Snow And More Snow

Things have been pretty stressful at work as of late. With only 3 people there instead of 5 we have to do more work. That's not fun. Kristal is managing well as of late and Jonathan and I are trying to keep her sane as much as possible.

By the way, it's snowing constantly here. Winter has arrived in Ridgway. I called Dr. Zeltner up too and we talked for like 4 minutes about how everything is going. So I know this is a short one but I don't know what else is going on.

A Weekend Where I Talked To People!

That's right. I actually took a trip to the wonderful and mediocre land known as Slippery Rock University. What spawned this trip? Sheer boredom and also because I don't know when the next fun and uninterrupted weekend will be.

So after telling my 3 loyal fans about my imminent appearance and putting a red-colored breaking news alert on the Rocket wire, Moo-Shu Mike is second to greet me (of course the first few being the Adam Brewer group of cool and wrestling-related hysteria) and he greets me with the greatness known as Prepwear, anything in Polo Jeans Co. However, I did enough ripping of Mike in person, so I will not go ahead and rip him on the blog anymore considering he did let me crash on the couch while he slept in longer than I did (oops) Mike and I played NHL 2K7 on the virtouso machine known as a Playstation 3 which requires approximately a down payment on a house to purchase. (It's $600 just for the machine) The graphics look sharp but I don't think it's that big an improvement from the PS2 opposite to when the PS2 was a massive improvement over the PS1 which made me drool every night haha. After playing SD vs Raw 07, which has terrible controls by the way, it was time for the gloriousness known as Madden in which after nearly choking it away the Colts (me) defeated the Patriots, 41-36 in which Tom Brady threw 5 interceptions mainly off of flukes.

Eat'n Park was next and amazingly my order was not duplicated by anyone. I'm so very proud about that (oops again). Then it was bowling where I was soundly defeated by mostly everybody. I bowled an 80 and I was very proud to do that. Afterwards, Mike begged and begged for all of us to go to a local place called Palmer's (which sadly I had never heard of. And I went to SRU for 4 years.) At Palmer's, I sit there bored at the beginning with Mike, Brian and Dan-o. Then I see my friends Jenna and Elise. Jenna talked to me about her life and was asking me some advice about what she should do for the semester. I enjoyed her company and we had a couple hugs too! I didn't notice Elise there until she looked at me. Elise is my roommate's cousin and was nice to see her and catch up on how Chase and Heather are doing. We hugged too and I found out she is a Facebook stalker. That's always a nice thing to know.

Sunday came along and after sleeping and waking up, Mike and I watched an old wrestling pay-per-view. After doing that, I got to visit my friend Brittney which was absolutely great! Brittney and I got to catch up on everything and I got to take a picture with my lovely camera. I've know Brittney for a long time and she's really cool and sweet. I know she'll be successful when she graduates in the world known as television.

The weekend continued by returning to the glorious halls of ECB and seeing the differences in the department. There's a bunch of different stuff and posters on the wall and a couple of my lovely articles are plastered on the Rocket alumni board. I saw Rachel and Nate and Ivan in the Rocket office and got to see how that was too. All of those folks seem to be doing well which I was very happy to see!

I think this weekend proved that even when you're away from your friends for a long time they still care about you and miss you just like you miss them. I know that was deep.

So that was fun and now I guess the next weekend is almost here. Let's do it.

The Girl From Blairsville

Editor's Note: This story will deal a lot about a story that has rarely been told, and never told to the college folks. This will undoubtedly make them mad at me or make them cry or both. Let's hope for just the first one. Alas, this story will not be dealing with the usual sarcasm a blog entry does. But enough warnings, here we go.

It was Super Bowl weekend, 2001. I was in 11th grade at the time and was heading to my first District 9 Chorus extravanganza. For those of you that may not know, District Chorus was the best of the best singers from 30-40 high schools in the regions. Yep, before I was a great journalist, I was a great singer. The trip down was nothing to shout about and the early part of the night wasn't either. We arrived in Blairsville at the auditorium and it was kind of dark and all that crap. So it was time for my audition to go on to Regional Chorus. If you got in a certain percentage you got to move on to an even more select chorus "festival," which I later did a year afterwards. But there's one problem with this audition. See, I had a sore throat from practicing and wearing out my voice. Yep, not so hot. Plus, to make it even worse, the judges in the room decide to pick out the two songs I didn't really know so well. So let's just say I sucked it up like a vacuum cleaner sucks up fuzzballs. So I'm walking out of the room and I'm not feeling all that great about the "performance." And then there she is.

Her name was Heather Marsh and she went to Blairsville at the time. Heather had curly red hair which proves I don't exclusively have things for blondes. Her official reason for being there was that she was a "Bass I host runner" which basically meant she made sure people like me who are directionally-impaired didn't get lost in the school. Heather said I did a good job and we engaged in small talk and I really didn't think of it much at the time. From what I can remember, I think she really wanted to talk with me and offered to hang around me during the week.

