here I am...

After an absence of sorts. Hope I didn't worry you. Went to my dad's for thanksgiving, we watched football and ate junk food. Wonderful times. I should be working on my World Religions paper (which, I have a sneaking suspicion that it was due yesterday), so I'm going to have a late night tonight because I forgot to bring my textbook to work, which I need in order to write the paper. Shouldn't be that long, no more than three pages, I can handle that. Maybe get to bed around midnight. Once I get that done, the rest of the week...oh, crap...the Spanish dialogue...we couldn't convince him that we shouldn't have to do it, and that is tomorrow. Has to be memorized. well, I'm not going to work on it if it's after midnight, I'll just have to memorize it quickly before class. Ok, so after tomorrow, the rest of the week will be easy. Well...then again...Okay, perhaps nothing will be easy till next friday when everything is over for me. Then it's christmas break. Yet another crap...I forgot to go to the post office today, and I also forgot to call the shrink's office to find out when my appointment is. They said on the card that it was the 8th, but it was marked as Thursday...which is the 7th. SO, I need to find out which one it is. I'm secretly hoping that it's the 8th so that I have a rock-solid excuse to get to Megan's house on my own instead of following her from campus. Her way takes us through Greensboro and Winston-Salem. Me, I avoid those cities, taking the smaller highways. If she went the speed limit, it would take us the same amount of time. She disagrees, but whatever. I like my "scenic route" as she calls it.

Finished my research project today, and gave the presentation. I think it went well. He also said that we're not having class on Thursday, so that means I have only one class, since we're not having choir either. Megan might be coming home with me this weekend. It depends on whether or not she finds a dress for her friend's wedding Thursday when she goes to smithfield. I hope she does, even though I'm not sure what we'd do to pass the time. All I know is, I'd be able to take her to Trio Cafe for dinner on Sunday, which is our six-month anniversary. If she isn't going to come home with me, I'll have to find some place in Dunn or Fuquay-Varina to take her, and I don't know any good places in either of them.

Well, since I can't work on my paper, or my spanish dialogue, I guess I can do what I originally wanted to do: work on my book. I'm working on the scene where David goes to one of Melanie's fights for the first time. I've been watching kickboxing videos to sort of get a better idea of how fights go. Well, off to that, then.

current events

ah, yes...I wrote about this weekend already, so now it's time to write about why today is a bad day. Well, it really started yesterday, so I'll start there. Yesterday, I found out that we have choir rehearsal tonight until 9:30pm. SO, I won't be able to leave for my dad's until tomorrow morning, so I'll have to deal with day-before-Thanksgiving traffic tomorrow. Then, Mike never showed up, so I was stuck at the lab waiting for him until I got permission to close it up. therefore, I was late getting over to Megan's. However, once there, it was enjoyable. Watched Milo and Otis.

There are some details, as usual, that will not go on my MySpace blog. We talked a bit before the movie about this weekend. You see, there was a little thing where she was rinsing off her shoes in the bathroom, I was in the living room, and I heard her cry out, so I went to go see what was wrong. I found her with her back to me, standing on the edge of the tub messing with the shower head, and her shirt was off. Well, I wasn't sure if she wanted me to see her like that, so I just went back to the living room, since she seemed okay anyway. She told me when she came out that she had slipped and almost fallen, and that was what I had heard. I told her why I didn't go in, and she was surprised that I would think that, considering I had pulled her shirt up to her ribs before. She had a point, I guess. But last night, she told me that it wasn't an accident, that she wanted me to come in there because her shirt was off. Hmm...lol. Then she told me about Saturday night when I had stayed with her in her bed for a while. She told me that she wished that I had stayed longer and that she had wanted to remove a certain article of my clothing, namely, my shirt. I had to coax this information out of her, by the way. that got us started talking about limits. Basically, after she decided that she would rather I tell her mine instead of her discovering them, I told her that mine were, she could take off my shirt, but pants are off limits. She told me that her limits were the same, but that there were a few others, and that I have come close to crossing those; namely, when my hands get too close to her breasts and her butt. She wasn't mad at me, though.
After the movie, she gave me a back massage and kissed my neck some. Eventually, she told me that I could do whatever I wanted with her. I knew she wanted something, but I didn't know what, and she refused to tell me. So I took a guess, and I was right. She wanted me to take off her shirt, so I did. I laid her back and kissed her neck and chest, then her belly. She put her shirt back on after that and then did something for me in return: she started kissing my stomach, and then slowly worked her way up to my chest to the point where my shirt was up to my neck and practically off. That felt so incredibly good, especially the lower part of my stomach and upper chest. Well, that's the end of the details that are only going to be in this blog.

