A Really Good Day

Usually when you expect and hope for the best, something comes up from behind and knocks out your teeth. Likewise, when you're really pessimistic, good things happen. Funny.

For example, I thought this week was going to SUCK. I had a ton of work to do on Sunday night, and was not looking forward to any of it. Instead it's been one good thing after another. First I had a Communications speech due on Monday, wasn't excited for that. All of the speeches were only kind of average. I had practiced for five minutes, and my other two group members and I had only exchanged a few e-mails. The first guy stood up and nailed his part, the second guy nailed his, and then I gave a gripping conclusion. The professor stands up and says:

"You know, I dread listening to Engineers speak. They're terrible speakers. But these three guys are all Engineers and they absolutely nailed it. It was flawless. Outstanding job."

One down. Next was my first English essay. Since I had joined the class late, everyone else's essays had been graded when I handed mine in. The professor said, "These papers were all very solid, with good ideas, but the execution needs a lot of work, so I DIDN'T GIVE ANYTHING HIGHER THAN A B." He gave NO A papers at all, none. But he graded mine while we were doing some classwork, and we picked up our papers on the way out of class. Mine said:

"A+ idea, B+ execution. A overall, very good."

I was going, "uhhh....what?" I did not just get the only A paper in the class. Yes I did. PWNED. Two down.

Third was supposed to by my first math mid-term. I didn't study at all. I showed up to class, and...the entire floor of the Computer Sciences building where my class is was completely roped off by caution tape, with a bunch of cops hanging around. I still don't know what happened, but the test got pushed back to Friday. I had an extra day to study, so I stayed up until two watching movies. Friday I got on my longboard to go to class, hit a curb, and completely fucked up my arm. I walked into class in slight shock, aced the mid-term, left, and went to sleep.


I had three huge goals this week and absolutely blew them out of the water. I wish every week was this awesome. Maybe next week I'll...nevermind. Have a good weekend.

Current Mood: Luminous

Listening To: "Thrash Unreal" by Against Me!

September 11

Sometimes I really don't like this country. I don't the people who run it, who argue and bicker and backstab and lie to themselves, to each other, to the American people. But there are several days in the 365 chaotic, politically explosive days of the year that I put all of this nation's flaws in the back of my mind.

On those days, I'll go and get myself a big juicy American cheeseburger with American cheese, American ketchup, and American mustard. I'll get a big bowl of American coleslaw and completely disregard the number of calories or the percentage of my daily saturated fat intake it contains. To wash it all down, how about a tall, cold glass of American Coca-Cola? And to finish it off, a perfectly swirled American vanilla ice cream cone. Today is one of those days.

It disturbs me how few people remember. I've questioned several people as to whether or not they know what today is. "Thursday?" It is only partially true that time heals all wounds. For the most part, each passing day fades the overpowering emotion and the shock, like sunlight fading that old blue couch in the living room. That is, for those who watched it on TV, who read about it day after day in the newspapers for several months. But after it had fallen off the back pages of the New York Times and Washington Post, people went back to their daily lives and it became a thing of the past.

There are those, however, who will permanently retain that wound, a wound that time can coat with dust but never heal entirely. Those are the people who physically saw it happen, who heard the unusually loud roar of the GE CF6-80C2 engines driving the Boeing 767-200ERs down Manhattan Island and onto every television screen worldwide. They felt the heat of the burning jet fuel, breathed the dust of crushed concrete & shredded paper. They ran with their own two feet from the collapsing buildings, and then back into the cloud to help their coworkers and friends, their brothers and sisters, people they didn't know.

A day will come far in the future when the final first hand memories will be extinguished by time, when the very last of those witnesses passes on as did 2,999 of their fellow Americans on September 11, 2001. At that time, the true terror of that day will be nothing more than another chapter in the history books. December 7, 1941 has seen the same decay of sentiment as the years have gone by and the number of survivors has dwindled.

Everybody still remembers 9/11, but not with the vivid horror as they did three to six years prior. For me, the twenty-four hours linking the tenth and twelfth of September always reignite the smoldering embers of pain from the attacks. I cannot forget. Every ninety-six seconds, a jet passes over downtown San Jose, descending into SJC international. Every single one of the seven hundred some-odd planes flying low over the tops of the buildings today has sent chills down my spine. I have been there, where those buildings once were. I have been to the Pentagon. I cannot forget. I have heard the tapes of their voices, in panic and in pain, from the horrified pedestrians on the pavement on Fifth Avenue to the Northwest corner of the 105th floor of Tower one, where Kevin Cosgrove and two of his colleagues stayed on the line with an emergency dispatcher until their final screams were silenced by the catastrophic structure failure 102 minutes after impact. I have seen the videos from the mobile command post in the lobby of Tower two, where the firefighters bowed their heads at each sickening crash, signaling the end of another life, a businessman unable to bear the heat of the fire above. I will not forget them.

I have a fifteen minute speech to write about videogame addiction, some studying for math, and a two page paper to compose on politics. Not today. I refuse to politicize anything on September 11; it is not a day to be political. I'd love to debate about the Iraq war and Sarah Palin, the election and the lack of evidence of a jet fuselage at the Pentagon attack, but not today. Today, like every 365th day for the past seven years, I will set aside everything to simply reflect on that day, and how lucky I am to be where I am now. Hopefully, you can find it in you to find a moment, maybe two, in your day to stop and do the same.

