(05-22-01)
Some days I just wish I would get one of those amazing callings ministers and nuns are always talking about. I used to think I was supposed to write for the rest of my life. I was good at it. --- Don't get me wrong... I was no Brill. I wasn't in line for a state award, but for a kid, I was damn good... --- Then I lost it. It was like I had this little trinket that wasn't worth anything to anyone but me, but someone still came and stole it, just because they knew how much it meant to me.
Life is an interesting journey. I wish I had a roadmap, but I guess we all have to make our own.
Vrooooom! ;)
A
(05-20-01)
This summer is to be for me, a time to examine myself, find where I want to be and how I want to get there, see if I like who I am, and if I don't, find a way to change that. It's difficult, especially when I have people around me who want me to give more of myself than I want to until I know exactly who I want to be.
I need to talk to a few people about this - friends, family and new aquaintances. Some feelings are going to get trampled in the process, but I have to look out for myself right now, and have so "me" time to put everything into perspective.
A
(05-19-01)
This evening I went out with Mike to the movies. Don't go see the Tale of the Knight or whatever it was called. It was a terrible movie. Nothing was in any correct historical context.
Moving on, about the date: Eh... There's an age different, that in some people doesn't bother me, and in others is very definite. This one is definite. That's not a big deal, but there are some things that will bother me, and some things I have to deal with. I don't want anything serious. I don't want a shadow. I don't want much of anything outside a friendship, because I'm not ready to have one, and I don't have the time.
We'll have to see what goes on. Until then, I'll be working on stuff for the Tamaqua bureau because I'm taking over the editor's stuff there for the week. :)
A
(05-18-01)
I have added at the top of this site, links to all the stories that I write which appear in the Republican. I will probably be two days behind the paper, but I'll keep it up to date.
Tom Coombe, one of the full time journalists here is leaving today. He's going to the Allentown Morning Call. That will leave us all with a lot more work, and we will all miss him. He's been a good "cellmate" for the past week who listed to all my bitching and more.
So, Mike asked me to go out on a date this weekend... Nice. I think he has this website address. If he does, and he's looked at it already, I can say I was right about calling him open minded. If he hasn't seen it yet, I think I should change the address pretty damn quick! ;)
Brian and Billy went to the Pine Grove Borough Council meeting with me last night. The big topic of discussion there was a tractor. WAIT! I can't even call what they were talking about purchasing a tractor. It's a little riding lawnmower. A half an hour about a lawn mower! ERRR
A
(05-17-01)
I started working at the Pottsville Republican as a summer intern again on Monday. This is my third year with the county daily.
For a while I thought I lost my knack for writing, but I think I'm finally getting it back. I don't have much of a choice. Our Pennsylvania High School Journalist of the year will be starting his full time internship here soon, and that means competition, though he already said he wants none. Guy speak: "I'm scared." Trust me... Brill has no reason to be scared. He's good, and I have to be on the top of my game to get stories that can come close to cover with him around.
Andrea gave me the position of Layout Artist for the Fall at the Beacon. A knock down from what I was doing... I don't know how it's going to be to go from running the show to becoming a side show performer, but we'll see. If nothing else, I can be glad that it will give me more "Me" time. Now I can focus on writing and school a lot more, and I might even be able to remember my friend's names again! :)
Okay, so here's the update since I last wrote... Monday I killed the Thunderbird. Now I'm left with the Bronco until I graduate from college... 4 years from now.
My first day back I got a front page story. YEA! Fluff, but that will work for now.
I got to see Matt yesterday... He was my geometry tutor last year, and my physics teacher, as well as a good family friend. I missed him, so it was nice to see how he is.
I also met a guy while "observing" Matt's class. His name is Mike, and he's funny as hell. I hope I get to see him sometime this summer. He seems very open-minded and humorous, and I need a few of those kind of people around me down here or I'll go insane.
I also saw Jason, my sorta-ex, last night. We, along with his cousin Bobby, and a whole bunch of people went out to the bowling alley. We got there before the rest of them, so I played pool with Jason. Let's just say, 5 bets later, I wasn't doing a thing, and he couldn't curse for an hour, had turned over his one shirt for a week and had to moon some people. :) What can I say... college taught me well.
