Reality Returns, Eventually.

But we still had a bt more fun to have. Being renergized by the show, we got to wandering again, and decided to head a bit further downtown to check out Union Square and NYU as well as Greenwich Village, a suburb known for its artists, poets, and playwrights, a place my friend felt right at home, and could see herself living in someday. Again, it was pretty late at night, but there was still hustle and bustle around the square, so we grabbed a seat on the steps leading into the park to just take it all in. There were some stunt bike performers that were pretty good, some random skateboarders showing off their moves, and just a truckload of youth from the city all talking about their latest and greatest exploits.

After hanging out there a while and pondering the meaning of a series of numbers on one of the buildings and eventually figuring them out, we got our walk on and continued South. After cruising through Greenwich Village and checking out NYU and discussing how nice it must be to be richy rich, we deicded it was time for a snack. She had some sort of tiramisu concoction, while I went with a simple cup of jello from the little market on the corner. I hadn't had jello for a really lengthy period of time, I'm not sure why. Jello rules. Having walked something like a couple miles by that point after the show going by the fact that twenty north south city blocks is a mile (a nifty fact I found in one of the guides I was reading while bored on the subway) we decided we'd call it a night. By this time we were subway pros and easily hopped on, transferred, and eventually hopped off at the closest stop to our hotel, er, hole in the wall we were making failed attempts at sleeping at.

The next day we wasted away most of the morning doing something or other, and eventually got our act together and headed downtown again. Having seen nothing but each other for the past few days, we decided it was time to split up at City Hall and handle a couple of our priorities separately. She really really really wanted to go shopping, and thus headed for a few of the areas north of there known for it, and I headed southwest towards the former site of the World Trade Center. I didn't really have any interest in shopping for bathing suits and whatnot, and she felt a visit to the site would bring up emotions she'd rather not, so we agreed to meet back in a few hours at a prearranged location and call each other's cells if there were any changes of plans.

The WTC site really isn't hard to find, you just look upwards and look for an obvious gap between several buildings, something found nowhere else on that end of the island. The one thing I regret is not having a very good memory of my visit to the WTC several years ago. I vividly remember the view from the top, and some of the inside lobby and whatnot, but I apparently never really paid attention to the surrounding area, or what everything looked like from the outside. Thus while I was standing there at the viewing wall looking out over the expansiveness of the site, I didn't really have anything to compare to. It was obvious though the devastation that had taken place. Most of the site had been hollowed out by repair crews, so you could see the outlines of the former two towers. All along the viewing wall there were sections where they showed pictures of the area in its former glory, as well as detailed accounts of what had taken place, and long lists of all those involved in the tragedy. There was a dull silence over the area, which was unlike anything else I saw in New York. Whereas elsewhere everyone was on cell phones, chatting, complaining, everyone in the general vicinity of the site seemed pensive, thoughtful. Rarely was the silence broken, even those passing out fliers did so with respect. Everyone seemed like they were in their own little coccoon, thinking about how the events of September 11th affected them personally, or those close to them. It really doesn't seem like it was that long ago, although closer to two years have passed. It was shortly after I began this blog, in fact. I eventually wandered around the circumference of the site, over to the World Financial Center. From an elevated position there I snapped a few digital pics, hoping to someday return to the same spot and see the site rebuilt as it is planned to be, with a huge observation tower as the central pinnalce towards the sky.

I then had the worst smoothie I've ever had in my life from a place inside the WFC, which I shall never return to again. It was absolutely terrible, I'm not quite sure how a smoothie could possibly taste that bad. Blech. Finding myself on the west edge of the island, I decided to walk down the esplanade alongside the Hudson river. It was filled with joggers, corporate america execs with their laptops open on the park benches while wolfing down sandwiches at the same time, and many a cell phone conversation. It was quite a neat place to walk, lined with trees, towering skyscrapers just on the other side, the Statue of Liberty standing stoically in the distance across the river. I ended up walking around the entire lower coast area of the island, through Battery Park and all. I probably walked more that weekend than the previous half year combined. There were a bunch of neat memorials set up in Battery Park, including one with this massive statue of an eagle that was really neat and earned a picture. From there I wandered over to the infamous Wall Street, and saw more of the world I'll never fit in to. By this time it was getting closer to the meeting up time with my company, so I took one more detour over to the Brooklyn Bridge, and then headed back to City Hall. There I found a little grassy spot under a tree, and watched dozens of squirrels skirting around the plaza. They were pretty brave, willing to come right up to you in case you had food to toss their way.

