Black Book

First Part

“Be careful with the luggage! They aren’t paying you to break their valuables!” Shiro shot up, careful to make sounds as the baggage men made their way through the hold. Shiro could tell they were getting closer by the sound of their heavy boots on the metal floor. He curled up behind the bags that surrounded him and waited.

The footsteps grew louder, and stopped next to the bag that he was hiding behind. “Hey Mark! We’re looking for a Miss Louise’s things right?”

“Yeah, did you find her bag?” The second set of footsteps started making their way toward his coworker.

“That’s not all I found. There’s something else.” His voice sounded wary, and Shiro tensed up, preparing to fight back if he had to. The second set of footsteps closed in on him. “She doesn’t just have a bag, she has her whole life down here.” The second guy groaned. “And we get to carry all of these back up to the first class deck.”

Shiro stayed tensed up while they were grabbing bags, and didn’t relax until they had left, shutting the door to the hold behind them. He let out a big sigh, taking in a big breath. “I have to move.” He thought to himself as he grabbed his small bag of clothes and the few other belongings he had around him. He looked around the large room, scoping out a new place for him to ride out the rest of the trip.

Shiro had snuck onto the ship when it was docked at the Great Wall. That area had the worst economy, and as such didn’t pose enough of a threat for security of any kind. When he got on The Alexandria he had with him a few changes of clothes for when he reached the capitol city, and enough food to last him the rest of the trip. He also kept with him his silver necklace, which had been passed down through the generations. It was tattered and worn, only getting cleaned every couple decades, when they could afford it, but Shiro made it a point to keep it with him wherever he went. He also had a small hunting knife he kept sheathed at his side. It was a gift for his sixteenth birthday, and had used it on several hunting trips. Finally, he kept with him a small black book. Everyday, during the day when the sunlight came through the windows, he would read the contents of his black book quietly to himself, without fail.

He settled down in a dark corner of the hold, and thought of what life would be like once they landed, drifting off to sleep with the gentle hum of the engines serenading him for the last time.


Next Part

Fourth Winter (Working title)

The engines on the Alexandria roared to life as it prepared to take off one last time on its annual voyage. The Alexandria was a luxury ship, used by the elite class, that once a year traveled the world "seeing the sights" and reminding the elite why they were there.

There was a steady drop in education, which stemmed from a steep rise in poverty. The "elite" class, as they referred to themselves, had managed to pool enough money to keep their city and the surrounding areas unaffected, while the rest of the world crumbled.

A few of the "sights" the Alexandria flew to were once the World's greatest monuments. The first stop was always the Great Wall of China. It landed on its own special landing strip, and allowed its occupants to walk along the wall. Not much was left of the "Once Great Wall", a nickname they had given the wall for its current state, but they all knew, and talked of, the stories of this magnificent wall that spanned 8,851.8 kilometers, and was visible from the moon. From there they made their way down to the Great Pyramid of Giza. The years had been cruel to the pyramid, the continental plates had shifted and caused the pyramid to split in half, which was followed by a flock of looters, hoping to get their hands on the lost wonders of the pyramid. The Alexandria then traveled to Alexandria in Egypt to visit the site of the Lighthouse of Alexandria. The elite had decided to restore the Lighthouse to the state it had been in before all the earthquakes and its ultimate disappearance by 1480. The investors, who had payed to restore the Lighthouse, liked the idea of having the Wonder that was the inspiration for the ship on the stop, to inspire those who made the journey to strive for the greatness that Alexander himself achieved. The final stop was the Leaning Tower of Pisa. There was only a monument for the Leaning Tower now, since it had fallen many centuries earlier. It is ironically fitting that after the stories of Alexander the Great they were treated to the rubble of the Leaning Tower, a fallen Wonder.

A teenage boy stirred in the hold. A look of fear crossed his face, and he jumped up, looking around the room in a panic. Nothing but luggage surrounded him, and he let out a sigh of relief as he slid back down to the ground. His hair was black, and his eyes were a bright brown. His clothes indicated he was from the "middle" class, which was barely a step up from the lower class in the eyes of the elite. They were able to sustain themselves with housing, and a decent job, but weren't able to afford any sort of education, only learning what was passed down through the generations. On occasion a book would make its way into the world of the lower classes and those who could made an effort to spread it to as many people as they could. The boy showed signs of nourishment, which was rare among any of the lower classes, and pointed to his higher status among them. His name was Shiro Winters, and this is his journey.

Next Part

A Phoenix Rises

Hey guys, I'm back! Sorry I didn't post there for like... Ever. Life gets awesome sometimes and when it does I get wrapped up in it. I almost came here and posted a few times, but each time I had too much to say, so I got scared away by the idea of having to write everything.

I'm actually planning on taking this blog in a different direction. If anything super exciting life changing happens I might still update about life, and what is currently going on, but the majority of the time will be fun blog posting.

I used to write a lot, constantly coming up with stories about these characters I based on myself and people I knew. There were some really great ones in there. One that very loosely followed the "Game" my friends and I created when we were younger, one that involved super powers and a super powered bad guy attacking a school, and one that took a fun new look at the whole Merlin/Morganna thing. I only ever finished writing the one with super powers, although never really edited it. The "Game" one was more of me learning how I write, and so it changed a lot through the 20-30 chapters I wrote. It would have been too much of a hassle to finish and edit it. The Merlin one just kinda ran out of my hands, I was trying to do a lot with it, and I like what I have, it's just more than I was capable of writing at the time.

SO, how exactly does my past writing have anything to do with my new blogging style? Well, I plan to write on here. Snippets of story, creating characters, maybe even a story that connects throughout the posts.

I was going to put something here, but I don't have anything in mind right now, so now I can just pop in and write randomly when I feel the need. Hope I get lots of good ideas, and that you guys enjoy whatever it is I do here. =D

Kingdom Hearts!!! =D

Recently, I had a friend buy me Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, which is on the PSP. While I don't own a PSP, I have a friend who does and he let me borrow it since he never uses it. That's a reason why I haven't been on here, because since Thursday I've been playing it when I'm not hanging out with people.

I'm trying to think of the best order to go in here, and I'm probably just going to jump around with anything that I have to say, because I don't exactly have an overarching thing I want to talk about.

I'm not exactly the sportsy type, so this next bit may seem a bit strange, but I joined my friend Gerardo's Intramural Soccer team. It was mainly because he needed people, and I didn't think it would be a bad idea to be a bit physical for once in my life. It's actually turned out to be a lot of fun, and we even decided that after this league is over we should continue practicing just for the fun/exercise. I went out and bought myself some green Puma cleats, shorts, and shirts to play in. So far, I've met a ton of cool people through the soccer team, and lost two games, one of which we actually scored in. It's been a ton of fun, and even with all the soreness that comes with working out, I'm loving every moment of it.

Today I actually went out and attended GDC Online. It was like a career fair for video game companies, which was super awesome and I got to talk to a lot of people in the industry, and heard a lot about what will help with the future. First step, learn C++. Second step, work with friends to make any sort of video game prototype. Tons of lots of fun! I ended up getting a ton of free stuff, like a LucasArts shirt, and a poster for Knights of the Old Republic (which will be given away at some point), and a ton of free pins and such. At one point, while we were wandering, I noticed a guy approaching us who was about to take a picture, and I smiled for the camera. I told Ricky, Ann, and Corey that I wanted that picture, and then we went back to gathering free things. Before lunch I bought a messenger bag, and then we went to eat at a crepe restaurant. It was super duper delicious, and we split up meal crepes and desert crepes, and it was super amazing! When we got back to the center, we went to grab our free water bottles, which allowed for us to reach into a grab bag that had several prizes in it. Ricky, Ann, and Corey got posters, and I got a free pass to one of the sessions. I'm planning on attending a 2-hour session on developing characters. Also, I found the picture the guy took of us, and already saved it. =D

The last few weeks have also been full of the whole super awesome frustration of work, and dealing with people, and struggling to keep stuff from falling apart. The things that messed with people the most aren't even things that... I'm being mean, and I don't like it. I just think if people would sit down and look at themselves for a moment before flying off the handle at someone else things would work out a whole lot better. I could do this better too, trust me, I just think some people could just put some sort of effort into it. I'm also horrible, because there's something inside of me that constantly judges the character of people. Generally, when I meet someone, I can tell whether they're the type of person I'd want to hang out with, or if they're someone I would rather only see every once in a while. This leads me to build connections with people without any effort on their part, because through this strange judging thing I latch on to the people whose character seems the purest, not in the sense of never done anything bad pure, but the sense of this person's character is true, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that they will never let me down. I probably expect a lot of people as is, but I sort of expect more from these people, and awesomely enough they've never let me down. I can think of only a few people who I have managed to build up this way, which might give a sense as to why they mean so much to me.

Umm... That was kind of welling inside me for a while, and it felt good to write it all out.

Lastly, on a good note, because I need that too right now, next week I get to go with Chelsea to the Panic at the Disco concert here in Austin. I'm pretty excited about that, but the super duper great news...