It was an unusually clear day. The sky was a deep, deep blue…seven years ago…

Current Mood: Sad

Listening To: "Please Remember Me" by Tim McGraw

English 1A

I just had class from 6 to 9 again, and God alfuckinmighty that's a long time to sit in one desk. It's like two SAT subject tests every Wednesday.

English 1A. Professor is also a middle school teacher, I believe, and he is probably the best teach I have now. He's a Liberal jackass, which is fine because I don't care what end of the spectrum people are on, although I'm pretty far left as well. We are supposed to write an essay on politics and the candidates for the upcoming election next week. Some quotes from his lecture:

(Disclaimer: These do not all reflect my own ideas, but they're still hilarious.)

"She (Palin) is better than Hilary, according to the Republicans. They say it's because she's an actual woman, she wears a skirt and not those pant-suit things like Hillary."

"They know she'll get votes because she's female. Regardless of anything else, some women in this country will go, 'Gee, she (Palin) has a vagina, I have a vagina...I'll vote for her!"

"There were three kinds of people that watched Woodstock. There was *my* parent's generation, and they were going 'Holy shit, this is appalling...kids running around nude with facepaint on LSD...' There was my generation, 14-years olds like me thinking 'AWESOME. I wish I were five years older...' And then there were marketers. And they said, 'Oh look, 500,000 kids with money. Why are we selling to their parents, why don't we sell to them?'"
...
"So that's why everything is marketed to you. When I grew up I was a kid in an adult's world, now I'm an adult in a kid's world. Everything is marketed to you. Why? Because they're not going to sell colorful underpants from Victoria's Secret to your grandmother. You have the money. They don't care about her. She has the VCR that keeps blinking...12:00...12:00...12:00..."

"Yes, the average lifetime has increased. So McCain may indeed live another eight years. But, keep in mind, he just might die tomorrow. And then Palin will be President. And then I'll kill myself."

"Palin believes that the best way to prevent pregnancy is to do what we're doing right now. NOT having sex. And we're doing a fine job, I might add."

"Palin said that she believes in doing it the right way: getting married, then starting a family. That is exactly what she did, she got married, and had her first kid 8 months later."

"Do you know why Bush is president? Okay, I don't mean to offend anybody, but it's really quite simple. Bush is president because of a blow job. Because Clinton's zipper was a little bit too loose."

"You know what I said to that whole fiasco? I don't care. I mean, if you're the President, and you can't get laid...you're pretty sad."

"They were so busy getting Barry Bonds, they forgot about Osama Bin Laden."

~~~~~~~~

Like the class wasn't good enough to begin with, he left halfway through for a full hour so we could grade each others' essays. Then, this huge, HUGE black dude walks in, like 7 feet tall. He starts telling jokes. Bad jokes. For twenty minutes, this monstrous black guy is telling crude jokes to our English class. Example:

"Man, I was in London, right? I asked the guy at the Pub...they don't have Restaurants, man, they got Pubs...if I could have a cup of black coffee. He was like, (with black-British accent) 'we don't have any coffee sir, we have three types of tea. Earl Grey, which is 20% substance and 80% aroma, Green tea, which is 80% substance and 20% aroma, and English tea, which is preferred.'

So I said, 'man, it's jus' like that in America! We got three kinds o' tea. F-A-R-T, which is 20% substance and 80% aroma, S-H-I-T, which is 80% substance and 20% aroma, and C-U-N-T, which is preferred.'"


I was cracking up, not at the jokes, but just because this random ass black guy was sitting there on the table at the front of my English class, telling jokes. For 20 minutes. Then the Professor Shapiro walked back in, and the guy asked him to sign a paper to drop a class he didn't teach.

~~~~~~~~

Weirdest class of my life, but I'm still laughing. Going to be a good semester in English 1A.

Current Mood: Amused

Listening To: "Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd

The First Week

A week.

I've been in San Jose for a week, plus or minus a few hours. It feels like I've been here for years, or at least months. I know where everything is, the weather, the schedule, the people, everything. It's really weird, almost scary.

Summer, summer summer...BAM...college. No transition whatsoever. At 1130 last Saturday I was in Pleasanton, at 1300 I was in San Jose. But I didn't even notice. High school student to college student in seconds. I had no emotion, at all. Leaving home, leaving parents, no emotion. New friends, exciting new place, no emotion. I guess I'm really adaptive...I've always thought you need to roll with the changes, but the total apathy of the fact that my life is 100% different is something I did not expect.

Anyway, THIS PLACE IS AWESOME. I can get out my longboard and ride around in the summer heat at 3 in the morning. I can play loud music until 10, when the RA kicks in the door. I can do homework whenever, 24-7, party until midnight and work until 4. I can wake up whenever the heck I want. ULTIMATE FREEDOM.

But I don't abuse it. I'm very pleased to discover that the morals and goals I set a long time ago have not faltered at all. Some of them have even strengthened. I have turned in all of my work, and have a 4.0 GPA (which is a good start, but doesn't say much since it's still the first week.) In the one week I've been here, I have not had a single drop of alcohol, a single cigarette, or a single puff of hookah. Why are hookahs so popular, I don't get it. Because they're legal and not quite as harmful, I guess. I'll have a few bottles now and then, but I've pretty much determined that I'll usually be the DD, rather than getting flat-out hammered and waking up in the middle of the quad with two fat chicks on top of me (TRUE STORY by the way, from one of the RAs.) I'm happy with my status so I'll keep it status quo.

