Merry Christmas!

Ahhh... what a great week!

Unfortunately for you, since I really have no idea who reads this, I tend not to post personal things on here. Most of you know me well enough to ask for more details on things if you don't know already, or if you even care.

So... yeah, great week... I'm not sure I can think of a week that has gone this well. Maybe it's just that tonight is Christmas eve, but I think this is actually one of my least favorite nights this week. As nice as it is to spend time with my family, these are the few days of break where I have to spend ALL DAY with them, and don't get to see other people. Oh well, I guess there's still another week of break after Christmas to do all that... too short, but I don't want to think about that.

I remember where I was last year at this time... laying on my back, ready to throw up at any minute, feeling the rocking of the boat in the Drake Passage north of Antarctica. Hard to belive it was only a year ago, and at the same time it's hard to believe that a whole year has gone by. Heh... thinking of Antarctica and Christmas reminds me of a great picture from Christmas on the ship with me and my brother... and 'Santa', complete with Vodka breath and a Russian accent. Hey, random observation: I'm wearing the shirt right now that I had on in that picture. Crazy.

Found a giant spider in the pile of wood my brother and I brought into the garage. This thing is almost 2 inches long and heavy enough to throw his weight around in the cardboard cereal box my brother has him in until tomorrow. He claims he's planning on looking it up to see if its poisonous (my guess its brown recluse) but if I find that bloody spider giftwrapped with my name on it, that kid will be in for some hell. And since he can't outrun me with his new knee injury (another tear, just like his other knee but so far slightly less painful) he'd better be careful. Sorry Xar, I've failed your Christmas challenge, although I think nobody predicted success.

Well, thats all for now... Merry Christmas everyone!

Insert title here

The past week and a half has been filled with ups and downs, but I think everything is starting to level out as it gets closer to winter break. I've been a bit stressed out lately because of everything I've had to do, and taking care of my brother and grandparents while my parents were back in Alabama for my cousin's funeral really didn't help me. Fortunately, I've managed to catch back up with homework, I think I actually understand whats going on in most of my classes now, and in the case of AP Physics, thats pretty significant. Done with college applications, I'll start financial aid stuff this weekend.

Got my UW acceptance letter a few weeks back (actually, just a couple weeks after I applied) and I got my Stanford rejection a few days ago. Can't say that either of them came as a surprise, all that says is I got into my safety school and didn't make it into Stanford which was a bit of a reach. At the moment, I'm looking at USC as my top choice, followed by Cornell and UW.

Helped at the middle school social yesterday, that was actually pretty interesting. I've been working over there, partly as employment but mostly as community service, for a bit over a month. The social itself was a lot more tame than the old Discovery socials, they kept the lights on at Jefferson in the commons and rotated the students through the areas by grade... I guess they can keep a lot better control of them that way, but it just seems a bit different to me. It was funny to look at the groups of kids and try to picture what they would turn out like in high school.

Finally finished reading Pride and Prejudice... I'd have to say that it's a lot like many of Dickens' novels, it starts getting decent about halfway through the book and has a great ending that almost makes up for the long, boring introduction. Thanks to Powers and us not doing anything for the past few days in Comp Gov, I've managed to get a lot of my homework and reading done during school.

Yes, I have been driving the BMW this week. My mom's car is... well, hers, and in need of service to keep it from dying when it sits in the cold (ie: skyview parking lot) and the truck is back in the shop for a mysterious 'check engine' light that came on last week, 2 days after coming back from the shop. Go Toyota! At least, since it is a Toyota truck, it'll run for another 150,000 miles before the engine gives out.

Well, thats probably enough writing for now, It's getting close to my bedtime, almost 10:00. Bah... why do I do 0 period jazz band in the first place?

Still alive

Yeah, so I haven't posted in a while. Bite me, I don't have constant access to reliable internet yet, since the desktop has more viruses than I care to hunt down and fix.

This last week has been pretty bad, mostly because it was the first 5-day week I've had in a long time. Jazz things the past few days have taken up all of my time (Bill Watrous on Thursday, who apparently teaches at USC!... Lessons and setup on Friday for the jazz festival on Saturday that took up 13 hours of my day.) Jazz festival was long and not quite as boring as it could have been, there were always plenty of people to just hang around. We played decently, not great but after 12 hours of listening to jazz, playing it isn't all that exciting.

Watched some movies at Amy's after jumpstarting my mom's car (no idea how she killed the battery, but it was certainly dead.) Saw something really cool on the way home...

I turned left from Hwy 99 onto 99th street, and was immediately joined by two cops. We all stopped at the next traffic light, and one of the cops edged out into the intersection, only to turn on lights and siren (at 12:30 AM he still put on the siren) and raced up the offramp. The other cop followed, and we went with the light to see a large car-transport truck with flames shooting from the side. Quite entertaining at any hour, but especially 12:30.

Woke up this morning to see a man wearing camo and holding a shotgun in the back of the golf course parking lot. I love my neighborhood. He walked around and stared in all directions with his binoculars for the better part of an hour without actually shooting anything before he packed up and drove away... weird.

Well, this may be another long week, so we'll see if I actually get around to posting before the weekend.