The Stars That Usher Evening Rose

First of all I would like to wish a day early Happy Halloween to everyone.

I finally finished "Sole Survivor" a few days ago. Because of school and other distractions it took me a lot longer to read that one than the ones in the past. So finishing that one I went to the store and bought a new Koontz book to read called "Odd Thomas".

In "Odd Thomas" I read the quote "I am twenty years old. To a world-wise adult, I am little more than a child. To any child, however, I'm old enough to be distrusted, to be excluded forever from the magical community of the short and beardless." I am not sure why but this made me think of a conversation Michael and I had a few days back. We were talking about whether dying is as bad as people think it is. I told him it depends on how you look at it. If you're a Christian then no dying is not all that bad, though you are in no rush to get there. But if you look at it from non-Christian point of view then its different. If your someone in the late teens or very early twenties the only big things you really have to look forward to is marriage, children, retirement and eventually grandchildren. Those don't even apply to all people. Like Michael for example in recent weeks seems to be leaning toward the idea of not wanting to get married or have kids so out of all of those all he has is retirement and at his age that's a really long way off. But there are also negatives ahead of someone this age. Like having to get up early every morning and go to work 5 days a week, like a robot, for 40 or more years. Which that brings many more responsibilities of which some can be fun and others are not so fun. Like, more bills, taking care of other people and your kids if you have any, other financial situations and the list just goes on. Plus there is always that factor of getting older and losing your younger looks and joints stiffening and not working like they used to. So if your around the age the age of late teens and very early twenties would dying soon really be that bad of a thing? Human nature says no it is a bad thing because no one really wants to die. But taking out human nature then is it? Well once again I think it depends on the individual. For me I guess in a way I have to take the Christian view even though I am not a big Christian. I don't believe dying would be bad but at the same time, even with taking the human nature factor out, I don't want to die anytime soon.

If I could I would rather, after I graduate from college, back track to the first day of first grade and live my life again from that point. For a few reasons. 1.) being the fact of having little to no responsibilities and being able to just be a kid, 2.) having long breaks to relax to some extent, 3.) to be able to go back and do things I regret not doing and 4.) you wouldn't have to worry about all those things I mentioned above. Only negative to doing it this way is you would not get the positives of going older. Of course this is all impossible and we must grow older.

I temporarily caught Michaels bug of over spending. I went to the mall Friday afternoon just to get out of this dorm room and had no plans of buying anything. But instead I ended up walking out of there having spent over $75 on things that I don't need. Oh well.

It looks like in order to vote I am going to have to travel to Charlotte on Tuesday. I never got an absentee ballet which is partially my fault and partially not my fault because I have never done the absentee ballet thing before so I had no idea how it works. In order to go I would probably have to miss my Weather Analysis class on Tuesday for the second time in two weeks and my Calc. class on Wednesday assuming I stayed the night instead of driving back the same day. It would depend on my mood and how I felt that day.

Finally, for anyone, like Michael, who might forget this is just a reminder to set your clocks back an hour tonight.

Stupid fire alarms. I got to the cafe at 1:20pm trying to get in and out as fast as possible because I had my Weather Analysis class at 1:45pm. So I got a sub sandwich and a piece of pizza but just after I got a piece of pizza the damn fire alarm went off. So I had to leave my tray of food sitting on the shelf thing there in front of the pizza and head outside. Not what I needed with class starting in 20 minutes. So we had to stand outside for 15 minutes before finally letting us back in. I had to decided whether to stay and eat and skip class or not eat and go to class. Finally after a short time of thinking I said fuck it and decided to skip class and eat because I was hungry. Hope we didn't do anything to important.

After my previous post I realize why some people use blogs or journals. Because it was kind of nice to have this thing to be able to type all that down. There are people who have a lot more issues than me and have more to write about and I am sure they really like having one of these to be able to vent their energy and get things of their chest. So maybe there is purpose to keeping up with one of these things even if only one or two people even read it.

On Thursday night while I was talking to Michael I got a weird feeling about the following day. Michael and I joked about the different things it could be, but never really expecting anything to happen. For the most part we were right nothing really happened on Friday, but the weekend itself was quite an eye opening experience for me.

