this is me forcing inspiration upon myself.

I hate ergonomic keyboards. Now that my computer is at school, I have to use the home computer. And guess what? It has an ergonomic keyboard because my dad likes it like that. GAHGLKSHJIOPSHJ!!! I hate having to type correctly if I don't feel like it! Why should I suffer?

Anyway, I had something that I was thinking of writing about, but I forgot it. Sorry! It was gonna be a good one. Now I have two things that aren't super special awesome, but I guess there's not much to do about it.

Number one: at the varsity football game on Friday, during the first half of the game, I got to wear the cardinal mascot suit! It was great! I can only hope I made some person's evening a little bit happier (because we got SLAUGHTERED), which I'm sure I did, considering all the little children that kept following me around and wanting their six hundredth hi-five from the cardinal... I complain, but the little kids made me smile. :) One that was probably two years old kept saying, "Hey bird!" Haha...

But overall, it was a great experience. Even though I sweated earlier than (and probably more than) the football players, I had a lot of fun!

My second topic: people disgust me. Mostly when I sit next to them during lunch or supper and they stuff their faces and CAN'T STOP SMACKING THEIR LIPS OR CHEWING WITH THEIR MOUTH OPEN. IT'S REVOLTING.


In other news, I went to see District 9 this week. After the initial being pissed that the people who told us to see it instead of G.I. Joe bailed on us and we had to pay nine dollars (#!$#@$) to see it, I did actually think it was a good movie. At first, I didn't think it was worth nine dollars. Then again, I wouldn't have been happy going to see The Dark Knight for that much. It was actually really awesome. I won't spoil it for any of my three or four readers, but I would say that you should go see it, but not at the Fashion Square movie theater in Saginaw.

it's got to be the new york city rhythm in my life!

You know how they say "Time flies when you're having fun?" Yeah... They were wrong. I got back from my first week at MLS (a college prep high school with a dormitory). I had a blast, and it feels like I've been gone for at least two or three times that long! I guess it makes sense, though. If we were talking about one evening hanging out, it would have felt like no time at all, but a week crammed with classes, Concert Choir, working out, hanging out, Hardin Street Harmony practice, workin in the IDO, going to the movies and getting Tropical Smoothie, and everything else that has happened just seems like a month!

Speaking of study halls... This year just feels different. Partially because I have no study halls and I have the freedom to do homework whenever I feel like it AND that my homework actually gets done, but also that I'm a senior now. I feel relaxed and stressed at the same time. Yeah, I'm one of the top dogs, but for how long? I have college to look forward to. College loans, getting a job, getting a car, getting out there in the world... I have it made right now, and soon that's going to be over. As stated in "In This Diary" by the Ataris, "Being grown up isn't half as fun as growing up... These are the best days of our lives." I'm beginning to see that now, and noticing what I've taken for granted. Such is life, I guess.

I'm just gonna start enjoying it while I can. I mean, that's all I can do, right?

"i'm significant!" screamed the dust speck.

I was driving today, and I told my dad about what I wrote in my last blog, about the people we drive past and wondering what they're like and how we would get along, and we started talking about abstract thought. One thing that made me think was God's scientia media (Latin for God's mediate knowledge, or his knowledge of what could have been). Think about it. Not only does he know everything that HAS happened, IS happening, and WILL happen, he knows what COULD have happened. Think of the butterfly and the hurricane (the thought that a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world can cause a hurricane on the other side). God knows all that. It just amazes me. I know that He's omniscient and all-powerful, but we take things like this for granted. Our God is a mighty God!

"God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." (Romans 8:28)

in another's eyes...

To all appearances, I'm not too deep a thinker. Truth is, I'm not. I miss a lot of incredibly obvious things that should seem like common sense to most people. Or, maybe I don't give myself enough credit. I do think about some things sometimes when I'm doing something I can ignore, like listening to music in my room, mowing the lawn, or driving. In fact, I was driving the other day (yesterday) while listening to Harsh Krieger. I like it (Harsh Krieger) well enough. I know someone who went to high school with either the guy named Harsh or the Guy named Krieger (no relation to me).

I like music while driving because it gives my mind some background noise. If I don't have music, I get irritated more easily by stupid and careless drivers, I lose focus more often, and it's just not as enjoyable.

Anyway, I was thinking, as I sometimes do on car rides, of life. To all these people on the sidewalks, riding their bicycles, to these people coming toward me on the road, to all these old farts that I get stuck behind in a no passing zone, I'm just another driver in another vehicle. To me, they're just another person going about their business.

