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