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

Here we go

26 June 2006 - 8:36 PM

I should stop procrastinating because writing the blog about my week in D.C. is going to take hours to write. I suppose I'll just reserve this one for the rest of the week, before I left.

Monday, June 12
I didn't end up going to sushi like my last post said. I was just out of the shower and getting ready to go when I got a call from Joanna, asking me where I was. Doh! I totally forgot that she was having a going-away lunch at California Pizza Kitchen in the Fashion Show Mall on this day. I told her I was running late, and just getting ready. Then I called Will back to tell him what was up. He wasn't too distraught that I wasn't going to go. I do need to get around to having sushi with some friends sometime, though.

I saw quite a few people at CPK when I showed up. I showed people pictures of the party from the preceding Thursday. Around the end of our meal, we saw Niki and Lucille coming down the escalator. Alexa ran up and fake-tackled him. He was absolutely in shock. He had gotten a call, like me, wondering if he was going to show up. He was thinking of the wrong restaurant, and considering the one he was thinking of was far away from the Fashion Show Mall, he told Ron that he wouldn't be able to make it. Turns out he was just misinformed, much to his surprise.

I had to get back home soon to get the car to my mom so she could go to work. After sitting at home for awhile, Niki came and picked me up and we went to pick up my tuxedo. Then he, Lucille, and I hung out at his house for about an hour or an hour and a half. Niki pretty much just slept on his floor, so Lucille and I played with Play Dough on his bed and wrapped Niki's cell phone in seran wrap. Once Niki was ready to take Lucille home, he decided to take me as well. The rest of the night is unclear to me.

Tuesday, June 13
Congratulations class of 2006! I took my mom to work, picked up Chris, and headed down to the Orleans Arena to get ready to usher the commencement ceremony. About fifteen minutes before it started, Ron backed out of being an usher because he thought he'd get to leave earlier so that he could go to a concert. That left me with Todd to usher the girls' side and Chris to usher the guys' side. Considering we had absolutely no rehearsal or job overview until twenty minutes before the fact, it's safe to say that the job we did was, for lack of a better word, bad. I ended up with a few rows of girls that were only nine people long when they were supposed to be ten long. When that happened, I told someone coming in to fill the space. Later, as they got called to receive their diploma, I noticed that they were supposed to be in alphabetical order, and that I probably screwed up the order of the pictures taken entirely. Sorry, graduates, if I led to you getting the wrong picture.

After the graduation, Chris and I took pictures of people outside for awhile. We found Jessica and Cayla, and after long enough, decided to go back to my house to get some dinner. Most people ate Hot Pockets. Soon enough, it was time for me to take Cayla and Jessica home. I left Chris with Dallas, who had shown up. After I got back, Dallas went home, and saved me some time and gas by taking Chris as well.

Wednesday, June 14
My dad and I did a bit of errand-running. We went to Fry's, where I chose the laptop that I wanted to use during my week in D.C. After we came home, my mom had cooked steak for dinner, which was delicious as always.

My mom was off from work, so I was able to go to Melissa's house to see her. It was good, because it happened to be our one-month anniversary. I made sure to do the speed limit or at least the same speed as the traffic around me so as not to yeild myself another violation. We watched TV, talked, and hung out. I finally got a picture of us together on my camera, which was much-needed. After my last relationship, I realized that I need to take more pictures of me and my partner together. I mean, when I tried to make a collage for my last girl, I didn't even have enough pictures to fill a 41-photo collage. I wish I could have stayed at her house for dinner because her mom cooked spaghetti - one of my favorite foods - but my parents wanted me back home so we could go to the gym. Plus, I totally forgot that I had already had dinner. Hopefully I will work out more this summer, because it would really be something good to get back into.

Thursday, June 15 & Friday, June 16
Here was where I started packing for my trip. I spent these two days figuring out what I needed - or much rather wanted - to bring with me to help me survive for a week. In retrospect, I was probably the person with the most or the second most electronics. I brought my PSP, speakers, laptop, two digital cameras, a digital voice recorder, a wireless mouse, and an ethernet hub, along with almost all accessories needed to support all devices. Along with that, I packed two two-piece suits, nine ties, eight white tee shirts, nine dress shirts, eight pairs each of black and white socks, two pairs of dress shoes, and an entire bag of toiletries. I was now ready to embark on the first journey farther from home than I had ever gone before, accompanied by the first airplane ride I had ever been on, not counting the one that I supposedly took when I was a young boy that I have no recollection of at all.

I know you're waiting for the next series of days. You're gonna have to wait just a bit longer on that one. I know that it's going to take much longer than this one took to write. Until then...