But I wonder... What are they like? What experiences in their life brought them to where they are now? Just like I'm on my driver's permit and driving with my mom, what brought them to this spot? Are they simply going to the grocery store? Are they going to work? What do they do for work? Do they wonder about the people they drive past? Are they wondering about me? Would we have been friends, had we the chance to stop and talk to each other?

Then I pass them.

Just like that, that person is out of my life forever.

Each face, a memory.

Each memory, forgotten.

whaddya mean "this isn't a bed and breakfast"!?

Alas, what goes up must come down. School is starting soon (for some suckers, it's already started), and I think back to simpler times when these few days before the start of classes brought groans and desperate struggles to play as many video games as I could before I no longer had the freedom to waste my time. But enough about last summer; this summer's different.

I just did a google search for pictures of "yay for school" that I could put here. The results were disheartening. All of the results turned out "yay, NO school", which is exactly the opposite of the mood I'm trying to create, as the writer of this blog. So, seeing as I have no pictures, I guess a thousand words will suffice.

Here goes.

I like my school (Michigan Lutheran Seminary in Saginaw, MI, if anyone doesn't know.). What I love about it are my friends. I love living in the dormitories with my best friends and all the others beside. I love the stupid things we do. You really get to know people when you are with them from breakfast to bedtime for a year, two years, three, or even when you're starting the fourth.

Of course, we do have classes. It's still a high school. But who likes those? I mean, some classes are just totally wicked awesome because of the teachers and/or material (Art, Spanish, Chemistry, Chorus/Choir), but my favorite part is still being able to walk to Kroger with friends in the middle of winter to buy Egg Nog and a can of Reddi-Whip to celebrate the holidays that hadn't even come yet and refrigerating it outside in the snow because we aren't allowed to have refrigerators in the dorms. THAT'S what's so great about MLS. I feel bad for the students who live in town and miss out. Not a whole lot, but there's a part of me that thinks about them sometimes.

And with all that, I came just under 200 words.

retribution

I'm not a frequent reader. I usually only read books I've heard about and expect to be good, like the Harry Potter books, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, or other books people have let me borrow. I was standing in Borders (That's what I do when I go to bookstores. I stand.) in the science fiction setting, looking at books I own and like, when I saw a book with an interesting cover, The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks.

I thought, awesome! Assassins right on the cover! Score, dude! So I bought the first one and I couldn't put it down. I loved it! So I went back and bought the second two.

SPOILER ALERT

The trilogy follows Kylar Stern in a rags-to-riches (kinda) story as he comes from being an orphan child (named Azoth) with nothing to the best wetboy (basically, assassins with magic) in the world.

SPOILER END

I've read some interesting things in there, like one conversation between the protagonist and a mage who can see the future that had a lot of phrases I'd love to use as Facebook statuses. Another interesting thing I read somewhere in there was something like, "There is only one sin: stealing. Everything else is a variation of that. When you murder, you take a man's life from him. When you sleep with another man's wife, you steal the sanctity of their marriage."

That's not the way most people see it (in the Bible, there are TEN commandments), but I think that's an interesting perspective. When we don't give all the glory to God, aren't we taking what is rightfully his? If people thought like that, would they be so quick to destroy someone's reputation with gossip? Would they see things that they dismiss as okay as sinful?

the stupider you look, the better you're dancing.

I've been gone for THREE WEEKS, and FINALLY I'm home! It was fun, but after a while, you just get weary and tired of traveling cross-country... We left from Michigan, went down to the arch of St. Louis, then went west through Oklahoma and Texas and New Mexico, all the way over to Phoenix, Arizona. That was when the REAL fun started! We rented a house (we, meaning my entire family) and stayed there with the groomsmen, playing Rock Band and swimming in our pool and getting tan (Ha! Kriegers tanning... I'm so funny!). The wedding itself was pretty great. In the first line of the sermon, my Uncle Mark forgot Josh and Julie's names! Then, my brothers, Danny and Joel, sang a beautiful song. Afterward, we went to the reception, which was pretty great, because my brother Joel, as the best man, did an awesome best man speech and sang another song with my brother Jon about Josh and Julie's first date. Once the dancing got started (REALLY started), it didn't end until the last songs ended... It was great. I got a lot of compliments on my dancing and I hi-fived Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords!

Then we went to Las Vegas and stayed with Joel for a few days before going to Wisconsin and staying at our cottage by Lake Wisconsin for a few days before driving home. And now, I have school to look forward to in a week. :D

That's the short version. I could write a long version, but it was SUCH a great trip that I would be tired of it long before it was over.

In other news, the new season of Psych started last week, and tonight (10 P.M.) is a new episode! I love that show. Also tonight (9 P.M.) is the first episode of the last season of Monk.

That's all for now.