Eventually my company returned, with many a story about how her all black outfit had earned her compliment after compliment as she wandered around, and how she could attest to the bravado of men in New York. Her ear to ear grin was really something else, just goes to show what a random compliment to a stranger will do for them. It was late afternoon now, and with a 9pm flight, we figured we should try to avoid the last minute heroics of Vegas by heading back in the general direction of our living accomodations then. We ended up snagging some dinner at this Indian restaurant nearby, at which I understood nothing on the menu outside of the descriptions of the items, yet ended up having one of the most scrumptious meals I've had in quite a while. Something about the spices they use make everything yummier. Our flight was at 9:30, and we grabbed our stuff from the locker and headed toward the subway around 7:30, so we figured we had it made.

Well, maybe if someone else had navigated. Although she said it wasn't my fault, we ended up on the A train, but when the track turned south towards the airport, we kept going straight. I noticed this basically immediately and whipped out the map, and noticed that A trains served both the section of track we were on and the one that led to the airport. A helpful passenger on the other side of the car noticing our predicament mentioned that only certain A trains go to the airport from the previous stop, and we had needed to get out and cross over to the other side of the track to find one. This appeared to be a minor gaffe at first, as there were only two more stops on this run anyway, after which it would head back to the transfer. We decided to just wait it out, but unfortunately there was a good 15-20 minute delay at the end of the track before it began heading back, instead of the usual 5 second delay at most stations. By the time we got to the bus station at the airport that would take us to the terminals, we were pushing 8:50 or so, dagnerously close to the 9pm cutoff. We were hoping they wouldn't do all the stops through the long term parking they'd done on the way out, but no such luck, although we did end up skipping most of them. Oh the best part was we didn't know what terminal we were in, so we had to guess between the 1-3 bus and the 4-6 bus. Having paid no attention when we arrived, it was literally a random selection that put us on the 4-6. Blind luck put JetBlue in terminal 6, or we really would have been screwed. Still, it was the last stop by the bus, and by the time we had gotten off and were running toward the ticket counter, it was 9:15. There we were informed that the computer is locked out thirty minutes before flight departure, and that the flight was closed. Should have seen our faces sag. There were no more flights that night, so we were in quite a bind. Luckily the pity card apparently worked, as the worker called up to the gate to check the status of the plane. Apparently they were still loading the last bit of fuel and hadn't actually closed the doors yet.

I'm pretty sure I broke some sort of land speed record for a man carrying large amounts of luggage while sprinting for the gate. My company wasn't too far behind, although she was complaining loudly that her pants were being dragged down by her duffle bag, or something. We made it to security and tried to hurriedly get all our stuff on the conveyor belt and walk through, at which point I was blocked hard by the security personnel. Apparently the custom there is to remove ones shoes and put them on the conveyor belt as well. Given I didn't and apparently looked suspicious, I got to sit in a chair for a few minutes while they waved some sort of swab around my shoes and then put it into a machine that took a while to give a readout. In the meantime the security woman commented on the fact that I was shaking. I told her I'd just run a quarter mile and had probably another quarter mile to go to catch my flight that might have already left. After that she felt bad and tried to expediate the process. Then it was off to the races again, with our gate of course being much further back in the terminal. Somehow though, we made it, and were the last ones onto the plane before the doors closed.