Which I don't think I've shared yet on here, is that I'm going to be an Uncle!! Woot! It's super exciting, and the idea of a little kid running around that belongs to my Brother that I'll be able to spoil and take care of and watch grow is super exciting! Ahh! =D

Friendship is Magic

This has always been one of those truths that I've lived my life by.

There are times when it rings louder than others, and this is one of those times. I was going to say it rang louder now than ever before, but that isn't true, although it's true that it rings louder now than it has for a while. I spend a lot of time on here talking about people, and how grateful I am to have them in my life, but it really is true.

As of this moment, I am super duper at home. Here's the layout of the current room in counterclockwise order. To my right you've got Ann, working on homework, or just browsing the interwebs. Ricky is laying in the bed next to her in a constant state of half sleep. Cathy is full blown passed out on the other bed. Eric is sitting at the other end of that bed. To my left is Corey finishing up his program and running the music. Gerardo just walked in, throwing all of this off, not that I mind in the least.

On occasion, after a long day, I might start to feel like I want some time alone, but when it all comes down to it I can't imagine spending time away from these guys. They're my life, and everyday they mean more and more.

We're headed to eat now, and I won't be back for a long period of time. Love ya guys!

Hispanic Pony Newspaper

Weirdest stand alone title ever, haha.

So, my friends and I do some pretty crazy things. We've recently taken to doing this thing where if we miss something we say, "Rewind." and everyone pretends to go back and repeat whatever just happened. It was first used to see who said something first, which turned us all into mind readers because we started answering questions before they were answered.

We've also started watching My Little Pony a lot. When I say "a lot" I really mean we've watched the first two episodes and fallen in love with the show. It's definitely my type of show, and we're all awesome enough to obsess over it, in a good way. After watching the first two episodes we started claiming which ponies were us. It came out to:

Cathy - Twilight Sparkle

Eric - Applejack

William - Pinkie Pie

Corey - Rarity

Ricky - Rainbow Dash

Ann - Fluttershy

Gerardo - Spike

Later, Ricky was applying for a position at the newspaper. We decided that if he didn't get it we would start our own newspaper. Everyone has their own section as follows:

Gerardo is in charge of Soccer, and it will only be written in Spanish.

Sara is in charge of Music and Arts, basically all things Indie.

Eric is in charge of Nintendo.
Ricky runs the Opinion section.
Eric W. writes about whatever sports news tickles his fancy, minus the soccer bits.
Daniel does an Ask Daniel column.
Corey is in charge of the Social Matters.
Cathy does Literature.
William is writing the Foreign news part.
Jacob has a Minecraft/Technology section.
Ann does the crafts section.
Lynn draws the comics.
I write about video games, mainly RPGs.

And finally, we've sort of recieved/given Hispanic names to everyone.
I'm Eduardo.
Gerardo is Antonio.
Ricky is Enrique.
Corey is Maria.
Jacob is Alejandro.
Enrique is Jose.
Pedro is Pablo.
Cathy is Catalina, I think.
Eric is Roberto.
Ann is Guadalupe.

There's really no point to any of this, I've just been trying to find the time to post it for a while now. Boo college being super duper busy!

Really though, it's pretty great, college that is. My classes are interesting, with the most interesting definitely being Python. I'm also getting to spend a lot more time with people this year than I did in previous semesters, which is making all of this a lot nicer.

I have found though, again, that I find myself attached to people super easily. This is a problem when I feel my super attachedness might be a bit overbearing for some people, that or they might get tired of it after a while.

I dunno, I would talk more, but I really want to sleep since I can, and post this thing, finally.

Till next time,
=D

The Difference

So, I always mention my friends, and always try to specify which friends I'm talking about. I've always wondered why I felt it so important to specify which friends I'm talking about, and I've recently discovered it's more for myself.

Each set of friends is different, but each set of friends has been made at a separate point in my life. Since I've formed the bases for each relationship at different points, I don't feel the same about any two groups.

You've got the group I've known the shortest. The UT crowd. I met them after a semester of college, and have only known them for 9 months or so. I honestly don't feel like I've got that super close friendship, where I can talk whenever I need to, but it's growing. It took very little time to get comfortable around them, enough so that I was willing to drive 5 ish hours to Dallas to meet up with them for a midnight release of Harry Potter. I drove back the next day. Totally worth it, and it wasn't awkward sleeping in the living room with Eric and Cathy, which if you know me make since because I've always found it awkward to even think about sleeping in the same room as someone with the opposite gender, but I'm weird like that. I've grown a lot with these people, and in such a super short period of time I've gotten to know them quite well and couldn't ask for better. I basically met them after a semester of needing someone to hang out with, that social interaction, and their arrival in my life was more than I though possible.

Then there's the Google group, err groups. There's the whole group I met in California, and then all the people I met in New York who get added to the category. Mainly, for this post though I want to talk about the people I met in California, because those are the ones I got closest to. I'm so lucky I got to go California with Google in the first place, and after meeting everyone there I realized just how lucky I really was. Meeting these people was a whole new experience for me since I usually meet people through people. Here it was a blank start, a clean slate where no one had anything to go on except a picture that we submitted and the knowledge that this was a Google CS camp thing. Since there was the added magic of Google I was way more lenient on judging people than I usually am (My judging is more so a pre-screening of people and knowng fast whether they're the type of person I would hang out with). I don't always feel comfortable with them, but when I do it's the type of comfortable where I could literally just fall asleep lying on their shoulder and there would be absolutely nothing wrong with that. The type of comfortable where staying the night in a hotel room with 2 guys and 3 girls wasn't weird at all, it just felt like another normal thing. It may be the extraordinary circumstances surrounding our meeting, but I feel like I met them with a more open mind than I met most my friends, and because of that there's that whole new layer of emotions that I feel around them.

Then there's the last group. The Amarillo group. I met these guys when I was most sheltered, most awkward, least sure of who I was. They've been there through every one of my stupidest moments, and for some reason found something worth waiting for. These are the guys I know I can talk to things about, and yet the ones I have an irrational fear of pushing away somehow. There's years worth of eggshells lying around, and I'm scared one of these days I'll stumble onto the right one that pulls everything apart somehow. It doesn't make any sense when I talk about it, but it's how I feel. There's so much that gets left unsaid on my part because it sounds too whiny, or mushy, which shouldn't bother me after all this time, yet I feel it gets bothersome after a while. I've gotten more comfortable around them over the years though, and now sleeping in a mixed gender room doesn't bother me, but it never would have happened more than a year ago. Since I've known these guys the longest they've also gotten accustomed to me. This includes them telling me when I shouldn't listen in a song, or knowing that their cursing doesn't bother me like it did. I'm now privy to less, and at the same time more, than I would have liked, but I've grown to accept it. This group is responsible for my applying to UT and the Google program. This is the group that breaks my heart every single time I have to drive away, knowing I won't see them for a while. They're responsible for my turning out the way I did, with pushes here and there in a better direction. They're my life, and even though sometimes I feel like I don't belong or that I'd rather be somewhere else, I wouldn't trade a single one for anything on this planet. They're all greater than I could ever explain if given all the time in the world, and they will never be anything less to me.

This blog started three or four days ago, and as such has gone through several different sittings. I feel like I continued with how I had planned on doing this, but overall I feel like that should give you a good picture of what I mean when I specify my different friends. None of them is worse, or better. They all mean something to me, and I wouldn't be the same without them. They're just different.

Flashback to Charles

Ok, so this isn't going to be a super long post, I just want to get a few things in real quick before I hit the hay.

As far as what I ended the last post on, it's still up in the air. I'm super fickle sometimes.

Anyway, classes started today, yesterday. They're going to be fun. Linear Algebra should be somewhat easy, Physics will get hard, and Python will be time consuming.

I'm irked that in Physics we have to pay money to be able to do the homework. That's super silly.

Python is going to be a blast though. The professor, Julian, seems super awesome, and if you were at CSSI, or know Charles he reminded Sara and I of him. It's going to be worth the effort.

Tuesday Eric started playing Kingdom Hearts for the first time. I'm loving seeing it all again. Absolute favorite game of all time ever right there.

I have more to say, but Jacob is sleeping, and I feel super bad for still being awake blogging.

I'll post more later! =D

Oh and be jealous, because I got to Hangout with Emily today! Boo-yah world! =D

Love you guys, and night.

Telepictionary

So I'm back, in Austin, at UT, living in Jester, same room. I don't know if you felt the excitement that was pouring out of me as I typed that, but believe me there was a lot of it.

I've been telling myself to blog for about... Two (?) days now. I'm not too sure exactly on the time, I've had so much happen in the past few days that it's been a whirlwind of awesomeness.

I got help from Ann, Cathy, Lynn and Emily moving in on Thursday. I'm super grateful they were willing to help, it made the whole process go so much smoother. We went and ate at Pluckers, and then returned to hang out and just talk in my room while I put a few more of my things up. I then drove them home, and made the awesome (dreadful) walk from my parking spot to my dorm.