And HERE is a run-through of my new life thus far:

~

*DORM ROOM:
My room is outstanding. I'm on the top floor of the seven floor CVC building (which is entirely Freshman.) I have a huge desk with two drawers and a file cabinet, four enormous drawers under the bed, a full armoire, and a full closet. There are eight closets total, two for each of the four rooms. Two bathrooms, four sinks, two showers, and a lounge. Broken down, thats eight of us, two to each room and sink, four to each shower / toilet.

The bed is extraordinarily comfortable, air conditioning is great. Windows open most of the way, and don't have screens which makes it possible to throw water balloons out of, which some kids have already been busted. I have a view of the quad and the CVB building, which is 15 stories and houses the upperclassmen.

The lounge for our suite is a hotspot. We have four blacklights with posters of Bob Marely, Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, snowboarders, Subaru WRXs, and whatever. Super Nintendo, N64, and 32" TV. The TV will be a 50" plasma pretty soon, and we're upgrading to an Xbox. We have two turntables, a mixer, iPod hookup, and a 5 speaker / 2 woofer system, which is FUCKING LOUD. They turned it all the way up last week and the RA from the third floor kept running around until he found out where it was coming from and yelled at us. We have an enormous refrigerator, which barely fits the size constraints. Finally are the red string lights in the window, which can easily be seen from anywhere in the quad.

We have tons of people filing through here. We hit 23 max, and our limit is 24. Our room number is 724, and our rep on campus is that we're 24-7 (get it?) Everything is in regulation, but we made sure to push everything in the limit. Nobody has been drinking in here due to the 2-strikes-expulsion rule, but they come up here after they get drunk, so it's a party room anyway. Pretty dope. Apparently the kids last year also called it 24-7 but were totally out of control--you can tell by the dents in the walls--they said they had 54 people in the room (well over twice the limit,) and I don't have the faintest idea how they fit that many people in here without having some standing in the toilets.

Anyway, room is dope.

~

*ROOMMATES:
Roommates are cool. My roommate is Andrew, who is from Truckee. We have some things in common, like to ski/board, want to play drums/guitar, like Rock.

Actually it's really odd how everything worked out. Every single one of the eight of the us likes the same general kind of music, like the same kind of sports, etc. I'm the only one that doesn't really drink much. All of us are from the Bay Area except Andrew and I think Rob, who is from Sacramento. We usually agree on everything from sports to politics. Most are engineering majors.

Names are Andrew, Blake, Rob, Adam, John, Aaron, and Nick.

~

*CAMPUS
This campus is absolutely incredible. It is fairly small, 6 blocks by four blocks. It's entirely flat, which is amazing for boarding, biking, or skating. Four of us bought longboards on Tuesday, so I think everybody in here has a board now. We are about a mile and a half from Walmart, couple of blocks from 7-11, and some other stores. We are smack in the center of Downtown San Jose. Three blocks from Cesar Chaves park, where the famous Fairmont hotel is located and they hold free concerts and such. The Tech Museum is across the street from the park. HP Pavilion is about a mile away as well, bordering the Business District.

The classes take me about 10 minutes max to get to, especially on the board. Might be a little longer when it starts raining. Everything is easy to get to, long straight pathways. Complete opposite of UC Santa Cruz, which is like a damn maze in the trees.

The cool thing is that we're urban, but we have problems that only come with urban areas. For example, at any given time, there are at least three hobos with shopping carts out hunting for whatever it is that they hunt for. If I ever go out after dusk I carry a fatty bottle of pepper gel, which burns like no other. We've had a bunch of people get jumped around here, to the South and East. That is where the kind-of-ghetto residential area is, North and West is all business and is pretty clean. After about a mile of going south through a housing area, it is all industrial, which is where our football stadium is (the SJ Earthquakes play there as well.)

~

*FOOD:
Oh my God, this place is like a 4 star restaurant. You can eat three times a day, just walk in and swipe your ID, and then it's ALL YOU CAN EAT. There's a Mexican place, Asian, American, and Italian, and they change up the dishes every couple of days. Huge drink bar area with 8 types of juice, including Guava (pinch me), sodas, Cappuccino and Coffee / Hot Chocolate, milk, ICEE things, and some sparkling juice things like Apple Cider and whatever. In the morning they have like a million types of cereal, omelets, breakfast burritos...words cannot describe this place.

There are also several restaurants on campus where the ID card can be used like debit-- Subway, Starbucks, and Burger King to name a few. We also have some little convenience stores to use the ID cards at, so I can buy protein shakes before I work out for three hours. With all of this free food I'm taking in as many calories as possible, and then working it all off. I'm going for a full diet on the food pyramid, with emphasis on meat. We have a pool, track, and a full gym so I intend to gain the Freshman 15 while everybody else is afraid of it. Except my F15 is going to be all muscle...I'm aiming for 30 extra pounds by the end of the year. I'm tired of being skinny and really white. I'm going to be buff and really white.

~

*FACILITIES:
Really good facilities. There is a full kitchen and huge TV in the floor lounge down the hall, so I can go bake a cake and eat the whole thing. The laundry room is on the first floor, but the God damn machines don't have locks so you have to sit and play with your dick for two hours while the dryer is running.

