Pride in oneself: More complicated than it sounds

5 November 2006 (Remember remember, the fifth of November)

1:33 AM

...I don't even know where to start.

I suppose I should try to pick up from my last post, however long ago that was.

My mind is off Fran. I made a habit of checking her page frequently after I put her on my Top Friends list on MySpace, so in order to break that cycle, I simply took her off that list. We barely ever talk anymore. I don't really mind. I've come to the conclusion that people who claim to be bi are really homosexual, but haven't come to terms with it completely yet. Excuse me for being so blunt.

I joined the 'stunt team' at my school... Yes, stunt team means cheerleaders. I am a dedicated cheerleader at Durango, and I couldn't be more proud of it. If you can't fathom the concept of Vaniah being a male cheerleader, then you should stop reading this blog and get the fuck out of my life. Thanks.

It's really a lot of fun - and harder than you'd imagine it to be. When you're at a game and you see those girls lift one of their own in the air, you don't really think about how hard it might be to lift and balance that weight. Now I know from experience. I'm a back spot, and it's hard work, especially when the others know what they're doing and you are the newby, who's trying to figure out what you're doing wrong. Also, I used to be confident in my tumbling. Now all I can think of is how I do everything wrong and how I wish I could fix it.

My classes are getting harder. Every weekend, I tell myself that I'll sit down and concentrate on the work that needs to get done. It never happens, and it's probably going to be my downfall in this upcoming quarter. I even skipped a day of school just yesterday because I didn't have my homework done. Not only did that make me feel incompetent, but I felt even worse when my mom wouldn't let me go to the school later that day to go to practice. It's one thing to let yourself down. It's completely different when you're part of a four-person stunt group and your teammates can't practice efficiently because you're not there. I hate the feeling of letting others down.

I intentionally hooked up with someone last weekend for the first time in my life. The major problem with it though is that the girl likes me. A lot, apparently. Just tonight, my friend came up to me and told me that I need to stop leading her on, because it's tearing her up inside. I wish it were just that easy to listen to myself from the inside. In truth, I can't tell you what the fuck my deal is. I could sit here and tell you like all the others that I just haven't given myself the time to think things through and consider the pros and cons of the girl and her qualities. I could mention that other girls run through my mind possibly more often than she does, particularly a girl on the cheer squad, who may be the first black girl I've ever considered myself physically attracted to - something that I find intriguing on my part. I could tell you, as I just told my friend no more than ten minutes ago, that there are times when I just don't think this girl is my type, whatever that may be, because of the things she does or the way she acts. But the thing is, I'm sure everybody's fed up with my excuses. I can't fucking tell you what's wrong with me. Everybody seems to like this girl but me, and it's so hard to dig deep down inside and find the answers as to why. In all honesty, I don't know.

Am I afraid of committing myself again? Am I just interested in partying with people all the time and being free enough to dance with whoever I want and to look at whoever catches my eye? If so, then why am I constantly thinking, "When will that girl come along? The girl who steals my soul and who I give everything to... The girl I love enough to lose my virginity to..."

I really didn't think I could place this many sporadic thoughts into such a comparatively short blog, but I think I've done it. I credit the alcohol in my system with such an accomplishment.

Best of luck...

Take it easy, but strike hard [If I'm not going to, then someone has to]
Vaniah Schwenoha

So Yeah

21 September 2006 - 11:30 PM

It turns out keeping her off my mind is much, much harder than I imagined...

Over the weekend, I found a few songs that just fit me right now. They are "Worry About You" by Ivy, "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz, and "Goodbye My Lover" by James Blunt.

I think about her just as much now as before homecoming, if not more. Those songs give me that kind of feeling you get when you're with someone you love.

Is love too strong a word right now?

Here we go again, back to basing the extremity of emotion on time.

You should let me show you me.
You should let me love you.
Before the time comes that we go our separate ways.
Before I lose my mind.

My name is Vaniah Schwenoha, and I believe in hope.
I believe in chance.
I believe in love.
Could you believe in me?




On a separate page, I want to mention in here that I am registered to participate in America's Walk for Diabetes on Saturday morning. If you can spare the money, it would be much appreciated for you to sponsor me. Just search Durango, find my name, and click the 'Sponsor Me' button. Sponsor me and I'll... sing a song for you to the best of my abilities. Yes, the song can be of your choosing. No, I can't guarantee that you'll be thoroughly satisfied. Still, the money goes toward a good cause, and if you sponsor me, I'll wear a shirt during the walk that extends special thanks to you for your donation.

Thanks for reading. It means a lot.

Vaniah Schwenoha

You can’t avoid being on the receiving end 100% of the time

18 September, 2006 - 9:00 PM

Read on, dear children…

Eighteen days. So much has happened in the past eighteen days. I’ll try to pick up where I left off, but truth be told, I can only really remember the highlights of the past eight days…

School has been a bit tiresome. This is mostly my fault. Over the first weekend, I was supposed to compose a project for English in which I find quotes from famous writers or philosophers and use them to describe me as a person. Well, it wasn’t until the night before the project was due that I decided to start. It took at least five hours to find good quotes, select the ones I liked best, find pictures to match the quotes (some of which I took that night), and compile a video. It was lucky that I didn’t count on not having to present the next day, because after I managed to save a good file, the video editing program that I was using came to its 30-day trial period expiration. If I had waited another day, I’d have had to use Windows Movie Maker, which is much less efficient at editing, at least when it comes to picture slideshows. The best copy of the video that I could save is here. I actually liked doing this project. It would’ve been much better though if it didn’t leave me awake until 4:30 in the morning. The next day, I was able to get my hands on Chris’ laptop and present the video to the class. I received 100% because of the visual aide used.

Other than that project, I’ve just been procrastinating everything. My sleep schedule’s all fucked up. I tend to sleep in the day and work at night. I really need to find a schedule where I’m not winging it every night, scurrying to finish homework that should’ve been done days ago. I’m still not caught up in French, which, by the way, I totally forgot over the summer. Mitch, Mike, and I have made our best efforts to continue what is basically my only physical workout by going to SkyMania every Friday. I’d have to say that the first significant event since my last blog was when I asked Fran to homecoming. With it being the technological age, what better way to ask her than through MySpace? Haha! I couldn’t just leave any ordinary comment, though, so I went down to the store to get some Post-It Notes and cut together this video. I left her the comment on the Thursday before homecoming week, but didn’t get and answer until the next Monday because she had to talk to her parents about it. So what was her reply? Gee, why don’t you click the link to my MySpace on the side of this blog, view my pictures, and tell me =P

So now it’s the Monday before homecoming. As always, this means that it’s the day of the Powder Puff football game! I was a cheerleader again, since it’s always fun to make an ass of yourself in front of your peers and total strangers. Besides, I was there to cheer on my homecoming date, who played in the game =D

Like last year, I attempted and executed a new trick this year. I can now do a round off back tuck. Last year, I learned to do consecutive back handsprings. Justin and I also did this cool thing where we roll over each other. It sounds weird, but trust me, it looks hella cool. The cheerleading coach saw me flipping and asked me to come by one day and try tumbling with them. I’m still thinking about it. I need more stable time management first. The game ended in a tie, which I thought was extremely gay. I think it’s the first time in Durango history that that’s happened. We should’ve gone into overtime… After the game, Cody took me home.

I forgot to mention that last week, I was nominated by my Government AP class to be homecoming king. Voting for court was on that Friday, and voting for king and queen was on the following Tuesday.
I wasn’t on court =(
Fran was, though, which was pretty cool because she got a free ticket to the dance (I sound hella cheap here. Sorry).

Tuesday was the student-teacher kickball game, which I think we lost. I didn’t go. Wednesday was the student-teacher basketball game, which I also didn’t attend. I hear that the students won, but someone rigged the scoreboard to give the game to the teachers. Thursday was our first assembly schedule and pep assembly of the year. It was good overall, but very fast-paced. I understand that we only have about 35 minutes, but when you start singing The Star Spangled Banner while people are still walking in, I think you’re taking it a little too far. We got out a few minutes before the school day was supposed to end, anyway. Friday, we had what was called a pep rally in the courtyard. It turned out really shitty, and I hope we never do one again.

Here come the majority of activities, and in such little time. Right after school, I went with Chris and Billy to a movie. We saw The Black Dahlia. It was a pretty good movie. Afterward, I walked a few doors down to buy a corsage for Fran. Last minute = not such a good idea. Seriously, how smart was it to buy a corsage from a florist on Sahara and Fort Apache? After my purchase, we went to the tailgate party in the school parking lot. Here is where the night seems to fall apart horribly, though I still don’t feel all that bad about it for some reason.

Friday was a particularly windy day. So windy, in fact, that by the time we got to the school, the senior homecoming float was obliterated. It didn’t even end up getting driven around the track. Juniors won both float and hallway decorations. I didn’t feel like paying for the game, so I hopped the fence in one fell swoop. It was either here, when I was kneeling to take pictures of the game, or just stupidly watching the game while sitting that my PSP managed to leave my pocket. Near the end of the game, I noticed the soft case still in my cell-phone pocket, but the PSP not in the soft case. There went at least $350, not to mention the huge set of songs I had prepared to play in the hotel room on Saturday. Take that and factor in that we lost the game by a touchdown. Fran didn’t win homecoming queen. Ally LaRoque and Luis Marin were the king and queen. Overall, not such a lucky night. I still don’t know why I don’t seem to care that much. Hopefully I’ll have money sometime in the next year to buy a new PSP, haha…

It’s now Saturday. I set my alarm for 10:30, but didn’t get out of bed for at least another fifteen minutes. First task was to get the car washed. Who wants to wear a suit and drive around in a shit-covered vehicle? After I got home, I continued with a few more details on the car, and then showered at 2:00 to get ready because my mom was going to shower at 3:00 to get ready for work, and I wouldn’t have had enough time if I had showered after her, especially since I had to take her to work. After I did take her to work, I picked up Chris, my corsage, and then the night officially started when we picked up Nickie, Chris’ date for the night.

From there, we went to Lotus’ house, where everybody was supposed to meet to get on the party bus. Neither I, Chris, nor Nickie were scheduled to be on the party bus. Why were we there then? Well, I actually was scheduled to be on the bus, but so were Fran, Azaria, and Leon. It wasn’t until earlier that afternoon that we confirmed that none of those three were going to be able to get on the bus because of scheduling problems. Well, I didn’t want to leave Fran without her date for the majority of the night, so I pulled out of being on the bus. What about Chris and Nickie? Well, I’m the one that hangs out with Chris more than anybody else who was going to be on that bus, and because I wasn’t going to be on it, it would’ve been that much more awkward for Chris to be there, since he wasn’t going to drink or anything like that. Chris is discovering his transportation situation in the same way that you are, by reading this blog.

