A Home, Destroyed

I'm back. We're back. Thet trip is over, I mean. It was excellent, amazing, all I hoped for/expected. There was a lot of time to think on the trip. We'll probably finish up the other journal, the trip journal, in a few days, but it won't contain my personal thoughts, just anecdotes and humor from the trip. My thoughts will be here. Now, I guess.

I've lived a sort of careless, semi-spontaneous life this year. I want the rest of the year to be--I guess the best way to describe it is--harder. I want to do a lot less of the things I want to do and more of the things I should do. Just for a little while. I want to work enough to appreciate not working, if you know what I mean. So, when AP tests are over and the like, when life is a little more open and time is much less of a commodity I want to keep up the good work ethic, but focus on the things I'm interested in. To be a little less abstract, I want to read more, watch more of the movies I've been meaning to, study the things I'm interested in, maybe go on some more solo photo excursions. I know it doesn't sound like work, but I sort of want to improve myself. Solidify. I'm having trouble being articulate at the moment.

I want to expose myself to some more music too. You know how you sort of get stuck in the same zones, always listening to the same songs, never discovering any new ones? Well, I guess it sort of takes effort to break out of that. I think I'll use Wikipedia to expand my horizons in a concentrated direction.

Traveling is fun. I sort of assumed I'd like it even though I've never really done much traveling before. Driving down the east coast was eye-opening. I've heard people say that the more you travel the more you realize that every city is the same. I don't agree with that or at least not based on the places I've been to the last couple of weeks. Each region we went through had a distinct personality and Florida is defenitly different that any place I've ever seen before. On the other hand, Chicago is very much like any other city I've been to before. It's a bigger Rochester, pretty much. So, I guess I can see where people say that.

What I want for the summer is a 9 to 5 job. I know that sounds really weird, but I've been thinking about it a lot and it would be really nice. I don't want to have to worry about when I'm working or have to figure out schedules. I really want to be able to work 8 hours a day Monday through Friday, have evenings to myself, and know that every weekend is free. I have a feeling that that would make for the best summer.

I don't know. I always get in these self-improvement moods, but I have a strange feeling that this one is going to last longer than usual. I feel kind of close to the edge. A conversation with Dan and Eric on the trip home yesterday sort of opened my eyes to that. Highschool is essentially over and I think I'm finally actually ready to move on. Not in the superficial way I've been ready all year, the "God, I hate highschool" sort of way, but in a real, genuine way. There is still a tremendous amount of anxiety and fear about the unknown, but it's a much calmer version. Much like the anxiety about taking a wrong turn on a roadtrip. Sure, it sets you back time-wise, but what's to worry about? It's not like you've really got anywhere specific to be.

Futhermore, I feel really disconnected from my home. I always guessed that's what would happen. I'm actually quite pleased that I knew myself so well. I'm not a stationary person. When I'm home all I worry about it communication and being able to contact everyone and to know what's going on. On the trip I didn't care what was going on back in Rochester. And when I got home and caught up on the news I realized none of it mattered. I mean I'm sure I would've have a tremendous amount of fun at home, but -- I don't know -- it would not have been the same. I would've stayed the same person at home. And I need a direction, even if it's into the unknown. I'm not scared of change at all. I'm scared of constants.

Anyway, how do I get a 9 to 5 job?

For Picture

Sunshine Empire

We've got a journal specifically for the Florida trip up and running. Look to that for the next eleven days of updating...

www.ponce-de-leon.blogspot.com

Tryon!

On Monday night Tony and I went to Tryon to mess around with his new camera, which makes me salivate with envy. I wish I had enough money to buy a camera like that, but I'll have to stick to my tried and true Kodak Z760. Actually, I really like my camera, and I'm not just saying that to avoid hurting it's feelings. It's solid and reliable, I think.

This stop sign at the entrance tro Tryon is an icon for the last couple of summers.


Those entrance pillars. Anyone that's been to Tryon knows them.

I'm actually a big fan of grafitti. I don't even think of it vandalism. Public art, maybe.

This is that pipe that runs across the canyon or whatever. I wonder what it's for.

