of the dainty champagne styled glass. Losing interest, his gaze rises to the scene around him. Dozens of people walking by his table, all in a hurry, all on the way to somewhere, late for something. Cell phones, laptop cases, briefcases, all abound. A constant ambience of city noise infiltrates the man’s table at the small Italian sidewalk cafe. The people are all inches from him, yet miles away. He is oblivious to it all, in a different mental place from them altogether. He catches the eye of his companion across the table. She then follows his line of sight to the street sign located on the corner. On a green background, written in white, are the words “Broadway Avenue, New York City.” The reality of the situation hits them yet again, as it has all day, and their giddy laughter attracts bizarre stares from the passersby.

This is exactly the type of thing I wanted to do before I left. Total spontaneity, total out of control snap decision making, total randomness of outcomes.

So last Wednesday I was up at Chumash, and I eventually left up. Big. Second biggest trip ever at $632.

I only have three days of classes each week, so four day weekends allow a lot of options. So for once, I decided to do something with the time. For once, I decided to actually spend some money, do something incredible, and in the process, knock a few things off my life’s list of things I want to do.

There’s one person I tend to call when it comes to spontaneity. She is someone unlike anyone else I know, and even though we disagree on some major issues, for some reason we get along amazingly well. I mentioned the fact that I’d had a pretty ridiculous night at Chumash, during which just about everything worked out in my favor. Even as I tried to leave for example, my friend talked me into max betting one more machine, and a four of a kind landed me another few hundred dollars. Just a truly amazing pile of luck was stacked upon me that night. So we pondered, where could we go for the weekend, and what could we do. Eventually, she landed upon the idea of visiting a city she’d never been, but was at the top of her list to go to. Although I’d been to New York once before, it was about eight years ago or so, and piled into a cross country trip of a million other places, so I really don’t think I was old enough or aware enough to truly appreciate the city.

Obviously, I eventually agreed to the idea. The main factor was of course how much the trip would cost. My main contribution would be the plane tickets, and she would pay for lodging, while most other expenses got split. At first, it really didn’t seem like it was going to happen. Plane tickets were pretty ridiculously expensive, which makes sense, given we were trying to leave the next day, or even that night. Eventually though I stumbled upon a pretty great deal. For $230 each, we’d be able to red eye it Friday night and arrive 9am Saturday morning, and then fly back and arrive just before midnight on Monday night, in plenty of time for my Tuesday morning classes. Well, almost. The catch, was the flights weren’t out of Santa Barbara or LAX, but instead, Las Vegas. Vegas is about a six hour drive from SB, but for a reduction in price of around three or four hundred dollars a person, we decided it would be worth it.

A few clicks and a duffle bag worth of packing later, wham, I’m in the car and headed for the state line. Now, this really isn’t the type of thing most people do on a regular basis, if at all. All I can say is they’re missing out. I was actually originally supposed to be attending a wedding and then travelling across part of the Northwestern U.S. to Yellowstone and a few other places, but due to the inability to miss summer school classes, I was unable to go. Being a bit bitter, this was part of the reason I decided to take a vacation anyway. In five weeks I potentially won’t be taking any vacations for quite a while, so given I had a sudden influx of money out of nowhere, I figured splurging was merited.

I’m quite aware I’m spoiled rotten. Never was it more evident than on this trip. Just the fact that I was able to consider it as an option shows that I’m very lucky. This was one of the reasons I wanted to share the experience with someone else.

So, fast forward to later Friday night. We have a 1am flight to catch in Vegas. We leave about 4:30pm, figuring we’re golden, might even have time to sightsee a bit, or grab some prime rib (her favorite). Survey says, errrrrrrrrr. For those who have never driven from LA to Vegas on a Friday night, it’s a real party. A party with you and about a gazillion other people doing the same thing. We actually at least smartened up enough to cut across through Santa Clarita, Palmdale, and Lancaster, but although this avoided most of the garbage through LA, there was no avoiding the mighty 15. This was actually the worst I’d ever seen it, as a few accidents in the vicinity of Baker brought things literally to a standstill. Then there were the literally DOZENS of cars on the grade between Baker and Primm sitting on the side of the road having overheated. The reason being of course, it was HOT. And I do mean, HOT. No air conditioning was being used at least in our car to avoid such a fate, but with the outside air feeling like a heat wave, having the windows open in the 90 degree or so heat (at night even) didn’t help much. It was just a swelterfest. Me being the soon to be professional navigator, I was constantly doing calculations as to what our average speed needed to be for the remainder of the journey in order to get to the airport on time. For a while, I really thought we were screwed, and was doing the mental preparation of “well the money wasn’t even in your wallet until two days ago anyway, pretend you never won it” but was still pretty bummed. As it turned out though, the luck from the previous evenings kept on running. The traffic opened up pretty much just in time, and we busted through Primm and Jean at record speed after the grade ended. We decided to park at the New York New York Casino, not only because it was funny we were going to the real thing, but the fact that their parking structure is huge, free, and close to the airport. This was the first of many strategies used to save money during the trip.

We arrived at the ticket counter to find a decent sized line, and finally got to the front right at the 30 minute deadline for the flight’s boarding to begin and the computers to be closed out. As Murphy’s law dictates, when in a hurry the gate your plane is leaving from will be the furthest possible. Luckily due to the late departure time of 1am, there was basically no one in the airport and security took like five seconds. I ended up on the aisle, which has never been my favorite (I’m a window man), but at least I wasn’t in the middle (she was, but was in between two guys and apparently was far from minding). Ah, I forgot to mention we flew JetBlue, which was a first for me. Coolest thing by far is DirectTV on the plane at every seat, with like 30 channels of live TV to choose from. Between ESPN, the Game Show Network, and MacGyver reruns, I was kept pretty busy. Of course, I also tried to sleep, but we managed to get a loudly crying baby in the row behind us, and that made it pretty impossible. This was only the beginning of problems involved with trying to sleep during the trip however, will go into more detail later.

At this point in time, it had been about twelve hours since I’d decided to leave Santa Barbara for New York City, and I was somewhere over Kansas. The most common thought in my head then, and throughout the weekend, was “Wow, I’m really here, I’m really doing this, how much does this rock.” I tapped her on the shoulder as I’d done about five thousand times in the last hour and whispered “Dude, we’re going to NYC!” with a huge grin.

The party was just getting started.

Finally Got Around to It.

Okay so now I’m updating about events that happened like two weeks ago, but I have good reason.

Upcoming tomorrow and over the next few days will be a series of posts about the most recent weekend’s events, which should be quite interesting reading.

The week previous to my coming back to SB though, I did a bunch of things, some of which I probably have forgotten, which is sad. This is why I prefer blogging the day of, and now that I have a laptop in class and get bored because the professor doesn’t talk as fast as I type, that should be much easier to do.

So anyway, other than eating like a pig, which I did a lot of, I did manage to get out and do some fun stuff.

On I think that Wednesday night I was invited to go to the Galaxy game with my Uncle, cousin, and a few other people. What most people ask me when I say that is “what’s a Galaxy game?” For those who aren’t familiar with the world’s most popular sport, the L.A. Galaxy are a Major League Soccer team. Yes I’m aware that people in the U.S. are oblivious to the sport, but I’ve played it most of my life, and enjoy it immensely. I’d never been to a professional game though, and it ended up being an awesome experience. Somehow I went through childhood only attending like three professional sporting events, a couple baseball games and a football game. I live in the city of the world famous Staples Center but have never seen a basketball or hockey game, or even a concert or anything else there. Quite sad.

So anyway, soccer in person is a very cool thing. The one thing I can't emphasize enough is everyone is extremely fast. Like, there's two speeds, really fast, and ridiculously fast. If you're not at least the former then you will just get run over. The game was at the brand new Home Depot Center at Cal State Dominguez Hills, which is where they're going to have the Women's World Cup final upcoming. It is a pretty incredible venue, I was quite impressed. Being able to play inside it must be a pretty awesome experience.

The final score ended up being 1-1, which was sad because a shutout would have meant a free dozen Krispy Kremes for everyone in the audience. Booo. For the next few days I stuffed myself some more, then decided to go somewhere else I'd never been.

For some strange reason, I live in LA but don't do much of the stuff there is to do here. Therefore one of the things I'd missed out on over the years was Universal Studios, amazingly enough. I went that Saturday with my sister and her fiancee and a few of her friends, which was actually much more fun than I thought it would be.

The studio tour was pretty spiff, as you end up seeing a bunch of these movie sets that you've seen on the big screen. Something neato about actually being there. My favorite ride was the Jurassic Park one, some pretty neat effects on it as well as a pretty serious sized drop at the end. I wanted to ride it multiple times but it was sprinkling all day, and people were worried about getting wet. Buncha wimps. Shrek 4D was also pretty fun, that's one of those where the chairs shake and spit at you and do all sorts of strange things. Also props to the Terminator 3D show, a few of the effects there I can't even explain. Ooh, and Waterworld wasn't bad either, some big surprises. If you're going to skip something though, skip the Spiderman show. It's terrible. Really terrible. They advertised that a ton I remember, must have been a lot of disappointed folks.

Okay now that that's all out of the way, big post coming soon.

Er...

Okay I lied. Gone for the weekend. Sure to be stories later, if I ever catch up.

Cleary I'm Just...

Not very good at this whole blogging thing. I mean really, these gaps are getting ridiculous.

Luckily, it's because I've been doing things like actually going to class. I'll catch up on last week later today (no class so I'll sleep in, but eventually) and then more on this week at some point as well.

The good news is, I've actually been doing things other than sit in front of the computer! ;)

A Week Behind.

Okay so I've been shafting my blog lately, time to catch up.

The last few days at UCSB really were a whirlwind. I was pretty much either taking finals constantly, or cramming for them in between. The really wasn't any time to stop and smell the roses, or realize that the nine months of eternal bliss in probably the coolest place I have ever lived was coming to an end.