In the building next door there are pool tables and foosball tables, and a full computer lab where I can steal paper. The internet blows like a hurricane, so I'm going to have to go pay 250 bucks for the high-speed upgrade. The entire campus is wireless, except for the dorms. Eric and I bought a Linksys and are trying to put up a shared secure network, but the Linksys is fighting me tooth and nail. Seriously, it refuses to work. I asked it nicely and it spit at me, so I threw it at the wall. Then it put me in a headlock and...nevermind. The wireless isn't working yet.

The athletic facilities are in good shape. Like I mentioned earlier, there's a huge pool with lanes and a diving section, a full gym, racquetball and basketball courts, four ice rinks, a pool room, ping-pong room, and a bowling alley. Yes, a bowling alley. The ice rinks are where I will be taking my hockey class, which is going to rock my socks off. They are owned by San Jose State and are on the same block as our football stadium (athletic complex is a mile away from the main campus,) but are operated by the San Jose Sharks organization. The Sharks practice on our rinks, pretty sick.

I think that's it for facilities, except our labs which I haven't even been in yet, but are supposedly top-notch (SJSU is consistently rated one of the top engineering schools in the country.)

~

*CLASSES:
My classes are amazingly awesome. I am currently taking PreCalculus (Math 19) and workshop (Math 19W), English 1A, Mechanical / Aerospace Engineering 15, Communications 20 (a public speaking class), and Ice Hockey, for a total of 16 credits. The reason I'm an engineer in PreCalc is because I last took that class Junior year, and didn't understand everything because Mrs. James was an imbecile. Nice person, but did not get the point across.

The PreCalc professor is an Indian lady named Mrs. Bodas. She should have taken the comedian route rather than becoming a teacher, she's hilarious. The assistant that runs the lab class is also Indian, and speaks with a heavy accent at a thousand words per second.

The hockey class is basically going to be 2.5 hour open ice sessions every week, which is going to be totally radical. Dude. Not sure who the "professor" for that class is quite yet.

I haven't had the English or Comm classes yet because I just signed up for them (I've rearranged my schedule more times in the past 7 days than I've been able to keep track of.) For Engineering we have no homework outside of 8 1-page writeups, no book, no tests, and no final. The teacher is a Spanish guy named Barez, who also has a sense of humor. You have no idea how rare it is to find an Engineering professor, or anybody in Engineering, with a sense of humor. For that class we will taking a number of field trips and have a bunch of guest speakers come in. This is why I am at San Jose State for engineering, and why we are so well known for it. We have hundreds, if not thousands of business connections in the industry, since we are in Silicon Valley. And in any business, engineering in particular, it isn't just what you know, it's who you know. The first day of class, this is what he said:

"No longer can you graduate with a 4.0 GPA and say "Hey General Electric, come and hire me, Ford, come and hire me." It doesn't work like that anymore. You need connections, the field is all about connections now, it's called networking. And that is what we are going to do, build resumes, create connections, find internships."

He is exactly right, and this is why I will have a job, let alone a high-paying job, before anybody else who is majoring in engineering, especially aerospace engineering. We have a field trip to NASA Ames in two weeks.

~

*WEATHER:
It has been warm 24-7 since I got here. Very pleasant at night, mid to upper seventies. During the day it has been in the upper nineties, which is abnormally hot for San Jose, and not very fun. We have air conditioning, but one of the dorm buildings does not. On average the weather here is mild, 5-10 degrees cooler than Pleasanton when it's hot but a few degrees warmer in the winter, because of fog cover.

~

*GIRLS:
There are a lot of girls here, you could've assumed that. Most of them have already been in our dorm. Actually that's probably an unfair exaggeration, but our room is definitely popular. Nothing yet from me, because I am still too shy and picky, as you may know. I'm hoping I'll be able to open up a bit, without turning into a drunk raving asshole that rapes every fuckable object at the Frat parties. Because that's just not me.

~

*PRANKS:
I haven't really done anything interesting yet, especially to Eric who will retaliate with full force. I'm planning though, oh yes I am, and whatever hacks I pull off are going to be of M.I.T. caliber. If you don't know what that means, M.I.T. kids are geniuses who have too much time on their hands, so they manage to pull off prank stunts that aren't destructive, but people remember them because they're so outrageously clever. For example, disassembling an entire server rack in an engineering lab and rebuilding and wiring it back at the Frat house and putting it online. Or deconstructing an entire police car and putting it back together on top of a building. We will see.

~

*SKIING:
I had to add this, because one of the reasons I am in San Jose is because I ski. I'm not even kidding, if I had to go to school in southern California, I would crack. NO SNOW. ANYWHERE. It's the same here, for now. Everybody in my suite snowboards, which is better than nothing, I guess. There are snow-related posters on the walls, ski and board magazines everywhere, and I'm about to lose it because it's not even September.

When winter comes, I will be skiing. Lots. Anybody who wants to hit the slopes, let me know and I'll be glad to give you a ride up in the Scion, so you can help me pay for gas a little bit, keep me awake, and admire my interior lighting.

~

All in all, a good first week. Topped off by the fact that we just beat UC Davis 13-10 in the first football game of the year. People are out screaming and partying in the quad, horns honking everywhere. I feel like I'm back in New York.