As it turned out, there were only about twenty people on the flight, so they allowed us to basically sit wherever we wished. This was a good thing, for when we arrived at our assigned seats, there was at least a four hundred pound young man in my assigned seat by the window, who was also using at least half of her seat in the middle. When the stewardess asked us if we minded sitting anywhere else on the plane, we gladly obliged. Having our own row worked out quite well for her, as that sprint through the airport had tuckered her out plenty, and she ended up sprawled across the seats asleep for the vast majority of the trip. I wasn't complaining too much though. After all I did have the window on a night flight, which is a damn cool thing when you're flying over metropolitan areas. Sleeping on the flight back really would have been intelligent, as I'd volunteered to drive the first shift on the way back to Santa Barbara. Unfortunately I'm never very good at sleeping on planes. For some reason though, I wasn't all that tired while on the plane. I guess the entertainment was good, or something was occupying me, or something. Oh I should mention that this was the liveliest flight I'd ever been on when it came to the excitement level of the passengers. Obviously this was a flight towards Vegas, so that's probably expected. When they were doing the safety demonstration and announcing the names of the men and women of the crew, people were literally giving them rousing ovations. You'd hear like "in the middle of the plane we have Steve" which would be followed with cheers and whistles and "YEAH STEVE ALRIGHT STEVE!"s from all over the place. I heard the person working near us say "wow, now this is is a first." They also made the monotonic weather reports and whatnot much more fun, by adding a second voice yelling things like "FIVE DOLLARS ON RED" in the background of the mic. I really had a good experience with JetBlue as a whole, and will definitely be checking them out as a possibility for future flights.

Eventually we landed in Vegas, although we lacked the excitement of most of the other passengers. After it was the end of our vacation and we had a long drive in front of us. First though we had to get back to the New York New York where our car was, so we decided to hop into a taxi. Now apparently, the fares basically double that late at night (around midnight). This was almost a big problem, as I only had $11 in cash on me, and she only had $6. Luckily it ended up being $15.80, although it was like $8 before we even got out of the airport. I'm not sure if they take cards or whatnot, but we certainly would have had a small problem if they didn't and the fare had gone much higher. Next came an amazing feat of self control, I actually walked through the entire casino without playing a cent, and went directly for the car. Of course, we were beginning to feel like we were going to keel over, so getting on the road as soon as possible was a good idea.

The car was still there as predicted by me, and so after dumping all our stuff in the back, we got comfortable and headed out of the structure. At the next stoplight we participated in an interesting "luck" ritual that is apparently a tradition for her in Vegas or something, although given I didn't gamble any more after that it remains to be seen whether it had any effect. Luck did shine on me in the fact that her car had cruise control, which is always nice to make driving long distances much more livable. We actually only made it about a half hour without stopping, as she was quite insistent on having some prime rib before we got too far, so we stopped in Jean, a place I'd driven through a bunch of times but never actually stopped at. I managed to leave my wallet in the car (I always take it out when driving so I don't end up with a large dent in my butt), so I yet again avoided gambling. Had a pretty decent meal for that early in the morning, and then we were once again on her way. At this point my company conked out for basically the night.

Long boring story short, I ended up having to stop in Baker, Barstow, and various other small towns along the way to wander around outside doing jumping jacks and whatnot to wake myself up. I even tried one of those double caffeine drinks Monster something or other, which is one of the worst things I've ever tasted outside that smoothie in New York. That eventually had an effect, and by the time the sun came up I was feeling much more livable. I got a call from my friend who happened to be heading out to Bakersfield that same day, so we probably passed each other somewhere on the 126. Intent on flipping him off or at least high beaming him I kept an eye out, but never saw him. I eventually stopped in Fillmore, deciding to finally put my foot down and actually make her drive the last forty minutes or so. Upon trying to wake her up though she was quite insistent that she would get up and drive in fifteen minutes. I then made the mistake of going to sleep, and two hours later we were still sitting there. I was now pushing being late for class, which would have been really pointless given if I was going to miss it I should have stayed somewhere like NYC or Vegas. With much complaining and after much provoking she was up and at em and driving the rest of the way. After dropping me off at the place I was staying and giving me a big hug she was off to her place, and I went inside, picked up my backpack, walked back out and drove to class. And so there I was, sitting in class again, four days later. I'd been from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and back.

No story about this trip would be complete without a bit more on the company I brought along with me. When it comes to spontaneity, she is head and shoulders above the pack. She's pretty much the only person I would have considered asking to do something this crazy. And I am so glad I did. I did do a lot of pondering about whether it was a good idea or not that Friday, eventually talking to an old guy friend of mine who wholeheartedly recommended it. The really amazing thing about the trip, was that I never got bored of hanging out with her, and better yet never got into any kind of significant argument that might have taken away from the fun. She's a very open minded and agreeable person, so making decisions about what to do or where to go never created any problems. Okay I admit it, aesthetically she probably makes me look better walking down the sidwalk next to her too. Don't get too excited though, we are very different people, and that just wouldn't work. As friends come though, she's one of the best kind. When I do finally leave here, I'll miss her.