That Friday around 10am I was finally done, but I couldn't really share the feeling of euphoria shared by everyone else. Not to say I didn't try though. I spent much of the day helping people move out in various ways, either carrying their loads of stuff, debunking probably a dozen beds, or entertaining them while they packed. Eventually we got my bed down too, which left a nasty bruise on a friend due to a miscue. Felt pretty bad about that one. I was then motivated enough to start packing, and did get a bunch done the day before I was supposed to leave. That night though, I came across a list of things I had planned to do in college. Unfortunately even after a blast of an evening, some of the things on the list remain unaccomplished. I guess now that I'm going back temporarily though, you never really know. Unfortunately I can't go into detail about the contents of the evening, but it was definitely a night to remember.

The next morning for some reason I woke up around 9am, pretty astounding given how late I went to bed. I decided to get up anyway and get to work again, after a brief jaunt over to check out what the morning commencement ceremony looked like. Unluckyily for those graduates, it was about 9 million degrees finally, the one day when no one was at the beach. Black gowns do a nice job of baking in the sun.

I headed back to my room and decided to actually make an effort to sell a gigantic stack of books back from various quarters of the past few years. They ended up weighing about a hundred pounds (literally) and I could barely stuff them into my huge duffle bag. I went over expecting a whole lot of not much, just hoping I wouldn't have to carry that many back because they wouldn't take them due to a new edition or something. As it turned out, $265 later, with only 4 books that were all paperback in hand, I headed back quite the happy camper.

My parents later showed up which was nice, as my room had gotten into packable order and I just sort of handed them the keys pointed at a lot of stuff and left. I did have reason for doing so, my friend was collecting on a bet I'd lost (had to buy her ice cream). Eventually we got back through the mad traffic due to the first ceremony letting out and a second one coming in, and my family and I went to go get Freebirds. I thought the night before was my last ever, but turns out not only did I have some the next morning, but there'll be six weeks more of chances to down some tacos.

Eventually after fully packing the car and checking out completely (closing the door to a bare room you'll never see again is quite emotional for me, I lay on the floor beforehand and make carpet angels) I headed over to the Thunderdome about forty minutes late. As it turned out the whole thing was running late, so after basically a strip search to make sure I wasn't concealing anything there I was with hundreds of graduates milling about the basketball courts in their gowns and mortar boards. Why do they call them that anyway. So yeah I just sort of randomly joined a line, not seeing anyone I knew after a bit of wandering. Luckily however, one of the cooler people I know here spotted me at some point, clamped onto my wrist, and dragged me over to where she and her friends were situated. This made graduation a lot more fun for me, as having someone to talk to and reminisce with is always good.

A few minutes after four they marched us out, and this was actually the coolest part of the ceremony. I thought that we just came in on the sides or along the path by the lagoon or something, but as it turned out they marched us right down the middle from the back, so that the parents were fully lined up on either side of the fenced off pathway. Thus the infamous song was playing and hundreds of flashbulbs were going off, it was a real celebrity like feel as we made our way to our seats.

I ended up in like the 5th row, which was somewhat nice because it was only a few minutes into the name calling that I went up, but somewhat lame because there were like 45 more rows to sit through. Most of the graduates actually left after their name was called, I'd say there was like 1/4 of the people left by the time the ceremony was over. The speeches were overall pretty lame, and the main entertainment came from the beach balls and tortilla throwing. I had an incident where I got beaned in the back of the head with a beach ball, so I picked it up and stood up to launch it as far back into the crowd as possible, and instead mishit it and spiked it full speed about 5 feet behind me where it socked a girl two rows back right in the face. Oops. I sat down in a hurry as the crowd went "OHHHHHHH" and the speaker became confused.

We later finally did the moving your tassel across your cap thing and voila, I was graduated. Well not really, but at least Commencement was finished. There was mad picture taking, and a lot of goodbyes to people I potentially wouldn't be seeing again for an extensive period, which of course all became not so true. My usual line was "Don't say goodbye to me, say goodbye to my hair, I'll come back at some point, my hair won't."

We then went downtown to my mom's cousins mother or something's house for dinner, which was pretty fun since I'd never met her before and she spent a period telling me how handsome I was, or something, which is always good for ones ego. Eventually late that night we hit the road, which was sort of bittersweet, because I wasn't sure if I'd be driving back in to Santa Barbara any time soon. Again, all this was pointless, as I'm going back sometime tomorrow most likely.

Oh I almost forgot, the weekend before my friend from Stanford came down to visit, so I have to give her mad props as being one of only four people from high school in four years to visit me up there. We had a total blast, as we went hiking, gambling, beaching, eating, moviewatching, and overall just having a great time. Unfortunately this was during the weekend before finals, so I could have picked a slightly more convenient time for it, but I really can't complain given she did finally drive all the way down after I'd been at Stanford like five times over the last few years. She's always an entertaining person to hang out with, and I've known her since like third grade, so I'm sure we'll be arguing over the way things really happened in the past for some years to come.

So now I'm caught up through a week ago, when I arrived home and began the wait for grades. I did manage to do some very cool things this week, but I'll save those for tomorrow.

No Really.

Okay this time I'm serious people, after more funtime shenanigans last night giving me two hours of sleep before even more funtime shenanigans all day today, I am dead tired, but I'm really going to do a big update tomorrow. Guaranteed.

Downer Post

Okay I've decdied to get rid of all the downer stuff with this post, and then post again tomorrow with all the good things that have been happening.

So things didn't turn out quite the way I planned. Most of my grades went fine, one in particular did not. What that means is I didn't graduate, and I'll have to take some courses in summer school to boost my GPA up the bit it needs. As it turns out, this isn't as life altering as was at first expected. I didn't miss it by a gigantic amount, so just by taking a couple courses during Summer Session A I could make up the ground required. To be safe I'll be taking three courses, to allow a little more breathing room. The session ends on July 31st, and my ship date is a week following on the 7th. So not a whole lot of down time there. As it is probably at least a few of the days will be spent chasing grades and transcripts around, so I'll have my final one in hand when I leave.

The living situation should be interesting, I'll be temporarily living with my good friends in their living room basically, at least for a few weeks while I try to find a slightly more comfortable situation (not necessarily for me, but one that causes a minimum of inconvenience for the people involved). I'll be commuting to school which is a pain, but gets me to stay on campus between classes and study hard.

So I don't have to say goodbye to Santa Barbara just yet. Six more weeks will be enjoyed, although for the most part my nose will be in books. The major downside to this whole issue is the $860 for tuition, a bunch for rent and food, and who knows how much for books. Theoretically though, if everything goes as planned (famous last words) I should still be shipping out on my original date for OTS. There will just be a whole lot less playtime in between. Probably would have gotten bored anyway. So all those of you who are going to be in SB for the summer, feel free to hit me up. I might even have a cell phone at that point. Egad.

Next update will include all the fun things I've been doing since and including Commencement, stay tuned.

The Happenins.

Okay so a lot has been happening. Lots of fun stuff as well as some not so good yet expected news.

I really am going to update about all of it, but unfortunately I have a 3:30am wakeup tomorrow to head down to MEPS.

Will fill it in later.

Home at Last.

Set up here, at least for the moment, as far as I know.
If you're in town, please do contact me, I get quite bored. Distance is irrellevant.
More as I get more bored.

It's Over.

Could have been better, could have been worse. Aint that always the truth.
I walk at Commencement tomorrow, and then grades are released most likely sometime early next week.
Full update as well as a look back, soon.

Simple Concept Here.

Three days. Five finals. Above average performance needed. No blogs til its over.

Time, Never Enough Time...

Yeah, blogs will be sparse for the next week or so. Well you never know I may get inspiration during a break. But yeah, three finals Wednesday, another Thursday, and another Friday. From now until then, you can guess what I'll be doing.

I do have news on another front, received my official class letter today.

Please congratulate Matthew P Wilson yada yada yada, please report to Building 1413, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, no later than 2400 hours August 12th, yada yada yada. So looks like I have an extra six weeks or so to dilly dally. Sometime in the next month though I have to go swear in as they call it, where I do some signing on the dotted line and so forth, and the years til my retirement start ticking. Course I need proof of my degree first. So yeah, priorities.

Candles Light the Way...

Okay, I'll admit it, I was glad I participated in this weekends Relay for Life. It was a benefit for the American Cancer Society, and ended up being really cool. It started at 9am on Saturday, with a bunch of fanfare and bigwigs making speeches, and then came the walking, oh the walking. Our team consisted of four people who were going to be there the entire time, and several others would would make appearance during the day. Of course during the wee hours of the morning it was just us, so there was a lot of napping and then waking each other up on the hour to switch off. The highlight of the event was at 9pm. Throughout the day they had been setting up luminaries (probably not spelling that right) around the inside of the track, which are those little paper bag things with candles inside. Each one had a name on it, and sometimes a message, representing either a survivor or cancer, or someone who had lost the fight and passed away. By the end of the night, there were by their count over 900 of them all around the track. When it got dark around 7 they turned on the stadium lights, so everything was still very bright around 8:50, when suddenly they killed all the lights, and all you could see were the candles which they'd gone around and lit when people weren't paying attention. A gigantic oval of light, one of the cooler things I've seen. They'd also set up a huge version of the word HOPE and the word CURE with the luminaries in the grandstands, so that it was illuminated as well. For the remainder of the night, as people walked the track, their path was lighted with glowing representations of people whose lives have been touched by cancer in one way or another. One of my shifts was from 4 to 5am, and I actually ended up running the first half of it, until my legs pretty much gave out. I wasn't tired, but after the dozen or so miles I'd walked throughout the day, it kind of felt like when you go to an amusement park and have been trapzing around all day and finally get to sit down in the car for the ride home. It really was one of the most inspirational things I've been a part of, though. While jogging the laps I felt like the lights were motivating me to keep going. Three of the luminaries in particular were important to me, those being my grandmother on my mother's side, my grandmother on my father's side, and my aunt. All three passed away from cancer during my lifetime. I actually ended up walking an extra half hour, as the weariness from the previous twenty or so hours just seemed to fade away.

I did a lot of reflecting throughout the day, as I ended up completing several dozen laps. Reflecting about how great life is, and how easily it is taken for granted. About how lucky I am, and how thankful I should be. And most importantly, how short our time is here, and how we shouldn't waste a minute.

Nine Fifty Five...