I hope you've all enjoyed the first taste of your college experiences, or will once you begin. Keep in touch.



✌ & ♥

kdawg

Current Mood: Chill

Listening To: "Writing to Reach You" by Travis

Last Day

Today is my last day in Pleasanton. I'll be back for winter break, and next summer, but it won't be the same.

I wanted to soak up every passing second of time left here. It's funny how you don't realize what you have you realize it's slipping away. You never know where you're from until you leave. Pleasanton has been good to me in the past twelve years, overall. It's been a ride.

The only place where time can be stopped or even reversed is the mind. Last night, that's where I went. I decided to rewind 4,438 days to June of 1996 and relive my time in Pleasanton, watching my memories through the windshield of my car.

Before I pulled out of the garage I stood in the street and took a long look at the house I've lived in. The same house I've come back to after a vacation in Barcelona, where I ran to from the bus stop after school in the pouring rain, where I played four square on the sidewalk, soccer on the grass, and Starcraft in the loft. Several meters away is Aubry's house.

I remember walking across the street in the summer heat to knock on the door and see if he could play. The glass door would always be unlocked, and on the comfortable warm evenings the glass was replaced with a screen. Scott would come down on his GoPed, and we'd play Zelda O.O.T., Mario Party, and Roller Coaster Tycoon. In the later years we had some great Halo parties in the garage. In front of his house is the street light that I knocked the glass out of when I threw a basketball at it, the same street light that I would later stand under when waiting for the Jeep to go skiing at 5 AM.

I turned my attention to the far end of the street, by the cul de sac where all of the street hockey games used to be years ago. Fourth of July parties and amazing fireworks were down there too. The whole neighborhood came out and watched the display. We had a ton of '08 kids around here, Aubry Conley across from me, Scott Baggett & Katie Carlstrom down a little further, Courtney Gangnuss across the intersection. Plenty of others used to be in the area, Antonella Janero, Matti Watt, Jaclyn Pang, Janelle Larson, T.J. Barkdull, Tay Centell, Caroline Lowry, Cory McDonald...I can't list 'em all but would like to. Some have moved, some have stayed, but I remember them all.

Got in the car, pushed in the clutch, shifted into reverse, and drove away. I'll be doing that again tomorrow, but I won't just be going out for a drive.

If you go down Tassajara towards Blackhawk quite some ways, you'll come to Highland Road. A dusty, winding two-lane through the hilly terrain of North Dublin, Highland is where I've gone to get away from my problems or to think about how I can fix them. This time I drove below the speed limit, taking in the golden light spilling over the hilltops. I had The Eagles playing, the best music for double-yellow cruiser roads.

"Dont let the sound of your own wheels
Drive you crazy
Lighten up while you still can
Dont even try to understand
Just find a place to make your stand
And take it easy"

It really allows you to open your mind and let your troubles blow out the windows, drowned out by the sound of the engine and Don Henley. It lets you just kind of...take it easy. Couldn't be more fitting.

I spent over an hour and a half just driving. I turned whenever I had the urge to turn. When I felt like speeding up, I gassed it, and when I felt like slowing down I eased up. Ultimate freedom, no plans, no schedule, nowhere to be and nothing to do. No one else in sight. I ended up around Las Positas, and took the freeway home.

When I got back back I had a nice lasagna dinner. Damn good lasagna. Went to Jenelle's house for a few hours to chill with some other kids that are leaving for the Cal State schools tomorrow. Watched the Olympics for a while. I still wanted to go drive around some more so I left at around 1 AM.

...
Alisal

First place I went was Alisal. That is where it all started for me in this town, first grade in Mrs. Gould's class. I met a ton of kids there, I still know everyone in that class bar three or four. First person I met in class was a guy named Matt, he moved to Monterey at the end of the year, as I recall. Second person I met was Ben Anderson. Ben, Justin Maslana and I would play Star Wars out on the playground. Jessica McKinley was Princess Leia. I think it was Ben that got in a fight with some kid one time, and ended up with sand in his eyes, that sucked. It was a good single year there, though, we had a pajama party in class on a Friday night one time, that was awesome.

...
Mohr

The reason I say single year is because at the end of the year most of us moved over to Mohr. That's where I drove next. Mohr was awesome...I remember taking the tour there in the summer of '97 before it opened...everything was brand new. Those were the four square and tetherball days. I sucked at tetherball. Four square was sick, we always had crazy slam moves that usually ended with someone getting nailed by one of those red rubber balls. In fifth grade I drop-kicked one across the playground and it bashed Tom Morris on the head. That is the closest I've ever gotten to getting the living shit beat out of me. We're friends now, he lives in Alabama.

Soccer was cool too, soccer and football out on the field. Kris Stambaugh was playing goalie one time and managed to kick himself in the face, one of the most hilarious things I've seen to this day. I'd race Tay Centell out on the field too, but he'd usually kick my ass. He's in Southern California now. Also out on the field we had field day at the end of every year, when it'd usually be 50º and windy even though it was June. Everybody would end up totally drenched.

On the basketball court is where we had P.E. with Mr. Maz. Our class was incredible, most of our physical fitness test scores are still unbroken records posted on the wall in the multi-purpose room. McDonald, Lowry, Sweeney, Starkey, Hadlock...all records yet to be shattered. Maybe they were doping. After a game of capture the flag (the best game in the world, by the way,) Mr. Maz would shout "NEVER SMOKE." The whole class would reply "YES SIR." Most of us kept our promise.