Take it easy, but strike hard.
Vaniah Schwenoha

"Let me get the Super Big Mac Slammer Slammer..."

12 June 2006 - 1:35 PM

Hahahahaha! You're gonna have to ask Chris Yi to tell that story. I can't exactly do it yet without cracking up half-way through.

Oh Shit. I have about a week and a half to cover in here, and it's a very eventful week and a half... Okay, here goes...

After my last post (on June 2nd), Chris Yi called me and was ready to play some pool. Not really interested in using lots of gas to pick Niki or anybody else up, I only picked Chris up, and we went down to Pool Sharks. We were both shooting pretty shitty, considering it's been months since the last time we played pool. I recorded a few games with my video camera... ran out of space on an entire 1GB card, haha. When I got home, I cut out the shots that were made and compiled them into a video, which you can view on my Myspace.

Saturday (June 3rd) was full of travel. It was the day of Sunset region's dive party. The divers were granted permission to use the boards at the Las Vegas Municipal Pool for two hours. The other people who were there took awhile to realize that they weren't going to get on the boards for awhile. We were all curious as to how a large group of people who live in the ghetto were going to react to not having use of the boards for such a long time. Again, I used my camera to record a lot of the dives I was doing. This time, I set the quality lower and remembered that I had another 256MB card on me. They both got used up. I got about an hour and fifteen minutes recorded. It was sufficient to make another diving advertisement.

After I ran out of recording memory, I started doing stuff off the 3-meter board. I wish I had recorded that, because I did a front 2½ pike over there. I also did about a front 3½ tuck... one of those ones where I spin as much as I can before I hit the water. This time, though, I landed on my chest and face. It didn't seem that bad at first, but when I got out and walked through the grass to get a drink, I coughed and spit it out... and it was solid red. Meh. I'm pretty sure that whatever was wrong, it cleared up for the most part.

After the dive party, one of the divers took me home. He wanted to go to SkyMania. I figured I'd be able to go right away and have time afterward to go out with Melissa and some friends to the atrium at the Bellagio. I called Chris to see if he wanted to go, and he did. It turned out to be good to bring him, because the other guy didn't show up, and we didn't have any way of contacting each other because neither of us had each other's phone number. While jumping, I threw out my knee again, but it didn't hurt - probably because I didn't throw it out with a lot of force. I also stuck the landing on a front double on the crash pad about 5 minutes before I left.

Chris and I left SkyMania, then called Melissa to see what the plan was for the night. Even though Erica had her car, she said she didn't have gas, so I ended up having to pick them up. We went to the atrium at the Bellagio and took pictures, and soon, the girls we were with grew hungry. We ventured over to the Forum Shops on foot and got a table at The Cheesecake Factory. This is where tons of hilarious stories were told, such as the one that relates to the title of this blog. By the time we got finished, it was about 1:30 in the morning. I took the girls back home and then started driving back toward my side of town with Chris. Along the way, I got stopped by a bike cop... Ugh. Apparently, the speed limit on Jones on the north side of Sahara is 35. I got stopped doing 52, and was also cited because my license plate lights were out. Odd enough for me to be stopped at that time of the night when I'm the only car on the road, the man didn't say anything about me being out past curfew. At the end of the night, I must've put 90 miles on the car...

That Sunday and Monday were greatly relaxing for school nights. They had to be, in preparation for final exams. Tuesday, I had Tech and English. There was no test in Tech, but we did end up moving a lot of computer shit from room to room. I barely had time to write my English essay, which was obviously due the next period. So here comes one of my favorite stories from exams... I figured out with my third and fourth quarter grades that I only needed a 66.5% on the English exam to get an A for the semester. This is why I didn't bother with my essay until first period the day it was due. This is also why I only spent ten minutes on it, and it only occupied a little more than 6 lines of size 12 font on a sheet of paper. Needless to say, the essay was poor. It got a 60%, and it counted toward half of the exam grade. Luckily for me, I set the curve on the multiple choice section by getting 102 out of 116 questions correct. Don't ask me how that happened, because I slept for part of the story of Julius Cæsar. This evened out to be 80% exactly on that semester exam. Lawl.

Then there came Wednesday - PreCalculus and French. Neither of these tests really had to be taken seriously, but hey, wtf else was I supposed to do for four hours at school? I still don't know what I got on the PreCalc test, but I'm sure it was higher than the 42% I needed to get to keep an A, haha! In French, I tied another kid for the highest multiple choice grade, getting 167 out of 200 questions correct. So far, so good, with 4 A's. After school, Dallas and I went to Mr. K's classroom to pick up some stuff. See, he told the techs that he'd let us walk out with computer monitors if we wanted them. Seriously, it was a free 19" monitor. Who was gonna turn that down consciously? It was a bit iffy taking them out, because the hall monitors were by the gates, and it was raining outside.