A lot of people take their families for granted, not really thinking about all the things they have done for them in the past. I realized this weekend I had been one of these people. On Saturday night everything seemed to being going in a fairly normal fashion until it came time for Jacqueline to get ready for bed. Now back tracking a minute, if you remember a few post back I had mentioned that Jacqueline had gone to be evaluated for ADD and ADHD and that they came back and said that yes she does have ADHD but they also think she might be bipolar. After what happened Saturday night I believe she is bipolar. There were two totally different girls that showed their faces that night. First there was the friendly, caring, loving, happy, hyper little girl, but then her mother told her to brush her teeth and she made a 180 degree change, and if I didn't know any better I could have sworn she had turned into the devil himself. At first she just said no that she didn't want to brush her teeth and Cathy told her that if she brushed her teeth that she could watch TV for 30 minutes in bed before going to sleep. This did not work Jacqueline continued to fight it. So Cathy told her that she just lost 5 minutes off the original 30. Jacqueline then started jumping up and down crying saying "ok, ok, I am sorry, please give me another chance." Cathy just told her again to brush her teeth and Jacqueline just replied with no. So Cathy said fine you lose another 5 minutes and Jacqueline starting crying again and whining again about wanting another chance. Then Jacqueline says "I don't love you, I hate you" and stormed out of the room, Cathy did not follow but just watched her. Just out the door and out of my view, Jacqueline went off and left me in complete shock of what I was hearing. She started growling and snarling and screaming and telling her mom to "Get out, Get out of this house! I hate you, get out of here!" over and over again. And then came back in her room and hit Cathy in which Cathy did finally return the hit and told her not to hit people, and told her that she had now lost TV for that night and once again to brush her teeth. So Jacqueline goes in and brushes her teeth in about 15 seconds which Cathy obviously knew was not really brushing your teeth so she told her to do it again. Jacqueline said "no" so Cathy got up and grabbed Jacqueline's tooth brush and brushed her teeth for her while Jacqueline screamed and took a few swings. After this Cathy took Jacqueline into her room and preceded to talk with her for about 15 minutes. Cathy finally returned and broke down in tears.

Now you might be wondering why she didn't beat the crap out of Jacqueline's butt. I would have probably wondered myself if I had not heard and seen what I had just seen. How do you handle a situation like that? I would not have a clue what to do. You can not punish Jacqueline because she had no control over herself and the way she was acting and returning violence towards her probably would have just fueled Jacqueline even more. After seeing that I have never felt so sorry for both Cathy and William. I don't know how they do that day after day like they do, it has to be hard.

After words the whole scenario of that night got me to thinking about everything my family has gone through over the years, especially the last 10 or so years. We have had both of my sisters getting divorced in that time with some child custody battles and Cathy going though a mental breakdown at the same time that Jeralyn had E-coli and had lost her baby, plus the problems and stress that my grandmother caused my parents before she died, and recently the whole business failure because of my sister and her husband not holding up their end of the bargain, which eventually led to us having to sell the house in Peachtree City. Yet through all these rough times were several other families might have folded mine didn't. We always have stuck together and been there for each other when we needed it most, and are probably stronger and closer today because of it. Now today we have Jillian, with epilepsy and Jacqueline looking like she is bi-polar now causing stress and problems and I once again see everyone stepping up and helping anyway they can, even if it's just for a shoulder to cry on.

I was reading this article and it is things like this that make me realize how fucked up humans really are. How does a girl get killed during a celebration of a sports teams victory. Something like that just shouldn't happen. And what's with the rioting. How does a normal humans brain go "Yeah! We just beat the Yankees! Now lets go riot, set some fires, and get into some fights!". How does that work? I mean I can understand celebrating by going out and getting drunk or something with some friends, but going out and rioting and getting into fights. Ummm, ok.

I got a call from the daughter of my advisor from Young Harris today. She invited me to come to a surprise birthday party for her mother. She told me they were inviting her friends, family, and her current and past advisees. Two problems though, one is that it's on Saturday November 6th and I had told Michael that I might come visit him that weekend. Second problem is that it is being held two hours away from here, in Blairsville, GA, which means if I went I probably wouldn't get back here until around or after midnight. So between those two things I probably wont be able to go even though I would have really liked too.

Anyway, I have decided that I am going to go to my sisters this weekend so I will be leaving here tomorrow after my one and only class of the day, and of course return on Sunday for work.

Now my sister is trying to convince me to come over this weekend because my mom and Clancy are going to be there. Plus William is having his b-day party this weekend. He turned 12 on the 17th. That might be enough to convince me assuming I don't have any projects or anything thrown at me at the last minute.

In my Calc. class we had a test and my professor made a big boo-boo. He started giving out the test and realized he was giving us the wrong test. He was giving us the first test all over again. So he had to run off back to his office find the correct test and start making a bunch of copies. He enlisted the help of a fellow professor who ran down and started handing out the first page of the exam while he finished making copies of the rest. Not to long after that he did return with the rest of the pages and handed them out so we could take the rest of the exam. My problem was that doing all this totally killed my concentration and going into that exam I was confident that I could get an A or a B on it, but once my concentration was blown I never really got it back and now I am thinking I probably got a C. Oh well what can I do.