The little arch-ed shelter on top the hill on the right side as you're walking in.


Tony's camera. It's a Nokia. I really like the particular one he got.


That pedestal that overlooks the road up on the hill. It's cracked n' stuff.


Some tree.


The only green around. I can't wait to Tryon explodes with color soon.


I took more pictures of Tony taking picture than I took of Tryon, I think.


Trees, moon. Boring.


Tony called Jimmy and I guess Frank and him stole Amanda's car and came to Tryon.


Frank!


I forgot to mention that Baglio arrived before Jimmy and Frank.


Murder attempt #1


More Frank!


We went to visit the old fort, the one that is in one of the first films that Steve and I ever did, but it was pretty much destroyed. Sad shape. At this point it's so dark the hope of taking a good picture is pretty much gone.


Later we went to Kevin's, but when we got there Tony realized that he'd left his cellular telephone back at Tryon so we grabbed some flashlights and some Kevin and returned.


Kevin had...other...uses in mind for the flashlights.


And Tony found his phone.

There are more pictures but I'm having trouble uploading them, so that's it for now. In fact, this might be the last post before we go to Florida.

I'm Not Tired, I'm Not Tired

I took care of the library fine today. Since I returned the book it only cost seven dollars. No big deal, I guess. I'm still a little bummed about the GEVA thing, but whatareyougoingtodo? Today, I "volunteered" at the blood drive at school. I say "volunteered" all quote-like because I didn't exactly ask to help out, but when no one else volunteered Dan, Joe Morelle, and I sort of had to step up to the plate. I ended up missing almost all of school (except for Biology, which I refuse to miss between now and AP week). My statistics teacher is pretty mad at me for missing class today, but I don't care very much. I'll do fine and I learn almost nothing from that class as is.

This guy Ted, a permanent volunteer for the Red Cross, worked with me today. He was pretty awesome actually. At first I was pretty creeped out by him (he wore fringed leather chaps, a leather vest, a motorcylcle jacket, and a bandana) but after getting to know him he turned out pretty okay. Apparently he's retired (really young) because of a work injury and he spends all his time volunteering. He's part of a study of malaria at Strong too, I guess. He was really good at what we had to do volunteering to the point where I didn't really need to be there, but, meh, I wasn't in the mood for school anyway.

So, this whole work thing is not going very well. In the last two weeks everytime I've tried to call in I've been given the day off except for like once or twice. I have about 150 dollars for the Florida trip, but that won't cover it. I might be able to get another day of work in this week, but I'm not holding my breath. When we get back I'm gonna start trying to find another job. Unless my having steady availability affects how often I work at Delta Sonic. It might have a pretty big effect now that I think about it.

Anyway, here are the promised pictures:

That's K-Mahl in front of the first bus while we were still at school. The second bus looked remarkebly like the first one, except with one key difference: it started.

One of the first places we went was this aquarium. This picture has nothing to do with the aquarium except that when I took the picture my back was to it.


Right by the lake the wind was so intense that it lifted you up in the air if you jumped into it. Eric used his jacket like a sail and glided through the air practically.


Wind. Kevin.


More.


Ahem. Yea...


I like how Mr. Facklam is standing in the background.


Kevin, waiting for the super awesome dolphin show to start inside the aquarium. If Rick was my muse for the New York City trip than Kevin must've been my muse for this one. Odd.


Here's Frank waiting for the dolphin show to start.


That reminds me! I need to Netflix March of the Penguins.


"I'm the Sears tower! Rawr!" It made me laugh to find out that Sears spent all that money and time making the tower to house their offices and then had to sell it when business went bad.


View from the top of the tower. Eric and I were talking about how awesome it would've been if something akin to the Chicago fire occured and you could watch it from the observation deck. Then we realized that the steel construction would provide much less fuel than wood buildings.


I've always liked how highways look from above.


View of Lake Michigan from the tower.

Anyway, yea, not very many pictures. My camera ran out of juice in the afternoon of the second day and I didn't even have it for the cool pizza place on Friday night because I left it in the room. Oh well. If I can score some more pictures from other people I might post them here.

