briggs - heroes by choice

so this is how it goes. early morning was great - went to work, felt like the day would be full of possibilities. anyway, coming home i figured today would turn out all right, you know? fun.
well, it didn't. big surprise. i ended up getting a huge-ass book about colleges, then driving around tacoma and lakewood trying to get myself lost. i heard a lot of good songs on the radio. i came home after a few hours and sat down with the book. it made me slightly depressed. i don't have that much money, and out of state tuition is insane. but i'm not too thrilled about my choices in washington. i've been sorting through information all night and i was starting to get this closed-in feeling. i have to start over - i have to get away from here. i got to start over in junior high. i came to decatur and did it again. now it looks like i'll have to copy either brent or scott - uw or wwu. i don't want to go to either. i don't want to go to wsu, either. i was thinking somewhere warm, you know? it's hopeless, though.
like i said, i was starting to feel really shitty about it all. and then elaina calls! i love her so much. she's invited me to come see her compete in a beauty pageant on the 27th. (haha... beauty pageant, i know! no, she's not taking herself seriously.) so i asked my mom if maybe tuey and i could go.. she has to discuss it with my dad, and i'm not allowed to mention it to tuey until they know. ha! so, steph, are you up for a weekend in long beach - finally? everyone will be there! so. yeah. other than that my night's been completely uneventful, and my whole back and arms and legs are stiff and sore. yippeee.

briggs - bored teenager

i started the night with $82. i have $5 left. you have no idea. this was one of the best days i have had in a very long time!
where to start, really? i had a dream someone stole my purse that ended with 3 animals combining to make a b-rated killer snake movie. around 11 i went off and got jonny boy, and we went to tuey's and followed her mom to jack's (!!) and made an appointment for monday (!!) and then went and ate at taco bell. at 2 we made it to shoreline, but cole's mom wouldn't let us stick around so we drove around for a while and met cole when he got home from school at 2:30. we went to the beach!
i finally believe cole about his beach being the most beautiful, best beach ever. now, it's not like long beach with the endless sands and waves and wind and rolling dunes and absolute freedom. it's more of the typical seattle rocky beach, but also extremely beautiful - sandy and covered in white driftwood, with expensive houses at the top of steep hills looking out over the little bay. there's an awesome waterfall across the train tracks, and we climbed a rope to get into a little cliff-side thing where the waterfall is. you can follow it back for quite a ways. i carved my name into the side of the little cranny and we climbed back down. that doesn't do any justice to the absolute beauty of the whole place, though. basically, over spring break i'm hauling ass to shoreline as much as i can, just so i can sit on the beach.
on our way to the graceland i almost killed the family - i was looking at a guy in the car next to us and didn't notice the car in front of us slamming on the breaks. jon: "i was sleeping until i was rudely thrown forward." haha. it was funny.
at the concert! okay, we were only there for about 4 hours (4:30-8:30), but concerts always seem longer. it's like a different world. the cigarette smoke is clogging the air, but it doesn't take long for your lungs and nose to adapt and breathe it in like fresh mountain air. the bands were all amazing - i only went into the pit during the briggs, not because their pit was tamer than the rest, but it was the only band i was willing to risk death for. this was a scary-ass punk scene, i'd never seen so many mohawks in the same room before in my life! the pit was murder, but fun. during the briggs i crashed around for a few songs before i shoved my way forward and got wedged between the stage and a monstrously fat guy. so i stayed there and had a perfect view of the band for the rest of the time, and i loved it!
got lots of merch. jon stole a sweatshirt that didn't fit him, so now i have a new punk sweatshirt, covered in patches and safety pins and all sorts of goodies.
back in shoreline cole made us a pizza at his work! it was cool. we took it home and tried to eat it, and it was ungodly good except all the toppings kept sliding off. we watched a few episodes of aqua team hunger force, and holy... that show is insane. i love it!
the drive home was beautiful. everyone fell asleep, i had my briggs cd playing with my little tape adapter, and there was fog collecting on the freeway. it's hard to describe, but i'm sure everyone has experienced that late-night driving feeling. like the world is endless.
and to top it all off, i got a little plastic toy tank.