So, the rest of my day...well, it's cold, windy, and wet outside, and we have that stupid 2.5 hour rehearsal tonight. that is going to be miserable. I hope we get out early. My voice will be shot if I have to sing for that long. Maybe that's the only bad thing about today, except for the weather. I'm supposed to read all of this and yesterday's post to Megan tonight. She read me her journal entry for this weekend. I wonder what she wrote about last night?

this weekend

Yes, that will be the topic of my um...post, I guess. MySpace doesn't seem to be working right today, or maybe it's just this computer. So, this weekend...

Had lunch with Megan as usual on Friday, I was already packed up, so all we had to do afterwards was put her stuff in my car, and we left. Got home, played with the dogs some, Megan was trying to knock me over the whole time, but she didn't succeed till we got in the house. While we were on the floor, we got into a tickle fight :D. Seems so unlike me, doesn't it? She got to watch me chop wood that afternoon (she told me later that she was somewhat turned on by that, lol). Well, we had dinner with my mom, then went to see "The Prestige", since she hadn't seen it before. I understood it better the second time, though I didn't like the ending any more. We thought we were going to have the theater to ourselves, but in the last few minutes, some people came in.
That night, I tucked her into bed, and she told me that I promised that I would hold her till she fell asleep. I don't recall ever having said this, but I didn't do it...afraid of getting caught, I suppose.
The next morning, she got me up out of bed, we ate breakfast, and then eventually went to Grandma's to walk the dogs. Megan and I got ahead of the others and talked about what our house might be like. She wants a library with a fireplace and a window seat. I wouldn't mind a loft and a vaulted ceiling in the living room. Anyways, when we got back, Jerry was there. I'm not even going to get started on him. He was doing some work on the boat and around the house. Anyways, Megan and I went to my room, and she told me she had never seen a colder, more hateful look than that which was in my eyes then. I'm sorry that it bothered her so much, but I'm not going to get into it. Basically, with both my mom and me upset, it gave her a headache. We left to go see "Happy Feet", then we did some shopping and went to dinner. Her headache wouldn't go away, so after a little while of sitting in front of the fire and not knowing what to do to entertain ourselves, she went to bed. I decided to do that as well, but I wanted to get up at about 11:30pm to get her up to go watch the meteor shower. Well, problem is, I didn't wake up till midnight, when it was over. She got me up, actually. I took her back to bed and finally kept the promise she said I made. I crawled under the covers with her and held her until she fell asleep.
Next morning was church. we made it on time this time. She still doesn't like our church, she always complains about it. She did say that this time was better though, because we sang more hymns. Came back to the house and had lunch with Grandma and Ross. Puttered around for a while afterwards, made out in my bedroom while the others were in the living room. She talked to me some more about Jerry and how she wants me to move on and thinks I can change.
Anywhat, we left shortly after, talked a little on the way back about how much our parents knew about the seriousness of our relationship. I think both sets of parents pretty much know most of it. I think they approve of this relationship and want it to work. Though, it does scare the stuffing out of me to think that one day I'm going to have to ask Megan's parents if they'll allow me to marry her. I'm just afraid they'll say no, just because they don't want to see her become independent of them. You know, the whole "I'm not ready for my baby to grow up" sort of thing.

Well, that's that for the weekend. I'll post tomorrow on more current events, like why I'm going to have a bad day tomorrow.

what to do...

with the rest of my time. Here at work, I mean. I'm out of gas concerning my research paper, which is due next tuesday. That's not cool. Everyone in the class thought that we had till after thanksgiving to get it done. well, I just went and added Social Psych. to my future class schedule thingie that I wrote up the other day. Dr. Taylor let me in, so I'll be taking three psych classes next semester: Learning and Cognition, Social Psych, and Human Relations. Other classes I'm taking are choir (of course), voice, US history to 1865, and Intro to Theatre. The last one, I hear, is really easy and fun, so perhaps I'll actually have an easy A next semester.

Today, the choir left at 5:30am to go to the Baptist State Convention in Greensboro. After we sang, we had to sit through a bunch of business stuff, something about amending a bylaw regarding the distribution of funds to Baptist nursing homes, blah, blah...I think I understand it, but you probably don't want to here about it. One thing I did find interesting and upsetting, is that the policy of the Convention is that if the Baptist church of a Baptist student attending a Baptist school does something that causes it to be excluded from the convention, the student will lose their scholarship funds from the convention unless they switch churches. Fair? Absolutely not. I don't know who made that decision, but they obviously have no common sense.