We still haven’t addressed why I was at that house. Well, like I said, it wasn’t until just a few hours prior that it became clear that there were going to be four less people on the bus than planned. So four times the $45 each it was supposed to cost… The group was short $180. This was in large part my fault because I assumed the group knew that Fran, Azaria, and Leon weren’t going to be on the bus. I felt bad for this, so I agreed to help make up the difference by giving Lotus $100 to help pay for the bus. After hanging out there for a little bit, Chris, Nickie, and I left and went to Fran’s house, where I thought I’d be picking her up. Things once again didn’t go according to my plans. We still have video of her walking down the stairs and of me putting Fran’s corsage on, but it was still decided that Fran and friend Kristen would be leaving the house in Fran’s dad’s Ford Mustang Cobra, which her dad would be driving. It was a bit weird driving around without my date, but hey, whatever. Everywhere else I went I was close enough to her =)

So, after taking pictures in front of an awesome car, we took off for the dance. I felt like a dick trying to keep up with a Cobra in my Explorer, but whatever. At least my car looked good – just washed =D
We were at the dance from 7:00 to 9:00, whereupon we left right after the first slow dance for our reservation at Ricardo’s for dinner. That was one of the funniest dinners I’ve been to. The highlight of it was when Azaria wanted to get a picture of her taken with her hands forming the initials ‘C.M.’ Well, from the front, your right hand is supposed to form the C. Azaria clearly thought differently, and we argued for at least five minutes on the matter, laughing the entire time. She still wasn’t convinced after we took a picture and showed it to her. Desperate, she called to the waiter and asked, “Is this a C?” while holding her left hand up in front of her. To this, the waiter replied, “That is a hand.”
We were almost on the floor in laughter =D =D =D
What was worse that when he actually did decide to cooperate, he took her side. Haha! Finally, we all agreed that your right hand is the one that forms the C. This is where Azaria tried to prove her point further by holding up her left hand and exclaiming, “Yeah! This is my right han…”
She was quiet after that for quite some time. Haha!

After dinner, we took a few more pictures in front of the restaurant, and then we left to go cosmic bowling. Chris Schroeder joined us then, as he had been bored all night. We had enough time to bowl one game. I broke 100, which pleased me, and what pleased me more was that the DJ played a couple slow songs, which left opportunity to dance with Fran more intimately…

When we were leaving the bowling alley, I decided to try something that I had seen in a video before. I’ll let you watch it here, and then you can read on. It was pretty cool, but I ripped my pants and slammed my knee pretty hard when I came down on the rigid metal platform. It was after that when the security guard who was standing at the bottom of the stairs checking IDs asked me if I was leaving. When I replied that I was, his response was “Good. Next time you do that, you’ll get cited for trespassing.”

I was still waiting for more friends to get down the stairs and discovering the hole in my pant leg when the security guard insisted I leave. So, I was pretty much forced to the door by a sour face, helpless to say goodnight and goodbye to Fran, who had to go to the other side of the building to get picked up by her dad. I tried meeting her over there after I got in my car, but she had left. When one of the bike cops saw me still driving around in the parking lot, he started chasing me down, as if he could’ve caught me if I were trying to escape. No matter. I was on my way out of the lot anyway, and he stopped following me when I got to the driveway.

I took Nickie home first, then Chris, and then I had unfinished business to attend to. I made my way up to Fran’s house and called her, which may not have been the best idea, considering I only have her house phone number. She came outside, no longer in her dress. We talked for a quick minute; I let her know I had a good night, and would very much like a good night kiss. Perfect end to a perfect night =D

After leaving Fran’s house just moments later, I picked up Mitch and Matzke and we headed to the Tropicana, where the hotel party awaited us. Yes, even though I paid for a bus that I wasn’t on, there was no way I was going to miss out on the hotel I helped pay for. Chris Schroeder was already there. There was tons of alcohol left, which we were still not able to finish by the end of the night. I actually ended up taking as much home as I could without looking too bulky in my suit. The room was in the perfect spot, as we were able to get a 270º view of the corner of The Strip and Tropicana. I took quite a few great pictures. Besides that, the party was… unforgettable. There were so many hilarious instances that it’s hard to recount them all. Here’s one that I uploaded. I may upload the others later, so keep an eye out on my MySpace.

I always manage to break something at hotel parties. Last time it was the bed frame, this time I knocked over a hookah and coal went everywhere, burning the carpet. Chris ended up breaking that hookah later that night. We went to sleep at about 4:00 AM and had to wake up at 9:00 to check out.

Whoo! I have officially deemed the night of September 16, 2006 as the best night of my life!~!~!

The couple days following that were not eventful at all in comparison, but I do need to close this blog with some clarification. Not knowing for a fact, but hopeful that I wouldn’t be pursuing any young women other than Franchesca anytime soon, I changed my status on MySpace to ‘In a Relationship’ last night. Well, today, Fran and I messaged each other, and she let me know that even though we got really close Saturday night, she isn’t looking now for a relationship, and that she was sorry if she led me on too much.

=/

Shitty, for lack of a better word, but not the crux of my virtues. If you will notice, the meaning of my blog title always comes near the end of the entry. If I were to take this extremely harshly, I’d be a hypocrite. In the past year, I have done the same thing to two undeserving young ladies that has been done to me. I’ve never felt good about it, but I tried to get on the same page as the other as soon as possible in order not to cause more emotional upset. As the general cliché of ‘What goes around comes around’ finally gets back to me, I get the same feelings as I inflicted on those two girls. This is why I again feel the need to apologize to Lilian and Chrissy for my misleading actions. You two may have forgiven me or forgotten about it because it’s not a memorable recollection, but I still want to say sorry.

There ends the fifth page of this exciting and joyous remembrance of one of the best weeks of one of the supposed best years of my life. I hope all of you who went to homecoming had just as great a time as I did, and if you didn’t go to homecoming, then I hope you are with me when prom rolls around and the night is even more memorable.

Take it easy, but strike hard.
Vaniah Schwenoha

Taxi!!!

31 August 2006 - 4:02 AM

This could be the most random collection of thoughts ever to enter my blog, so bare with me... Also, if I offend anybody in this blog, especially toward the end, I'm sorry. I just need to vent somehow on what I've been feeling...

Sorry I haven't written in three weeks (Wow. That's probably a new high score for me). It's just that... whenever I write in my blog about any type of relationship that might be building between me and another, it angers the Heavens, and all seems to fall apart before anything good ever happens. I suppose I'm ready to reflect on things now.

An hour and a half after I last blogged, I went to the indoor rock-climbing center with Chris, Michelle, and Michelle's brother to meet up with my brother and sister. Overall, the experience was good for the guests I brought, at least as far as physical health goes. Right before closing, I decided to start tumbling, since the ground there is cushy, and I usually have more confidence to do so. Well, I got a roundoff and three consecutive back handsprings in, but on the fourth back handspring, I decided to go ahead and attempt the full flip without using my hands. That was a bad idea, to say the least. I ended up not having enough time, and when my body came down to the ground, it landed on my left hand, which ended up being bent back extremely far, thus spraining it. It was sore and swollen for a number of days, and since then, I've just been trying to regain the strength it once had. It's almost back to normal. I'm not sure if I'm going to try any handsprings anytime soon, though I'd really love to if I knew I could.

The day after all that nonsense, I went to the mall with Chris and Sexton to buy some new shoes... I should probably mention here that earlier in the day, Michelle called Chris while he was at my house and broke up with him. Don't ask me for all the details. It's not my deal. You can read Chris' or Michelle's blog if you want more details. Okay. Back to the mall story... I bought a new pair of black shoes, as I always get, and finally bought a pair of white shoes for the first time since when I was a kid and bought my shoes at Payless. While I was in the DC store trying on these shoes, I couldn't help but admire how cute one of the employees was. I thought about it even after I left and bought a pair of basketball shoes at the Nike store that I could use to jump at SkyMania. Finally, just before we left the mall, I mustered up the courage to go back in and ask her if she wanted to come to Mitch's party the next night. She said she worked 'til 10:00, but that she would try to stop by, so I gave her my number and Mitch's address on a piece of paper.

Yeah, it's probably true that she gets that kind of thing a lot from people who are much more confident than me, and she probably threw that piece of paper away within ten minutes, but the point was that I had never just gone up to a total stranger and asked them for a chance to get to know them better. I did happen to catch the girl's name, as the employees have to wear name tags, and it was easy to remember because it was a variation of Cecilee, and you should all know what kind of issues I've made for myself with that girl. Anyway, her name was Cecilia, and for me to be able to spell it really helped when I went on MySpace that night and searched for her. I searched within 50 miles of my zip code. Ten pages of results came up. I clicked on each page so I could start at the end and just hit the back button as I looked for her, but luckily, on the last page, one of the results had a DC image for her headline. Bam! First profile I click and it's her. So yeah. I sent a few messages to this girl who goes to Eldorado High School (doh!) and still thought I'd have any way of dating her. Soon enough, though, we stopped sending messages to each other, and that was pretty much the end of that.

There's one woman for you. Another would be Cecilee again, who I was told had broken up with her boyfriend. A blog or two on her MySpace make it seem like she's heartbroken, but she still has pictures of her and him up and her MySpace still says she's in a relationship, so I have no idea what's up with her. When you really think about it though, we live more than ten miles away, and I have no idea if another long-distance relationship would work out. Besides... I know how hard it is to get back into the game after a heartbreak.

I finally got the right people to read this blog, but that really didn't do what I thought it would. In my last blog, I was trying to say that I knew and accepted that Mitch and Sarah were probably going to go out again. After they both read my blog, though, they backed off each other so they wouldn't upset me. Dur, I'm a retard. I suppose things worked out for the best in that situation, because both Sarah and Mitch are involved with other people at the moment, and both seem to be happy about it, especially Mitch =)

"So where does that leave you, Vaniah?"