New PR today in the 1.5 mile, pretty exciting stuff there. Of course tomorrow I'm going to try to run a 10k as a part of the Relay for Life, so that should be interesting, twenty five laps is a lot.

Oh right, I'm down in LA, went to see another of my sister's plays tonight, and tomorrow I'm doing the twenty four hour relay thing with my whole family and some of our friends. Should be interesting.

Took three hours to get here, which sucked, but I was ecstatic to see they finished the road work in Oxnard, so Highway 1 wasn't detoured anymore. Since I saved time I decided to stop at Port Hueneme and check out the models they have out front, which I'd seen from the highway but never up close. Turns out they have a full size F-14 sitting out there, which was a plane I'd never seen up close. Those things are a lot bigger than they look. It's similar in size to the F-15, so it was pretty neat to walk around it and snap some dig pics.

It's actually been a really good few days, on a social perspective.

I really have to give a huge I love you to pieces to my friend who kept me company on a Chumash trip on Wednesday night... I was originally deciding not to go, but given how short my time is here, decided to squeak in one more trip before the final Monday, since I missed the previous Monday due to Memorial Day. So yeah, she finally caved and went with me, although it took quite a lot of convincing. Even with a paper due the next morning. How cool is she. How lame am I, is a better question. ;) So yeah, few hours later we came home with five Benjamins, largely due to a 2nd place finish in the Blackjack tournament out of 140. I ended up coming through with my end of the deal, which involved helping her out with an art history paper. All in all I had an awesome night with her, and am beyond thankful, for everything. It's really neat how amazing things just tend to happen, when you least expect it.

So yeah the next day I had a final Cranium showdown, where my team took 2nd again, mostly due to the fact we couldn't roll purple. That's about all there is to say about that. Very fun though.

I'll end with the news that it's now official, two of my best friends here are now engaged. As if enough timers weren't already running on me. Dun dun dun.

Maid of the Mist...

Fog is so cool. I love fog. Especially heavy fog. When I used to walk out my front door at home and not be able to see across the street. That was awesome. Running in fog is so refreshing. It never seems like you have a long way to go, because you can only see ten or twenty yards in front of you. Tonight was foggy. It was nice.

I'm up too late again, largely because I didn't hit the sack until very late last night. I ended up getting a phone call from someone I haven't had a decent conversation with in one heck of a long time. I've known her since 1st grade, but for the most part we always drifted in different circles, so we were never close. But geez, it's been a while since I've been on the phone for that long. Just had a lot to catch up on I guess...

It was actually nice to get a female perspective on some things that have been happening, especially from someone on the outside without any personal bias. Nothing worth talking about here really, just the same old shtick. Unfortunately I'm learning more and more the definition of the word hypocrite, from the type of person you'd least expect it from.

So yeah, was awesome catching up her, I'll have to be sure to keep in touch with her in the future, you never know when you'll need the help of one of those intellectual types. Two weeks from today I have my first three finals. Sigh.

Reviews Galore...

So here we are halfway through a long weekend, and given I'm still in town, might as well update.

On Friday I ended up catching two flicks, both very different. The first was the new one with Jim Carrey called Bruce Almighty. There was one particular scene in this movie that had me absolutely cracking up. The rest of it was pretty funny. Didn't knock me flat, but it was the type of good fare expected from a Carrey movie. I'll go with 4 M's out of 7, which is pretty good for a comedy, given it's almost impossible for them to get up to 6 or 7. I do enjoy laughing my ass off every once in a while though.

Later that evening since I ended up at a matinee of the first movie and having a few extra bucks on me I decided to go check out the fare at the el cheapo pretty much ghetto $3 theater on Hollister. The showing was Better Luck Tomorrow an independent film I'd heard a lot about. Randomly two of my friends ended up at the same show, which was pretty neat. A few of the people who had seen the movie had made comments about "asian shock" or something, given pretty much the entire cast is of asian descent. I guess the reason I hardly noticed was I've been growing up in that kind of breakdown for most of my life. I'm really oblivious to people's races really, in just about all aspects of life. The main actress was pretty cute, but I'd already heard she was 28, so that kind of killed it, even though she does look 16 in the movie. Overall I really enjoyed it, especially all the cutesy wutesy scenes involving the concept of boy likes girl but girl has boyfriend and thus boy gets shafted. Poor guy. That must have sucked. False happiness is eventually achieved though, in what I'll say is a pretty unfulfilling ending. Many plotlines are left open, so you sort of leave with a "well how is that going to work" type feeling. I'll give it 5 M's though even with the crappy ending, just because it was cute too.

I also finished playing through Splinter Cell, which ended up falling somewhat flat as it went on. Initially the idea of shadows being cast by everything, including realistic shadows cast by yourself and enemies, was really cool. Sneaking from shadow to shadow to avoid being "seen," and being able to tell what kind of weapon an enemy is carrying based on his shadow coming through a doorway, led to some really neat effects though. When it came to gameplay though, it was nothing special. The set pieces in a game like RTCW or MOHAA were much better, but overall this was a step in the right direction. Of course Half Life 2 and Doom 3 will bring all this and more, but hey, you have to entertain yourself with something in the meantime.

Next on my plate is Vice City, the expansion for Grand Theft Auto 3, which should keep me busy for a few days in between books. That is, if I can ever actually get the thing fully downloaded, which seems to be more challenging than it first appeared.

And then there were twenty days to graduation, scary thought.

Guestbook Entries...

It's fun to see that people are tagging my guestbook, but unfortunately occasionally I have to take the time to edit out certain entries.

The really hilarious aspect of people hiding behind anonymous postings, is in the private section of the guestbook site, it clearly shows the IP and hostmask of everyone who leaves an entry. This allows a traceroute that literally tells me what computer they're leaving the post from. This actually isn't even necessary, as the site tracker already shows that information, as well as what page was being viewed before this one, and what page was viewed afterwards, along with obsessive stuff like what operating system they're using, what resolution they run at, and strange tidbits like that. Comparison of the IP to previous IPs of "creative" posters show me that as much as they'd like it to seem like many people are doing it, it is really just one person, with no life. The information from these programs isn't something I analyze regularly, it just comes in really handy when identifying which loser has most recently been playing around with the guestbook.

So I will continue to delete their entries with two simple clicks, while they continue to waste their time. You'd think living in IV, they'd find something, or someone, better to do. I guess the best they can do for entertainment is sit in front of their computer talking trash in random people's guestbooks. Makes a person feel sorry for them. I'll as usual refrain from naming any names, they don't need me to announce their stupidity, I'm sure they're already well aware. The sad part is, even though they do their best to ridicule me, they've probably still returned to read this as well. Go figure.

Those of you who do feel like leaving whatever your heart desires, please do continue to do so, I enjoy reading the entries when not instantly deleting them.

Memorial day weekend upcoming, and I have no plans. Hm... Could get interesting.

Every Once In A While...

Eating like a pig is pretty fun. Knowing I was headed out to Elephant Bar last night, I just downed a smoothie for brunch and saved up plenty of room. Neighborhood Council was rewarded for their work during the year by using up the remaining money on a dinner trip. Twenty bucks a person was the limit, and we were all sure to spend all of it. For me it was some decent jambalaya as the main course, and some pretty good cheesecake afterwards. I ended up majorly stuffed, largely because we ordered almost every appetizer they had and were passing them around. I took my fill of chicken tenders, potato skins, jumbo shrimp, garlic bread, mmmm. The only sad aspect is I'd hit a new low of 184 that morning, and something tells me tomorrow weigh in will be a bit different. You never know though, most of what I ate was meat, might have used up all that energy already.

Unfortuantely I was retarded enough to miss the 24 finale as a result, but due to some miracle FX is showing an encore of it tonight at 11. Even if I forget I set the VCR, so all should be well.

Now to see if Clay takes it home, who might I add was my pick from the very beginning! And yes I have witnesses!
Edit: Okay he got robbed. Barely. The other guy was good too. I guess.

Exercise for the Cranium.

Okay so I actually got off my ass this weekend. This is a good thing.

Friday night I got an IM from a friend who was a bit on the depressed side, so given I had no plans for the evening/morning I decided to take the slightly longer than average drive to go keep them company. While in the car I heard plenty of good music, among which was Frankie J's "Don't Wanna Try." I'd seen the video the day before, pretty heartfelt stuff. Downloaded the main version that was out, but it was too quiet and had that annoying timer error where it counts too fast through sections, so I fixed it up with soundforge and now it's muy perfecto. Something very satisfying about taking something and making it better to share with other people.

So anyway, was an entertaining evening to say the least. Around 6 I ended up getting to sleep, and unfortunately plowed right through my 9am intended wakeup for a hiking trip. Then traffic reared its ugly head, and we finally got going up 154 to the trail around 2. It ended up working out though, we all took bathing suit attire so we could take advantage of the pools and rivers located along the trail. Unfortunately since the last time I was at Red Rock the rope swing had been shortened, so it no longer reaches as far out into the deeper water as it used to. I of course was smart (read: stupid) enough to try anyway, and impressed the ten or so spectators with a flying leap from way up on the bank, which swung me way too high in the air, and was followed with nice crash into the water with a good sized splash. Somehow I managed to completely misjudge where I was going to go, and thus landed right on an enormous rock. The good news is I landed flat on my ass with my legs out straight, so my whole body took the blow pretty well. That and I had a few feet of water to slow me down. Not even a bruise. I enjoyed the ovation from the grown men across the river who hadn't had the nerve anyway. The water was just amazing. It wasn't the warmest at first, but I felt that made it even more refreshing. It had been an incredibly long time since I'd been in water that didn't involve chlorine, or salt. Made it a tremendously relaxing experience. I really savor those times when I'm out in the middle of nowhere, away from everything but nature. I'm sure I'll find myself in places like that throughout my life, whenever I feel the need to get away.

Afterwards we all headed back to get cleaned up a bit (especially me, I hadn't been home since the day before) and after a bit of DDR, went over to one of their places for dinner. Scrumptious salmon was inhaled by all, along with a cookie cake representing the fact that one of them was moving to Northern California soon afterward. We then enjoyed a rousing board game which I really must plug here.