Friday I woke up to help Gerardo move in, but he assured me he didn't need help, and sent me back to bed. I then got up to meet Lynn and Ann, before heading to move Cathy in. Her parents are super nice, and it was cool getting to meet them. We helped Cathy organize her room, and I alphabetized her books on her bookshelf. Side note: She had 3 boxes of books, and she lives on the two and a half floor and there are no elevators. Those things are heavy! Haha.

After we got Cathy all moved in we decided to go eat, and Cathy, being super awful, paid for our food since we helped her move in. =P Gerardo crept up on us, on accident, which was super funny. We then went back to my room to play some Little Big Planet. Cathy got super addicted and was beating the rest of us. Whilst we were playing, Jacob arrived, so we felt bad playing and tried to help him move in, but there wasn't much he needed help with.

Following that, Jacob and his family invited me to dinner, which took place at Curras. It was a pretty great Enchilada, and I ate more of it than I thought I could.We returned, and went to Cathy's room, where we played Telepictionary a few times. We got some pretty great sequences out of that. We then returned to my room where we played more Little Big Planet. It was as enjoyable as it was before, and Cathy was continuing to be one of the better players consistently, which is super duper awesome. When we finished up our gaming, we walked Katherine to her dorm, then I walked Cathy to her dorm, because I didn't want her to get attacked in the middle of the night by some strange night attacker person.

Saturday, the Erics moved in, and I got to help the second Eric move in when he got here. We were able to get everything up in 2 trips, and then the move in help left so he could unpack and we wouldn't be in the way. We ended up playing more Little Big Planet, with Eric joining us once he was free.

I just got super distracted, and lost all trains of thought, and it's 2:30...

We saw One Day yesterday, and it was one of the greatest movies ever. I recommend it to all of you. I spent the whole movie going back and forth between thinking, "I want to be that guy!" and, "Well, I don't want to act that way." Honestly though, he had some super awesome redeeming qualities, even though he was a jerk and I thought he didn't deserve her.

Realistically though, I feel like I'm a lot like that. I'm stupid at times, and I hate myself for the way I act, or treat people. I'll say something that completely destroys someone, not with the intention of destroying them, just because it sounds right in my head. In a moment I can send a conversation in the opposite direction and not even know I did. I like to think though, that at the end of the day I've done more good things than jerkish things.

I know I can't erase my jerk moments by being doubly good. I wish it worked that way, but it doesn't and never will. When I watch romantic shows I'm reminded more and more that I'm not as good as I can be. We have these shows where the guy is always the jerk, and the girl is way more deserving than he or she realizes, and in the end he changes and they're happy with each other. I feel like that is so me, granted I'm sure it's a ton of people.

I'm the best friend, who doesn't always realize the blessings he's being given, and when he does he's too... Slow to act on it. If I were to be super honest right now, I'd tell you that I've given thought to the whole liking someone situation. Lots, and on several occasions felt as though I may have found someone who makes me happier than anyone else. I can't be sure, because I have to spend way too much time over thinking things, because I'm retarded.

Wow, umm... I think I'm off for the night, because I may have just talked myself into something I've been trying to do for a while now. I'll keep you posted.

Goodnight, and I hope everyone is enjoying the start of a new school year. =D

No Such Thing as Monsters

I get super caught up in Google, and College, and life sometimes that I forget to stop and look at where it all started.

My whole Tuesday was devoted to my friend Brian's movie premiere. It was awesome, and I wish I could have more days like that one!

I'm going to take us back a bit, to when we were still in high school. I don't remember how it all began, but somewhere along the way Brian and I became super awesome friends. Not even lying, I would pretty much do anything for him. We've done several projects together over the years, starting with our cake project freshman year. I don't think we did a project Sophomore year, which kind of breaks the pattern I was going for. Haha. Junior year is where the magic happened.

Our English teacher assigned us a video project. We had to make a parody video about two of the books we had read. Brian and I had no trouble deciding to work together. Chris, Ryan, Nate and Cong were also in our group and Stickley and Autry came from a different English class to help us with some of the scenes. (Julie also showed up to help, however she is Chris's super awesome mom and not a student.)

It was the most genius video I'd ever made, which doesn't say much because it was the first, but it was awesome. Brian planned everything out, and we pretty much hit the ground running. We decided pretty unanimously on Moby Dick and The Great Gatsby. Nate took the role of Ahab and the Owl Eyed Guy (Sorta), Cong was Queequeg, Chris took the roles of Gatsby and Detective Grissom, Ryan was a reporter, I was Moby and Ishmael, Brian was George, and everyone else were the extras that were at Gatsbys/part of Ahab's crew.

We started off with a Cribs-like intro, which was all about Gatsby, and eventually he got shot. This lead to the reporter and Detective Grissom, who segwayed the video into an awesome chase scene with Ahab and his crew chasing Moby, me. Brian, Chris and I spent several hours editing it, using Windows Movie Maker. We stayed up until 1 or 2 in the morning, the night before we were going to turn it in. The rest was history. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILXgwKasH2g

Shameless plug for a high school video. Yeah, haha. I went that far.

When Brian was looking into college he decided to make a video to send to USC. The video was How To Ride A Bike- Learning to Fall Down. It was a more inspirational type video than Brian had made. Here's that one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf30CumJTI8

Senior year, in our Government class we had to do a John Locke project. Brian, Brison and I teamed up and decided we were going to make a video. Somehow we ended up on the idea to take songs and rewrite them. We decided on two songs, Tik Tok and Birthday Sex. I have no idea how those two made the cut, but they did, and it doesn't make much sense.

I didn't appear in the video, and Brison did Tik Tok while Brian did Birthday Sex. It was an interesting video, and we meant it to be super funny with very little of the video that was scripted, with most of it being thought up on the spot. The hardest part was getting all the video and everything on my computer which wasn't able to connect to the camera anymore because we got a new computer. We actually didn't get the video working in time for us to present, so we made a backup slideshow that was thrown together in a few minutes.

I remember it was snowing a lot, because we had to drive over to Camron's to get the video on a flash drive, and then back to my house, and then to take everyone home and there was snow and ice and what not all around. We got the video together, with music and vocals which took some work, and then presented it the next day even though we had already done our slideshow.

Our class thought it was funny, and so here is that project. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=989s7rkTDhs

Also our senior year, Brian had a few projects of his own for us to work on. One of them was a fun one called Wanted: New Roommate. This was all in our free time, over Spring Break senior year, and we had a ton of fun making it. It was serious, and funny all at the same time which made it rather good. This is the first of the films that I actually appeared in, if you don't count me carrying a whale/showing up in the credits for Death in The Water.

It was a lot of fun to shoot, and was the last video of Brian's design I edited. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgjPS7Si4uM

We did one more video where I edited, but it was more my set up, with Brian helping out with the filming and lining things up. It was a video for our choir banquet, that was supposed to be fun and cool for everyone to watch. I wanted it to be something we could watch and think, "Yeah, that was our choir!"

We interviewed a few people and put what they said in the video, along with some epic music and one of our concerts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JN-NcLshnc&feature=grec_index

The next thing Brian went on to tackle was a video he titled Cured. This video took place earlier this year, I think around Spring Break time. It's about a society that has figured up a way to keep people from aging and thus dying of old age. Basically, since there's more people you have to have permission to have kids basically. It's a strange society, and makes you question what you would do in order to protect the family you have.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iadQuTBmQp4
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh9oit0Cz_0

Finally, Brian has recently made No Such Thing As Monsters. I've seen it twice, and the only reason I haven't watched it more, is because I've been busy since he put it up online. It is an amazing story, and watching it the second time it was a whole lot more powerful. The movie isn't perfect, but the budget was literally nothing for it, and so he made due with what he had and created an amazing show.

My favorite part of it is the characterization, and how real the actors make it feel. Keep in mind that everyone who appears in it did it because they wanted to, they had no obligation, no payment, just a love for acting. The same goes for the whole crew. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8YjR3uE7iA

That's the movie we had the premiere for, and it's crazy thinking about how far we've come, how far Brian specifically has come.

There you have it, a whole novel post about Brian, and his films. I love that guy, and anything you could say that would make things better would be appreciated.

http://www.blackelephantfilms.com/

There's his website, and ways to contact him, cast or crew.

Alrighty, adios guys! Love ya!

Toss Toss!

The trek back to the hotel was probably the hardest of any of the treks we'd made because it was in the middle of the day and super hot. We managed to make it, although I didn't think I would make it.

We got to the hotel, and they didn't have Emily's room or Izzy's and my room wasn't ready. Izzy looked into getting a room at a different hotel, and Kofi, Lynn, Emily, Elissa, Sam, Mario, Sara and myself sat in the lobby waiting for my room to open up. It did finally, and around that time Elissa left, so we all said our goodbyes, and Izzy went to a hotel a block away.

When we got upstairs and in our room, we started the shower rotations and I passed out super quick. I woke up to Kofi hovering over me, he was leaving and Emily made sure he said goodbye. It was in no way easy, but it wasn't as sad as last year. After meeting up once, I wasn't scared I'd never see him again.