In Basketball I had one of my better days. Before this semester I had not played basketball in about 2 years and it definitely showed. But today definitely showed signs that I was starting to get back to the level I once was at. We had to shot 100 free throws and count how many we made to figure out our percentage. I made 76/100 or 76% of my shots, the third highest amount amount out of 12 people in the class.

Yesturday was one of those days where I ran the gantlet of emotions. About the only one I can think of that I didn't have at some point was sadness. But at times I was happy, upset, pissed, amused, annoyed, anxious, content, and just about anything you can think of. I wont post about the individual situtations since most aren't worth posting about and would be boring to read. But I will post about one of them. I had just finished eating in the cafe and was making my way out and in the lobby they have a huge standing cardboard/poster type thing that's about 15 feet wide and 5 foot tall. It had the question posted on it asking "How has alcohol effected your life?" and something that someone wrote caught my eye. It said "I know people who drink and they are really dumb!". I read that and couldn't help but be amused and get a laugh out of it, because it reminded me of matt and his absolute stubbornness against drinking of any kind.

As for my roommate after he never returned on Friday I knew that he had left for the weekend, so I expect him back sometime today. Kind of sucks that he is coming back because I have enjoyed having this place all to myself for a few days, oh well.

Also, even though I am sure neither of them read this, I would like to congratulate Greg and Miranda on getting married on Saturday. I hope they are happy together and I wish them the best.

The weekend has started, well for me atleast. Though I am not sure why I am happy about that. I have several test next week that I need to study for. My sister, Cathy, has been trying to talk me into going to her place this weekend because she is really bored. William and Jacqueline have left for the weekend with their dad and her friends that live two or three doors down have gone out of town. So she has nothing to do. But, I have to much studying to do and I would get that done better here than there. Plus I don't really feel like making a drive of that distance after just being in Atlanta last week.

My roommate has disappeared. He left with one of his friends from home around 4pm yesterday and I haven't seen either of them since. I am hoping that they have taken off for the weekend so I can have this place all to myself.

I forgot to post about something in my last post. As some of you all my know Jillian the youngest of my nieces, she is 5, has epilepsy. But my sister, Cathy, took her daughter Jacqueline, who is 7, to be evaluated at the doctor for ADD and ADHD and they think that she has ADHD but they also believe she may be bi-polar. If she is bi-polar this is, in my opinion, scarier than epilepsy is, because epilepsy you can grow out of and if you don't there are medications that can control it. But, with a bi-polar disorder, atleast from what I understand, it is something you do not grow out of and even though there are medications out there for it there effectives can sometimes be questionable. A cousin of my has a son who is bi-polar, if I remember correctly he is 10 or 11 years old and they are having all sorts of problems with him. He wants to kill himself because he can't take it. They have to send letters to the school to let them know to be careful with the kid because if they set him off somehow he can turn violent. Though its not guaranteed that she is bi-polar yet and I am assuming there will be more test in the not so distant future to find out for sure. Only can hope she is not.

So its seems that there is actually two people who read this thing. Not a following to brag about that's for sure but its better than having no one I guess. Maybe with time I will gain more, though I am not betting on it.

Today I almost went off on one of my professors. He claimed he didn't say something he had. Last Tuesday before fall break in my Weather Analysis class my professor had told us while we were turning in homework that we could turn in whatever we had finished and turn the rest in the next class meeting which was today (Tuesday). So I only turned in one of the three assignments that where due that day so I could look back over the other two to make sure I was happy with them. Then in class today he gave back those assignments and after class another student and I tried to turn in the other assignments and the professor would not take them. So I reminded him of what he had said the previous week and he still hesitated. I was started to get agitated and I told him that when he had just gone over them in class I had graded them myself. He turned to ask the other guy if he had done the same and he said he did. So finally the professor caved in and asked me how many I missed and I told him and he said that sounded fair enough. Thankfully he caved in when he did because if he had still refused to take them I might have gotten myself into some trouble. Other than that its been a fairly non-eventful couple of days.

Though today I have been pondering, more than I normally do, over what my plans are when my parents do move to Orlando in February of this coming year. Do I want to move down to Orlando with them, or move to Charlotte and stay with one of my sisters until I finish school and get a job? I don't know which yet, both have advantages and disadvantages to them. I can't stay in Atlanta because I wont have any real place to stay there. Though Michaels mom said I could stay with them. But she offers that to anyone she knows and plus I am not sure if that would be the smartest idea for me. Though once done with school I do hope to find a job in the Atlanta area and move back but who knows nothing is ever guaranteed.

I must say this blog is becoming somewhat a pain to keep up with, only because Michael is the only one who seems to even read this thing. If more people read it then it would be a different story. I know it is not the most interesting blog in the world nor was it ever intended to be but I think it is interesting enough. I will keep up with it for a little while longer and give it more of a chance to maybe pick up a few people.