Well, apart from all those stories of failed attempts at emotion, there is one lone girl who I've actually been talking to for a couple weeks, and she actually goes to my school, which is pretty cool. She was one of those MySpace friends who I added just because I recognized her from a few functions at school, but she's pretty damn cute if you ask me. One day, I replied to one of her bulletins, and in response, she let me know that she thought I was hot. Well, what a coincidence, because I think the same of her ;-) Anyway, we've been talking a bit, and though the last couple of weeks haven't presented the opportunity for us to hang out, I think things may settle in the next few weeks, what with school starting and all, and she and I will eventually bond. The wording in that sentence doesn't quite set right with me, but the thought puts a smile on my face nonetheless =D Have you met Franchesca Rivera?

Whew! All that just to tell you about my situation with girls. Moving on...

Mitch and I got drunk the other day with some friends. It was his first time in eight months and my first time since the first day of summer, and we made the most of it by hanging out and laughing our asses off. Soon, I'll post pictures we tried to take that didn't turn out as well as we had planned, haha!

I wanted to go to Starbucks in the morning at least once this summer, and I was planning on telling some people to go two days before school started. Plans changed however, when Jessica took it upon herself to tell everyone to go just one day before school started, as she was under the impression that it was tradition to go the day before school started. It has never been tradition to do that. My friends and I just went sporadically during the summer, for the sake of getting out of the house and hanging out with each other. That was years ago though, and our old rituals have faded. So Jessica invited some people, and it turned out to be okay, I suppose. I hadn't slept the night before because I was up drinking with Mitch, so when we got back to my house, I crashed for the rest of the morning. Everybody was gone by the time I woke up, and Jessica had left a note on my computer telling me how she thought Starbucks was a success... Well dur. It's not like we were launching the first rover to Venus. I wouldn't say it was a success because it's not supposed to be a task to get your friends together and have a good time. I just think it was nice to see some people and to joke and laugh with them.

Let's see... other significant events... The first day of school was today, and I thought it went rather well. I have some classes with people who I met through Mitch, which is pretty cool. I have some other classes with friendly new faces, which I didn't think was possible after three years at the same place. Also, some people are in my classes who haven't been in a class with me for three or four years. It's pretty sweet. I still have a conflict with my schedule, as I might be dropping Tech to take a fine arts class such as Photography. We'll see how that works out. I'm gonna have to really consider my options this weekend.

After school, there was an actual tradition to be carried out, and that was that I go with my friends to Baja Fresh for lunch as I always do after the first and last day of each school year, ever since the last day of eighth grade.

Okay. Here's where the blog might get offensive to some people.

The title. There's a reason for my blog title. It fucking sucks being the taxi. The part that bothers me is not the fact that I have to give my friends rides. What does bother me is that I'm giving them rides because they don't have licenses. We're seniors. Most of the people I give rides to are older than me. I've had my license for over a year now. Why have these people not gotten their licenses yet? I always hear excuses about how time didn't permit them to go down to the DMV and get their permits early enough and blah blah blah. You know what? Those aren't reasons. My dad's pretty busy all the time, and my mom sleeps in the day. But do you know how nice it is to be able to drive yourself around as you please? Do you know how hard I fought to get my permit and later my license? I knew that a license would mean freedom, so I insisted my dad take me as soon as possible for my permit. It's not like it's a great strain on the parent. All they have to do is sit in the waiting room for an hour or two and sign the consent papers. Then when it came time to get my license... I scheduled an appointment myself, and went in to test. When I found that I couldn't test because I had a brake light out, I was pissed. I could either reschedule for an entire month later or come in on standby the next day. Well, guess which one I picked... We got the car fixed that very day and I went to the DMV the next day before the place even opened, and I was still eighth in line. But you know what? It was fucking worth it. I don't have to ask people for rides everytime I want to go somewhere, and I love it. If there's one thing I made sure to prepare for, it was the freedom to drive. Get off your ass and get your license as soon as possible.

...Meh. I just needed to get that one out. I was thinking about it earlier as I drove people home. I had just been woken up, so it made me a lot crankier, and allowed me to really think about how ridiculous it is that I have to drive these people everywhere.

Alright. I think I hit most of my major points. The next few things will be short and very random, but significant in some way...

I go to SkyMania all the time and never really hurt myself there, but it was last week when I was playing Twister with some friends that I dislocated my knee again. I was pissed. I really need to see the doctor about that MRI I took.

If my mom gets caught up on all her car payments, my brother David will give me his old truck so he can buy a new car. That'd be awesome because it's only a two-seater, and I won't be the taxi anymore. I'll also probably get way better gas mileage than 15 mpg, like the Explorer gets.

On the way out of Wal*Mart, there was a new pillow still in its packaging just sitting in front of the car next to me. I now have a new, fluffy pillow =P

I didn't want to go to Terrible's to get my car washed because it never gets all the bird shit off the top of the car, so I stayed home and washed the car myself. It took a couple hours because I was being meticulous about it. Two days before school starts and I've got a freshly washed car. What happens an hour later? Mitch and I get back from Arby's and he decides to throw his cup of soda in the middle of his street. It must've hit the fucking top of my car, because when I went outside later, all exposed sides of the fucking car were covered with the dried soda. Mitch gave me $10 to get a new car wash, but it'll probably cost me $15, not to mention I didn't have a clean car for the first day of school. Thanks, Mitch, for being a fucking retard about that drink.

^Okay. That one wasn't short. Just another long expression of rage^

And last but certainly not least...

... When I fall asleep wrapped around my body pillow, I'm thinking of Fran =) =P =D

Take it easy, but strike hard.
Vaniah Schwenoha

Just Friends

9 August 2006 - 6:07 PM

Did you guys ever see that movie? It was good... Funny, too...

I guess I thought more people read this thing than actually do. You see, last night, I had some people over to go swimming. One of those people was Sarah. "That's good," you might say - at least, if you've been reading these things - but after you found out that another one of those people was Mitch, you'd probably tell me I'm retarded.

I was never that great of a flirt. It may have something to do with me not getting into a relationship with someone until after 7th grade, but whatever. It was apparent, however, that I wasn't my normal self last night. Chris saw it because he reads my blogs when he knows there's a new one and Sexton could see it even without knowing about my blog entirely. I suppose it didn't catch Sarah's attention because she was flirting with Mitch all night.

I thought to myself that this couldn't really be happening between them again, first of all because whenever Mitch isn't around, Sarah appears to be disinterested in him, and second because Mitch has been hung up on this girl Stephanie for the past few days. Now, don't get me wrong here. I do think Mitch is a pretty cool person overall because he's fun to hang out with and all, but when it comes to women, after watching his past two relationships, I just don't see him settling down anytime soon.

That's the way it went, though. When Sarah fell for Mitch over eight months ago, she fell hard, and since then, she hasn't really moved on, regardless of how much she looks like she has. All doubts were written off when I looked back at Mitch's conversation with Sarah last night after we took her home. Consider that a note to all of you that if you talk to someone on AIM and want to keep the conversation between the two of you, either ask me to move it or delete it yourself... Sorry for being a sneaky asshole, but at least we skipped the confrontation step.

So, straight from Bruce Almighty, that's the way the cookie crumbles. I'm sorry if you think that I shouldn't take this lying down, but to be honest, I've never understood the concept of fighting for a girl. If you're working extremely hard to win her over another, then you're trying too hard. You might want to ask me "What if she's the one?" Well, then she'd be able to see me for the loyal and caring man that I am - or at least try my best to be. A woman's choice between two men is hers alone, and she'll always pick the one that best fits her at the time.

Back to being the good friends we are.
Back to the drawing board.

I remember when I was a kid and my big brother was my influence. I remember when I played with action figures and Hot Wheels and such. I remember learning to ride a bike and how to rollerblade and how hard I thought it was going to be to swim in the deep end. I remember when the only love I knew was for my Sunday morning cartoons [because I remember never having gone to church as a child - that'd explain why I'm Agnostic, if you're wondering]. I remember when I didn't have girls on the mind all the time.

When can I love a woman like I loved my childhood?

It may sound odd to you, but before I go to sleep every night, I always end up wrapped around my body pillow. I always imagine myself falling asleep holding a girl. A lot of the time, it's not one girl in particular over and over again; just whoever is on my mind at the time. It's not until I take the time to write about it that I realize how many girls run through my mind. Meh, it's hard to explain.

I'm not depressed. I'm just bored with the single life.

Take it easy, but strike hard.
Vaniah Schwenoha

P.S. - Happy Birthday, Niki!

Clever lines to weave my web of thoughts

3 August 2006 - 11:27 AM

They say lightning never strikes twice in the same place...
Well, that myth certainly doesn't apply to car crashes. In the past two weeks, I've gone to pick up my mom from work in the morning and found that cars had collided on eastbound Flamingo just near The Rio. Two times, the accident was on Hotel Rio Drive and Flamingo and once it was a short distance behind on Valley View and Flamingo.

The worst drivers are Asians and women...
And that's why it's hysterical that the accident that involved three cars also involved two women and an Asian man.

Can't we all just get along?
Just because the accidents stopped doesn't mean there is no more tragedy in the world. I took my mom to the Gold Coast one morning to cash her paycheck, and while waiting outside for her, I watched three Asian men get into a fight. It seemed that they knew each other prior, but were very mad about something; I'll never know what because I just sat in the car and watched as casino security broke it up.

Do unto others...
Because I'd love it if my friend cooked me dinner and brought me and my girlfriend together. Of course, that would mean finding a girlfriend first. But, that's not what this section is supposed to discuss. I'll get to that later.

Chris Yi had a bad day about a week ago. His house got broken into and he spent the rest of the day at home because of it, thus making him feel unproductive. After hearing about it all, I thought it would be a good idea to do something to cheer him up. What better way to make a guy happy [without being gay] than food? So I went to the store, spent about $14 on two steaks, two potatoes, and a cheesecake, and stored it for the next day. Why enough food for two? Because my evil scheme also involved Chris's girlfriend, who apparently hadn't spent any time with Chris this summer. That part was a plus. Next was the issue of a table. As you may know, my house doesn't have a dining table. This is due to the fact that we don't have enough open space for a dining room. Meh. That meant that I'd have to go and borrow Chris Schroeder's dining table again, as I'd done it once to cook dinner for a girlfriend quite awhile back.

So as it went, I picked up Chris's girlfriend Michelle, had her keep me company as I prepared dinner, and set her up with everything ready in my brother's vacant room. Then I picked up an unsuspecting Chris, made idle conversation on the way over, and completely took him aback when I opened the door to my brother's room. The timing worked out perfectly for me to leave them alone, too, as Jessica had invited me to a movie that night. Of course, I forgot to tell them about the cheesecake in the freezer downstairs, but whatever. Needless to say, they were happy to spend time with each other again.