Well, I'm done ranting. I'm going to go to ebaumsworld.com and then play some solitaire until it's time to go.

another night...

Here at work. Wait, now that it's about 6pm, I should go clock in...I was a bit early, so I decided to wait. Okay, I'm back. Last night was my night with Megan. she brought "The Butterfly Effect" over for us to watch. She's coming home with me this weekend, and she wants to see "The Prestige". I wouldn't mind seeing that again. My mom also wants to take us to a hockey game.

Found out some news today: the project paper is due next tuesday. Ugh. so, we ran the analysis today, hopefully we did it right. Wasn't sure if we ran the correlation and linear regression right, but we're going to talk to Dr. Asbury tomorrow...crap, I have to call Bryan and tell him that I forgot that I won't be here tomorrow, I'll be in Greensboro with the choir. We're singing at the Baptist State Convention. That will be loads of fun, getting up at a quarter to five just to go sing for an hour and sit through the whole morning program. But back to what I was saying, we need to find out from Dr. Asbury if we did those two analyses right. But I'm going to start writing the method tonight, and half of the analysis portion, and he will do the other half and the discussion. Then, hopefully, we'll have it done. Then we have Thanksgiving break to work on the Powerpoint presentation.

But, you're dying to know the results of the study, right? Well, I should probably tell you what we're studying first. We were testing to see if, one, violent video games increase aggression levels like previous studies indicate, and two, if they do, does that aggression decrease over time? The last bar graph pretty much sums it up: those that we tested immediately after playing the violent video game (Halo 2) had only slightly more aggression than the control group that did not play a game at all, and significantly less agression than the group that we tested the day after game play. This is not what we hypothesized. Possible causes? My roommate suggested that playing a violent game may serve as a catharsis of their aggressive feelings, and that the next day, their feelings were back to normal, suggesting that those that were attracted to the Halo tournament were actually more aggressive individuals than the average person. Of course, this is all speculation, particularly the last part. We would have had to test the players before playing the game to assess their normal level of aggressiveness.

Well, I'm going to the Chamber Ensemble concert tonight, whatever that is. So, I'll be closing the lab at 7:30 so I can make it over there. I should probably get to writing then...

it's official

I've had over 1000 views on my MySpace blog. Who are they? Only they know. Went over to Megan's last night, helped her set up her little Christmas tree in her room, listened to Christmas music while doing that. She'll be coming over tonight to my room. Rhone did some cleaning this past weekend, so it's not nearly as bad as it was. I did some cleaning on my side. Oh, yeah, Megan bought me some cologne that she is not allergic to. I put it on last night and she really liked it.

Slept through spanish today, I've just been tired all day. Finally got to register for classes today. Got into all of the ones I wanted except for American Lit. There were a bunch of people that couldn't get into that. Well, an hour later, I'm back to this post. I decided that I would write up my schedule for the rest of my undergraduate career. Basically, it was deciding when to take my remaining general curriculum courses and my psychology courses. Just have to remember to try to talk Dr. Taylor into letting me into his Social Psych. class. Imagine that...me trying to get IN to one of his classes. Anyways, that will replace American Lit for next semester, and I'll just take that another semester, probably next fall, when I can register as a Junior. Dang, it's great to just sit here at a computer, messing around and getting paid to do it...hope Dr. Durham doesn't read this, lol. well, I'm off to do other things, I guess...need to write a review for "Babel".

nearing 1000

Views on my MySpace blog. I'm in the upstairs lab today, but Kate's not in, so I have to go back downstairs at 5:30. Had the concert last night. It went ok, rather long and tiring, because we didn't have an intermission. Messed up some stuff, Dr. Morrow did his usual of making a change during the concert...basically changing us in formation on a song we've never done in that formation, and having us do side-to-side steps in Kpanlongo. got very dizzy in that song, I'm surprised I didn't pass out. *sigh*...what am I going to do this evening?

