This day got busy after I left my shift in Putnam earlier. Drove over to Dillon’s to grab some food and drink for the tailgate. Got back to Putnam and our rides had left. Luckily, Hannah was nice enough to come back for us. Got out to our typical spot in the sheep lot and things were pretty much peachy. Plenty of friends, some drinks, some food (though I wasn’t eating). Took a little trip away from the tailgate to talk to someone and then headed into the game.

Since my family was coming, I was expecting them to call and about anytime and ask for directions toward the stadium and where to park. Game time was getting closer and they were later than expected. They ended up getting to the stadium about 30 minutes before kickoff, which wasn’t bad it just didn’t leave much time to talk to them. We agreed that we would meet near the gates at the end of the game or if they decided to leave early they would call so I could go say bye. Well when the game was almost over, I missed the call. Most likely it was due to the large gathering of college students trying to use their cell phones all at the same time in a relatively small region. They ended up leaving about two minutes before I got to the gates and so I had to figure out how I was gonna get some stuff from them. They ended up dropping it off at Putnam so I could get it when I got back. It turned out OK, but it was kind of annoying not to get to see them off.

Meanwhile, the evening took another turn for the weird during the second half of the game. I sat in ICAT for the first half of the game, then switched over to GA where most of the people from the tailgate were. This is where the weirdness began. I’m going to be annoyingly vague because I don’t feel the need to tell the whole world for a change. I’m probably making too much of things anyway. Still, the type of person I am, I will analyze and re-analyze, and over-analyze until my head wants to explode. The sooner I make a phone call, the better. I hope. Unfortunately, it won’t happen tonight.

Currently Playing: Flickerstick – Coke

Says she’s got another life
That I am living in my friend
Through and through she says
Its nothing I can change
I always was the one

And she knows…

I’m sitting at the Putnam desk on my second of a four hour shift. Parents are starting to show up looking for their kids, but other than that nothing much is going on. In approximately 2 more hours I will be free to go do some tailgating. Then at some point I’ll be meeting up with my parents and sister who are coming up for the game. It’s the first game they’ll have been to, so it should be fun for them. I might even get to sit with them for some of it. Go State!

I’m feeling a little sleepy. Not so sleepy I can’t stay awake, just a little tired. Probably because I stayed up late despite knowing I had to work this morning. But it was worth it.

So yesterday I was kinda lazy in the morning and I didn’t end up getting a shower in until sometime in the early afternoon. When I get out, there’s some paper taped to my monitor. It says “Everything is fine. Nothing is ruined.” Underneath it was a note that I had gotten a phone call. (Score! Wasn’t expecting that.) My roommates have an interesting way of leaving me messages 🙂

Anyway, I ended up at the lake for the rest of the afternoon, which was pretty fun even if it was a little windy. After we got cleaned up, we went to dinner at Chile’s which is almost always good. Then it was back to her place for a movie and some TV (meaning Carson gets less sleep). I think I’ll survive 🙂

Oh, and I’ve temporarily been dubbed Charlemagne. Something tells me that won’t last long. Finally, a little engineering humor.

Currently Playing: Maroon 5 – She Will Be Loved (Their only song that Teh Jimini likes)

Beauty queen of only eighteen
She had some trouble with herself
He was always there to help her
She always belonged to someone else

Please don’t try so hard to say goodbye.

What does? I have no idea. But Alix just said it at roughly 3am. Something about someone.

Tonight was a good night. Lot’s of fun at Rusty’s and even dancing at Joe’s. I lika to say “holy crap!”…Didn’t see that coming. Only one thing could have made it better. Maybe another time.

Currently Playing: Staind – How About You

If someone else showed you the way
Would you take the wheel and steer?
¹It hurts me that you’re not ashamed
Of what you’re doing here^1
2If they jumped off a bridge
Would you meet them on the ground?
Or would you try and claim
That it never made a sound?²

⁶So please don’t take offense
This is just a point of view
‘Cause I’m the only one
who will say these things to you⁶

¹There’s a lot of ugliness in the world. You can’t really argue with that. What I hate to see is people that continue to do not-so-upstanding things and they don’t even care. It’s like the fact that the world is a messed up place makes it OK for them to follow suit. Do they not understand what they’re doing? Sometimes maybe they truly don’t, but c’mon, that can’t happen often. The worst is those that know exactly what is happening and they don’t feel the slightest bit guilty about it.