Ahh, yes... The apple tree scenario...
You'd only understand that if you'd ever read that analogy about how women are like apples on a tree and men are far too cowardice to work toward getting the best ones at the top. Now, I'm not saying that it's too much work for me to climb to the top [what with being a ninja and all, haha], but there does happen to be something obstructing my path: a gate. This is ironic because the same term will work in the analogy as in my actual situation. I've made many attempts at having Jasper hang out more, but either she truly is too busy on her own or she doesn't have any interest in me, so she makes herself busy in order not to have to tell me directly that I've got no chance. As for the gate, I'm talking about the one around her neighborhood that stops me from making random appearances in front of her house to spend time with her, since the only time she seems to ever have alone is at night. Anyway, the long and short of this is that it's too hard to try and keep up with someone's extremely busy summer vacation schedule. If she's going to keep giving me responses like 'maybe' when I ask her if I can take her to a movie sometime, then it's a bit hard to ever make plans for a date.

Secret Window
No, I never did see that movie. I just thought it was clever because you're staring at an application window right now [be it Internet Explorer or that cockface FireFox], and you're about to read on and discover what I've kept secret for quite a long time, at least in comparison to my entire life. What if I made this like a real journal? What if, instead of stumbling upon it under my bed, you found all thoughts and emotions right here on this page? And instead of having to sneak glances at it while I wasn't looking, you're able to read on and discover what really makes me tick just by being considerate enough to take time out and read this blog. The catch is that I'm going to ask you to be kind enough not to talk about what I write unless the person you're talking to has read it as well, and only of their own volition; not because you asked them to read it so you could both understand.

So now we're up to date. And the secret is this: Before I went out with Marlena, the choice in my mind was either her or... Sarah Fulco.

Surprised? If not, I'm sorry I'm so transparent.

Yeah, that's the shocker for today. After Marlena and I started going out, it wasn't long until Sarah started going out with Dallas, and I always wondered what would've happened if I had ever made a move on her instead of Marlena. Don't get me wrong; I was very happy with Marlena while we were going out, but after I was single again, I thought about it. And I think about it today. Meh. It's hard to describe how it's just a 'back of the mind' kind of thing.

Don't you love the 'what if's?

Alright. I think I'm done writing for now.

Take it easy, but strike hard.
Vaniah Schwenoha

Epiphany

27 July 2006 - 5:01 PM

I was just out in my backyard lying on my now-broken diving board, trying to get a feel for the essence of how I've been spending my time this summer, and suddenly, a few things occurred to me. One realization was that this is the first summer in my high school career that I've been single for the majority of. Though I'm confident that being with friends has aided my situation, I suppose the days just seem longer when you're not with that someone special, but thinking of a potential special someone.

This brings me to my next thought: Jasper. I wanted to call her to talk, but knew I didn't know what to talk about. I realized I've fallen again for a girl who I knew three years ago, but the fact of the matter is that I've done so in the three days I spent with her this summer. I know nothing about who she is inside; about the intricacies of her heart and soul. All I know is that she's smart, pretty, and fun to hang out with. I suppose that's about as much knowledge as anybody has when they find themself attracted to another for the first time, if not more, but how am I ever going to find out if I really like this girl unless I engage in conversation with her more than I have been?

So I told myself I'd call her. I sat awhile and contemplated what I'd say to her to try and break open the shell of my thoughts and emotions. I'd tell her that it doesn't make me happy to sit on the sidelines and that I want to start being in control of how well I get to know someone. I'd tell her that I want to get to know her and find out if she is really the person I would like to imagine she is. I'd ask her where she is in relationships and why she doesn't want a boyfriend right now. If I scared her a bit a few days ago when I told her she makes me feel like she did when we were in 8th grade, I didn't mean to...

I called. The background was loud, and it was hard for her to hear me. We hung up because she said she couldn't talk at the moment.

So much for coming on strong =/

When will you hear me?
When will I just let myself go?
When will I just let my life flow?
When will my eyes clearly see
where my heart's supposed to be?
When will they hear me?

My final thought is this: I've been writing in this blog long and often enough. Significant doesn't usually come day-to-day; it comes with those momentous occasions that make you feel weightless and lively. I feel I've written enough daily entries to depict the way I lived in my high school years, and they will be sufficient to remind me of what has been deemed 'back in the day' by those who choose to reflect on their childhoods ['back in the day,' by the way, was a Wednesday, if you didn't know... lmao Dane Cook]. So, unless I find myself extremely bored in the future, I will most likely abandon my habit of writing about the many days I go to SkyMania and the times when people spend the night at my house. Instead, I will try to write about the days that I do something new or meet someone spectacular who has the potential to change my life forever, either in miniscule or extreme circumstances.

I feel good to have written a very meaningful entry in my blog. I hope to have more like this in the future.

Take it easy, but strike hard.
Vaniah Schwenoha

Shit shit! Who the fuck is shooting us?!?! Oh well... Fire missles!!!

20 July 2006 - 6:23 AM

Man... Another two-week absence. Sorry if you're a dedicated reader... I'm also sorry if I completely forget the events of a few days and don't write about them...

Friday, July 7th
We were supposed to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie - 'we' being me, Mitch, Sexton, Niki, Chris, Nicole, Billy, Jessica, and some others. Well, like I said, we were supposed to see it... but didn't. It turned out that it was sold out for the time we were supposed to watch it, and every time after that for two hours after. I'm glad Chris and Niki were there to find it out because it saved me the trip up there in my car. I still haven't seen the movie. If you want to go with me, let me know.

Saturday, July 8th
Wow... A Saturday and the eerie thing is that I have no records from the day. No AIM logs, no phone calls, nothing... Now that I look at the AIM logs from the day after, I realize Mitch called me again because his computer took a shit on him again. Every time it tried to start up, it would come up with the BSOD, or the Blue Screen of Death to you who have no idea what I'm talking about. After about an hour of fucking around with it, I finally got one picture of the screen as it flashed on the monitor for a split second. Just to show you how fast it went, consider this picture and how it took 25 consecutive shots within a matter of seconds. Notice how only the last one shows the monitor. Anyway, I actually think I started working on the computer on Friday night and I didn't get it finished until late into Saturday night. After I finished it, I finally gave in to Mitch and Sexton and we went down to the Gold Coast for what they like to call Two-Dollar Breakfast, even though the meal we all got was $3.55. Whatever.

Sunday, July 9th
My mom gave me $100 to go grocery shopping and finally get some food in our house. My dad, Mitch, and Sexton went with me to get the stuff. We spent about $104. Whew. I dropped Mitch and Sexton off at Mitch's house after because they were supposed to be going somewhere with some other friends that night and Will Dickstein invited me to go to SkyMania with him and his friends. I met with them at Joey Indivino's house, which is pretty nice, if I do say so myself. I ended up driving my car down with Willy and John in my car while the other five went in Will's Cadillac. Travis also met us there. After half an hour, my diver friend Mike showed up as well. Things went well. Afterward, I took my passengers to 7-Eleven while the guys in the Cadillac went back to Joey's house. When we showed up, they were getting ready to go swimming. I had to drive home to get my swimsuit and chamois, and when I got back, there were only a couple people in the pool. The rest were setting up to smoke hookah. I sat around with everybody until I had to go home at about midnight.

Monday, July 10th
I guess I didn't have much to do, so I put on the DVD player and watched Superman The Movie in my room. When night came around, Mitch, Sexton, and Keisha picked me up and we drove up to the pool at Palo Verde. Yes, the pool was closed at 11:00 PM. Yes, we still swam. We had to wait until after the custodian left the building, but that wasn't too bad. It was good to get back on a springboard, but because I hadn't had much practice and because it was night time, some of my dives were pretty bad. I tried teaching Sexton a hurdle, but he kept collapsing his chest. He's going to need quite a bit of work when the season comes around.

Tuesday, July 11th
The first thing worth mentioning is that one of the guys I met at Presidential Classroom called me at 10:45 and woke me up because he forgot that he was three hours ahead of me. He was also talking about calling people in Hawaii, which definitely would've been fucked up considering that we're three hours ahead of them, which would make him their personal wakeup call at 9:00 in the morning. Moving on... I had far too many activities planned for today than I even had time to organize. First, I still wanted to see Pirates of the Caribbean. Mitch wanted to go to SkyMania as well. Because I wanted Niki to go to both with us, I had to work those two things around when Niki and Lucille bought some RAM for Lucille's computer. Yes... She's going to start playing WoW. ~sigh~

I also need to point out here that when I read Niki's most recent blog post, I found that he had seen quite a few movies already this summer with Chris, Nicole, Dallas, and Brittany, but I was never aware of any of them. This upset me quite a bit. I really don't like how my old friends are drifting away from me as they are.

Anyway, it turned out that Lucille wasn't ready in time for us to go to a movie early enough to leave time for SkyMania, and Niki knew that if he went with us to SkyMania later on, he wouldn't jump anyway because he's such a computer geek that he doesn't enjoy physical activity, so in the end, I drove over to Mitch's house and Keisha drove Mitch, Mike, Sexton, and me went to SkyMania. Once again, Keisha didn't jump, but she volunteered to record us again. I brought my dad's tripod because Keisha's hand isn't that steady. We'd have had some good video if the asshole employee hadn't been there to tell us to stop doing things that are only dangerous to the people who aren't there at least once a week like we are. We only had a few decent videos as a result.

We were going to go swimming at my house afterward, but never did. I got back to my house a little before they did, and when they did show up, they let me know that the moon was red. I thought it was awesome and tried to get some pictures, but it wasn't working from the view I had from my window or even my backyard. Finally, I climbed onto my roof, set the camera on the air conditioner for stabilization, and got a few decent pictures such as this one. Finally, I came back in and we got something to eat in my kitchen. Keisha left around midnight and Mitch and Sexton spent the night. We watched The Hills Have Eyes on DVD.

Wednesday, July 12th
At 2:00 AM, I checked my email and went to Las Vegas Movie Insider to see if there were any free showings coming up. What I found was a printable flyer for a free sneak preview of Clerks II. I was very excited, and then I became nervous when I realized that the date of the showing was today! Even worse was the fact that the showing was at 10:00 AM. I texted people who I thought might be interested, but only got a few responses. The people who ended up going were me, Mitch, Sexton, Sarah Fulco, and Niki. Billy and Chris Schroeder were supposed to go, but I guess they weren't allowed in the end, and forgot to let us know. Mitch, Sexton, and I watched Clerks before we went so Sexton would know what the thing was about. I fell asleep near the end because I had been up all night. The movie was hilarious, and it is very likely that I will end up paying to see it after it premiers.

