The Stars That Usher Evening Rose

2010-04-20T23:08:00.003-05:00

It always amuses me how when one kid gets into trouble their brother or sister always has a huge smile on their face. You know they are loving the fact that their brother or sister is the one getting into trouble not them. While I have two sisters I didn't actually grow up with them as they are much older than I am so I never got to experience this but if I had I am sure my reaction would have been no different. Short post but life been boring last few days. Though Andy and I need to hurry up and figure out if we are going to renew our lease or move elsewhere.

2010-04-13T21:51:00.003-05:00

Work yesterday was very interesting to say the least. About 40 minutes after I started working my co-worker ran inside and told me to radio up to the front of the store and tell them to call the police because there is a women being chocked by a man in the parking lot and that he is also trying to kidnap her kid. At first i wasn't sure if he was being serious since it's not every day you hear someone tell you that sort of thing. But I looked outside in direction he was heading and noticed a crowd forming and realized he wasn't joking. So I immediately radioed up to the front and told them what was going on. That was followed by a long pause before I finally got a response from them asking me to repeat what I said, I later found out the pause was due to them making sure they heard me say what they thought I said. So apparently I wasn't only one caught off guard by it. So anyway they call the police and one of the managers comes running up to the front of the store asking me where they all were so I pointed and she ran out there. By then the guy had already fled the scene. Thankfully the women seemed to be fine except for a scratch on her neck and while the child seemed a little rattled he was ok as well. The police came and interviewed several people and took written statements from those who witnessed it. The cop then stayed with the women till she could get someone to come pick her up at which point they followed him to the court house so that she could press charges and put out a warrant for his arrest. 30 or so minutes passed before a customer who witnessed the assault came back out of the store. He told me that in his 48 years on this earth that he had never seen anything like that before and that when he came in the store he had to take some time to himself in order to recompose himself. Apparently this male who assaulted the women also threatened and cursed at one of our employees as well as this customer who saw it take place and made initial call to police. I don't know if they ever caught the guy but I do know they had a discription of him, his car and the license plate so chances are probably pretty high that they got him at some point. So yeah that's how my day at work started yesterday, not every day you get that kind of excitment.

2010-04-12T10:36:00.002-05:00

Took me forever to sign in here as I couldn't remember my username or password despite the fact I just signed in here a couple days ago, is that bad? Anyway I have come to the conclusion that everyone is an idiot. Some are definitely worse than others though. You have people who can't read or refuse to read signs warning them or telling them they can't do something but then precede to do it anyway. For example at work we have signs all over the front entrance for telling people to park on other side of the street yet people will still park smack in front of the store and then bitch and wine when you tell them they have to move their car. Also you have those people who come to get their propane tanks refilled and total ignore the big sign on the front door that specifically tells them they can not bring their propane tanks inside the building yet decide to bring tank inside anyway. The few times I have worked gas station it has amazed me how many people do not know or understand how a gas pump works. As well as those who don't understand what they did wrong when they get charged the wrong price. Its not complicated people. Then you get those people who park behind other people and wait for them to finish pumping gas instead of using one of the other several empty gas pumps, I mean do they have superstitions that they will only use that one pump or are they too dumb to realise there is several other open pumps? It is amazing how so many people can turn the simplest things into the most complicated things and unfortunately we are all guilty of it from time to time, just some are a whole lot worse than others.

2010-04-07T21:49:00.002-05:00

I haven't updated this thing in over two years. I got bored of it and didn't really feel like keeping up with it anymore so I quit posting. Now two years later I think I may give it a try again and hopefully keep up with it. I won't be posting everyday as I do not have that kind of time or patience but hopefully I will pop on at least once a week if not more often. Blog wont change much from what I posted on it before, just whatever is going on in my life and probably continue to post whatever dreams I can remember. I will also use this as my ranting post as I seem to have a lot to rant about anymore these days. Chances are no one reads this anymore and that is OK as I will mainly be writing just to get things off my mind, etc... That's it for now I should be back within a few days with my first real post.

2008-01-31T23:01:00.000-05:00

Happy Birthday to me, haha. Anyway, I am now a quarter century old. Sounds old when you say it that way.

Thought I would post to correct something I posted about last night. I was wrong about the whole Jamie situation. Come to find out all it was is that she had gotten a new cell phone and phone number so she actually never got my texts. She gave me her new number so everything should be good now. We are having a b-day party for me on Saturday night at Jeralyn's place. Jamie did not know I knew about the party because she started to talk about it then stopped fearing she had just spilled the beans. I assured her that she was ok and that I already knew. It is not going to be that big of a party though mainly due lack of time and waiting to last minute to plan it. Mainly just going to be my sisters, their kids, Niki, Jamie and I at least that I know of who will be there. But that is ok, I don't need anything big. Sunday Niki is probably going to come down and watch the Super Bowl with William and I, don't know if Jamie will join us for that or not. But that should be fun, don't know what we are going to do, maybe get some snacks from the store and what not. Cathy said she is going to take me out to dinner for my birthday tomorrow as well. But, thats about all I got. I will probably post on the b-day party and everything early next week.

2008-01-30T21:47:00.001-05:00

Looooooonnngg time no see. Life has been pretty crazy for me lately so for the most part I had totally forgotten about this blog. But, I am still here. A lot has happened since I last posted(some good and some bad), so this has the potential to be somewhat of a lengthy post but for the most part it should be more interesting than most of my other post.

First off I am no longer living at Jeralyn's as I moved to Cathy's house in early December and I have been here since. Though on the weekend of February 15th I will be moving into my own apartment, which for the most part I am really excited about. I left Jeralyn's as I had been there since May and was feeling like I was overstaying my welcome. But, once I get my apartment I will be back closer to her than Cathy's, in large part because its closer to a lot of my friends up there and its closer to my current job. Though hopefully it wont be my job to much longer. Its a one bedroom apartment about 850 square feet for $713 a month, but that includes cable tv and high speed internet. All I have to do is get renters insurance and set up the power as they do the water for me. Though for about the first three weeks or so my apartment will be sparsely populated with furniture basically having a table (with possibly no chairs), a computer desk, computer, tv (possibly a tv stand), PS3, and my blow-up mattress. But after a few weeks I will head down to Orlando to pick up my actual bed, dressers and any other furniture that I have there.

Second is my job search which has been up and down. I have gotten two job offers but declined both due to the fact they were both either strictly commission based or mostly commission based. One was a marketing position and the other was selling insurance. Another job that I have interviewed for is with a company called Trigon Engineering to be an Air Monitoring Technician. Basically I would travel around the Southeast to different industries testing their emissions to make sure they meet state, local as well as EPA standards. Job pays well too, $20 an hour or $800 a week which due to travel there are weeks I could get paid for more than 40 hours. So the potential to make money is definitely there. The interview was about three weeks ago and I have kept contact with them since continually expressing interest but they keep telling me they have yet to make a final decision. So basically it does not seem to be looking very good for me. But, who knows they have not actually told me no yet so I guess it is still possible. I have also been looking for a second part time job in order to bring in some more money since I am going to have the apartment, but so far have failed at finding anything to this point. So basically despite the fact I spend a chunk of time each day looking for work so far nothing has worked out for me, but hopefully that will change.

Third the Jamie situation has dramatically changed since I last posted. Literally a couple days after my last post her boyfriend broke up with her. It crushed her and she has had a really difficult time dealing with it. He was all she really had other than a few friends for a long time and when he broke up with her I am sure it felt like her world was going to end. That night she actually ended up sleeping on the floor next to my bed as once she fell asleep I did not want to wake her as she was finally at peace. Niki ended up falling asleep at the foot of the bed and they both slept there until about 6-6:30 that morning. After that though Jamie began ignoring me. Which I kind of understood it as it had only been a handful of days before that I had just told her how I felt about her and I am sure the timing of that with her break up made her uncomfortable to be around me. So I gave her space and only occasionally made contact with her (as in maybe once every two weeks) partially to try and cheer her up, though I do not know if it ever worked. None of the text where ever sent with the intent of trying to make a move on her. We did throw her a little birthday party at Jeralyn's place but even then (maybe a week after the break up) you could still tell she was really having a hard time. But after about a month and half she seemed to be doing much better as she seemed mostly like her old self and was really no longer ignoring me and things seemed to be getting close to back to normal (other than the fact we were not hanging out as much since I am so far away), this lasted about three weeks or up until about four days ago when she all of a sudden seemed to began to ignore me again. But, this time I have no idea why she is. I had thought based on the way she had been acting around me the previous couple weeks that she had realized that I was not going to make any moves on her or anything of that sort so I am not sure what is going on now. It is a little aggravating because I do not see what I have done to deserve it. I have been trying to just be her friend but she is making it quiet difficult. All I can think to do is if she continues to ignore me much longer is to go talk to her and maybe get to the bottom of this so hopefully we both can move on and get passed this.

Fourth about three weeks ago I found out that my mother has cancer. Its on her liver and in most cases when cancer is on your liver it has come from somewhere else. They did a bunch of test on her but could never find where else it was located and after several more test have determined that she seems to be one of the lucky ones who has the cancer confined to the liver. Only problem is because of some of the medication she has been on over the years her liver is in bad shape and they are not positive to how well it will handle the surgery needed to remove the cancer. So it is possible that even if they do get rid of the cancer that she may end up needing a liver transplant. But, until they actually do the surgery they wont know. The surgery will hopefully take place within the next week. So we are all keeping our fingers crossed that it all turns out ok.

Fifth tomorrow is my birthday. Hard to believe it is here again. Niki has been asking me what I am doing for it and I had not really thought about it but once Niki asked if we do something could it be on Saturday that seemed to be the little boost needed to get something going. I talked to my manager about changing my shift Saturday which I was able to do so it seems we are going to have a small party Saturday night at Jeralyn's for me and if I get out of work early enough we are going to go get something for dinner. Then on Sunday Niki wants to do something again for my b-day (assuming I do not have to work) and mix it with the Super Bowl. So either I might go up there or she may come down her on Sunday night. Do not know if Jamie will be involved in any of it or not, obviously she is welcome and invited but depending on what has caused her to start ignoring me this time around it would not surprise me if I don't see her. I am half curious to see if she even wishes me happy birthday. Anyway, I am hoping this birthday will begin to turn things around for me because as you can see between, job hunting, girls, my mom, and so on things have not been going all that well for me lately. Not to mention BJ's had severally cut my hours back until this past week making paying the bills nearly a nightmare. But, I figure I am overdue for something to start going right for me and Niki seems to agree, though only time will tell.

2007-11-18T10:19:00.000-05:00

I guess I shall update on the whole Jamie situation. On Thursday evening I went to the mall to where she works and told her how I felt about her. Her initial reaction was that of surprise as she had the text book dropped jawed look on her face. I basically just told her how I felt and why I had not said anything to her sooner, so on and so forth. After her initial surprised reaction she really gave me nothing to work with as she said nothing nor gave me any signs in one direction or the other. Basically once she felt like I was finished she went on acting like I had not said anything to her. The days since she has not said anything either so I basically have no idea what she is thinking. She came over Thursday night and spent the night so she obviously wasn't that uncomfortable with what I told her. Though for some reason she did not tell Niki I had said anything to her, though Niki did red it out herself. As at one point Jamie went to the restroom and Niki turned to me and said "You told her didn't you?" and I said "She told you huh?" and Niki said "No, I can just tell" she also said it was because I was acting weird and I later asked her about it and said that not only was I acting strange but so was Jamie. Which I noticed a little too as she was more talkative than normal and quite often talked in a higher pitched girly voice especially towards me. I have been trying to get a read of Jamie in the times I have been around her since Thursday but she has been pretty silent about everything. Niki and Jamie spent half of Friday together so I was hoping that they would talk about it at some point but when I asked Niki Saturday morning if Jamie had said anything Niki said "not really". Whatever "not really" means, does that mean she did say something or not, but I didn't think to ask Niki that until after she had left to go to her sister's cheerleading competition. I half wonder if she has stuck it in the back of her mind and has not really thought about it which could be for a couple different reasons. One reason could be that she may not be interested and therefore just stuck it in the back of her mind and is trying to move past it but it also could be because she is afraid that if she does think about it that of what the answer might be because if she is interested and does like me then it would definitely put her in a difficult situation. So, basically I am just sitting here in limbo. Hopefully I will find something out in the near future, if I do I will post about it.

2007-11-08T21:53:00.000-05:00

Now on to the post about the trip to Atlanta.

Once off work I filled our cooler with Ice and the cokes we had previously bought and then made my way over to the mall where Niki and Jamie work. Once they finished closing up their respective stores they changed into their pajamas and we headed out. Before getting on the interstate we decided to get something to eat and Jamie wanted Taco Bell so that is where we went. At which point we preceded to sit in line for what felt like at least 30 minutes before finally getting our food. Finally we get on the interstate and officially begin the trip at roughly 10:30-10:40pm. We were not on the road maybe 10 or 15 minutes and Niki preceded to drop part of her food on her pants. For some reason the food was sloppier and greasier than normal. She had Jamie get her the tide-to-go pen so that way she could hopefully stop it from staining her pajama bottoms. She kept getting aggravated with me because I kept putting my elbow on the arm rest thingy in the middle console which is were she put the tide-to-pen after finishing with it and it is where she had her hand sanitiser, both of which she used several times and just about every time I had put my elbow back up there. We then drove about a 1/3rd of the way into South Carolina were we finally stopped for gas at which point I moved to the back seat and Jamie took over the drivers seat. She ended up driving the rest of the way into Atlanta as we made only one more stop for me to use the restroom at which point Niki moved to the back seat and I moved to the passenger seat. Which ended up working well as it allowed me to give Jamie instructions easier of how to get from the interstate to the hotel.

We were staying at the Embassy Suites hotel right next to Centennial Olympic Park which is normally about $220 a night but we got it for free since we used my brother-in-laws hotel points. So anyway we get there we pulled up to the valet attendant who then helped us unload the car onto a cart and then took the car and parked it for us while we made our way to the front desk to check in. We checked in and made our way up the elevator to the 6th floor where our room was located. We entered the room, which I have to admit was fairly nice as it had a living room with a coach, chair, tv and a desk in it. It also had a fairly decent bathroom, at least for a hotel, a refrigerator, microwave, a safe and a decent size closet. Then of course there was the bedroom which had two double beds both of which were very comfortable, a table, a couple chairs and a tv. After we finished looking around I changed into my pajamas and we basically just lounged around and watched tv for a little bit before heading to bed.

Sunday morning we all got up within about a half hour to 40 minutes of each other. I called Matt, a friend of mine who was meeting us in order to go with us to the coke museum, to make sure he was up and going to be there on time. I then went and took my shower real quick so that way Niki and Jamie could have the bathroom to get their showers and get ready since they take longer than I do. At around 1pm Matt arrived and I had him meet me outside the elevators on the sixth floor since Niki and Jamie were not quite ready yet. Though not but maybe ten minutes later they were so we headed out and made our way across the street to the food court located in the CNN building so we could get something to eat before going to the museum. After we finished eating we made our way across Centennial Olympic park and over to the Coke Museum entrance at just a few minutes past 2pm. Once they had let us in we made our way into the lobby and waited for the next entrance time to begin which was only about two minutes. We first entered a room that had a ton of coke memorabilia in it from over the years. There were two women in there who gave us a brief run through of the history of coke and where some of the memorabilia in the room came from. From that point they had us all go into this theater to see a video called the "Happiness Factory" about the journey of a coke bottle from the time someone puts a quarter in a machine to the time it comes out the other end. Once the film ended and we made our way out of the theater we were then allowed to tour the rest of the museum at our own pace. We first went into the bottle works station which showed you the process of making coke and putting it into a bottle. From there we went into the Milestones section of the museum which was basically a lot like the first room we came in except bigger with much more memorabilia and interesting facts about each one. When we finished there we made our way up to the second floor and checked out some large cool artistic coke bottles and then made our way into the 4-D movie. Which in waiting to go into the 4-D movie you watch another shorter and partially uninteresting film about your taste buds and how and why they love coke. Once that was over we got to go in and watch the 4-D film. The film was about finding out the secret formula to coke. Overall it was pretty cool as the seats moved, air and water would come out at you, stuff would hit your feet and you also get poked in the back. The film it self was ok and at the end you find out it is you, the drinker, who is the secret formula to coke. So anyway from there we headed out of the theater and went into the Pop Culture section. Which basically just had some computers where you could design your own coke bottle as well as some places to sit down and look at some of the unusual coke items they had in the room. Including coke ceiling fans. Next to that was another little theater that was about the history of advertising for coke. But, we decided to skip that part and move on to our favorite part, the room where you get to taste all the different kinds of coke products from around the world. Niki, Jamie and I had decided before hand to go in and try every single drink they had in there. Matt didn't want to because he didn't want to get grossed out which Niki and I both agreed that getting grossed out was half the fun. So we preceded to go from station to station trying every drink we could. Some of them were actually half way decent and others were quite disgusting. Finally we got to the station for the coke we know and love and after all the other drinks it didn't even taste the same. I guess our taste buds had been shot. From there we made our way out and grabbed our free coke that we got for going through the museum. As in just about all museums you exit into their gift shop and this one was no different. The gift shop was actually fairly large and we spent about 40-45 minutes wondering around looking at different things. All I bought was this little weird looking coke figurine thing for Niki since she asked me to for her birthday since it passed a little while ago. Niki on the other hand bought another one of those little weird looking coke figurines for herself as well as some Barq's flavored chap stick for Jillian and a coke can ornament for Jeralyn. Jamie bought herself some cherry coke chap stick, and something else too but for the life of me I can't remember what. Jamie also bought a pair of coke boxers for her boyfriend, Chris. I don't remember Matt buying anything. Once we checked out we then left and made our way back to our hotel where we separated from Matt as he had to head home.

Niki, Jamie and I then headed up to the hotel room to grab our jackets as it was starting to get a little cool outside. We left again this time our destination being Underground Atlanta. We could have driven there but instead we took Marta so that way they could get the full Atlanta experience, even though we only went one stop away. We got off Marta and made our way into Underground Atlanta. It definitely is not what I remember it being in the past, first off I remember it being bigger than it is now and definitely it used to have more going on than it seems to now. We walked up and down it making only a couple stops to look at shoes and some bracelets, but no one bought anything. We left underground and walked around outside a little bit before we finally were approached by our first homeless person looking for hand outs. I told him I did not have any money what so ever not even change, which was actually the truth. The guy then asked me if it was ok to ask the two girls if they had any change to spare and I told him it would be pointless as I was almost positive they did not have any money either. He asked if I was sure and I told him that I was pretty positive because I had known that one of them had $3 dollars earlier but that I was pretty sure she had used it to buy her Marta ticket. Which I really had thought she did. With that he sped up to catch up to the two of them and asked Niki if she had some money telling them I had said it was ok for him to ask them (which was not true though Niki still doesn't seem to believe me) at which point to my surprise Niki pulled out the $3 and gave it to him and he took off. At this point we were getting hungry so we decided to catch Marta and take it back to the station near out hotel. After we got back off Marta and up one of the worlds longest escalators to street level we made our way across the street to the Hard Rock Cafe where Niki and Jamie wanted to eat. Off and on through most of the meal Jamie and Niki talked about how cute the waiter was and about the watch he was wearing (they work with watches). After we ate Niki ordered a piece of Chocolate Cake which she shared with Jamie and I and I told Niki she was evil for offering me some of the cake (I am trying to lose weight and had being doing a good job until the trip). We left Hard Rock and walked back to the Hotel.

We hung out at the Hotel for a little while trying to figure out what we wanted to do next. They kept asking me what there was to do since I lived in Atlanta for 15 years but since I only really started using Atlanta for entertainment purposes about the last 4 or 5 years I lived there I didn't really know a whole lot of places to go. Partly because many of the places open that late the two of them can not get into as they are both under 21 (they are 19, well Jamie is close enough to 19) and all the other places were either closed or to far away. So I decided to call Cathy as she knows Atlanta better than I do. Most of the stuff she came up with was in Buckhead so the three of us decided we would ride up to Buckhead. We got part of the way there when I remembered that highway 400 was a toll road and we had no change on us what so ever. I was pretty sure I know a way to go to avoid the tolls but I was not a 100% sure so we turned around and started to head back. On the way back we decided to stop at Wal-mart to get a game or something we could play in the room since it was already 10pm. The Wal-Mart was definitely unusual as for starters it had a quite large parking garage attached to it which I have to admit I had not seen before. Plus the Wal-Mart was all backwards compared to all the other ones I had been in which made it hard to find things. We finally found the games and Niki and I decided to split the cost of an electronic Deal or No Deal game. Jamie then decided she wanted to get crayons and a coloring book to color in. So we looked around for a while looking for a coloring book as we could not find any. Finally I stumbled upon them and brought them over to them. Jamie picked one out and we went up to the front to check out. The lady that checked us out had a story too, she had these teeth that stuck out in the front and upon further inspection we noticed they were gold teeth with dollar signs engraved in them. From there Niki handed the keys to her Jeep over to me and I drove us back to the Hotel. We got up to our room and then I left to go downstairs to try and catch the valet before they parked our car so that way I could get another six pack of cokes to put in our cooler. I got back to the room and Niki and Jamie were gone, so started to take the game out of the box but then it dawned on me that this game is electronic which means it probably needs batteries. So I looked around the box looking for something about batteries when I noticed it said "4 AA batteries required, not included". Well we did not exactly have any batteries. So once Niki and Jamie got back to the room I informed them of the situation and then called the front desk to ask where the closest place was to get batteries. The man at the desk gave me directions to get to a 24 hour Walgreens. Well I can honestly say the guy sucks at giving directions as we drove around in circles for at least 15 minutes before we finally decided to ask for directions. We noticed a cop walking down the street and so we asked him. He told us how to get there so we followed his directions but again could not find this supposed 24 hour Walgreens. Luckily though we did stumble upon a CVS that was open till midnight (it was just before 11:30pm at this time). So we ran in and bought AA batteries. Upon leaving the store we were approached by our second and thankfully final homeless person of the trip. This time we just half ignored the guy, kept walking, and said no we had no money (or at least I did, I don't remember what Niki or Jamie said to him). We got back to the car and I drove us back to the hotel. We get back up to the room take the batteries out of the package go to put them in the game and there is a damn screw that has the cover for the batteries screwed down. Well we don't have a screw driver. So again I call down to the front desk and ask them if they happen to have a small phillips head screw driver and somewhat to my surprise they did. So I took the game and went downstairs so I could put the batteries in. I returned to the room and we played the game for about 30 minutes, though the last round of the game Jamie didn't play as she wanted to color in her new coloring book, so just Niki and I played the last game. After that we watched America's Funniest Home Videos and then went to sleep.

Monday morning we woke up at 9:30am to the chiming of Niki's alarm clock on her watch. We all got up and again I jumped in the shower first. Once I was finished Niki got hers followed by Jamie getting hers. Once everyone was finished getting ready we had them bring us up a cart from downstairs. We loaded it up and headed down to check out. After checking out and loading our stuff in the car we headed back over to the food Court in the CNN building to grab something to eat. From there we made our way across Centennial Olympic Park and over to the George Aquarium. We walked up to the entrance and gave them our tickets. They then had us take a picture before actually going in. Once in we went over to the Georgia Explorer section of the aquarium which had areas where you could touch, shrimp, starfish and some type of hard shelled creature. They also had a area were you could pet sting rays and small sharks. We wondered around there looking at everything along with a big turtle named Dylan. From there we headed over to the River Scout section and walked around it. This part reminded me most of the Tennessee Aquarium as that aquarium dealt more with river species of fish than the Georgia Aquarium does. But they had things like River Otters and large Catfish among other things in that exhibit. From there we went to the Cold Water Quest (I think it was called) and this is where all the cold water fish and crabs, etc... were located. Including the Beluga Whales. Which the Beluga whales had a story all to their own. We start watching them (there were four of them) and it wasn't long before we realised that two of them were trying to mate. It was one of those things you really didn't want to watch yet could not take your eye's off it. Even the little kids knew what was going on as you could tell by their reactions and even the lady who was telling us all about the Beluga whales admittedly got distracted by their actions. All I can say is Nico (the male Beluga whale) has got some really bad aim. So anyway from there we walked through the rest of the Cold Water Quest exhibit looking at the seals, penguins and sea otters. We exited the Cold Water Quest exhibit and crossed to the other side of the aquarium and entered the Tropical Diver exhibit. In here we found things such as sea horses, sea urchins, jellyfish, octopus, and some of the more unusual creatures of the ocean. Once we left the Tropical Diver exhibit we sat down for a minute and I took this time to call Matt as he wanted to meet up with us again before we left. Basically I told him we were almost done with the Aquarium so if he was going to come up he better get moving, which he did. So, at this point we got up and made our way to the final and by far the largest exhibit in the Aquarium, the Ocean Voyager exhibit. This is the exhibit that houses the Whale Sharks, hammerhead Sharks, saw fish, basically all the larger fish. We started by entering the underwater tunnel that traverses across the length of the six million gallon tank. We walked through the tunnel and made our way into another room which had other smaller viewing areas into the tank as well as a touch wall where you could walk up to the wall and touch the images of fish as they went by and it would tell you the name of the fish and something about it. After that we followed the passage around and it led us to the main viewing room with a huge class wall that was something like 65ft by something like 25 feet tall that allowed you to look inside the tank. They have standing and seating areas in there so you can sit and enjoy the views for as long as you like. We sat there for probably 15 or so minutes, enough time to hear the lady talk about the different fish and for Niki and Jamie to get up and take pictures with their phones of some of the fish swimming by. We finally got up and made our way to the aquarium gift shop where we wondered around looking at a bunch of different things but Jamie was the only one who bought anything as she bought a shot glass for Chris as he collects them.

Niki and Jamie wanted to go back to the Coke store so we walked next store and went back into the coke gift shop. Jamie found another shot glass for Chris so she bought it. She also bought some more chap stick for herself but this time it was Dasani flavored chap stick and she also bought two coca-cola pencils. Niki bought another one of those little weird looking coke figurines but this time she bought one for Jillian. She also bought a coke glass for her friend, Phillip, who also works at the mall. I again bought nothing as I never really could find anything that jumped out enough to me to make me spend money on it. Matt arrived while we were in the store and staying true to himself he talked the entire time and even talked me into playing a game of bowling on the Wii that was set up in the store. Niki even said that he talks more than any girl she has ever known. We finally checked out and made our way out of the store. We walked back over to Centennial Olympic Park and looked at a bunch of the bricks, making fun of what some of them said or the names that were on them. From there we headed back to the Hotel where Jamie and I hit the restrooms while Matt and Niki waited out in the Hotel Atrium. Once the four of us were back together we sat there trying to figure out what to do next as Niki, Jamie nor I were ready to leave. But neither Matt nor I could really think of anything to do in the short amount of time we had. Though Niki and Jamie did want to stop at the Tanger Outlet mall on our way home. After a while of getting no where Matt chimed in and said "Well you all seem to have your mind set on the Tanger Outlet Mall so why do you just go there", except he said it really sarcastically. Not a minute after he said that his phone rang so he answered it and walked off a little ways and Jamie said "I almost snapped on your friend there for a second" which I was not surprised as I knew at some point he would probably aggravate one of them because thats just how Matt is. So anyway that all passed and we headed outside to figure out what to do next. At this time it was 4:00pm and I knew traffic would really begin to pick up around 4:30 so I just went ahead a suggested if they wanted to avoid the worst part of the traffic we should probably get going. They both agreed so we got the valet to pull our car around. So matt left and headed to meet some other friends while other the three of us pilled in the Jeep with myself driving, Niki in the passenger seat and Jamie in the back seat behind me.

We finally hit the road for home. Traffic wasn't that bad but I drove in the HOV lane for as long as I could which allowed us to move faster than the rest of the traffic around us. An hour or so and the occasoinal head poke from Jamie later we reached exit 149 on I-85 in Georgia where the Tanger Outlet Mall was located. We got off and pulled into the mall. I parked the car and we got out and walked into some store that had a ton of sun glasses in the front which Niki and Jamie spent some time looking through. After a little bit they gave up their sun glasses search and we exited the store. We then walked around for a little bit before deciding not to go any further because the store they wanted to go to (Coach Outlet) was not located here and the majority of the stores that were located there are also located at the mall they work at here in Concord. So we left this time with Jamie driving, Niki still in passengers seat and myself this time in the backseat. From about this point until we finally arrived in Charlotte the two of them blamed every single smell that creeped into the car on me, no matter what it was. So anyway Jamie drove until we got into the Anderson/Clemson, SC area where we stopped and ate dinner at Cracker Barrel. After eating and wondering through the Cracker Barrel store we hit the road again though this time Niki was behind the wheel. From that point we drove the rest of the way in without stopping with nothing really eventful happening. We arrived back here at the house in Charlotte around 9:15pm or so. From there we all came in used the restroom and then helped Jamie pack her car so that she could head home. At which point she headed home which marked the end of the trip.

Like I have already said overall we all had a great time and Niki and Jamie are already trying to plan our next trip but this time they want to go to Washington D.C. I found that it only takes six to seven hours to drive there from here which makes it a decent possibility for a future trip. Though if we go it will have to be after the first of the year since it is going to be near impossible for any of us to get any time off work before then with the holiday season coming up. So if we decide to do that trip I will leave the actual scheduling of the dates to Niki and Jamie as come January Niki will be back in school and Jamie will be starting school so it will be harder for them to find the proper amount of time to go than it will be for me. So bascially if they can find five or six days to take off and plan the trip for that time then I will adjust my schedule accordingly since it will be easier for me to do that than for them. But, this is all in the very earily planning stages and far from anything being set in stone, more just decent ideas floating about at this time. We shall see though.

2007-11-07T10:22:00.000-05:00

I am a little overdue posting on here I think. Niki, Jamie and I got back from Atlanta on Monday. We had a great time and are already trying to plan another trip but this time to D.C. I will go more in depth about that in my next post. But for this post I guess I will use it as they were most likely originally intended to be used for, an outlet for some ramblings of my mind.

