Happy Holidays

That's it. More on the holidays later. I need to start my posts at more reasonable times.

Cruel Irony

On the morning news I learned about Bethesda, Maryland's water pipe breaking and flooding a street named "River Road." How's that for irony? Or is that a coincidence? I always get the two mixed up. Regardless, I hope the residents are OK and aren't offended by my brand of dark humor.

Just got back in Austin from San Antonio a few hours ago. It's intriguing how two cities less than two hours apart can be so different. San Antonio has that blue-collar, Catholic, conservative feel going for it, while Austin's that oddball liberal city in the middle of red Texas. As with any cities, they've both got their pros and cons. It's crazy to think that there's thousands of cities in the country and thousands more in the world. What makes one more appealing than another? Convenience? New challenges? Family? Job opportunities? Diversity? Or maybe it has the Food Network's best-rated burger joint. Trying to prioritize those reasons (except maybe the last one) has become quite the task the past several weeks.
But there's bound to be a better time to think about such things than at 3:33AM.

Smile-inducing memory of the day

Holiday season of 11th grade:

While shopping at Spencer's Gifts w/ my then-girlfriend for a gift for our English teacher, Chumbawamba's "Tubthumping" starts playing through the speakers. "I used to love this song," I tell my girl, "loved it so much to the point that I had my mom buy the full album, which was terrible." She chuckles.

"I feel ya, man," remarks a random shopper as he walks by.

Pre-Graduation Isomnia

I graduate tomorrow/later today at noon. I have a terrible cough and haven't gotten more than maybe 4-5 hours of sleep the past week.

Yet I still can't fall asleep.

The concept of time has always fascinated me. To think that right now, some kid in this city is going to my Elementary School, having fun, living a similar carefree life that I had some 3000+ days ago baffles me. I love toying with the idea that I'm not the only individual person in this world; other people laugh, eat potatoes, and think about their future, too. Add in time, however, and you've got a completely new level of contemplation. That boy (individual count: 2, me and the boy) has a father (3), just like me. Yet his father, while still being a father, is maybe fifteen years younger than my own dad (4). And my grandpa (5) at one point was my dad's age, taking care of my dad when he was a small fry. And one of these days I'll presumably bring a grandpa, bringing the individual count to six. Why, then, are these otherwise similar characters so different? It brings truth to the old adage "time will tell" as well as the definition of the word "individual." Thus, you've got twenty-somethings who marry right out of college, forty-somethings who never marry, thirty-somethings roaming the streets asking for change, sixty-somethings who've known the worth of a man only in economic terms.

And you've got me, a happily confused twenty-one year old, graduating a semester early, not exactly yet kind of sure why he wanted it that way, still debating if he made the right choice regarding what college to go to and which fields to study, staying up and writing a blog about it.

Better get at least some rest...

Turkey day and Veggie kindness

I guess this is the first legit entry.

Prior to this post I had a discussion with my sister as to the differences between livejournal and blogspot. She used a different email hosts analogy; they do the same basic things, but each have different features that the other hosts won't have. Makes enough sense. Besides, when I think of LJ I think of back-and-forth drama between high school girls and citing PMS as an excuse.
As far as this blog goes, I'll probably use it to chat about what I'm currently thinking about. Chances are that the thoughts will come about due to random things I see or thoughts that pop into my head (in regards to the world, my own life, etc), so I'll probably end up recounting a day's events, something of that sort. It probably will have sort of that stereotypical teenybopper blog feel. But hey, it'll help y'all get to know me and will ideally help me get to know me, too.