So, chalk up another experience into my list of the greatest things I've done in college, which at some point in my life I'll get around to posting. Not until college is over, though.

Five Hundred Twenty Five Thousand…

So yeah, eventually we get off our ass the next day and hit the town again. Our first stop was the Nederlander Theater, to try to snag tickets for that evening’s performance of Rent. Upon being successful at that, we hoofed it over to the lower west side docks, where we’d read in a brochure there was a cruise type thingy that circled most of the island and showed you the major sites. As it was it turned out to be a slightly longer walk than expected, which was pointed out repeatedly by my company. :) Manhattan as a whole though is only two miles wide at its widest though, so if you’re somewhere in the middle it’s not like it’s a gigantic distance to get anywhere. Besides, easier to enjoy the sites if you’re moving slowly.

We eventually made it over to the NY Waterway cruises I believe it was called, and bought two tickets for the 90 minute half island dealy. Basically the 90 minute one goes halfway around the island via the southern end and then comes back, whereas the 2 hour and more expensive one goes all the way around the circumference. We decided all the cool stuff was on the southern end anyway, and we’d rather see it all twice. It was a gorgeous day, so we decided to hang out on the upper deck of the little ferry ship thing. They had a narrator who would go through all the different things we’d pass by, and give all sorts of need facts or inside stories about the buildings, bridges, and monuments. He was really good, didn’t sound bored at his job or anything, which made the cruise really enjoyable. I learned a lot about the different aspects of the city I never would have known before. Zipping underneath the massive bridges was pretty nifty, that’s not a view you normally get. The thing that worked out best for us on the cruise was the view of the Statue of Liberty. As we found out earlier, they had closed the statue to visitors, so you could go to the island, but you couldn’t go up in the crown or into the pedestal or anything. As it was, the boat took us right up to the front of the statue, basically as close as you can get without being on the island. Being up close and personal was really cool, and mad picture taking took place. I’m now even more glad I had the experience of going up in the statue during my last trip, as since September 11th, no one has been able to share that experience, and it’s unknown whether it will ever be reopened. It was also pretty trippy checking out the former World Trade Center site, and the gaping hole that it left. More on that later as I visited it the next day.

We eventually made it back to dry land, although I had really enjoyed just sitting on the sundeck zipping along with the wind in my hair. We then discovered the free bus (oops) that ran from the ferry service to the main bus terminal over by Times Square where we’d just walked from. These things are always useful after the fact. We got plenty of exercise during the weekend anyway, that was a good thing. It’s kind of sad that I’ve waited so long to write this, I’m sure I’m forgetting about all sorts of cool stuff that happened. Blah, next time I’m taking a laptop and updating every night. ;)

I’m not entirely sure what happened in between, but eventually we ended up back at the Nederlander Theater just in time for the massive line to start moving in. Our seats were assigned so it wasn’t a big deal we were near the end. As it was we were up in the mezzanine a bit towards the left, but I didn’t really mind. The orchestra level was all flat, so being in the back of that a person is probably way worse off trying to see over everyone. There was a decent about of depth and height to the stage as well, so being above and able to look over the entire expanse was advantageous.