Anyway I am back up in Asheville at school again. I arrived here around 5:40pm and had to quickly get ready for work at 6pm were I still sit as I type this. On Friday I went down to PTC and hung around with Matt for a while. We went back to McIntosh to see the changes that had been made recently, like the senior cafeteria being moved, the technology room is gone, and the new gym which still is not completed. We also tried to find some teachers and the only one I found was my German teacher, Herr Keough, and I talked for him for a second. But before going to McIntosh we stopped by Wal-Mart and saw Andrew and talked to him for a few minutes and then walked around the store looking for anyone I knew from when I worked their last year and only saw two. Then on Saturday my parents and I went to Ellijay, Georgia where they own some property and when went to the annual picnic they have there. My parents also looked at a few houses that had already been built and even found on they liked but not on a lot they liked so now they are talking about using that house on their lot and use the house as a summer/getaway home. Then My dad and I went golfing and my mom tagged along to watch. My dad beat me by one stroke but he also cheated, because he would pick up any ball within 3 feet of the hole and say he made it.

On the drive up here I had one of Michaels detached from the world episodes, I guess you would call it. I was driving through Greenville, South Carolina searching the radio for the race and looked at some of the exit signs, but they didn't seem real as if they didn't exist or that I was really somewhere else at that time and I was looking through someone else's eyes or watching a movie. It didn't last long maybe 5-10 seconds but it was definitely weird.

On Tuesday before I left school on my way back to my room after eating I had a flashback (I guess you would call it) to one of Michaels post that he made a couple days ago.

I had walked over to the elevator in our cafe at the school and there was a child (about 7 or 8 years old) and both his parents standing waiting for the elevator as well. Then the child looks up and points at me saying "Mommy, he scares me." His mother turns to him and tells him that I am not scary and that it is ok. But, when the kid said this I immediately thought back to Michaels post about him saying that there seemed to be several children who had acted as if they were afraid of him. Why this boy was scared of me I am not sure. Maybe it was actually me who scared him or maybe it was my shirt that scared him. I was wearing my Ozzfest 2003 shirt at the time and it has a demon type thing playing the guitar on the front of it, which to a child might be scary.

But that all got me thinking about when I was a kid and also about how my nephew, who turns 12 in a few days, and my niece, who is 7, act. I realized that kids really are more perceptive than adults are. William is getting to the age were he is not really that way anymore but Jacqueline is. Children are also much more open minded then adults are, whether that is because they are more willing to learn, because they don't know different, or for whatever reason. Children are more willing to try things and are a lot more likely to speak there mind which is actually very refreshing its a shame that more adults are not that way. I think that is part of the reason I enjoy kids so much is because they are a lot more fun to be around than adults are. Sure they can be annoying but it is still more fun than sitting around with adults talking about the news. Though Children being more perceptive and open minded is also a disadvantage for them as they can be more easily corrupted than an adult can, and what people became as an adult is mostly because of what they were taught when they were a child. Children are also more relaxed than adults. Most adults seem tense and stressed most of the time. But when you look at the whole picture adults are this way because it is the way that society has shaped the world. Which is unfortunate in my mind

Just a quick update or more of a reminder here since not much is going on. I am leaving tomorrow for Atlanta like I said before and will be there through the weekend for Fall Break. I will try and post while I am there assuming anything interesting goes on if not then I will post when I return on Sunday. Tomorrow Everclears greatest hits CD comes out tomorrow called "Ten Years Gone: The Best of Everclear 1994-2004" and I will definitely be there to buy it. Korn also has a greatest hits CD coming out buy if I do buy it I will probably get it later.

Well I was going to try putting titles on the post to see if I liked it or not but it seems that this template that I am using is not set up to show them so I guess I won't try it, oh well.

Haven't posted in a few days but that's mainly because there isn't a damn thing going on right now. It's October now that means Halloween is not that far away. I will probably go to my sisters the weekend of Halloween because she supposedly has some things planed, I don't know what exactly though she hasn't really told me much about it.

Next Tuesday we have the start of Fall Break here so I will be heading home to Atlanta during that time. Probably will head down to PTC at least once to see some of my friends, I need to call them to see whats going on. On Saturday I promised my dad I would go golfing with him so that should be fun. Otherwise I have to be back here on that Sunday for work.

Also I found out that no matter how much school we miss (even if we missed several weeks) that we can not make them up because graduation is set and our vacations are set and cannot be changed at all, unlike grade schools which can make students come to class during scheduled vacations. Only thing they could possibly due is have classes on Saturdays but that is unlikely since it probably wouldn't help all that much. So I thought that was pretty cool.