It's only 3rd place, but I'm somewhat honored because I was racing against people who have been going all year while this was my second race this year.

It was so incredibly hot today. I couldnt drive because my steering wheel was so hot and I couldnt see because I felt like my eyeballs were melting. Not the optimum conditions to drive, fortunately I didnt do much of that. More fortunately, there is a walk-in freezer at Albertsons. Score!

This heat wave better not persist into next week. Tuxedo's are uncomfortable enough in 75 degree weather, I dont even want to imagine the sweat and heat stroke that is certain to follow a 90 degree heatwave. Heatstroke is not a fun disease, especially on a night that is supposed to be as memorable as Prom.

So I've settled in pretty well at Albertsons and I've begun watching people. One of the unique things about a grocery store is that it's a very family-oriented atmosphere. The music is very PG and everything is kid friendly. It should be, because there are always alot of children, and I find this to be very interesting for two reasons:

First, the interviews. I love it when kids ask questions, because they are always dumb or funny or unknowingly insulting. You know, the stuff that we all used to watch on "Kids say the darndest thing" before Bill Cosby became senile. One of my favorite ones was a kid today asking how the holes got in the Swiss cheese. I started talking about bacteria and CO2 but then I realized I was confusing the hell out of the kid and just said "bacteria fart in the cheese and make big bubbles". Yeah, I wonder what his mom is going to think when he never eats the stuff again.

But even more interesting than talking to kids is watching them and their parents. Now, I realize that there does exist something called "adoption", but I also realize that it's not very popular. I know when a white lady comes in with a little black boy hanging on her shoulder that she's either adopted or runs a daycare. A little more shady is when you see a 60+ year-old white guy walking in with a 18-23 year old asian (daughter/wife?). That really sparked my curiosity because for all I know it was relatively taboo for white guys to marry asian women in 1950 so this girl didnt have much probability of being his daughter. I dont often see asians as adopted, either, so there goes that probability. Actually, about 30 seconds after I saw this guy and his female companion, I thought "mail-order bride" and chuckled to myself.

Man, I'm soo racist. I'm sorry.

So today's Saturday the 21st. Three months after my birthday, one month after the big birthday bash for Tyler. Good times have passed in this relatively short period of three months, including but not limited to at least 5 surprise birthday parties, a trip to San Francisco, a cruise to Mexico, and the slow resolution of Prama: every seniors nightmare.

That's all great, but it seems like my future just might be as bright as the past three months (minus the cold, of course). Highlights will include a half-week wakeboarding trip with the White Republicans, a trip to Morongo with the same group, a camping trip to Yosemite (sleeping in tents and all that extreme stuff) with some random friends, finally getting a credit card (which I promised myself I would do when I got a job) and a paid cell phone plan (doing it myself), and let's not forget the prospect of romance.

In other news, my ass hurts from standing all day.

In other news, I've only been on the job four days and there are allready things that piss me off, like managers trying to work in my section of the store.

In other news, Prom just might be the highlight of this year.

Or maybe not. Goodbye.

God it's nice to have a job again. Even better to have a job like mine at Albertsons. See, I work in the Deli, and it's like separate from the entire store. Although I have managers, they are store level and they dont have enough time to even pay attention to my department and the actual department head will never be around when I'm working. Therefore, me and another kid from Esperanza pretty much run the deli by ourselves, and it goes without saying that the best kind of working is that which is done without a boss.

Anyhow, I promised to write a little thing on Prom and my thoughts and explanations for my actions.

Put quite simply: I think that Prom is something that is supposed to be both romantic and memorable (although those two things are very connected). I could not see myself going with a person that I merely considered a friend to what is probably the culmination of my senior year. This is my primary reason for going with Tiffany: I like her, and I can at least pretend like we're more than friends for one night.