I didn't do much to prepare for my toughest classes of semester exams. I woke up Thursday morning at 5:00 and started writing up my study sheet for Chemistry. All I did was take my sheet from first semester and add stuff to it. I never saw it for myself, but I heard from quite a few people that my raw score was too high to use as the curve, since it was a 67%. I felt pretty good about that, considering I ended up with like, 112% after the curve even without doing the extra credit essay. I didn't do that because I wanted to study for History, which was the class that I needed the highest exam grade on to keep an A. I needed a 72%. Half of the grade on that was the DBQ that we had to create, which Chris and I did together. It really wasn't hard to do. We ended up with a 99% on that part of the exam. Then, the multiple choice turned out to be a very laid-back, 50-question multiple choice. The questions were fairly easy. I turned out getting 39 questions correct, and even that shocked me, because I admit that I'm no good at history. End of story, end of school year - Straight A's again. Yes!

After school, we continued our high school tradition by having lunch at Baja Fresh. When we left there, we headed to the park and hung out for awhile. We played frisbee, talked, and just enjoyed our summer freedom for the first time. Chris dropped me off at home because I didn't have my car, and said he'd come back later to jump in the pool because it was extremely hot outside. When he came back, I asked him where Nicole was, and he told me she was at home because they had broken up - again. Don't worry. They got back together the next day, to nobody's surprise I'm sure. Chris and I swam a bit, but I had to get out of the pool soon to get ready for the black and white party at The Rio that I had been invited to. Actually, I was probably the best-dressed person there that night, because I wore my black suit with a white shirt, black tie, and white top hat. It looked pretty spiffy. I can send you pictures, if you'd like. The one weird thing was that I had to brush my hair back to wear the hat. I will probably brush it back while I'm in D.C. next week.

The party was awesome. Had to be one of the best ones I've ever attended, especially since I'd never been to a hotel party. Dallas and Brittany kinda flipped out on me part of the way through the night because they thought I was getting too close to people while dancing. Brittany apologized the next day, realizing that there's really no non-sexual way to freak dance. I know that it wasn't the best way to prove to them that I was in control of my actions, but once everybody was drunk enough to dance, I put on a little show. See, we were at a black and white party, and one piece of clothing that happened to be black was my Speedo. Haha! Once I stripped down to that, I had to wait in the bathroom for 20 minutes before a good song came on that I could come out and dance to. It was hilarious to everybody. I still want to know if anybody got pictures of it, haha! I also ended up breaking a bed by flipping from one to another. When I landed, the frame snapped. One of the guests helped me take the matress and boxspring off and reassemble it as much as we could. I guess it was a good enough job, because two people slept on it that night and the hotel didn't say anything about it when they checked out. By the time I left, I was sober enough to drive, but I made sure to obey the speed limit this time, because getting pulled over again might have turned out a lot worse than the last time it happened. All in all, it was a very awesome day, with straight A's, great friends, and one of the best parties I'd ever been to.

The fun didn't stop then, though. The next day, I spent a few hours cleaning my house and getting ready to have my birthday party. It was very short notice for lots of people, but the turnout was pretty good, if I do say so myself. Before Ed took me to go pick up pizza, we decided to go into my street and ghost ride the whip. Hahahaha! We even got Bo to be in it... even though you can't see him in the video that I put up on Myspace. I probably also should've changed the recording quality back to high from when I set it to normal at the dive party. One thing that kinda irked me was that Mitch left with about a third or a fourth of my guests to go to his house and smoke hookah. That was super-cool. It was even better that Sarah left with them, even though she was the one who said early in the party that she'd wait until night to continue her so-called tradition of going skinny dipping in my pool. Thanks Sarah, for being true to that word... Oh well. I guess that she just really felt the need to go, considering throughout the entire party that she and Mitch were getting along rather well, even though Mitch has a girlfriend. Meh, it's hard to tell what's going on with them. I don't even want to try.

Saturday was the last day of this slew of madness that's been keeping me amused. I took my mom to work so I could have the car for the night. Right after dropping her off, I went up to Brent and Amanda's house for their graduation party. It was pretty cool. They had a lot of food on-hand and we watched some childhood memories of them on good 'ol VHS. Chris and I had to leave their house at about 5:30, for separate reasons. I dropped Chris off at Game Stop for his first day of work, then made my way to Brandy Langford's house for Durango's swim and dive banquet. Her house is amazing. It was huge. I never saw the inside because the banquet was in the backyard, but the pool looked great and they had an in-ground trampoline, which I made much use of. I came close a few times to landing a front double, but never fully got it. I pulled a pretty good speech out of my ass when called up as the only diver for the school, and told the crowd of my struggle to make the requirement of getting a varsity letter this year because of my ear. One last thing worth mentioning is that the neighbors of the Langford's owned a huge turkey, haha!