²The ultimate question of friendship and loyalty. It’s not the typical “If your friends jumped off a bridge would you do it to?” question; instead it asks if you’d meet them on the other side to help them see the error of their ways. If a friend was going through a tough time, would you be there for them? Or would you rather go out of your way to convince yourself that nothing was wrong in the first place and there’s nothing you could have done to save them?

³This really hits home for me. There are times when I really feel like I’ve lost a big part of who I am (or was?) in order to be accepted in this stupid world we live in. I’d like to say that I never care what anyone thinks of me, and that I never do anything just because it’s what someone else wants. But that would be a load of shit. It happens. Whether I like it or not. How ’bout you?

⁴I see this all the time. Nothing in life can ever be simple. People constantly change “the rules” that they live by and then they expect everyone around them to instantly know what they want. Give me a break. It doesn’t work that way. I’ve come to realize that drama is something you can never escape completely, but changing things constantly will only make it worse, never better.

⁵So many people focus on all the material things in this world: brand name clothes, the latest techno gadgets, money…does any of that really matter? I can be bad about that at times, too, but I’d like to think that at the end of the day it’s not really what’s important to me. Sure it’s fun to have nice things, but at the end of the day I try to remember how miraculous it is that we even exist on this planet. When’s the last time you just looked up at the stars at night? How does one even judge a person’s worth? It sure as hell isn’t by their gadgets.

⁶I can be a very blunt person. Sometimes people see it as a blessing, other times they secretly (or not) hate me for it. You can be sure I’m almost always going to tell it like it is (or at least like I see it). If you don’t want an honest answer you better not be asking the question. Unfortunately, sometimes it seems like I’m the only one willing to speak up and tell people what I see. Even when I know other people feel the same, why is it that I’m the only one with the guts to stand up and say what’s on my mind? Is everyone else really that afraid, or am I overstepping my bounds?

How ’bout you?

I got up at 7am this morning. Granted, that’s probably later than I got up just about everyday during high school, but for college life that seems so early. I mean just last year I would have whined and complained if I had to get up that early at all, let alone three to four days a week. Yet this semester I set my schedule up so that I work almost every morning. And so far it’s been fine. Getting up hasn’t been that hard (except yesterday where I was in class almost as long as I slept). Most days last year I would have just been waking up to get to class. Today, I’ve been up for two hours already. I got up in time to realize that Melissa stood me up for our “breakfast date” (again), and I still made it to work early. Go me.

Now I get to kick back and leisurely read the Collegian (for purely entertainment purposes of course; I wouldn’t rely on it for news). Oh and I found a few interesting things out there on the web. Example: farewell act of pwn4g3.

Currently Playing: Black Eyed Peas – Let’s Get it Started which, by the way, opens the movie Barbershop 2. I know Teh Jimmy loves this.

In this context, there’s no disrespect
So when I bust my rhyme, you break ya necks
We got five minutes for us to disconnect,
From all intellect and let the rhythm affect
Obstacles are inefficient, follow your intuition
Free your inner soul and break away from tradition
’cause when we beat out, girl it’s pullin’ without
You wouldn’t believe how we wow shit out
Burn it till it’s it burned out
Turn it till it’s turned out
Act up from north, west, east, south

Those two things don’t really go together. Yet somehow that pretty much describes the last two days. I’ve had lots to do and some things have started to get me stressed out, but when I’m just about to the point where I don’t think I can take much more I get a little relief in some form or another. My Work schedule turned out pretty well, despite the suckage of the scheduling meeting last night. The only thing I somewhat regret is scheduling a 8-10am shift after my 12-3am. I may try to swap somebody for that one.

The relief today came in the form of a phone call. After a little phone tag, I got the person I was looking for. It wasn’t a forced conversation, it flowed easily from one topic to another without those dreaded awkward moments, and it only ended because my stupid phone was dying and I had to go to work. Now, if I can only get some more reading done here at work without putting myself to sleep. Yeah right. Time to watch Barbershop 2: Back in Business.

I’m not quite sure why but I really like this song.

Currently Playing: MercyMe – I Can Only Imagine

Surrounded by Your glory, what will my heart feel
Will I dance for you Jesus or in awe of you be still
Will I stand in your presence or to my knees will I fall
Will I sing hallelujah, will I be able to speak at all
I can only imagine

Why? Because I never have any stories to tell quite like this.

That is one dangerous squirrel. And now he has a patrol car…

I was a little skeptical as I started reading, but it just kept getting better and better. Ok, I’ve really got to get back to reading now. More later.