Speaking of college teaching me... I pulled the semester out with 3.5's in all my COM classes, a 2.5 in SOC and a 2.0 in Psychology. Not too bad for 45 hours plus monopolized by the paper, and an extremele case of sleep deprivation. :)
The Republican's okay. If I can get back into the swing of things, this will be a good summer. If not, I will be in a great mood to go back to Wilkes.
I'm thinking that I'll go out tomorrow night for a while. Fridays are great! :) Now I just have to find someone to hang out with, and somewhere to go... CHEAP... because I haven't gotten paid yet from the Republican. hmmmmmmmmmm What is there to do in Schuylkill County... the eternal question!
I'll update more later... now I have to get back to a story that's on deadline in less than an hour... Have fun! I know I will...
A
<05-10-01)
I left Wilkes yesterday after completing my freshman year in college. I will be online soon enough at home, and will make sure to post updates. :)
A
(05-08-01)
I just finished my rough draft for Jane's COM 300 class. What a pain! The scariest part about it is that I think I knew what I was talking about. Now she gets to look over it and tell me if I'm a genius or just completely stupid.
The speech in Kinney's class went well. Scott came up to see it. Wow, the things he had to say about the people in the class... and the things the people in the class had to say as their dream! It was an awakening.
Speaking of awake... I shouldn't be. I have a final in COM 102 that I haven't finished studying for in about 7 1/2 hours... guess I better hit the sack. :) Night!
A
(05-07-01)
Two finals down... both looked good. You know what that means: either I did really well or REALLY FUCKED THEM UP. Hope it's the first! ;)
I played football tonight out on the greenway. FUN! I wish I had started doing that before we were leaving. (SHOUT OUT HERE: I'm miss you Ed and Greg! Good luck and keep in touch.)
Back to writing my speech for the final in Kinney's class.
A
(05-06-01)
I have my first two finals tomorrow... think I'm ready. Gotta get back to studying (i.e. trying to read but being distracted by all the fun things like SNOOD and Erick) :)
(05-05-01)
Mental note: Never go to bed at 10 am when you have to get up at 3 pm. Now, you can reverse this. You can go to bed at 3 am if you want to be up by 10 am, or at 10 pm to be up at 3 am, but 10 am bedtime is a no-no!
Scott came up tonight... I saved him from some psycho girl in Hazelton. ;) Ah, the fun you get to have...
A
(05-04-01)
I just got back from the a walk around good ol' Wilkes-Barre... SCARY PLACE!!! Erick and I took a walk last night, too, as a stress relief. It was great, and we only met one heroin addict prostitute, so we didn't do too bad our first night. We thought we'd try it again... bad idea!
This time we were chased down Wilkes-Barre Blvd. by a psychotic old drunken druggie guy. NO WORD OF A LIE! He was freaky! He called me hun. We started booking it down the street and he was keeping up. I thought we were going to die. Gotta love Wilkes-Barre. Glad to be here for another four years... :/
On to better things... ummmm, finals. Nope... not better... ummmm, more finals... nope. Damn! Well, when I find something better that's on the near horizon, I'll make sure to check in. Until then, be careful, always watch who's walking behind you, and never leave home without your best friend who's a double black belt! ;)
A
(05-03-01)
You know what I liked best about the study break party in the cafeteria tonight? Nope, not that I got to take a break from studying... Nope, not free pizza or soda or ice cream. It was the fact that I got to say the words "fuck" and "go down on you..." over a microphone REALLY REALLY loud in front of a whole bunch of students, and our deans, and they couldn't and didn't do anything about it... it was perfectly acceptable, though some people raised an eyebrow. It was fun.
Now, don't get me wrong... I don't think I can sing now or anything, but karaoke is fun. Where else do the deans let you say that kind of stuff... and Alanis is so me... "You oughta know!"
Annie sang too. It was cool. She won a door prize - $20 gift certificate from Applebees. :) GO ANNIE!
Last Beacon came out today. I'm very excited about my responsibility being over, but I'm also sort of upset. I enjoyed my time, made great friends, worked extra hard to do everything with that and get all my work done for classes, and really pulled off a good semester on all fronts.