Cranium is one of the more fun games I've played, and I've played a lot. It combines a lot of different aspects into one game. It's part trivia, part charades, part clay sculpting skills, part spelling backwards talent, part blindfolded drawing, and part humming. There's just a load of different things you have to be able to do well in order to win. There's an equal number of "left brain" tasks to go with an equal number of "right brain" tasks, so you really need a team with both. We had three teams of two, but just about any number of teams and number of people per team were possible. Nonstop hilarity ensued throughout, especially during portions that involved charades or blindfolded drawing, as people found pretty unique ways of getting their partner to say the buzz word. Highlights involved my partner pumping his fist and saying "BOOM" whenever I got anything right ever, and him bouncing from foot to foot saying "I'm so happy" in a high pitched voice while trying to act like a teletubby.

This game really looks like it would be a real party time amont the Wilson family, although we'd need someone to sub in as a 6th member to have three teams. Then again two more well-rounded people might do just as well as three less-rounded people. Of course the arguments about attempted cheating and extensive discussions over exact interpretations of the rules would ensue regularly. Hopefully there will be a few more nights of such activities before I go jaunting across the country, it's hard to find things that entertaining.

The One Is Simply An Anomaly.

Interesting quote there, from tonights fare, The Matrix: Reloaded. Note, stop reading here if you really really don't want to spoil it for yourself. I'm not going to say anything that spoils plot elements, but some people are paranoid.

So this is the middle one in the trilogy, which unfortunately means there are some slow parts. They have to do a lot of explaining, and there's a lot of technical sci fi terminology, especially during the last half hour or so, which leads to a ho hum ending of this portion. Note, there are some really, really cool action scenes. Of course, you saw portions of just about all of them in the preview. They strived to top the lobby scene from the original, and unfortunately failed. But given that was one of the cooler scenes of all time, that's not altogether surprising. If fighting martial arts style is your thing, you'll certainly get your fill. If car chases are your thing, there's an excellent one lodged in the middle. If you're really into sci-fi mumbo jumbo and pondering life's questions about who we are and why we're here, you'll probably rate this one very highly. Unfortunately my personal favorite action scene is almost directly after the opening credits. Also seen in one of the previews, it's one damn cool explosion. Very much like X2 in that respect, after the open few minutes I was thinking "oh yeah baby" which was later replaced with "well thank you for explaining the origin of the matrix could you go back to kicking some ass now." Who knows, maybe I was in the mood to be simple minded tonight. Then again the original was an action flick staple, and you expect at least an equal caliber in return. I was hoping to see increased usage and innovation in the technology so heavily used in the first, and while they do use a bunch, it just makes it seem even less realistic to me. Running up a wall backflipping and kicking some guy in the face three times before you land is pretty nifty, but doing a superman impersonation and leaping cities in a single bound, well, that's just a bit less realistic. Not that any of it is realistic logically, but some is even less, you know?

Hm think that's enough babbling. We'll give the sequel 4 M's out of 7, after the original earned 5. The other night I decided to watch Clerks, due to the fact my company wanted a comedy, and I'd heard it was hilarious. As usual, I was disappointed. There were a couple scenes that were downright funny. There were a couple scenes where I found myself more interested in the posters on my wall, and found myself not paying attention to paragraphs full of dialogue. I probably didn't miss much. And it's black and white, which sort of adds to the dullness. We'll go with 2.5 M's here, because I usually say 3 is the level that it's at least worth renting if you're bored, but this isn't really one I'd spend money on.

Blew out one of the air pockets on my running shoe, quite annoying. Going to have to get them replaced, which costs money. Gr.

Crunch Time.

Okay today first of all I have to give huge brownie points to one of my friends for randomly IMing me last night and deciding to come up and visit. For those who didn't know, visiting me here at UCSB is like the coolest thing a person could ever do. To date only three people (including this most recent person) have done it, and one was required, so that doesn't even really count. We're talking like two million brownie points in my book forever. I do love randomly showing up at other campuses across California and surprising people, but being visited is just as special. So yeah this person rocks.

Okay now on to the topic of the day. Starting this week, there are exactly five weeks left. On the final Saturday, I graduate. This weekend I did a whole lot of organizing/planning, figuring out how things are going to go over the five weeks. I redid my reading schedule to include everything post midterm, and have it set up so that as long as I stay on top of it I should never have books full of reading to do like usual. I'm back on my morning workout schedule, and actually felt pretty good today even though I didn't compelte the entire workout. The repetitions I did complete had quick times, with the second 800 being even faster than the first, which is basically unheard of. I did blow out an air pocket at some point, so I'm trying not to do anything to hard until I get a new pair of shoes. Shin splints haven't reared their ugly head in quite some time, and I'm loving it.

I tried a pool workout yesterday, was pondering adding that in the mornings, and that pretty much killed my eyes, going to have to invest in a pair of goggles before I try any more of that. On the one hand it adds good cardio, on the other it will tire me out so that my workout times will slow down, and I'll feel like I'm making less progress. The good news is on the bicep curl side of things I've seen drastic improvement, it's very visible. Unfortunately while sick I've been slacking on the pushup reps, so I'll probably have regressed a week or two when I start it up again.

Anyway long story short I've set various goals, that I hope to achieve by June 14th, which is the day before I graduate.


Weight: Current: 185-188 Goal: 180
2400 Time: Current: 10:21 Goal: 9:00
Mile Time: Current: 6:38 Goal: 6:00
Pushups (2 min): Current: 45 Goal: 60
Situps (2 min): Current: 60 Goal: 80
Bicep Curl (10 reps): Current: 50 Goal: 70
Bench Press (10 reps): Current: ? Goal: 145
Lateral Pulldowns (10 reps): Current ? Goal: 125
GPA: Current: WHO KNOWS Goal: Good enough to Graduate!

So there you have it. Not actually sure where I'm at in the last two weightlifting exercises, going to start adding the lat work with my bicep work on running days, but benching will probably have to stay out while I'm doing hardcore pushups workouts every other day. I figure that should improve my bench just as well anyway. Maybe I'll throw a random set in on one of those days just to see how far off I am.

The mile time is possible, although I'm still a ways off, running two 800's separately today I only managed a 6:15, although if I was trying to break 6 in a mile I could probably eek some more speed out. The 9:00 1.5 mile is a lot more of a dream, 90 second laps for that long will probably require a bunch of guys on the track with me, along with some very vocal spectators. The last day of training before I go home I'll probably run a 1.5 mile time trial, and try to not only break the 6 minute mile barrier that I haven't crossed since high school, but also sneak under the 9 minute mark at the same time, which might be possible if I do manage the first mile under 6.

Basically if I achieve all those goals I'll be in fabulous shape going into OTS. At those levels of running pushups and situps I'll be at a 359 score out of 500, not quite the 400 I'm shooting for long run, but after ten weeks of getting my ass kicked, I'm sure it's possible. Then again most people will come in hoping it will "get them in shape" having not run more than a half mile in the last few years of their life, and not even be able to pass the 140 point passing level. Sucks to be them.

Probably the hardest goal is the 180 pound barrier. I've been hovering in the high 180s for what seems like forever. Yesterday I weighed in at 185 after a normal day of meals/exercise, today I weighed in at 188 after the same. Starting this week I've gotten a lot more serious when it comes to eating though, so I should finally start seeing the number inch downwards. No more food after 8pm unless it's the apple and banana I jacked at dinner, always eat breakfast and an early dinner, squeeze salads onto the tray instead of pizza. It's turning heads, but should do be good.

Okay have I been boring enough today talking about my health, yeah I think so.

More later about the coolest video ever I downloaded.

Unwell.

Today we start with some lyrics that were deemed appropriate due to my state of health as of late... I really like the beginning of this song, which is what's quoted below.

"All day
staring at the ceiling making
friends with shadows on my wall.
All night
I'm hearing voices telling me
that I should get some sleep
because tomorrow might be good
for something.
Hold on
I'm feeling like I'm headed for a
breakdown
I don't know why.
I'm not crazy I'm just a little unwell.
I know right now you can't tell.
But stay awhile and maybe then you'll see
a different side of me."

Matchbox 20 is the artist, "Unwell" is the title.

Today thanks to the wonders of modern technology I was able to witness the graduation of someone special live via webcast, even though I was hours away. Pretty good quality too, her sheepsih grin as she walked across the stage was readily visible. Quite neat to be able to see it even though I wasn't there. Makes me wonder how things like that may influence our future, with video phones becoming more mainstream, and live streaming video and audio being a daily part of our lives. Sounds pretty spiff. A phrase such as "I miss you" voiced on the other end of the telephone line does a lot, but seeing them smile as they say it does a whole lot more.

Thanks to post midterm freedom and the fact I haven't been able to do much because I've been sick, I've started making my way through Splinter Cell, which thus far has proven to be great entertainment. Full review when I complete it as usual.

So Annoying.

I think I'm going to start religiously stretching my neck along with everything else whenever I work out. My theory is it'll prevent the type of tweaking that always seems to happen totally randomly. Today it was getting out of bed, just all of a sudden the sharp pain, and now it hurts when I bend it certain ways. It's happened to all of us, we all hate it.

More annoying though, was the fact that my on and off sickness really came to a head last night, and I ended up awake at 1am with one of those cold hot cold type fevers goin and literally sneezing consistently every 5 seconds for about 10 minutes or so. It was so bad someone came and knocked on my door to ask wtf was going on, confused as to how I could be making that much noise. My eyes were basically water faucets, it was really pretty bad. So I did what I basically never do, which is take some medicine. Nyquil did the trick, at least initially, and I got a few hours of sleep in until about 3:30, at which time I woke up again, still not feeling too well. After tossing and turning for a while I eventually got back to sleep and slept through the night, and I do feel better this morning. Well at least I did, until the neck tweaking incident.

I decided to go ahead and workout anyway, and see how I felt. I ran pretty hard, and felt pretty trashed, but I figure it's best to keep fighting through it, as missing days just means a lot of lost time.

Found out I get to watch The Matrix: Reloaded the day before it opens nationwide, as part of a special screening at the best theater in the area. Should be sweet to totally avoid the lines and hubbub of opening day.

Now all I have to do is get better already, gawd.

Midterms. Done and a Half.

