Epiphany

27 July 2006 - 5:01 PM

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

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

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

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

So much for coming on strong =/

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

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

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

Take it easy, but strike hard.
Vaniah Schwenoha

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

20 July 2006 - 6:23 AM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take it easy, but strike hard.
Vaniah Schwenoha

Open Your Eyes

7 July 2006 - 2:49 AM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take it easy, but strike hard.
Vaniah Schwenoha

Presidential Shit

30 June 2006 - 7:28 PM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Take it easy, but strike hard.
Vaniah Schwenoha

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

Speeding up the Octaves

22 May 2006 - 7:32 PM

So I missed my Sunday blogging this week. Oh well.

Monday
I took my mom to work and headed to practice, but apparently, someone forgot to tell my coach that we weren't going to be using the pool at Baker anymore. So, practice got cancelled, but I didn't want to go home yet, because my friend's band concert was on that side of town, and it would be pointless to drive home and back just because I had nothing to do. It took me awhile to find the building I was supposed to be going to. Once there, I really had nothing to do for a good two hours. At one point, the idea came into my head to go to Melissa's house and see her, but unfortunately, I didn't have the directions on me. Then, I decided to try and get a map using my PSP. I drove around the surrounding neighborhoods for a good 45 minutes trying to find an unprotected wireless internet connection. It wasn't too hard to find wireless connections, because I was near a number of legal offices. Sadly, my PSP wasn't able to navigate the interactive maps, so I couldn't figure out where I was going. I ended up just waiting until they started selling tickets to the concert.

After I sat down, a few people came and sat next to me. I recognized one of them from a very long time ago. I don't even think I had any class with her, but I remembered her from elementary school. It was very interesting for me to have come across such an old acquaintance. I'm glad that I went to the concert, because I hadn't been to a school band performance since 8th grade, when I was part of the band. It was also nice for my friend, because her parents couldn't make it to the show, which was the last performance of the year.

Tuesday
So today was the first day of dive practice for the week, considering it got cancelled yesterday. The good thing was that we were practicing at the same pool that we'd be competing at on Saturday, so we had time to get used to the boards. It was also an indoor pool, which is always nice. The one thing that did suck was that practice started at 2:00, which didn't give me much time to get down there. I had to tell Sarah and Courtney to find different rides home for the rest of the week.

Wednesday
My dad had to take the car for deliveries, so he was supposed to take me to practice right after school. Well, he ended up being later than he should've been, so I changed and stretched at the school while I waited for him. We showed up about ten minutes late, but it wasn't too bad, because they weren't even in the water yet when I arrived. Practice was really good. I was getting great tops and better kickouts than usual. Too bad they didn't stay...

Thursday
Had a Chemistry test today. It was alright. I got a B on it, which is fair enough for me, I suppose. Practice was nothing special. It was longer than the other practices of the week though. I ended up leaving 6th period about half an hour early in an attempt to get down there by 1:00 because we had the boards from 1:00 to 3:00 as opposed to 2:00 to 3:00

Friday
We started debates in History today after we finished watching All the President's Men. We were supposed to do three debates in one day, but only had enough time for the one on abortion. That was lucky, because I wasn't completely prepared to take part in my debate on same-sex marriage. Practice seemed to be getting worse. I had to leave directly at 3:00 so I could get home, help my dad load the car, and let my parents go to work on time. After I showered, I looked around on Myspace for a bit. I ended up finding one of my sister's friends. If you look at my main Myspace page and notice the scan of the card from CJ's memorial service... she was his wife. I ended up reading a large portion of her online blog. It really gave me some insight to how she's been holding up over the past five months. If you'd like, you can read her blogs as well. There's an address in one of her Myspace blogs. In my friends, she's Tamsen on the 6th page.

I would have liked to see Melissa today, but by the time my dad got home at 8:30-9:00, I didn't think it would be wise to go out until midnight and then get less-than-sufficient sleep before the meet the following day. I was waiting for her to call after she got back from a play that she went to, but fell asleep about five minutes before she texted me, so that made me feel like a pretty big douchebag.

Saturday
I woke up at 7:00 today to drive down to the pool and get ready for the state dive meet. My dad went with me and left to his friend's house during warmups before he came back when the meet started. My mom caught a ride later on with my grandpa. It made me feel good that they actually wanted to watch one of the meets for once. My sister and her boyfriend also showed up near the end of the meet. Other than that, there weren't really any others who came to support me, with the exception of some divers who were cheering on divers from their school, as well.

I got about the same score at state as I got at regionals - about 300. Sadly, this left me in last place, just as I got last year, haha. The first-place winners really surprised me, though. Even though the kids from Reno were really good, a sophomore from Green Valley took first for the men by about 2 points. What was even more incredible was that the women's first place winner, a senior from Sierra Vista, had even failed a dive. I was very happy to see her win, because she should have gone to state last year, but failed two dives at regionals, which disqualified her.

After the meet, I ran some errands with my dad, came home, showered, and took a nap. After I took my mom to work, I picked up Niki and Chris and we went to SkyMania because I really wanted to go, given that I hadn't gone in three weeks in an attempt to strengthen my feet-first entries for diving. I dropped Niki and Chris off afterward, changed into presentable clothing, and drove over to Melissa's house. I took a different route than the directions I printed, so I almost got lost. The only change was that I didn't take the freeway. I actually probably ended up traveling less miles by skipping the freeway. When I showed up in her neighborhood, I discovered that my printed directions led me to... the emergency exit for her neighborhood. Haha! I ended up turning back and following another two cars in through the gate. Melissa and I talked in her room for a bit, but when her little brother and parents got home, we went for a walk... I'd never done that with anyone before - just gone for an evening walk. We went a short distance to a nearby park, where we talked some more and made official our relationship. It being spring, there were many bugs out, so eventually, we walked back to her house. We sat outside in my car, listening to music, and ended up playing a game of chess on her cell phone. We ended in a stalemate.

Soon, it was time for me to head home. We said our goodbyes, and I got about two miles away when I received a phone call from her. She had left her cell phone in my car, and I had left my PSP in her room. So, I turned around, and fortunately caught another person driving in through the gate to the neighborhood... at 12:30 in the morning... weird. We exchanged electronics, said goodbyes again, and I drove home.

On a sidenote, I like the one area on Jones that is about 50-100 yards of absolutely dark road, only lit by headlights. Jones is also a fun street to drive on at night. I made it from her house to my house - roughly a 14-mile stretch - in about 20 minutes. That was even with the mixup where I had know prior knowledge that Jones and Alexander switch names at Rancho because someone decided to get smart and cut the two perpendicular streets with a fucking diagonal street. Lawl.

Sunday
Today, I picked up my first suit. It fits well, and I have a few good shirt and tie combinations to go along with it. My mom thought it impractical to buy only one suit for an entire week in D.C., so she told me to buy two more, since the deal was three for $500 and I already bought one. My dad and I picked out two more suits, but didn't have the money, so we had the manager hold them until Wednesday. I also bought my quarter-project book at Borders because I had to return the one I checked out from the library on account of their policy on turning in all books at a certain point before the end of the school year. I've come to the conclusion that my Sundays at home are probably the most relaxing thing I can do. I don't have to worry about going to see anyone, and I am able to clean and organize things on my own time without rush.

Well, it's Monday, but I don't feel like writing more. Maybe later on tonight... Maybe tomorrow... Maybe next Sunday.

Take it easy, but strike hard.
Vaniah Schwenoha