I find myself in an interesting predicament though I am far from the first person to have this as a problem. I have mentioned Jamie on this blog several times but never really expressed anything about her other than I became friends with her through Niki. But the predicament that I find myself in is one that pretains to Jamie and that Niki already knows about, though I don't think she quiet knows the extent of it. My brother-in-law (Niki's dad) also knows a little about it as well as my friend Michael, who probably knows the most about it. My problem mainly is that I have come to like Jamie a lot, as in having feelings for her. In my opinion She is absolutely beautiful, she has an amazing personality, she is an incredibly strong individual as she has had to be in order to make it through some of the crap she has gone through, just over all she is an amazing person. Plus she is a whole of a lot of fun to hang out with, I mean shoot I can't lie I look forward to every time she comes over, hell she was even part the reason I looked forward to going on the Atlanta trip because it meant I got to spend two days with her. The only negative thing about her that I had was the age difference factor as she is five almost six years younger than I am. Which I will admit when I first started becoming interested in her that part made me pretty apprehensive about the whole thing. But, in the end it did not take me long to look past it, partly because she does carry herself as someone older than she is. But, the problem I have is that she has a boyfriend, named Chris, who she has been dating for over two years now and even though they have had some rough patches of late I still have a really hard time believing that she would be interested in me especially to the point that she would even consider me in that way. Therefore I know my chances of anything happening with her are fairly slim and that there probably is not a whole lot I can do about it. At least not that I am aware of. Plus I am hesitant to do anything because I don't want to come across as a jerk or some obsessed weirdo (which I can promise I am not) and I don't want to chance messing up our friendship. Plus I also know that Niki is not overly keen on the idea as she has said that it would make things really weird for her. Which I totally understand why that is as I probably would feel the same way if I was her. So I am overall at a loss of what to do. Basically all I know to do is just basically tell her how I feel, and not because I think it will change anything but mostly just so this whole thing will stop eating at me. You know just kind of get the monkey off my back per say so that way my brain can somewhat get back to normal. I wouldn't be making a move on her, as I wouldn't do that, but just letting her know how I feel and leave it at that. Basically at that point if anything did happen between us it would be because she made a move and decided to get me a shot(whether it be based off what I told her or not). So there you have it the ramblings of my mind at least for now. Suggestions are welcome if anyone who reads this has any ideas. Anyway I will probably post about the Atlanta trip tomorrow before I go to work.

2007-09-24T20:53:00.000-05:00

Today is a very sad day. Today is the day that not only I, but pretty much my entire family has been dreading for a long time. Today my parents took Clancy and had him put down. So far I am handling it better than I would have expected but that may be because it just hasn't totally sunk in yet and probably wont until the next time I go down to Orlando and he isn't there to greet me. I am sure my parents, especially my dad, are taking it harder than me. He will definitely be missed as there was no other dog like him and will never be another like him again. He was truely unique and anyone who got to know him knows exactly what I mean.

R.I.P Clancy, April 12, 1992 - September 24th, 2007.

2007-09-17T14:18:00.000-05:00

Niki and Jamie bought me a house or in my eventual cause apartment warming gift. They bought me a 4 or 4 and half foot tall knight made out of metal. He is really sweet looking, his helmet can even open and close. There is a little bit of a story behind it all.

My sister as well as Niki and Jamie went to Atlanta Friday morning (left here at 3am) to go to the Vera Bradley sale there. Well I woke up at exactly 11:40am that morning and three minutes later at 11:43am my phone beeps as if I have gotten a voice or text message. It ended up being a text message that was from Jamie. It said "Do you like knights?" I obviously found this to be quite the random question so I verified the question by asking if they were talking about a knight as in a medievil night. Jamie replied with a "yep" and I replied back saying "Yeah, why?" and all she said was "Just wondering :)" So at this point I was totally confused but let it go. About an hour later my phones beeps again and again it was a text from Jamie. This time asking me "What names do you like?" Once again I found it to be a very odd question so I asked "Names for what?" and she replied back "nothing never mind, don't worry about it" at this point I had a feeling they were up to something but Jamie swore they weren't. So that night when I got back from work I immediately asked the two of them (Niki and Jamie) what the whole knights and name thing was all about. Neither of them would tell me. Finally Niki turned to Jamie and said "Should we?" That immediately tipped me off that I was right that they were up to something. So anyway Jamie was like "You want to?" and Niki was like "Yeah lets go get it." So the two of them head out the door to the car. At this point I was just hoping they were not getting something Vera Bradley out of the car since Vera Bradley is not exactly guy stuff. They come back to the door and Jamie peeks her head in and tells me to close my eyes. So I close my eyes and I here the two of them come the rest of the way in and walk into the living room. About three seconds later they tell me I can look so I open my eyes and here is this Knight that is almost is tall as they are standing in the middle of the room. They said "His name is Sir Clancy" which supposedly my dad told them to name it and most people should be able to guess where the name came from, unless you don't know me.

On the Atlanta trip front we have settled on November 4th and 5th for the days. We did think about October 21st and 22nd but Jamie is playing the piano at a wedding the following weekend (October 28th) and she didn't want to lose those two days to practice. So that's why we went with the 4th and 5th. Instead of staying at Matt's we are going to get a hotel downtown somewhere hopefully within walking distance of the Coke Museum and Aquarium. My brother-in-law (Niki's dad) said he would book the hotel for us if we just told him where it was. We will come in the night of the 3rd and leave the afternoon of the 5th. We have talked about doing Underground Atlanta too since Niki has never been there. I have talked to Matt and he said he would meet us up there and go to some if not all of the places with us. Andrew may join too but haven't heard from him yet. So it should be fun.

2007-09-12T20:23:00.000-05:00

Since my last post I have been making a bigger push to get the things done I need to in order for me to become a substitute teacher here in Charlotte. I have filled out the entire application and had the physical part done yesterday all I have left to do is to go back in tomorrow and have my TB test checked and then to turn the application in. Everyone I have talked to has said I should have no problem getting the job especially since I have a science background as they are supposedly really short on science teachers around here. So hopefully I will get that set up and started by the start of next month. We shall see though.

I have also began looking for apartments. Prices seem to be all over the place. One apartment was nearly $800 a month for a one bedroom but it did include free cable TV and free high speed Internet. Which having those two free is definitely nice its still not worth $800 a month. I contacted another that was $675 a month but they have no one bedrooms available next month so that killed them. I also found one that is $595 a month which yesterday I actually went and checked this out and talked to the people in the front office. They gave me a tour of one of the apartments which I have to admit was fairly nice. Has a living room, kitchen, bathroom, two halfway decent size closets, bedroom and a laundry room. So I am definitely going to have to keep that one in mind. Though I will continue my search and see if I can find anything just as nice that's in a decent area for less.

That's pretty much it for me lately other than working. Though Niki, Jamie and I have plans for a road trip in the works all we really have left to do is figure out exactly which day(s) we will go. We want to go to Atlanta to go to the new Coke museum and the Georgia Aquarium. I have been to the Aquarium already but that was almost two years ago so I want to go back. They can't seem to make up their mind if they want to do it all in one day or two days. If we decide on two days then we will probably invade in on Matt for the night. We shall see.

2007-09-03T23:52:00.000-05:00

Lets see what has happened since I last posted. I went and had lunch with my friend Josh and his nephew before he left for school last month. Being hanging out lot with Niki and Jamie. Also been stepping it up when looking for real work, hopefully it will pay off.

I decided about mid-August that I did not want to go to Florida for several reasons. One being that I am enjoying myself up here as I do at least have some friends here, Josh (when he comes home on weekends), Niki and her friends (mainly Jamie), and of course Tim and Scott. Where as in Florida I have a grand total of zero friends. All I have there are my parents, Clancy and golf. Speaking of Clancy I have news on him I will post in a second. The other reason I don't want to go down there is because my parents(mainly my father) are going to be one my back 24/7 about the job stuff no matter what I do. My dad, though he always means well and truly wants to help, he only knows how to do it by making you feel like your a worthless piece of shit. Again I don't think he does it on purpose or even realizes he is doing it, but he does. So if I went down there mentally I do not think I could handle it. I think I would curl up in a little ball and do nothing. Cathy seems to think I would turn suicidal, which I highly doubt that but none the less it would be quite rough. So overall going down there I truly believe I would be totally miserable so I am trying to find a way to stay up here, which means stepping up the job search, hopefully landing a second job (looking into substituting) so I can afford and apartment.

Now on to the Clancy news. Unfortunately it is not good news. It seems over the last two months he has really gone down hill. He is now totally blind which causes him to have panic attacks at times. He almost never plays anymore (which anyone who knows Clancy will know that is totally unlike him). He has little control over his Bowel movements as my mom said he poops in the house two or three times a day now. He doesn't pee in the house as he still can hold that one. He can't jump up into any of the furniture at all anymore and they know believe his kidneys may actually be shutting down on him. They figure he has a month left before they are going to have to put him down. Which puts me between a rock and a hard place. As I definitely want to see him again but at the same time if I am there when they put him down it will be a lot harder for me than if I just came home to a house without him there. So basically I want to see him again but at the same time I don't want to be there when they take him to get him put down. It is definitely sad but was also something I knew was going to come a lot sooner than later. Therefore even if I did find a way to stay up here past this month I probably would still go down to Orlando for about a week or so to see him before they had to put him down.

On the Niki and Jamie front I have to admit we have had some fun and amusing times of late. We tend to hang out a couple times a week now whether it be just bugging someone at their work or hanging out here at the house. A week ago they called me up from their work(they work at the same place) and asked me if I would pick them up something to eat and bring it up to them because they couldn't go get anything themselves. Since I was bored I said sure. Jamie wanted Japanese food so they told me they were going to order from the Jap. restaurant near the mall and have me go pick it up. About ten minutes later Jamie calls back informs me that she has ordered and that Niki decided she didn't want anything. So I head over and get Jamie's food and take it over to the mall. Since it was already 8:30 and they closed in an hour I decided to sit there and hang out with them. Jamie had her iPod hooked up to the stereo and they were playing it over the speakers. Well all of a sudden the song "Crazy Bitch" starts to play. You should have seen the looks on their faces as they both realized it and took off running to change it. What made it even funnier is the two of them ran flat into each other as they ran to change it. So anyway 9:30 arrives and they close up the store and I head out with them. Well they ask me to carry the trash so I do and we make our way out and over to the dumpster. Well I thought it was one of those dumpsters with and open top and you throw the trash over the side and in. So I proceeded to throw the trash bag (not realizing the dumpster had a door that you opened on the side) but when I throw the trash bag I actually threw it a little to hard without realising it so the trash bag went flying all the way over the dumpster and landed on the other side next to an 18 wheeler. Well Niki and Jamie thought that was the funniest thing they had ever seen as they laughed so hard they said their stomachs were hurting. I thought it was funny too though not quiet as funny as they did.

Story two and probably the most humorous of the three I am going to tell happened this past Saturday. Let me give you the build up first. Niki and Jamie came over to the house from work as Jamie wanted to show Niki all the stuff she had bought at the Vera Bradley (sp?) sale. Throughout all this Niki kept trying to convince Jamie to stay the night (it was already 10:30pm) Jamie said she wanted to but was worried her dad would get upset if she stayed. Eventually Niki talked her into staying but Jamie needed to go home to get some clothes for church and work the following day. Well Jamie lives about 40 minutes away so the whole thing is basically like a mini road trip. So they ask me if I wanted to tag along and I said sure. So we get about half way there and Jamie changes her mind and decides she doesn't want to go all the way home but instead wanted to just go to Wal-Mart and buy new clothes instead. at this point its already 11:45 at night. So we get off and go to the Wal-Mart. Now Jamie is small, about 5'1" maybe 5'2" and skinny. So its difficult to find stuff that fits her as she wears a size 0. We looked all over including in juniors and smallest size we could find was a size 2. She did not like anything in that size but found a size 3 denim skirt she liked as well as a red shirt. She wanted to try them on so we went over to the fitting rooms. Now this is where the funny part begins. We get there only to find all the doors are looked, I look on the desk and happen to find the key and tell Jamie if she wants I can just unlock one for her but she was afraid we would get in trouble so I didn't. Not 30 seconds later an older lady who works for wal-mart walks around the corner. Now what happens next is one of those things you swear only happens in movies, but I'll be damned if I didn't happen then. The lady walks over to the phone and hits the page button and without missing a beat says "Customer needs assistance in lingerie with strapless bras" I swear to you the three of us about feel over laughing. Niki especially as she thought the lady was talking about Jamie even though Jamie was standing next to the desk no where near the strapless bras.

Then last night (Sunday night) Jamie comes over after she got off work at 6:30 pm. Well I had come up with the genius idea to have Bison burgers for dinner. We did not want to tell Jamie what it was as we thought she wouldn't eat it if she knew what it was before hand. So we start eating and the burgers still had a little pink in the middle and Niki makes the comment "I am surprised mine still isn't mooing, oh wait these don't moo." she turns to me and ask "What sound do they make" I thought about it but wasn't sure. Well at this point Jamie has caught onto the conversation and realises it isn't beef she is eating. She gives the burger a weird look and as she sets it down "this isn't a cow, then what am I eating". I then inform her it is a Bison/Buffalo meat and describe not only how it taste better than beef but also why its better for you. Fortunately this news did not stop her from eating it and by the time she was full she even said "I like Bison its good, I definitely like it better than cow." So, I have now gotten another person liking Bison. So anyway on to the amusing parts of the night. This was supposed to be a movie night. So we had decided we wanted to watch the movie "Fracture" first. Jeralyn wanted to watch it with us but had to get Jillian set up to watch her own movie first. So Niki, Jamie and I came into my room and sat around in here. I was laying on the bed with the dog Freckles and Niki and Jamie were sitting in the computer chairs. Not two minutes had pasted and the Freckles lets one rip right next to my head. Well this makes me jump back and cover up my nose undoubtedly with me letting out a few curse words. Well this sends Niki into hysterics making her fall out of her chair and bang her head against the legos bin, this interns sends Jamie into a laughing fit her self. While this takes place Freckles keeps banging into me. I am already on the edge of the bed so I am fighting to push her back to stop from falling off. Next thing I know I get rammed from behind and off the bed I go banging against the shelves and falling to the floor. At that exact moment the room went completely silent as the three of us were laughing so hard we couldn't breathe or even make a sound. We finally settle down and Jeralyn comes in saying she is ready. So we head into the living room. Niki changes into her flamboyant (only way I know how to describe them) pajama bottoms. Jamie then decides to do the same. Once she comes back she wasn't on the couch five minutes and realises that if she is going to stay another night that she needs clothes again for work the next day. Again not wanting to drive all the way back home she decides she wants to go to Target to get new clothes. Niki does want to go because she doesn't want to get dressed. Jamie tells her just to wear her pajama bottoms to the store again (she had worn them to wal-mart the night before) and Niki tells her fine but only if she( being Jamie) wears her pajama bottoms too. Jamie thinks for a second then agrees. They then ask me if me not only to go with them but if I will drive. So next thing I know we are on our way to target. Thankfully we found clothes much quicker this time. By the time we return Jillian's movie is almost over (had about 30 minutes left) and Jeralyn wanted to finish watching it before we started our movie. So we went in the other room and started watching TV. Well Niki all of a sudden decides she wants to make a smoothie and Jamie liked the idea. So they came into the room and started looking up smoothie recipes. Jeralyn at this point gave up on our movie as it was after 10pm. So next thing I know we are on our way to Wal-Mart to get some fruit to make smoothies. We buy our ingredients and head back. We then make the smoothies as the directions tell us too but upon tasting it we all agreed it was missing something. So we just added more of the fruit we wanted to have a stronger flavor of. Well in doing so it made the smoothie bland. So Niki gets up and goes and looks in the refreg. and freezer for other stuff to add. She finds coconut which both Jamie and I liked the idea of. So we threw like two hand fulls of coconut into it. Again though it was too bland, wasn't sweet enough. So Niki decides to add sugar. Which made it sweeter but because the sugar wouldn't dissolve it also made it grainier. Then Niki gets the brainy idea to add a cup of vanilla pudding to it. I figure why not as it wasn't like it was going to make it any worse. To our totally surprise it actually made it 10 times better if not actually really good. All toll we spent about an hour making our strange smoothie which Jamie wrote down the ingredients of calling it the "Niki, Jamie and Kenneth Smoothie" original I know, haha. So finally at like 12:40am we start the movie. We get about half way through it around 1:30ish and all three of us found ourselves hardly being able to stay awake so we decided to stop the movie and head to bed. Poor Niki and Jamie had to get up at 7:30am to get ready for work. Speaking of which I have to get up tomorrow morning at 8:30am myself so I should probably get going.

So until my crazy adventures continue I bed you farewell and I am off to bed.

2007-08-10T21:02:00.000-05:00

Well it seems that I did not do a very good job of holding to my word about updating this thing more often. Though unlike before its not because I am tired of it anymore its more of I keep forgetting about it because I keep getting side tracked.

Anyway in this post I thought I would talk about the Projekt Revolution Concert that I went to on Wednesday. I sat around expecting Niki and Jamie to get to the house around 2pm when they got off work (which is when they told me they would get there) instead it was closer to 3:30pm. Another girl, who is a friend of Niki and Jamie, named Amy(though Niki and Jamie call her "The Yeti" because she is tall) got here around 3:45. Then the three of them preceded to take 45 minutes to get ready, I asked them what was the point because all the work they were doing was going to be completely undone within 10 minutes of being out in the 100+ degree temps. All I got was the evil eye from them. So I sat at my computer and waited for them to finish. Finally around 4:30ish Niki walks into the room and tells me they are ready. So I grab my hat, the four of us pile in to Jamie's car and head off to Wendy's were they decided they wanted to get something to eat really quick before heading to the concert. After eating we left and Niki and I had to give Jamie directions to the concert as she had no idea how to get there. Once there she (being Jamie) started freaking out because she didn't know where to park. She finally figured it out and we parked and walked across the street to the venue.

Once inside we made our way up to the lawn and found a good spot to sit, laid down some towels and took a seat just as Placebo finished their set. Niki saw a sign that said we could upgrade our lawn seats for $10 so she and Jamie walked over to check it out. On their way back to us they got lost and walked right past us so I had to get up and go after them. They decided they wanted to upgrade our seats but Niki said we should wait until Daniel (a guy who was going to met us there) arrives. Daniel is the assistant manager at a store that Niki and Jamie work at, just in case you were wondering how he fit into the equation. So at this point it was time for HIM to take the stage. Besides Linkin Park they were probably the band I was most wanting to see. Unfortunately I was quite disappointed in them. I mean I like some of their music but their live show was quite dull and boring.

Towards the end of HIM's set we decided we wanted to get some water as we were already become dehydrated. So we all walked over to the concession stand and got some water. One the way back to our seats I could have sworn I heard someone yell my name, even Niki heard it as she said "did someone just yell your name?" But, I couldn't see were it came from so I figured it wasn't directed towards me. At this same time a big fight between like three or four people broke out not far from us. From my perspective it looked more like some drunks having fun than people who were mad at each other as none of them looked pissed off to me. We got back to our towel at which point HIM played their last song and left the stage. Almost at that exact moment Daniel showed up.

So we got up and headed over to the upgrading lawn seats tent and got new tickets up in the actual seating section. Since it was still going to be a while before Taking Back Sunday took the stage we got up and wondered around the whole venue for while. We made it back to our seats just as Taking Back Sunday was starting. TBS really isn't my style of music so I wasn't really into them but their stage show was alittle better than HIM's was. TBS finished and this time we just stayed in our seats, talking until My Chemical Romance took the stage.

Like TBS, My Chemical Romance really isn't my style of music, though I do like them better than TBS. So music wise they were just ok, but I have to admit out of all the bands we saw that night they had the best live show, partially because they used a lot of pyro which is always a plus. Only thing I couldn't understand is why the lead singer laid down on the stage through the last 2 or 3 songs. MCR was the main band that Amy and Jamie had come to see, as a matter of fact Jamie even had an MCR shirt on. MCR finished and left the stage and this time Amy, Jamie and I got up and headed to the concessions to get some soda's as we were all getting thirsty again but were not in the mood for water. We then headed back to our seats and like before sat, talked and waited except this time for Linkin Park.

Linkin Park was the band that Daniel had come to see and was also one that I had come to see as well. Overall they put on a really good show but I am sure a lot of that was due to the fact I knew almost all the songs that they played, plus it's more my style of music. Now when My Chemical Romance was on the stage, Niki and Jamie stood on the chairs so they could see the stage (they are both fairly short, Niki is 4'11'' and Jamie is probably about 5'1" or 5'2"). Therefore when Linkin Park took the stage they again stood on the chairs. They were not the only ones doing this as there were some people behind and in front of us doing the same thing. But, about two songs into Linkin Park's set someone who works at the venue came by and made everyone get down from the chairs. Which ment neither Niki nor Jamie could see now. I felt sorry for them but there wasn't anything any of us could do about it. So Jamie ended up just sitting in her chair watching the video screens and Niki moved up a row to a spot were she could see better. So anyway, Linkin Park played for about an hour and a half before leaving the stage. They came back for an encore but we decided to go ahead and leave anyway. The five of us then made our way out and back to our cars.

We were all hungry so we decided to go get something to eat at Steak N' Shake. Niki and I went and washed our hands while the others got a table. After giving our orders we preceded to play hangman until Niki came up with "Macho Man" and Jamie then sang it about every 30 seconds causing Amy to lose her appetite because the whole story behind "Macho Man" is because her father was caught doing pelvic thrusts to the song. Now, all Jamie ordered was a milk shake while the rest of us actually ordered food. So while the rest of us ate our food (or in Amy's case attempted to eat food), Jamie got the brilliant idea of making a smiley face out of our food. It started out fairly simple but eventually everyone else started pitching in and next thing you knew she had a entire face made of food. It consisted of two tomatoes with round grapes with a dot of ranch dressing for the eyes. Another much smaller grape for the nose an apple which Jamie cut out to look like a smiley face a thing of lettuce for the hair (which looked like a mohawk) and she put salt and pepper on the lettuce to make it look like the hair had multi colors to it, she used a long french fry to give it a unibrow and also used pepper to give it a mustache that reminded me of the type of mustache that Charlie Chaplin had. She then cut out two tomatoes for the ears and then got two small yellowish colored peppers (they reminded me of maggots)and used one as a earring and the other as a tooth. She then circled the head, called it Theodore and took a picture (which we have but its on a cell phone and we do not have the cords to hook it up to this computer or otherwise I would have posted it up here for you to see). Finally once everyone was done eating and once Jamie's masterpiece was finished we paid our bills and made our way out.

This is were we separated from Daniel as he left and went home. The rest of us piled into Jamie's car. Amy had wanted to drive but, Niki is deathly afraid of Amy's driving and did not want her to drive. But, Niki felt bad and told Amy she could drive but that this was her last chance. While by this time Jamie was already in the drivers seat and was not willing to give it up. Despite the fact Niki kept telling her to pull over and let Amy drive. So in protest Jamie nailed the gas not once but twice out of intersections scaring both Niki and Amy half to death while I laughed my head off as I thought the whole thing was quite funny.

We finally arrived back at the house at 12:30am. Amy and Jamie were spending the night since they both live 30+ minutes away from here. So the three of them (including Niki) got ready for bed and headed off to their room and closed the door. So me, thinking they were done for the night began my normal night time, before bed, ritual of checking my e-mail, fantasy leagues, etc... as I had to get up at 7am for a final in my Diffy Eq. class. Next thing I know Niki calls me over and and asked me if I knew about the game were you can supposedly connect any actor or actress to Kevin Bacon in six movies or less. I said that I had and she told me they were trying to connect Reese Witherspoon to him but couldn't figure out how to do it. I couldn't think of how to do it either so I came back into the room and tried looking up the game online. I found it on the University of Virginia webpage. I put in Reese Witherspoon and it connected her to Kevin Bacon in only two movies. At this point all three of them had piled into the room and began reeling off names of different actors and actresses determined to find one who did not connect to Kevin Bacon. We tried people from the very first movie ever made to even people on current Disney channel shows figuring they would not have done enough to connect to him. To our surprise every single one of them connected in four movies or less. For about half of this whole thing Jamie pretended to be Stitch from "Lilo & Stitch". Finally about 2:30am Niki made the comment about me having to get up early in the morning so the three of them headed out and back to their room letting me get to bed, only to get up four and half hours later at 7am. Overall, It was really fun night. Amazingly I never really got tired the whole next day and actually even had to half force myself to go to bed at 2:30am the next night.

2007-05-06T01:40:00.000-05:00

Hello, I am still alive I promise. Been several months since I have graced this site. Mostly because I was getting tired of the blog and really had nothing to blog about. But now that I have had a few months away I am ready to make a come back, I hope. A few days ago would have marked the 3rd birthday of this blog but do to my little hiatus it now is almost like a rebirth. Hopefully I will start updating more often (atleast once a week) again.

This marks the start of my last week in Asheville. Hard to believe it is coming to an end. I have enjoyed my time here and if it wasn't for the administartion at UNCA I would have really enjoyed my time here. But thats a long story some of which I have talked about in the past.

Graduation is this comming Saturday and I am torn. I can not wait in some aspects (no more homework, not having to deal with this administration anymore, etc...), but in some ways I am dreading it (going to miss college in general, going to miss being lazy, etc...). Though I guess you could say college life is not completely over for me as I am going to take one more class at UNCC over the summer before starting work. But this is the end for UNCA and Asheville. Don't know when or if I will ever return and if I do return it will not be for anything related to UNCA.

This post is short as it is late and I am tired, but hopefully this is just the beginning of getting this blog up and running again.

2007-01-03T00:30:00.000-05:00

Wow, I guess I should post since its been nearly a month since my last one. I wonder if thats the longest I have ever gone. That is what having a break from school does to me I get totally distracted and this blog gets neglected because I half forget about it. So first things first Happy New Year to whoever reads this if anyone since I haven't posted in a while so I am sure some people think I have killed it(it being the blog). Also a heads up as I can't get spell check to work on my dads computer and there is probably a billion spelling and grammer mistakes since between the fact I can't spell and my trying to type fast I have probably messed up a throughout this whole thing. So I am saying sorry now in case it bugs anyone.

Anyway on Saturday, December 9th I spent half the day at Ergent Care and at the Emergency Room. I had been playing basketball with my half nephew and literally in about the snap of a finger I got a weird feeling in my chest and I released my heart and started to excelerate at a much higher than normal rate. It literally felt like my heart was trying to jump out of my chest. I bet my blood pressure at the time was probably 160 to 170 over 110 to 120 which is very high. I don't know if thats what it was but that would probably be my guess. I talked to some other family members on the phone which insisted that I got to Ergent Care. So my sister took me. By the time I had gotten there my pulse was still up at 182 (normal is around 80) despite a good 30 minutes had passed. At that point my pulse had felt like it had dropped from what it was at first so I probably was over 200 when it first started it. They showed me some tricks to help try and bring it down, which includes acting like you are straining to take a dump. This help dropping my pulse to 169 and then to 118. My pulse then stalled around 115ish which the doctor, though pleased it had dropped, was still not satisfied and sent me to the Emergency room. I then spent 2 and half hours there while they ran a bunch of test on me and hooked me up to a bunch of wires and such. One of the things they tried to do was literally stop my heart for a second. When the nurse first explained it she said "Ok, I am going to give you some medication that is going to make you feel like you are falling backwards in an elevator and your vision will start to go blurry around the edges. You might even lose conciousness for a second, but if you do you probably wont even realise it because you will come back so quick." So I asked exactly what the medicine did then to give me a feeling like that and she said that it slowed the heart rate way down. I then asked how much is way down and she said "Probably all the way down to zero". Well that wasn't what I wanted to hear. Course when they rolled the machine with the pads out and hooked me up to it that didnt exactly calm me down or anything either. So anyway she told me that the medicine took about 20 seconds from the time injected to finish its work. So with hesitantion I let her give me the injection of the medication. Well within the matter of seconds I got a feeling of my body weighing about 4 times it normal weight then my body went completely numb, but my heart didnt slow it actually excellerated up to 155-160 and my blood pressure went back up to 155 over 110. After a couple minutes my pulse dropped back to 110-115 and blood pressure went back to normal. So the nurse tells me we are going to try it again. So with even more hesitation than the first time I let her inject the medication and again I got the same feelings as before and again my heart rate jumped, instead of going down, to 155-160 with same blood pressure as before. So at this point the nurse leaves to go talk to the doctor since the medication wasn't working the way it was supposed to. After a couple minutes after my pulse and such had gone back to what they were before the nurse walks back in saying that the doctor wanted her to do it a third time. This time I put up alittle bit more of a fight but eventually gave in and again had the same exact result as the first two times. They then finally gave up on it. Thank God too because that is the worst feeling I have felt in my life. So anyway after about 2 and a half hours of them trying stuff they got my heart rate to hoover around 100 which was still high but they figured they could let me go home anyway. They gave me some medication to take for 48 hours to get my heart running smoothly again and released me. By that evening my heart rate was normal again.

That following Tuesday I went to the cardiologist and they told me that what happened to me was harmless and that it shouldn't really worry about it unless it was accompined by pain or labored breathing or if it started happing to me once a week or something like that. They also told me that if I does ever happen to me in the future that I don't need to go to the hospitial and to use the techiniques they showed me in order to try and slow it myself, but if it last for more than 30 or so minutes then call the doctor. On January 19th, I have to go have an echocardogram done on my heart so they can just make sure nothing is wrong. But other than that I should be fine so I am not that worried.

In other news, I am currently in Orlando and will be probably for another week and a half before returning to Asheville for my final semester of College. Also just found out today that I might be going on to Rome, Italy (a city i have always wanted to go to) in April of 2008. My parents are going, my Aunt Jessie, her boyfriend, possibly my sister Cathy and possibly my self would be going. We would fly out of Orlando to New York and from New York to Rome, Italy. From there we would board a cuirse ship and it would take us to Genoa, Italy then to Barcelona,Spain followed by Palma De Mallorca, Spain then to Tunis, Tunisia after that we go to Valletta, Malta then Palermo, Sicily and finallky back to Rome. Then we would fly back home. The whole trip probably would take about 10 days.

Anyway this is probably long enough and other than Christmas and New Year's there isnt much to post about. Neither of those days did really anything interesting happen other than the usual holiday type stuff. Oh and I went to Disney World on the 19th but again nothing really to post there.

2006-12-05T17:03:00.000-05:00

December is here, Christmas is 20 days away, so what does that all mean? It means it is that dreaded time of the year known as exam time. Finals are upon us here at school and thankfully I only have three this semester. Though two of them are going to be near torture and they are on the same day(Thursday). I finish Friday morning with my German final and then winter break will be upon me. I will be at Cathys for a couple days before leaving for Florida. Normally I would leave the next day but I am going to stick around to see William's basketball game and also to see Scott's concert both of which are on Saturday. But, the next couple days will be spent studying. Anyone want to trade?