rise against - six ways 'til sunday

so then after work my mom told me that i couldn't be at home for the rest of the evening, because people from church were coming over. i went to tuey's and we got a cheeseball at fred meyer, picked up brandon and watched suicide kings in her basement.
tomorrow is the concert. we'll see!
yesterday scott gave me a book called exodus. it's about the founding of the jewish nation. it tells the story of (10?) jewish people thrown together by circumstance, with absolutely nothing in common except for their religion. i've seen the book on our bookshelf for years, always just thought my parents were nuts for buying the book of exodus when it's already available in the bible. see how dense i am? anyway. i'll start it once i finish my other jewish book.

rise against - voices off camera

the images i got from it this time were of a person constantly on the move, always fending off the next disaster, trying to keep up with all the demands of life. no time to stop. and behind all that shifting scenery, a feeling of disconnection. a yearning to just give it all up, just for a little while. to lay it all aside and rest, relax and find comfort before picking it all up again and moving on.
there. because i can't go a day without feeling sorry for myself, now can i?

beck - loser

it felt wonderful to wear jeans today. jeans that haven't been washed in 2 weeks, have been soaked in ammonia and used to clean an exploding pink pen. not to mention the shirt that i washed over the weekend, but wore to school 3 days last week. and my shoes, oh baby, so comfortable!
when scott came home i was doing my precal. he commented on how he sees me as some creative english major in college, so i'll never have to mess with math again. the idea is appealing, but nah. i kind of like math. it was still really nice to talk to scott, though. for some reason he thinks i'm this wonderful kid (he consistently brings up "showing me off" to his friends), and it's really nice to talk to someone that honestly believes i'm better than i think i am.
we went out to dinner for my dad's birthday tonight, and it was fun! it seems like the past 4 years of my life, i've been unable to get along with more than one family member at a time for any time longer than 10 minutes. but there we were! eating dinner together for about an hour, talking and joking and sharing stories... and for once i even felt involved, like i had something to contribute. that is a rare feeling when i grew up in silent awe of the dinner conversations going on around me.
by the way, my grandpa shot his cat with a .22 because he wasn't wearing his glasses - he thought it was the neighbor's cat. he buried it and didn't say anything. finally my grandma figured it out. "walter, did you shoot the cat?"
he also shot the wild dogs running around their house with an aluminum crossbow, since the police made him lock up his gun while he was in the country (i think this was in the philippines? maybe burma.)
my dad's going to look into shooting ranges. we might learn to shoot together! scott too. that'd be a cool family bonding thing.

and finally. when brent gets home for spring break in a little over a week, we're putting peabody to sleep.

madcap - bright lights, big city

can you say, "home, sweet home"?? it felt sooo good to be home again. and i'm not talking just my house. i mean the little things that just make me think 'home'. like when jon found me before school got out and gave me a huge hug. seeing tuey and brandon again. you know, for a minute i was almost even glad to go to work.
no worries, that feeling didn't last long. but, well, seattle made me homesick. it was this huge mass of people i didn't know, all around me, 24 hours a day. i liked the people i was sharing a room with well enough, but... it got tiring. my main obsession/joy trip the whole time was the huge window we had in our hotel, looking out over the freeway. i sat and watched the cars and the people go by for a few hours, doing homework and listening to music. i love that window. i want to live in an apartment with a window like that. also, walking around seattle again made me realize how much i love that city. of course, i know i love seattle, but it always sinks in again when i go there. i haven't been up there, walking around, since summer, so it was really nice. i had all these flashbacks to summertime, running around with elaina and jessika picking up fliers, following the monorail to westlake center. i was dying for tuey to be there, tuey and brandon and cole. this whole trip thing would've been ten million times better if the four of us could've been running around.
but i don't know why i keep talking about how it could've been better. it was still fun. the whole competition thing wasn't so bad as i thought, although i didn't do well enough to go to nationals. like i care, right? i still got a medal.
stupid tosha got a raise. $9.55. i want a raise, too! well, i'll get one soon, soon as my 300 hours are up. so there.