Most of my teachers there have retired...Annen, Steyart, Crawley, Parker. Parker is the only one still working, I think, she's a principal at one of the other Elementary Schools here in Pleasanton. We were her last class, and that was, by far, the most awesome class I have ever had. Second floor of the then-new building, with a view of the quarry lake behind Martin, down at the East end of Mohr. That was the year we first had band, and DARE (although I never liked Officer Batoy, he never called on me.) Outdoor Ed. I could write a book on Outdoor Ed, so I'll just keep it in my head for now. It was hardcore for me, since the week before we left I had a major injury. I was running the bases in Scott Baggett's backyard when we were playing wiffle ball, and I caught my toe on a metal post stuck in the ground (they were re-doing the backyard.) It sliced down to the bone, so I did every hike at camp with six stitches and one of those goddamn boot things.

I remember graduating from Mohr, I felt kind of the same way I do now. I sat on the field and looked at my school for a long time, and then walked home down Martin on the new walking path. It was a hot day, mostly clear. I was unsure of middle school, but the best was definitely best to come.

...
Harvest Park

I drove back down Stoneridge and headed for Harvest Park. Now that I think about it, I had some pretty damn good times there. The first day of school I showed up in front of Ms. MacCleoud's science class (she was a real bright one, she gave us the answers to the tests BEFORE we took them.) There was a really tall kid standing there with a high-top haircut. I walked up to the door and all he said was "RENOB."

"What?"

"RENOB!"

"Uh..."

"RENOB. It's boner backwards..."

That was first impression of James Peters.

In sixth grade we had all kinds of new stuff to deal with. P.E., where everybody loathed running the mile every three weeks. Now they run it weekly. Band, getting up at six every single day. About two weeks into 6th grade I got up one Tuesday and when I went downstairs, my mom was sitting silently in a chair staring at the TV, with her hand over her mouth. I will never forget that look. When Blake's mom picked me up I didn't say much until we got to school. "Two planes have hit the World Trade Center towers in New York. They're about to collapse." They didn't believe me. Blake realized that I was very serious when three, five, ten other people said the same thing. They fell to the ground while we were running warm-up laps. That changed me forever.

Also in sixth grade was the laptop program. Gatehouse, Lars Hegstrom, Alex Kato, K.W. Kim and I went into Ragsdale's room every day at lunch and played adrenaline-filled games of F/A-18 Hornet and Bolo. Eventually, Ryan Brody and some other kids joined the crew. We'd all be cussing each other out, yelling across the room. The laptop classes were freakin epic, with Raimondi and Robeck. We had endless problems with the damn things, but it all worked out. Halfway through the year we moved all of Raimondi's stuff from the portables into the new room, where she still teaches. Robeck assigned 60 problems of Pre-Algebra a night, and it almost killed half of us. He had barbeques out on the blacktop for kids that got A's on the tests.

Seventh grade was even cooler, because we had the Medieval Fair, where everybody duct-taped up plastic swords and armor and beat the shit out of each other. That was serious gladiator stuff right there. Also in seventh grade, Ragsdale got some new eMacs, so Gatehouse and Hegstrom and I basically skipped a whole day of school to set them up. We installed Jedi Knight on all of them, I still have a copy of that game that Ragsdale gave me. He retired a year early because of his Parkinsons, moved up to Sparks, near Reno. I'll catch him on AIM every couple of months. For english, I had Mrs. Wilder, who was passionately despised by most of our class. She made Lizzy Harford cry when she sent a few of us to the office for forgetting to print an essay.

I still go back there every year, with Scott, to teach "boot camp" to the incoming sixth grade laptop kids. We do two five hour sessions to train the kids, and a two to three hour session to answer all of the parent's questions. We've been back I think five years, built up some serious connections with management at Apple, where I think I might end up working sooner or later. We just did it again earlier this week.

We had Ms. Kennedy for eighth grade, who was a great teacher. Now she goes by Mrs. Valentine, and is on maternity leave for the second time since we graduated. One time she lost one of the fish in her fish tank, so some of the kids made up "LOST FISH" posters and taped them up around campus. She found the fish buried at the bottom of the tank a few weeks later. On the last day of school, K.W. was agitated that he got a B+ instead of an A, so he smacked his huge Korean forehead into the glass door, shattering it. Ms. Kennedy was laughing but he still got a referral on the last day of school.

Eighth grade was also cool because in the winter, after our last class (Physical Science with Mrs. Jones,) Blake and I would go to Cassandra's bakery over by the Hopyard and get Lemon Tarts and Hot Chocolate, and then sit in his mom's car and play SNOOD on our laptops until his sister got out of dance practice. Good times.

Graduation was alright, but at the end of the three years of middle school I will still a nerdy little white kid. I wore a clip-on tie to the graduation commencement ceremony. That started to change at Amador.

...
Amador

Spinning my wheels over to Amador, where the parking lot was dark completely dark, I thought about the last four years. I've done that a lot this summer. The place has already changed, with the portables in a different place, the parking lot slightly re-worked, and those completely useless security cameras hanging off of the buildings.