Sunday my sister, Jeralyn, and her husband were in town for some friends wedding thing. So they came and visited with me for a little while and we also went and hung out at the mall because Jeralyn wanted to look for some stuffed animal thingy. After the mall they left and went back home.

How about them Florida Gators (12-1) on making it to the National Championship game. Even though most of my readers could careless about this stuff, its still a big deal for me as the Gators have a chance to do something no other college in history has done and that's win a Basketball and Football National Championships in the same year. Florida has already won the Basketball National Championship and now they are one win away from winning the Football National Championship. Though the game isn't until January 8th so I have just over a month to wait. Oh well, hopefully it will be worth it.

2006-11-29T17:04:00.000-05:00

I figured I should probably post about Thanksgiving break. I left here Tuesday at 3:30pm and what should have been just over a two hour drive turned into a four hour drive thanks to rain and traffic. That Wednesday was my relax and do absolutely nothing because its break day. All I remember from Wednesday is going to my sister's neighbors house and playing Taboo for a few hours. On Thursday I got up and Cathy and Jacqueline (William was at his dad's place in Atlanta) were watching the parade. They were watching it on CBS and thier coverage was terrible. So finally with only about an hour left of the parade I told Cathy to check NBC (station we normally watch the parade on which she wasn't this year because she thought only CBS was showing it this year) and when she did there was the parade. Cathy was upset because that meant she had wasted most of the parade watching CBS's coverage instead of NBC. About an hour and half after the parade we had our Thanksgiving Dinner or Thanksgiving Lunch as I called it since we were eating at 1:30pm. Surprisingly she didn't ruin the dinner which was something all of us were half expecting. We had a turkey, rolls, candied yams, Waldorf salad, stuffing, green beans, cranberry sauce and one other thing that I am forgetting. The rest of Thanksgiving Day was fairly uneventful. Friday Cathy , Jacqueline and I went and picked out a Christmas tree. That night Tim wanted me to meet him and some of his friends down town at a bar but I wasn't able to go so he invited me over for Saturday. So on Saturday I pretty much relaxed watching the FSU-UF game and then around 6:45pm I headed for Tim's place. I got there a little before 7:30pm and finished watching Nacho Libre with them. From there we made a beer run and came back and set things up waiting for other people to get here. Over this time I drank two beers, normal beers too (Bud Lights) which anyone who knows me knows I don't like those kinds of beers. But I hadn't had anything in a little while so I drank them anyway. At that point still no one had come so me, Tim and his friend Brian went outside and put Christmas lights on three of his trees outside. By this time it was almost 9:30pm and Tim and Brian were getting impatient so we went into the garage where they had a beer pong table set up and I watched them play beer pong while waiting on the others. Brain, I guess was bothered by me just sitting there watching them, went over to the cooler and got me a third beer. I drank it but towards the end I was forcing it down as I had finally lost complete taste for it. No, I didn't play beer pong for two reasons, one I had to drive home and two because I knew I couldn't have forced down another beer if I tried and that's all they had. By 10pm other people finally started arriving and so they started playing 10 cup team beer pong. I must say not many of them were very good at the game. From then on (at least until I left) people kept arriving. For the rest of the night I just watched them play beer pong and talked with a couple of the other people there most of whom I didn't know. Finally around 1:00am I decided I better get going since I had to leave for school the next day. Overall I had a good time, it would have been better if there had been better stuff to drink than regular beer and I wouldn't have minded being able to try and kick their ass at beer pong. Oh well though, there is always next time.

I arrived back on Campus Sunday just in time to make it to work. Then Monday marked the start of the final week of classes. Its been a somewhat hectic week for me this week as I have had to do a take home synoptic test and I also have a presentation to do in Thermo tomorrow. Then its time for Exams, which will probably suck but at least its the end of the semester. Only one more left.

2006-11-20T14:48:00.000-05:00

The Asheville snow curse continues. At this point its become predictable. Yesterday and last night they were calling for snow and even this morning when I got up they were calling for 1 to 2 inches of snow here. But as usually we got a big whole nothing. I saw a couple of flurries this morning but that was about it. I think we actually had even more in the way of snow flurries back at the end of October than we did today. Every time it supposed to snow here we either get nothing or well below what is predicted. There are factors that play into this of course but you think that National Weather Service would have caught on by now. With my self soon to be a Meteorologist I understand why they always forecast the snow as they would rather be wrong in forecasting to much snow than be wrong by forecasting to little snow. But in doing so you get tons of peoples hopes up that end up just getting dashed. Though for once I was actually hoping it wouldn't snow as I have leave here tomorrow for Thanksgiving and didn't want to have to deal with any possibility of road troubles. So I can't really complain to much but I know there have been some bummed people wondering around campus today. I have even talked to one guy who skipped his classes today in protest of the no snow.

As I said there are factors that play into this occurrence. The case with the past storm is that the moisture just wasn't there like they thought it was going to be. Being located in the mountains causes issues too. Some of the more common ones are that the mountains block the moisture from getting in here and in some cases the mountains will actually divert the precip around us instead of over us. Asheville being in a valley and therefore at a lower elevation than other places near by means we tend to run a little warmer so there are several occasions were the rain doesn't change to snow as quickly as predicted. There are other factors as well but those would probably just confuse most people so I wont mention them. Unfortunately for us snow lovers this will probably always be an issue. We will just have to sit back and wait for the perfect storm to come along. Who knows maybe it will come this year. I hope so anyway.

As for me I am heading to Charlotte for Thanksgiving. My parents are going to be in PA so this year it will just be me and my sisters celebrating Thanksgiving. William is going to his dad's place for Thanksgiving so he won't be there either. After break I only have two weeks of school left before I am finish. The semester went by fast though I can't complain I am ready for Winter Break. Then begins my final semester of college and it's about time.

2006-11-08T22:15:00.000-05:00

Last weekend I went to my sisters. Got to see my nephew's basketball practice as he has started playing basketball. He needs some work as he is not the most graceful person on the court but he does have some potential. On Sunday night I had planned to go to Scott's(a friend of mine) band's concert. The show was to start at 7pm so William and I left the House around 6:45pm thinking we knew exactly where to go. We quickly get to the place we thought the show was at and realize it is just a bunch of old people there listening to some speaker. So we knew that it wasn't the right place. From there we left and started driving down the road we though it was on and couldn't find it. So finally we called Cathy and she gave us directions which we followed but got us no where. I then decided to stop and ask for directions and the people working the gas station had never even heard of the road I was looking for. So I decided to go back to the House and look it up myself. Finally understanding where the road I was looking for was we headed back out the door. We reached the road and drove down it about 7-8 miles and still could not find the place. So I stopped for directions again and they seemed like they knew where this place was and sent me back in the direction I had just come from. So I drove about 10 miles in that direction still not being able to find the place so finally I called Cathy back and asked for the places address. With the address we were finally able to find the place after over an hour and half of searching (it was 8:30pm). As soon as we pull in William made the comment "People are pulling out". Hoping this was just coincidence, but knowing otherwise, we still parked and walked up to the counter out front and asked the guy working there if the show was over. He said it was and I explained that I knew one of the band members and he let us in since the band members were still there packing up. So after waiting for them to finish packing, Scott walked over to us and apologized for putting the wrong address on their myspace page. He also said they had started at 6pm so even if we had found it right away we wouldn't have seen the whole show. He said that they were setting up another show in December at either Avondale or Tremont(which I have since found out it will be held here). So other than getting to talk to him for a few minutes hour and a half search for the place was basically pointless.

School continues to just flow along and a fairly quick pace. Just signed up for classes for next semester. Weird to think that it was the last time I will sign up for classes. Thanksgiving break is coming up in two weeks and I will be going to Charlotte and having Thanksgiving with my sisters since my parents are going to be in Pennsylvania. Then about two weeks after that the semester is over.

The elections are now over and the democrats have taken over power of the House for the first time in 12 years and it seems they are going to gain power in the Senate as well. Though this is definitely not good news for Bush it does seem from what I am hearing this will actually help him push through his immigration reform of which I am not a big fan of. But, oh well. Also today they announced that Donald Rumsfeld had resigned and was to be replaced by Robert Gates. I doubt many people minded hearing that news, including myself. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out over the next two years.

2006-10-24T23:15:00.000-05:00

I am debating about going to Charlotte either this weekend or the following weekend. My friends band is playing shows in Charlotte both those weekends. I have never seen his band live and keep telling myself I need too so I am finally going to. I just don't know which weekend yet. If I went this weekend I wouldn't be able to get their till later than normal on Friday because I have to go to the local elementary school here to give a presentation to some local elementary students and I would have to be back here on Sunday. But, the show is Saturday night so my nephew, William, could go with me since something tells me he is going to want to go. If I went the following weekend I could get there at my normal time on Friday and wouldn't have to leave till Monday. But, the concert is on a Sunday night so William would not be able to go. So I need to talk to him and then make a decision as to what I am going to do.

I had something happen in one of my dreams that I do not think has ever happened to me before. I have had dreams in the past were I was not myself but each of those times I wasn't in that dream at all. But, the dream I had last night I was in the dream and actually watched myself in the dream. I remember very little of the dream and the only part I actually remember is watching myself walk my dog, Clancy, outside of a restaurant while my dad was moving some stuff around in the car trunk. It was weird watching myself as I remember thinking that I thought I looked like a dork.

Other than that not a whole lot going on with me. School has pretty much ruled my life since my last post. That's part of being a college student I guess.

2006-10-13T15:21:00.000-05:00

Guess I should probably post about fall break. I left here around 11:30 Friday morning and arrived in Peachtree City at 3:30pm. Spent a majority of the next several hours trying to find someone who wore the same size shoe that I did and had an extra pair of non-sneakers that I could borrow. After that failed my friend, Matt, and I went to Wal-Mart to buy a cheap pair of decent looking shoes. Shortly there after we found out another friend of mine couldn't wear the shoes that he expected to wear to the club either. So once Michael got back in town he picked Andrew up and took him to Wal-Mart so he could go buy a cheap pair of shoes too. They then came to Matt's place were Michael changed at which point we hit the road just after 11pm to head up to the club, called eleven50, in downtown Atlanta. The majority of the drive up there was uneventful, that was until we got off the interstate. At that point it turned into an adventure. We drove up and down this one street eventually going in circles a few times before finally turning on a small street that took us to Crescent(can't remember if it was street or road) and so we were convinced we had finally found the right street. But, next thing we knew we had driven the full length of the street twice and still couldn't find the place. Finally while making a third trip down the street we decided that this one bar/club looking place that was on that street had to be it. So we dropped Andrew off to go and check while the rest of us went to go and park the car. We got to the entrance of the parking garage were the valets opened our doors for us and we got out. I walked around the back of the car over to Michael where he was answering a call. Within a matter of seconds Michael turns to me and said "It's a gay bar." I started laughing asking Michael basically if I had heard him correctly which he assured me I had. Leave it to our group to almost accidentally go to a gay bar. So we turned to the valets and told them we were in the wrong place and were actually looking for a club called "eleven50". They gave us directions on how to get to the right club and we got back in the car and went back and picked up Andrew. Somewhat following the directions that we were given we still found ourselves failing at finding this place. Finally we stumbled across a Crescent Ave. and turned down it and almost immediately found the place. But at this point we were thirty minutes late as it was 12:30am and we had been told to be there before midnight.

We walked up, feeling like complete idiots, to our friend Randy who was a doormen at the club. He told us he could still let us in but we would have to pay $15 since we were late. The $15 gave us each two drink cards which matt split his two between Michael and I. So we enter the club and after matt had to make a bathroom pit stop we made our way up to the club. The club itself wasn't very big and you could tell it was once a theater that had since been converted to what it is now. They had a stage up front which had a bunch of people dancing on it with two girls up on blocks (that probably worked for the club) dancing as well. The DJ was also located on the stage as well as a background where they put up all these weird moving type pictures/videos (similar to those windows media player backgrounds that move when you play music). The main bar was located in the back of the club with some smaller bars located off to the side. There was a dance floor in the center and couches raised up along the two sides. We weren't there long before getting our first drink. At which point I released I used the last of my money to get in the club except for a $5 bill so I exchanged my $5 for five ones with Andrew so I could tip for the drinks. So thanks to being limited with tip money I was only able to use two of my three drink cards so that was a little disappointing, but oh well. I wasn't alone though both Michael and Andrew found themselves with only two drinks as well. An hour or so after we walked in Matt had a black chick tap him on the shoulder asking him to dance and Matt obliged. This lead to a domino effect with a girl then grabbing Michael and asking him to dance. I knew at this point I was in trouble. Anyone who knows me knows I am not a dancer. Never have been and probably never will be. I tried to duck out acting like I was heading back to the bar (which I was as I was dropping off the empty glass from my second drink). I turned around and exactly what I had feared was standing right in front of me. I lady grabbed my shoulder and said come on. I immediately thought "oh shit" and not wanting to say no thank you, I grudgingly followed. It wasn't maybe two minutes in before the lady turned around and said "come on, you need to loosen up" and I said "No, that's not really the problem because I am not a dancer and have no idea what I am doing". She said "If you don't want to dance that's fine" and she wondered off, which was a relief. I was there for the drinks and that atmosphere not to dance. After she walked off I noticed Michael was alone again himself so I assume his luck wasn't much better than mine, though I never asked. But, there was matt still going at it. Pretty much the entire night Matt seemed to be having by far the best time of any of us there. Which came as a total shock to me. But he was up on the stage dancing and everything, while the rest of us stood there watching him, laughing at him and taking pictures of him. We saw a girl named Nicki Spencer who we graduated High School with and Michael went down and talked to her real quick before returning. Just before 2:30 Matt decided to head back up to the stage and Andrew followed him. Michael and I hung back for a while but after maybe ten minutes Michael basically said "Fuck it" though I think his exact words were "You only live once, right?". He left leaving me there alone and it wasn't long before I felt dumb just standing there alone so I basically said "Fuck it" myself and made my way up to the stage. I still didn't dance but I at least went up there. At 2:45 the music stopped and a voice came over the speakers thanking everyone for coming and so on and so forth. Matt took a quick chance to get his picture taken on one of the blocks that the girl dancers had been on. We then made our way out and stopped to talk to Randy for several minutes before making our way to the car.

Thankfully we made our way back to the interstate a lot easier than we had made it to the club. We made our way back to PTC acting like dufuses in the car the whole way. We made a couple stops at RaceTrac so matt could get a drink. Then we went to Kroger were Andrew and Matt bought doughnuts. From there we went to Wal-Mart before dropping Andrew off at his house. By the time we got back to Matt's and went to bed it was around 6am in the morning.

Saturday I woke up around 1:45 in the afternoon and quickly got a shower before heading off to get my hair cut. When I got back, which was around 3pm, Michael and Matt were up. Andrew had a wedding to go to that day so we pretty much just played video games that whole day. We had made plans to go eat at one of my favorite restaurants, called Ted's Montana Grill, but Matt's mom had miss understood something Matt had said the other day and had planned a cookout with hamburgers and such for dinner that night. So we had hamburgers, baked beans and chips for dinner. They had a bunch of friends over most of whom I did not know. That night was unfortunately uneventful as Andrew was not there because he had to get up in order to go to work the next day. Michael and I ended up watching the movie "Dead Poet's Society" and by the time it ended and after talking for a minute I realized it was 7am in the morning. Therefore we headed to bed.

I woke up on Sunday at around 2:30pm and Michael and Matt were already up. We spent most the afternoon watching the race and then around 6pm went off to have dinner at Ted's were we had planned to go the night before. From there we went to Baskin Robbins and got some free Ice Cream before heading over to Kroger to see Andrew since Michael was going to be leaving. Soon after that we headed back to Matt's house were Michael grabbed his stuff and left a little after 9pm. Matt and I goofed around playing ping pong and watching TV until Andrew called us around midnight wanting to know if we wanted to go to Waffle House. So we met him, his sister, two of his cousins, Matt's brother and three of his friends(all of which are street racers) at the Waffle House. We hung out there for a little while before heading back to Matt's.

Monday Matt, Andrew and I went to McIntosh High School from which we had graduated back in 2001. We wondered around seeing some old teachers and checking out the new gym and the renovation of the old gym into a auditorium. Its pretty amazing the transformations portions of that school has made since we last went there. We left there and went to Blockbuster were I bought seven movies. Why you ask, well because I got $90 worth of movies for only $42 and that's why. I couldn't pass that up. We went back to Matt's and for the life of me I can't remember what we did. Guess it wasn't very interesting. All I do remember is that about 12:30am Matt went in his room to watch a downloaded episode of CSI that he had on his computer and I remained in the main room of the basement and watched the movie "Three Extremes" which was one of the films I had bought. I then went to bed as it was a little after 3:30am. I got up at 11am on Tuesday, eat breakfast, packed up the car, watched a little TV and then just before 1pm I hit the road. I arrived back on campus around 4:20pm or so as classes restarted on Wednesday.

The weekend as a whole wasn't as I was hoping it was going to be. Certain people by the name of Andrew should have asked off of work so the group could have done more together. I understand missing time with us for the wedding but he could have asked off work on Sunday. It even took some convincing on my part just to get him to go to the club with us on Friday night. Going into the weekend I had expected Matt to be the party pooper and instead it almost ended up being Andrew. I was actually impressed with Matt as he was gung-ho about pretty much anything we throw at him. It just would have been nicer to do more than just the club with everyone. Though at least we got to do the club which at one point on Friday definitely looked up in the air. Not saying I didn't have a good time because I did, hell I wasn't ready to leave yet when Tuesday rolled along. Just next time, whenever that may be, we have to make sure we schedule better and farther in advance so we hopefully wont run into these problems again.

2006-10-01T00:27:00.000-05:00

Have a couple of things to mention. First I have made some minor changes to my homepage(link of right hand side called "My Homepage"). I removed some links on the front page that didn't work anymore and I also turned Scott Taube's name into a link to his band's myspace page. I also updated My Favorite Bands, My Favorite Sports Teams, and Education pages. I re-did the links with a little help from Michael. I found these things called userbars that I thought were pretty cool and would make my page look better and Michael said I should make them act as links. So I spent some time for about three days changing all the links over to these userbars and added some new ones. I even made some of the userbars myself.

Several nights ago I had another fairly unusual dream. The middle of which is now a little fuzzy so I will be pretty bare bones in describing that section of the dream. In the dream a group of four (including myself) were made to enter some underground caverns. We were told that we had to search the tunnels, as a team, for a certain object. They didn't tell us what the object was and they just told us we would know what it was when we found it. With this miniscule information we set off. Fairly quickly after entering we came to an area that had many different tunnels all heading off in different directions. We chose one and made our way to the end finding nothing of what we felt was of importance. We turned around and made our way back the way we came, but along the way we encountered water that had begun entering the caverns. This was a complication that we had not been made aware of at the beginning, yet we knew that this incoming water was planned. So now realizing we no longer would be able to take our time we picked up the pace. Checking cavern after cavern. Before long we found ourselves having to hold our breath and swim to reach some areas. We were having no luck seeming to pick the wrong cavern every time. We got down to only three tunnels left to search and entered the first. After swimming under water for a little bit we reached an air pocket at the bottom. This allowed us to take more time to look around than most of the others that had been filled with water. But, again we failed to find anything of importance. We began swimming back up and were amazed to find that the large area where all the tunnels were coming off of was now also filled with water. This was a major blow to us knowing that very few of us could probably keep going. We then made the decision to swim to the exit and regroup to decide who were the best swimmers to send down to attempt to check the final two tunnels. Just as we broke through the top of the water near the exit I awoke.

Next weekend I leave for Atlanta, Peachtree City to be exact, to see some of my friends that I haven't seen in a while. I was notified that Friday night we were going to a bar that was in town. This was news to me as when I moved from Peachtree City there were no bars in town. Figures I leave and they finally get a place for people my age to hangout. I have also notified my friends that we have to eat at Ted's Montana Grill while I am there. It's one of my favorite restaurants that I rarely get to go to as there are none in Asheville, Charlotte, or Orlando. Other than that I really have no idea what the plans are. Knowing our group things will be done fairly spontaneously as that's how it tended to work most of the time in the past.

2006-09-21T21:55:00.000-05:00

Just yesterday I had been telling some people how fast the last week has gone and then today comes along and moves at slower than a snails pace. Of course the day that had to move agonizingly slow had to be a day that I had four classes all 75 minutes long. It couldn't have been the weekend or one of the days I only have one class.

School is pretty much up and down so far depending on the subject. In German the lowest grade I have had so far is a 91. We have had three test in there already in which I have gotten 91, 91 and 92 on respectively. I have gotten 100s on all the HWs in there and all 100s except one 95 on quizzes. So that class I am doing great in so far. Synoptic Meteorology has been up and down as I have gotten grades as low as 60 and as high as 100. I figure I have a B- or a B right now. Thermodynamics and Statics has also been up and down as I have gotten A's on all the homework yet only a 70 on the one test so I figure I have a B- or B in there as well. Now Differential Equations is a different story. As one person who sits behind me put it perfectly saying "Everyday feels like the first day". Most people I have talked who have had the class in the past have said that Diffy Eq. isn't all that bad. So far to this point in the class I would really like to know what they were smoking as it's been just as difficult as Calc. II was. The one quiz we have had in there I got a 10/20 on so I am not off to the greatest start in there.

Fall break is closing in quickly. Fall Break marks the mid point of the semester which means another round of test coming up in about another week. For Fall break instead of going to Cathy's like I have in the past I am instead this time going to head back to Atlanta to see some friends of mine. I will head down there the Friday before Fall break and then return to campus the following Tuesday. For the most part I am looking forward to it as I haven't been in Atlanta (other than for one day last November) in about two years. It will be nice seeing everyone again and getting to hang out like old times with the small except that I will have to stay at one of their places instead of my own.

2006-09-14T20:03:00.000-05:00

To think that the schools cafe food couldn't get much worse. Then what do I find when I got dinner last night? Moldy tortillas. Talk about killing an appetite. Can't imagine what else they could do to make it worse. Though I am sure they will find something. Definitly not going to miss the cafe after I graduate next spring.

2006-09-11T23:21:00.000-05:00

My brain is finally starting to shift into school mode. Which hopefully means it has switched into blogging mode as well. When my brain is in summer mode the blog tends to take a back seat and I tend to forget about. So now hopefully I should start posting more often.

Today, well yesterday now,was the five year anniversary of the attacks on the Twin Towers and the pentagon, and lets not forget United flight 93. A news reporter mentioned how we do things in fives and tens and she was right not a whole lot was made of the past four anniversaries of 9/11. But, this year things were completely different. Most news stations spent the entire day (and even the History Channel) talking about nothing except 9/11 and what has happened since. Even MSNBC re-played the entire tellecast(from 9/11/01) of the attacks this morning. I was glad to see the media concentrating so much on this anniversary because I have noticed that each year more and more people seem to forget what 9/11 was all about and hopefully some of them watched some of the coverage today was got a reminder. I am sure I am about the zillionth person today to post about the anniversary but there is good reason. Thinking back though its hard to believe its been five years. Where have the years gone, next thing I know we will be remembering the 25th anniversary.

Anyway, not much going on here on my front. Other than the usual school and work anyway. Though over labor day weekend I ran into a friend of mine that I had not seen in five years. His name is Scott, and I was walking around my sisters neighborhood trying to figure out where my niece had gone when a van pulling a trailer drove by. I thought nothing of it until I saw it come back and stop about four doors down from my sisters house. I noticed the passenger in the car and thought to my self "Hey, that looks like the one guy from Scott's band". Next thing I know the drivers door opens and I hear "Kenneth is that you?" and I see Scott climb out. Strangely at the time it didn't seem that strange to me that I had just randomly ran into a friend of mine that I hadn't seen in five years, as it wasn't until later that I actually got a laugh out of it. He was in the neighborhood doing some recording with his band, "Philmont", of which he is the lead singer.

Well that's about all I have this time. Plus it's late now and I have an early class so I am off.

2006-08-28T20:11:00.000-05:00

I thought I had already posted since I arrived back in Asheville. Obviously I have not. Not much really to report to be honest besides the already stated obvious that I am back on campus. Classes have started and so far my hardest classes look like they will be Differential Equations and Thermodynamics and Statics (Meteorology class) with my other two being easier Synoptic Meteorology and German (especially German). Have my first test in German tomorrow as we move fast in that class, though it should be pretty easy.

Already have a first break coming up next weekend for Labor Day. Though I am going to do the weekend backwards and leave here Thursday evening and then come back Sunday afternoon so that way I don't have to take off of work.

Other than that the only thing I am really doing is watching Tropical Storm Ernesto which is eyeing Florida. For those that read my blog know that my parents live in Orlando which the current track of the storm has it going fairly close to them. Since it is not a strong storm they aren't going to leave but did go fill up their extra gas canisters just in case they need them if the power does go out. So I will keep an eye on that.

Also I am going to try and set up a collection of my summer vacation pictures to link onto here incase people want to see them. For people who read this that are friends with me on Facebook you can just go to my Facebook page and view them there as they are already up. My linking them on here in the next few days will before for any of those who may read this that don't have Facebook and still want to see them. So look for that in the next week.

2006-08-10T15:45:00.000-05:00

One Thing of interest that happened on the trip that I didn't post before was that William along with the help of his mother and sister made up a sang about Halloween using the 12 Days of Christmas song as the template for it. So this is William's new version 12 Days of Halloween, which I promised him I would post.

Instead of useing "my true love" William decided to use "ugly christian friend".
So the the line is "On the first day of Halloween my ugly christian friend gave to me..." All you have to do, like the orginial, is change the day number.

Day 1 - A Rotten Apple
Day 2 - Two Tootsie Rolls
Day 3 - Three Christmas Trees
Day 4 - Four Candy Corns
Day 5 - Five Smashed Pumpkins
Day 6 - Six Jack-o-lanterns
Day 7 - Seven Fun Sized Snickers
Day 8 - Eight Stingy Neighbors
Day 9 - Nine Lousy Costumes
Day 10 - Ten Rolls of Toilet Paper
Day 11 - Eleven Used Toothbrushes
Day 12 - Twelve Screaming Ghosts

So There you have it. Though I am sure he isn't the first to do it he still had fun doing it. As for me I leave Florida on Monday to head back up to Charlotte and then back up to campus on Tuesday for more training for work. My last Summer flew by, but summers always do. Overall can't complain to much, played some golf and got alittle better at it and had an awesome vacation.

2006-07-30T23:33:00.000-05:00

I arrived back home from our trip on Thursday. The trip was exactly three weeks long as we left Florida Thursday, July 6th and arrived back on July 27th.

We arrived in Charlotte on the 6th and spent a day there. We left Charlotte with my sister and her two kids on the 8th and made our way to Williamsburg, Virginia. We toured Colonial Williamsburg on the 9th. Only thing of note on this part of the trip was when we came up to the gate to possibly entire Jamestown (in same area as Williamsburg) the man at the gate asked my dad if he was a resident of the United States. My dad thinking the man was going to say Virginia said "No, I am from Florida." The man not missing a beat says "Man, you have been on vacation a long time". Needless to say my father didn't live that one down the rest of the trip. From Williamsburg we left for New York on the 10th. Once in New York we spent the 11th going to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. The following day we drove through Manhattan passing the World Trade Center site, the Empire State Building, Madison Square Garden, Majestic Theater, went through Times Square, and past Central Park before departing New York and heading north toward Canada. We made it half-way through the state of New York stopping in Utica, NY for the night.

On the 13th we entered Canada and made our way into Kingston, Ontario. The next day we spent the first half of the day touring Kingston. The second half of the day we went on a three hour boat ride to and from Boldt Castle (hour and half there and back). I have decided that if I ever moved out of the United States I would move to Kingston, Ontario as it is just about the most beautiful place I have ever been too. I would recommend taking a trip there to anyone. On the 15th we left Kingston and having a day to waste before we needed to be in Toronto we decided to drive a little ways into Canada and drove up to Victoria Harbor and Midland with the plans to stay the night in Midland. Though all hotels were taken up there so we decided to go ahead and drive down to Toronto that evening making it to the hotel about 10:30pm that night. The following day we went into downtown Toronto and went up in the CN Tower and had lunch and walked on the glass floor(not quiet as impressive as it sounds). The 17th we left and headed for Niagara Falls which was our main destination of the trip. The 18th myself, Cathy, and her two kids did the Maid of the Mist boat ride, Behind the Falls, and the Aero Car. We wanted to do the jet boats as well but didn't have time nor were we really that keen on spending that much money to do it. That night we had dinner up in the revolving dining room in the Skylon Tower that overlooks the falls.

The morning of the 19th we made one last drive by the falls before heading back into the United States making our way the Hershey, PA. The following day we spent the day in Hershey going on their little tour, 3D movie, and of course stock piling on junk food that we didn't need. The 21st we drove through the Amish Country stopping at an Amish Smorgishboard (yes that's what they called it) as well as stopping at one of their funiture stores that my parents like. After driving through the Amish Country we headed to Monroeville, PA which is just outside of Pittsburgh, PA where we have some family. The next two days we spent helping my uncle move his bridal shop by working on fixing up the new one (ripping up old carpet and tile and doing some painting and mirror hanging). On the 24th we drove into Pittsburgh and went up on of the old inclines there were you can overlook the three rivers and downtown Pittsburgh before hitting the road and heading south. That night we stopped in Charlottesville, VA. The following morning we went to Monticello and tour Thomas Jefferson's home and gravesite. Around lunchtime we hit the road again for Charlotte, NC. Spent the following day the 26th in Charlotte visiting my other sister and her husband and also went to see the movie Monster House which wasn't too bad. Then on the 27th we returned to Florida which marked the end of our adventure.

Believe it or not that was actually the very brief summary version of the trip. If you want a more detailed version then just give me a buzz on the cell.

Now home I relax, hopefully get a round or two of golf in, go to the doctor, and then get ready to head back to school. As it stands now I have to be back on Campus on the 15th of August for work, though I wont know of sure until my boss replies back. Then classes start on the 21st, one more year to go.

2006-06-29T14:26:00.000-05:00

I have come to the conclusion that the summer is bad for blogs. Atleast mine it is. Pretty much this whole summer I have had little to no will to post on here as something else always sounds more interesting.

My summer so far hasn't been exactly filled with excitement either. Pretty much just sticking with my original plan of playing golf a couple times a week assuming the weather is nice. Played put-put last weekend for my Aunts Birthday and I finished with a 46 which was par for the course, which included two hole-in-ones.