As of a few minutes ago, I am done with midterms at this institution. Forever. Now THAT has a nice ring to it.

I apologize for being MIA for a few days, as having 8am tests for me generally means staying up until like 4am. Not actually studying, just procrastinating. I then tend to actually do the studying between 4 and 8, and after taking the midterm, come home and crash and sleep the rest of the morning/afternoon. Then I get on whack sleeping schedules consisting of four hours at night and four hours during the day, which never really seems to even out.

Then if I get really lucky I forget to take Centrum a couple random days in between since I usually do it first thing in the morning but I'm not actually waking up in the morning, so wham I instantly become sick, and get to feel like a train wreck as I try to wake up to study. Then the party really starts when I force myself to go workout anyway, and do things like sets of 800s when about a half hour before I couldn't breath out of my nose.

Yeah so as fun as all that is, it's over forever. Now all I need to do is spend a couple days sleeping all day getting better, then back into the normal scheme of things, the normal scheme being of course doing nothing all day long. Ah yes, college life.

Oh yes and I've been asked to clarify my previous blog, deuces wild refers to a poker term, where all the twos (deuces) in the deck are considered wild and can represent anything. A pair of twos could be seen as 22, which happens to be how old I am as of Sunday. Don't trip if you didn't know, rare was the person who did. No worries. I don't exactly advertise.

Deuces are Wild...

And I've got a pair of them.

The Power of X.

Well, I think I got my one sob story of a blog out of the way for the year, so I should be able to avoid such boredom in the future. I was informed by one reader that they felt like they'd turned on Lifetime: Programming for Women or Days of our Lives. Hm.

On the beginning of this eve of deuces wild I give you a new movie review, X2. After waking up way too late to be productive I decided to go ahead and watch the first one, and then go see if I could haggle up a ticket for a late night showing of the new one. As it happened I managed to snag one for the latest show at 10:15, and being it was only 5:30 or so I had plenty of time to kill. I spent most of it in Borders, browsing like I always do. I actually sat down and read parts of things for the first time in a while though, which is always fun. It's amazing how much easier it is to read, and pass time, when you actually care about what you're reading, or are actually interested in it. Ah but yes the movie was quite entertaining. Your usual special effects laden action flick, although I'd have to say this one was better than the first. Not the common result generally with sequels. This is probably because they took the effects to new levels, and added some new characters to spice things up. The opening scene is actually one of the best, reminded me much of the Matrix preview that was shown beforehand. Speaking of which, that could be the movie of the year thus far when it comes to entertainment value, just the preview got a rousing applause out of the audience. Couple Thursdays down the road I believe til that one opens. All in all good stuff if you liked the first one, even if you're not a comic book fan. We'll say 4 M's out of 7.

Meanwhile, halfway to halfway, meaning I'm done with two midterms out of four, after which I'll be halfway to being done with this quarter and college life in general. If I can get through Mondays and Wednesdays, I'll be a happy camper. Unfortunately I still have loads of work to do on both, they're both essay tests. Although I have review questions the test questions will be based off for both, I still have to outline them and somehow memorize loads of historical data, since for once I won't be able to program it all into my calculator. Alas.

Oh yes and about all that from Tuesday, I suppose we'll just have to see how it turns out, not really going to be anything to report on a regular basis.

Potential.

Yes folks, scary word there. Unfortunately I'm not the type to count my chickens before they hatch. Well, actually I am, that's probably why I'm mentioning it at all.

So like, there's this girl. This girl is quite spiff. Spiff to the max. Spifferific. Then there's this boy. Boy has always known girl was spiff. Somewhere in here should be a line about boy and girl fall in love and live happily ever after.

Alas.

Outside forces currently prevent such happy endings. On top of those outside forces, boy will soon be going poof. Poor boy.

It's really strange. Like a few weeks ago I had various conversations with various friends after spending some time with said girl, and did all this talking about how frustrated I was with these "outside forces" and how I was going to just forget the whole thing. I figured that would be best, I'd leave, I'd eventually find someone else to hold my attention, and the earth would keep turning. I even went so far as to make a bet with my friend that I wouldn't talk about said girl until I left. Needless to say I'll be treating her to ice cream as a result at some point.

I must fess up, some of the recent entries in this blog have been kept out of the public eye, and instead just added into the Word document I use as backup. Unfortunately not everything can be talked about here. But I can try to explain what I'm thinking at the moment.

So what am I thinking. Hm. In the past few years, I've been doing the single thing. I've actually had a few encounters with people who were interested in more than a friendship, and had the unwanted task of turning them down. There just was never anything there. It's funny, poets, authors, and playwrights have been for centuries trying to describe what it's like to find "the one" or someone who could be "the one."

At times I can be pretty naive. Compared with many of those around me, I tend to be on the optimistic side of the scale. With regards to some things though, I'm quite the opposite.

I came to a conclusion this weekend, as I had the time of my life. There is always a possibility that at some point during my life I will find someone that is at this girl's level. However I personally feel I will never find someone above her. A lot of people will respond with "oh everyone who has a crush says that." Unfortunately I can't exactly call this a crush. She's been in my life for a decade. That's a long time. Unfortunately, there was a significant gap in our communication over the years.

This involves a really long story that I really shouldn't get into. Let's just say at one point, I was in the perfect relationship. Abruptly, it ended. The reason it ended, is no longer valid, or relevant, and has been proven so through time. Slowly, trust was regained. A friendship was built, and since then I've been happy as a clam. Always satisfied with the way things were, but never satisfied with the way things were. Always wondering, if what was once perfect could eventually be regained. Always waiting for that second chance.

I am unfortunately the slowest mover on the planet. Agressive is just not in my vocabulary. This ended up costing me, as the time ticked by, and the door began to crack open, I lost that chance, again. Had I grasped it, things might be different now. But I didn't, and it passed me by. Whether there will ever be another chance has been a constant thought. This is when I decided that it was hopeless, I'd screwed up again, and should move on and try to forget about it. This was of course, fruitless.

This is going to sound pretty sappy, but there's no way to butter it down, so to speak. I looked at my watch a bunch of times while I was at Six Flags this weekend. Normally, when I do this it's because I want to know what time it is. This time, every time it was because I wanted to know how much time I had left. Unfortunately, when distance is involved, the time two people spend together is always limited. There's always a countdown until someone leaves, immediately followed by a countdown until they're together again. The trying times in between are what break up the majority of relationships. While in college especially, the concept of wanting to be committed, rather than be out partying every night enjoying the single life, is generally foreign. After this weekend, I've decided I'm so past that, it's unbelievable. As much as I try to put up a facade that I enjoy the ability to "play the field," and tell my friends the same, I don't. It's probably been some time since I was over it.

This weekend while spending time with her, I couldn't help but imagine that we were together. The things we did, the way we talked, the closeness I felt, opened wide a door that's been shut, but never locked, for years. I literally loved every single second. I literally felt like I was sharing love with someone else. Most importantly, I felt those same feelings were returned in equal portions. The time passed like nothing. Lines just disappeared. Hours flew by. On the freeway during the ride home, all I kept thinking whenever I saw an exit, was how few exits there were left before I'd be dropping her off and drive away, alone. I really sound lame. How often is a person willing to drive hundreds of miles in a two day period just to spend a short amount of time with a friend? Willing to talk on the phone all hours of the night, and then at a single request, drop everything, get in the car and drive hours to see them? I don't think anyone would call this normal friendship behavior. There's no one else currently in my life who can make me feel the way she does. All she has to do is open the door, and give me a smile, and wham, cloud nine. Just the thought of exchanging smiles would get me barrelling toward LA. She exudes a warmth that is unlike any other. Sigh. I guess gushing doesn't help the situation all that much.

Which brings us to the issue at hand. "Outside forces" is about as descriptive as I can be without talking about anything I shouldn't be. Basically, something in her life would have to change in order for me to be a bigger part of it. Actually, there's more than one challenge involved, none of which are easy. Previously, I've always looked at them as barriers, things that wouldn't ever be overcome, and reasons why I'd never again be with her. Now, I see them as challenges, difficulties much like those faced in any relationship. The really crazy thing here, is I'm willing to change personally to accomodate many of them. For those who know me, change is not a simple thing for me. I almost always order the same food, get the same smoothie, walk the same way to class, park in the same spot, put my keys in the same place on my desk. Seriously though, if she asked me to change any of the above, or anything else about my life, I'd probably do it. If it really wasn't doable, I'd at least compromise. How sad is that, most of my friends would get some response along the lines of "yeah right, you're dreaming" whereas with her I'd have the mindset of "sacrifices must be made."

So why the sudden optimism about the situation? Well, I finally feel like this isn't a one way street. I feel she feels the feelings I feel. Great word selection there. A few of my friends when hearing about this have made the comment that "she might be playing you." Again, call me the most naive person alive, but I'm convinced that's not the case. I think a half a decade later we're back where we once were, and are one step short of what we once had. When I looked into her eyes, I felt her looking into mine the same way.

Boy am I babbling.

So what am I doing now. Well I have two midterms Thursday, some randomness I'm sure this weekend, another Monday and another Wednesday. So i'll be mostly in the books, while the days sort of pass by. Meanwhile a hundred miles away she's preparing for finals, graduation, and a trip across the country. We might see each other somewhere in between all that. We might not, and that's not something I can control very well. Forty six days from now I graduate. Potentially within ten days of that, I'll be driving away. Far, far away, with the miles growing with every step.

There's really one of two possibilities here.

I leave with a picture, which captured a moment in time where life was perfect. Ten weeks later, and whenever possible after that, I will return, to find that person who shared the moment, and create many more. I'd leave again sure, but I'd always come back. Regardless of distance, time, or troubles, my committed feelings would not waver. I would know that we wouldn't be separated forever.

The second possibility, is I leave alone. With a car full of my life and a tank full of gas, I'd head far away from my childhood home. Eager to meet my future, apprehensive about what it might bring, but hopeful that the perfect kind of happiness will eventually find me.

I'd love to say I was in charge here. But I'm not. I think it's obvious which possibility would make a dream come true, and which is really an open ended story.

