2010

Hello, it's been a long time since my last post. Too much has changed to fit into a single post so I am not even going to attempt.

Let's talk about the better things, and the more obvious things.

I am married, and although we are definitely going through those "bad times" financially and with the economy and all of that, it has been amazing.

I had a dream that we had a son about 4 months ago, and in the dream he was upset that Ian W. and Samuel T. were already doing science experiments in school and he wanted to be doing them too. Prophetic? Right now why not take it to be, by his age in the dream he was about 6 and Ian and Samuel were in grade school, probably about 10 and 9 respectively. Meaning that we will have our son in 2 or 3 more years. Sounds cool to me.

In the dream we were sitting on the front step of our house too, I am as excited to have a house as I am to have a child. So needless to say, it was a great dream.

I have been missing those friends as well. Maybe it's the Oregon winter weather of no sunshine and constant gray that makes me so depressed, but lately I have been feeling pretty disconnected.

I am out of time to talk for now, I will attempt to update more tonight, perhaps my New Years Resolution for 2010.

A New Hope...

And yes I realize how cheesy the beginning is.

So my friend Manny at Fry's had a free mainboard. An ECS, but once again, it's free.

So I'm excited to start the research portion of assembling a new computer, something I've been dying to start again for years.

But I have $0.00 to spend on a computer. So I'll either have to save all my pennies and hope to afford one piece every great while, or get more free/discounted stuff. So now I start my search.

I'm leaving on a Jetplane...

So... in 1:15 in the morning... I leave for the airport at 2:15 to arrive at the pre-determined 3:20 meeting time in front of the US Airways desk in PDX.

I finally got my apartment situation worked out, made the holding deposit today, I go in to work out the lease agreement before or on the 1st of June. So I have to try to cover rent for 3 months without Andy... that's gonna be spendy.

So back to the trip, now that my life when I return is more or less in order, I am leaving in an hour, I am mostly packed, though worried that my bag may way over the 50 lbs. that US Airways allows (and it charges $50 if you are overweight), what an unforgiving airway, or you could pay $25 and have two checked bags... once again... what an unforgiving airline.

But other than that worry I'm okay, I'm taking my laptop, Flip, video Nano (with about 3 hours of Yogi Bear cartoons I just bought off of iTunes for $10USD) [I'm going to start referring to things in USD from this point in the blog until I return from my trip as a way of differentiating between what things costs there. According to Yahoo! Finance, the Euro to Dollar is 1.5554 everything costs 1.5x what it does in the states. Yippee! With rent when I return! Crap...

Back to Europe again! I'm flying to Amsterdam... I'm leaving at 5 a.m. this morning and I get there at 8 a.m. WEDNESDAY MORNING! Just for those of you keeping track... that's 25 Hours of loss (not really because of time zones, but I'm not caring about time zones, this is my rant, I can have it be as miserable sounding as I want)... 25 Hours of sitting in a plane with babies screaming, but I have Yogi bear with me, and about 10 hours of Podcasts about European Travel, specifically Amsterdam and Parisian travel. Am I going to be bored? Doubtful, I like being able to watch old Yogi Bear cartoons and sleep and drink soda all day :)

ALAS! I doubt they'll let me just waltz into Northwestern France and buy an old sword and take it with me home... and that's a sad day. Someday I'll own a house in France and then I'll horde antiquities.... Swords and armor and I'll get into some sticky situations in town where someone got almost run through and I have to ride my horse/mule/pony/donkey back to my chateau/house/hut/shack and quickly tear out of my rusty armor before the police show up to question me...

But I want to rent a car, a Citroen or something that we don't have in the states, just for fun.

I'm also considering going to the Heineken factory in Amsterdam, Sarah thought it might be fun as well.

We'll see, I have my flip so I'll make an attempt to upload movies sometime this week if I get brave enough to take my laptop out into the sea of European pickpockets to find one of 2, YES I SAID 2!, internet cafes in the entirety of Amsterdam. What kind of country has only 2 internet cafes? Honestly... they would have an aneurysm is they saw the media-drowned existence I lead at home in the United States of America. Wi-Fi on every corner, 45 year old men playing World of Warcraft, talk about a culture shock.

But until then, Au Revoir!

I have a French Phrase book that is hilarious, has pickup lines and everything, we'll see how that goes. Haha.

Later Hombres.