After I left the banquet, I went to Wal-Mart to run an errand for my mom and then went to pick up Sarah and Briana to go see The Omen. I ended up going to the wrong house to pick them up because they didn't elaborate where they were. Was I wrong to assume they were at Briana's house when Sarah told me that Briana was in the shower? Anyway, the movie was pretty good. I liked it. I dropped them off at some guy's house after the movie. It turned out to be the house of the guy that helped me with that bed a couple nights before. Haha! Small world...

Sunday wasn't too eventful. I think I might keep Sundays open even through the summer to be my relaxing days at home. Then again, I have all summer to have relaxing days at home. Niki came over with his computer to get some technical support. I thought it was gonna be a long process, but some random fluke with a Windows XP CD ended up fixing it right away. For the next few hours, he and I played Worms Armageddon. It was his first time playing, so I pretty much pwned him like no other. I think he won one round out of the entire 2-3 hours that we played. Chris Schroeder called sometime during the day wanting to go bowling after he got off work. I told him I'd go after the season premier of The 4400. Because of this, I took a shower before the show came on. When I came back out, Niki had already left because his mom picked him up. The season premier turned out to be two hours long, which is not what I expected, so we didn't end up going bowling because of the time issue.

I talked on the phone with Melissa last night for the first time in too long. It was pretty nice. We talked about how Dallas and Brittany were uneasy about me at the party, and it turned out to be fine with her, especially since the same kind of thing happened at a party with her on Saturday night. Today, not much has been done. I've been writing this blog for probably an hour and a half. I have to pick up my tuxedo today to be an usher tomorrow at graduation, and I just received a call minutes ago from Will, asking if I wanted to go out for sushi. I'm gonna shower now and get ready. Until next time...

Take it easy, but strike hard.
Vaniah Schwenoha

I'm The Juggernaut, Bitch!!!

2 June 2006 - 7:16 PM

~sigh~ I can't believe he fucking said that... It was pretty funny though.

So yeah. I kinda failed to write for a good week and a half. Now that I'm bored as fuck, though, I will try to recount what I can. It's been too long to recount every day, so I'll just go over the things that aren't 100% boring.

On Wednesday (May 24th), I wore my brand new suit to school. It was pretty interesting. People would ask, "Why are you wearing a suit?" to which I would be able to reply, "I wanted to look good for my birthday." People would then realize it, and then I'd get "Happy Birthday!" Haha! Apparently, the shoes that I thought were good with the suit... were very uncomfortable. First, I'm very used to my DC's, which have lots of cushioning in the heel. The dress shoes I have don't have any cushioning, and seams at the heel. The shoes also aren't broken in yet. At the end of the school day, I had two open blisters on each foot. Ugh.

After school that day, my parents and I went back to Mastroianni Fashions to buy another suit. One ended up being mine, and the other one Victor's. His still needs to be tailored when he comes to town to get it. When we left there, we picked up my grandpa and went to the buffet at Bellagio to celebrate my birthday. Overall, my birthday was good. I'm still waiting until summer to have my party.

Thursday (May 25th) was the last school day of the week on account of Staff Development Day. During the last few periods of the day, I realized that I would be able to go to the midnight screening of X-Men: The Last Stand. After dinner, I picked people up to go. In my car were Courtney, Jessica, Chris Yi, Billy, Niki, and Sarah. We went to the showing at Suncoast Station because Dallas and Brittany were supposed to be going there with a lot of Brittany's friends. Well, it turned out Dallas and Brittany hadn't saved enough seats for all seven of us to sit with them in the back of the theatre, so we sat in front... without Dallas and Brittany. Lawl.

To me, the movie was pretty good. The director did the best he could to incorporate familiar faces into the movie, but it was only an hour and forty-five minutes long, so there wasn't much time for character development. Mid-movie, it was revealed that the internet somehow influenced the filming of a scene of the movie. It was definitely the funniest scene in the movie. I was laughing for a good three minutes at least before I could calm down.

After the movie, I decided it would be nice to go to the park by the Suncoast again. We played around and took pictures for about forty-five minutes, then left. I took everybody home or to the house that they'd be spending the night at, and then crashed on my bed at about 4:30 in the morning.