I had a couple of people trying to get me to stop thinking about girls out of our school and trying to "hook me up" with friends of theirs that didnt have dates. In my opinion, this is Prama at its finest: expecting another person to go with someone you have paired them with in your head without any real knowledge or care for what either people want. I hate to say this, because I have real friends that told me to go with so and so, but I truly despise people who think they have the right to tell me or any other guy who I "should" go to Prom with.

That said, I forgive those people because none of them are truly close to me and therefore dont hold alot of respect to lose. (remember: I dont hold grudges, I lose respect)

That's really all I have to say about Prom, other than the fact that I'm looking forward to it, and it's going to cost a whole lot. Luckily, I have a job, and I can work it off in a week and a half. It's worth it.

Well, friday the 13th treated me well. Let me count the ways:

Woke up this morning to my brother yelling at me that another one of my tires on my car had a hole in it.
Thus it followed that I took my dads SUV to school.
Thus it followed that he was paranoid that I would go fast and crash it because I'm such a dangerous driver with all of my 0 tickets and 0 accidents.
Thus it followed that I had to go straight home.
Thus it followed that I could not go hang out with a group of friends that I'm starting to feel really separated from.
Thus it followed that I felt kind of sad as I came home.
Thus it followed that the lady from Albertsons called me back to inform me that I had finally gotten a job.
Thus it followed that tommorow became as packed as a creme brulee.
Thus it followed that I could no longer do many of the things I had planned to do, and I had to call alot of my friends to cancel things.

Yet, getting a job, finally, makes up for it all. I'm happy, and that's all that matters.

I went to an old friend's 89th birthday party today. I cant imagine being 89. I'm allready scared of death as it is, being so close to it would be absolutely horrible. For a couple of seconds I came to the realization that I should be living my life to the fullest, then I realized that I allready do.

So life works out. As it always does. Good.

Today was such a down day. Went to school early and took a single AP test and then left. If it wasnt for a drug test that took way too long, I would have been home by 11:30.

Life is fine, 'nuff said.

I came home earlier today than I normally do, around 4:30. See, normally Friday's I try to do something at least somewhat social to hold me over for the weekends, but today I just feel kinda tired of people. Normally the solitude kills me, but in this case I'm feeling just a little happy - happy to be alive and some bullshit like that.

See, friends of late have been concerned about one thing - Prom. Even I cant resist asking the question, "Who are you going with?", which always leads to a big period filled with silence and coaxing but never really gets me anywhere. This meaningless banter has really gotten to me, and it seems as if there's no escape from endlessly telling people that I wish there was a girl I wanted to ask, so maybe that's why I feel better just getting away from everybody for awhile.

Unfortunately, I was supposed to pitch in throwing a surprise party for a close friend today. I honestly tried to be there, but somehow last night when I was told of the time and place, I misheard the place and ended up about 30 miles from where I was supposed to be. At the point where I figured out my error, I just gave up on the whole social thing for the weekend. I'll try again next week.

Yeah, sorry about that Jon.

Recollections today will be integrated into the entry, rather than being a section in itself. You see, there's this annoying habit I have with any music that has anything that resembles a beat: I tap my shoe to it. I do this everywhere: in my car I tap my foot on my dead pedal, in the crowded troy high cafeteria I step all over other people's shoes in desperate attempts to tap my feet, I even did it during homecoming and winter formal while I was dancing, which undoubtedly made me look somewhat foolish.

Sometimes I notice I'm doing it and I have alot of fun with it. For example, I'll be in my car listening to a rocking song and notice my foot beating on the dead petal and change feet, so I'm tapping the accellerator. I can only imagine what that looks like to people driving around me, then again I can only imagine what it looks like when you see me singing along to a song you cant even hear.

Now the question at mind here is: Where did this habit develop? After some consideration, I came across a part of my past I havnt thought about recently, my band years at Travis Ranch Middle School.