Chris got back into town from San Diego today. We caught up a little online, and then I picked him and Mitch up and we went to Fry's to buy Mitch a new fan for his power supply because the one he had was missing a blade, which threw off its balance and made it loudly vibrate a lot. I just need to add in right here that when we took our fan of choice to the desktop computer area and requested to take the power supply out of a computer the size of Mitch's, I realized the true lack of professionalism of some employees, at least near closing time... See, they wouldn't let us take the computer apart, but a man that tried to help us heard our story and saw our fan and said something to the effect of "You wanna put that fan in a power supply? That's a big ass fan!" Hahaha! Awesome. I did my best to keep that comment in until we left the store. The fan took awhile to put in because we kept having problems with the power and BIOS, but eventually it worked. We hung out at Mitch's house for a little while, but as time passed, I took Chris to his house and returned home myself.

Before we went to Fry's, my dad pointed out that there was a sparrow with a broken leg in a bucket next to our house. I took it out and put it next to the tree in my front yard. After leaving Fry's but before we went to Mitch's to install the fan, we ended up back at my house and hung around it while we tried catching crickets to feed to a gigantimous black widow spider that had made its home near my Trans Am. Before we left to Mitch's, I pulled some bread out of the refrigerator and broke it into pieces for the bird to eat. When I came home at the end of the night, though, I discovered the bread gone and the bird dead =( My conclusion was that either the bread was bad (considering it was weeks old) or that it expanded in the bird's stomach because it was bread in general. Anyway, I had to pick it up with a plastic bag, tie it off, and place it in the trash can to be taken out in a couple of days.

Thursday, July 13th
My parents woke me up and asked me if I wanted to go with them and pick my grandfather up from the hospital again. I was tired, but I know how little time I might have left with my grandfather before he passes, so of course, I went with them. This time, he seemed to be in much better condition than when we picked him up the first time. After we got back and ate dinner, my mom wanted me to take food over to him, so I did, and after that I filled up the tank over by Durango High School and picked Chris up on the way home. We hung out, looked through some pictures, and watched a rerun of USA's new original series, Psych. After I took him home, I got back home and started catching crickets again, still trying to feed that black widow. I must've caught like, 30 crickets that night because they wouldn't stay in the web. I also realized that I am a little more ninja than I thought, considering I was able to catch about 30 crickets easily. I even caught one in mid-air and didn't even touch the ground with my hand. Needless to say, I was impressed with myself. After I finally crushed one by accident but it was still alive, I got very close to the spider itself and gently dropped the cricket into the web. Then I took pictures. This is probably the best one right here. After all that, I started reading the owner's manual that I downloaded for my digital camera and discovered some things that I didn't know before.

Friday, July 14th
I had to wake up at 9:00 to go down to Bernhard & Williams to take my senior pictures. They charged me $27 to take them and be able to view them online. I lost another $2 because I didn't have $27 on me and had to go across the street to a non-WaMu ATM to get $20 out. I must've spent half an hour watching Independence Day while I was waiting there to get the pictures taken, but when I got in there... Bam! Done with 15 pictures in less than 5 minutes.

Will Dickstein called me and invited me for sushi, and because it was Friday and my dad had the car for work, Will had to come pick me up. The first place we went to happened to be jam-packed, so we ended up down on Tropicana and Jones and ate at Sushi Factory. I saw and visited a little with some friendly faces that I hadn't seen since the school year ended. After dinner, I had Will drop me off because I was under the impression that I'd be able to meet Michelle Jensen down at the bowling alley like we had agreed... I turned out to be way late. Instead, Dallas came over to my house and we hung out for the first time in too long. Billy, Chris, and Niki were supposed to come over too, but never found the time, I guess.

Saturday, July 15th
Once again, Mitch's computer broke. He had some trouble finding his music. Somehow, his computer made all his music folders hidden folders and files. I ended up controlling his computer through Remote Assistance and fixing his apparent problem. Then I went to take a shower. When I came back out, Mitch called me and told me that after he restarted his computer, he got the BSOD yet again! He brought the shit over and I ended up trading him hard drives because one that I had still had his music on it from the last reformat. I hope it doesn't have anymore problems for a very long time.

Sunday, July 16th
Not much here. I spent the day lollygagging (haha) around and cleaning my house in preparation for a Clerks II movie marathon that was supposed to include all films written by Kevin Smith prior to Jersey Girl.

Monday, July 17th
My dad woke me up 15 minutes before 7:00 asking if I had picked up my mother from work yet. She called ten minutes later, just in time for me to get her before my dad left at 7:30 to meet a friend for breakfast. Afterward, I couldn't sleep, so I just started doing things around the house such as a little more straightening up before people came over. Somehow I ended up playing around with all my remaining hard drives that weren't being used and I tried them all in a computer that was lacking one. Two of them were out, and are pretty much just good for shooting as of right now. The third and last one though is the one that intrigued me. It was about 2½ GB in size... only a small amount of space larger than the Memory Stick Pro Duo in my PSP right now... Anyway, I never thought much of it before because it lacked the available space to run any modern-day operating system, but I decided to plug it in anyway.

...It started up...
...With Windows 95.

Holy shit! It was actually trying to start. It had a hell of a time installing all the new hardware because it was in a foreign computer, but it actually made it to the desktop after awhile. I was amazed. I tried making a network setup disk so I could try to use the internet, but it turns out those setup disks only work on Windows 98 and up. After that, I just turned it off, still amazed that I had a computer that ran Windows 95. Yeah, I know. I'm a nerd. Thanks.

After all that goofing around, I went with my dad to Wal-Mart, where we picked up a check for $1000 written out to J.E.T.S. This was his first government grant and he wanted me to take a publicity picture of him receiving it on behalf of the company. That was a quick errand, followed by a stop at Niki's house to pick up a DVI to VGA converter that would allow me to plug in an extra computer monitor to my computer if it was necessary during the party. Finally, our last stop was to pick up Jasper Lee, an old friend from middle school who I hadn't seen since the first week of the summer after 8th grade. It was a journey to find her house because my directions led me to the residents' gate of her gated community and then there were quite a few twists and turns to get to her house. I didn't get her phone number from her before I came over, so I grabbed my 8th grade yearbook on the way out the door because I knew she must've signed it with her number back then... The story between us is that we were getting pretty close to each other at the end of 8th grade, but when she went to Korea for a month in the summer, we became more distant, and by the time she got back, the fire was gone...

Sure enough, the number was in the yearbook, and it was still her current cell phone number. She hadn't been expecting me to be outside, or even past the gate and into her neighborhood, for that matter. Warning: Romantic sentiment ahead ~ She looks better than ever. She doesn't have braces anymore, she's taller and more defined than she used to be, and if I may add, she only needed to be sitting in the car for five seconds before the entire vehicle was filled with a lovely smell of perfume or body spray...

~ahem~ Back to the blog and out of my own little heaven...

We weren't back at my house long before Willy and Chris showed up, later to be joined by Mitch, Sexton, and after we got in the pool, Courtney. Mitch and Sexton hadn't slept in two days, so once we put on Clerks, which they had just seen the week before, they went into the other room and fell asleep. They were in need of it so badly that after the movie, they couldn't be awakened by us to go out for lunch. I just left them there in the room while the rest of us took a short trip to Pho Saigon 8 - Jessica Williams and Cayla were dropped off by Robert just as we were leaving, and they joined us as well.

Upon return, Willy took off. We hung out a bit more, and somehow, Chris Yi miraculously managed to get Chris Schroeder to respond to an IM for the first time in months. As soon as he found out that I had made contact with such an old friend as Jasper, he and Billy were emphatic to make an effort to make it to my house - this is in total opposition to when Billy told me he might come Tuesday, but wouldn't be able to make it Monday, most likely because they were playing WoW. It still took them a couple of hours to finish in their game and make it over. They had just shown up with James and Kit when I was on my way out the door to take Jessica and Cayla home. When I got back, they were in the pool - while it was raining, mind you... I gave in to temptation - and the fact that Jasper was getting in as well - and got dressed to get in the pool again. We had some fun, but when the rain started coming down hard, we concurred that it was time to get out. A little more hanging out and it was time for me to leave the house again to take Jasper home.

It was raining pretty hard, and I wanted to be very gentlemanly about my actions, so I grabbed my umbrella on the way out the door and held it over Jasper as I opened her door for her. We got up to Torrey Pines and watched as a fire truck went by. Just after I turned onto the street, I got a call from Jake, who had just seen me from Walter's house and thought I was crazy for driving in such bad weather. Just as I was on the phone with him, I saw where the fire truck was headed. In the backyard of one of the houses behind the ones on Torrey Pines, a palm tree was bright and violently blazing. I told Jake, who then insisted on driving out to see it. We told each other to be careful driving and that was that. On the way up Flamingo, the light on Buffalo was out, which turned it into a four-way stop. There, I called Chris Yi and told him to turn off my computer in case of a power surge. As I spoke to him on the phone, some idiot in the left-turn lane would not go, so I finally went before him (or should I assume her?). I got Jasper home safely, watched her go in, and then drove back toward home, this time going down Spring Mountain. The light on Buffalo and Spring Mountain was out as well, likewise with the light on Spring Mountain and Tenaya. Finally, I made it home, safe and sound.

I started cleaning up to keep the house ready for the next day of friends and movies. For some reason, I ended up looking out my front door. This is when I discovered that my front driver side tire was very low on air. I pumped it up and rolled the car out of the driveway to find where something might be stuck in the tire. It turned out that the tire was so old that it cracked, leading the air out of it.

Tuesday, July 18th
Nobody had shown up at 1:00 for the second day of movies. I took Mitch home early in the afternoon to shower and change. When I took my mom to work, Chris went with me so we could pick up a game from his house and return it to GameStop. As we got back home, Jasper pulled up with Tamella, another old friend who I hadn't seen in more than three years. We went inside, where Mitch wanted me to pick him up again. I was on my way out the door when I thought about the three remaining cracked tires and the dirty ass spare tire on my car. At this thought, I went back upstairs and asked to borrow Jasper's car. To my surprise, she trusted me with the keys and told me not to crash it. Wow. That was easy... "Long time, no see... can I borrow your car?" Haha! Anyway, this was also an unintentional way of ensuring that she didn't leave before I got back, since Tamella was supposedly due back home soon.