Tomorrow morning my dad and I are leaving to go to the Bush and Nextel cup races that are tomorrow night and Saturday night. We are taking the motorhome and staying in it. My dad reserved a spot for us to park it over the weekend. Fortunately for us the tickets were free as my brother-in-law sent my dad the tickets as a Birthday/Fathers Day gift. We should get back late Saturday night or Sunday morning assuming the races don't get rained out.

Then one week from today we leave to head up to Charlotte to pick up Cathy, William and Jacqueline to begin our 16 or so day trip. I will try to post at some point on the trip but the chances of my probably being able to are slim. That's pretty much it, just wanted to post and let you all know I am still here and haven't quit the blog.

2006-05-25T13:29:00.000-05:00

I know, I know, I am slacking off again. It's summer what can I say. I get down here and blogging is just about one of the last things on my mind.

Obviously I am in Orlando now and have been for just over two weeks now. I arrived here on the 10th and the drive wasn't near as bad as I expected it to be. I never really got that bored and the trip went much faster than I expected it to.

That following weekend I went to St. Augustine for a Car Show that my dad had his car entered in. The car show was that Saturday and he actually won a trophy for getting second place in the Paint category. On Sunday we took a trolley ride around to see the sites though we didn't do a whole lot of walking since my mom has her ankle messed up. Then on Monday we drove around a little and stopped at a winery and I have yet to find a wine I like but I did learn one thing while there and that's if I do eventually find a wine I like it is probably going to be a dry one instead of the sweeter fruiter ones as the dry ones tended to be better.

Since returning back from the show I have had two golf lessons that have made a major difference in my game (exactly how major I don't know yet). Yesterday I went to the dentist only to find that I have four new cavities but they assure me that all four are small. Never-the-less I have to go have them drilled so I have to do that next month. As for my wisdom teeth the dentist says that I have to go to an Oral surgeon to see if they need to come out. I looked at my x-ray of my teeth and though I am no dentist or oral surgeon from what I could tell only one of the four teeth looked like it would almost definitely need to be taken out because it was sitting side ways instead of straight up and down like the other three are. So anyway at some point I have to make an appointment with the Oral surgeon to see what they think.

We are trying to set up for William to fly down here and spend a couple weeks down here with us while his sister is at their dads. Since he has never flown on a plane before he is afraid to go by himself so we are trying to work out cost to have Cathy fly down with him and then have her fly back home a few days later. Luckily since William's step-mother works for AirTran he can fly down here free so that helps reduce some of the cost. So we are working on that because he wants to come down.

Totally changing subject, but I have to admit that I have lost pretty much all respect for the citizens of New Orleans. They re-elected Ray Nagin when he is at fault for the majority of what happened there during and after Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately though 52% of New Orleans residents either are unintelligent enough or idiotic enough to not realize it. The man screwed up big time and got rewarded for it. I mean when you wait until 24 hours before a Hurricane hits to issue a mandatory evacuation what do you expect to happen with a city that size(especially when you have been warned repeatedly for the last few days to get the people out). I mean New Orleans is a major city and there is no way you are going to get all of its citizens out in 24 hours and I guarantee half of the deaths in New Orleans are directly connected to that discussion. I could go on and on as there are many other examples of how he screwed up (like the busses for example) but its all pointless now. I feel sorry for the 48% or so that realized it. Anyway enough ranting about that.

You know people complain about the US spending but if you look back at some of the things the US has spent money on over the decades there is some really stupid stuff we have spent it on. Perfect example when we were first going to space they discovered that a pin does not work up there due to the lack of gravity. So what does our wonderful nation do it decides to spend thousands or millions of dollars on researching how to make an anti-gravity pen when all we had to do all along was just use a stupid pencil.

2006-05-08T17:15:00.000-05:00

My summer officially started at around 1:00pm this afternoon as I finished my last final exam. Since then I have been packing things up in the room so that way tomorrow morning all I have to do is put all the stuff in the car. My sister is also coming up tomorrow morning to help me move out since I can't fit all the stuff in my car. I will end up leaving some stuff at her house of the summer (which is the stuff that we will pack in her car tomorrow). Then Wednesday morning its off to Orlando. I am looking forward to the drive and dreading it at the same time. Mostly because when I leave Wednesday morning that is when it will really feel like summer is beginning but at the same time its an eight to nine hour drive in which I will be board to death by the time I get into Orlando. The first three hours wont be too bad, but come hour four my mind will start wondering who I could call to waste time and make the trip move faster, by hour five time will be moving at a snails pace and those five hours will seem more like ten hours, at the six hour mark I will be basically hoping to be shot in the head to end the misery (I wont really want to be shot), by the seventh hour I will begin to lose coherence as I will probably have zoned out on the road due to complete boredom, by the final hour or two when I make it home I will be near unconsciousness. Though that only may be slightly true it will definitely fill if those will be the cases.

This will be my last post until after I have arrived down in Orlando. So expect a post around this time next week as I probably wont even get the computer hooked up until early next week as next weekend I will be in St. Augustine for that car show and more than likely wont hook the computer up till we get back. So until then this will just have to hold you over.

2006-05-03T21:40:00.000-05:00

Two years. That's now the age of this blog. Guess that means it's time to start working towards three years. Happy b-day blog! Sounds weird.

I have one exam down and three to go. I took my Humanities 324 final today which I am pretty sure I aced it as there is only one question I am a little worried about. My other three finals are Weather Forecasting which I have tomorrow, that one shouldn't be to bad, then on Monday I have both my Calc. III and Physics II finals back-to-back which is going to be hell. Though once I finish those two on Monday I am finished and the summer can begin. Tuesday morning I will pack the car up with my sisters help then head over to her place for the night before finally hitting the road for Orlando on Wednesday morning.

Yesterday we had a staff dinner for work and they were giving out awards as well as some parting gifts for the graduating seniors. So while sitting there as they call out the names of the graduating seniors to come get their little gift envelope thing all of a sudden I hear my name. So stunned to hear my name I walk up there and as I get there I mention that I am not actually graduating yet and they gave the envelope to me anyway. Not sure why they thought I was graduating as I already told them I was coming back next year. Anyway all that envelope had in it was a year long pass for alumni recreation whatever that is. I was kind of disappointed, despite the fact I wasn't supposed to get anything in the first place, that all I got was the pass because the people who got them had gift cards to places like Best Buy along with the alumni recreation pass so I felt kind of gypped.

2006-04-28T13:11:00.000-05:00

This past Wednesday I had to get up at 7:30am which isn't the most delightful time in the morning for a college student. I had to get up because I was going to Vance Elementary School in West Asheville to go talk to a 4th grade class about weather. Another fellow student, Chad Hutchins, and myself got there just before 9pm. We had some trouble finding out exactly which class it was we were supposed to be speaking with but with a little help from someone in the front office we found it. We went in started to set up our stuff and ran into some problems as the projected was being incorporative with us. Finally after getting some help we got it all up and running. We then talked to the students about severe weather. Chad went on to discuss what classifies as severe storm. I then followed with and explanation of how a storm forms, how hail forms, what causes lightning (as well as the different types of lightning). Chad then talked about tornados and how they form. We both talked about safety concerning each of the things that we were talking about and how to prepare. Throughout the whole thing we asked them several questions which some were easy and some were a little more difficult. We had them share some stories of their own about some neat weather events they had seen or been a part of. The students were very receptive to us and asked a lot of questions and had a lot to say even to the point to where we had to calm them down a few times in order to proceed. We eventually ended at 10am which was 20 minutes longer than the planned time, though the teacher didn't seem to mind and neither did the students. So all and all for our first go at it I would say AMS Outreach (AMS=American Meteorological Society)was a success. We had two other groups to with other people, one also later on Wednesday and then another one today. From what I have heard it has been a success on their end as well. We plan to continue AMS Outreach next year as well following these same students on to 5th grade and working with them there to try and help broaden their understand and increase their awareness of weather. Hence the name AMS Outreach. It should be a lot of fun as I know I enjoyed it and look to continue with it next year.

As for other things still not much going on as all I have left now are my finals next week before I finally head out of here for the Summer on May 9th. Which will signify then end of Physics and Calculus. Thank God, because I have no idea how much more my brain could have handled.

2006-04-23T23:24:00.000-05:00

It is kind of annoying when you have absolutely nothing to post about. Then you go several days without posting anything and people wonder what happened to you, if you quit, etc... Anyway that has been my issue and seems to have been my problem a lot over the last several months. I know I don't lead the most exciting life in the world but you would think something would pop up every now and then to post about. Atleast something more interesting than what I have left in school like two test and then finals. Also I have no idea whats up with my comments and why it just says "comments" and not have a number like it normally does, been this way for a little while now.

Though I did have another weird dream about a week ago that I had meant to post about several days ago. This dream did something that no other dream of mine that I can recall has done before, in that it tied it self into a book I am currently reading. That book being Watchers by Dean Koontz. The dream started with me running towards a movie theater from something that was chasing me. I hadn't seen what was chasing but I knew it was huge. I ran into the theater and made my way quickly into a movie where I sat down hoping the thing chasing me couldn't find me there. My hopes were dashed when a huge creature smashed its way in through the side of the theater. I didn't get up and run right away I instead watched for a couple seconds as it attacked some of the people in the front rows. Finally I jumped up and ran out of the movie making my way to the front of the building were instead of exiting the building I hung a right and ran into a restaurant that was adjacent to the theater and ran towards its bathrooms thinking I could hide in there. But, just as I got to the bathroom doors I stopped and realized running into the bathrooms was a bad idea because if the creature found me in there I would be trapped with almost no escape. So I turned around and fled out of the restaurant and into the parking lot. I ran down the side street of the parking lot eventually turning left into one of the lanes of the parking lot where I stopped running and turned back around. Within a couple seconds I saw a shadow approaching towards my lane from the side road. I stood there almost as if in a trance watching the shadow grow. Then a girl around my age came running up towards me and as she got to me she said "If I was 14 feet tall you would be dead." Those seemed to be the magic words as it snapped me out of whatever trance I was in and I turned around and ran towards my car which I found parked in one of the parking spaces to my right. I jumped in the car started the engine, looked in my rear view mirror and saw the large creature approaching from behind. So instead of packing up I just put the car in drive and drove over the median in front of me and accelerated towards the exit of the parking lot. I reached the light and it had just turned red so knowing I had a couple seconds before the cars started coming from the other direction I nailed the accelerated and took off out of the parking lot (tires squealing and all) and headed as quickly as I could down the road. Once the theater and restaurant were out of my rear view mirror I started thinking to my self "Ok, the creature can only travel three miles per day so if I get myself a large enough distance away from it then I should not have to worry about for an extremely long time." This thought I got from that Koontz book I am reading as there is a creature in that book known as "The Outsider" which is an ape that had been mutated though genetic engineering to become a killer to be used to fight in wars. In the book it escaped from a lab, along with a highly intelligent dog, and is stalking the dog to kill it. In the book it is mentioned that it travels an average of three miles a day. So, going back to the last piece of the dream I continued to race down the road until eventually I woke up.

2006-04-16T19:28:00.000-05:00

Got some bad news concerning Clancy earlier today. Basically he is dying. Sounds a lot worse than it is I guess. Figures just a couple days after I brag about what great health he is in that something like this would pop up. First off the vet is about 90% sure he has cancer. But at the same time that vet is also about 90% sure its an extremely slow moving cancer and so much so that they say that considering his age that it's not really something to worry about. They also found his heart is enlarged. This isn't uncommon for dogs his age but none-the-less even though it hasn't go into anything serious yet it definitely could and probably will down the road. Also his trachea is slowly collapsing they said that in some places its pencil thin and that at some point in the future it will completely collapse. Despite all these they have no idea how long that means he has. They told my parents it could mean six months or it could mean two or so more years. Though all that a side my mom says Clancy has been doing great lately. She said he has been playing a lot more and his back and joints don't seem to be causing him near as much trouble. So despite all these new problems arising they don't seem to be effecting him at all as of now. So we shall see how he does and like I told my mom all that matters is that he is happy, which he is.

2006-04-12T14:34:00.000-05:00

Today is my dog Clancy's 14th Birthday. I seem to be the only one in the family who remembers his birthday. My parents always forget so I have to remind them every year. Despite now being 14 he still is doing very well. Other than his back he is still in great health especially for a dog his age. Therefore, as long as his back holds out then who knows how much longer he will be around. Hopefully a while longer though as I am in no rush to lose him. I even have a picture of him up on Facebook now. I still remember when we bought him way back when in early August of 1992. That was even before my nephew William was born (October 1992). Happy Birthday Clancy!

2006-04-10T21:10:00.000-05:00

For a large part of last week I was at my sisters place in Charlotte which is why its been a while since I last posted. While at Cathy's house I didn't do a whole lot as I mostly just enjoyed being away from all the stresses of school for a few days. Though on Wednesday I did go to Jacqueline's horseback riding lessons. Helped William improve free throw shot in basketball though he still needs some work. I also played him in a game to 21 and kicked his butt 21-5. Went to the mall on Saturday and I bought some National Championship stuff for Florida(a shirt and a hat). But that's basically it. Though I did have a weird dream while I was there but remember very little of it. I remember being in a hotel being chased by some deranged man in a pirate costume. I didn't know if he was trying to kill me or not but I know I was scared of him. I also remember locking myself in a hotel room to get away from him. But that's about all I remember.

Now I am back at school to continue the torture. Thankfully I only have one month left. I still have a 12 page paper, 4 test and finals to go between now and then. Not to mention my other homework I have every week. I am just ready for it all to end. I also signed up for my classes next semester today. I signed up for German I and II (a whole year worth in one semester so I will have it every day), Differential Equations, Thermodynamics in Meteorology and Synoptic Meteorology I. So it will be a tough semester but not as bad as this year as been.

2006-04-03T23:45:00.000-05:00

FLORIDA GATORS 2006 NCAA BASKETBALL NATIONAL CHAMPIONS!!!!

I can't believe it. I am not going to be able to get this simle off my face for a month. #1 Baby!!

2006-04-03T00:49:00.000-05:00

Today is the big game. At 9:20pm my Florida Gators take the court against UCLA for the National Championship in basketball. I think Florida does have the edge in this game but then again I am biased. Only thing that sucks is I have to work from 10pm-12am tomorrow night which runs right over the game. Though thankfully working in the game room gives me a TV to watch, so I will still be able to watch it except I will just have to put up with a bunch of noisy people.

Anyway NCUR starts here at UNCA on Thursday and runs through the weekend. Classes have been canceled during that time. So I am heading off to Charlotte, after classes on Wednesday, to get away from the over 2,000 people they are expecting to be here. Hard to believe that when I get back that following Sunday that there will only be about four weeks left till school is over. Though unlike last year I am definitely ready for this school year to end. Then just one more year left.

2006-03-27T01:12:00.000-05:00

Has it really be over a week since I last posted, geez. Seems more like two or three days ago.

GO GATORS!!! Final Four, only two wins away from a National Championship. They play George Mason next weekend in the Final Four. Which normally I would call that an easy win but not this time. Not with the way George Mason has been playing so far in the tournament.

I finally declared my major. I didn't realize that I had not done that yet until about a month ago when I got an e-mail saying I still needed to. So on Friday that's what I did. I need to go talk to the Foreign Language department about trying to get out of taking a foreign language because if I am able to it will make my final year much easier. So I plan to do that next week. Still haven't heard anything from the state about tuition. I am starting to get flustrated. If I find time I plan to go ask what the hell is going on. Though I love this school I have to say I have lost all respect for its administration with the way I have been treated. Anytime I try to go talk to people I feel like I am getting the cold shoulder and that they don't want to talk to me. I mean last time they turned me down they did not even tell me why. They have proven to me over and over again they couldn't give a rats ass about their students.

My parents bought, with the help of my Aunt Jesse, a RV for our trip this summer. I don't know if I have mentioned it but we are planning a large road trip for this summer. Leaving from Orlando, FL heading up to Charlotte, NC to pick up my sister and her two kids. From there we plan to head to Williamsburg, VA. From there its off to Washington DC where we will probably spend two days. After DC we plan to head up to New York City and spend a couple days there before heading across the state to Niagara Falls. From Niagara Falls we are going to head into Canada and up to Toronto. That's the first half of the trip and we are still planning the second half as we would like to take a different route back.

2006-03-17T21:46:00.000-05:00

Well I had a pleasant surprise in my mailbox today. I checked my mail today and had two things in it, one was junk mail and the other was from the school. I was hoping it was going to be the letter telling me what the state decided on my tuition status. But instead when I opened it up I found a $1,374.90 check inside. At first I had no idea what it was for. After thinking about it for several minutes I got an idea what it might have been for so I went to the cash office to find out. It was a check for the left over amount of my loan that the school hadn't used. That verified that my thinking was correct but I wanted to make sure before I did anything with it. So about an hour later along with my work checks I deposited $1,699.90 in my account today. Not bad if I do say so myself. Only downfall I guess is that eventually I will have to pay the check back. Nonetheless it was still a pleasant surprise today.

2006-03-14T12:33:00.000-05:00

The first dream was the weirder of the two. It started with me crouched down in some bushes peering out towards the street ahead. Within seconds I felt a sharp tap on my back. I looked back and saw the bushes behind me moving but didn't see anything so I went back to looking out towards the street. I was watching some sort of battle battle between a bunch of small creatures riding some sort of weird looking animal. I then felt another sharp tap on my back and again saw nothing so this time I stood up out of the bushes and saw an ostrich standing there. I looked back towards the street and realized that it was ostriches that they were riding. So I decided to climb on to the one that was standing near me that had been poking me in the back. Not a few minutes after I climbed on I saw another Ostrich come running past me with one of those creatures on it. This gave me a closer view of what the creature looked like and it looked like a really small bear (a little larger than a cub) with a human face. It raced passed me towards the others battling in the street. I happened to look down and saw two large cloth pouches hanging down on each side of the ostrich. One held these boomerang type things and the other had a club looking weapon. At that moment I heard a whizzing noise go by my head and looked up to see one of those boomerang things had just gone passed me. I looked in the direction of it and saw one of those human bear creatures was running towards me on its ostrich. I then pulled out the club and as it had also pulled out theirs and as it got close enough to me I pulled back the club and hit the human bear thing as hard as I could in the head and its head exploded into a million pieces. But not with blood or guts or anything like that it exploded like if it was made out of styrofoam and even made a sound as if it was styrofoam. Then a point total of 600 points popped up above its head (or the left over body in this case). I looked back towards the street watching for a moment and noticed when a hit or a kill was made point totals popped up. I was in what seemed like the middle of a video game. I decided since that one had attacked me that chances were others would come after me as well so I took the offensive and headed towards the street to join the battle. Once reaching the street I throw a boomerang at the first creature I saw and hit it on the arm chopping off its arm just below the elbow and again it came off like styrofoam and 100 points popped up above its head for the hit. The creature then turned towards me and with its other hand chucked one of its own boomerang things at me and it hit me in the side. I felt only the pressure of the hit, no pain, and saw chunks of my side fly off and looked up seeing a 100 point total above my head. I then took my club out and charged the creature hitting it in the head, like I had with the first one, and its head exploded giving me the 600 points. I then felt something hit me in the back and reached back and pulled a boomerang thing out of my back. Looked up and saw the 100 points. I turned around to see who had hit me and before I could return fire, I woke up.

The second dream wasn't quiet as strange as the first. This one involved my Nephew William, Jacqueline and my sister Cathy. Cathy, Jacqueline and I were sitting in the stands of a medium sized outdoor stadium watching a cheerleading competition that William was going to be participating in. The one group before Williams finished up and we waited only what seemed like seconds before Williams group game out. William lead the way wearing a strange costume that reminded me of what a Ring Leader at a circus would wear. With the tall black top hat, and long black sparkly pants with a white shirt and a black sparkly coat to match the pants over that. He had a microphone in his hands and began speaking to the crowd explain what they would be doing in the competition. Not but a minute into the competition my dream shifted and I was now walking behind the stands with William talking to him. He was telling me how this was going to be his last competition because he was going to quit. I asked him why and he told me it was because it required more work than he wanted to put into it. I argued with him that it can't be harder than when I wrestled back in high school. He swore it was and started explaining why he thought so but before he could finish explaining it I woke up. I fell back asleep again and started dreaming again but this one was different in this dream I woke up(in the dream) to having water balloons being thrown at me by Cathy and Jacqueline. Jacqueline was laughing and Cathy noticed I had woken up and said, "Phew, Its 4pm I almost thought you were going to break my record there for a minute". I assumed she was referring to length of time sleeping in. Even though I was awake Jacqueline throw another water balloon at me and started laughing. I then woke up in real life half expecting to find my self soaked but I was of course dry.

2006-03-12T20:13:00.000-05:00

One thing I noticed while on Spring Break this past week was how high property cost have gotten. I have seen signs of it in the last few years but I really noticed it this past week. There are several new neighborhoods going up near my sisters place and in every one of them the houses are right up against each other. Back even just 10 years ago pretty much the only time I can remember seeing homes up against each other like that were with the smaller homes in those starter or retirement communities. Now you see them everywhere. Not just in small homes anymore either. Even the mid-size and larger homes are being built right up against each other. There is this one neighborhood going in down the street from my sister's place with homes in the $300,000-$500,000 range and they are being built right on top of one another. Then just down the street from those there are these three homes that were just built right on the main road that coast over $600,000 and they are also built right on top of each other. One of the biggest examples of this I noticed was actually over the summer when My dad, Uncle and I went to a car show and afterwards decided to drive around some of the neighborhoods around there. This one neighborhood had a street that had $1,000,000-$2,000,000 homes and there was no more than 10 feet between the houses. A couple of them were under construction so we decided to get out and walk through them. If you look out the second floor of one of the houses in the direction of the one next door all you see is the roof of the others garage. I do not know about most people but if I was to spend $2,000,000 on a home I would want a lot more than 10 feet between me and the person living next to me. All I know is when the day comes that I am in position to buy a house I will probably start looking at older homes that actually have some property because I like my privacy.

As for Spring Break it was much needed. Though a week was nice, it wasn't enough. And not just because I wanted a break but because my brain needed a break. I was beginning to burnout. Though the burnout will no doubt return by the end of the week. I think the stress and the burnout was causing me health problems as well as for the last couple weeks leading up to Spring Break I was have some heart issues with it skipping beats basically everyday. Over Spring Break though the skipped heart beats went away and all was normal again which has led me to believe it is the stress of this school year weighing down on me that has been causing it. Summer needs to get here fast because I need the extended break and not just because I want it but for health reasons as well. I guess I have become living proof of my philosophy that school is bad for your health.

My friend Matt came in from Atlanta and stayed at my sisters in Charlotte through last Tuesday before heading back home. We went and raced some go-karts and played some put-put one day. He spent a chunk of another working on my sisters home computer and messed up her work laptop in the process, which she wasn't happy about. He (with the help of Michael) got the home computer working though. Every night he was there he got midnight cravings and we would head out to Taco Bell or McDonald's to get something since those are pretty much the only paces open that late. I also bought a PS2 game(TOCA Race Driver 3) and a movie (Saw II) using his blockbuster discount while he was there. After he left Tuesday I spent the pretty much the rest of the week running around like crazy. On Wednesday I had to take Jacqueline to her horseback riding lessons. Thursday I had to go met my sister Jeralyn for lunch up near her house in Concord. Then Friday I got to pretty much see what it was like to be a single parent. First I had to get up sorta early and take my sister to get Lasik surgery done on her eyes (which I got to watch). Then I had to take Jacqueline and her friend to their bowling party and after dropping them off I had to go pick William up at school with the intention of bowling ourselves only to find that Jacquelines school had all the lanes filled (which at this bowling alley is like 150 lanes). So because of that I had to take William home and then an hour later I had to go pick Jacqueline and her friend up from their bowling party and bring them back home. Then Saturday I had to go pick up some of Williams friends and take them to Blockbuster to rent stuff for their sleepover. Now I am back on campus at work getting ready for the hell to restart at 10:25am tomorrow when my Physics class starts.

I will post later about two dreams I had over break, another really weird one and one sort of normal one (for me anyway). Oh, and Go Gators (27-6) as they won their 2nd consecutive SEC Tournament Championship today.

2006-03-01T23:52:00.000-05:00

These warm temperatures need to go away. It's only the first of March and we are in the mid 70s. As a matter of fact we set a new record high here in Asheville today of 75. I want the 40s-50s to come back. Though I dislike the warmer weather I do have to admit it has its advantages but that doesn't change the fact that it is only the first of March so its not supposed to be warm like this. Thankfully by next week we will be in the 50s again.

And speaking of weather our weather forecast for the radio has officially begun. So Monday March 13th I will have my first go at giving a forecast. I am kind of looking forward to it, I expected to be nervous about it but so far I am not. Still over a week away for my first time so that could change.

Spring Break is just about here. Starts Friday and I will head to my sisters place in Charlotte. My friend Matt is coming up from Atlanta to hang out for a couple days. That should be cool as I haven't seen him in almost a year. Hopefully I will be able to hook up with some of my other friends around town so I do not die of boredom. Overall though I need the break whether I am bored or not. School is wearing on me. Unfortunately though it only last nine days so it will probably fly by and be time to come back up here in no time. Oh well should do me some good anyway. Hopefully give me some decent stuff to post about as well.

2006-02-27T12:32:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I had one of those moments where I ended up someplace without having any recollection of how I got there. I left the dorm room with the intention of heading down to the laundry room to put my clothes into the dryer. A couple minutes later a women walks out a door snapping me out of whatever trance I must have been in at the time and was surprised found my self not in the laundry room but instead standing in front of the vending machines in Vance Hall (the public safety building). I tried to think back to how I got there but the last thing I could remember was walking out the door of my suite. I had not recollection of making the walk over there. For all I know I could have been teleported there. Attempting not to look weird by just walking out I decided to get me a diet Pepsi while I was in there and then finally made my way to my original destination, the laundry room.

2006-02-25T20:21:00.000-05:00

Last evening I went bowling with the BlogAsheville crew and had a good time. It was the first time I had bowled in atleast a year and a half. I was expecting to be pretty rusty and the first frame of my first game lead me to believe that I was. I guttered both balls on the first frame. Surprisingly though for the most part that was the only time I really struggled. I ended up finishing with a 158 that game which was the second highest of everyone for the night. About three frames into my second game my thumb started to go numb and once that happened I started losing the ability to direct the ball to where I wanted it to go so my score for the second game dropped to 110.

Starting either this coming week or the week of March 13th, I will begin doing the weather forecast for WPVM 103.5 here in Asheville on Monday evenings. The Atmospheric Sciences Department at UNCA is the one putting this together with 103.5. There are several of my other co-majors that are doing the other days. I wasn't sure if it was something I wanted to do at first but after I thought about it I decided to do it. I figured it could be fun and potentially would look good on a resume done the road sometime. So anyone here In Asheville who might read my blog start listening for us here in the near future.

I think I am starting to burnout. I haven't been doing as well in school as I was expecting to at this point. I am not giving any less effort than before. It is just that I am having a much harder time this semester staying on task with studying and staying alert in class. My mind seems to be wondering a lot more lately. Only thing I can think of is that mentally I am beginning to burnout. Hopefully that isn't the case because if it is this could be a long second half of the semester. Spring Break is just under a week away so hopefully that week away from school will help me out.

2006-02-15T21:01:00.000-05:00

I am beginning to believe that Asheville is cursed. At least in the way of snow. Every time they forecast a big snow event here (atleast in the time I have been here) it never happens. Most of the time we will get some snow but about a 1/4th what they forecast. Same thing happened this weekend. They were forecasting up to 8 inches of snow here Friday night into Saturday. Guess how much we got? Try zero. What fell was all rain and very little rain fell at that, I think the airport reported something like 0.20 inches of rain over that time. It is not the forecasters fault that they get it wrong. All their models and the conditions were setting up perfect but something always comes along a fucks things up. Like this last time the Upper Level trough which was supposed to interact with the low ended up lagging behind therefore the low didn't intensify until it was past us. So therefore the cold air wasn't in place like it should have been and the moisture wasn't there like it should have been therefore all we got was just a small amount of rain. But, since the upper level trough was lagging behind once it did come though here it lead to an enhancing of the northwest flow event which did give us here on campus about a total of 2 to 2 and half inches of snow between Saturday evening and Monday morning.

This gave start to a great beginning of the week. Because of the snow we did get it caused the cancellation of classes on Monday. Then on Monday afternoon I got an e-mail from my Physics professor telling us that he is canceling labs and class for the rest of the week because he father had passed away over the weekend so he was leaving to go to the funeral and spend time with his family. Though that isn't the way I like to have classes cancelled it still was a nice addition to the beginning of the week. Then to top it off the iPod got here on Monday which was two days earlier than planned. So overall had a good start to the week. Though because of all that next week will suck since we will have classes on Monday (well maybe might have another winter system come in this weekend into Monday) and Physics classes will resume as normal so that means no more sleeping in. Spring Break is just over two weeks away though. Hard to believe still feels like its maybe the second week of the semester. I am not complaining though because unlike last Spring I am actually ready for this year to end.

2006-02-07T12:36:00.000-05:00

My 23rd Birthday was a week ago. Overall it was a good day. Even at one point I locked myself out of the suite and just as I got to the front door and was going to knock to see if anyone was there to let me in an RA just happened to be walking by and asked me if I was locked out. I told her I was and she let me in. Plus also on that day I got all my financial aid crap figured out and have this semester paid for. Other than that though I didn't do much as I had a lot of other things I had to get done. My parents and my sisters are going in together to get me an iPod. The main reason I want one is for use in the car so I don't have to be constantly changing CDs anymore and will just have all my music on one thing. I wont be one of those people who carry theirs to class or every they go.

This week is going to be hell I have 3 test one of which is this afternoon. My other two are on Thursday (Calc. III) and Friday (Physics II). So I will be spending just about the rest of the week studying for those. Then Friday I am going to go down to Cathy's place to celebrate my birthday as well as Hers (2/16) and Jeralyn's (2/14) .

Spring break is less than a Month away and I am already ready for the break. Matt called me last night and told me his boss is going to give him some time off and asked him when he wanted to use it and Matt told him the first weekend in March which just happens to match up with the start of my Spring Break. So he is hoping to be able to come up to Charlotte that weekend and hang out. So if he comes that will be cool, I will probably give Tim a call to see what he is free and see if we can maybe met up with him that weekend. Though since Matt refuses to drink that could limit the amount of possibilities. We shall see though. That's about it for me though, not a whole hell of a lot going on with me other than all this school work. Pretty boring I know.