Simply put, the person who taught me to tap my foot to everything was my band teacher, Mr Topping. Mr Topping was a character. He was one of those guys you could see living at home with his mother. He would come to school some days and spend a half hour raving over his new gadgets. Specifically I can remember him spending our time talking about his new PA system which he had installed in his room, as if he wasnt loud enough allready; he also talked alot about his fancy bike. See, he didnt make enough money to buy a car, apparently, so he rode to and from school on a fancy electric bike. Now I dont know about you guys, but I think electric bikes are on the same level as Segways and those crappy Mopeds: too lazy to actually ride/walk/run, but not classy enough to hide oneself in a decent used car. Not only did this man tell us he rode this bike, though, he raved about it day after day and how he saved so much money riding it and all this bullshit and I cannot believe I put up with it.

Then there was his court. He actually named it Topping-court, and had the class been a class of law or government or something of that nature, this court would have been totally appropriate. But this was band class, and at least once a week our insane teacher would waste an hour of our time trying a random student for hitting a tympany or yelling in the bus or some other menial crime that never came out with any punishment higher than a lunch detention. Here is genuine proof that openly punishing students does not work: nobody, and I mean nobody in our band class respected Mr Topping. He couldnt even control a bunch of Middle School Bandos properly, he had to attempt to publicly humiliate them by setting up "court days" in order to subject them to anything resembling a "punishment", and he failed more times than he succeeded.

I can still remember those days when he would say "would the person who planted the stink bomb in the bus yesterday please raise their hand" and when nobody (shock) did, he would say "I'll give anybody who tells me who did it a dollar". Guess what? His bribery never worked. I swear the man got more pleasure out of attempting to control kids than teaching. I can only imagine him in a bar or something. Probably a laughable situation.



ANYHOW. I need to do some english and whatnot now. But first I'll get a healthy dose of Simpsons. Long weekend ahead, hopefully I'll have fun, because I'm guessing the coming week will be pretty stressful on me.

If you havnt allready learned of Googles outstanding new map features, I recommend you go to local.google.com and type in something random like "Pizza" under what and your zip under where. This thing is really cool for finding roads and freeways, but my parents introduced me to an even better feature:

Find a point on the map that you want to look at in detail, and then go to the upper-right hand corner of the map and click on the link that says "Sattelite" to get a sattelite image of that point. Obviously, military bases like El Toro are blurred out, but almost all the other areas in the US are covered with very good quality images.

Of course, for most people this is a toy. I could play with it for a long time and make that it's sole use, but I just realized when I was looking through The two mountain ranges surrounding my house that there are thousands (literally) of trails stretching all the way from my house directly to faraway places like The Country, Chino Hills, and even Irvine and Mission Viejo. Me and Tyler are going to go riding up one of the trails a couple of miles on Saturday or Sunday, but I'm allready getting busy mapping out entire treks that we can take to various places in the county. Sweet.

In other news, Prom might go good, might not. We'll find out tuesday, perhaps later. Maybe I really dont care.

Man, this cold is killing me. To think it all started with a measly Tic Tac. All I wanted was fresher breath, guess I cant trust dirty candies from the bottom of my backpack anymore, heh. I imagine that after I recover I wont be in a much better mood, Prom coming and all. I figure I should either get hooked up with someone or just decide to go with a friend. The benefit of the former is that I can pretend that I actually like my date for the night whereas the latter gives me a little bit of security.

Of course, those of you who saw me today probably either thought I was a downer or were told that I was sick. I've realized is that sickness is intoxicating for me. I acted more like myself today than I have just about every day this school year, meaning I didnt have a nice little thing called "inhibition" by my side. I think I said a little too much to some people, probably hurting their feelings or some other bullshit.

Recollections:
Before Christmas break 2003, I hadnt had a disease in eight years. Unfortunately the flu hit me hard last year, for those of you that have a sub-brilliant memory. I was puking out my guts in sixth period the day before we left for break and was confined to my bedroom for an entire week after I somehow drove myself home.

Before this year (I've technically been sick twice since that flu), I was relatively immune to everything. In all my life up to this point I think I've only really had four or five epidemics of disease, and all of them were violent. Probably cuz I'm a whiteboy.