I Hate Ohio (No Explanation Included)

Back from Chicago. I took a depressingly meager amount of pictures over the weekend because my camera ran out of batteries and I neglected to bring a working charger. I don't have time to upload them tonight so I'll save that for tomorrow.

Chicago was fun. It's not the most exciting city in the world, but it was still a good time. The number of times I almost got hit by a car turning right on red was enough to make the time interesting. See, downtown Chicago is somewhat like Manhattan and in Manhattan you can't turn right on red, but in Chicago you can. Hence the confusion.

There's so much to discuss that it's hard to begin. The drive down wasn't too annoying, believe it or not. I didn't sleep for very much of the drive at all, but the twelve or whatever hours went by pretty quick. Well, except for the late start. We were supposed to leave at like 5:45 or something, but the bus broke down and we didn't end up leaving until almost 7:30. People were starting to come to school by the time we left (in Laidlaw buses, which brought us to our new tour bus in Buffalo).

Thursday night we went to some pizza place in Chicago, which had writing over every square inch of its surfaces. In the bathroom there was this excellent poem written on the wall. I can't remember it exactly, but I wrote it down on some piece of paper in my luggage and I'll post it tomorrow. Long story short I scribbled out a second stanza and used a sharpie to add it to the wall next to the original.

Friday we did lots of strange tourist-like stuff. We took a "gangster" tour of the city, observing all the noteworthy crime spots from the twenties with a character actor spilling out jokes and facts. We went to some other places, but I hate being a tourist and, therefore, remember very little of them. We ate dinner at a jazz club with a pretty good blues group fronted by a pretty nifty sax player (although visually he was awkward).

Saturday was more tourist stuff in the morning and the actual jazz competition in the afternoon. We played pretty well, especially on our firs two tunes, but we ended up getting second anyway. Whatever. I forgot we went to Chicago for a competition until around noon on Saturday. After the competition we went to this really surreal Medieval-themed place (with all the other bands from the festival) and witnessed some crazy jousting and this and that while eating poorly cooked food. We made comments about the varying self esteems of the employees of the facility, noting specifically that the affectionately dubbed "poop guy" must have difficulty explaining his job to members of the opposite sex on dates and in other venues. Then there was a dance that we could only stay at for twenty minutes before we had to leave for the hotel. Lame.

A little while after we were sent to our rooms K-Mahl and I busted out to do some exploration of the hotel. We managed to make our way onto the roof and climb this giant glass dome that was above the pool. That was the hilight of the escapade. We went back to our room at about 2:45, accidentally woke Eric up who was trying to get some sleep before his flight to Arizona at 4:30, and felt really bad. I managed to sleep through Eric's wake up call at 3:45 and our wake up call at 6:00 (we wanted to go swimming before leaving in the morning). I woke up about five minutes before we were supposed to leave, frantically packed, and dashed to the bus. The dash was sort of unnecessary as many people were later arriving than I was.

The trip home was relatively uneventful, or at least I'm too tired to remember anything eventful. When I got home, however, I got bombarred with numerous bad things in a row. One, I have an outstanding library charge of $100 that I need to pay in like five days or I'm in all sorts of trouble. Including, according to my dad, the inability to get loans for college if a collection agency comes after me for the library money. I'll take care of it tomorrow, but it's just adding to the return home stress. And two, Geva didn't select "Trinity" for the readings. I'm pretty bummed about that. I was pretty proud of my play. I'm gonna keep on telling myself it was because of the high level of controversy of if, because it's soothing, not because I actually believe it's an accurate assesment. Rather annoyed, in general.

Jimmy was nice enough to phone me with my Stars of Tomorrow comments and I'm pretty damn pleased. The one that I liked the most was one of the least important ones (I guess). It talked about what I did during Stiff Upper Lip. I dunno. It was nice that something so obscure and relatively trivial got picked up on. I could explain better but I should probably be sleeping.

I need to really get in to work some days this week. I need money for Florida, money for this library book pontentially, I have to pay back my mom for Chicago...

Double Yew Tee Eff. Pictures (more eleboration too) and stuff tomorrow.