The next two years will be interesting, in a political sense. Democrats have the House and will probably get the Senate. Despite bipartisan talk from Nancy Pelosi, I seriously doubt that she will be able to control the Democratic party and get them to work with the President...which means that nothing is likely to get accomplished in the next two years. I'm in favor of a lot of the issues that Democrats are going to be pushing, except for the raising of minimum wage to $7.25 per hour. Why do that? In the long run, the only thing that it will accomplish is further devaluing the American dollar. How will that happen? Companies will do two things when forced to pay their workers more money: one, they will lay off workers, because they can't afford to pay them, and two, in order to avoid laying off too many people, they will raise the prices of their products. It is this last one that essentially nullifies the effect of raising the minimum wage...sure, you have more money to spend, but everything will cost more. Hold the minimum wage where it is, and even if companies decide to raise their prices in the short term, the prices will come back down once their profits start to sink because people can't afford their products.

Anyways, so says some economists. I'm done ranting now. Wow, time is flying...only an hour and a half left. That's awesome.

I'm out of sound effects

I've used them all in previous blog posts. I'm bored as usual. Really wish that I didn't have to be here today. I'd like to be sleeping. Second thing I wish was that we didn't have to have dress rehearsal so late today. 7-9pm. That means I don't get to spend any time with Megan tonight. Saw her for a little bit last night. I'll get to see her even less tomorrow night after the concert...that is, if she waits for me.

Anyone have any comments on my new poem? Like I said before, not my best, but it's not that bad, is it? Great, now I'm getting a headache. Sleep sounds so good right now. Sampled some of the ignorance of Americans last night reading comments on the article about Saddam Hussein's death sentence. Extremists on both sides posted. Most were posts by ignorant leftist sheep calling for the hanging of Bush instead of Saddam. Some even called for Saddam to be reinstated because he was the "elected" president of Iraq. I did respond to one "Seattleite" who said that anyone who liked Bush was an ignorant redneck who couldn't think for themselves. Only the worthless and ignorant insult the intelligence of others who disagree with them. One quote, however, struck me. It was a military man who wrote that after reading the comments posted about Bush and the war, he said that he regretted ever having put his life on the line protecting the freedoms of those people. Strong words, eh? But I'd feel that way too if I was in the military.

Man, my headache is getting worse. I've got an hour and forty-five minutes left. really sucks. Then I'm barely going to have time to eat dinner before having to go to the FAB for dress rehearsal. Then it's back to my room to grade those assessments that I've been putting off. Data entry is tomorrow. Well, I'm done for now, I think.

new poem

yes, I've written something new, finally. I like the second half of it, anyway. not one of my best, but perhaps it will grow on me. I wrote it during Spanish 201 this morning. It's posted on my poetry blog, but I will post it here to, I guess.

Why must I feel
this Pain again?
What have I done
To deserve it?
I feel like doing
that Thing again.
I know it's wrong;
I know that.
But why must I
Feel it again?

I'm not alone anymore.
I am loved.
Why isn't it enough

I'm hurting right now
With no one to tell
Thoughts pervade my head
Keep me company
On lonely nights
But it's not real
False solace
For a real pain
Is it wrong
To want the real thing?
Where do these thoughts come from?
I don't know.
All I know is that it hurts
And I want it to end.
One way or another,
It must end.

I'm going to skip Lifetime Wellness today. We're supposed to go to the gym to either run or lift weights, but it's usually the guys who end up doing the weights, and I'm tired of doing that because it's so crowded in there, and it's pointless to lift weights once every few weeks. Then again, maybe I won't skip. Maybe the guys will get to run today. I have to stick around campus anyway until tonight for that Madden tournament that we're going to for the experiment. Anywhat, if I'm going to Lifetime Wellness, I'd better change, because I won't have time between CJ and that class.

@!#$

yes, that is a four letter word. Some piece of $h!+ hit me with his car while I was on the crosswalk on my bike. I was in the middle lane, and he was coming from my right in the lane in front of me, and he slowed down like he was going to stop for me, so I kept going. I was going at a pretty good pace, so it would only have taken me a second to get off the road, but then he gunned it. My brakes don't work too well, so I couldn't stop in time. Thankfully, they worked just enough so that I didn't get IN FRONT of the car...I hit the driver side back door. Knocked me down, misaligned my handlebars, that's about it. They didn't even stop, just kept going. Almost wish they had hit me, so that a$$h01e would go to jail for vehicular assault. If only I had gotten the license plate number...I doubt the police would do anything, but I sure would...

Other than that little incident...I dressed up as the Phantom last night. Went to the party in Bryan with Megan. I'll put some pictures up in a minute, at least on MySpace and Facebook. nothing else going on, just another boring day at work.