I don't remember if I passed out again, or stayed awake after that. I do remember talking to Sam and realizing that he's probably one of the coolest people I've had the pleasure of knowing. He did a few impersonations, and I think one of them was me, which was ridiculously accurate.

Eventually we all finished getting showered, and we were in the last stages of getting ready, so we started to work on where we were going to go eat. Sam wasn't dressed up, because he was just crashing in the room until his friend got off of work, so he didn't want to go somewhere nice and look out of place. We thought about a few places, but decided on Shake Shack eventually. I was wearing my black dress shoes, black dress pants, a black T-shirt, navy blue button up, a silver tie, and a black velvet vest. I got told the heat would kill me, and it tried to. I had to take my vest off after we got to Shake Shack in order to live.

If you get a chance go there. They had the best orange cream slush thing ever! The burgers are pretty great too. After eating, we walked with Sam over to the subway entrance and all said our last goodbyes with him. Sam, if you read this I miss you, and wish I had spent more time with you than I ever did. We got on the subway, and down to our stop easily, and weren't sure if we should go to the theatre or wait and shop some. We decided to go in, and looked at some merchandise, and bought some, and then went upstairs to where our seats would be. We couldn't get in the theatre yet, but we sat outside the doors and it was a bit overwhelming. The whole building is Wicked themed... Did I ever mention we had planned to go see Wicked? Hrmmm...

It's legit though, the building that is. We got drinks because they came with a souvenir mug, and then just talked as we waited to go in. The stage... Ahhh. The work that goes into that shines forth when you just look at it. Ahhh!

Had I finished this the other night when I started it, I would have skipped out on describing the Wicked experience to you as well as I could. Emily had said something about it being almost inevitable that we would cry at the end, and she was right. I need to explain something before I go on, we had all been up since 7ish the previous day, and had got, at most, a few hours worth of naps in. Sitting in the theatre was super hard, because it was cool and comfortable which didn't help the whole tired thing. Izzy took a nap before the show, and I think Sara might have tried.

I'm not going to devote a lot of time to explaining the show, because if you know it you know what happens, and if not you need to, but it's a lot for this blog, haha. I think Izzy was the loudest person in the theatre when he laughed at Galinda, and at the end when Glinda imprisons Madame Morrible. There were several parts in the show where I couldn't help but cry, it was a mixture of the amazingness that was the show, and the overwhelming feeling that I was actually sitting there watching a Broadway show in New York. I'm silly like that. =D

I do think I dozed off for a short second, Emily quickly woke me up, haha. During this whole thing Mario was sitting twelve seats from the stage, while Lynn, Emily, Izzy, Sara and I were a row or two from the very back of the balcony. The view was amazing though, haha.

After the show, I talked myself into buying a Wicked sweet track jacket. It took me the whole show, but in the end, I couldn't help but buy it. We took several fun pictures right outside, and then made our way to the heart of Times Square, and did our last bit of shopping. Hershey store, M&M store, a little shop for "I heart New York" shirts. The good stuff, minus Disney, haha. We eventually decided we were super tired, and all made our way back to the hotel.

We talked about the show, and all of our favorite parts, but still crashed pretty quick once we were back. We ended up waking up later than we expected to, which was bad because we didn't have much time before Lynn and Mario left for the airport. We managed to run to this nearby food place and grab some breakfast/lunch to go and eat it outside the hotel before the shuttle for Lynn and Mario showed up. I think Lori arrived before they left, and we all said hello to her and goodbye to Lynn and Mario. Izzy went to his hotel with Lori to get his luggage so he could keep it with mine and Sara's at our hotel while we ran around before we left. While he was gone the shuttle for Emily popped up, and he didn't get to say goodbye which was super sad.

After Sara and I saw Emily off, we checked out and gave them our luggage, along with Izzy's to hold till our shuttle arrived. We made our way over to Central Park, and found ourselves walking around this big lake thing, which wasn't too exciting, so we left the park and went to a nearby Starbucks. We then walked as we looked for a place to eat. My phone battery was on it's last legs, for some reasons, which was bad because I had given the shuttle company my number.

We eventually decided to eat at the Shake Shack, so we caught some shuttles over there and stood in the line, which was long. It was nearing time for the shuttle to arrive, and I was worried, because my phone had died. We got our food to go, and basically ran back to the hotel. The guy had waited for us, and he wasn't too happy about that, but we were thankful. The hotel then took a long time finding Sara's luggage, which made the guy a bit angrier I think. We said our goodbyes to Lori and Izzy, and sat in the shuttle, eating quietly to ourselves.

We made it there, before 4:30, which was an hour after we had signed up for the shuttle at, which meant we didn't get charged extra but the guy asked for a waiting fee, or whatever so we paid it so we could just go inside. We got inside, got checked in to our flights went through security, and waited at the gate. They informed us that we might miss our connecting flights because they had to stop in Tennessee to fill up, because it was too hot in New York. We called our families to tell them, but ended up landing in Dallas only a few minutes late.

Sara and I walked to my gate, which was overbooked so they were taking off a bit later. I charged my phone, and we talked about how we'd see each other in a month so it wasn't sad. Then, I boarded the plane, waved goodbye, and that was pretty much it...

I got home, and was super happy to see my sister and parents. I couldn't stop thinking about the trip, but I was ready for that Sunday afternoon, because I was having my birthday party then.

Ummm... That was my New York trip, since then I've had a birthday party, played in a Brawl tournament, watched Brian's movie with the cast and crew and am currently waiting for the premiere on Tuesday. It's a legit premiere with people paying to watch, and catering, and we rented out a room at the Civic Center. Crazy stuffs.

I'll tell you guys how that goes. Love ya! =D

Sing a song! ... Ummm... Hakuna Matata...

I woke up to Emily I think, and she was telling me we were going to go see the sunrise (sorta). I was sort of energized after my short nap, while everyone else was in that half hyper, half groggy, half half asleep state.

We somehow managed to make our way upstairs to Hemispheres, which has an outdoor seating area. We all went out onto the patio and looked out over the skyline, in awe of the city in the morning. It was one of those picturesque moments, and I know so many people got a billion great pictures! Ahh, if you guys could have been there, I mean, I would give it up if that meant every single one of you could be there, witnessing the beauty of New York in the morning with several of your closest friends around you.

We spent a lot of time watching as the sky lit up, standing around talking and just basking in it all. They got all of us together to take a few pictures with the whole of everything behind us. I was one of the last to leave to head back downstairs to get ready for breakfast then our presentations.

I don't know if I mentioned this, and I probably did, but I had been wearing my glasses for almost 12 hours, which never actually happens. The first thing I did when I got downstairs was put my contacts in, which people thought was weird since I'd been up for so long, but it felt a lot better having my contacts back in. We went to breakfast, and probably looked ridiculous to all the BOLD immersion students, and the actual Googlers.

We got back to Tech Talk, and set about preparing ourselves for super awesome fun presentations with 58 half asleep students. Sounds good, right?

Oh it was! While it was hard sitting in the audience, everyone who was on stage did a superb job! I was super tired, and so I don't remember a ton of what everyone said, but I remember that the gist of everyone's programs was along the lines of making it easier to find events that are going on, or will be going on.

When we took the stage we spent a good amount of time trying to get the screens to work, so I decided to take the mic and improvise. I started off with a few bad knock knock jokes.

"Knock Knock!"
Everyone started laughing, so I couldn't hear anything.
"Did you say 'Who's there?' because I couldn't hear."
"Who's there?"
"Boo"
"Boo Who?"
"Don't cry it was only a joke."

I tried to think of a good one, but got:
"Knock Knock!"
"Who's there?"
"Tuba."
"Tuba who?"
"Tuba toothpaste."

If I remember correctly someone else told a joke, but I don't remember that, sorry. It was after that last joke though that I decided to stop telling bad jokes.

Someone told me to sing a song. I was about to start A Whole New World, but in my tired state I forgot how to start it out. The only other song I could think of was Hakuna Matata, so I started off slow.

"Hakuna Matata..."
"What a wonderful phrase." It was this line that a lot of people joined in.
"Hakuna Matata, aint no passing craze!"

I don't know how far into the song we got, but our presentation started working, and everyone was laughing or singing, so I handed the mic over to Victoria who was starting our presentation.

It went well, everything worked like we had wanted it to, and I feel like there weren't as many speed bumps as there could have been. After that we had some lunches that they had packed for us, and it was time to start saying goodbyes, and get everything out before we had to all leave.

It was fun, and awesome, and super sad all at the same time. Eventually, even though I don't think they liked doing it, Cat, Isa and Stephanie had to ask us to all leave, because we weren't technically allowed to be there or something, I honestly don't remember that either...

What do I remember then? Haha.

I remember getting to play the Ha Game one time, before we all left, while we were all delirious and having the time of our life. I remember thanking Cat, Isa and Stephanie for everything they had done for us. I remember having to say good bye to all the CSSIers a second time. I remember thinking that we'd done it once, we'd left and met back up so it was no longer as sad because the chances of us seeing each other again are pretty great as long as we actually want to, and even if we don't try, if we all shoot for Google we're bound to at least see each other again.