I have too many memories at Amador to list them all, but there are some that stand out. A few weeks into Freshman year, a bird dumped on my backpack. I was pissed. At lunch that day, Joe Falls spilled a cup of marinara sauce on it (from the Dominoes breadsticks that they don't have anymore.) I was really pissed. Then, on the way home from the bus, Aubry decided to pick up a stick and smack my backpack with it. Of course, that was the only damn stick on the planet with a half-eaten peach stuck on the end of it, so I got peach glop on my backpack. I was furious. When I got home my backpack was like a cesspool with straps, it was disgusting.

I remember the football games. The one we one against Foothill in, I think, Sophomore year was when everybody jumped the field and I got buried under the mosh of football players and fans on the 35 yard line. Epic.

Sophomore year I had Tofanelli, which is when I met Eric Miller. Every day he'd come in and grab Matti's enormous sunglasses and Katie Gellerman's Starbucks, and walk around looking like Paris Hilton. By third period, he'd already had three Monsters so he was always wired. Now I have to deal with him at SJSU. I had Ekstrom too, that was funny. Ronnie Buckley, who I hadn't really talked to since the Mohr days, and Jeff Squire sat next to each other and wouldn't shut up. Ekstrom put them across the room, and they started using sign language and throwing things. Ekstrom would turn around and a barrage of Starburst wrappers would by flying over his desk. Aswin Kolady was there, too. One day when we were taking a vocab test, Aswin, who sat in front of me, tied my shoes to the desk. I got up and fell flat on my face. I have to laugh at it now, pretty sly prank.

Junior year sucked, except for Emerson's class and hippie day or whatever the hell it was called. Emerson literally shouted his lectures at us since he is deaf in one ear. We all got the notes, though. Aswin, Topher Mitchell, Andreas Rodriguez, and I all were in Hanson's Comp Sci class, and we'd all send each other our code on e-mail and play pocket tanks and DX Ball. I think I did a total of around ten days of work the whole year, and skidded by with an A-. He was a big star after the streaker hit the field during one of the rallies, since he was in the pursuit team with Scarpelli. That was the only time I've ever seen Scarpelli run, when he was going after that naked dude. He was a good coach though.

I ran track Sophomore and Junior year, and it was completely miserable. I loved it. "Pain is temporary, pride is forever," that was the quote on the back of our T-shirts. I won a couple races, ran 100M, 200M, and 400M. Unfortunately I had to drop out Senior year because I was having severe knee cartilage problems. I'd rather keep my knees till I'm 90, so I can keep skiing.

I don't need to explain much about Senior Year, it was amazing. Everything from Senior Picnic, when it was nut-shrinking cold, to the last night of high school, Grad Night, was just perfect. Experiences of a lifetime, indeed.

But it's all gone now.

...

All gone. I left Amador and drove downtown, and up Foothill, around to places I've been to so many times over the years. Good memories from all of them. After about an hour I headed home with only a quarter tank of gas. Time is infinitely more valuable than money, though, and my drive wasn't a waste of time, so I don't care about wasting the money on 3/4 drink of fuel.

It's all over now. Summer is ending again.

I'll let you on something kind of personal. There's a tradition I have had for years. Each summer, on the last day before school starts again, I sit on the highest peak of my roof, and listen to a song. One song. It is called "Boys of Summer," by Don Henley. Some of you may have heard the version by The Ataris, but I like Henley better because it's a slower, more apt tribute to another summer gone by:

"Nobody on the road,
nobody on the beach.
I feel it in the air,
The summers out of reach

Empty lake, empty streets,
The sun goes down alone.
I'm driving by your house
Though i know that you not home...

...

Out on the road today
I saw an AV sticker on a cadillac
A voice inside my head said don't look back
You can never look back

I thought i knew what love was
What did i know
Those days are gone for ever
I should just let them go and...

I can see you
Your brown skin shining in the sun
You know your walking real slow
Smiling at everyone

I can tell you
My love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone.

...

Now i don't understand what happed to our love
Now baby gonna get you back
Gonna show you what i'm made of...

I can see you
Your brown skin shining in the sun
You got your top pulled down,
Radio on baby

And i can tell you
My love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone..."


Why this song? The lyrics carry a sad parting with summer, with friends, or someone else, and with memories that you just can't let go of. As I leave for college, they are shockingly close to my own situation. This next and final evening, I will sit up there on top of the roof that has covered my for the past decade, listening to Henley formally close the last summer of high school. I will watch the sun set, and with it, my past.

Tomorrow is a new day.

Tomorrow I will be in my seventh floor dorm at San Jose State. It will be an odd change of direction, having not moved for over twelve years. I'll definitely miss all of you, and all of my experiences here in Pleasanton. But I was born in Silicon Valley, though, so in a way I am leaving home to come home. I will be back to where I am truly from, surrounded by the hills of gold. Bittersweet. Bittersweet Symphony, this life.


The boys of summer are gone. I am gone. I'm free, but alone.


We're in college now.

So let's do this. Bring it.

Current Mood: Adventurous

Listening To: "The Story" by Brandi Carille

Bucket List

Life from here on out is going to be like trick skydiving without a parachute. Free falling is inexplicably awesome, as is life. At the end of both is certain death. So I'd best get started on pulling as many awesome stunts in the air as I can before I hit the ground.

