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