So there you have it, it's out there. One of the reasons I haven't talked about it before is because it basically closes out anyone else. All I can say is this is who my focus is on right now, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

Edit: Although I'm a brutally honest person, and thus don't have a problem with letting people know how I feel about any topic in a public way, this doesn't mean that I'm comfortable discussing an issue such as this with anyone who happens to read about it. I'm sure literally everyone who reads has an opinion, and at times find it pretty difficult to refrain from voicing it. It's generally safer to wait for me to bring it up, so I don't have to make you feel bad by telling you I'm not comfortable discussing it with you. If you feel lucky go for it, but the disclaimer is there.

Best Weekend Ever.

Like, ridiculously good. It was one of "those." Friday night at midnight be on the phone, receive a request, get in the car to fulfill it. This time it was cough drops for someone who was sick. The person just happened to be a hundred something miles away. What can I say, when I'm bored on a weekend, I'm willing to do a whole lot of things most people don't even consider.

So yeah, spent the majority of the weekend with this person, and had a better time than I've had in literally months. I could not have asked for anything more. Just what I needed, just when I needed it. Currently, life rocks.

Perhaps slightly less generic details later, I'm pretty tired, not much sleep was involved.

LALALA.... Boring.

Boy do I feel sorry for my loyal readers lately. I need to like, have a hot passionate weekend or something to give me something to spam about. Oh wait, I probably wouldn't put that in here. Sadness.

I've been informed writing about running is boring. Well.

Unfortunately the story of my life for the next two months can basically be summed up in one series of words. Sleep, wake up, flounder, go running, do reps, shower, eat, flounder, class in there somewhere, read, read some more, play a game or two, flounder, watch tv, maybe read some more, sleep. I see friends here and there, but rarely outside of meals it seems like. Mondays continue to be profitable, but one night a week does not a social life make. Word on the street is a Red Rock hiking/swimming trip is planned for Saturday though, and there's potential for Magic Mountain on Sunday given the plans a couple weeks ago got "washed away" somewhow... It's kind of sad, I'm either getting work done, or my mind is nagging at me that I should be getting work done. I did find out when my last two midterms are, and I actually only have them in 4 of my 5 classes, with the first one not being until a week from today. So while everyone else crams I still have plenty of time, and am moving right along with my reading schedule.

Hey, one of you, out there. AREN'T YOU BORED TOO? Come knock at the window already, GEEZ.

Chocolate Soothes the Soul.

I actually think the above is a load of horse doodoo. Maybe I'm just not a huge chocolate fan. It's sweet, but more than like two pieces and the stomach goes swirling. Hm.

Ran a 66 second 400 on Saturday, my fastest thus far, and amazingly close to the 64 second or so lap I ran in high school. Course then by the end of the workout my hamstrings were cramping so bad I couldn't even run the last 100. I stretched an excessive amount afterwards and all was well though. I did the same before my workout on Sunday, and even though the sprints were longer, I didn't have any crampage. What I did have was leg soreness in general, probably just because between Sat and Sun I don't have the usual day's rest. I managed to complete the 4x600 workout in a combined time of 8:59, which although it can't really be compared, is a significant drop off my official 10:21 1.5 mile time. I'm always itching to see what my 1.5 mile has dropped to whenever I workout, but I figure watching the sprint times drop will be satisfying enough. The nine minute mark will actually be my goal for the most part, it would require a 6 minute mile pace for all 2400, which as of yet is not possible, but is definitely within the horizon.

We actually have a movie review for the first time in a while, as my friend was nice enough to take me to see The Hours. One thing I really gotta comment on is the music. I know it was nominated for some Oscars, and I'm not sure if score was one of them, but the music really played a large role. There's no dialogue for the first several minutes, but this haunting piano riff just dominates all the scenes. The piano is the major piece used throughout, and really helped set the tone of the movie. Speaking of tone, this is definitely not a picker upper. Can't say a whole lot without giving away plot elements, although it's pretty cut and dry, and is one of those show the end at the beginning types, and it's obvious that's what they're doing. Still though it kept me interested throughout the two hours, which is sometimes more difficult than it seems.

It's Monday, you know what that means.

Hm, Days Past?

Strange. It's not like I've been doing all that much.

I did have my last 4x400 workout yesterday before I move up to 4x600's starting tomorrow, which went quite well. I can now say I can officially run as fast as I did in high school, sort of. The sort of being I was running the sprints with 200 yard rests in between, whereas in high school as part of the mile I would have ran the 1600 all at once. But my times are comparable. So once I build up the endurance, wahoo. That was the first workout I ever really cramped up afterwards, like it even hurts to sit down because your hamstrings are just dying. I've been doing really good stretching sessions both before and after the workouts though, so there isn't any soreness. I still get occasional soreness in my shins, but almost always because I'm running on pavement for long periods rather than the track. Either that or at the very beginning of the warmup, before I've properly stretched and such. I'm very happy about my progress.

Upcoming weeks get pretty ugly. The setup is Tuesday Thursday Saturday Sunday, with Thursday and Sunday being the heavier workouts of 4x400 for example last week, and Tuesday and Saturday being shorter speed workout such as 1x400, 1x300, 1x200, 1x100. Sounds easy, but if you're really bookin it, it's still pretty draining. That and you have to tack on a mile or two afterward as a warmdown, which is really good for getting used to running while absolutely dead. It doesn't really leave any time for seeing how my 1.5 mile time improves as I go, but it should be pretty obvious as the workouts lengthen. This week I go to 4x600, and then as the weeks pass it goes to 4x800 (this should be bad), 4x1000 (this should definitely be the worst one), 8x400, and 8x600 (um, gasp). The final two weeks of the schedule I've been working at actually tone down the workouts, maybe to just maintain the level of endurance rather than overdo it. Basically has you run the first rep at top speed, literally race pace, and then still do a few more lengthy reps after that, such as 1x1000, 1x1000, 1x300, or the final one of 1x1400, 1x1000. One thing I should mention is in these later weeks the rest period between the reps is a mere 25 or 50 meters, whereas in previous weeks such as the 4x1000 the rest was up to 400 meters. Basically as the distances increase, the rests decrease. Easy way to build endurance I suppose. So somewhere down the line in about 7 weeks I should be in pretty awesome shape when it comes to running the 1x2400 (1.5 mile) I'll be scored on.

Hm, have I babbled enough about running yet, yeah I suppose.

Meanwhile I'm sticking to my reading schedule, although I have a bunch to catch up on this weekend. I felt pretty trashy today, think I missed a day of Centrum a couple days ago and got your typical common cold. Did get some sun in, and got a really funny squarish shaped sunburn in the middle of my back where I guess I couldn't reach with the lotion. It's small though, just kinda funny.

I went over and bought all the graduation stuff required, including announcements, the cap and gown rental, the diploma cover, and all the stuff they end up basically forcing you to buy with it. I also decided to splurge on a ring, for as I also said in high school when I bought that one, I'll probably only buy three rings in my life, one of which I won't even get to wear, so I might as well buy the other two. It's dang spiff if you ask me, but of course won't get shipped until just before graduation, so I can't enjoy it just yet. Hearing all the workers over there say congratulations to me like eighty times for graduating sort of caused it to start sinking in, but given how much work I have left to do, I don't think it'll be until the end of that last final that I can truly enjoy it. Meanwhile, rise, run, rep, eat, class, read, sleep, repeat as necessary.

Man, I slept like ten hours last night, took at least a three hour nap, and am now probably going to easily sleep through the night again. I really need to get better and get back into eight hours a day and feeling great.

Two Days and a Hundred Years Later...

It's funny how sometimes when you finally sit down and look at where you're at, and figure out everything that's wrong with the way things are, it makes it so much easier to see what's right.

I've had a really good couple of days, spent with really awesome people. Yesterday someone came to visit me in my room, which is always a pleasant surprise. She stayed for quite a while, and we just talked about this that and the other thing. She's just a very cheerful person, and it's so easy to crack a smile whenever I'm around her. We eventually went to dinner which I inhaled given I was to meet a friend at the 154 for our usual Monday night jaunt at 5:30. I was even sly enough to jack a full sandwich from Carrillo to eat on the way back which worked out nicely. It was raining, but I actually like driving in the rain. Much less monotonous. Chumash for the second week in a row was kind, with me walking out being up a total three times what I walked out up with last week, which is of course even better. Going to be pretty tough to triple the winnings next week, but you never know. Unfortunately for the four of us playing in the tournament, no one made it past the first round, although we all had "big fish" stories to pass around. I personally think I got robbed worse than anyone, with a 19 on the last hand while all in against a dealer 8, which then became a 16. Thus any card other than a 3, 4, or 5, and I would have won. Ten out of thirteen times I'd have gone to the second round, unfortunately this was one of the three times I wouldn't with a 3 popping and making the old lady's day at the other side of the table. All four of us had fighting chances in the last hand though, so it was a shame no one went on. By my count though I've played probably in about 8-10 tournaments costing me 40 or 50 bucks, and thus far have won $400 worth of winnings. Still a good $5 wager with a 10 to 1 return. On the way back since we had two cars involved due to one of my friends meeting us there since he works in Solvang, one of them was nice enough to ride with me back over the pass so I wouldn't have to go alone. We split up two and two and were off again through the rain, and I actually became engrossed in conversation the entire way back about my previous blog, the stage of life that I'm at, and just everything going on. She is actually in a somewhat similar situation and was able to relate, which was great. Was just good conversation, yet again.

Denny's was the flavor of the evening once we got back, and we had the usual fun making fun of my friend's special ordering that is quite extensive, with the usual reference to my previous joke about the fact she might as well "ask if they have a kangaroo in the kitchen." You kinda have to be there and in a certain mentality, but hey. I also found out the long distance phone card I've carried in my wallet for years expired in 2001 and has just been taking up space, go figure. Haha, I just typed fo gigure. That's hilarious. Anyway. Apple pie ala mode is the best. After more trash talk and storytelling alas it was time to head back, which was sad because it was now 11pm and I of course had homework due at 8. I'd had a great day though, so I decided to put it off til the morning and wake up mighty early. Before I did though, I got an IM from another friend wondering how the trip had gone and how I was doing, which was nice. She's definitely the person most like me that I've met this year, which makes her very easy to talk to. She'd swelled up her ankle like a balloon a day or two before, which really sucks, I remember the days of spraining stuff, it was never fun.