When I showed up at Mitch's house, he came out first, and we waited a few minutes for Sexton. As we waited, we looked around Jasper's car. There was this small plastic helicopter clipped in front of one of her air-conditioner vents. We noticed some small white spheres inside and wondered what they were. When we found a small bottle of them in the center console as well, Mitch asked me to try one, since they smelled good and were about the size of mints.
...They were air fresheners.
Haha! That would explain why they were in the helicopter that was in front of the vent. Wow. I'm not stupid, I swear.

We played Scrabble while waiting for them, and I won in the end. Surprise. I was up by like, 50 to the second place person, too. I think it was Jasper. After the game, it was really time that Tamella get home before getting a beating. After that, more people slowly started showing up. Once it got around 7:00 or so, we started watching Mallrats. After the movie, I took Sexton to Mitch's house so he could get picked up by his girlfriend. She called and thanked me for letting him borrow my phone and for driving him over. After I returned home, my friends and I shared stories with each other and talked for hours on end.

Wednesday, July 19
None of us woke up until 1:30 at earliest. This might have something to do with going to sleep at 6:00 AM, but I could always be wrong. Keisha picked up Mitch and they went somewhere, which left me and Chris hanging out for awhile. I took him home around 7:00 so I could meet with my brother David and my sister to go rock climbing. I might start getting involved in it more because it really helps my upper body while SkyMania helps my legs. While there, I decided to try a back flip because the ground was a little padded. I landed it a couple of times. A few more practices and I might have the balls to try it on the ground. After leaving, I made a phone call to Jasper in an effort to let her know that she's been on my mind and I invited her to go swimming with me, what with me being all sweaty from climbing and all. All effort aside, it was just too late for her to be able to leave the house without getting shit from her parents =

You'd think that I wouldn't be too busy in the middle of the night like this. Well, if you did think that, you'd think wrong. The time that the site says and the time that I put at the top of this entry are so far apart because I had to take two breaks so I could pick up my mom from work and then go grocery shopping with her at 5:00 in the morning. Finally, though, it's done. Congrats again for making it through seven and a half pages of text. I won't keep you much longer...

Take it easy, but strike hard.
Vaniah Schwenoha

Open Your Eyes

7 July 2006 - 2:49 AM

Once again, I've put the writing off for about two weeks. This post should get me up to date entirely.

Sunday, June 25th
Not much to say about this day. I pretty much sat around the house organizing pictures and such.

Monday, June 26th
Again, a quite a bit of unpacking and resettling. Victor got into town sometime at night. We met Jake here at the house and went to the gym. I did bench press for the first time in a very long time. Only 95lbs on three of the four sets. The other one was 115lbs. Jake and Victor were surprised at how long I could hold a handstand. I'd have been able to hold it longer if I hadn't done the bench press and pullups before.

Tuesday, June 27th
When I woke up in the early afternoon, my dad told me that Victor was talking to Jenni, our old neighbor and long-time friend since we moved into this house back when I was in third grade. From my room, I heard them downstairs jumping into the pool. Mitch had called the night before asking if I wanted to go to SkyMania. Before going to pick everybody up, I had to take my mom to work and take my laptop back to Fry's for a refund. After that, we went to SkyMania - 'we' being me, Victor, Jenni, Mitch, Sexton, Chris, my sister Angela, and her boyfriend. It's always fun to go there and show new people what I can do. After SkyMania, we went to the Buffalo Wild Wings over by the Galleria Mall. My sister paid for me and my friends. Thanks Angie! Sarah and Briana kept bugging us while we were there to pick them up afterward, so we did. They were at The Orleans. We hung out for a bit at Mitch's house. When my mom called for me to pick her up, I took Briana and Sarah to Briana's house, picked my mom up, and went back home for the night.

Wednesday, June 28th
My parents wanted to go to dinner at the buffet at Bellagio, so we did that. Jenni came along. We took pictures while eating and at the atrium afterward. At night, Victor, Jenni, and I met up with my sister and her boyfriend to go indoor rock climbing. My brother David showed up and climbed a little, too. It was the first time I had been climbing since I was in 8th grade. I'm lucky to have remembered as much about belaying as I did to avoid being charged for a lesson. This concluded three consecutive days of physical activity. I was overwhelmed. When I got home, Chris, Nicole, Dallas, Brittany, and Niki were outside my house. It would be nice if I could tell you that they just wanted to hang out like we used to do just last year, but I can't. They were looking for N64 controllers to play video games. When they realized that Michelle probably had them, they left. Nice friends I've got there, huh?

Thursday, June 29th
My mom has been having me take her to work recently because it takes her like, 45 minutes to find a parking spot when she goes by herself. I won't have to do that anymore after the 17th of July, when the new employee parking garage opens up. Anyway, having to take her to work at 3:45 meant that Victor, Jenni, and I had to wait until after to meet David to see Superman Returns. I really liked that movie, by the way. Even though I haven't seen the original yet, I hear that they did their best to keep things similar. The movie was longer than we thought it was going to be, so when we got out of it, it was too late for my brother to go to his Quixtar meeting. Instead of trying to make it, we just decided to go to dinner. We ate at the Thai restaurant across the street from Subway on Jones and Flamingo. They had good food there. I hadn't eaten Thai food before. I left with David to his house after dinner while Victor took Jenni to pick up Heather, another long-time friend, from work. I borrowed a few movies from my brother Richard while I was at his house, including the Superman collection and Johnny Mnemonic.

Friday, June 30th
Victor left town today. He wasn't really packed and ready yet, but he eventually got everything together. When he left, he was in a bit of a quarrel with Nani, I don't know what about. Even after he left, Jenni and David came over to swim. I actually don't think I did anything on this night after they left.

Saturday, July 1st
My mom woke me up at 8:00 because she had to go over to the hospital to talk to my grandpa. She wanted me to drive her because I had to go to Ticket Busters when they opened at 10:00 to have them take care of my ticket for me. I paid them $200 to do my work for me, which I found out later from Jake I probably shouldn't have done, since he seems to have paid less than that for his ticket. After I got home from that, I had to pick up my mom, go to my grandpa's house to pick up food, and drive it back to the hospital later. He wouldn't eat the hospital food because it was nasty. He ended up being transferred to a hospital with better food though, so it really didn't matter that we brought him food.

After dropping the food off at the hospital, I was already on Rainbow, so I decided to stop at the Auto Zone on Spring Mountain and finally replace my license plate lights. My dad took the car out after I got back, but I got the bright idea to walk down to the police station down the street from my house to see if they could write off that part of my ticket. Yes, I'm stupid enough to have gone down there and have them check the lights on a car that wasn't there. Luckily, my dad was done with his shit by the time I got there, so he met me there so the police officers could verify that the lights were fixed.

David was at my house when I got back, and we waited for Jenni and Heather. They wanted to get something to eat. I had to take my mom to work first, so they had plenty of time to stop at Jenni's house before meeting me at Food Express on Decatur and Oakey. Afterward, I went to Wal-Mart to get a few personal items for my mom and myself. While there, I also decided to buy a few small things for Melissa since she had been sick all week. I was tired of not going to see her because of her illness, so I finally said 'fuck it' and drove over to her house.

I suppose it was good that I didn't buy anything too spectacular, because after a little bit of talking and hanging out, we ended up breaking up. She brought up the fact that she would be in the Phillipines for all of August and in New Jersey for a week before that, and after considering what I wrote in my last blog post about the girls in D.C., she thought it wouldn't really be fair to me or her to just sit apart from each other for so long. I'm glad that she was understanding about our situations as teenagers, especially since we've seen each other twice in the past month because we were a long-distance couple. Technically, we're on a break, but that's only if you want to get really into it. If we do end up going out again, that would be great, but for now, we're just separated.

On the way home from Melissa's house, Sexton called me, asking if I wanted to hang out with them. I picked them up from Mitch's house and we spent the night at my house.

Sunday, July 2nd
The guys didn't get much sleep the night before. This really didn't prove to have been a good idea when we engaged in physical activity that night. One of my new friends from Presidential Classroom came into town for the weekend, and as I do with most of my out-of-town visitors, I invited her to come with me to SkyMania, since Vegas is the only city with a location and it's one more thing to do if you're under 21 in this city. Anyway, after my dad and I ran some errands, I picked up Chris at Mitch's house, where Mitch and Sexton had to change into stuff to wear at SkyMania. We were running pretty late to get my mom to work, especially since we had to pick Sarah up at Briana's house on the way. Scheduled to meet Mary Grace (the PC girl) - or MG as she likes to be called - at 4:30, we drove straight from dropping off my mom to SkyMania. We weren't going to make it on time, but it turned out to be okay because she wasn't there on time either. We jumped from 5:00 to 6:00, and Chris got video of me, Sexton, and Mitch doing some awesome tricks. I put the best videos with a song, which you can find on Myspace.

At our usual 7-Eleven stop after jumping, we sat outside my car and talked with MG and her brother for like, at least 45 minutes. When we left, she and her brother went to visit another local friend. We, on the other hand, went back to my house to go swimming. Sarah wanted to make up ditching me at my birthday party and go skinny dipping there, so we did after it got dark, but I put my swimsuit back on and put some pants over it after I invited MG over to my house because she was bored. My brother showed back up in town with company after his conference in Palm Springs, and we all went to dinner at Sean Patrick's - 'we' being me, Chris, Niki, Victor, Victor's two guests, my two guests, and Jenni - I took Mitch and Sexton home and Sarah to Briana's house before we went. We came back to my house after dinner and Chris, MG and her brother hung out in my room until they got tired and decided to go home. Chris stayed the night.

Monday, July 3rd
Chris found out he was working today by accident, so I had to drop him off at home so he could get ready for work. After I took my mom to work, I picked up MG and her brother to go to Red White & Boom because they had returned their rental car and were very bored sitting in their empty house. The concert wasn't really that great because I don't listen much to the bands that played, but there was one attraction in which you get strapped to two large elastic bands and bounce up and down. I did like, a quadruple backflip and a quintuple front flip on it. It was awesome, and most people around me at the time were watching me =P

We watched the bands for a bit, but never ended up finding my brother at the concert. We tried to leave early and beat traffic, but since we had brought Nicole with us and she disappeared after a short while with her phone in our possession, we tried to wait for her back at the car. When she didn't show up by 11:30, we left. It turns out she passed out during the last act. She picked up her phone from my house the next day. Also, I found out that Nicole and Chris broke up again a few days ago. MG and her brother hung out at my house until around 1:00, when I took them home... I'm not sure how safe it would be to say this on here, but if her brother hadn't been hanging out with us, I probably would've made a move on MG, since I'm single again...