When we finally left, Lynn, Emily, Sara, Mario, Izzy, Kofi, Sam, Elissa, and myself all made our way to the hotel we had left the previous day to check in for our last little hoorah in New York.

More on that in the next post, because it's 3 AM, my laptop is dying, and I'm super tired.

Yesterday was super short, but felt so very long, and not in all the awesome ways I thought it would. I'm still not entirely capable of living in the now. I keep fading in and out of the future, and that makes being here in Amarillo hard, because there's not much of it in my future. I'm kind of torn between UT and Google, as far as where I feel most at home, and I really want to still feel that about Amarillo. I love this town, and truly can't see why people don't like it. It's because of this town that I am who I am, so I may be weird, but I can't help but love that.

Oh no, if I stay here I'll just keep going on rant after rant that my tired mind wanders to, because I think way more when I'm tired, especially about non physical things like emotions and morals and whatever else may crop up.

I promise I'll finish off New York in the next post, and then I can get back to me pretending to have some sort of important ideas that if people took a moment to read might cause them to think and maybe one day cause them to grow some. I dunno.

Night readers. Love you all, so much. =D

Remember that time we had a program?

While we were out on the town exploring as much of New York as we could in a few short hours, Isa, Cat and Stephanie (And maybe some others, I'm not entirely sure) had completely transformed Tech Talk where we had been having classes and where we were going to spend the entire night programming.

There was a banner that read "Camp Hack" at the entrance to the room and they kept with the theme perfectly. Off to the right side of the room there were 4 tents set up with sleeping bags inside in case anyone needed a nap. Right out in front of that were a few couch things surrounding the smore stations. I think they had 4 of them set up on top of gnome tables, which were cool looking.

The rest of the room was filled with beanbags, and super comfy chairs, and bouncy balls, and leaves scattered around the ground. Cat had even set up a moon, and a machine that was supposed to be showing the night sky, but it wasn't really working.. =/

Everyone got in their groups and started working on programming their app, which was supposed to be a social networking app. This was all before Dusan showed up, so I felt horrible about it, and kept checking with Isa and them to see if anything came up. They couldn't get any of his numbers to work, and his emergency number was based in Serbia, which only made me freak out even more.

Emily had to keep telling me that everything was going to be alright, because I was on the verge of breaking down. I went over to my group, and tried my best to be productive, which, compared to Namita, was pretty hard. Earlier in the day she had been working on our two main pages, and already had it where you could click the add button to go the add event page.

I went and put my glasses on, and came back to try and find something I could do, still out of it, but I went to talk to Emily about it first, and about that time I looked up and Dusan walked in. It was the greatest feeling ever, I was so relieved. If you read this Dusan, sorry I didn't go with you, and I'm super glad you made it back safely.

Emily smiled and said, "I told you everything would be fine." Special thanks to Emily for keeping me together during that.

I went back to my group and started cracking. Shachaf and I worked on writing up a To Do (if we have time) list and drawing what we want the screens to look like. Namita was working on the Mobile app, Faye worked on some drawings for our app, like the introduction for our app, Victoria worked on our presentation, and Anna was working on setting up the web app.

Honestly, I feel like I helped the least. I popped around throughout the night and took pictures, and talked to other groups, and drank coke from a GLASS BOTTLE! At one point in the night Beth came out and was just like, "William, guess what I have?" I looked over and the moment I saw the drink in her hand I jumped up and asked where she got it, after apologizing to my group for getting distracted. I ran out to the hall, and there were two packs of these cokes so I snatched one up, and savored every last drop of it.

They had set up the sound system to play naturey music, and at one point there was a thunderstorm. After the thunderstorm there was a bear attack. It scared a few people, but for everyone else it was just awesome. Isa had dressed up as a bear and stormed the camp. Someone ended up throwing a net over her, and effectively taming the bear enough for a few photo ops. I got a few pictures on Lynn's camera, so I don't have them handy to put up in this post. In fact, I plan on creating a post with a bunch of pictures at some point. Not sure when, but sometime.

The night actually flew by really fast, and I didn't even sleep during the night. I guess we never really looked at the time until we hit a spot where we couldn't make something work. A few times I was able to jump in and help Namita and Shachaf debug the code to make it work, but lots of times it was stuff none of us had any idea about. There were several interns there, who were helping us if we asked for it, and so we went to them. Since we were working with Android SDK nobody really knew how to help us, except for Cooper. He reminded me of myself more and more as the night went on, because you could tell he was tired, but he couldn't resist helping someone when they asked.

My group alone asked for help at least 3 times, and it really is thanks to him that some of our features actually ended up working. There was this one time, it was like 4 or 5, so we were really tired and loopy, and our program wouldn't work at all, so we were kind of freaking out. Shachaf and Namita were like, "Remember that time we wanted to have a search feature?" and so after we stopped laughing I said, "Remember that time we had a program?"

That was the be all end all, and we couldn't restrain ourselves. We were laughing so hard, and I'm pretty sure some of the other groups were just looking at us like we were crazy. Haha. Definitely one of the more memorable moments of the night. We then decided that if we couldn't get our app to work we would make it look like it did, by engineering the right screens and then when presenting it would just look like it did the right thing. Sam ended up making his way over, and we found out his group had the same idea, since their program couldn't work.

In the end, with the help of Cooper, we actually had a functioning mobile and web app. After he helped us for the final time, I went and laid on a bean bag, which was probably a bad idea, because I passed out instantly pretty much.

The next blog will be from when I woke up to when we left Google. The one after that is our time in New York on our own. Then I get back to Amarillo posts.

I can't remember if I left anything out of this... I'm kind of tired, haha. Night guys!

Love ya!

Picture in 3, 2, 1. *Pose* *Snap*

Thursday started off awesomely, with us having to pack everything up and check out of the hotel. We then had to make the trek to Google. It wasn't normal, in that we had to carry all our luggage, and luckily it was early in the day so it wasn't too unbearable.

We got to Google, and put all of our luggage in Tech Talk then headed off to Five BB for breakfast again. There wasn't enough room in the dining area, so we decided we would go eat out in the mini kitchen. It was nice, and we ate and talked about all things Googley. While we were eating, Demian, one of the speakers from CSSI laster year, walked by, and we started talking to him.

He told us about the BOLD immersion program, and a bit more about the specifics of the different programs. We then got a picture with him, and he went to go catch up with his students. Shortly afterwards a security guy came around, and asked too see all of our name tags. We showed them to him and he proceeded to ask us why we were there. We told him we were part of FUSE and we were eating breakfast. He walked off, and shortly after he left Cat came out and told us that they got mad at them, telling them we weren't allowed to be outside the classroom unaccompanied. She apologized, and we walked back with her to Tech Talk.

I don't exactly know how to describe it, but I don't like the fact the NYC Google is more uptight than Cali Google. I understand that having security is kind of important, but that being said, this year, when we're a bit more matured and grown up we were treated like little kids compared to last year. Only downside, and it wasn't even that big of one. =P

So we got back to Tech Talk, and the first thing on the list was a class in App Inventor. It was really neat, and I started playing with it and managed to throw together a cheap little app that allowed me to text someone. It was fun, and could probably be used be people who didn't even know a lot about programming specifics.

After that, we had lunch at the usual, this time with no security interference. I probably had some awesome conversations, but I don't recall because it has been several days since then with an all nighter somewhere in there. We got back to Tech Talk, and had a class about presentation skills. It was nice, and we got a ton of pointers to help with our presentations in the morning. After that, we got to watch a live stream of a video conference that the VP of the European Offices was holding, where he talked about managing. It was definitely interesting hearing what he had to say on the matters.

They then set us free, telling us that we had 4 hours to do whatever we wanted. A group of us got together, and ran to the Met at Central Park. We got there, and were on the opposite side of Central Park so we walked through Central Park. It was beautiful!! We had several photo ops while in the park, one of which, was probably my favorite. While we were walking Shachaf (See, Awesome) shouted out, "Photo in 3, 2, 1." and we all spun around and posed as she took the picture.

It was an amazing picture, as were the tons of other pictures we took. We arrived at the Met, and several of us had ended up showing up a bit later than the first part of our group, so our small group went to see the photography section first. It was more than amazing watching Lynn's face as she looked at all the pictures on the walls. It was one of the best things to watch as she was completely in awe of the photos. She's amazing, and I truly don't doubt that she could one day have a photo in a museum. She's that awesome.

We then tried to make our way to the Asian Art, but got distracted for a moment. In that moment Lynn got roped into a conversation by this guy who I thought was nice, at first, but as the conversation went on I kind of worried about her. We stayed in the room with her, until the guy left, then we ran to the Asian Art part of the building. We got there as everything was closing, so most of the exhibits were already closed off.

We met up with the entirety of our group outside and started to discuss what we wanted to do next. I think all the guys wanted to go to Nintendo World, so we all decided to make the trek 40 blocks to find the store. On the way we walked through Central Park, and took an amazing picture on an Alice in Wonderland statue, as well as a few more great pictures. After we had gone 20 something blocks we decided to catch a bus. It took us right up to the Nintendo store basically.