Well, now I have to work on a 12-15 page paper for Rhetorical Criticism... wish me luck!
A
(05-01-01)
Tomorrow is the last day of classes for the semster: YES! Bad part about that, though, is: FINALS ARE NOW HERE!!!
Erick is working diligently on his Bio Lab notebook. I am reading some of my Rhetorical Criticism book to find information and a method to use in my 15 page Rhet. Crit. of the Harlem Renaissance poetry. I also have to do a 10-15 minute speech on that for Thursday, and write an 8-10 minute speech on "I, too, have a Dream" for Tuesday. Don't you want to be a COM major, too? :)
I put in my application for next year's Beacon, but I haven't heard anything yet. I'm not too surprised. I also registered for classes today. I'm taking 18 credits:
COM 202, Interpersonal with JANE,
COM 224, Mass Media and Society with NO ONE because
the prof who teaches it is leaving,
COM 260, Basic Newswriting with Andrea... what fun that should be!
ENG 358, Contemporary Fiction... a whole lotta reading going on
HST 398, Education in American Life, with no professor because he's retiring, and
ED 190, Effective Teaching with Dr. Baynum.
I hope it's worth it to pick up two more majors... that's right, I said two... Secondary Ed, and English, and I'll still be in Communications as a double concentration in Rhetoric/Public Address and Journalism. What fun!
Today I had to pick up my security clearance papers for ED 190. They have to check my criminal history, if I've ever abused children, my eye color, urine sample, and who I've slept with... okay, I exagerate that part (thank god, I don't want to have to make a list!) but they are very thorough about not just letting anyone walk in and observe the high school kids around here. I guess they want to make sure that we're bad asses already so the kids don't corrupt us.
A
(04-31-01)
Since I came back from a nice little mental health vacation at home, I've decided to stay at Wilkes. I've added another major and along with that came a minor... Communications, Secondary Ed, and a minor in English here I come!
Erick and I are currently in the process of figuring out our housing situation for next year. This is a long and difficult procedure because the university is not officially cool with us living together, so asking for a room together wouldn't fly. That means we each have to find roommates that like our counterpart, RAs that don't have a problem with us living together, and all that fun jazz. We can't live off campus or we lose part of our scholarships. Anyone want to give us an anonymous $1 million dollars so we can get an apartment together and pay for our education... something like that anonymous million that came in to rename COB Breiseth Hall.
Speaking of Breiseth Hall, BOB, as it is more affectionatly called, was on fire today! Okay, I exagerate. Actually, the mulch to left of BOB was smoldering. As Jane and I were coming down the stairs from COM 102 we smelled smoke. Jane quickly alerted the deans office who promply, over an hour later, notified the fire department that there was indeed a burning smell coming into the building. No one got off their asses to check where this could be coming from. Now, hello people, I know brick, glass and fake gold don't go up in flames very quickly, but the week before finals, you think you would just a little more contientious of not having a major campus building burn down.
Now let me move on to the brilliant Wilkes-Barre Fire Department. After being alerted to the fact that there was a possible fire at Wilkes, the brought a truck and two fire fighters over to the scene where they diligently watched our maintainance man sprinkle out the smoldering mulch with a small metal can of water. They took quite a bit of pride in their work, but then realized that they misplace the fire truck. I don't know how you misplace a fire truck. It's red, big, has hoses and ladders, and loud, loud siren. It's not that easy to miss. One of the exceptionally "special" firemen was quoted to have said, "Where'd we put the truck?" This was while he was looking down the street to see it... was he blind? I don't think so. Was he stupid... I'll allow you to decide that one on your own.
A
(04-30-01)
I saw some great shows this weekend. First, Justin, who I miss very much, was lead in OLIVER on Thursday night, and HE WAS EXCELLENT! On Friday I saw the same show over again. TIM KECK was a wonderful "Mis-ter, No-ah, Clay-pole!" On Saturday I went to Lehigh University with Scott and saw his band, ABSENTEE BALLAD perform... what a fantastic show, though I like their accoustics better. VERY GOOD WEEKEND THANKS TO YOU ALL!!~