This morning 5:15am was when the watch went off, which was of course pretty obscenely early since I didn't actually hit it until around 1. I managed to get off my ass though, and better yet do the couple chapters of reading and understanding concepts required, and then figure out and finish up the homework, a half hour before it was due even. I even had time for breakfast! After a relatively uneventful class of going over stuff I'd already read (she collects homework at the end and despises people who come in at the end just to turn it in) I turned it in and headed over to the reccen and track. I've added an arm curl regiment to my workout, as that's one of the weightlifting exercises I'm a decent gap behind what I'm going to have to be at during fighter training. I figure biceps are easy to develop and look good anyway, so might as well get that started. The bench press will probably take care of itself as my push up reps climb into the several hundreds a week, but I'll probably check at some point to make sure I'm up where I need to be. Most everything else I'm already at the level I should be or beyond, so I'm not too worried. The track workout was pretty uneventful, other than feeling like I was going to die as usual. Managed to double the length of the warmdown, although it's still half the length of the recommended one. I've been doing the same initial week's sprint workouts for two weeks though to get better acquainted with that type of workout, so I should be up to speed next week. Lap times continue to fall.

So then I head off to my 11am which I was finally able to add last week. The lectures are pointless, but my main goal was to find someone with the reading list so I could copy it down. As it turned out the first guy I asked was extremely helpful, even letting me know about a homework assignment that's due a week from today and letting me copy down both it and the syllabus/reading list. With that info in hand and having scheduled out the reading for that class up through the midterm, and feeling much better about that class in general, I headed off to go check mail. That is when I stumbled upon my friend from my Writing 109 group, who I've run into now and again since then. Although she'd probably kill me for bringing it up again, she was the one who donated the golf ball sized bump to my forehead a few months ago during a heated racquetball match. :) Although we see each other occasionally, I really haven't been able to get to know her all that well until today. She was tabling for the Princeton Review, so I basically just kept her company when she wasn't helping a patron. I was initially only going to hang out for a little while, as I was hoping to get home and go to sleep immediately, not waking up until around 6 or something. As it was I ended up staying the entire time she was working, for no real reason at all other than the fact I was enjoying her company. I got to hear a lot of good stories about her life, and share some of my own, and it's weird, I just felt like I was actually getting to KNOW know her for the first time. Rather than just being a casual acquaintance, she actually feels like a friend now, you know? She's just an awesome person in general. It's bizarre, I go and complain about lacking these types of connections and then I just start falling into them left and right. Go figure.

I also must mention while I was outside the library one of my bestest friends stopped by as well, cheerful as ever. I don't get to see her too often since she lives off campus, so I value all the times I see her more than ever. She's just the type of person you wanna squeeeeeeeeesh whenever you see them.

So there you have it, Sunday I do all this whining about lacking real friends, and within two days six of the coolest kind make appearances. Life isn't all that bad.

Taking Stock.

I yoinked that heading off a sibling's blog, it just sort of fit what I'm trying to do here.

So I've been pretty irritated lately in general. It's just sort of come to a head this weekend because I got flaked on by a few friends who were supposed to go to Magic Mountain with me today but waited til the night before to decide against it. That, and like every single person I've talked to ends up annoying me. I'd call it PMS, but well, that wouldn't make much sense.

I had a phone conversation last night with someone for over two hours. I used to have those kinds of conversations all the time with people. Be it on the phone, or just sitting someplace, we'd talk about anything and everything, whatever was on our minds. I never felt like I was wasting time, I always felt I was gaining something. The people were smart, knew what they were talking about, and even if our opinions differed, helped me learn why. Those types of conversations seem like they're becoming fewer, and fewer. The conclusion I've come to is while in college, I just haven't really connected with anyone. There are a select few who I feel are on the same wavelength, but other than that, it's like I'm a stranger in a strange land. In high school these types were for some reason, easier to find. Many of them I still keep in touch with today, and whenever we meet up we end up just hanging out for hours. In college, everything seems forced. I do things with people because it's better than being alone, but I'm not necessarily happy hanging out with them either. Granted everyone I know could potentially take that last line personally, but if they do, they're clearly not one of the select few mentioned above.

This is probably all becoming more clear because of my impending departure. I am at a stage in my life where everything will soon be changing, and I will be too. It's actually quite sad, although I still see myself keeping in touch with literally a dozen people I met in high school while I'm away, I really don't see that happening with those I've met in college. A few sure, but given the dozens I've become acquainted with here, the fraction is miniscule. People just don't seem like they're on the same page. I know where I'm going in life, I know what I'm doing, I know how to get there, I know what's required, I have the motivation, and I'm on my way. Most people I know, are just stagnant. They don't know what to do with their lives, what comes after college, or why they're doing what they are already. Some are more concerned with whether or not their significant other remembered an anniversary than whether or not the US is at war.

That's the other sad thing. I'd love to say that I thought all of my friend's relationships were going to last forever, but call me a pessimist, or a hater, or bitter, or whatever, but some just make me laugh. That someone can possibly be so shallow as to think that it will actually work in the long run, that they will actually get married and have kids some day. I'm not going to go into specifics, and given almost every single one of my friends here is in a relationship of one stage or another I'm not speaking for the whole, but some people are just being stupid. Yeah, it's my opinion, yeah, I may be proven wrong. I just wouldn't put money I earned on the happier ever after result.

When someone is that engrossed in something doomed to fail, it just makes me feel detached from them in general. If they're willing to expend all this energy on a waste of time, then are they really going to go anywhere in life? Am I ever actually going to learn anything from that kind of person, or are they just dragging me down? The obvious defense is I haven't dated in college, so I don't know what I'm missing. My phone conversation last night was with someone who over the past few years has run into a few unfortuante circumstances with a few different members of the opposite sex. Although we are near the same age in our lives, they have taken a much more proactive stance when it comes to trying to find a relationship that works, while I have not. In a way, the person has taken what has come to them, and only later found out it wasn't the ideal situation. Whereas I've simply been the most picky person ever, not even making the effort unless there's extremely long term potential. Arguments can be waged for both strategies. One causes pleasure follow by pain, but you learn as you go. The latter merely means you don't date until you find one of "the" ones. It was interesting, as we talked it seemed we both were leaning towards using the other person's strategy, due I suppose to the grass being greener on the other side. In reality though I don't know which of us has ended up better off.

It's been close to three years since I've been in any kind of serious relationship. Three years of college mind you, which I've spent surrounded by thousands of people my own age. How is it possible I haven't found someone on my level, seeing things on the same wavelength, being at the same stage in their life? I have no idea. Granted, there's still time. Also granted, I'm leaving, but seriously, if I thought the person was the best thing that ever happened to be, distance would not be an issue, and neither would time. I've done it before, and I'd do it again.

But alas, the challenge is the search, and the chase. Meanwhile I'll keep meeting people who are more worried about what they're going to wear, or how many pounds they need to lose, or why President Bush is an idiot for wanting to kill American soldiers on purpose so he can get more gas for his SUVs. I suppose I could give a long drawn out rebuttal to why these people are stupid, but frankly, if they're stupid enough to think it's true in the first place, it's not like saying something to deaf ears will improve anything.

I'm often asked what single value I'd look for in a partner, and honesty always comes first. Everything begins with trust. I've never really thought about the second one though. Based on all this, I'd have to say ambition comes next . That's one of the most admirable qualities a person can have.

Are you out there? You who actually has a clue? You who know where you're going in life, have a plan, and are making it happen? You who are actually informed, intelligent, and ambitious? You who will always be teaching me, as well as always be learning? If so, please feel free to contact me. I'll be waiting.

Okay Children Gather Round.

I'm going to tell you how to play a very fun game. It's called "Chase the Add Code." It has been occupying my time over the last several days as we have now reached the end of the second week of classes.

See, you spend all four years of college looking forward to the quarter you are a graduating senior. Why you ask? Because that's when you have the highest priority when crashing a class. If a class is full, especially in the econ department, they generally close it after a certain number of days from the beginning of the quarter, and then the ONLY way to add it is via a four digit add code. It doesn't matter if there are spaces on GOLD, our registration system, unless you have a code. The codes are turned over from the department to the professors, who can then at their discretion add the people they want. In most cases, the people are prioritized by number of units, so that those seniors who need the class for graduation are able to add it first, and those freshmen who will have years to take it another time get shafted. However, you might get really lucky. You might have say, 171 units, and be only 9 units off the required total for graduation. You'd think with that total, you'd have an exceptionally high priority. You'd figure most classes would have plenty of add codes to give out, and you'd be safe getting any class you wanted. You'd of course, be wrong. I made the mistake of thinking I was going to be able to add a course on personnel economics, the one I was looking forward to taking because the professor was actually coherent. As it turned out, he wasn't going to add anyone over the fifty person limit for the class, because he uses two labs for the midterm and final which are computer based, and there are only fifty computers. Thus, he only had two add codes he was going to give out. Still I attended a few more classes, expecting to be one of the two, before finding out on Tuesday that the two unit totals receiving the codes were 213 and 208. I was under the impression they kicked you out after 200 units. Apparently not. So, for two days I scrounged around for basically anything that was upper division econ that I could add so I could graduate. Eventually I went over to the Phelps labs to actually check out the computer situation for myself, and discovered there were in fact 26 computers in each lab. Armed with this information, I eventually tracked down the professor's office hours, and sat outside the room for an hour waiting for them, as they happened to be the same day. "Not all of them might be working on test day" was what he told me. So I notice that he is also teaching 100C this quarter, and ask him if he's adding people to that. All too willingly, he gives me a code immediately. I'm at first ecstatic, but decide this is a little strange. I log on and check the syllabus. "This course is aimed at students with a serious interest in economics (as distinct from business), who may be considering graduate study in that field." Uh oh. That is so not me. I read more. "Some of the material we will be reading is very advanced ... economic research in its original form of journal articles ... everyone will be called upon and expected to participate since the class size is small ... thursdays I will randomly call on you to present your answer to the discussion questions or to discuss the supplementary reading" Basically worst case scenario here in my book. Luckily after a few days of e-mails, I manage to get an appointment with another professor who teaches 106 and 114 for today at 10am. I show up and basically give him a partially true story about how I was enrolled in his class, and then dropped it, and later tried to readd but couldn't because it had been closed. In reality it was because I tried to add 152, and got shut down. He asks if I'm a graduating senior and when I'm graduating, and then gives me the predictable line of how he's had literally dozens of people he's had to say no to. Then however, to my utter amazement, he pulls a sheet out of a drawer and says that one person who he was going to give one to didn't show up, so he has one last code to give out, and might as well give it to me.