Now I am a loser, and thus even though I lived in Los Angeles the majority of my life, I have never been to see a major musical that has come through. I’ve always talked about it, but never gotten off my ass and done it. So this was the first real musical I’d ever seen. I am now very sorry that I’ve wasted so much time. Coming out of the show, I really really wanted to extend my vacation a few days so I could watch at least a few more shows. It was just phenomenal. There were times when my mouth was hanging open for minutes at a time. Some of the performers were just unbelievably talented. Both male leads harmonized really well, while also dominating the stage when singing solo. I actually think that it’s better that I’d heard virtually none of the music going in, it really created a more powerful effect as I was exposed to it for the first time. The sound system in the theater was just out of control. We’re talking LOUD. Even I was impressed, and I tend to only enjoy it if I can FEEL it. There were literally a few times that I thought one of the performers was going to blow out one of the speakers, or at least an old lady’s eardrums in the audience. The most obvious example was the soloist during the one song I had heard previously, the signature piece “Seasons of Love.” The performers all walked out to start the second act after the intermission and lined up on the edge of the stage, and just stood still and sang their hearts out. For me it was reminiscent of “Heal Their Hearts” in Riverdance, the song that doesn’t involve any dancing, just a large group of motionless singing performers harmonizing. Interestingly enough, according to an insert in the playbill we received it wasn’t the normal performer in place that night for the soloist role. Whoever it was though, she just dominated. I was never more impressed than during the thirty seconds or so that she simply took over the stage. They basically had to hold up the next scene for a period while the crowd just went crazy with applause, cheers, and whistles largely supplied by myself. The show was only halfway over though, and I ended up loving pretty much the whole thing. After returning home I snagged the soundtrack by the original Broadway cast from a friend, and was playing large portions of it several times over for days. Some of the music even got better the more I listened to it. Seems like every time I listen to it all the way through I discover a song I hadn’t listened to so closely before, or it just moves me in a different way. My personal favorites other than the aforementioned in random order are “One Song Glory,” “Will I?,” and “What You Own,” as well as of course the “Finale B” immediately after which the crowd goes nuts. When it comes to getting stuck in your head though I’d have to go with “Santa Fe,” which is a catchy little tune by one of the secondary male leads about opening up a restaurant that I’ve been annoying my friends with repetitively for days now. As I mentioned before, when I came out of the performance I was revitalized, the energy level in there was infectious. The fact that you pop right out of the theater near NYC’s Time Square helps too. HIGHLY recommend this show to anyone who is ever in New York. I hear the travelling performance is pretty good to, but as they say, nothing beats the original. The fact that the show has been at the Nederlander for its entire seven year run makes it even cooler than I managed to see it there. At least download the music and give it a look see, you won’t be disappointed, there’s something for everyone.

We’ll have one more pause here, and the next post will finish up the story.

Where The Ball Drops…

After a quick power nap, we were up and at em again and ready to take on NYC at night. Although we still weren’t exactly loaded with natural energy due to lack of sleep and jet lag, the adrenaline of being in one of the world’s greatest cities counterbalanced that pretty well.

Our first stop was Times Square, a place I’d actually never been, due to the fact that on the previous trip I’d decided venturing out to the Statue of Liberty with my father was more important than traipsing around midtown, which is what the rest of my family ended up doing. I’m certainly glad I came back, because it is definitely a cool place to see in person. It’s somewhat like the Strip in Vegas when it comes to the lights, but on a much grander scale. Since the street isn’t as wide, the buildings tower much higher around you, and the neon rises far into the sky. The really weird thing is visiting these places you’ve seen on TV a thousand times, and being able to actually see what the cameras are filming from your own perspective. I still don’t think I’d want to mess with Times Square on New Years Eve when its wall to wall people, but being able to watch the ball drop on tv and see places I’ve actually stood or walked is a pretty neat thing. One thing we noticed though was restaurant prices are like doubled in the area immediately surrounding it. Our initial attempt at a late night meal was foiled by $20 TGIF entrees, and we eventually ended up at Sbarro or however it’s spelled, for those yummy and amazingly unhealthy stuffed pizzas they have. Afterwards there was just a whole lot of wandering around and staring, at the lights, the people, and the billboards. Two in particular caught my eye personally, one was an underwear model I didn’t mind staring at for a while, and another of an Infiniti G35 coupe, what I consider to be the sexiest car on the road at the moment. Isn’t that the true representation of a guy, being able to stare at a car almost as long as a beautiful woman. Almost.

Eventually my company was able to tear me away while making various comments, and after snapping a few pictures we headed a few blocks over towards Rockefeller Center. This is yet another famous place that is fun to visit in person. It’s featured in a truckload of movies, including Home Alone 2 as I remember in particular. It’s the place they go nuts with at Christmas, with the monster tree and massive lighting setups, as well as where they put in the ice skating rink in front of the famous sculpture fountain as I recall. The main building of the Center is lit up at night from surrounding buildings, and is really a dominating presence. The flags of what seems like all of the world’s countries line the square, and the sound of water from the various fountains emanates throughout. We actually ended up spending a long time there, just sitting at a central location in front of one of the fountains, looking across at the expanse of the square, with the dramatic skyline above. As it had become much later, there were few people wandering around, so there was a drastic difference in atmosphere between it and Times Square. Instead of car horns and the sounds of multiple languages, the ear was greeted with running water and a cool breeze. This was actually one of my favorite moments of the entire trip. Just sitting someplace, stopping to smell the roses, and not only having random good conversation with someone, but also having an equal amount of enjoyable silence. That is the best comfort level to reach with someone, where you don’t feel the need to fill space with babble, but instead can just enjoy each other’s company without saying a word.