Our first stop was a Five Guys that happened to be right there. It was great, and we scarfed it down pretty quickly since we had to head back soon. A few of us still needed to go to the Nintendo store, so we ran over there and did some shopping. Dusan really wanted to hit up a Best Buy, so he went to go find one. After we did our shopping we started to make our way back to Google. Everyone else was already gone, and Dusan hadn't returned so I kind of freaked out and started calling anyone I could to see if they could get a hold of him.

We walked through Times Square, and I knew exactly where to go to get us back. I found it strange how we ended up back in Times Square unexpectedly. Haha. So we were hurrying to get back, and I was super worried about getting in touch with Dusan. We finally ended up back at Google, and hurried upstairs. The first thing I did when I got in was talk to some people to see if they had heard anything before going to talk to Stephanie about the inability to contact him. We tried the number they had, but it wasn't working, and so she told me they would work on finding him.

After that I actually looked around the room, which had been redecorated in the most awesome of ways. I'll explain it to ya in the next post. =D

Since I'm not connecting all the days I'm behind on I'll go ahead and tell you he's safe. Thankfully. I was super worried, and feel really bad about not going with him to Best Buy.

Love you guys, miss New York and FUSE and all of you, but I'm glad to be home with everyone here too.

Night! =D

Paparazzi at the Bowling Alley

Wednesday started off like a normal day... As normal as waking up in the morning in New York to head to Google is.

Seriously though, nothing really happened on the way to Google. We got to Google, and they took us to the same cafe to eat, which is cool because I like the breakfast at 5 Borough Bistro. I usually have a bagel, some eggs, and Strawberries if they have any, which they do. Haha.

When we got done, we went to Tech Talk, and had a class about Appengine. Our instructor was really cool, and had a guestbook app running online where people could sign in. It was cool being able to write something, and see it pop up on the screen while she was presenting. Someone managed to hack the website by making a comment that redirected the page to Google. She got it fixed, and no one did it again, but it's being blamed on Christian who is the only person who had signed in on the site.

At the end of the presentation, Isa and them led us upstairs to Hemispheres for lunch. It was great, there were a ton of options, and some of us ate outside on the patio type area. On the way in, this guy was asking for everyone's name tag, which I had left at the hotel, so he just told me to make sure to bring it the next day, but he was super adamant about it, even though I had the tag from the front desk with me. That was just a kink though, because everything else went smoothly.

After we ate, we tried playing a game of Bananagrams, but it got interrupted when they told us we could either go to the High Line or the gameroom. Everyone went to the High Line. It was really cool (just not temperature wise). It's the old railway that got turned into a nice walkway/garden thing. It's really pretty, and Lynn whipped her super awesome camera out. After a while, Izzy got a hold of it and he started taking pictures of everything. Emily threw her hat on me, and apparently I look good wearing a hat backwards. Who knew?

We got back to Google, and went back up to Hemispheres. We started to play a game of bananagrams, and Lynn won. Gah! First full game, and she wins.We started another game, and head to move to get ready for the Panel. I didn't end up sitting by them, but I tried to get another game going. We didn't finish that one either, because the panel started talking to us.

It was made up of a few interns, a BOLDer, and a few software engineers. It was fun listening to them talk about where they came from and how they got there. It was pretty cool, and we learned a lot about the inside point of view on things.

When that was finished, we came back to Tech Talk, and did more group brainstorming. We had some software engineers who came and helped us iron out what we wanted to do. It was really useful, and we now have a project that we feel would be useful and something we could do. We played with the idea, and tried to make something as far as what our app would look like.

When we left from here for the night we headed to Chelsea Piers I think, where there was this awesome bowling alley. At said bowling Alley it was Izzy, Kwesi, Isa, Linda, Sara, Christian and Devin versus Lynn, Emily, Kofi, Sam, Cat, Kyle and myself. Isa had the overall best score followed by Sara who got 3 Strikes in the tenth frame, and then myself and Lynn came in 3rd and 4th respectively.

I got to take a ton of pictures with Lynn's camera, which was super awesome. I was awesome paparazzi, and managed to keep catching Kwesi when he was eating. Sorry, didn't mean to. =D

I got a lot of action shots of people while they were bowling. It was super duper fun, and I think I, personally, had more fun at the bowling alley than I did on the boat cruise last year. It may be different fun, but I think I was all around more relaxed than I was last year.

After bowling, we went to Times Square and shopped, and just went around. Emily and I didn't make the first subway, so we had to catch the next one and then find Lynn and the gang. We went to the Disney store, and I bought a Captain America shirt, and a Mickey Mouse shirt. We then went to the M&M store and the Hershey store, and then started making our way back to the hotel. I'm leaving a lot out, but if it's anything big I'll add it later.

We got back to the hotel and planned our next few days, then slept.

I'll be back later to talk about Thursday, however I might mix Thursday/Friday. not sure yet. Haha.

Love ya guys,
Adios! =D

Times Square Wave

Sorry, I meant to blog this last night so when you woke up this bright morning you could read it. Things got awesome, and then we were tired, since it was 2 AM so we just went to sleep. Shhh...

I left a few things out of the last post. Mainly the gifts I received for my birthday. Lynn made me strawberries, so I would always have some, and Emily got me an awesome Marvel shirt and a copy of Nintendo Power.

I think that's the biggest thing I left out of Monday's post.

Tuesday was a loooong day as well. I didn't want to get out of bed, because the beds at our hotel are super nice, but the allure of Google and everyone there pulled me out of my bed. The walk was fun and such, but the real fun took place at Google itself. We had breakfast, which was super great (Google food is always good). =D

We had a supppper duppper awesssome class on Tuesday! We got to listen to this guy from Poland teach us about HTML5. It was one of the coolest slideshows ever. If I get the chance I'll show you, I just don't want to post a link without knowing I have permission first. Haha, I learned something from last year. =D

We ran over, which most of us were ok with, and ran to lunch when he got done. It was fun, and I got to talk to Isa and Cat a lot more. I always like getting to talk to people about what they do, and what they like about it. They're really awesome people too, which is sweet! =D

Then we got split up into groups. I have a really great group, Shachaf, Faye, Anna, Namita, and Victoria. We did some icebreakers with our group, we were stuck on an island and everyone had to bring one thing that best represented them. I went with a superhero, because I was a nerd. Then we had to create a story that used all our items. Our story was as follows:

Our ship mysteriously crashed on this island that was inhabited by some cannibalistic natives. Anna was a kite-charmer, and Namita brought a kite, so Anna played her flute to control the kite. My superhero loved kites so he was following it, and he pulled the Pegasus which we were all on, and Faye sat on the back with her knife protecting us.

It was interesting, and I really like my group. We then had to start to brainstorming for our group project while they handed out Xooms. They only had 2/3 of them, so I haven't gotten mine yet, but it's alright. I'm interested to see what our final project becomes, because we didn't really have much to go on during our brainstorming session.

We then got to listen to Adam (Another Googler) talk to us about the interview process, and give us tips for resumes and how to go about the interviews. He was easy to listen to, and a lot of what he said made the process seem less daunting, but the idea of getting asked a question and having to write out an answer is still scary. They then took us out to do mock interviews in our groups, which gave us an idea of what it would feel like. The guy asked us 3 questions, which he had us answer like we were in an interview, and then just walked through how to optimize the problems we had. He was super awesome, and actually knew Isa back in Australia.

We came back, and there was a lot of pizza, and most everyone was already eating so we got some food and drinks and sat around and hung out while eating. They waited for a bit before telling us to get back with our groups because we were about to start the scavenger hunt. The lady in charge got up in front, and told us all to grab a lunchbox. Inside was a phone, a camera, an envelope and instructions. She walked us through the different types of missions, and then told us to start.

We had to run to Times Square, and on the way get someone to trust us. We ended up getting a picture on some guy's motorcycle. He was nice enough to trust us on there. Haha. We then made our way to Times Square pretty seamlessly, which was good. Haha. Once there we had to run around and do things, one of which included talking to this guy who was doing the cup game. It took us a bit to realize there was a ball under each cup, but once we got that we got it. We asked the guy if he was a Googler, and then got a picture with him before running off. My favorite thing we did was this one mission where we had to get as many people as possible doing a synchronized dance of some kind.

I saw all the people on the steps in Times Square and thought, "We should try to get them to all do the wave." Everyone decided that since I suggested it I should ask. 5 of our member went and sat in the crowd, and Shachaf had the camera ready.

*Slowly stand up on the back of the statue in front of the steps.*
"HEY EVERYONE!! WE'RE HERE WITH GOOGLE DOING A SCAVENGER HUNT!! WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO HELP US OUT BY DOING THE WAVE AND LETTING US RECORD IT??"
"YES!"
"THANK YOU! OK, WE'RE GOING TO START ON THE LEFT AND THEN GO TO THE RIGHT AND BACK!" *Turn to Shachaf* "Ready?"
"Ready!"
"ALRIGHT! LET'S START!" *Point to the left side, and slowly move to the right as people do the wave. Then go back to the left.* "OK, ONE MORE TIME!" *Motion from the left to the right one more time.*

It was crazy, and I'm pretty sure I'll never forget it. I'm not that outgoing, so yelling at a bunch of people is way out of the ordinary for me.