2006-01-22T20:20:00.000-05:00

Almost three weeks since my last post. I am falling behind. Partly due to the fact that nothing exciting is going on, atleast nothing I felt that was worth posting about. But since as I said its been almost three weeks since that last post I figured I couldn't wait to much longer.

I am obviously back up in Asheville at school. Classes this semester actually seem to be better than I initially anticipated. Course I said that at the start of last semester as well. Once I hit the first round of test I will probably be ready to shoot myself again. Physics II atleast so far seems like the class that will give me the most trouble this time around.

Last weekend (weekend of Jan 13-15) William came up and visited. He has been wanting to come up here for a while and finally got his chance. Unfortunately due to the weather, which consisted of snow on Saturday, we were pretty limited on what we could do. So we just hung around on campus for most of the weekend. Hopefully next time he comes we will have better weather and possibly even more time to be able to actually go out and do something.

Now I just sit at work watching football. Happy that the Pittsburgh Steelers won earlier today since they are the team I am rooting for to win the Super Bowl and now watching Cathy's Carolina Panthers get their butt's kicked.

2006-01-02T00:48:00.000-05:00

Guess I should probably start off to saying Happy New Year to anyone who reads this even though I have probably already said it to them. Hard to believe its 2006 the 90s still don't seem that long ago. My New Years Eve night was lame, course I was kind of expecting it to be. I just sat around and watched tv and talked to some friends on the phone around the midnight hour. Today(being the 1st) we had a big New Years Dinner with a bunch of people over and we all probably gained a 100 pounds because of it. This was the first year in about the last 5 or so that I haven't spent New Years with my friends course from the sound of it theirs wasn't a hell of a lot better than mine. Though earlier in the day I got a call from one of my other friends in Charlotte inviting me to a New Years party at their place that night but since I am about 8 or 9 hours away from Charlotte I had to turn them down.

Anyway back a couple days ago my PS2 died again and I told my mom that when I got back to school I planned on buying a used one that is in better shape than mine that will last me till the PS3 comes out sometime next year. She told me that I should go ahead and look up places around here to see if I could find anyone selling them cheap. So she gave me a phone book and I started looking through making some phone calls. Cheapest used ones I could find where $100 and most places sold new ones for $150. Surprisingly my mom started to try and talk me into getting a new one instead. Then even more to my surprise my dad started to try and convince me to get a new one. Which it wasn't hard to convince me to get a new one since I knew it would be better and guaranteed to last me long enough. So that night I went out and got another PS2 so I no longer have to worry about my PS2 dying on me and having to get it fixed.

I also got my car fixed like my parents said they would for one of my Christmas presents. So the car should be good to go for a while now. Anyway I will be here in Orlando for another week as I will head back to Charlotte around the 8th or 9th before returning to Asheville on the 10th since classes start back on the 11th. Going to be another fun semester of classes. Get the shot gun ready (kidding of course).

2005-12-26T01:02:00.000-05:00

I have been lazy when it comes to posting on this thing lately. But, I am on break so I have an excuse. I could waste a couples hours of my time typing a long message for you to take like an 30 minutes to read talking about whats been going on since I last posted but instead I figure I will just hit on some of the more major points.

Friday morning (December 16th) after our little Ice Storm in Charlotte when Cathy totalled her car while driving William to school. They were crossing a bridge hit a patch of ice which sent the car out of control spinning toward the median which they hit sending them air born where the front wheels and underside of the car hit the guard rail blowing out both front tires and tearing up the underside of the car. They finally came to a stop facing the wrong way in the opposite lanes. Both she and William are fine they were just a little shook up afterwords, Cathy was even afraid to drive for a couple days. Anyway so because of the accident she had to go buy a new car and on Tuesday the following week I guess it was she went out and bought a 1999 Mercury Grand Marquis.

Friday evening we also had our Christmas and I got a box of chocolates, a long sleeve shirt, a gift card for FYE and a putting practice thing. My sisters and I went in together on getting Radio City Rockettes tickets for my parents for their gift so on Saturday afternoon we went and saw the Rockettes which both my parents really seemed to enjoy.

Then on Monday morning I was woken up at about 6:45am from William whining and begging his mother to let him stay home because he claimed he was tired. Well she obviously refused to let him stay home so he got mad and let the words "damn bitch" slip from his mouth. First off he was lucky as hell I didn't come out of that room and slam his ass against the wall and rip him apart. The only reason I didn't is because I expected Cathy to handle it so I was shocked when I never heard her jump on him. Well it didn't end there when he got home Cathy preceded to take him upstairs to privately tell him his punishment which basically included losing several of his things. Well he didn't like that and started mouthing off as he came back down stairs so Cathy then preceded to take more things away from him which did not seem to phase him as he continued to mouth off. Cathy even said at one point "if you keep it up your going to get smacked" and William then preceded to say "come smack me." Obviously Cathy happily did so more than once. William began to resist a little bit at this point that's when I started to walk over to just kinda watch over in case I felt things got out of hand. Which didn't take long as William's face began turning read with anger and he grabbed hold of Cathy's arms to hold them away from him and he continued yelling at her and I knew it was at this point that if I didn't do something then someone was probably going to get hurt so I told William to go to his room. Cathy said "Yeah, William go to your room." and he said "No". I then told him again "Go to your room" and again he said "No". I said "OK" walked over to him grab him by his shirt picked him up off the couch and literally dragged/carried him to the stairs where I told him to "get to his room and not to come out for the rest of the night". The only time he came out the rest of the night was to eat.

It is rare that I step in like I did that day. But, like I told Cathy the only times I will step in and take control of a situation like that is if I feel things are getting beyond her control or if it is effecting me directly. What bugs me most about it though is that she has already given William most if not all the stuff he lost back already and its not but a week after the incident. That kid isn't going to learn anything that way. If it had been me that kid wouldn't have seen any of that stuff for a couple months, and only would have seen it then if he had been on decent behavior over that time.

Anyway on Thursday my parents and I left to come down to Orlando. So I am now here in Orlando and will be until around the 8th or 9th of January when I will return to Charlotte before heading back to Asheville on the 10th. On Friday we play golf and I stunk as usual but still had fun. I also got one of my Christmas presents from my parents on Friday which was a new set of golf clubs and a new golf bag to go along with the clubs. On Saturday (Christmas Eve) we had our Christmas dinner early with my Aunt, Uncle, Cousin and his daughter. We also played a game of Apples to Apples which is an awesome game.

Then on Christmas I got my other two presents from my parents which was one they are going to pay to get the tie rods replaced on my car over break instead of waiting till Spring Break or Summer Break since the tie rods could potentially be a safety issue. The other gift was guitar lessons for the computer so now instead of having to pay for lessons I can teach myself on the computer which I am pretty excited about since I have been wanting to learn but haven't been able to take more than the one class on it. After that I mentioned that we should go to the Movies. My dad wanted to see that Chronicles of Narnia movie (which I had already seen), I wanted to see King Kong and my mom wasn't interested as she was wanting to take a nap. So even though I had already seen Chronicles of Narnia I made a deal with my dad that I would go see that movie with him if he would go see King Kong with me. He agree so we went to the 12:40 showing of Narnia and the 3:30 showing of King Kong. King Kong I thought was awesome, the special effects were insane but I expected them to be with Peter Jackson directing it. My dad even seemed to enjoy it and he wasn't even interested in the movie to start with. Only complaint I have is some small oversights they made in the movie and also the movie felt really long. Yes I realize it was long (187 minutes I believe it was) but it almost felt like watching two different movies with the first half of the movie being different from the second half. Overall though it was an awesome movie especially for a remake and would definitely recommend it if you have 3 hours to waste.

2005-12-12T11:50:00.000-05:00

I haven't updated in a while. Mostly due to being extremely busy with exams and getting ready for Christmas.

Exams overall went really well. My Climatology exam was about what I expected so I figured I did fairly well on it. My Meteorological Instruments exam was a little more difficult than I expected but I seemed to have still done decent on it. My Physics exam was actually easier than I expected. I would say it was our easiest test we had all year and since I ended up with a C in there and I had a D going in then I easily must have gotten my best grade on it. I didn't have to take my Calc. II exam so I was able to leave campus on Wednesday afternoon.

Since arriving at Cathy's we have gotten her Christmas tree. We put it up and decorated it along with the kids help. We also put some Christmas decorations outside in the yard. Friday William, his friend, Adam, Cathy's friend Ken, and myself went outside and played some football. William and his friend beat us, but that was partially due to them being in better shape and having more energy towards then end and also once it got dark I couldn't hardly see the ball to save my life. On Saturday we went to the mall and did some Christmas shopping and I ended up spending about $400 which only about $80 of that $400 was spent on a present that I was getting for someone. The other large chunk of that money was spent on stuff that Cathy needed to buy. Reason Cathy couldn't pay of it was because she lost her license and therefore couldn't write any checks. Her credit cards are already over charged so she couldn't use those. Cathy on Thursday won her court case for child support against her ex-husband and will get about $4000 all together. So when that money starts coming in she will pay me back.

On Sunday I went to Jacqueline's horse back riding lessons since I knew I probably wouldn't have time to next week. A little while after her lessons the kids and I headed off to the movies to see that new "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" movie. We all seemed to enjoy it. I only remembered little bits of the book before going into the movie so I can't really tell you if it follows the book very well or not. The special effects were really good the only negative was the fact that the sword fighting seemed really fake as you could tell that most of the actors and actresses hadn't had a whole lot of practice of how to use one. But, overall I would recommend it. Once returning from the movie we headed off to the store to pick up some groceries for the week.

My parents are due in here on Thursday and will be here through the 22nd in which I will head back down to Orlando with them for the rest of my winter break. That is pretty much all the post worthy stuff I have unless you want to here about Jacqueline's non-stop whining which I figure you don't. I will try to post sooner next time than I did this last go around.

2005-11-28T23:00:00.000-05:00

24 hours. That is how much time I spent driving and riding in a car over break (that's just traveling time that doesn't include little drives around town). I left here amongst the snow flakes on Tuesday morning around 11am. The snow did not impact my driving as it wasn't sticking and the only place I hit some heavier snow only lasted for about three or four minutes. I arrived at Cathy's place around 1:15pm or so. I preceded to watch the movie "Finding Neverland" while waiting for Jacqueline to get home and for William's dad to pick him up. I finished the movie and we packed up the car and headed out the door around 4:30pm. The drive down to Orlando was fairly uneventful and we arrived in Orlando around 12:30am.

The next day (Wednesday) was spent just laying around the house enjoying break. My uncle Johnny and his wife came into town for thanksgiving and stayed at my parents house too. They got in around 7pm on Wednesday. I spent part of the day hanging out with Clancy, atleast when he wasn't sleeping. He is still doing fairly well but having Casey around you can definitely see his age coming through. He and Casey seemed to get along fairly well. Clancy laid down the law pretty quick and let Casey know he was the boss and Casey listened.

Thursday morning my dad woke me up at 7:15 to get up and get ready to go play golf as our tee time was at 8am. We ate and headed out the door and met my Uncle Butch and my cousin Chris at the pro shop. After paying we headed out on the course. We played like crap as normal so nothing overly unusual there. Only interesting things of note here were when I hit a ball in the water near the bank of the pond and my dad told me to step out on the sand patch so I did and I quickly found that it wasn't very stable and I sank about shin deep and when I yanked my legs out they flung sand and mud all over the place including the golf cart and my dad. The other thing of note is that on one of my shots on the 17th hole I almost hit a passing golf cart which was pretty funny. After the game of golf we returned and I changed my sandy, muddy pants and sat down to watch the Falcons game, which they won. After the game we had thanksgiving dinner which included me, my parents, my uncle Johnny, his wife, my Uncle Butch and Aunt Rita, my cousin Chris and his daughter Marissa, Cathy, and Jacqueline. Dinner was great and after words Jacqueline and Marissa insisted everyone go out on the back porch to watch a play they had made up. The play ended up as mostly a disaster as they kept screwing up so we kept giving them a hard time. After a while everyone went home and we headed to bed.

Friday morning I was woke up at 9am to get ready to hit the road to head up to Atlanta. An hour and half later we were out the door. We arrived in Atlanta around 6pm dropped Casey off at Petsmart to stay the night and a chunk of the following day. From there we went and checked into the hotel and then went to dinner at the spaghetti Warehouse. After eating we headed back the the hotel as we had an early wake up call coming on Saturday morning.

Saturday morning did start early as I was woken up at 6:30am. After Cathy got her shower and the rest of us got ready we headed down stairs around 7:30am to get some breakfast. At a little past 8am we headed out again making our wake to Penske so my dad could rent a large truck to empty the storage unit with. After getting the truck we headed over to the storage unit to begin taking everything out of there and moving it into the truck. After a few minor items we began to take the phone booth out which probably weighs close to 700lbs or so and as we began to move it up the ramp to put it in the truck the weight shifted and it lost placed and fell to the ground with a fairly big bang. Luckily though it seems to have made it through the fall just fine. My dad at this point figured it was probably a good idea to go hire some people to come help us. So he hopped in the car and drove off as Cathy and I started pulling a bunch of the boxes out of the storage room. After about 15 minutes or so my dad returned with some guys he picked up at a bus stop. With their help we easily got the phone booth on the truck and even loading the rest of the stuff on the truck was a snap after that and we were finished by noon. Just before finishing William was dropped off by his step-mother so he could go with us to the aquarium. So after seeing my dad off we headed into downtown. We arrived in downtown a little after 1pm and parked in the Aquarium parking deck and since we were hungry we decided to walk over to to the CNN building to get something to eat in the food court there. Around 2:15 we left the food court and headed back to the Aquarium since our tickets where for 3pm. We got in line and waited for about 20 minutes before being let into the Aquarium.

Upon entering the aquarium we decided to go see the 3D movie first in the Aquariums 4D theater. So we headed up there got your tickets for the movie (which were kind of pointless as we never used them or even showed them to anyone) and waited for a few minutes before they let us in. Once in they had a little pre-show with this guy that told us a little trivia and asked a couple questions. After a few minutes we headed into the theater and watched the movie which was about a 15 minute movie which was mostly about keeping the ocean clean. Though the special effects were cool with the sprays of water, gusts of wind, things brushing against your head and legs, and of course the bubbles. After leaving the movie we headed down starting going through the Aquarium itself. We started with the "Georgia Explorer" which was mostly for kids though they had some smaller tanks in there with some smaller fish and a sea turtle. They also had places where you could pet stingrays, different kind of crabs, and starfish. From there we headed off to the "River Scout" area which is mostly freshwater fish and animals and I think it is also were the Japanese Spider Crabs, which are the biggest crabs I have ever seen, were located. Next we went into the "Cold Water Quest" which was mostly cold water fish and animals, such as sea lions, seals, pengiuns, and of course the Beluga Whales which were really cool to watch as they would swim around and flip around each other in the water even one went to the bottom and started scratching its back. Jacqueline started complaining she was thirsty so we went and bought some bottled water before heading over to the "Tropical Diver" section which is as it says topical fish. One of the best parts there was the jelly fish as they were just fun to stand there and watch. The other really cool part was the coral reef one which had its own generated waves that would move through every couple a minutes, this tank even stretching over your head a little bit. Last we headed over to the "Ocean Voyager" where the big fish were at. You head in there passing some smaller windows before finally entering the 100 foot long underwater tunnel that goes inside the huge tanks. The two Whale Sharks swam over a couple times as we slowly made our way through the tunnel. Along with the Whale Sharks we saw, Hammerhead Sharks, Goliath Groupers, Sawfish, and some other weird looking fish. After the tunnel we made our way around and came up to this screen with moving fish on it that you could touch and it would bring up facts about the fish you touched on. After playing with that for a few minutes we made our way around the huge viewing area. This had a whole wall basically of glass (I would say about 40 feet tall and 80 feet wide) to view into the tank. They had areas where you could sit and stand to watch so we decided to sit down and watch for a little while and Cathy took some pictures. After sitting there for several minutes we got up and made our way into the gift shop. Cathy and William got some Christmas gifts for people while I got a new hat for myself. After buying that stuff we headed out of the Aquarium and back to the car. We were hungry so after leaving the Aquarium we stopped at a Johnny Rockets and got something to eat. After eating we went and picked up Casey from Petsmart and hit the road back to Charlotte around 8:30pm. We arrived back in Charlotte around midnight that night. William and I stayed up for a little bit playing PSP against each other. Then around 3pm we decided to head to bed. This is when I basically locked myself in Jacquelines room. I went in her room to get my stuff to brush my teeth and closed the door behind me not realizing there wasn't a doorknob on the door anymore. So after struggling to get out for about 20 minutes Cathy walks out with the door knob and uses it to opens the door and then gives it to me. So finally just before 4am I was able to get in bed.

On Sunday I woke up around 10:45am and went downstairs. Pretty much just sat around and played a game of Phase 10 which I finished last in thanks to a bunch of bad hands. Finally around 2:30pm I hit the road to come back to Asheville. On the way back I gave Tim a call since I had actually told him I was going to call him when we got back to Charlotte on Saturday but since we returned late on Saturday I waited till Sunday to call him. I also called Carlos to make fun of him for Florida's 34-7 victory of his Florida State Seminoles the day before. I arrived back on campus around 5pm and unpacked and did some studying trying to prepare for the next two weeks. Last week of regular classes are this week and exams are next week. December 9th probably wont get here soon enough.

2005-11-20T11:22:00.000-05:00

I love snow, and I look forward to it every winter. I am always like a little kid whenever I hear snow is coming, except this time. Our first snow of the year here in Asheville is predicted to be on Tuesday. Again this news would normally bring joy to my life but on this occasion it does not. Why is that? Well because I have to travel that day. After my morning class on Tuesday I have to pack my car and hit the road for Charlotte. As I am sure you have already figured out snow and driving tend not to mix extremely well. So depending on the exact time the snow starts, how heavy it falls, and outside temperature. I could find my self in a small predicament Tuesday. I have some possible "out plans" and that is if my Calc. II class is cancelled Tuesday morning (got any e-mail from professor that leads me to believe it could be) then I could either leave after my meeting on Monday evening or early Tuesday morning. So I guess it's time to start keeping an eye to the sky, NOAA, local news stations, and the Weather Channel to see what my best option is. Hopefully I wont be posting from my dorm Tuesday at 11:30pm cause if I am then I am in trouble and thanksgiving plans are in real trouble. Overall this is actually one snow I hope doesn't come.

2005-11-20T00:41:00.000-05:00

Only two days left until Thanksgiving break, thank God. I need this time off to let my brain rest, I swear that my headaches I have been getting lately are because I have been pushing myself so hard school wise. You would think it would pay off too, but I still seem to struggle to pass my Calc II test and I am really lucky if I get anywhere near a C on my Physics test. So this pushing myself doesn't seem to be working as planned, but my professors have seen me in their labs so they know I am trying and hopefully that will buy me a couple points come the end of the semester.

On this past Friday I went to see the movie Walk The Line, the one about Johnny Cash. I decided to go see it because it looked good from the trailers and I had heard good reviews about it. I really enjoyed the movie. I liked it more than "Ray" because I thought Ray kind of dragged on at times and I didn't get that feeling with "Walk The Line". I thought Joaquin Phoenix did an excellent job playing Cash. One of his best roles I think. After watching the movie I definitely see why Johnny Cash decided to cover the Nine Inch Nails song "Hurt" before he passed away as that song seems to sum up his life pretty well. I would definitely recommend this movie. After the movie I came back to my room to print out instructions to the BlogAsheville Thanksgiving Party (aka BlogAsheville's Inaugural International Giblet Olympics and Gravy Guzzler) since I forgot to print them out before I had left before. After getting the directions I went and hopped in the car and drove over there finding parking much easier this time around than the last time. I walked over to the house with my package of dinner rolls that I was told to bring and knocked on the door. I was quickly let in, handed over my rolls and preceded to walk around and say hello to everyone. Had several faces I didn't recognize this time around and several that I did. We all stood around talking for a while and I had a conversation with Uptown Ruler (I believe it was), as he goes by in the blogging world, about Global Warming. I also talked to Raphael Doxos about all sorts of deferent things. Before eating Ashvegas, as he goes by in the blogging world, had a taste test of a certain beer he had trying to see if anyone could guess the secret ingredient. I was totally stumped and had no guess at all, some other people guessed some of the other ingredients but not the secret one. After a few minute Ash finally told us the secret ingredient was "butter pecans" which as soon as he said it I noticed the taste (doesn't it always work that way?). After that we started eating, we had turkey, pumpkin cornbread (awesome), salad, green bean casserole, stuffing, mashed potatoes, among other things. We also had, pumpkin cheesecake, ice cream, and apple pie for deserts. While eating we sat around and talked and I actually found another person who reads Jose Saramago which I thought was pretty cool. Once we finished eating a bunch of the people started to head out but myself along with a group of about 6 or so decided to stick around a while longer. This is when all the questions started coming out such as "If you could be reborn as anyone who is living today who would it be?" or "What is your favorite band?", or "How did you learn about the birds and the bees?" had some interesting and worrisome answers to that one. Even our host Edgy Mama pulled out the book she learned from and thumbed through it for us. We also hit up the internet looking at the websites Kitten War and Cats in Sinks, a lot of cat fans there. After 11:00pm the rest of us started heading out. I got back to the room around 11:30 or so might have been a little later as I don't remember for sure. Overall I had a good time and look forward to the one in January.

2005-11-13T20:35:00.000-05:00

Last night something that I have been waiting to happen all semester finally happened. At 3:30am the fire alarm went off. Without fail every semester I can count on some asshole pulling the fire alarm in the middle of the night cause they thought it would be funny. So I had to jump out of bed grab some of my crap and of course a jacket and head out the door. After standing outside for about 15 minutes or so we were finally allowed to go back in. Atleast this time it was on a weekend.

Anyway this semester is quickly heading towards an end. Only a couple weeks left. This weeks are going to be hell. Next week I have two test to take, a debate to go to, and then the BlogAsheville thanksgiving party that Friday assuming something doesn't pop up. Anyway since the party is a potluck, in otherwords we have to bring stuff with us, I have to figure out what they need me to bring that I am able to bring since I can't really cook anything as I don't have really any access to a stove and even if I did I am pretty limited in what I know how to make. So it will have to be something I can pick up. I need to e-mail them for directions as well since I have no idea how to get there.

The following week is Thanksgiving so its only a two day school week. I will leave here after work Tuesday to head to Cathy's place and then we are leaving from Cathy's around 6pm which should get us into Orlando around 2am or so depending on road construction hold ups. We will stay there and have Thanksgiving and then all of us, including my parents, will leave to head to Atlanta on Friday morning. Saturday morning we will unload the storage unit my parents still have there into a truck my dad is renting. After unloading the truck, Cathy, myself, Jacqueline, William, and maybe my parents are going to visit the new Georgia Aquarium which will have just opened a few days before that. So that should be fun. And I of course will return to campus on Sunday in time to be at work at 8pm. Then its time for finals, which wont be as much fun.

2005-11-02T22:43:00.000-05:00

Every semester I talk about how insanely fast they go by. That never seems to change as the current semester is only about 5 or so weeks from ending (including exams). I swear it still feels like it should be August stil. Though I am not complaining about this semester moving so fast as it has been a really rough one. Next semester isn't going to be much better though. Hell, it isn't going to be any better. I sign up next week on Tuesday I believe. As it stands now I will be taking Calc. III, Physics II, Humanities 324, and ATMS 320 (Weather Forecasting). That is a total of 15 hours. I must enjoy killing myself. Though I think of it this way come May I should be finished with all that hard crap and pretty much can just concentrate on the rest of my Atmospheric Sciences classes. So my winter break needs to move slow, course it wont it will blow by just like everything else. Hard to believe this is the end of my forth semester here hardly seems like a year.

Other than that there really has been nothing going on as I don't really have much free time with this class schedule. I was even toying with the idea of turning one of my really weird dreams into a short story but between not having a lot of time and not knowing how to start it, I haven't been able to do anything with it. What free time I do have is normally spent relaxing or on weekends heading into town just to get away from campus.

Since I had a free weekend William expressed interest in coming up to visit. I told him it was fine with me. He ask his mom/my sister if he could come and she told him no because she didn't have the gas money to drive him up here. I told her I would met her half way but she can't do that either. So its not looking to likely that he will be coming up. Oh well, there will always be another time for him even if its not till January.

My parents have been calling the school for like a week and half (well they only called 3 times during that period) trying to figure out what's going on with tuition. Then finally just today the lady sent me an e-mail saying that she could not talk to my father unless I signed something saying she could so tomorrow I have to go do that since I have no idea what it is my dad wants to know. That and even if I did and I asked her knowing him he just wants to hear it from her. So we shall see what happens with that. But that's pretty much it as I said not a whole lot going on.

2005-10-24T16:47:00.000-05:00

Here I go again. Last year I applied to get in-state residency and they turned me down because my parents claimed me as a dependent. So immediately they quit claiming me as a dependent so again this semester I have applied for in-state tuition again. And I be damned if those fuckers didn't turn me down again. God dammit it is pissing me off. I would love to hear what state they consider me a resident of then. I have been a resident of this damn state for almost 2 fucking years and by the schools rules you only have to be a state resident for a year and 2 years is twice that long. They said they turned it down because they feel I moved to NC just to get in-state tuition which is a bunch of horseshit as I made the decision to move here before I got excepted here. Now yes I didn't become an actual resident of this state till after I was accepted but the decision was made before hand. So they have to be making an assumption that since my move date to NC is so class to when I started classes here that I must have done it to just get in-state tuition which again is a bunch of bullshit. I can appeal but fuck appeal next step is talk to this people on the phone to figure out why they came to this discussion and then potentially after that the next step would be to sue the fucking school. Fun shit. This school must love to piss my ass off because they are good at it. Now hopefully its my turn to return the favor.

Anyway on another note Myrtle Beach was pretty cool. Only real complaint I have is that I would have liked to have spent more time there to get to really see the city and the beach. The whole weekend I was only a block away from the beach yet I never saw it. I got there on Friday around 7:30pm where we went to go eat at the Planet Hollywood there in town. We came back got caught back up on Hurricane Wilma and what it was doing. Got to bed that night close to 1am and didn't sleep hardly at all just dosed off a couple times for short periods. Maybe got 2 hours of sleep. Then had to get up at 6am to get everything ready to leave with the PT Cruiser caravan at 7am to go down to the boardwalk where the show was. The caravan thing didn't work like it was supposed to as it was pretty disorganized that morning so my dad and I just road down in our own little caravan of the PT Cruisers with my dads club in Orlando (called Orange County Cruisers). We get to the boardwalk and wait in line a little bit as they slowly shuffle all the cars in. About 7:45am we were parked and started cleaning off the outside of my dads car. Now one thing I didn't mention is that he has made two changes to the car since I last posted pictures of it. He has since added the chrome strips the go along the bottom of the doors and he has also had someone put a rose engraving on the back two quarter panel windows. He asked me what I thought of the roses and I told him they are nice except for the fact they don't really fit with the mobster look of the car. So anyway after cleaning the car we headed around looking at the other 300+ cruisers that were their looking for ones we liked and my dad also looked for new ideas to do to his. We found several we liked and my dad took some pictures of them. We eventually made it back to the car around 9am about the same time the public was supposed to start coming in. Finally the place started filling up with people, my dads car got some attention but not a whole lot. The car next to us got a ton of attention (this car is also in my dads club) as it had a big frog sitting on a branch on both sides of the car and also had a smaller version of the frog on the hood. He also had an engraving of some frogs and dragonflies on his back window and also on the hood he had the words "Rainforest Addition". In the front seat of the car he had Kermit the frog sitting there talking on a cell phone. Saw a lot of people stop and take pictures or video of his car. Its kinda funny in that when my dad started making the modifications to his car my mom was almost totally against it but while at the show she kept telling my dad different things he should do to his. So it seems she has started to really get into it as well. Around 11am we went and got something to eat and a place there on the boardwalk called "Key West Grill". After eating we went and hung out at the car talking to different people as they walked by and waiting for the Judge guy to come by. Finally around 1:30pm the Judge dude came by and gave my dad a whole bunch of tips on how to increase his score next time around. Since it was my dads first time doing this he really had no idea what he was doing so the guys advice really helped and maybe next car show my dad will actually be able to compete for a trophy. My dad also plans to make some more changes to the car such as he has a new grill he wants that he is definitely going to put on, and he wants to white wall the tires, put an oval window in the back instead of the square one that's their now, wants to put chrome inserts on the bumpers, and wants to put some rain shields above the other windows. At 2:30 they started ushering all the PT Cruisers out so we left and headed back to the hotel. At the hotel we set up chairs in the front lawn as they started annoucing the winners of all the different raffles. My parents were trying to win this 13 month old puppy to give to my aunt since she just lost her dog and has been really lonely since. But the puppy was the last thing they auctioned off which was at 6:30 so we sat there and waited until then and ended up not even winning despite the fact they put in 135 tickets on the dog. From there we headed out to eat this time stopping at a Seafood restaurant there in town which was pretty good. From there my dad thought it would be a good idea to go play put-put so we went and played put-put and one of the gazillion put-put courses they have there in Myrtle Beach. I got my ass kicked by my parents. Normally I am awesome at playing put-put but that night for some reason I sucked. I ended up with a 57 to my moms 48 and my dads 44 on a par 42. Normally my scores would have been closer to theirs. But oh well, it was fun anyway. From there we headed back to the hotel and watched Spider Man 2. Second time I have seen but I like it and actually like that one better than the first one. After that I got a shower and went to bed around 12:30am and then got woken up at 8am by my parents to get up and get moving. We left the hotel about 45 minutes later stopped at got some breakfast at IHOP there in town and after that we left there and got gas and officially hit the road at 9:30am. For the first hour of the trip my mom road with me since we were going the same way for that part. But before we got on I-95 she got out and got back in my dads car. I followed them on I-95 south until I got to I-20 West were I got off and they continued on I-95 S towards Orlando. I got back to campus around 2:30pm unpacked went to see if I had to work that night which I did. From there I went to the grocery store to stock up and that was pretty much it. So I went from mid 80s and sunny on Saturday down there to mid 40s, overcast and windy here on Monday. But, overall it was a fun weekend.

2005-10-20T21:48:00.000-05:00

Myrtle Beach here I come, well ok not till 2pm tomorrow but its close enough. As I mentioned before I am going down there to meet my parents for the PT Cruiser car show that my dad is taking his car to. So it should be fun hanging out down there checking out other peoples PT Cruisers and seeing what kind of reactions my dads car gets. Plus just hanging out there on the boardwalk there at the beach will be cool.