Halfway into January 2008

My researching has slowed to a halt unfortunately, due to a mix of Forza 2, Halo 3, Assassin's Creed, my Business classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and random stuff with Sarah.

I have started looking for a job though, applied at a place earlier today. I just want 20-30 hours a week, enough to make some money for playing when I'm not working.

I have pretty good classes this semester, only 3 of them during the day from 10:35 to 2:35 every Tuesday and Thursday, a 4 hour block! And then every other Wednesday I have a Juniors Abroad class which looks pretty simple.

So that's what I'm doing, I went to Cupcake Jones in Portland with Sarah last Saturday, it was pretty amazing, it's a great place, good date daytime activity, if your date is into good cupcakes.

And then we went to Powell's City of Books, where I bought "Life in a Medieval Castle" and "Life in a Medieval City" both by Joseph and Frances Gies, I'll tell you how they are if I ever get a chance to read them.

You want a rant? I'll give you a rant!

I hate it when people won't just put their foot down... on either side of the line. You can't straddle the line forever.

You are either with me or against me, it's that easy, you aren't half with me, you are kinda with you, you are all with me or all against me.

Some moron walks up and starts talking to me like we're friends, we aren't friends... we aren't friends at all. I don't want him talking to me, I don't want to acknowledge his existence. He's cretin. And either you agree with me and don't like him too, or you can pick him over me, that's your choice, but you don't get to have both.

You can't be my friend and be the friend of the person I hate.

But it seems like everyone wants to straddle that line. Tell me this... when they all graduate next year and you are looking for someone to live with... where are your friends going to be? Who knows I'm not one of them. You chose them over me, you wanted to belong so you looked past the faults, you didn't want to lose any connections so you make excuses for their wrongdoings, you know them better than me so you are willing to be their friend instead of mine, even though you don't agree with anything they do or say or the way they act.

Explain that to me geniuses? Explain that you freakin private school kids? Where is the logic in that? This isn't a "Jesus ministered to the corrupt" situation, because you aren't trying to show him Christ, you just aren't willing to leave a ghost town. Everyone else already moved on, but you think it matters, you hold to it like it's all you've got, you could move on, belong to something new.

I'm so sick of this, he's a stalker, "yeah but, that's not that bad, lots of guys are like that..." No they aren't you moron, that isn't acceptable... why do you let believe him over me? YOU ARE A MORON

You all seem to believe him over me, what a suicidal idiot claims you believe like there is no other truth...

I'm tired of all of you.

New Goals

So I usually don't set goals because of a more than likely chance that they will never come to fruition.

But here goes: By the end of the 2007-2008 school year I want to have:

• Level 70 Paladin in World of Warcraft
• Near straight A's (I'll accept 1 B per semester)
• Attainment of a job (This one's a long shot)
• I want to have properly budgeted my lifestyle for the entirety of the school year (Even longer shot)
• And for good measure let's go ahead and go with: Being a better person in general.

Where I currently stand with those goals:

• Level 55 Paladin in World of Warcraft (Only 15 to go!)
• Already doing the near straight A's deal, got 1 B last semester (But 1 out of 6 ain't bad at a school like Fox)
• No progress on the job front, I'm not in Oregon yet so job hunting is difficult
• Never been able to hold to a budget in my life (Hence it been a very long shot)
• I'm already pretty awesome, I just have to kick it up a notch!

So yeah... that's it for now.

Harry Potter... for the last time.

I am sad. I'm not going to lie. I love reading books, stand alone, trilogy, or series. I love getting lost into character, letting my overactive(and hyperactive) imagination get lost and blurring the line of reality to the point where I begin to believe it may be real. I'm good at it, I've been doing it since I was little, it's why I'm so extreme about everything, I make my whole life about a single thing and become a fanatic. Like my secret desires to kidnap George Lucas and have him tell me Star Wars bedtime stories forever... that kind of thing. I just don't want the world that I've immersed myself into, the world that I feel like I've become a part of... to end.

And there begins my sadness. As I was telling Whatafreak over the phone not 2 hours ago, I feel like I have no direction now, for the last decade of my life, half of my life, there has been a new Harry Potter book shelled out every year and a half to two years. No more. Never again. Never again will Harry be a friend to comfort me. I can reread his pages, but his story doesn't go on. I always have a hard time imagining past the last page of a book, I feel it's a crime, it's stealing, to run away with someone else's story. So basically it is as if Harry has died. There were a lot of times growing up when I felt alone like Harry did in the book, like I was just me against everything else, and it gave me something to believe in, it gave me an example of courage and strength and similarity. It let me know that I wasn't alone, there were others like me, geeky, outcast, abnormal, and they too had their own world to belong to, their own adventures.