We had a ton of fun running around Times Square and taking pictures and videos, and I'm looking forward to heading back so I can spend more time at the Disney store and several other places. It's going to be so epic, and I'm probably going to spend way too much money there. =D

We ran into Lynn and Beth's group on our way back to Google, and went into the subway to come back. There was a mom getting mad at her daughter for coming back out of the station, so I offered to pay for her daughter since I got the card for free, but she just looked at me like I was stupid, so I apologized and walked off. Inside the station there were a ton of Harry Potter posters, and I tried to take as many pictures as possible.

We got back, and did some voting on the pictures/videos. It was fun, and there were great pictures/videos. I think everyone did a really awesome job. Lynn's team won first overall, and there was much rejoicing and picture taking and such, haha.

Seriously, there have been a ton of pictures, and I plan on getting my hands on as many as possible. Haha.We left after that to go back to the hotel because it was like... 10 or so. After we got back, Lynn, Emily, Tanay, and I went to CVS and then we came back to the hotel.

Emily started a hangout with Tasha, Ashley, and Enrique. It was probably the most exciting thing ever. We got 7 people on Emily's side of the hangout. We were loud, but Ashley and Tasha could barely hear us... Haha. We spent several hours talking, and it was around 1:45 when we stopped talking with everyone and called it a night.

Wednesday has been just as fun, and we went bowling and shopping in Times Square. I'll tell you more about it in a post that isn't already a mile long.

Love you guys, and...

Adios. =D

Google Birthday? Oh yeah!

My day started at midnight, when I got home, and rushed around the house making sure I had everything packed. Procrastinators for the win. =D

I then tried to get a few hours of sleep. I managed to see my phone at 2:15ish, and then was promptly woke up by my mother at 4:45. I must have passed out at some point, but I'm not exactly sure. I woke up smoothly though, and it was crazy packing last minute stuff and electronics.

I got into the airport, and boarded the plane smoothly, this time no high school English teacher to keep me company on the flight. I was going to take a nap, but decided to wait on the drinks before napping. Before I could finish my drink my nose started bleeding. Woohoo, right? Next thing I hear, the flight is ending in 15 minutes. Yay for not sleeping on flights.

When I got out of the plane at DFW I texted Sara and Mario, so I could meet up with them, and found out I was the first one to arrive. They got there shortly after I did, and we got some food then boarded our flight. The flight was uneventful, but I used my laptop to charge my phone, which was dying because of all of the birthday texts. Ridiculous!

At LaGuardia we went to get our luggage, and Jhan (one of the FUSEers) ran around trying to find us. He finally did, and we met up with 3 other FUSEers. We got 2 more, and then waited for Lynn, the final arrival. They had me call this Limo company, with a decent price, and work on setting up a ride. That was a hassle.

I called several times with the guy telling me, "25 minutes! We'll call you." (25 minutes later) "Are you almost here?" "5 minutes! We'll call you!" (5 minutes later) "1 Minute. Head upstairs."
...
A few calls later we finally got in the limo, and managed to shove 20 of us in the limo, which was better than having to wait on a second one.

Walking into Google was crazy. It's in the building, but not the entire building, so we had to go up to the fourth floor to get the greeting table. We met Isa, Stephanie, and Cathie (I think on the names, sorry if it's wrong), who gave us all our introduction stuff. While talking to them we were ambushed by Emily Stumme, who ran out and hugged us. It was awesome!!

We then walked into the room where the intro was taking place, and it was like an awesome family reunion where I got to say hi to a ton of the CSSIers from last year. Truly and honestly, I felt like I was home. It was beautiful. =D

We got the introduction speech, and a little talk from an engineer, and then they started a few icebreakers. We felt like we were cheating, because our group was 4 CSSIers and one new person. It was fun though, and I got to meet Faye.

After our icebreakers, we took a tour of the offices. There are some super sweet places in these offices, and I'm sure enough time will make me love them more, but I'm still more attached to the Mountain View office. Beth found me some strawberries and it was heavenly. We finished the tour at a new cafeteria, which opened specifically for us. =D

I got to meet Joseph, Mike, and another Googler while I ate. It was a fun meal, and I got to learn a lot from the three of them. After the meal we were cleared to go, and Emily and Lynn and them almost broke out into Happy Birthday, but I hid so they didn't. After we finally got back, and got checked in I tagged along with Izzy and Beth to a pizza place.

It started raining when we decided to leave, so we went back to the hotel, where I then met up with Emily and Lynn. They wanted to go to CVS so I tagged along with them. Then we returned to their room where I started to tackle thanking all of the birthday wishes. While that was happening we tried to Hangout with Michelle, Kasra, and Jessica. Then we got to Hangout with Kat for a bit. I finally finished the thank yous, and then finally got to start blogging.

This is where you come in, and now I sleep...

Long day... Great birthday...

I love Google, and I love all the CSSIers, and I really do feel like this is exactly where I belong.

I do miss everyone from Amarillo and UT though...

Love ya guys,
Stay tuned,
William Combs

Hogwarts, Hufflepuffs, and Hermononucleosis

So I saw Harry Potter at the midnight release. I even "dressed up" as a random Ravenclaw student and went with 4 friends (1 Hufflepuff, 1 Gryffindor, 1 Slytherin, and 1 cool guy).

It was a great movie. I never read the books, so I only had a few whispers to go off of as far as what happened, and in a way I'm glad I didn't because I could watch it without judging it too much. I mean, it would be awesome to have read all the books as they came out, and grown with the characters, and shared in the magic of the Harry Potter fandom. I feel bad that I missed out, but I can still appreciate the series and the story.

Anyway, I drove 5 and a half hours to Fort Worth to watch it with my friends Cathy, Eric, Corey, and Katie. I don't think I've been that happy in a while (Even if a while is a week or so). I've honestly felt off for a while now, and it doesn't help that Chelsea's been out of town, and then everyone else works all the time, because then I just feel more and more distant from everyone in Amarillo, and more and more guilty about loving every minute with friends from college, and looking forward to a week with everyone from Google.

I understand that they work a lot, and that sometimes schedules can't line up, but I've even got to see the newest friend, who I met through one of the friends who I feel like I'm getting further away from, more than I get to see the original friends. I hope that was followable, because it made my head spin.

It's just that seeing my friends from UT made me so happy, and then I see my friends from Amarillo and I feel like there's something missing. I can't stand it, because I know it's something on my end that's going wrong. =/

The premiere was great though, and some kids had us high five them for dressing up, because they thought our nerdiness should be rewarded with a high five. I teared up a few times at the movie, and before the movie, watching pieces of Part 1 on several people's Ipads/laptops that they had scattered around the theater.

Today is Emily Stumme's super awesome birthday. Hope it's a good one!

In 2 days it'll be my birthday, but more importantly I'll be heading out to New York with Google!

Love ya guys, I'm off to sleep after 11 ish hours of driving in two days.

=D

P.S. I've been listening to the Wicked album, and I love it, but I could tell who played Glinda and Elphaba by their voices. Your boy is that good, thank you. =P

Optimism

So, I've started and stopped several posts in the past couple of weeks because I start them at a bad time and get ridiculously tired in the middle or I just lose my train of thought on whatever it was I was talking about, which happens to me a lot.

I'm pretty positive I'd make one of the world's best pessimists. When I see the glass with milk in it it really depends on the mood that I'm in at the moment as to whether I say it's half full or half empty. However, every single time I find myself saying the glass is half empty I immediately follow it up with the following thought, "No, don't say that. You can't lose that faith, even in the most ridiculous of ideas or the most insignificant ones."

I mean, in the end all anyone really has is faith. If I let myself lose faith in people, things or the world in general then I don't really have much. It's like that friend that changes for the worse and everyone else sees it and start doing what they need to to distance themselves. After someone points it out to me, because I don't see things like that sometimes, I try to take the steps needed to make sure any distance isn't caused by me. If I lose faith in anyone then it's only a matter of time until I allow myself to lose faith in another person. The more I allow myself to lose faith the easier it'll become, and one day I'll look back and realize I don't have anything.

On a much brighter note, in less than 2 days I will be heading to Dallas to hang out with some friends from college to watch the Harry Potter midnight premiere. It's going to be super duper epic!!

Also, in less than 6 days I turn 19, but more importantly I head to New York thanks to Google. My ticket to go see Wicked on Broadway, while I'm there, came in yesterday, and that was really exciting. I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of the people I haven't seen in a year. It feels like it's been ages though.

I'm pumped about the upcoming week (and a half ish)! I feel bad every time I say this, because I try to not live too much in the future, but I want these in between days to fly by super fast so I can cut to having the uber fun times in Dallas/New York.