I have spent way more time this week in the math lab than I ever care to spend again. Course I say that now and watch later in the semester I will do it again. And it seems when I am not in the math lab I am in the physics lab working on homework in there. Last year I would have said I was crazy and hell maybe I am crazy but atleast I wont be able to say I didn't do everything I possibly could to pass. For example my day today consisted of waking up at 11am going to work from 12-2:40 and then heading off to my Met. Instruments class from 3:10-4:25 which during that class we went outside to read some wind speeds and when heading back inside about 10 of us got on the elevator and before it started moving one guy says "lets all jump" people laugh and at first I admit I thought the guy was joking then next thing I know just as the elevator starts to move another guy starts the three second countdown and we are all jumping which causes the elevator to jerk and sway for a second which everyone thought was pretty cool and got a good laugh out of it. Anyway after that class ended I went and got my Calc. II book and headed up to the math lab from 4:35pm to 7:00pm went and ate dinner and then came back to the math lab from 7:35-9:40pm before heading back to the room, spending a total of 4 hours and 40 minutes. That pretty much explains most of my days this week with only class times and work times changing. And I continue to say that this semester sucks. Then of course I have the Calc II test tomorrow. Ok, done ranting, I have Myrtle Beach to look forward to.

2005-10-16T01:07:00.000-05:00

The hell continues. Fall break went by too fast as basically planned since all breaks go by fast now-a-days. Last week I spent around 10 hours between the physics and math lab studying and doing homework. Then the physics test on Friday was nothing short of a nightmare, and not only for me. Honestly, about 95% of the physics class, including myself, were still working on the physics test when time ran out. There are 60 students in that class exactly and I only know of 3 that finished early. So my guess is probably 70-80% of the class failed that exam. It will be interesting to see what our professor does come Monday. Hopefully he will be nice and give a curve, gives us more time, throw it out or something. Plus on Friday I just about wanted to strangle my Calc. II professor. I got my quiz back and was unhappy about the way he graded a certain problem so I confronted him about it. He told me that he understood how I did it mentally but he said that the way I wrote was kind of confusing. So even though I got the correct answer and even though he understood how mentally I got to that answer he still counted half off because he didn't like the way I wrote. Well shit what he expect me to do give him a long explanation when his is only giving us a 20 minute time limit to start with. So yeah I was not pleased with him at all. Next week it doesn't get much better I have a quiz on either Tuesday or Wednesday and a test on Friday in Calc. II. So here comes another 10 or so hours in the math and physics lab week. Yep, this semester sucks.

While just looking around at some of my friends, friends list on facebook I happen to stumble across two of my old bosses at Young Harris. So I added them and I assume they will remember me, if they don't I might have to make that two hour drive down there and kick their asses, lol.

My parents are coming up to Charlotte the week after next. I don't know if they will be there next weekend or if they are arriving that following week. The weekend after that though is the PT Cruiser car show in Myrtle Beach, SC that they are going to be going to with my dads fixed up PT Cruiser. I am seriously thinking about meeting them down there, but I don't know for sure. Anyway its after 2am in the morning and I am basically running on pure exhaustion so I am going to quit here.

2005-10-04T12:18:00.000-05:00

Fall break starts today. About 4:30pm to be exact for me. And, man do I need this break, this semester has been a bitch so far. I am ready to get away for a little while and not think about homework, school or anything. Not really sure what I am going to do during the break, all I know is I am going to Cathy's place.

Not a whole lot has been going on since I last posted. Just the continued homework, quizes, and test that I seem to he having on a daily basis. I have actually fallen behind in my physics homework just trying to keep up with all the other test and homework. So when I return from fall break i will probably spend that monday and tuesday doing mostly physics homework trying to stay caught up. Course on top of that I have a quiz in the middle of that week and another test that friday. It seems to never end. To make things worse this time around Calc. II doesn't look like its getting much easier. Had a test a week ago and after I took it I had felt good about it and probably would have even been willing to bet a couple bucks I had atleast an 80 on it. So when I got it back and find out I got a 52 it felt like I had gotten hit in the side of the head with a sledge hammer. That means I have failed the first two test (though the first one I had expected) though I have aced the quizes so far but unforunitly the quizes don't count for as near as much as the test do so though it helps me it doesnt help me enough as overall I am probably still failing the class. If I fail Calc. II this time I am in deep shit and I am pretty much down to three options. 1st option being to stay in school this summer to try and get myself back on track. 2nd option is that I would have to stick around in college even longer (add another semester) and 3rd option is to change majors, which I obviously dont want to do that. I am not sure what else I am going to have to do to pass this class but I better figure it out soon or else I am going to be in a real bad situation. So yeah fall break is coming at the right time for me. Now I can get my mind off this stuff for a couple days and then come back next week with a clean slate and do the best I can do to save my ass.

2005-09-22T17:10:00.000-05:00

For people who have gotten themselves a good college education the people in the media can be really fucking stupid sometimes. I realize that their job is to inform the public of what is going on in the world but there are things that are definitely better left unsaid. The media also loves the negative. They will give you the negative side to almost every story but then most of the time leave out the rest of the truth. This inturns leads to bad rumors starting and things to happen that should never happen. Perfect example is the mini gas crisis the country had due to Hurricane Katrina. There was absolutely no reason for any gas station anywhere in this country (with the exception of those areas right there where the storm came on sure from people evacuating) that should have run out of gas. Yet gas stations around the country especially here in the southeast were running out of gas and gas prices jumped much higher than they should have. In my opinion 95% of this was the fault of the media telling people about all the oil drilling planets that were shut down because of the Hurricane and how that would cause a drop in the supply in oil to our areas. But none of them or almost none of them told you the rest of the story which. Now today and the last few days and probably for days in the future the media is doing it all over again. Talking about all the oil drilling plants closing down and the oil refineries in Houston that have had to close down because of Hurricane Rita. They talk about how this will cause a drop in supply and the amount of oil refined in our future. They are also talking about how this could cause a temporary rise in prices. This is again starting to cause another gas crisis. Already in towns south of Asheville there are several gas stations running out of gas and reports of gas stations with long lines. Again I blame 95% of these on the media. If they had just kept their mouths shut or would just tell the whole truth like few of them are doing then we wouldn't be having these problems. They are not telling people that there is plenty of gas out there and that there is actually a surplus in oil currently that is waiting to be refined. So this whole rumor about oil and gas shortages that started with Katrina is nothing but a bunch of bullshit that would have never started spreading if the media had been smart. Gas prices would not have made as big of a jump with Katrina and wouldn't make as big of a jump this time around. And because the media is too stupid we had and now have again people (who aren't much smarter than the media) freaking out when there is no need for it. Ok I am done ranting now.

2005-09-20T12:27:00.000-05:00

I figured I should go ahead and post. I was holding off on posting waiting for Michael to post about the weekend in Charlotte and then link himself to me like he claimed he was going to do. But that was over two weeks ago now so he has had plenty of time.

Over these past two weeks it seems all I have been doing is studying. Feels like I have had a test almost every day. For example I had one Monday, I had one last Friday, had a quiz the Tuesday before that. I have a test tomorrow and I have a test next Monday. So instead of having the normal hell week I have been having a hell month. Not that I should have expected much different from this semester. Though despite the torture things have been going fairly well. Only class I am not comfortably passing right now is Calc. II. Not that is much of a surprise either. So far Physics has still been coming to me a lot easier than I expected it to. I have been able to do almost all the homeworks with little or no trouble and the test we had in there Friday my only question is whether I aced it or not as I am positive I passed it.

To give myself a break from all the homework and studying the last two weekends I decided to go to the movies. I went and saw "The Skeleton Key" the first weekend and "The Brothers Grimm" last weekend. Both were decent movies but nether were great. I think I liked "The Brothers Grimm" more because it was a little weirder than the other one was. Also speaking of movies I was talking to my sister about how the blockbuster up here half the time doesn't have the movies I am looking for and I had mentioned to her how Michael had suggested that maybe I should look into joining on of those movie sites like Netflix that mail you movies you want in the mail and you watch them and send them back. Well Cathy is a member of Blockbusters version of that and I asked her if she thought it was worth the money. Instead of saying yes or no she offered to me instead that I could use her account to rent movies and she would send them to me. So I jumped at that opportunity and so now I have a basically free supply of movies to watch.

Also going back to my Aunt Claudia, who was hit by Hurricane Katrina, it seems my predictions were right on the money. She has been down to her place in Pass Christian, MS a few times and the news is not good. Her shop, which was about two blocks from the Gulf was pretty much completely destroyed. Her house on the other hand was left standing but that was almost the extent of the good news. During the Hurricane her house was totally submerged over the roof with water. Her house is 17 feet above sea level so you figure in the height of the house your looking at atleast 30 foot storm surge. The house is ruined along with pretty much everything inside. The one good thing was that all her breakable things in her goodie cabinet survived somehow. They believe that when the water filled the house that they just floated up and then when the water went back down the things just slowly floated back down again. The strange thing is the found the cabinet upside down. The top portion of the cabinet was on the bottom and the bottom part was on the top. I haven't heard whether she plans to rebuild or not. She would have to rebuild the shop and tear down and rebuild the house if she does. If any other news comes I will post.

2005-09-07T23:37:00.000-05:00

I figure I have been putting this post off long enough. I have been telling myself since I got back here on Monday that I need to post about this weekend, so now I finally shall.

Overall this weekend was a really good weekend. I arrived at Cathy's place Thursday around 7:30pm or so. Michael arrived around 11:30pm that same night. Michael and I were not sure what time we wanted to leave that morning to head over to Ozzfest so we got on the computer to check out who the early bands were and to see if they were any good. After spending a couple hours on the computer checking them over we decided that none of the early second stage bands were worth our time so we decided to get up at 11am and get out the door around noon, which was probably a good thing as it was 3am in the morning at the time.

11am Friday morning came with a dog jumping in my face waking me up. I laid in bed a minute then got up and got ready to go. But we ended up wasting a bunch of time and not getting out the door until about 12:30pm or so. We had no problem finding the Version Wireless amphitheater and getting a parking space. When we got there A Dozen Furies was on 2nd stage. We did not see them though as we took this time to walk around the place to see what kind of shops and all were around. After looking around we headed back over to the 2nd Stage just as Mastodon took the stage. We started walking around the outer edges looking at the other shops around that stage and I found one selling Ozzfest 2005 shirts for $25 so I bought one. We continued to make our way around and eventually found ourselves in the PS2 tent to get out of the sun. We still had a clear view of the stage from there so we just hung out in there playing some video games while keeping an eye on the stage. After Mastodon finished the band As I Lay Dying took the stage. Following their set the band Killswitch Engage took the stage and about half way through their set Michael and I left the PS2 tent to go watch them. Once Killswitch Engage finished their show Michael and I made our way over to the opposite side of the stage and went and set up against a fence in the shade waiting for Rob Zombie to take the stage. While waiting my mom called which it was the first time in almost two weeks since I had last talked to my parents since they were on that Alaskan Cruise. Finally Rob Zombie took the stage and put on a pretty good show, even brought out a video camera and supposedly video taped the crowd and himself while singing a song. Michael and I had a hard time getting over the image change as the new one just doesn't fit him like the old one did. Following Rob Zombie Michael wanted to go wonder around shops some more but I said that I wanted to hurry up to the main stage just in case In Flames really did take the stage five minutes after Rob Zombie finished like the set times online said they would. Michael was skeptical and thought that there would be more time despite what the set times said but I insisted and he agreed so we started making our way up the stairs towards the main stage were we started hearing music. At first we figured there was no way it could be In Flames yet. At first I figured it was just some of that music they played in between bands but I realized that it was way to load to be that. Finally reaching the top of the stairs it became apparent that In Flames had not started five minutes after Rob Zombie but had actually started before Rob Zombie even finished. Well that pissed me off because In Flames was one of the main bands I wanted to see and only ended up getting to see half their set. After In Flames finished Michael and I headed out to get something to drink. Just as we got back to sit down Black Label Society took the stage. Overall I was somewhat disappointed with them. After Black Label Society the band Shadows Fall took the stage and after about a song and a half Michael and I were not that impressed so we decided to go get another drink and to get something to eat. While standing in line for food my friend Tim Taube called me about the following day, which I will go into more detail about later. After getting off the phone with him and standing in line for what seemed like forever we headed back to sit down. Almost as soon as we got there Mudvayne took the stage. Overall they were not bad, I am not a real fan of that band but they do have some decent songs and I did enjoy them more than I had either Shadows Fall or BLS. After Mudvayne finished we laid down waiting for Velvet Revolver to take the stage. While waiting Cathy returned my call from earlier as I was trying to find out if she had heard anything new from our Aunt who was hit by the hurricane. She hadn't. Finally 35 minutes later Velvet Revolver took the stage and put on an ok show. After the first song though it seemed to become a strip fest up there or something as half the band members started losing their shirts. Not that this should have surprised me as the lead singer can't keep his shirt on. Once they finished Michael and I headed off to get something to drink again and then came back and moved more towards the center and tried to line our selves up with stairs to give us a better exit and to give us a better view of the stage for Black Sabbath. After a few minutes Black Sabbath took the stage and played for just over an hour. Out of all the main stage bands that I got to see their whole sets of I have to say that I enjoyed Black Sabbath the most. Course that's why they were headlining. I also have to admit I actually enjoyed Ozzy more with Sabbath than when I saw him by himself. After Black Sabbath finished we headed back out down the stairs and out to the car. Overall I really enjoyed the concert as a whole. Then again I have only been to one concert were I didn't enjoy it so I am not hard to satisfy. Once in the car we started to make our way out. I called my friend Tim back like I told him I was going to and he invited us to met him and some of his friends at a Sports Bar in downtown Charlotte called Stool Pigeons. I asked Michael if he wanted to go and he wasn't sure at first be eventually decided why not. So they gave us directions and we met them at the bar. We got there showed our ID's walked in and found Tim and his friends sitting up at the bar. We went through the whole introductions thing and then starting talking and somewhat catching up on things. Tim then ordered Michael and I Bud Lights. We reluctantly took them as neither Michael or I are big fans of regular beers. But, we both drank them. After I finished mine I ordered a Smirnoff Ice which was more expensive but more my taste. It even tasted better than usual since I had the regular beer before it. Around 1am or so Tim's girlfriend said she wanted to go dancing so we decided to break off there and Tim, his girlfriend and a few other of his friends headed off to a dance club while Michael and I along with two other guys decided to call it a night since we had an early wake up call the following morning. With some help from the other guys we found our way back to the interstate and headed back to Cathy's. Since all we had to eat since our Poptarts for breakfast was those fries we wanted to get something to eat. We went over to a shopping center near Cathy's place that had a 24 hour McDonald's and picked up some food and took it over to Cathy's to eat it. We got back to her house around 1:45am that morning and in bed about 30 minutes later.

Saturday morning it started early, 8am early. I got up got dressed and then got Michael up. I then called Tim to see if he was up and where we were meeting and he told me to call back when we left and he would tell us exactly were to me them. So Michael and I got some breakfast and headed out the door. I called Tim back and he told us to meet him at the BP off exit 36 on I-77. Michael and I arrived at the BP at 9:30am and waited a few minutes when I got a call from Tim and he met us there at the BP and told me to follow him to the McDonald's next door. At the McDonald's Tim and his girlfriend got something to eat. While there some of his other friends who were going with us starting coming in and getting something quick to eat as well. From there we hit the road and headed out to the lake. I had to borrow a swim suit from Tim since my only swim suit is in Orlando. We headed out on there 18 foot sport boat where Tim and his friend Brian went wakeboarding. They decided that the water was too rough to continue to wakeboard so we headed back to the dock and picked up their big three person water tube. Me, Michael, and Tim started out on the tube. Me on the left, Michael on the right and Tim in the middle. It started out easy enough as we pulled out away from the docks but once we got out deeper in the lake they really laid it to us. Going over our own waves caused by our wake trying to get us up in the air and moving back and forth trying to throw us off. Finally we hit a big wave that shot us way up in the air and I heard Tim scream and knew he had fallen off and then I looked down and saw just how high we were and then we hit and I face planted into the tube which hurt. The boat slowed down to make a turn to go get Tim and I looked over and realized that Michael was gone and had fallen off too. This gave me a feeling of accomplishment knowing I held on when the other two could not. They got back on and we continued on again until Michael fell off again when we hit some more air this time he bounced off the tube and flopped into the water. So we went around to pick him up. Tim found it funny how Michael fell off the tube and did an imitation of him. They got back on the raft and this time we continued along and again lost Tim. We picked him back up and continued on again this time Michael fell half off the tube basically only hanging on by the handles and Tim tried to pull him back up on the raft as we continued to speed along. Michael was able to get back on and we continued on and we again lost someone but I don't remember if it was Michael or Tim. At this point my arms were killing me from holding on so tight to the handles and I did not know how much longer I was going to be able to hold on. Finally after another couple minutes we made this one fast turn that pushed Tim into me which was all my arms could take and I lost grip and flew off the tube with Tim right in toe and he actually landed on top of me as we hit the water. Tim asked me if I was alright and I said that I was fine. He asked me if I wanted to continue which I did but I knew there was no way in hell that I was going to be able to hold on anymore so I told him that I was done and made my way back to the boat were I preceded to flop like a fish onto the boat which Brian seem to find amusing. But at that point I felt like mush. But I was really impressed with myself that I only fell off the one time despite the air time and beating we took and that was only because I could no longer hold on. Michael and Tim stayed on the raft and Tim's girlfriend took my place. Tim and his girlfriend kept trying to push each other off and his girlfriend kept winning. After a while Michael feel off one last time and decided to call it quits for the same reason I had in that his arms just could not take anymore abuse. After the rest of the group got their turns we headed back to the dock. When we got back we hung out for a few minutes while Tim's dad started a controlled brush fire to clean up some of the trash off their property. From there we got back on the boat and headed to a restaurant there on the lake to get some lunch. Tim told us some cool stories of some times he got busted for underage drinking and once when the campus police thought someone had been murdered in his room. From there we got back on the boat and brought out two of the smaller single person tubes. Tim and this other girl Jenny started out on the tubes. This was fun to watch as they would really get some air off of those things and many times Jenny flipped out of hers sometimes in some pretty dramatic ways. After she got out Michael got in and he took some spills as well but after about the third spill he called it quits and Tim's girlfriend headed out next. After she took her share of spills she quit and we pulled in the extra tube and just let Tim go at it. I decided not to go out because I did not want to get wet again because we did not have enough towels to cover my car seats for both Michael and I. After trashing Tim up pretty good we head back to the dock since Brian had to leave for a wedding. The rest of us decided to call it a day as well so we packed everything up and closed the boat up. I gave Tim his extra swimsuit back and we said our good-byes and made our way out. Michael and I followed Tim back to the main road since we didn't know how to get there and from there we headed our separate ways. My sister Cathy called and told us to meet them at a Steak 'N Shake there in town. So we met her and her kids, Jeralyn and Jillian, along with our cousin Renee and her two kids there. We ate and then everyone headed back to Cathys for a little bit. After a half hour or so everyone left. Cathy, Michael and I went upstairs and watched the movie "Sin City" since Cathy had not seen it. After that we got some snacks real quick and then headed to bed.

The next morning we got up and had a quick breakfast. We then just sat around for a while before heading to Jeralyn's house before heading out to Applebees to get some lunch. Same people as at Steak 'N Shake with the addition of my step niece Nikki all met up this time. After taking almost two hours to eat and talk I mentioned that Me, Michael and William should go go-cart racing. So after eating we headed over to the mall and went go-cart racing at the sports park there. We did two races. The first race William won out of the three of us but that was mostly due to the fact that I got stuck on the outside on three different occasions which shuffled me back and I was never able to recover. The second race though I dominated. I started second and fairly quickly moved into the lead. Michael hung around in second but I slowly pulled away from him and eventually started lapping traffic. The first race William finish 1st, I finished 2nd and Michael finished 3rd out of the three of us. The second race I finished 1st, Michael finished 2nd and William finished 3rd. From there we headed back to Cathy's place. At 7pm William and I started watching the Nextel Cup race while Cathy, Michael and Jacqueline watched "Hot Chick" and "Whose Line Is It Anyway" upstairs. Cathy ordered some pizza for us to eat for dinner since William, Jacqueline and I were hungry. After the race ended William and I played PS2 for a while and then headed up to bed around 2am.

Monday morning came and I got up around 10:45am. William was still asleep on the floor, and no one else was home and the dog was in its cage. So I figured they had gone out for donuts so I started watching TV. After about twenty minutes the rest of them came back with as I had figured Krispy Kreme glazed donuts. So we had that for breakfast. After that Jacqueline had a friend come over and they along with Cathy went to the pool. They wanted me to go to so Michael, William, and I went to Wal-Mart to see if we could find me a cheap swimsuit but could not find one that fit me so we went down to Old Navy to see if we could find one there. Again we found nothing so I gave up and this time we headed over to Barnes & Noble to see if we could find the book that Michaels name supposedly showed up in. After a very small bit a searching we found the book and his name. We all thought that was pretty cool. From there we kind of wondered around looking at other books before finally leaving and heading back to the house. Once back I got online to check my e-mail to find that I had gotten an e-mail about some test coming up in my Calc. II class that I knew nothing about and from the way the e-mail sounded to me it had me worried the test was going to be Tuesday. The e-mail did say we could make a cheat sheet so I planned on taking full advantage of that. After a while Cathy returned and started making us some dinner. We at dinner just after 4pm and after eating I packed up my car so I would be ready to go. After packing up the car we played three rounds of Rummi-kub before I had to leave. So we put the game up and I headed out the door at 5:45pm. I got back to campus around 7:15pm or so and unpacked the car. I then called Cathy and my parents to let them know I made it back to the school. At this point I got things ready to head up to the math lab to go try and study and make that cheat sheet to try and get as ready as I could for a possible test that following day. So I walked all they way up to the math lab only to find it had closed. This was not good as all I could do now was just try and study on my own and make that cheat sheet as best as I could. While looking through my notes I found a note I had written stating that the test was going to be this Tuesday I then knew I was fucked. After working for about two and half hours I decided to call it quits and head to bed.

The next morning I got up went and got breakfast and headed off to the test. Got the test and though it wasn't as hard as I expected I still doubt I passed it and in the end my cheat sheet ended up only helping me with only one of the problems. Friday I will probably see what the damage was. But, on the good side if the rest of the test are like this one and assuming I get enough study time I feel more confident I can pass those and hopefully pass the class.

Well that is it I guess. This post took me almost 2 hours to type up so you better read it and enjoy it because my fingers hurt now. And Michael if I had to suffer you have to suffer so don't you copout and just send a link to me or something or I might have to come kick your ass. :P Plus I know there is stuff I probably forgot.

2005-08-30T19:20:00.000-05:00

I can not believe the destruction this hurricane has caused. It makes me sick just seeing the aerial videos that have been coming in from New Orleans and the coast of Mississippi. Those people sitting on their roofs waiting to be saved in New Orleans as two levees broke today flooding atleast 80% of the city. New Orleans is uninhabitable and looks like it could be for the next two months as that is the time they are thinking it will take to restore power. Along the coast of Mississippi I swear it looks just like a Tsunami had hit there. Everything from the coast up to quarter to a half mile inland was totally destroyed. All that's left in most of these places are just foundations of where buildings used to be. You can easily tell how far the storm surge came in as all the debris is piled up. There were huge buildings that were picked up and moved across highways and then dropped. I have never seen destruction like this before from a hurricane and I find it hard to believe that I ever will again. This storm caught a ton of people off guard. I don't think anyone expected this kind of damage. This storm will effect everyone in this country even if its just increasing your gas prices.

As for my aunt obviously from the videos I have seen from towns near her the news doesn't look good. We were able to get in contact with her today and she road out the storm in Pensacola, FL. She tried to make it back to her home in Pass Christian, MS today but they stopped her long before she got there because the roads where still underwater. The one main area that there still has been no photos or little word coming out of it is the Pass Christian and Bay St. Louis, MS areas where my Aunt lives. Only word I have heard from that area is that 80% of the buildings are distroyed and that people are walking around with their belongs in shopping carts. But, that is all we have heard from that area. From what I understand the reason for the lack of photos and word from this area is because the area is still inaccessible. My aunt hopes to be bale to get back in there by this weekend to see if anything is salvageable. She is also worried about her neighbor who decided to ride the storm out. Hopefully they survived but I wouldn't put my money on it. After she gets to the house and her business or what's left of them and goes through everything she plans to fly to her sons place in Washington state to stay there for a while to get things grouped together. It will be a while before she or anyone else really get a chance to start rebuilding. I feel so sorry not only for my aunt but for all of these people directly effected by this storm. It will take those areas many years to recover from this storm. It almost feels fake.

2005-08-29T22:56:00.000-05:00

This morning Hurricane Katrina made land fall as a major hurricane just east of New Orleans and then made land fall a second time still as a major hurricane west of Gulfport, MS. Being a weather geek that I am I have spent the last two days doing nothing by reading my book and following this hurricane (besides the times I was in class today of course) . But, being a weather geek is not the only reason I had interest in this storm. My Aunt lives and also owns a shop in Pass Christian, MS. Both the Shop and the house are within a few hundred yards of the gulf. In case some of you all are curious were Pass Christian, MS is it is just west of Gulfport, MS pretty much right where Katrina made that second landfall. These areas were effect by a storm surge between 30-35 feet which is a record and that doesn't even take into account the 130+mph winds they endured for a couple hours. We have tried to get in contact with my aunt as we don't even know if she evacuated the area. We assume she has because she is the type that wouldn't even think about sticking around for something like this. But still not being able to get a hold of her has made us a little worried. We will try again tomorrow and hope for better luck. Knowing how Gulfport got hit I do not expect it to be good news for her place. I suspect the shop to be gone as it wasn't much more than just a simple wooden structure. The house was a one story brick home which probably got flooded out. But until we hear from her we wont know for sure what things are like there. Once I hear something I will post it here. My thoughts are also with all the others who have been effected by this historic storm as I can not imagine what it would be like to be in their shoes.

2005-08-25T15:48:00.000-05:00

Last night as I was sitting at the computer just after 11pm I hear boom and the whole dorm shook. My first thought was that someone in the room above me had fallen off their bed. But then I realized that someone falling off their bed would not have shaken a concrete block building. After that I thought nothing more of it until about two and half hours ago while sitting in my Meteorology instruments class when I overheard people talking about an earthquake. My first thought was that somewhere out west had been hit by an earthquake. Come to find out that boom and shaking of the dorm was actually a small earthquake, 3.8 (though they are now saying 3.7) on the Richter scale. With one that weak it is no surprise that when I originally felt the building shake that my mind never wondered to the idea of an earthquake. That marks the second earthquake I have ever been in. The other being about 2 or 3 years ago while going to school in Young Harris, GA. That one hit in the middle of the night and I slept though it. That one was stronger than this last one registering 5.8 on the Richter scale.

2005-08-24T19:16:00.000-05:00

I have to admit I am not liking this new food service we have here at the school. The new company that is serving the school is called Chartwells replacing Sodexho from before. Sodexho was definitely better. It seems most of the food I have had this year taste funny. Even the salad dressing taste funny. They always seem to be running out of food which almost never happened in past years. It seems almost every time I go eat they are out of something whether it be just the salads or one of the actual entrees. The dessert bar sucks, they have a limited selection and it isn't even all that great. Sodexho had a much larger and better selection. The drink station setup is annoying. You have no place to set your tray in order to fill up your glass so you have to either do a balancing act to fill your glass or you have to go find a seat and set your tray down then walk back to fill your glass. In past years they always had a place where you could set your trays down next to the drinks. Also they have totally changed the food court in the Highsmith building around. Only thing similar to last year is the grill. They got rid of my burrito place (though they are supposedly bringing in something similar) and they are adding some oriental place in there. The latter two places aren't even open yet and supposedly wont be for a another month. So yeah Sodexho needs to come back.

I think there might be something wrong with me because I am actually enjoying my physics class and I even have fun doing my physics homework. It's still early in the semester so if I am still enjoying this class and the homework at the end of the semester then I will definitely know there is something wrong with me. Who knew finding the instantaneous velocity of a ball rolling down a ramp would be enjoyable. Maybe its because so far I am finding it to be easy.

I have been obsessed with Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 lately. The other night I designed a roller coaster that is 455 feet tall and goes 113 mph, it is a 3:05 long ride (course a lot of that is just going up the 455 foot lift hill) and is over a mile and half in length and the people on the game actually ride it, it's awesome. I have almost beaten the career mode on there as well, so once I have beaten that I will probably go back to designing coasters.

Still waiting to hear back from Michael about Ozzfest this year. Concert is just over a week away, Sept. 2nd. So time is beginning to run a little thin. Not really his fault though so I can't blame him. Hopefully things will get sorted out so we can get things moving. Also still waiting to hear back from Cathy about the concert the following weekend. Not sure what is taking her so long but oh well.

2005-08-21T12:27:00.000-05:00

Classes so far have actually been better than expected. My Calc. II professor (same one I had last semester) has totally changed the way he does things. Instead of three big 100 point test he is instead going to give five 50-60 point test with five fifteen point quizzes before each one. The quizzes are actually optional but if you don't take the quizzes then you can't drop your lowest test grade. So far my Physics class hasn't been that bad I actually finished all the homework assigned in the amount of time he said it would take to do one problem, but I am sure that will change as the semester progresses. My two meteorology classes seem to be ok. Only complaint I have so far is that the homework for the Climatology class is ten times harder than I expected. But overall the classes at this point aren't all that bad.

Last night I went to an Asheville Bloggers get together thing (I think they referred to it as Blogapalooza) they had up in Weaverville. It was pretty cool. I got to meet a whole lot of new people from around Asheville that I probably wouldn't have otherwise met. It was nice being able to put some faces to some of the blogs. They all seem to be really cool people, easy to talk to. I didn't get there until about 6:30pm because I had to work and I stayed until about 8:30pm. I look forward to the next one.

Ozzfest at this point still seems to be a go. Haven't gotten my ticket yet because I am waiting on Michael to get his because I don't want to get mine and then find out he can't go. So once he gets everything he needs to sorted out and buys his ticket I will get mine and we should be good to go. Though I have to admit I have a gut feeling that something like a test being given on the 2nd that we can't miss is going to fuck everything up. I really hope I am wrong. As for the Staind and 3 Doors Down concert the following weekend I haven't heard anything back from Cathy on that one yet so it's still on hold. We shall see what happens I guess.