A bucket list is a must to set goals for yourself, goals that you need to achieve to complete yourself. I myself am only a fragment of who I want to be when I leave this world, so I should get working. I'm separating this list into "Achieved," "Average," and "Challenging" goals. Some of them may never be reached, because they are lifestyles that contradict one another, but I'll call them "Challenging" because IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING.I will continually update this indefinitely as I reach these goals and add new ones:

Achieved Goals:
-Wear chromed aviators daily :-D
-Go 100mph+ in a car (We hit 132.4mph in the Cadillac on Stanley)
-Drive 100mph+ in a car (My record is 108.6mph in the Scion on Highland)
-Ski A Double-Diamond
-SKi out-of-bounds at a ski resort
-Run on a Track Team
-Win Track races
-Land a 40 foot ski jump
-Break 50mph on skis
-Go backpacking
-Stand on a mountaintop and watch the sunrise
-Become an Eagle Scout
-Obtain High School diploma
-Find at least 1 person I can trust
-Ask someone out (regardless of the outcome)
-Go for a 5 hour walk in the middle of the night
-Own a tuner (goal from the old Need For Speed Underground days)
-Waterski
-Play ice hockey & watch a hockey game
-Make a wish on a shooting star (I saw 78 in two hours in Willets, CA...and made the same wish on all of them)
-Swim at least a mile continually
-Become a half-decent writer
-Have a H.S. crush
-Go to Las Vegas
-Go to New York


Average Goals:
-Meet Glen Plake and have him sign my face (and skis)
-Skydive from at least 15,000 ft.
-Get a Bachelors Degree
-Heli-Ski the Alps & Alaska
-Get married
-Have a family
-Travel to Japan
-Travel to Africa
-Travel to Germany
-Write, sing, produce an album and perform it live
-Learn to play guitar
-Become an advanced drummer
-Meet John Glenn
-Break 100 mph on skis
-Land a 55 foor ski jump
-Do a front flip on skis / do a whole bunch of stunts on skis
-Bungie Jump
-Go to a Tom Petty Concert
-Go to a Mark Knopfler Concert
-Go to a whole lot of concerts
-Do a backflip on dry ground
-Live in New York for a year


Challenging Goals (I can dream):
-Find that 'someone,' who also thinks I am that 'someone'
-Fly a military jet at Mach or higher
-Become a Marine Officer
-Become a Marine Officer Fighter Pilot
-Get a Masters Degree
-Win a gold medal in the Olympics
-Go to all 7 continents
-Fly in Zero G
-Go to space
-Stand on the Moon
-Act in a movie
-Produce &/or edit a movie
-Work for Warren Miller or Teton Gravity
-Work for Apple

Current Mood: Busy

Listening To: "Believe" by The Bravery

One Week

College.

Some of you have already left, some of you have a few weeks of Summer to go (you lucky bastards.) As for me, I have one week left in the fast-dying days of youth-hood in Pleasanton. And as the final hours wither into dust, I'm realizing that I've never had such a bizarre cocktail of emotions.

I've never been so ready to leave, but I've never been so reluctant to do so. I've never wanted so badly to meet new people, but I've never been so hesitant to leave old friends forever. I want to be somebody amazing, and I want to be myself. Maybe they're the same thing.

When two sides of yourself face off and contradict, you are in limbo, walking the thin wire between the towers of your former and future self, at risk of falling and losing your identity. It seems odd because my College career is set in stone and I'm all packed, but I still feel like I don't know where I'm going.

It's like filling your bags with your memories and going to the airport...buying a ticket to nowhere, to anywhere...you'll figure it out when you get there. How long will you stay? Who knows. Who will you meet? You will see. Where will you go from there? Who will you go with? Only time can answer these questions. But they will never be answered until you get there, because time is always a step ahead of you.

I don't care how organized you are, or how detailed your plans are for the next two years, or four, or ten...there is always the fog of uncertainty that keeps you from knowing exactly how the game plays out.

I'm going to spend this last week seeing and talking to as many people I care about that I can before I leave. I will only be 30 miles away from here, but we will go in different directions to different places, and our lives will be different. Some of us will be at Community Colleges, some at 4-year Universities, some directly into the workforce. The truly honorable will be fighting for our country.

For the past 13 years many of us have gone to the same schools with the same teachers and the same rooms. We've walked the same halls, been to the same football games, the same lockdowns. Now, for the first time, we will no longer start in sync. The gun has yet to be fired, but some of us have already left the blocks, and some will wait longer. But we are running the same race, against time. We are no longer in the same place but in relation to the scale of this universe, we are still right next to each other. Same stars, same sky.

So now, I bid you auf wiedersehen, until I see you again. But remember that we aren't really as far apart as you think. Call me if you ever want to talk about anything. I always have been, and will be, someone that anybody can trust.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. I wish you all good luck in this new beginning. This is the next chapter in your unfinished book. Don't spill the ink-- have fun but don't be stupid. I don't want invitations to anything but weddings and birthdays until I'm at least 40. No funerals! That goes for all of you Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines, too, dammit.

Most importantly, enjoy life.



I've got adrenaline in my veins, spikes on my feet. Down in the blocks, looking at the ground. Finger on the trigger. SET..........


...and here...we...go..............






peace & love forever,

K2

Current Mood: Weird

Listening To: "Call to Arms" by Angels & Airwaves