Thanksgiving came and went as it normally has the past few years. Honestly, I haven't been pumped about holidays- namely Thanksgiving and Christmas- in a long time. The apathy's mainly due to the fact that I'll be disappointing one side of the family every single time. Divorce has always been a sticky issue regarding the holidays, but when I was a kid, I'm sure I was too dumb and naive to really think about what my mom was doing by herself when my sis and I were hanging out with our dad's family down south. In fact, she just worked overtime when we were gone. The tides turned when my mom remarried; she probably felt more motivated to include herself, our stepdad, and his family in the so-called family holidays of Thanksgiving and Xmas. Long story short, the other side feels slighted when I don't come down for Thanksgiving, so I see them for Xmas, then the other side feels slighted, and so forth. It's an unfortunate situation that already has me worrying about the logistics of graduation. Then again, at least I'll only have to worry about that once in my life. Commercialism aside, enjoying the holiday season is something that everyone ought to experience, even if only for a day each in November & December. It gives me something to look forward to when things come full circle and I've got a family of my own.

Aside from that, I did some Black Friday shopping (didn't shop at GameCrazy, but I love the ad they put out). Black Friday's like a lot of things that you wait around for forever; it's not so much the results that matter as it is the experience of reaching those results. In my case it was pulling an all-nighter after a college football game, as in eating a superfluous meal at midnight, working on a screenplay, laying in bed for a few minutes, looking at the clock and realizing that the stores opened in an hour and half, and looking at the ads just minutes before driving groggily to Circuit City in the rain. Hmm, reading over that, it certainly doesn't seem like a particularly good experience, but at the time I'm certain I was saying to myself, "Yeah, I'm conquering Black Friday on zero hours of sleep!" Nothing like that one-nighter or last-minute buzz to make mundane events more interesting than they otherwise are.

Late Friday night/early Saturday morning, this blog was created. I was thinking of using The Brain from Animaniacs as the image but figured that would be too corny. Speaking of the image, if anyone knows how to move the Title and Description to the bottom of the image instead of the top, please enlighten me.

Earlier today I ate at Veggie Heaven and witnessed two unrelated events that had my mind running wild, the first with awe and the second with happy.
First, I saw an older African-American man with a younger, apparently multiracial (B&W) college-age woman that was probably his daughter. The man had a certain look to him that shouted out "short film subject." Grizzled, thin grey beard, and smiling, he just had the "it" look, as if he could carry a movie without speaking a single word. The first thought that came to mind was him and the young woman standing over a gravestone, subsequently going to get lunch, and reminiscing about life with the spouse/mother through silent flashbacks. I try to write down observations that hit hard like that one, though I'm sure I do a terrible job of it considering it happens somewhat often. It brought to mind a conversation with a friend after the Thanksgiving football game regarding how it's crazy to think there's billions of individuals like yourself out there that have their own thoughts, agendas, histories, and so forth... but that's a topic for a different post.
Second, there were two homeless people waiting outside of Veggie Heaven. An employee went out and gave them to go boxes with rice. I thought, hmm, pretty nice bunch here. Then two more people were outside. The same employee went outside and gave them two more to go boxes. Wow, that's really nice of them. Then five homeless people with two adorable homeless (but not ownerless, mind you) puppies waited outside. I thought, OK, as a restaurant during business hours, it'd be understandable if they draw the line. So they waited and waited outside for maybe five minutes, then started walking around as if they were leaving. Soon after, another employee went outside not once but twice, giving the two people who stuck around four boxes of food. Now, I have my own opinions on the homeless in regards to who I will and will not support, but during lunch I was very proud to eat at Veggie Heaven. It's not an excessively successful restaurant by any means, yet here it was, giving person after person free food. It reminded me of how I keep putting off immersing myself in goodwill and charity work until I'm "successful," at which point my contributions would seemingly make a bigger difference. Really, what's the point in waiting? Even something like a bowl of rice will help feed someone for a day. Knowing me, I may hold off on community service and charitable activities until I at least get a job. That has a good amount of logic to it. Until then, I'll look forward to the little things that I can do to help people. And I'll still eat at Veggie Heaven.

That's it for now. It's the last week of class so I should be nice and busy.

Welcome to me

Hi. I said that after graduation, I'd create a blog. I decided to quit procrastinating and created one before I walked across the stage. Hurrah.