2005-08-16T19:20:00.000-05:00

I figured I should probably post. I originally said I was going to post a week ago when I first got to campus and here I am just no posting. I got back in Asheville on the 10th as planned. I got here around 12:30 in the afternoon and unloaded everything into my room. From there I went and had my PS2 fixed. The guy fixed it right there on the spot and didn't even charge me instead of making me wait a week and charging me $25 if he would have had me leave it. Can't complain about that. From there I went to the mall and picked up Madden 06 which I had ordered earlier this year.

Thursday and Friday I spent most of the day training for work. Training was pretty much the same as it was last year. Go over the rules how to work things and meet everyone. I found the getting to know each other parts pointless as we all basically knew each other from last year, but oh well. Sunday was my actual first real day back working.

Other than training I have been pretty lazy this week. All I have done is gone out and picked up the few things that I needed for the room as well as a grocery stop. I have been otherwise sitting the room playing Madden or playing on the computer trying to be as lazy as possible before class start tomorrow.

Talking with Michael it seems that he, his brother and myself are going to go to Ozzfest this year in Charlotte on the 2nd of next month. We would have to miss classes that Friday in order to do it but as Michael pointed out we will be in no rush to head back home as we have a 3 day weekend that weekend. Also just found out today that Alter Bridge (formally Creed), Staind and 3 Doors Down are going to be in Charlotte on the 11th. So my sister and I are thinking about going to that concert since I am a Staind fan and she is a 3 Doors Down fan. Anyway that's it I guess once classes start I am sure I am going to have plenty to complain about.

2005-08-07T00:48:00.000-05:00

We have the internet working here at the house but that is only because it decided to start working on my computer. My parents computer is still not working correctly so when leave they will be stuck without a reliable computer until they buy a new one. Supposedly they plan to buy a new one in the not to distant future so we shall see what happens.

As for me I played one last round of golf here on Friday and did terrible as usual. I still enjoy myself though. Today I have spent the day packing things up and getting them ready to leave here Tuesday. I have to be back in Asheville at the school on the 10th between 1-4pm. I have work training the following two days. Tomorrow I will spend more time getting things together so that way Monday all I really have to do is just start packing the car. The closer time comes to leave the more I seem to look forward to it. If it wasn't for the insane amount of class work I am going to have this semester I would probably be going crazy wanting to go. All that class work is going to suck, I am not looking forward to that part.

On Friday evening we had one of the coolest looking storms I have ever seen skim past us. The storm had a nice shelf cloud form along its outer edge, seeing this I wasn't complaining much that the storm was just skimming us. For those of you who don't know what a shelf cloud is it is a cloud that can form around the outer edge of a storm that looks sort of like a shelf. A shelf cloud represents ether a strong gust front or downdraft associated with the storm. In other words that cloud means potential strong ass winds. Normally when you look at clouds that people say are pitch black and they are really just a dark bluish purple color. Well I can honestly say that these clouds were pitch black. I have never seen clouds as dark as those were. Also most of these kinds of storms you can see the base of the clouds were with this storm I couldn't for the longest time it was pitch black all the way from the ground up. If I didn't know any better I would have thought there was a 30 mile wide tornado on the ground. I stood at the front window of the house here and watched the storm for a while as it was close enough to hear the thunder and watch the lightning. You could even see the clouds within the storm sinking and rising with the movement of the air. At the storms closest point to us I could even see the rain which had a green tent to it which signifies hail. All we got from it was a little wind and a little bit of rain, but I am sure nothing compared to if it had hit us head on.

Anyway, This is probably my last post from Orlando for the summer. This summer has flown by, they seem to go faster and faster every year. My next post will probably be when I return back to school on the evening of the 10th. So until then I will be busy packing and getting ready to go and then Asheville here I come, again.

2005-07-26T19:43:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that at home we do not have internet currently due to some problems with the computer. Therefore there is a chance this could be my last post until I return to school on August 10th.

Cathy and William left on Friday night to head home. Jacqueline stayed with us and we will take her back home with us when we head up there to take me back to school. We figured it would do some good to get William and Jacqueline some time away from each other.

Right now I am in Pass Christian, Mississippi visiting my Aunt Claudia and using her computer to make this post. We got here on saturday evening and are leaving to head back home tomorrow. Jacqueline said she doesn't want to go home because she is having to much fun here working on sewing and other crafts with Aunt Claudia. We were going to leave today but I wanted to go down to New Orleans since we are only an hour away. So we spent most of the day down there. I must say that town atleast the French Quarter, where we spent all our time, is way over-rated. It is a dirty and smelly town. They don't really even keep up with the buildings, half of them look like they are going fall over any minute. It is an ok place to visit but I definitly wouldn't want to live there.

2005-07-15T22:11:00.000-05:00

Finally the pictures of my dads PT Cruiser and the stuff that he has added on to it. The only things that you can't really see in those to pictures are the dual exhaust, the air intake in the engine and the fire extinguisher inside the car. The guy never posted the pictures on his site like he said he would. So when we went to his little PT Cruiser club get together thing earlier this week one of the guys took some photos of the car and e-mailed them to us.

We have been busy around here with Cathy and the kids being here. We have gone to Animal Kingdom which was pretty cool, post about that later when I have more time and I am not half asleep. Last night we also went to Downtown Disney and to that Dixie Stampede thing with them (also went with Jeralyn and her kids when they came). William and I have also played golf and he broke a window on the 5th hole. We went over to their house and no one was home so we left a note for them to call us and its now several days later and they have yet to call us. On Wednesday we tried to go to the shuttle launch and spent about two hours there before the launch was canceled. So now we just wait and hope they launch before the end of the month so I can go. On Monday we plan to go to Sea World again this time of course with Cathy and the kids. Then either on Tuesday or Wednesday they will leave to head back home.

2005-07-03T11:37:00.000-05:00

Been a while since I last posted but that is because I have been lazy when it comes to keeping up with this blog this summer. There is always other things I would rather be doing.

In the last week or so not a whole lot has been going on. My Aunt and Uncle were gone for a about 5 days so we had to watch their dog, Buttons. Buttons slept in my room and other than the first night when she was a little restless, from being homesick sick I guess, she was fine. I have been playing golf quite a bit lately. Though its been pretty rare that we make it through a full round before the rain hits. Sunshine state my ass. Since the last week in May here in Florida it has done nothing but rain basically every day. As a matter of fact it rained on 26 of the 30 days in June here in Orlando. This made June the second wettest June on record for Orlando. So sunshine has been at a premium here lately. But none the less we still try to play a round. Though the last two times we have actually made it though our whole round and I continue to suck at golf but hey its a hell of a lot more fun than sitting around doing nothing. Tomorrow we have a par 3 golf tournament here that me, my father, my uncle and my cousin are all going to be playing in. We will all probably finish near the end of the pack but that is ok.

Cathy and the kids are due in here on the 10th and will be here atleast a week if not longer, depending on how much the weather effects us. They want to go back to the Magic Kingdom and they also want to go to Animal Kingdom as well as one of the other places which I forget. I am debating whether to go back to Charlotte with them when they go back home or to stay here in Orlando. I am leaning towards staying here in Orlando to spend more time with Clancy and to play more golf. If I got to Charlotte all there will be to do is hang around with William and Jacqueline all day at the house. Not that it is a bad thing just that eventually you would get bored pretty quick. I could hang out with Tim and Scott if I went back, but with all their touring with their band they probably won't be around much anyway. Here atleast I get to play golf a few times a week and even when not playing golf we still go do things more often here than I would at Cathy's place.

The guy still hasn't posted the pictures of my dads car yet. Don't know what he is waiting for. There was more I wanted to post about but since I had such a long break between post I have forgotten most of it.

2005-06-21T22:28:00.000-05:00

The weather even though ever fascinating to me still can be a pain in the ass at times. Every time we don't play golf it doesn't rain, but every time we do play golf it not only rains but it starts to storm before we are able to finish our round. The first few times we played it didn't rain at all but recently it seems that every time we try it does start raining. Two days ago we tried to play and only made it half way through the 9th hole before a storm rolled in. That day I actually got stung by a bee which is the first time in memory that I have ever been stung.

Today my dad and I went and saw that "Batman Begins" movie. Overall it was a decent movie. The movie basically describes how Bruce Wayne becomes Batman. My dad said that because of that he actually enjoyed it more than any of the previous Batman movies. The one problem I had was at the theater we were at they had the volume up way to load. You could have worn ear plugs and still have heard the movie fine. At times the sound was ear piercing. Most theaters have the volume load I know but this was much loader than any other movie I have seen in a theater before. Anyway I would recommend this movie if you have seen the past movies or are a Batman fan. But, at the same time if you are new to Batman it is definitely a good starter film since it goes over the beginnings of the series.

Tonight my parents and I watched the 100 greatest movies quotes. My dad predicted that the quote "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" from the movie "Gone With The Wind" would be #1 and he was right, it was. My favorite movie quote of all time didn't even make this list, but I didn't expect it too. In case you didn't know already mine is from "The Usual Suspects" said by Kevin Spacey "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." I don't know why but I have always loved that quote.

Still waiting on the siding for my Aunt's house to arrive so we can get started on it. I just want to get it done and over with so we don't have to worry about it anymore. But we are running out of time as my Uncle (who is going to help us) leaves to go out of town this weekend for a week and then the following week when he comes back he will have company for a week and then the following week after that my parents and I are going to have company as my sister Cathy and the kids are coming down. So who knows when it will get done.

The pics of my dads car have still not been posted. They guy who took the pics said he was going to put them on his site told us just the other day that he was getting ready to get them developed. He also asked my dad if he could use the pictures for advertisement which my dad told him he could. So therefore my dads car will probably start popping up in certain car part magazines that this guys company has ads in. Every time we go out in his car we get all sorts of positive comments. Without fail everytime we stop at a light if I look around at the cars around us there is always someone checking the car out. In October he is taking the car up to Myrtle Beach, SC to a PT Cruiser car show. If I can I plan to meet him there since it is over a weekend and only about three and a half to four hours from the school. As I said before as soon as the pictures of the car are posted I will post the link here for you all to check them out.

2005-06-16T00:34:00.000-05:00

Today or should I say yesterday the 15th was my dad's birthday. He had actually forgotten that it was today he was thinking it was tomorrow until I wished him a happy birthday this morning. We didn't do much for his birthday because he didn't really want to go anywhere. But, we did play golf. I had played golf yesterday with my Uncle and got a slight sun burn from it so today I put on some sun screen and headed out there again with my dad and my Uncle. It doesn't take much for you to get sun burn here or get a tan for that matter. Today I wasn't able to finish the round though as on my second shot on the 9th hole I pulled something in my right arm. I tried to continue to play but didn't make it past the 10th tee. It hurt when I took the swings so I knew that I probably should stop before I do more than just pull something. So from then on I just watched them play and helped my dad as he needed it. But, as we were on the 14th hole we heard thunder in the distance but they kept playing as it was only in the distance and we could see no lightning. As we moved on the clouds grow darker and by the time we reached the 16th tee the thunder had gotten much louder and had become more frequent, but we still really were not seeing any lightning. I recommended that they should probably stop playing anyway but they insisted they were so close to finishing that they wanted to try. Once we got to the 17th tee (a par 3 hole) I could now see the lightning off in the distance from the storm that was off to our north and west and the storm was slowly moving our way. I again said that they should stop but again they insisted on trying to finish. As they played on the lightning become more numerous. As they reached the green I started seeing lightning to the south of us as well. Finally after realizing that we were pretty much surrounded by lightning they called it quits before heading to the 18th tee. About 10 minutes after my dad and I arrived home the storm hit.

It wasn't one of your typical summer storms either. There was a ton of lightning all of which was cloud to ground lightning. Many of these strikes hit fairly close by, I even saw two strikes hit from within 100 yards of the house. The thunder was unbelievable. Most of the clashes of thunder were short lived but they were potent in that short time. They were extremely loud and shook the whole house. I have been in storms before with loud claps of thunder but in those storms those loud claps of thunder were few and far between. These loud rattling claps were almost non-stop. And the rain was insanely heavy, in probably an hour period I wouldn't be surprised if we got around three inches of rain. The pond next to the golf course out behind our house flooded over and spelled into the golf course. Our side yards on both sides along with the street turned into rivers. I bet the water in some places was more than ankle deep at times before the rain finally came to a stop. Once the rain stopped the standing water almost disappeared as quickly as it formed. Then about 2 hours after the storms had past we got the residue effects from it as we lost power for about 20 minutes so we worked on crossword puzzles.

Now for the next few days I relax and let my sun burn tan as I do expect it to tan instead of peel since it isn't really a bad burn plus I also want to let the muscle or whatever it was I pulled get better. Then I will probably head out again and play atleast one more round of golf before starting the work on replacing all the siding on my great-aunts house. Overall though nothing overly exciting going on around here at the moment hence the long delays between post. Also that guy still hasn't posted the pictures of my dad's car but when he does I still will post the link. My dad has been getting tons of complements and looks from other people about his car as none of them have seen a PT Cruiser that looks like his before, my Aunt Rita calls it a "mobster car".

2005-06-08T23:07:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I know I said I was going to post yesterday. But, I ended up being gone almost all day yesterday and not having time to post.

Continuing from last post we decided to go to Seaworld that Thursday. My dad, sister, Jacob, and Jillian left the house around 11pm and arrived at Seaworld about 30 minutes later. We entered the park and Jeralyn got a stroller that was meant more for carrying things that were bought than to carry the kids. We then made our way towards the far end of the park where the restaurant we wanted to go eat lunch was at. We went to go eat at the Sharks Underwater Grill and put our name in and since we had a 30 minute way we decided to walk though the Shark Encounter exhibit which was right there. You walk in and right away you come upon one of those underwater tubes that you walk through and this one only had different kinds of regular fish swimming around. Jeralyn didn't trust the glass/plastic or whatever those tubes are made out of. She kept asking questions about it that we mostly ignored. After exiting this tube you walk down a slow sloping ramp that winds around until finally you reach the main tube. This tube was in a much larger tank that held the sharks and other larger fish. In the tube they had one of those moving sidewalk things to keep people moving. Jacob thought this was really cool seeing all the sharks swimming around you like that. The coolest and probably largest fish in the tank was the large sawfish and it swam right up against the tank right over our heads and Jacob loved it. Finally we reached the end of the tube made our way up another winding ramp. Along this ramp there was a sign there that explained the tube was strong enough to hold something like the weight of eight elephants on it without breaking and Jeralyn says "Of course they would put that at the end after you have already gone through it." Once we left that we went back up to the front of the restaurant to see how much longer the wait would be and they didn't say they just told us to wait until our name was called. So finally after a couple minutes they called us and took us to our table. The restaurant was pretty cool they had one side of the restaurant that was basically all glass looking into the huge tank that contained the sharks and other large fish. We ordered and ate, I had the barbecue Chicken and Shrimp which I found to be pretty good. Now that we were full we decided to see what the park had to offer.

They told me they wanted to go check out one of the shows and they asked me what shows were coming up (they put me in charge of the map). I told them the two that were coming up within the hour and they decided they wanted to go see the "Pets Ahoy!" show. In the description it said this was a show where dogs, cats, birds and even a pig perform stunts. So we go in there thinking it was going to be some kind of show were there would be a trainer out there having the animals perform tricks. We couldn't have been more wrong. The lights went down, no one came out and then you see this mouse coming out from behind this curtain on the right side of the stage. The mouse then preceded to run across the stage, up a rope, and into a trapped door. Then out from that same curtain the mouse had just come from a cat comes out runs across the stage, up the rope and through the same trap door the mouse had gone in. At the same exact moment the cat came in the trap door the mouse pops out of a different trap door runs to the next door and goes in. As soon as the mouse went in the cat came out went the same route and in the same door the mouse did. This continued about three more times before the mouse finally went into a dog house. The cat follows goes into the dog house and you hear barking and the cat comes flying back out of the dog house runs across the stage and exits to the left. At that moment an English bulldog walks out of the dog house looks around then turns around pulls a string which drops a sign that says "No Cats Allowed" and the dog then walks back into the dog house. The show continued on like this. With the dogs, cats, birds, pigs, and even a skunk, performing on their own without the help of any trainers on stage. It was amazing I had never seen anything like it before. It still amazes me how they got those animals to do those things. Like a cat would set off a trap door and that would set birds off that would fly to the wall behind the audience and that would trigger another cat to walk on two thin, small metal pipes over head of the audience back to the stage where it would jump down and go though another trap door which would set off some other animal to do its thing. Only a couple times did humans ever appear on stage and when they did they were just part of the act. I would extremely highly recommend checking this show out if you ever go to Seaworld. It still blows my mind how they trained that mouse to do that.

From that show we made our way over to Shamu stadium. Both Jacob and Jillian had been waiting to see Shamu. On the way there though we stopped and got to pet some sting rays. We also checked out Dolphins Cove where you can have the Dolphins come right up to the side and maybe even pet them if they get close enough to you. They were pretty cool as they liked to tease just about anyone they could. The Dolphins would knock their toys right over within reach of someone and then just as the person would go to reach for the toy the Dolphin would knock it away. One person even got in short tug-a-war with one of the Dolphins. But the lady lost and let go. From there we stopped by the Manatee exhibit and also saw the baby alligators. From there we picked up the pace and got over to Shamu stadium so that we would know we could get a seat. The kids wanted to sit in the splash zone to get wet so we got about 8 or 9 rows up on the left side of the splash zone (Splash zone goes back 14 rows). Before the show started by dad bought some Shamu towels one for us to keep and gave the others to the kids. The show started and it was pretty much what I had expected a bunch of whale jumping along with the trainers getting in the water with the whales and do tricks with them. Then it was time to splash people. Up to that point in the show the largest Killer Whale we had seen was 17 feet long and weighed about six thousand pounds. The next Killer Whale they brought out to do the splashing they said it was 22 feet long and weighed about 12 thousand pounds. You could definitely tell it was much larger than the others. The sole job of this whale is to splash the audience. It did this but swinging its tale quickly into the water sending large splashes of cold (52 degree) water into the audience. The center got the worst and the Whale slashed the people just to the right of us and the people just to the left of us but missed us. This made the kids upset because they wanted to get wet and didn't. We told them we would come back for the night show and would sit in the center in the splash zone so we would get wet.

From there we went to get some food across the the way from Shamu stadium at a place called "Mango Joes". My dad and I both got the Caesar Chicken wrap, Jeralyn didn't want anything, Jacob only wanted Fries, and Jillian wanted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. We ate that and ended up just sitting there for a little while and next thing we knew it was about 30 minutes until the night show at Shamu Stadium. This show was 10 minutes shorter than the day time show and had rock music (the map claimed modern day rock but in reality it was mostly things like "YMCA" that they played). This was like the day show but faster paced and only half the amount of talking by the trainers. Again time came for the big whale to come out and splash people. Like we had planned we were sitting in the center in the splash zone about 4 rows up. We felt for sure we were going to get wet this time. Well I'll be damned if the whale didn't splash everywhere but the center. We again got away without a drop on us. Funnier even is that if we had sat where we had for the day show we would have gotten soaked. We just were not ment to get wet that day I guess. This of course made the kids upset once again but what can you do. We tried.

From there quickly as we could we made our way across to the other side of the park to see the fireworks show that they called "Mystify". We made it litteraly like two minutes before it started. The show was storyline based like I figured it would have been. They had this big fan of water spraying up which they projected images across that followed the story line. The story was of a kid who as having a dream and he was looking for Shamu. He was just about to get attacked by hungry sharks when Shamu saved him and his mom woke him up. But to this story they had some music and a bunch of different kind of water fountains. Some which which shot way up there. Then there was the fireworks that also went along with the story. Overall the display was decent but I think I have to say I liked the firework show at Magic Kingdom from last year more.

After the firework show we slowly made our way out stopping in some of the shops on our way out. During the day I saw a group of people wearing a cool Seaworld hat so I went around looking for it while Jeralyn looked for stuff for the kids. I found my hat in the last store before the entrance. After buying my hat the kids wanted to go in the candy store that was next store so I took them over there and I got them some lollypops that they wanted. I got a small box of Coconut Patties which is just coconut and sugar partially dipped in Chocolate. My dad went into the ice cream parlor and got himself an ice cream cone. From there Jeralyn returned the stroller and we made our way out of the park. The parking lot was already mostly empty which made getting out easy. We arrived home 30 minutes later and the kids went to bed.

We had planned to go to Animal Kingdom Friday but between the kids being tired from the day before and the rainy weather we decided not to. Saturday Jeralyn and the kids left around noon to head to the airport as their flight left around 1:45pm that afternoon to head home.

Like I figured it was a long post that is why I had decided to split them up. In other news my dad finally got his PT Cruiser back from the shop. He just finished putting almost $3,000 in it putting some kits on it and adding horse power to it. He added and new air filter to it to increase horse power and also added dual exhaust to give it a nice sound. He put a continential kit on the back of it. Put finder skirts over the back wheels. He got some chrome smoothie wheels put on it. He had some port holes put on the sides of the hood. He also got a sun visor put on over the windshield as well as having a fire extinguisher installed in the car. So he is pretty much only a couple parts away from having a gangster car. When I say gangster I am talking back in the day gangsters like something Al Capone would have driven. The guy who did the work on the car took some pictures of it and said he is going to post them on his webpage so when he does I will post the link so you can see what the car looks like now.

2005-06-06T15:30:00.000-05:00

Well things last week didn't go exactly as planned thanks to mother nature. Last Tuesday we had planned to go to Seaworld but at 7:30am or so it started storming outside and the rain continued all morning so instead we decided to go to the mall. Then of course it stops raining around noon and didn't rain again that day so we could have gone to Seaworld anyway. But we went to two different malls as my parents were looking at new washer and dryers. I looked for a CD I wanted ("Epica" by Kamelot) and never found it so finally on the way home that afternoon the last place I looked in I finally gave up and ordered it.

On Wednesday we made plans to go to the Dixie Stampede and kept those plans since it was indoors. Wednesday was a carbon copy of Tuesday with storms rolling in around 6am and rain continuing up until noon. We arrived at the Dixie Stampede around 5:15pm or so. We walked around and looked at some of the horses in the stables before finally going inside and meeting up my moms Aunt and her daughter-in-law who were already there. We got in and found them and sat down with them. The room we were in was full of these narrow but really long tables filled with people along with a balcony on the second level going around the top. There was a stage in the front and a bar to one side. We all got drinks, most everyone got a Strawberry daquirie (they were non-alcoholic kind so the kids could have them too). They had a pre-show in this room with this lady that sang and a guy who played the piano and sang. They also had a magician all of which were very crowd interactive. Eventually it was time for the main show to start so they had us leave and head through two double doors out to the arena. They had it split up with one side being the North and one side being the South. We were on the South. The waiter came around and talked to everyone explaining what was going to happen through the evening. He then walked around selling flags to the kids. Both Jacob and Jillian got one. Then the show began with some buffalo running out with some cowboy type people coming out on horses rounding them up and eventually sending them back out of the arena. The waiter then started coming around givening everyone rolls, soup and our drinks. The show continued with a lady coming out talking to us about what was going to go on that night. The show was mainly a competition between the North and the South. The food continued to come this time with a small whole rotisserie chicken and a small piece of smoked pork and some kind of seasoned potato and a small corn on the cobb. The show continued as we ate and they had several competitions such as ring retrieving, horse races, pig races, ostrich races, and other events along with some cool tricks mixed in. The North won the first 2 events and we won the next 3 events then the North won the next event and then we won the following one to give us (the South) a 4-3 event lead. The desert then came which was a apple pastry of some kind. We then also split the next two events to keep our 5-4 lead. Then we had the final event which explained that not matter what who ever won this event won the whole thing. So in other words even if one side had a 9-0 lead the team with zero could still win. The final event was a crowd event. They had each row on each side pass a flag from one end of their side to the other end of their side and which ever side gets all their flags to the end first wins. Well our side was slow and the North got all their flags over first so they won the whole thing. This really upset Jacob as he really wanted to win and he said that next time we came we had to be on the North. I tried to tell him that the North didn't win every time but he still insisted the North was better. The show then started to wind down and they took all the dirty plates away and then the show finally ended with Dolly Parton singing on a video screen which I thought was kind of lame since she cant exactly sing in my opinion. We then headed out and then headed back home. The show overall was decent and the food was great. I would recommend it especially if you have any younger kids to take with you.

I was going to post about when we went to Seaworld on Thursday as well but I think since this post is already long I will post about it tomorrow to make it easier on what few readers I have. In other news though it seems that my older sister Jeralyn is heading towards a divorce. Thomas, her husband, said he was going to get a lawyer to get a legal separation. They have been have a lot of problems for about the last year to year and a half and she has talked about leaving him for a while but it seems he is going to beat her to the punch. He said he can't take it anymore and wants to get out while he still will have money in his pocket. Little does he realize that the money wont last long as he owes my parents close to $30,000 which has he has been trying to find excuses to push off paying it for a long time now and it isn't going to take much more for my parents to sue him to get the money back, especially if they do go through with the divorce. So we shall see how that goes.

2005-05-30T10:58:00.000-05:00

It has been a few days since I last posted so I figured I probably should. My sister Jeralyn along with my step-nephew Jacob and my niece Jillian came in on Saturday. They got here that morning, flying in from Charlotte. Tomorrow we plan to go to Seaworld so that should be pretty cool. Wednesday we are planning to go to some Dolly Parton (sp?) dinner festival thing. I would have preferred going to the Medieval dinner festival myself but I was over ruled but that is ok I guess. Then on Thursday we plan to go to Animal Kingdom. So these next few days should be pretty cool. Supposedly it is supposed to rain each of those days so hopefully it wont rain much and ruin many of our plans. Other than that not a whole lot going on it has actually been fairly quite activity wise around here lately which is pretty unusual. Though It has been pretty hot. I know around 2pm or so it was 94 degrees out. Luckily though because of the clouds and rain it is supposed to be cooler than that the next couple days. I will post again when we get back from our adventures if you can call them that.

2005-05-23T00:07:00.000-05:00

I had another one of those weird dreams last night. Since I have been home for the summer I have been having dreams a lot. I would say I dream about 5 out of every 7 mornings. I say mornings because that is when I have the dreams when I am in that in and out of sleep phase. 90% of the dreams are not post worthy though, either that or I eventually forget them.

This dream did something unusual that I do not think any of my previous dreams have ever done. That is seeing part of the dream though someone else's eyes. The dream started in a house or some kind of building that looked sort of liked a house. There were three people in a room upstairs and I was looking through the eyes of one of these people. The room was a bright room a lot of natural light coming through several windows. As I said I was not actually the person whose eyes I was looking through and as a matter of fact I don't even know who the person is in real life. There was also a female and another guy in the room, neither of which I know in real life. The female was holding a shotgun in her hands and we seemed to be looking for something or someone. She walked over to what appeared to be a closet door and opened it and what appeared caught us all by surprise. A large head from some creature comes out of the door. The head and the very little we could see of the body had no skin it seemed to be all muscle or something like that. The mouth was small compared to the head but it had very pointed and assumingly sharp teeth, that are like you see in many movies. She jumps back in shock and as she does it comes after her but not by coming out of the closet. It just swung its head forward towards the floor, but since she had moved it missed her. It raised its head back up again and turned slightly towards her. At this point the dream changed views and I was now standing outside. Now I was actually myself looking through my own eyes. I was standing outside with another guy (who I also do not know in real life). I assume we were probably working with the three that where inside but in what capacity I do not know. But just a few seconds after the dream changed to me from the second floor of the building a big hole was punched out the side of the building and the back side of the creature popped out. That was when I noticed it had a second mouth in the back. The mouth was on the end of what seemed to look like a tail. The mouth was shaped sort of like a alligator mouth is. The mouth kept swinging back and forth. From what I could see it had no eyes from this end. At some point I knew it was time to get out of there. So me and the other guy ran back to our car, which was some yellow and black muscle car that had a 1970's body style, I drove and the other guy got in the passenger seat. We sped off. Within about three blocks we passed a cop in an intersection and he quickly turned and chased after us. I was not about to stop and actually sped up making my way towards the hills that I could see a little ways in the distance. Once reaching the hills the the road became one lane and I soon got stuck behind a slow car. I knew I couldn't wait for a passing opportunity for long so I quickly decided to run off the road and pass him through the grass. After a few minutes the dream changed again. I now found myself alone and riding a bicycle as quickly as I could through the golf cart paths of Peachtree City around the Flat Creek area. I still felt that I needed to get away from something and so I tried to keep up a fast pace continually looking over my shoulder. I made my way to a street crossing, waited for a small white car to pass and just as I was about to cross the road I woke up.

As for how I knew the first person was not me I do not really know. I just knew, when I was looking through those first guys eyes I just some how knew it was not me and when it shifted to me I just some how knew it was me. Not really sure how to explain it.

2005-05-22T00:16:00.000-05:00

I have still be really busy around here since I last posted. I am just waiting for the day when I will finally be able to relax some. My Uncle and Cousin came in yesterday with a pick-up and a uhaul truck filled up. So we spent pretty much all morning unpacking the two trucks and spent the afternoon cleaning up our house here since we had a bunch of people over for dinner. Then there was the race tonight. I got mad at my father too because my favorite driver won the race tonight and since my aunt came back right as the race ended I had to move the car. But since it was my favorite driver who had won the race I wanted to see the post race stuff so I asked my dad if he would move the car for me so I wouldn't have to miss anything. But, he refused making me have to go move the car so I ended up missing half the stuff. I wasn't happy.

Though most people probably wont believe me I honestly forgot all about the Everclear concert here Thursday night until it was about 12:15am that night. We were so busy that day that the concert never even crossed my mind. I mean we went to Best Buy (twice), Home Depot, Appliance Direct, Wal-Mart, Bombay, and B.J.'s all on Thursday not to mention the fact that my parents bought a new flat screen LCD TV for the living room along with two new 19 inch flat screen LCD monitors. One for the computer here and one for me to take back to school with me. Plus we also bought a new TV for my aunt which she will eventually pay my parents back for. So between all that running around and buying all that stuff plus hooking it all up I ended up totally forgetting about the concert. Oh well not a whole lot I can do about it now.

One thing I forgot to mention before in my last post was that all my grades were posted. I ended up with an "A" in Mathematics in Meteorology, an "A" in Computer Applications in Meteorology, an "A-" in Physical Oceanography, an "A-" in Humanities 214 and a "B+" in Georgraphy in Meteorology. That gave me an overall GPA of 3.70 for this semester which is the highest GPA I have ever had for a semester. That in turn raised my overall GPA to 2.94.