Tuesday, July 4th
Happy Independence Day! I didn't want to go back to Red White & Boom because I didn't think it would be worth it. I went with my dad and picked up my grandpa from the hospital to take him home. It took a very long time to get him home and then go get his prescriptions from the only Sav-On open so late on a holiday. I took my blood pressure while waiting for the prescriptions to get filled... It turns out all the phycial activity is paying off. My blood pressure was 110 over 58 and my resting heart rate was 51. Holy shit. That's low. Anyway, after I got home from all of that, I lit off fireworks in front of my house with the neighbors because none of my friends called me to do anything even though I asked them to call me if anything came up.

After just sitting around bored for so long, I finally called Mitch. Apparently, he was at Caesar's Palace with Sexton and his girlfriend because they had a free hotel room for the night. I met up with them there, as did Mike, and we just chilled in the room all night. It was the first time I formally met Mitch's girlfriend. My mom called at 4:00 AM while we were all trying to sleep and startled everybody. Lame.

Wednesday, July 5th
We woke up at 10:30 so we could check out at 11:00. After I showered back at home, Michelle brought her computer over for me to reformat. That took a few hours because I also decided to dust out her computer entirely. Following that, Mitch came over with his computer to try and figure out the problem with his CD burner. I said wtf to the situation and dusted his computer as well since I had been doing so much computer work all of a sudden. Then we had a problem. The computer wouldn't start, and I tried many, many possible solutions to the unknown problem. Sexton showed up somewhere in the process. After hours and hours of confusion, we finally decided to replace the battery on the motherboard. Beep! BIOS posts. God dammit. It worked. I did a bunch of other useless shit for no reason whatsoever. Having been up until 3:00 trying to get that shit to work, I crashed in bed after I picked up my mom from work. It was after the sun had risen.

Thursday, July 6th
My parents woke me up at 1:30 in the afternoon telling me that I had a dentist appointment at 2:40. I got ready and my dad took me. No cavities. Yay! While talking with my dentist about the summer, I mentioned diving. He brought up the fact that his son had been on the dive team for his high school this year. His name was Grant. Holy shit. I never made the connection between my dentist's last name and this diver's last name. I dove with my dentist's son all season. Small fucking world, huh?

My dad and I picked up my mom from the hospital, where she visited again with my grandpa, who had gone there again. Then I went to the bank for my mom and returned to my house to find Mitch and Sexton still here, starving. My dad bought Roberto's for us. We then got ready to go to SkyMania for the third time in two weeks. I didn't have to drive this time, surprisingly. Mitch drove his girlfriend's car down. Mike joined us this time. He was being kind of a bitch, but whatever. We all have our days... He just happens to have more of those days than we do, haha! Mitch's girlfriend recorded us. It was very nice of her to just sit there while we jumped.

We dropped Mike off at Mitch's house after SkyMania because he didn't want to go swimming at my house with us... for whatever reason. It's still hard to get Sexton to learn diving techniques. The rest of the company left around midnight because Mitch's girlfriend had to be home. I took a shower and now I'm here, done writing about all this shit that took me forever and a day to remember.

Take it easy, but strike hard.
Vaniah Schwenoha

Presidential Shit

30 June 2006 - 7:28 PM

Oh fuck. Alright, now that events have calmed down a bit, I should be able to sit tight for long enough to write out the experiences of last week. Here we go...

Saturday, June 17th
My flight was scheduled to leave at 12:40 in the morning. Naturally, I didn’t sleep the night before. I was too busy packing and making sure I had everything. My dad wanted to walk with me all the way to the gate, so he had to get a pass that would allow him to go that far with me. Even though I was the one who hadn’t ever been through security checks around anything that has to do with an airport, my dad was the one who had the most trouble. First, I had to go back to the car to get his license so he could get the pass to go in. Then, he had to hide his Victorinox Swiss Army Knife because that was obviously not permitted through the checkpoint. After that, he kind of refused to take his shoes off when he walked through the metal detector. Keep in mind here, he wears steel-toe shoes. Ha! They made him go over and get frisked, and in the end, he had to take his shoes off anyway. We waited over by the gate, and when it was time for the plane to board, we said our goodbyes.

If you’ve ever packed clothing in one of those garment bags that folds in half with your clothes hanging in it on hangers, I want to you imagine the size of that right now. Now I want to you imagine a bag inside of that, another separate bag filled with my laptop and most of my electronics, and a dolly to carry it all. That is all I had in my possession to take on the trip, and that’s what I took on the airplane as ‘carry-on.’ That’s right. I didn’t check any bags for fear of lost luggage. It took three trips from the front of the plane to my seat to get it all situated, and in the end, I left my changeover ticket at the front of the plane, most likely to get thrown away. Luckily, my tickets were electronic, so all I had to do when I landed in Dallas Fort Worth was show my license and they were able to print me another ticket. I watched the majority of National Treasure on my PSP for the first flight. After I changed planes in DFW, it was getting very late for someone without sleep. So much so that I fell asleep during takeoff. When I woke, I watched the rest of my movie and it ended just in time for us to land. I got off the plane and made my way to the meeting point for Presidential Classroom kids to take the shuttle to the hotel.

Even as early as the bus ride from the airport to the hotel, I was meeting new people. I met and talked with three people on the bus as we traveled to the train station to pick more people up and then to the our hotel on the campus of Georgetown University. It was too early to start checking people in to their hotel, so we placed our luggage with the luggage of the others and introduced ourselves in one of the conference rooms. Out of the entire program, it turned out that I was the only person from Las Vegas, with one other Nevadan from Virginia City. Naturally, I earned the nickname ‘Vegas’ for the week. I also turned out to be one of the most electronically-equipped scholars in the program for the week. Go figure with the choice of program (Science, Technology, and Public Policy).
We got electronic room keys and materials for the program, and after that, I went up to check out my room. After about ten minutes, one of my roommates, Rich, showed up. I tried to put on some music that he’d like while we unpacked and got organized. He left after unpacking, but I was in much need of sleep after only getting a few hours worth on the plane. I crashed on my bed with my luggage next to me. When I woke up, another one of my roommates, Colin, had shown up, and he started talking to me right off about how soon dinner was going to be served downstairs. I took a shower and started getting dressed. He had read our daily schedule wrong, and I hadn’t read it at all, so we both started dressing in business attire for dinner. After awhile, Rich turned to us and asked if we knew that we only needed to be dressed well for the welcome seminar, which was about an hour after dinner. Colin and I felt stupid, but there was no way I was going to re-dress if I was going to be getting into the suit again anyway. Dinner was alright, and afterward, we returned to our room to meet our last roommate, Nick. He lived very close, and later in the week, he had his mom bring us snacks. He was the only other in the room with a laptop, but it was very old.

The opening session for the program was pretty laid back. We got introduced to all the instructors and volunteer assistants. Afterward, we were dismissed to our caucus meetings. I had been designated to Caucus 2, a great group of 39 people from the program with whom I worked with to complete our project for the week. Curfew followed the caucus meeting. My roommates and I stayed up for a bit more, but had to get to sleep as early as we could manage, considering we had to wake up at 8:00 the next day.

Sunday, June 18th
There were two optional activities this morning, one being Catholic Mass. Well, fuck that. I wanted to sleep in as much as possible. I got up a little after 8:00 and got dressed before going down for breakfast. This was the last day that we were allowed to wear casual attire, but I hadn’t brought any of that, so I just wore my suit slacks and my red dress shirt. There was another session of all scholars about getting the most from our week in D.C. and then another caucus meeting. At 11:30, we split off into our separate crossfire sessions. These were the debates that we had chosen topics on when we registered for the program. Everybody had to do the first one, which was Media & Science. I hardly said a word the entire time. I wish I had actually researched the topics that I was supposed to be debating.

Lunch followed, and after that we left by bus to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington Dulles International Airport. We had a bus with a broken air conditioner. Meh. That, coupled with the heat and humidity, made us all happy that we didn’t have to wear business attire yet. I took tons of pictures at the museum - most a little blurry, but it’s all good. Upon leaving the museum, we made our way to the Pentagon City Mall, where we were given food vouchers to choose our own dinner. I made the best effort to try food from places I hadn’t seen in Vegas, even though it was all fast food. If you ever get a chance to try sushi from Kabuki, go for it. It’s pretty good. After we got back, we were to dress in business attire for the rest of the night. Our first guest speaker was alright, but didn’t have as much knowledge of the technological side of things. Our caucus meetings followed the seminar, and the rest of the night was reserved for student lounge, where we just hung out downstairs and socialized. After curfew, we decided to watch Batman Begins on my laptop while using my Logitech speakers. Most of us fell asleep right off, but Colin watched all of the movie before he fell asleep.

Monday, June 19th
Even earlier than Sunday, we had to wake up at 7:30. After breakfast, we had a speaker from an inventor. She was able to answer the groups questions more than the man the night before. I never asked any questions to the speakers throughout the week. I didn’t know what to ask. We rode over to Grant’s Statue to take the group photo, which you can find a scan of in the Myspace group that I started after I got back from the trip. It’s not that great of quality, and if you get the larger file from me directly, it still won’t be perfect because I had to Photoshop five sectional scans together to get the full thing into one file. Anyway, we had lunch at Union Station – kind of. We had to be back on the bus ten minutes after arriving because we had to get to our caucus’s onsite visit destination at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Our bus driver was kind enough to let us ear our lunch on the bus. We weren’t allowed to bring phones or cameras into the building because everything was pretty much classified.

The speakers inside the building weren’t that interesting, really. Many of us started falling asleep from fatigue combined with boredom. At the end of their presentations, they gave us a couple of souvenirs such as 3-D glasses, a CD with 3-D pictures to look at with them, and a tear-resistant, water-proof map of southern Nevada. It was probably more interesting to me because I am from Nevada. We moved to another room to check out some of their equipment and such, and watched a few segments of a documentary on a race in which the cars were driven through the desert trail by programmed robots. When it came time for us to leave, we discovered it was raining outside. Not only that, but our bus – which had replaced the one without air conditioning – had broken down. This is where we came to the conclusion that the world was against Caucus 2, and I at one point said, “This sucks caucus.” Luckily, we had received those cool water-proof maps, haha! They didn’t completely cover us, but they helped. We ran to the bus to get our things and then ran to our third bus in two days to start driving back to the hotel. Note to self: Wool suits do not smell good when they’re wet.