Currently Playing: Video of a Valkyrie doing a wheelie

But it also results in awesome days! I slept in. And it was glorious. Sorry, watched Old School today, hehe. I slowly got around and got dressed, even thought about reading some of the 5 chapters I have to finish by Tuesday. For about five seconds. Then I played some Ocarina of Time Master Quest. They took the original Zelda game for N64, ported it to The Cube, and changed around all the puzzles in the temples and stuff. It’s been quite entertaining and a little challenging at times. Anyway, I was playing and Alix stopped by and was thinking about getting some lunch. We ended up at Little Apple Brewery and had some good food and conversation. I think her cruise (vacation) owned mine though…bummer.

So after lunch I came back and had all intentions of actually reading a chapter or two. That is, until someone gave me an excuse to do something else. Jimmy and Alix were headed to Wal-Mart so I jumped up and went with them. Stocked up on a few things. Jimmy even cashed a check so he has money! Amazing. After we got back we watched the aforementioned movie and I helped Alix pick out some new music.

After a few more hours of messing around on the computer I was just about to consider going back to the reading when I realized I might be able to find another excuse not to read. This will require a little backstory. I headed out to Aggieville on Thursday night and ended up seeing a bunch of people I knew. (Some of them chose to make a bet about me and talk about it while in my presence as if I had no idea…wanna know a good way to irk me quick…) Included in their group were a few girls I didn’t know. After migrating to a bar with an almost empty dance floor, one of them actually got me out there and dancing. I know, I don’t know how it happened either. Anyway, when we left the bars, a few of us headed to K and T’s apartment. Hung out there well into the morning and had a great time. Oh yeah, I got the number of the one who got me dancing. That was the important part 😉

So I called her up earlier this evening and got lucky: she had no plans. So we hung out at her place for a bit, then went and saw Collateral. I didn’t know quite what to expect, but it was very well done. It had a little action, a little suspense, some humor in just the right places, yet with a pretty unique style. We both liked it. The company was pretty good too. It was thoroughly enjoyable and a good ending to a day filled with procrastination goodness.

Random Quote: “You know I think you and _____ would make a really cute couple.”
-Jimmy, approaching 2AM (Keep in mind he hasn’t met the one who got me to dance, so he doesn’t mean her.)

Currently Playing: Just the thoughts in my head. Roomie is sleeping.

I just got done reading 50 pages of the driest, most redundant report ever. It’s about Health Information Technology (HIT) and how to implement the use of Electronic Health Records (EHR) on a national scale in such a way that they can be easily transferred from one provider/facility to another. This report totaled 178 pages, luckily (?) I only had to read 50 of them. There had to have been at least 50 different acronyms in this thing too…everything from DoD to CDC to HHS. Don’t ask me what any of them even mean. Doesn’t that sound exciting? This is exactly what I’m going to get to do in Systems Design but on a smaller level. The class is getting split into three groups and each one will be responsible for developing a system to store health records. Each group has to get together to develop some standards so that records can be transferred from one system to another. Apparently last semesters class never got it to work. Something to look forward to? Let’s hope not.

I’m here in Van Zile nearing the end of my shift. Most of it was spent reading the aforementioned report. Then an Airborne Express guy shows up with a package. I’m thinking it’s rather odd cause packages never come this early in the morning. So I sign for it and he leaves. Then I look at the package. It’s marked Airbourne Urgent (10:30AM) so things are starting to make a little more sense. Then I look closer…there is no name on it. Gotta go track them down.

Seems like that’s all I’ve done lately. I’ve spent 20 hours at the desk in the last two days. Still, it’s given me some time to relax, watch some DVDs from NetFlix, and finish reading Angels & Demons. As I’ve been told by numerous other people, I did enjoy the prequal more than it’s popular equal The Da Vinci Code. There weren’t quite as many intricate clues or puzzles to fall into place along the way but the story seemed to be better crafted. It amazes me how authors can come up with that kind of story. I only borrowed the book from Patrick, but I think I’ll be buying my own copy soon.

In other happenings, the semester has started off well. We seem to have a great group in the basement this year. Over the weekend (when I wasn’t sitting at the desk), I managed to play ultimate frisbee with some people from the complex (many from my floor). It was so much fun, I’m really looking forward to playing again. Dylan, Jimmy, and I have also started throwing the Aerobie around in the complex courtyard and inviting random people to join in. It’s been pretty cool. Now if I can just withstand the reality of classes and all the work that comes with it, I will be OK. My mammoth four hour shift is nearing it’s end. Time to get ready for LAN lab. This should be interesting.