I really do feel as if I just spent the last 10 years with a person, really knowing a person, fictional or not, and now he's gone, it's like loosing an amazing friend. Whoever reads this can laugh if they want, they can call me a retard, idiot, pansy, what have you. But I'm not joking, I'm not trying to make you smile or chuckle or be a clown. I just have a hard time letting go. And it hurts to let go. And it sucks knowing that every book I read and every movie I watch, will end. And I know that every time I read a book or what a movie, I will get attached to the characters, feel their pains, be frustrated at their struggles, laugh with them, cry with them... it's a difficult thing for a child to endure for his entire life, all of the attachments and the endings and feeling that every time the book closing or the credits roll, he just lost a friend he trusted and believed in. And I must say, it puts in me the thought of never reading another book, never watching another movie, never getting involved with people because even in the real world, the one I seek to avoid by submerging myself in that wonderful world of fantasy and fiction, everyone I know, trust, believe in, and love... they will all go too someday.

Do I dare attach myself and set myself up for the eventual breakdown of my existence? Or do I distance myself from everyone and everything that I love and take pride in? It's a difficult question.

I often feel that I'm missing something, I feel like a hero that lost his villain, I don't understand my purpose but I feel like I'm missing something, some integral clue or plot point that should be pointing me down the correct path... I want power, the power to change people, to help people, to fight for something I believe in. I want to be a hero, but it seems that in this day and age, there's so much gray area that a true black villain no longer exists, there's good and bad. An evil businessman may employ an honest man... shutting down the businessman ends the honest man's ability to support his family... there are no evil men surrounded by other evil men, there is good and bad to everything it seems.

I wish that life were easier, simpler, more black and white. I wish that I was more realistic or cold. I wish that emotions didn't grab a hold of me so easily. I wish that I wasn't so weak willed.

I want badly to be a writer, though writing is my weakest skill, funny how life goes. But I don't want to write for profit or fame, I wish to write to finally complete one of the ideas that is clanking around in my ill-shaped head. My thoughts are so chaotic and in some cases tainted with other ideas I've heard or read, that organizing them and writing them down is the most ridiculously daunting task. I don't have the mental fortitude to complete a task such as that. And I would much prefer a collaboration on a work, create something with a friend, but my friends are never around when the desire strikes, nor would I care to waste the precious time I had with them on a pursuit such as that.

Maybe it's just due to my age. Maybe that's the empty feeling is just that so much of my life has yet to be lived, yet to be completed. Maybe my life is like when I was watching Windows XP install on the computer I built for the first time, it's sitting at 22% and I'm just sitting waiting for the bars to fill up so I can boot it up for the first time, maybe I'll get the same rush of pride I felt then, maybe I'll feel it complete and know that my life is over... that would be an odd sensation.

My life has drastically changed in just a few short years. I went from this pudgy young kid, knowing he was different from other people, that he didn't belong, that he wasn't normal, to a teenager who preferred to spend more time with books and computers than with people, to finding two of the most amazing friends in Whatafreak and Nicklaus, to going to a university on a whim because my brother went there and I didn't feel like filling out other applications, to meeting the most beautiful, dark-haired girl, to falling in love, and slowly start watching my past slowly crumble away, Whatafreak and Nicklaus move away, not feeling at home at home anymore, and uncertainty about my own future, and then this void was created... this huge terrible empty feeling... I once thought of myself as a smart person. My entire life people told me I was gifted, talented, not living up to my potential. And I was afraid to try... I didn't want to try my hardest and then realize that I wasn't as smart as I was made out to be. I am certain that I am glad I got away from here, else I'd end like Koda is now, struggling to make ends without any kind of a future in site...

I just don't know to go frankly. I want to get my next semester's books so I can begin studying, I want to try. I want to figure all of this out. I want to see what that last 4/5 of my life is going to be like...

There's so much that is riding around on my shoulders these days, so many thoughts haven't finished thinking themselves out, so many beginnings without endings... So many endings that I miss dearly. So many things that have come and gone and left me alone. What is left of me?