I didn’t keep track of how long we actually sat there, but soothing was definitely the word to describe it. Eventually we tore ourselves away and decided to go wandering. She had wanted to go check out a club her friend mentioned, but on the way towards its supposed location we kept running into stores that were closed but that she loved, and thus had to stop and glue her face to the glass for a few minutes each. Eventually it was decided we'd just continue to wander until we get tired. We hit up a good portion of 5th Ave and Park Ave, and just sort of aimlessly picked routes around the city. Strangely enough even though it was like 1am or something at that point, there really wasn't the kind of scumminess abounding that I was expecting. At this point we both figured out we had a stack of voicemails that had appeared over the last few days unnoticed, so we returned a few calls. Whereas she had a great time with "GUESS WHERE I AM" questions, I chose to be a little more discreet until my return, since there are a few people directly related to me who tend to worry about their offspring in foreign cities. I did keep various people informed as I mentioned previously though, so its not like I was doing anything majorly stupid. Spontaneous, but not stupid.

Eventually we caught a subway back to the hotel, hoping to find a slightly cooler room. It wasn't, so we had fun attempting to sleep until the next day, when we'd be hitting up the Statue of Liberty and taking a cruise around Manhattan, as well as trying to snag tickets to the Broadway production of RENT. To think this was technically only the end of day one of three.

Just to update on the rest of my life, taking various midterms, attending various classes, doing various workouts, and being variously bored. If anything exciting happens I'll be sure to post about it in between sections of the story. It just aint happenin.

Erm, Short Intermission?

Okay I'm horrible. Almost a week gap, so lame. Unfortunately been busy with midterms. I have some more of the story typed up though, will post tomorrow sometime.

Nyuck Nyuck.

Unfortunately due to the combination of the excitement of flying, which is always great fun for me, and the baby going off behind us, I didn’t get much sleep on the way over. They had a nifty little channel on the DirectTV that showed where you were over the U.S., and I had fun tracking our route from time to time. At one point I’m pretty sure I was pretty close to directly over my parents who were on a trip of their own to Colorado and Wyoming. I of course hadn’t yet informed them of my own trip, so I found that hilarious. I’m not irresponsible though, I kept in touch with a few people after giving them my itinerary, in case things didn’t go according to plan.

Eventually, we did touch down at JFK on schedule, around 9am EST. This is where the real fun began for me. For once, I had no actual travel plans, no perfect routes, no strategy for getting to major attractions in a certain order or time period. Upon touching down, I was at an airport I’d never been to, in a city I’d only visited once, years previous. I actually didn’t even have my license at that point and thus didn’t do any driving, and have no idea whether we even stayed on Manhattan or somewhere else. So, my skills as a navigator would get a pretty good test throughout the weekend.

The first challenge was how to get from our gate to the subway, which apparently involved taking some sort of bus. After wandering around a couple terminals following the big Buses sign, we eventually found our way to a pile of people hanging out under like 10 signs all talking about different kinds and numbers of buses going various places. Of course none of them said “Subway” which would have been nice. After asking someone for help (yes even I do it occasionally) we figured out the yellow topped bus is what we needed, and were eventually merrily on our way. The subway system of payment was pretty easy to figure out, we decided buy 5 get 1 free should work out pretty well initially.