The Windy City

So, I'm going to Chicago tomorrow. Should be pretty fun. I never have short entires, but I've got to pack -- so there.

There'll be pictures, I'm sure, when I return.

"D. Herman's been dead for twenty years, boys!"

More pictures, sorry, but there is adventure to describe. Eric, Dan and I managed another one of our you-have-to-be-there-for-it-to-be-funny but-I'm-going-to-tell-you-about-it-anyway adventures over the weekend. We were driving around on Sunday trying to find the Bayview YMCA (we knew where it was mostly, but we were in no hurry to get there) and we passed this creepy/amazing orchard in Webster and, of course, couldn't resist the urge to explore. So Dan pulls over on a hill semi-legally and we hopped out to investigate. The pictures I have don't do it justice, but it was a few acres of really weird, warped, contorted, etc. trees all laid out in straight linse. All our botony knowledge aside we couldn't determine what kind of trees they were or what fruit they bore.

See? I said they were weird.


They look very scary all dead-like, but Eric, Dan, and I want to go back later in the season when they're in bloom. I kept on expecting them to come alive and drag their limbs across the grass, marching towards us, mouth wide with fangs and such. I remarked on this numerous times, and although my fears were extremely legitament they fell on deaf ears.


Eric and I decided to climb the trees. A natural progession, I think.


Blurry view from top of said tree. They're not really high up anyway.


This one was dead. Well, dead-er than the others ones.


Eric found a lighter because you always find a lighter when you're wandering aroun random fields.


Dan kept on suggesting that we drive around, but I imagine that would've been a bad idea considering we didn't exactly want to be noticed...


...you know...trespassing!

I need to start limiting the number of pictures I put on here. I'm really annoyed by how long it takes to scroll through the last post.


Eric climbed another tree.


Then stood real picturesque-like on the top.


Then Dan insisted that Eric jump and that he would catch him.


We found all these crates in the back of the field. How exciting!


Sky equals nifty.

More crate-things.


Ahem. Even more. See what I mean about the limiting pictures?


All the crates said D. Herman on them.


And then we found all these labels around with the same name: Donald Herman. Eric, Dan, and I got it into our heads that we were in a bad mystery film and we started pretending to be the local sherrif trying to convince a bunch of kids that they were imagining things. We did it for like the rest of the day.

"Sherrif, sherrif! Who's D. Herman? We were just at his orchard and..."

"Boys, boys. There ain't do D. Herman. Never was. And that orchard burned down twenty years ago. I don't know what you think you saw, but there ain't no orchard no more."

"But sir!"

"You best be runnin' along know before you upset your parents. Don't you boy have chores to be tending to? And don't go 'round town mentioning this D. Herman. People in these parts don't care much for the D. Herman talk. It's all foolishness and I don't want to hear any more of it. It's rubbish. You hear me boys? Rubbish. Now run along."

And other variants...for hours and hours. And it didn't even get tiresome. I mean...for us. I'm sure other people were quite annoyed by it.

If that wasnt' weird enough we found this weird deflated Hello Kitty ballon in the adjacanet woods. To many coincidences if you ask me...Later on Dan's mom told us who D. Herman was. Some local grower or something. Very anti-climatic if you ask me. And, by reading this journal, you have waived the right to not "ask me."


Some weird construction equipment.


Later on we actually made it to the Bayview YMCA. There are some of these things around the parking lot. I don't even like this picture that much, but I took like three dozen and I figured I'd had to at least pick one to show from it. After all that work. I can't believe not one of them turned out how I wanted it to.

Oh, and before, at the Chinese food place, Eric introduced my to cheese won-tons. Freakin' amazing. I like it both with and without sweet and sour sauce. It's got to be the greatest food to come out of China ever. You heard me. Ever. Eric also told me that they're researching growing meat from cells, which I would have absolutely no qualms with eating. Maybe I can have a chicken patty again some day. Or a nasty, greasy fish stick. Not that I don't love being a vegetarian. Ahem. Well that's that...I'm tired and it's time to sign off.

Oh, and Eric on a mattress. Always a good way to end a post.