As of about 11am this morning, I am finally enrolled in 20 units. Of course I had to go get a refund for the 152 book, and by the 106 book for the second time (which was a little more expensive) but it's a small price to pay. Friday has been a very good day. Thank goodness. Now all I have to do is get some decent grades. Oh by the way, I've heard from inside sources that basically no one gets below an A or a B in 106, so it's nice that 106 was the one that I ended up with. That's now three classes that should be automatic B's or better, with the other two looking fine as well. Eight weeks to go.

Some Shoutouts.

This'll be fun. Some shoutouts to those I know, in completely random order. If you can guess which one's you, huge amazement points.

Shoutouts...
To the blue jean baby.
To the luscious lips.
To my polar opposite.
To the retard.
To a great mind.
To the star.
To the one I miss.
To big red.
To the dreamer.
To the blinks.
To my partner in crime.
To the late night rendezvous.
To the old one.
To the older one.

And no, I'm not telling.
While I'm at it, a shoutout to myself...
To the dork.

Sunny, but DAMNIT WIND!

These past few days I've been getting my sunbathing on, but unfortunately the wind has made it more difficult than I'd like. I actually never did talk about the trip I took to the beach the day after I got here, which was a lot of fun. Although I was forced to show off the interesting tank top shaped tanlines I have from hiking last summer, it was the beginning of trying to get back to a monochrome exterior. Four of us ended up making the fifty yard or so walk that takes you from my front door to the water's edge, and took a tennis ball so we could all destroy most of our arm muscles trying to show each other up, and then whine all through the day following about what's sore. I eventually had the pleasure of being buried by two fine young women, a rare opportunity I of course took advantage of. Reminded me of the ol childhood days. The only thing I didn't do was dig a huge hole, but the sand was packed pretty hard with water not too far under, so a significantly deep hole wouldn't have been possible. Unfortunately much of the recent attempts at sunbathing have been thwarted by the gusting winds, which tend to slam the sand into you like thousands of tiny needles while you like there not bothering it at all. The gusts actually got up above 35 mph one of the days last week, which is impressive enough to make it pretty rough biking back and forth, especially in a crosswind as you try to avoid the retard freshmen on their cell phones.

They also finally opened up the pool here in the complex, which should be quite nice. Already invaded the place a few times, and it's nice not having to go all the way to the RecCen to get my swim on. Yeah seriously, how spoiled am I, half a mile via bike is too far, fifty yards is the maximum effort I'm willing to put out. Sad. I actually have been following some periodization schedules put together by a fitness trainer and incoming Officer Trainee who frequents one of the OTS forums I keep up with, which have been good for keeping me on track for hitting my goals in the running and strength events. Now I just have to keep with it, and watch the reps pile on and the minutes pile off.

Darn, was gonna post this before midnight, I flunk!

Doh.

I wore the same pair of jeans today and yesterday, and it was only tonight that I noticed the long size sticker was still on the side of my right thigh. Almost two full days and either no one noticed, or no one told me. I'm guessing the latter happened more often than I'd like. Sadness.

Finally Friday.

This week has officially been the longest ever. Mainly because I've been going to even more classes than I've been scheduled for, trying to decide which ones I want to take. After talking with the econ department I found out that you can basically take any six econ upper division electives you want, which is contrary to what the business economics major sheet says, which acts like it has to be two from each of three groups. This would have been really useful information last quarter, I could have actually been taking things I thought were really interesting rather than stuff just to fill requirements. So given this new freedom I checked out just about all the possible classes before deciding what to add.

I finally settled on two of my classes because I had the teacher last quarter, you just read a whole lot and then write an essay test midterm and final, and if you know what you're talking about you get at least a B, which was my grade last quarter. I don't mind reading, the classes are right after each other MWF in the same room at 8 and 9, so no real effort is required other than the usual getting up early. One is on the economics of ancient civilizations like Egypt and the Middle East (111), which is interesting, and the other is on the economics of Europe prior to 1850 (112A), which isn't really. Given prior to 1850 means everything from 8000 BC really, and economics didn't even really exist until much later, thus far it has been mostly a history class. History is somewhat interesting though, and easy to absorb and write about, so I'll live. The one required class I had to take was 134A which is Corporate Finance, in which all the lecture notes are online as well as the reading that should be done out of a decently fat book. The concepts don't seem altogether difficult, and there are weekly homeworks assigned but not graded for which the solutions are given, so that will keep me on top of what's going on and prevent me from falling behind. Then there's personnel economics (152) which was a really great find. The teacher is coherent, and not only can I understand what he's saying, but I can read what he writes on the board. These are two very rare qualities in professors these days. He goes through the usual concepts and formulas, but then also even throws in numerical exampls to make everything much clearer. Usually teachers of this kind of class give you all the boring derivation of the formula that no one cares about but is "more important" and then leave you on your own to figure out how to use it. Given that's what you're tested on, it's quite annoying. So yes, this guy rocks, and the class's concepts seem easy to learn. Last on the list we have um... Man there have been so many it takes me forever to figure out what the fifth one is every time I try to describe my schedule. It's 180 which is International Trade. My 8am TR class, this is taught by a female professor who clearly knows what she's talking about. She moves pretty quick, but thus far the concepts have all been based on what I already learned when studying Global Economics in AcaDec. Actually I'm pretty sure the whole class will be a review, barring some more in depth topics. I'm tellin ya, the knowledge from AcaDec will be helpin me forever it seems like. Unfortunately aerodynamics and aviation weren't subjects, so during my training I'll be learning as I go.

So there ya have it, twenty units with 8am every day. Whee. Three sections even, when barely any upper division lectures have sections. Lucky me. But it should go alright, unlike last quarter there is no real class where it's like "wonder what I'm going to get in here cuz I have no clue" type situation. Obviously I'll know more after the first set of midterms, of which I think I have like three on the same day. Always nice. The good news is I got out of having three finals on the same day, which would have been much worse. Instead they're all over the place with one on Monday at 11am, two Wednesdays at 8am and 7:30pm, as well as two 8ams on Thursday and Friday. So having three 8am finals on the last three days of finals would usually be lame, but given I'm doing that all quarter it will be nothing new. Besides which I have to stay around for commencement anyway, so it's not like the last final is keeping me here anyway. Would have been nice to have a few days to enjoy myself though.

I'm almost caught up in writing about what I've been up to, prolly by tomorrow will be all up to date and can start writing about things when they happen instead of weeks later, yay!

SREEPEE!

I'd blog a bunch more, but I promised myself I'd finally go to bed before midnight and actually get a full eight hours of sleep rather than the seemingly more common four or five. More in the morning.

Geez, Life Busy Blows.

Okay so if I don't start catching up with this I apparently never will, so here we go.

Last Friday (am I really this far behind, so sad) I headed up to Snow Summit again for my second snowboarding trip of Spring Break. This time I went with my father, who is a self proclaimed "mastur skier." We got there basically as early as possible, and were greeted with pretty much large slopes of uncut ice. For those who have tried snowboarding on ice, it's really not the prettiest picture. Luckily as time went on the sun gave it a decent slushy type surface, which made it about a hundred times easier to dig into the curves on the steep stuff. Ended up spending a great deal of my time on the "Miracle Mile" as they call it, one of the intermediate runs down from the top, with relatively steep sections thrown in. Confidence came even quicker than the previous trip, and I managed to find a better way to carve toe to heel edge than I had been previously by bending my knees a little more and changing my arm position.

Unfortunately not all was paradise, as I managed to suffer the worst accident yet in my relatively short lived thus far career in the snow. Was zipping along across one of the easier runs, when I came across a flat section all snowboarders know and love, where you are skimming along a sheet of ice in the shadow and then plow into a section of slush in the sun. I'm not even sure what exactly happened, as is generally is the case when you eat it while hauling ass. Something dug in, the momentum kept me flying forward, and eventually my board went flinging over my head as my arms flailed around in the air trying to break my fall. They didn't, and I dropped out of the sky to land square on my shoulder and eventually skid to a halt in a heap. The guy who had been following me chimed in with a "Holy sh**, that HAD to hurt, you alright dude?" and a few other people took notice, with my father eventually joining the party as well, having missed the entire thing while trying to avoid a tree further up or something. Luckily other than some major back soreness for a day or so there wasn't anything major wrong, and I was able to continue through the rest of the day. We ended up leaving before 1, which gets you something like twenty bucks off your next trip, which will be nice. It also doesn't seem to expire, so I'm sure I'll make use of it at some point, even if the weather doesn't improve enough for another trip this season. It did rain today, so who knows.

Driving up PCH on Sunday on one of the hottest days in a few months wasn't very intelligent, but apparently driving the 405 and 101 wouldn't have been much better, judging from the radio dj's description of the "worst traffic jam EVER" on the 405 North at Sunset. Ended up taking about three hours instead of under two like usual, but what can ya do. The ocean sure was beautiful in the meantime.

While I was at home I got to spend time with various high school friends I'll probably only see once more if at all before I leave, so that was nice. I'm not a real fan of goodbyes, but guess I'll have to get used to it pretty soon here.

I'm still in the process of deciding which of my classes to keep, as I found out I have a few more flexible options than I thought I did, so I'll finish updating on what I've been doing since I've been back a while later.

What, Did I Get A Life Or Something?

For once I actually have a lot to say but haven't gotten around to saying it. Strange. 8am classes every day this quarter will make things interesting, but Tuesdays and Thursdays will be especially interesting with class from 8-9:15, 11-12:15, 12:30-1:45, and 5-6:15. Wee. Will update somewhere in between all that mess.

It's Goin Back, Back, Back, To the Wall.... GONE!

Back to UCSB I go.