Another crossfire session followed dinner and an optional seminar on college life, which I again passed up. My crossfire topic was Energy and the Environment. It really addressed the question of what to do about America’s limited energy sources. Caucus meetings came next, where we finally started working on our project, which was to be presented on Friday. Our chosen topic was space exploration. I volunteered to be on the publishing team because I had a laptop. After student lounge and curfew, I packed my dirty clothes and went to sleep.

Tuesday, June 20th
Once again, our wakeup time was set earlier, this time at 7:15. Our first seminar of the day was on the National Security Agency. Two short presentations followed. The ones I was assigned to were biometrics and language at the NSA. Our final crossfire came before we left by bus to the Smithsonian. Finally, this was a crossfire that I was more interested in because it addressed computers as opposed to medicine. We talked about which operating systems will flourish in the near future and other computer-related information like that. I started hanging out at the National Air and Space Museum with a group of kids from my caucus who had already gotten very close as friends in the first few days. We only got to tour the National Air and Space Museum because we didn’t have time to trek to other buildings.

Before heading back to the hotel, we took a trip to the National Academy of Sciences for a seminar by the president of the National Academy of Engineering. He was informative and witty. The auditorium we were in was awesome, too. All of the architecture in that city is beautiful, really. It’s just the humidity that kills me. Anyway, some people asked extremely stupid questions, such as the ones that regarded teleportation and time travel. Pffft.

After dinner back at the hotel, we had yet another seminar for the day from a director of Research & Laboratory Management for the Army. I suppose he was pretty interesting, but I could barely hear him way in the back, where our caucus was supposed to sit for that seminar. He did do something cool, though, where he stabbed two pieces of Kevlar, one of which was impenetrable because it had some kind of liquid dried on it that closed gaps between the fabric. A short overview of the next day’s activities left us to our caucuses, where we went into more detail and then did more research for our caucus project. I ended up typing up my part of the research back in my hotel room while my roommates slept. I didn’t get to sleep until 2:00, which, in my next sentence, will prove to have been a bad move on my part.

Wednesday, June 21st
As if it weren’t bad enough for me to have gone to sleep at 2:00, our set time to wake up today was 5:45. Oh fuck. Just after breakfast, we adjourned to the buses and headed out to Capitol Hill for the day at 7:00. Our first stop was the U.S. Capitol Building. Once again, all cameras and cell phones were collected before entering because it is, after all, a business building, and peace is needed. We got to sit on the floor of the House of Representatives. What an honor, really. There’s so much to learn about that single room. Everything has a meaning – from the busts of lawmakers on the walls to the state seals on the ceiling; gas masks under the seats; bullet holes in the ceiling and one of the tables; where the presidents sits and the process of voting on a bill. The place is a lot smaller than you’d think from watching the State of the Union Address on television. We had one man speak on an impromptu notice because the senator who was supposed to speak was late. She arrived after he was done and gave an inspirational speech.

Congressional appointments were made for every scholar who attended the program. I got to visit the offices of Senators Harry Reid and John Ensign and of Representative John C. Porter. While they were all out and busy with other tasks, I did get to meet with their staff and learn about them. Aside from that I was able to visit the Supreme Court, Library of Congress, and botanical gardens – where I got a few pictures and videos of some cute squirrels who were begging for food.

After the buses left Capitol Hill, we still had time for more touring before dinner. I got to see the Vietnam Wall, Lincoln Memorial, and Washington Monument. A few friends and I played with the squirrels again because they were fun, and would occasionally try to attack you. Soon, we realized we were late for the bus, and had to run back to the location. I was the only one of the four of us that was able to hop over a fence without touching it with my feet. The others needed help. We must’ve run a quarter of a mile to get back to the bus. Luckily, it was late. Still, I had to strip down as much as decently possible to cool off before we showed up at H20, a restaurant and lounge located near the marina.

The food was decent, but the noteworthy thing was the entertainment. The Capitol Steps, a parody group that came together decades ago, was probably the best group of people on stage that we sat and listened to. If you look at their site here, you can listen to some of their songs. A friend and I split the price of four of their CDs, but after I came home, I found out that they have many more than that. I wrote the CD images to my laptop and let the other guy keep all the physical CDs. The caucus meeting didn’t involve much work today, since the project directors were the ones with the most work to do.

Thursday, June 22nd
Yay! We finally get a break from the ever-earlier wakeup calls. 7:45 was our time today. The first speaker for the day did not seem very knowledgeable. Some of the pictures on his PowerPoint presentation were just Photo-Shopped pictures. Lunch was a bit early at the Ronald Reagan building. We were supposed to have general touring time before we went to our onsite visits, mine being the American Red Cross – Don’t look at me like that. Everything else was taken by the time the signup sheet came around to me. Anyway, that’s later. I fell asleep on the bus ride from the Ronald Reagan building to the area in front of the White House, where we got dropped off. When the group was getting off the bus, someone tapped me on the shoulder and woke me up.

After taking some pictures, I started walking around to the back of the White House to look around. See, I was under the impression from the daily overview sheet that I had to be back at the bus by 1:15. Well, as I was talking on the phone with my brother on the other side of the White House, I got a call from the instructor, who was on the bus with everybody else waiting for me. Apparently, while I was sleeping, everybody else was told to be back at the bus by 12:30. Oh fuck. Now it’s five minutes after 1:00 and I’m running once again, fully dressed in a suit, through hot and humid conditions, from the back of the White house to the front. When I finally arrived, I found out whytf I was considered late. I also found out that I would’ve gotten left behind if I hadn’t given my business card out to some new friends, because without it, they wouldn’t have had my cell phone number.

So obviously, we didn’t have any more time for touring. We weren’t late for the presentation at the American Red Cross though… luckily… I suppose. We actually went between three different buildings, one of which was like, four blocks away. The overviews of the intricacies of what the organization does really weren’t that interesting to anybody in the group. It was really more like touring an office building, complete with cubicles. We were given a few small souvenirs, but that’s about it. After returning to one of the other buildings, someone gave us a presentation on safety in cases such as floods, hurricanes, and things like that. It really wasn’t that interesting, either, but the guy who gave the presentation had a very amusing chuckle, which he let out every now and then when he thought he was saying something witty. I’m not sure if he knew whether or not we were laughing with him or at him.

Finally, we headed back to the hotel. Dinner preceded our last seminar – one given by another man who really didn’t know how to capture the attention of his audience. He really shouldn’t have been reading the definitions on his PowerPoint presentation word-for-word. We had plenty of time in our caucus meetings to address the poor quality of the seminars of the day.

Friday, June 23rd
Another 7:45 wakeup call, we were all excited about the day ahead of us. Each caucus presented their project. A lot of other caucuses proved to have had more fun than we did in making our presentation. It’s cool though. Whatever. We had brief touring at the World War II Memorial and Jefferson Monument. Lunch was at the Pentagon City Mall again, where I actually bought a pair of shorts for myself at American Eagle Outfitters because I only owned one pair of shorts back at home and felt the need to get more. Because we wanted to listen to music after we got off the bus, I carried my bag and laptop with me when we arrived to tour at the Arlington National Cemetery. In retrospect, it was a bad idea. It was especially hot on this day, and long walks up hills and steps did not help anybody walking in a suit. Now add fifteen pounds to the load. Grrreat. I got to see JFK’s gravesite. Somehow, the guys I was with managed to take an extremely long route to the Tomb of the Unknowns, where four of our scholars were to take part in a wreath-laying ceremony that followed the changing of the guard.

We left immediately after the wreath-laying ceremony. We had a couple hours to pack after returning and were given time to get dressed up for the night’s banquet and dance. The banquet was awesome. Food was good, but in small portions, for some reason. We were entertained by a band consisting of drums, fifes, and trumpets. Graduation speeches were given by four of the seven caucuses. We had a final caucus meeting, where we all said a small goodbye to the rest of our peers, and in our caucus, had a surprise by presenting one of our scholars with a birthday cake! I didn’t eat any, however, because our meeting got out later than scheduled and I wanted to get to the dance as soon as I could.

The dance went from 9:15 to 11:55, and it was awesome! I surprised a lot of people with what they thought was good breakdancing, when really it didn’t have much style at all. Still, it felt good to be recognized. The slow-dance songs were a bit awkward. I made my best effort to find the ones who seemed lonely at those times. It’s probably not the best idea to put this up here, but I would’ve tried to find a girl to hook up with if I hadn’t been involved in a relationship back here at home. Many of the other Presidential Classroom kids will agree that there were many smart, stunning young women there, and the girls will say the same about the guys. But, I do have a girl back here, and she’s great for me. I’m not one of those guys that would give up a good relationship with one girl for a short night with another. Finally, back in the hotel room, I managed to setup my tripod and get a picture of me and my roommates, which is currently loaded on my Myspace. We probably didn’t go to sleep until 1:45 or 2:00.

Saturday, June 24th
Well, what a week. One of my roommates had already left by the time I woke up. The other three of us hung out downstairs for a bit while we waited for our bus to leave to the airport. I only had to wait a couple of minutes to get my ticket printed out at first, but when I went to get checked at the gate, a woman wouldn’t let me through with my garment bag. I didn’t understand at first why she made me check it when I had taken it on my flights before, but after waiting 20 minutes in line to get another ticket to check my bag, and then heading to my gate, I found out that the plane I was on was much smaller than the ones I took to get to D.C.

While waiting at the gate for my plane to leave at 11:00, I ran into another scholar from my caucus. Apparently, her flight got cancelled, and her next flight was either going to be at 7:30 that night or 6:30 the next day. I felt bad for her. I hope she didn’t have too much trouble after I had to leave her. I changed planes in Nashville, where the next plane left two hours after mine landed. The woman sitting next to me on that flight out happened to have changed the same plane as I did. We were both heading to Vegas, but had another stop in DFW, where there was another hour of waiting. All in all, my flight was ten hours with changeovers and stops. My dad picked me up at 6:00 PM Vegas time and we picked up pizza for dinner.


Congratulations. You just read 5½ pages worth of my experience at Presidential Classroom. If you think you’d be interested in attending a program like this, let me know. I can recommend you to it through their website. As for now, I’m sure you won’t have a problem waiting for my next blog, which will cover this week. Hmm… it always seems like I’m a week behind…

Take it easy, but strike hard.
Vaniah Schwenoha