The first morning comes around and we practice, quite a lot actually. Not so much fun. After the practice, there's Heather waiting for me and I think she went and gave me the tour of the school. (This was one of my favorite parts of going to other schools and somehow I got a tour of EVERY school I was at including Apollo-Ridge, Clarion-Limestone, Union City and of course Blairsville.)

One of the most memorable moments came whenever she started doing a cheer in the hall for me and anyone else that would listen. During breaks, usually we would end up finding each other along with her friend Jessica and hang out or just sit around and be bums (something I enjoy quite a bit).

Friday night was our first concert and afterwards there was a dance. No, we didn't dance together and the most memorable thing I remember about this dance was it was the first time I heard "We Like to Party." This dance had huge video screens too. Imagine if they had this at the prom.

Saturday morning came along and I remember our little group having a conversation and Heather begging us not to leave before our afternoon concert. That point will come up again. A lot of other stuff happened before the concert too. I remember talking with a group of guys about how low-scoring Super Bowl 35 would be between the Giants and the Ravens. We were all wrong, the Giants lost 34-7.

The concert comes along and is over with and thankfully in a short amount of time. It was the first time I remember sweat dripping down my back. It was also the first (but not the last) robe zipper I broke. The concert ends and I'm looking for Heather because I know she'll be so disappointed if I don't see here. It takes a little while and then I see her. And then she starts to cry. A lot. We embrace for probably a minute or two as she eventually settles down. She tells me to promise I will e-mail her back when I get home. (This was before I had facebook, AIM or even a cell phone.) So I'm walking out the door of the school with my folks and she comes whizzing by and hands me a note then screams, "E-mail me when you get home!" Of course, the first thing I'm thinking is "Why did you have to do that in front of my parents!" Questions followed and I think my grandmother thought I had a girlfriend which sadly was not true. This may have got around briefly in school too.

That's not the end of the story, though. Heather and I usually would e-mail each other once a week and update our lives. I would tell about my distain for physics (and the handy-dandy formula card) while Heather would tell how she gained confidence in singing from watching me perform. As a month or two went on, she started saying "I miss you" a lot more. I saved every e-mail. We got to talk a couple times online on MSN Messenger (HAHA! How dated is that!) and while talking she told me I have a beautiful heart and to never change for anyone.

Sadly, though, Heather's e-mail address became inactive and I haven't tracked her down since. I'm not too optimistic that I will any time soon either. But the reason I wrote this is because A) I was waiting on results at work and B) It just kind of popped into my head like a lot of the blog entries tend to do.

I think I want to end it like this. Almost every time, Heather e-mailed me she would sign off, "Love your friend always." Now normally, I wouldn't really believe that or take much stock in it. But with her, I do. Well, that's about it. Sorry if I made you all emotional. I promise the next one will be a lot funnier. People need to start giving kids normal names.

Hey It's A New Year!

Wow, it's been a long time since I wrote in here. Of course, lots of stuff has been going as expected.

The new year has come upon us and I'm pretty excited for it. I always liked odd-numbered years better than even ones because it seems like odd years are better. Oh well. I turned 23 on the 4th and I must say I had a very nice birthday with lots of well-wishers. My editor, Kristal went and baked me a cake which you can see if you have the lovely marvel of Facebook. Her cat went and licked part of the cake so she had to cut out three of the pieces. It was still a very nice thing she did. But speaking of Kristal, she's very sick with some sort of nasty stomach virus that I hope I never ever get. Lots of puking and not a lot of good times are involved. Yuck.

Rumor has it the spring semester is starting at school soon. HAHA!! And I don't have to pack or move or do any of that worthwhile crap that I hated while attending the fine institution of Slippery Rock University. It's snowed very little here so I have to thank global warming for having it be unseasonably warm. It's been in the 50s quite a bit in Ridgway lately. Just a little odd. I get to watch the NFL Divisional Playoffs this weekend which is pretty sweet in my opinion.

I hope to be visiting SRU for a weekend pretty soon to see the entire gang soon. (Or at least as many as I can rile up) I have one special fan that is especially anxious as well to see me come back. I think I will call her "Special Smiley." I don't know if she'll like that or not so I might have to come up with a better nickname.

I got lots of good stuff for my birthday. I went and bought Final Fantasy 12 and Sonic Mega Collection Plus, two of my favorite video game series. I grew up with the Sonic games and now I have them all! Incredible! As with FF12, so far it's been a pretty good game through about 5 hours. (If you don't know, the game usually takes 40-50 hours to complete, depending on how much you want to do with it.)

I'm amazed that the Sonic series seems so easy today when I'm 23 then they did when I got them at 11 and 12. The games usually take around 2-3 hours to complete, a drip in the water compared to these mega-games today. They're still fun.

OK, that's about it for now. Until next time, stay healthy and eat some pretzels.