I slept most of Friday because of the late getting-in from the night before. After my dad got home with the car, I left and met up with Melissa, her sister, and their friends to see X-3 again. This time, I made sure to stay in the theatre through the credits, since I missed the extra scene afterward the night before because I left to use the restroom. Melissa stayed with me too, but everybody else in our party left, so I ended up taking her home <3

Saturday, I took my mom to work, sat around my house for a bit, and then went to Melissa's house. I brought my American History X DVD for us and her friend Danica to watch. They had never seen it before. If you haven't, either, you should. After the movie, it was hard to get time to talk among the three of us because Melissa's little brother kept coming in. He pulled a water gun on us, and we tried to shield ourselves at first, but it proved useless - and potentially expensive - when he started squirting Melissa's desk and electronics instead. Eventually, I ended up getting in a water-gun fight with him... something I didn't expect myself to do... I'm not usually good with kids, even though I'd like to be. After a bit, Melissa's dad got mad that her brother was jumping around upstairs, and her brother started crying. I felt bad, but Mel and Danica told me not to think much of it because he usually cries when Mel's sister's friends are around. I left for the night at about midnight. It was a good night.

I woke up Sunday a little stuffed up and with a bit of a sore throat. Little did I know that it would soon turn into a pretty bad cold. I stayed home for Sunday and Monday, Monday being Memorial Day, and me being off from school. My dad's trying to tell me that it could be mononucleosis. Thanks, Dad, for semi-bad-mouthing my girlfriend.

Monday (now the 29th), I don't recall doing much. We've been doing things in Tech all week, which is pretty gay, considering it leaves little time for me to do homework. Today (Friday) was the first day that we didn't have to do anything. I came home Monday and slept from 2:00 to 9:00, and then later from 12:00 to 4:30. After waking up at 9:00, my dad told me that my new camera had arrived. I played with it for awhile. It's pretty nice. I used it the next day to take pictures of my Chemistry AP class, since the teacher kept forgetting to bring his wife's camera to take his annual pictures of his AP classes. I brought my tripod the day after taking those pictures in case we took more, but we never did. I set it up anyway to get video of the class detonating ammonium triiodide, but the batch we made didn't end up drying enough for us to get it to detonate.

After school on Wednesday, our school held the yearbook-signing party. It wasn't as good as it usually is. Not many people were there. I think I got signatures from every person there that I knew. I even signed the yearbook of some guy who I had never met because he wanted to say thanks to me for holding the hallway doors for the majority of the school year. Haha!

After school on Thursday, I went to an NHS pre-meeting to get informed about next year's NHS. I found out in sixth period that day that I was supposed to get an application a few days ago during first period. Well, I have Tech first period, and a very informal teacher for Tech. He gave me the application today in class. Thanks, Mr. K.

We had quarter-book-project presentations today in English. Only three people volunteered to get the extra credit by presenting, but they were all very good presentations. Chris' song was great, Niki's rap was awesome, and Brent's visual aid was perfect and detailed. I did my oral presentation in French today, which included a very-hurriedly compiled series of pictures that I made in first period and lunch period the day before. It had some rather surprising pictures in it, such as a horse that was thrown through the windshield of a car - the sentence that went with that was "Pour conduire bien, il faut que l'on fasse attention" or "To drive well, it's necessary to pay attention."

Today was locker-cleanout day. I impressively managed to fit five binders, two textbooks, three composition notebooks, and paperback copy of Julius Cæsar into my backpack and get it zipped up. Of course, it ended up being four times the depth of my body, and I still had to carry my Ti keyboard and my yearbook in my hands, along with the stuff from Courtney's locker, because she was in a classroom and was going to meet me at the car afterward. Haha!

I was invited today by an old elementary school friend to go with her and some others to eat sushi this afternoon. I let her know that I didn't have any transportation, but she assured me that I'd be able to get a ride from someone. We exchanged phone numbers, and I also knew three others who were going.

...I have not heard back from anybody about going to eat sushi, and as I write this sentence, it is 7:06 PM.

Yay. I'm a loner.

I also put up a bulletin inviting people to come and swim at my house, and I told people about it at school, but nobody has talked about that with me, either.

Yay. I'm a super-loner right now... so much so that I set up my tripod in a room with no windows in order to avoid conflicting shadows, took pictures, and learned enough about Photoshopping to create this.

I really hope I do something tonight. If nothing else, I want to play some pool. It's pretty sad that I rarely use the cue that I received by request for Christmas this past year.

Ugh. I also need very much to buy some Jones Soda flavored lip balm because the weather is really fucking up my lips.

That is all for now. Thanks for reading.

Take it easy, but strike hard.

Vaniah Schwenoha