2005-05-16T23:17:00.000-05:00

I have had two more really weird dreams. I keep saying it but I do wish I could come up with ideas like this when I am awake because I would probably make some good money. But first before I get to the dreams just very quick updates on what is going on here. My aunt arrived here on Saturday and began moving into her new home a couple blocks from here so we have been busy helping her. We have also been running around to several stores buying different items that my parents need to finish getting this place fixed up the way they want it. They have a guy coming to do their cabinets in their bathroom tomorrow morning. As for the Everclear concert I found out I can go to the show here in Orlando and the tickets are only $10 a night, though I would like to go I do not know for sure if I will be able to with all the things we have going on this week with continued help of moving my aunt in plus all the stuff my parents still have set up to do this week. We shall see though.

Anyway now on to the dreams. Both of these dreams are gruesome at times. I will start with last nights dream, this is only the last part of the dream there was more to it but I do not remember it. The dream started with my friend Andrew, a black guy who I do not know in real life and I standing outside of the house of a female who we knew (though don't know her in real life) and we had a good inclination that she was in trouble. We decided that the black guy (don't remember his name if he had one) would go and talk to the lady while Andrew and I went around back to check things out. So Andrew and I went around and entered the fence that surrounded her back yard. We walked in a little ways and could see no one in the backyard itself so Andrew climbed up the side of the fence to look around the otherside of it. He then jumped over the fence and called me over and said there is someone on the other side of the fence. I climb up the fence and look over and see a guy laying with his feet curled up behind him laying back against the fence. Andrew said he was dead and it was then that I noticed the severed hand laying on the ground up against the fence, looking back on my side of the fence I noticed that one of the fingers was actually sticking through on that side. I told Andrew that the dead body signals that the person we were looking for must be around so I jumped back down from the fence and Andrew jumped back over. We then walked around the back of the house keeping an eye out. I could see the black guy inside talking to the lady and he looked back at me and I called him out. He quickly came out and asked what was going on and told him about the body we had found. He then poked his head back in the door said something to the lady and then came outside with Andrew and I. We made our way around the otherside of the house and when he did the guy popped out. Andrew had gone out ahead of us and he quickly made his way around the guy and grabbed him from behind. He then did something I did not expect, instead of taking him to the ground he proceeded to bite him on the neck as if he was a vampire. The man reacted to this throwing Andrew off of him. The black guy and I worked our way around him and the man came after me but before he got to me I gave him a strong kick to the mid section which knocked him back this gave the black guy enough time to get his gun out and put two shots in the man that took him to the ground. I then began to relax and then I woke up.

The dream from the night before started in a large room. The start of this dream reminded me of Jurassic Park a little as there were these creatures that sort of looked like the raptors in Jurassic Park that were after me. I was trying to free these three people who were in cages, but was unable to before the one creature reached other side of the cages where it seemed to check me out. I happened to find a machete on me, that wasn't there when the dream started, so I took it out to try and use for defense. The creature and I worked around the cage circling it one and half times before it finally jumped on top of the cages where I took this time to try and stab it but was only able to make a very small puncture but it was enough to make the creature back off and jump back down on the opposite side again. We circled around again once before it jumped up on the cage again where again I tried to stab it and again only made a small puncture, but also like before it was enough to make it jump back. But, when it did jump back it transformed into a fairly human form, not completely human but mostly human looking. I then decided to try to pull it away from the cages. I made my way around an aisle and the now human creature looking thing qucikly came after me and as it did I swung the blade and hit it right behind the ear and made a deep slice all the way from the ear down the neck to the front of the chest. When I made the cut it just opened up but it somehow did not bleed. I then took the machete and stabbed at it again making a bigger puncture wound than in past attempts. This wound like the others also did not bleed. Thinking I had severally wounded the creature I quickly backed off but I only got about 25 feet away before the human looking creature pulled out (not sure from where) this frisbee looking thing that had a sharp blade going all the way around the outside of it. It throw it right towards me and it was headed straight for my neck area so I dodged back still expecting it to hit me, but amazingly it barely missed me and slammed into the cement post about 10 feet behind me and fell to the ground. Only seconds after it fell to the ground I woke up.

2005-05-11T22:21:00.000-05:00

Today was a fairly relaxing day for me compared to the past several days. Besides taking Clancy out and other normal chores I didn't really do much of anything. Tomorrow will be a slightly different story as I have to do some cleaning up and probably end up helping my dad wallpaper the bathrooms.

Weather wise down here it hasn't been all that bad. It has been sunny everyday, until today, with high temps in the low to mid 80s. Today though we had one of those typical summer Florida thunder storms go through and it stayed pretty cloudy after that and kept temps in the upper 60s or lower 70s the rest of the day.

Today I found out that Everclear is comming to Orlando on the 19th of this month so in 8 days from now, but from the way the website looks the show they are playing is a restricted viewing audience only. It seems that only record company people and so on can attend, not us regular fans. That kinda pissed me off a bit because I would have loved to have gone to the show. I looked at maybe going to the the show the following night in St. Petersburg, which is out past Tampa, but it would be about a hour and 45 minute drive from here and that is a little ways to travel to go to the concert on my own and since all my concert going buddies are up in Atlanta I do not have anyone to drag with me.

2005-05-09T00:00:00.000-05:00

I am now in Orlando. We got in here around 2pm on Saturday. My parents arrived at the school around 12:30pm on Friday and we finally hit the road about 3pm. We stopped in Hendersonville to get something to eat before making our way into Atlanta around 7pm or so. For the next 2 hours we worked in the storage unit that my parents still have there, going through and finding a few things that my parents needed. Once we got what they wanted we left and got something to eat real quick there in town. At 9:30pm we hit the road again and made our way out of Atlanta. We ended up driving until about 1am where we made it to Adel, GA which is just north of Valdosta, GA. We got up about 9am the next morning and were on the road by 10am and got into Orlando around 2pm.

Since being here my parents have kept me fairly busy. They have been taking me to all their favorite restaurants they have found here. I have also been unpacking, though I still have a ways to go since we have been doing a lot of running around to Home Depot and Lowes looking for a storage unit for my Aunt Jesse, who lives in the same neighborhood as my parents do. She found one she wanted and my dad and I spent about 30 or 40 minutes putting it together and getting it set up for her. Tomorrow I will finish unpacking my stuff and get everything put away so my room isn't covered in boxes all summer.

2005-05-05T21:18:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is the end. I will leave here tomorrow around lunch time. It is still hard for me to believe that the semester is over. Believe it or not I am actually some what dreading tomorrow because I am not really ready to go. This semester along with my first semester freshman year at Young Harris has been one of my favorites. You all would probably be like "but you really didn't to much of anything." That might be true to an extent but I have really enjoyed this semester, I liked all my classes, all my professors kicked ass, I met new people that I probably wouldn't otherwise met, I have basically had this dorm room to myself, and to top it all off I am well on my way to getting the highest GPA I have ever had in school, college or high school. Why would I want something like that to end? Not that there are not positives to leaving, like no more school work for 3 months and I will probably play a lot of golf this summer and I will probably be able to go to Disney World and the Universal Parks anytime I want for free except for parking and food/drinks. Even so I am still someone disappointed that it all ends tomorrow. Kind of weird considering normally I can't wait for school to end. Oh well.

yesterday I finished my humanities final just as I wanted to. So today I have spent it getting things cleaned up as best as I can and packing some of this stuff up for the move out tomorrow as well as going to work for the last time this school year. Tomorrow I will get up around 9:30am in order to get some breakfast and get the rest that I can packed up before my parents get here around 11am or so. Then sometime between 12-1pm we will hit the road for Atlanta and then 2 days later Orlando, not to return to Asheville for 3 months. I will post next from Orlando.

2005-05-03T21:52:00.000-05:00

One year ago to this day I started this blog and here I am amazingly still keeping up with it. It does not seem like it has been a year now. Hell this last semester alone has flown by in what seems like a matter of seconds. Now the question is will I make it to a 2nd year anniversary post, we shall see, but if I have made it this long I don't see why I won't make it back around again.

Today started with being woken up at 11am by the fire alarm. So I get up, change, grab a few things and head out the door and when I reached the front entrance the guy says "Go back we are just testing." So now I was pissed off because I just did all that stuff to walk out there when I could have just stayed in bed. After lunch I started working on my Humanities 214 final and got about a forth of the way through it and then ran into a problem so I e-mailed the professor who I have yet to hear back from. I was hoping to finish it today to get it down and over with but I guess I will finish it tomorrow now. This evening I went to a cookout that was for work. Was not exactly the most exciting thing in the world we just kind of sat around and talked while we ate and at the end they gave out a few awards to the best person at each position (most of which were not even at the cookout) and they also gave out some prizes to the graduating seniors (half of which were also not there). After that we ended and everyone left. Also today I noticed that two of my classes have already posted grades and in my ATMS 261 (Computer Application in Meteorology) class I got an A and in my ATMS 373 (Physical Oceanography) class it got an A-. We shall see what I get in my other class but I suspect that those should be just as good or pretty close to it.

Tomorrow I have to get up at 11am again but this time it is because I have to be at Asheville Middle School to tutor. This will be the last tutoring session of the semester for me since I am leaving here Friday. The teacher, Mr. Burgner, whose class that Gary is in said to me when I was there last Friday that they were going to do something special for me tomorrow so it will be interesting to see what it is. No matter what it is though I will still have enjoyed the tutoring this semester and I am sort of disappointed that it is coming to an end. I would like to tutor again, except maybe not next semester since it is going to be a rough semester and demand a lot of me. Once I return from the tutoring session, assuming my Humanities professor has e-mailed me back, I plan to get back to work on that final and finish it.

2005-05-01T15:08:00.000-05:00

Now they aren't bringing the dog. Yesterday about an hour before they leave I am told they are bringing Clancy and then today I am told that they didn't bring him. That was a quick change of mind. Kind of makes me mad too because I was looking forward to seeing him, but oh well I will see him next Sunday.

2005-05-01T00:23:00.000-05:00

Ok, remember when I said I wouldn't mind if winter stuck around all year? Well, I lied I have to say 70s or even 80s, though not 90s, are sounding good about now. It has continually stayed cool and overcast here for about the last week and half to two weeks. Course I say I am ready for the 70s and 80s now but give me a month in Orlando and I will be ready for the 50s and 60s again.

Anyway, my parents left Orlando Saturday and went up to my sisters in Charlotte. They brought Clancy with him so I will get to see him which I am excited about since I have only seen him once since his back problems. They are going to go to my niece's, Jacqueline, show today and I would have like to have gone too but it is later in the day and if I had gone it would have meant a very late return to campus, as in 11pm or so. So now I need to find some way to make it up to her if possible. She wants that engraving I did of that horse so maybe if I can find a way to frame it, so she can't ruin it by scratching it, then maybe I will give it to her. We shall see though. My parents will stay there this week and then Friday morning come to get me and like I said in the previous post from here head to the storage unit in Atlanta and then head for Orlando.

2005-04-28T18:23:00.000-05:00

Today has been a pretty busy day for me. I had a presentation this morning that didn't quiet go as planned, because Mac computers suck. The Mac computer they had in the classroom did not like the disc I had my powerpoint presentation on which I assume has to do with the fact I made the powerpoint on a regular PC. So I ended up having to wing it. Though it went ok, I was able to get just about everything I wanted to in anyway just without the visual. My professor seemed pretty happy with it so that works for me. Then later in the day I had my first final in my Oceanography class which I am pretty sure I got an A on it which will keep my A in that class. Therefore now all I have left is a small presentation on Monday and then I have to turn in my final for humanities by Thursday afternoon. Come next Friday I am out of here. My parents will get here around lunch time that Friday and we will get everything moved out and head to Atlanta in order to make a stop at the storage unit we still have there. Do not know what my parents plans are at the storage unit though. So we will stay that night in Atlanta at a hotel. Then I assume leave Saturday to head to Orlando. It will be weird leaving Atlanta to go home somewhere else, since Atlanta was home for 15 years. Hard to believe summer break is just 8 days away, time flies. But, before I know it summer will be over and it will be time to return here to Asheville in August.

2005-04-24T01:50:00.000-05:00

Winter is refusing to let go. Not that I am complaining I wouldn't mind if it was winter almost all year round. It is currently 33 degrees outside and snowing. So far it is not sticking to the ground or roads which I didn't expect that it would but it is sticking to the cars and they have a nice little coating on them. Snow is supposed to last off and on for about 8 or so more hours so ground accumulation is possible I guess especially if we make it to and below that 32 degree mark. Guess I shall see in the morning.

This weekend has been pretty busy so far with working on projects and papers. I finished the presentation part of my presentation but I still have to write the paper that goes with it as well as write the two small papers for my ATMS 241 class. So tomorrow will be spent writing, fun stuff. Anyway I am going to go now and watch the snow for a little longer and then get ready for bed as it is closing in on 3am.

2005-04-19T13:04:00.000-05:00

I figured I should probably go ahead a post something before I start hearing it from the two or three people who read this thing thinking I quit. No I have not quit the blog it is just that I really haven't had anything to post about and on top of that I have been pretty busy as the end of the semester nears. My group and I in my Humanities class have to give a test this Thursday and on top of that I also have a presentation to give in my Oceanography class on Thursday. I also have two small papers due Monday along with another presentation in Humanities to give that Thursday. Then of course I can somewhat relax. Feels weird saying that I can relax once finals week gets here, but that is because I only have one final and that is in Humanities and it is take home open note and open book exam so I figure that I do not have to much to stress about that week.

Then I get to head home which is now Orlando. Because my parents have moved to Orlando it means that this summer has the potential to be the most boring summer I have ever had. I do not have any friends down there and chance of me making any friends in Orlando is slim to none. Reason being is the neighborhood my parents have moved into is a 55 or older neighborhood so finding a friend isn't likely. Hell I am not even really allowed to be there all summer but my parents are good friends with the people who run the place and they said they would just look the other way as long as I didn't cause any problems. Don't think they have to worry about me causing problems I do not even have anyone to cause problems with. To top it all off I might not even be able to work since it could hurt my chance at in-state residence for school, I have to talk to the residency people about it. My parents are going to get a couple season passes for Magic Kingdom as well as Universal Studios and Islands of Adventures. But those really do not do me a whole lot of good either as it is not like I have anyone to go with. So yeah this summer I could potentially end up just laying on my ass doing nothing except maybe playing golf once and a while since my parents have a membership to the golf course there in their neighborhood since they live there. Only big positives of the summer getting here is seeing my parents since I haven't seen them since before they moved (though the enjoyment of seeing them will last all but about a week when the put me to work or get on my nerves since I wont really be able to get away from them.) That and I get to see Clancy again. Now that he is 13 and with his recent back problems for all I know this could be my last summer with him and I will definitely have plenty of time to spend with him. But other than those things it definitely has the potential to be a really crappy summer. I am sure within a month I will be begging for school to start again.

2005-04-11T23:06:00.000-05:00

Sunday night was torture. I could not fall asleep if my life had depended on it. I went to bed at 1:30am and the last of the many times I looked at the clock it was 5:58am. I took me over 4 and half hours to fall asleep. All I can say is I better not repeat that feat again tonight because I couldn't take that again. Because of how long it took me to fall asleep I decided to skip my Calc. II class this morning, since it will not hurt me, and get that extra hour of sleep.

Now that it is after midnight it is officially Clancy's birthday. He turns 13 years old today. As for Clancy he is doing well my parents say that he is playing now and running around again. They still will not let him jump up on furniture though. Hard to believe he is 13. Here is to hoping he has no more problems with his back in the next year and makes it to age 14. For now though I am going to go to bed as I am beyond exhausted from last night.

2005-04-09T14:09:00.000-05:00

I figured when I posted that first dream that it would be the only one since I almost never have weird dreams and now here I go about to post my third one. Since then it seems I have another really weird dream about ever two months. I only remember three sections of this dream, I am not sure if that is because I have forgotten the in between stuff or because the dream really jumped like this. But anywhere here is the dream.

First Part. My group of four people and I, none of these four people do I know in real life, were captured and were being held in some large building that was somewhat like a warehouse. We were being held with a bunch of monkeys and one really large gorilla. When I say large I mean large as in as tall as trees. Then the large gorilla escaped. I don't remember how he exactly escaped I just remember the dream shifting to him as he was leaving the building and took off running. He ran in the forest running along the road that lead to the building. Along this road there were search light stations in the tops of the trees and while the gorilla was running along the edge of this forest he took out each one of this search light station things on the side of the road he was on. He continued running until he made it out to a huge field where he finally somehow, despite his size lost the people following him. At this point the dream came back to my group and I who where now standing outside. It was as if when my dream was following the gorilla action still continued on as my group somehow escaped during this time. Anyway we were outside running away as fast as we could and just as we were coming up to this corn field several people on motorcycles came after us. So we took off into the corn field trying to lose them.

Part Two. My group and I must have lost them as we were no longer running and were standing at some other building that seemed to be abandon. Inside this building we found several weapons (guns, bows and arrows, swords) we each took a gun and each one just happened to be loaded. We then found a dead dog laying on the floor. We all stood around the dog looking at it and it looked like it had been there a while. Then out of nowhere two shots were fired in our direction and thankfully both shots missed all of us. We immediately took cover. We noticed that their were four of them that we could see so we split up and walked around trying to use our slight number advantage against them. I walked around one corner and noticed one of the men standing with his back to me oblivious to the fact I was only about 30 feet or so behind him. I opened fire and took him down before he even knew what hit him. I made my way around and met back up with the rest of my group who had taken out the other three men. We made our way to the exit of the building were we saw another dead body of someone who was not one of the four men we had just killed. We figured that it was someone who was taken out by the group who had attacked us. We decided for some reason that we wanted to change weapons. Everyone but me got new guns but this time I took a bow and some arrows along with a sword. We then made our way out of the building.

Part Three. In this final part of the dream I find the group and I in an open field surrounded by forest. To my right I see some more arrows laying on the ground somewhat behind a large boulder. I go over and pick them up. As I pick them up some guy comes out of the forest opposite me and starts taunting the other people in my group. For a reason unknown to me they did not shoot at him they just stood their looking at him. Then the guy starts running across the field straight towards me, though at this point I do not think he knew I was there. I try to get the bow and an arrow out to try to get a shot off at him, but before I could He was only 20 feet away from me and I knew that there was no way I could get that shot off in time. So I dropped the bow and took the arrow in my hand held it like a dagger and just as he got to me I jammed it as hard as I could into his chest. He looks at me and says "so that is how you want to play." He grabs his knife and slashes at me and I fall backwards trying to not get hit but I was too late and he caught me on my left hand and I fell to the ground. I grab my sword swing and hit him on his thigh. He falls to one knee and then slashes the bottom of my right foot and I then take the sword and jam it in to his stomach. He immediately keels over in severe pain and I remove the sword. I get up as best I can and begin to hobble my way over to the rest of my group. Before I made it to them I woke up.

Last night I also went and saw the movie Sin City. Talk about an insane movie. It was pretty much none stop action from beginning to end. I think they thought up just about every way possible to kill people. The movie had several story lines to keep track of that for a while was confusing but as the movie progressed you saw how it all came together. It was kind of weird seeing Elijah Wood playing a bad guy though. A really fucked up bad guy I might add. Anyway I definitely would highly recommend this movie to just about anyone to go see if you haven't all ready. One of the more original films to come out in a really long time.

2005-04-05T21:38:00.000-05:00

I might catch some flack from someone with this post especially since the Pope just died. I was just watching the news and they were talking about something the Pope said, several days before he died, about the Terry Schiavo case. The Pope said that pulling the feeding tube was an excution. I thought about that for about a half second and realized that it made no sense. Some people would argue that taking the feeding tube out decided her fate sentencing her to death, but this argument holds no water coming from people who call themselves Christians. The Pope holds the highest position in the Catholic Church which means he is what you would consider a true Christian. True Christians supposedly believe that when someone dies it is their time to die and that God has called them to him. So following that philosophy if you had let God decide when Schiavo should have died then she would have died 15 years ago not just a couple days ago. Humans have kept Terry Schiavo alive these last 15 years not God. Therefore how can the Pope possibly call it an execution? What he should have been saying was, "It was about time."

2005-04-05T11:33:00.000-05:00

Michael and Matt got in here around 6:15pm or so on Friday evening and we soon after their arrival left to go get something to eat at "Cheeseburger In Paradise" I had the same thing I had before, matt copied me sorta as in he got the some thing but plain and Michael got their Caribbean Sandwich which he really seemed to enjoy since he continued to try to finish it off even after he was already stuffed. Matt made a mess out of his milkshake by spilling it all over the table and Michael and I got a few good laughs out of that. Of course Matt being himself asked the waiter about 30 billion pointless questions, I almost began to feel sorry for the poor guy(the waiter) after a while. Finally after leaving there we headed for the store to get a few items some of which were two six packs of Smirnoff one Black Cherry and one Watermelon. We then headed back to the room and hung out for a while before matt brought up the idea of going to Wal-Mart to see if we could find any good cheap movies and only Matt found anything he wanted. So we headed back to the dorm and got back around 12:30am and Michael and I watched a movie of mine called "The Great Santini" while matt messed around on the computer surfing the internet while watching a few movies that he had bought at Wal-Mart. Michael and I kept making fun of him because of how loud he had the headphones. Michael and I also decided to try once of each of the drinks we bought. The black cherry was ok but I did not like the watermelon at all and could not even finish the one I opened. So I told Michael that he could take the watermelon home with him since he seemed to atleast be able to handle them well enough to finish a bottle of it. After that we got ready for bed and talked for a few minutes before finally falling asleep. The next morning we woke up to find that the Pope John Paul II had passed away. Matt found it very amusing that on the Spanish channels they called him Juan Pablo II. After a few minutes we left the room to head to the cafe to get some breakfast only to find that they had closed early for some reason. So instead we decided to head to the mall. We walked around the mall for a little bit making our way to the food court were we got something to eat. Matt and I had Chick-fil-A and Michael got Mandarin Express or something like that. Once we left the mall we went back to campus and I showed Michael around the place. He seemed to really like the campus because of all of the trees which gave it a wilderness feel to the whole place. Which is one thing that brought me here was the fact that this campus is very secluded and you could easily drive by it, if it was not for the signs, and never know the campus was right next to you. While walking around we went in the Library and went downstairs where you can rent DVD's and such and Michael found a whole bunch of his weird movies that he watches that he has either seen or has been wanting to see. So I am sure the next time he comes up he will probably make a trip back over there and probably rent one or two of them. Afterwards we decided to go to Blockbuster and look through their movies since Matt would get a 20% discount on them since he works at one. I ended up getting "Blue Collar Comedy Tour 'Rides Again'" since I have the first one. From there we went to the store to replace the Watermelon drinks and this time got the Green Apple ones. We headed back to the room and watched "First Daughter" that Matt had rented so Michael could watch it. The movie started out very corny but as it went on it got better but over all it was just an ok movie as it had pretty much the same story line of a million movies before it. While watching the movie I happened to look in the "Blue Collar Comedy Tour 'Rides Again'" case only to notice that the correct movie wasn't in the case the movie "Hooisers" was actually in the case. So once the movie finished Matt and I quickly ran over to Blockbuster to fix their mistake. When we returned Matt left and went and watched some show on VH1 about Green Day while Michael and I started watching "Blue Collar Comedy Tour 'Rides Again'" and broke out some of the drinks. The movie was decent not as good as the first one but had its good moments. After that one ended Michael and I watched the first "Blue Collar Comedy Tour" movie. About a third of the way through that movie Matt walks back in the room claiming that he feels like shit and lays down in the bed only to get up a few minutes later and go throw up in the bathroom. By the time the movie had ended I had four drinks and was feeling it and Michael, only having two because of a headache, took this time to mess with me and make me fall off the bed or bang my head on the wall. Due to the fact that there was so much crap on the floor it made it difficult for me to walk around all that well. Eventually though the effects went away and the rest of the night we pretty much just sat around and talked until about 5am. When I woke up around 11:30am I think it was Michael and Matt were already up though I have no idea how long they had been up by that point. We then headed to the cafe to get some breakfast and this time they were serving. While there Matt ran into this older guy(Norm) that he knew from when he was still going here and Matt offered to give the guy a ride home when he and Michael left. We came back to the room and they packed up their stuff and left around 2:45pm or so to head home.

Last night this campus went nuts when North Carolina won the NCAA National Championship game beating Illinois 75-70. North Carolina is pretty much our parent school here so there are strong ties between us and them. It was during that game that I realized I must like to see people be miserable as I was rooting for Illinois to win just so I didn't have to listen to all these people around here making a huge ruckus over the game.

Tomorrow I sign up for classes and I have narrowed my schedule down to two choices only differing in one Class. First choice I would be taking my second try at Calc. II, Physics I, ATMS 320 (instruments used in meteorology), and Humanities 324. My Second choice the first three classes would stay the same but instead of Humanities 324 I would take ATMS 232 (Physical Climatology). Both schedules equal 14 credit hours which I figure is enough with Calc. II and Physics I on them.

2005-03-30T23:21:00.000-05:00

William left today. Cathy came and picked him up around 5:30pm. But before they left we went to eat at the Mellow Mushroom in downtown Asheville. Since most of the parking there is along the streets I had to parallel park for the first time since I took my drivers test to get my license five years ago. Surprisingly I did it perfectly even Cathy was surprised. Took us a while to find that parking place though we had to drive around the block about three times before it opened up. We also drove around the downtown area a little before and after eating and Cathy said "Yeah you can definitely tell this is a college town", course I already knew that and have said that many times. I asked her what tipped her off and she said that half the people are hippies or hippie wantabees even the older people. I thought that was pretty funny, but it is true. Anyway after eating we left and came back to the dorm were William grabbed his stuff and they headed out the door and hit the road around 7pm or so. Due in part to basically no notice of him coming up here and really lack of ideas for things he could do around here we pretty much did nothing other than going out to eat a few times and he played the PS2 a lot especially when I was in class. It was nice having him around though even if we didn't do much. But, now the wait begins for Michael and Matt to get up here on Friday.

2005-03-28T22:38:00.001-05:00

This past weekend as I said I would I went to Cathy's. We stopped by blockbuster and rented Final Cut. It was a decent movie. I can see why a lot of people would not like it though, because it is not what you would call action packed. But it has an intriguing storyline and it is one of those movies that make you think in order to fully follow it and even so still left me wondering what just happened after it was over. And I like movies that leave you slightly dumbfounded at the end. While there I got a call from Matt saying that he and Michael may not being able to come up this weekend because his work suddenly through a mandatory training session on him this Friday. Luckily though he has been able to reschedule the training and so they are still coming. On Sunday before I left we all went over to my other sister's (Jeralyn) place and had a Easter dinner. Unfortunately since I had to leave for school and because Cathy misjudged time we were not able to stay very long.

Also while there at Cathy's before leaving for Jeralyn's I mentioned to William that come next Fall he would be able to come visit and stay with me here at my school. Next thing I knew he had a plan in action to try to come up here this week since he has Spring Break this week. Since no one was at the school Sunday evening he was not able to come up with me when I did. But today they talked to them at the school had everything set up and now he is up here with me until Wednesday afternoon when his mom will pick him back up. Then Friday afternoon Matt and Michael arrive. When Cathy and the kids got up here today we left and went to go get something to eat. Knowing that Cathy has been dying to try that Jimmy Buffet owned restaurant called "Cheeseburger In Paradise" that is here in Asheville we decided to go there. I had the "The Shaken Bacon, Burger" (I think it was called) which has bacon, lettuce, tomato, onion (though I got it without onion), mayonnaise, and cheddar cheese. I was really surprised to find how good they actually are. Even their fries were extremely good. Matt, Michael and I also plan to go up there Friday for dinner to get something to eat.

Now I sit at work typing this as William sits in here and watches TV waiting for me to get off work. Not sure what exactly he and I are going to do while he is here since he doesn't have much money but I am sure we will figure out something.

2005-03-24T21:59:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow morning I will leave to go to Cathy's place. She has been asking me to come since it is Easter weekend. Supposedly she and Jeralyn have some Easter dinner (or lunch in our case since I have to leave Sunday) thing planned on Sunday. We do not have classes tomorrow so that is why I will be able to leave in the morning. This will probably be the last time that I head over to Charlotte for a weekend for the rest of the school year. Michael and Matt come up next weekend and after that I have two big projects, one of which is a group project, that I have to work on and both are due at the end of April.

As for that December 23, 2012 date the only other thing I have found is that they(the Mayans) actually did not pick that month/date/year it is just that the date they picked on their own calendar when translated to our current calendar comes out to be December 23, 2012. Though I am still curious as to why they believe it will end then and if it is actually the end they predict or just the beginning of the end.

Spring sucks. Only thing that I like about Spring are the storms. Being the weather nerd that I am anything that has lightning catches my attention. Hell anything besides sunny days catch my attention but especially storms. Kind of weird considering I used to be scared to death of storms as a kid. Maybe that is why I am so fascinated by them today. But other than that I can think of no positives of Spring. It means that warm and hot weather is on the way and I hate hot weather. Also means allergy season and already this early into Spring my allergies are starting to act up and not much sucks more than not being able to breath and having an occasional sore throat. Winter needs to come back and unfortunately it will be a while before it does.

2005-03-21T22:17:00.000-05:00

My Humanities lecture today was about the tribes in Central America. While the professor was talking about the Mayans he mentioned that they predicted the end of the world would be December 23, 2012. This raised a lot of questions in my mind. As in where did they get the date from? While spending a few seconds looking it up supposedly the 23 came from the letter "W" the 23rd letter in the alphabet. But why the letter "W" and why the year 2012? Knowing the Mayans were very good astronomers then do they think we are going to be killed off by a large meteor like the dinosaurs were or in some other way related to astronomy? These were all questions that came to mind plus some when he mentioned the date. I plan to look more up on this to try and answer some of these questions because I would like to know where the date came from. I also could not help but notice the closeness of the date to Christmas. I know that Christmas has nothing to do with the date since obviously the Mayans did not have Christmas, But I still found it interesting. I am sure as that date gets closer and closer we will start hearing more and more about it. Hell now its just over 7 and 1/2 years away. Not all that long when you really think about it. Here is to hoping they are wrong, which they probably are but as long as that date is in the future then who the fuck knows. Anything is possible, course it is all absurd anyway. :P