I really need to say something about how cool subways are. If Los Angeles had subways, the concept of traffic would be easily avoided. I don’t know why millions or billions haven’t been spent to make everyone’s life a little easier. They’re just the coolest things ever. You pay the $2 fare (which is the same whether you’re going 1 stop or from JFK all the way uptown), wait for the right train, up it zooms, open doors, walk in, close doors, and within seconds are zipping right along. For many people this might be an everyday fact of life, but for me this is something I’d love to be able to do as a commute. Not only is it easy and brainless, but you can be doing whatever you want since you’re not having to drive, like read. Even if you’re bored, there’s always relatively constant entertainment moving through the cars as you’ve probably heard. The system when you first look at it is pretty complicated, as there’s trains numbered 1-9 as well as like A-F, so figuring out what stops where and what destinations require transfers takes a bit of puzzling at first. The real catch is later in the evening after rush hour half the trains stop running, so the train you thought would take you isn't there, and the stop that you wanted to get off at gets skipped. Overall though, since Manhattan is set up like a grid, you just need to figure out whether you’re going uptown or downtown, and then make sure to go down the subway entrance on the right side of the street, when you’re facing your destination, so you’re sure to end up going the right direction and not end up on the wrong side of the tracks. Well, at least it sounds simple in my head. So yes anyway, subways are my preferred method of transportation.

Eventually we pop out at 110th street, right on the corner of Central Park. This was very neat, as I’d never been to Central Park. More on it later. The address of our hotel was on 107th, but the map I’d had didn’t have addresses, so I wasn’t really sure where along the almost a mile gap between the park and the Hudson River our hotel was. Figures it was like five blocks uphill. We actually blew by the place initially as I had read the address wrong, and had to backtrack, one of the minor navigation gaffes of the weekend. It was easy to miss though. Now, the way that we picked this place was surfing Expedia I think, sorting by price and reading the descriptions. Thus it was pretty dang cheap given it was on Manhattan. Now, the phrase you get what you pay for has never been more prevalent than in reference to our hotel. It was more like a foreign exchange student hostel. I heard no English spoken the entire time I was there. There were six floors, and we managed to get a room on the sixth. Heat rises, people. I’d say the room was about seven feet by maybe twelve feet, honest dimensions. There was a window, but 99% of the time no breeze was moving in or out. I’d estimate the temperature in the room during the day to be about 95 degrees, and during the night around 90. This was really the sole downer of the whole trip. The bed was slightly bigger than a twin, but certainly not a double. Some sort of 1.5 person style. Thus nights (or days depending on the sleeping schedule) consisted of being as naked as possible, lying inert on top of all the blankets and trying to ignore the heat and somehow fall asleep. This was not easy, and I failed most of the time. The bathroom by the way, was shared among half the floor. College dorm style I guess. It actually wasn’t all THAT dirty, and thus I can probably only put this at the second worst accommodations I’ve ever stayed at, behind the piece of trash in downtown Berkeley I stayed at once.

Oh I forgot to mention, we got to the hotel at 11, and found out checkin wasn’t until 3. Big bummer. We’d been travelling almost a full day, and just wanted to take a nap, but as it turned out had to stuff our bags in a $5 locker downstairs and go wander around.

We first hit up an Italian sidewalk café, where I had some lobster ravioli which was a new one for me. Very tasty stuff, although they lost our order for about 45 minutes until we said something, and then proceeded to be completely out of what she ordered so she had to order something else that took even longer. We were slightly irritated given we’d gone a long time without food, but that was a mere hiccup in the cheerfullness of the trip that was over as soon as our tummies were full. We then wandered up to Columbia University, which was apparently a place her brother was considering and thus many pictures were taken. Pretty neat looking place, lots of too rich for words people walking around snooty and proper.

After that we decided to go get a better look at Central Park. This is easily my favorite park I can remember. If I ever live in NYC, I’ll have to live within a mile of it, or it just wouldn’t be as amazing as it could be. The thing is gigantic. You could have 10k routes setup through it for each day of the week without repeating any paths. You can easily travel from flat pavement to a sloping trail to a granite rock face in the course of a few minutes. There are lakes and ponds, just a truckload of wildlife, and enough sunny grassy knolls to satisfy even the most avid reader. It really is a neat place to hang out. Unfortunately having packed light I had no running shoes so I couldn’t take advantage, although given the blistering heat that probably wouldn’t have been a good idea anyway.

Eventually checkin time came and we wandered back to discover the room as described above. Tired, full, and hot, we decided to take a nap and attack midtown later that evening. Not much sleep was gotten, but I can’t really complain. After all I was in New York City, at least SOME sacrifices had to be made.

Obviously nothing interesting has gone on in my life since I returned, so I'll keep posting sections of this as I write them.

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.