Hope you are having a wonderful Summer, and that it continues.

Love ya, and stay Optimistic! =D

21 Days!!

This will be one of the few times I have actually counted down the days till my birthday. I don't do it often, and technically I'm not doing the counting this time, but my very good friend Emily is counting down for me.

I'm actually just really lucky, because my birthday happens to fall on the right day.

In 21 days I will be getting on a plane here in Amarillo bound for Dallas, and then flying off to New York. I technically will make the entire trip down there as an 18 year old, and not until we're probably doing dinner will I actually turn 19.

I'm super duper excited for my birthday, because, while I won't be with any of my friends from Amarillo, or my friends from UT (minus Sara, Mario, and Samantha), I'll get to spend it with some of the best friends I made in one of the shortest time spans, and many more people who I know will be just as awesome friends in an even quicker time period.

I'll be in New York, at Google, what more could I ask for. Ouch, and there it was. As I thought that I hurt because I really am moving so fast. This time last year I would have been upset that I didn't get to spend my birthday with my friends. Wait, I'm not explaining this right. Having three sets of friends that all exist in different places makes life hard. The fact that I get to spend my birthday with any of my friends is what makes it amazing. It would be just as amazing if I stayed in town and had those friends over, or if I ended up somewhere and had the UT friends over. I love all of them so much, and none of them could ever be replaced.

I think that's my favorite part about this whole thing, the Google camps, the college scene, the whole of life in general. It's the way I can meet someone, who I know absolutely nothing about, and over time (long or short) I'll grow to need them in someway. I need Brison to nerd out properly over things like X-Men. I need Cathy to inspire me to read. I need Emily to count down the days till I see her again. I need Chelsea to always know what to say. I need Eric to remind me that you're only as tall as your heart will let you be. I need Beth to be sour, but one of the sweetest people I know. I need everyone to help make me who I am today, a Blue, who is Such A Blue.

My life has sort of sped up a lot in the past few weeks, and I think I'm still kind of trying to deny that fact. I need to stop though, because the longer I deny it the more time I lose to thinking this way. There's a ton of stuff I want to do, that doesn't include video games or TV Shows, but that's what I spend time doing, because people happen to be busy, which I can't blame them for. I just feel like I'm not trying hard enough to maintain what I have here, and with new friendships popping up I'm having trouble feeling good about wanting to make those friendships stronger and not even spending time with the current friends.

It's weird, I know, and it might make sense to you, but even if it doesn't I'm fine. I know how I need to go about fixing this stuff, it's just a lot of work.

New York in 21 days. Birthday in 21 days. Google in 21 days. Birthday party at home in 27 days. Possible Brawl tournament in 33 or 34 days. Movie Premiere of No Such Thing As Monsters in 43 days.

=D

I Should Be Sleeping

I turned my laptop off and everything, with the idea that I was going to go to sleep, but then my mind started wandering, and I couldn't.

My life has recently sped up, a lot. I went from a casual painting job, and then hanging out whenever anyone was free, and then helping with found for Brian's next film, to possibly having a job at United, and finishing painting so they can put the floors in, and still film, and getting to know everyone going to FUSE, and learning legit Brawl skills from Dakota who Brian introduced me to.

Let's go with... FUSE first. You guys don't know anything about pre CSSI, but this right here is a lot like it. 30 more people, but still the whole getting to know everyone, favorite movie, etc... It's going to be one of the best weeks ever, all these people sound legit. I'm going to miss everyone that isn't returning, and Kat and Caroline and Jessica, but I get to meet a ton of super awesome people! Gah! I love this feeling!

Now for Smash Bros. Brian works with Dakota, who is a ranked competitive Brawl player. So, naturally Brian has been telling me all about him. Well, I had the chance to actually meet Dakota earlier and play a few games with him. OHMUHGAHBBQIDIEDSOMANYTIMESHEISRIDICULOUS! But really. He spent the majority of the hour teaching me crazy techniques and the rest of the time destroying me. I'm used to the losing part, it was just a lot to take in. I plan to continue playing with them as long as they will let me, and hopefully getting better... It's possible somewhat. Haha.

And now I try that sleep thing again. Night!

Back In The Habit

It's been a while since I've blogged normally. The last two have been about friends/me, and there was a good long break in between those two.

My Summer has sort of consisted of a real job. I've been helping my mom's friend paint the interior of her house. It's a job, haha. Other than that, I've been appointed sound guy for my friend Brian's next big film. It's an interesting story. My friend and I introduced Doctor Who to another of our friends, so we've been watching with him when we can. I've also been watching Sherlock, and Firefly. Well, I already watched Sherlock. There are 3 episodes out, and it doesn't come back till the fall.

I went to the midnight premiere of X-Men First Class. It was good, I enjoyed it, but I had a lot of complaints as far as the actual story goes. They picked the wrong Angel! Gahhh! Anyway, there is a new X-Men game that should be coming out around the Holiday season, and I'm super excited for it. It should be the game I've been wanting in a super powered game for a while.

I have a new celebrity crush, and it's Jewel Staite who plays Kaylee in Firefly. She's awesome, and optimistic, and always cheerful. =D

Linz recently rented LA Noire, and we've solved several crimes/caused several thousand dollars of damage over the past couple of days. It's really addicting.

I'ma go, because I'm only half working on this, and trying to sum up my whole Summer so far. =D

Night guys!

William Combs 101

So, in ze last post I went all "here are my super awesome college friends and I couldn't have made it through the year without them"-crazy. It was a big fantastic post 100, and again I apologize to anyone I left off. There was so much more I could have said and wanted to, but had to drive and readjust to being home.

Anyway, new post talky time. =P

The stereotypical introduction courses is generally titled "(Insert Subject Name Here) 101". I figure it's kind of fitting for me to do a crash course in me. To help myself, and you understand me a little bit better.

First, I'm going to answer a few questions people asked via Facebook. Mainly a bunch of Favorites and such, but that's not a bad starting point, so here goes.

Favorites:


Color: Green. Not exactly sure where it came from, but Green is my absolute favorite color. Period. My room is painted green, after years of wishing it were, and as I write this I am wearing a completely green outfit, cause I'm that cool. If I had to pick a reason for Green I would probably go with my equating that to Elves/Centaurs and such. I'm a huge fan of those so that could possible be where it came from. Is green ever related to magic, because that might be why as well...

Food: Meal-wise I would probably have to say Burritos. Bean and Cheese for the win, unless it's some amazing Barbacoa because that stuff is like heaven in a tortilla (with beans and cheese also). A close second would probably have to be enchiladas, and only if they are the ones my family makes because those are golden. We could probably make lots of money if we had a restaurant that was all about those enchiladas. Oh geeze, my Mexican is showing.

Memory as a Child: This one is sort of a best more than a favorite. When I was in elementary school my friends and I had these super awesome ideas for a video game/comic/manga/anime. What better way to understand the story than by immersing ourselves in it, so we would run around in my backyard, on the playground at school, and just about anywhere else playing this game. I couldn't help but make my character a fast, magical, wise Elf with a whip (thank you Yu-Yu-Hakusho) named Murcielago who fought from the back with his spells. My friend Cody was the almost as fast, energy, silly, flying Mayhanna (a race of humanoid people who had tails) named Meeko who fights with a sword and super awesome energy attacks.. My other friend Erik was the slow, physical, serious, defensive Sunnian (a race of humanoid people who lived on suns) named Azome who ran the forge and smashed our opponents with his epic strength. That's a bad description of their characters, but it's really for another time I think. Basically, we would enact these whole scenarios and train and then fight bosses, and save planets, and come up with new story arcs, and have guest appearances (My Sister Lindsey with her character Lightning, the daughter of Zeus and some non-goddess, who was really good with potions).

TV Personality I Would Love to Make Disappear: I do not know how to answer this question. Honestly. I don't watch enough TV I guess. I mean, I could name characters from shows I would love to see gone, and even some musicians, but can't think of a TV personality. So, I guess no one.

Music: Ummm... I... Music is hard for me... I like a lot of stuff... And it changes depending on my mood... So, I'll leave that be for now because I think there's an artist one someone asked about later. I guess I'll say that the only music I don't like is the majority of Rap music, and most anything that cusses in it. Yea, weirdo over here. After thinking about this for a while, I can safely say that my favorite music genre is video game soundtracks. Those are pure beauty. =D

Childhood Friend: I don't have a childhood friend I liked more than everyone else. The two I would pick, based on how much I enjoyed hanging out with them then and how much I still hang out with them, are Cody and Erik. They're the same ones I mentioned earlier with the game we used to play as kids. Of all my friends, they've been there the longest just about, and I wouldn't trade them for the world. They are uber fantastic.

Artist: I'm not going to lie, I don't know a lot of legit artists. I couldn't tell you all the classical painters or anything, but I do have a few artists whom I really like. I love the artists for Kingdom Hearts, and for Final Fantasy, and the Star Ocean. Every single time I'm playing through one of those games, and many others, I am taken aback by how beautiful everything is done. I can't help but love all the comic artists who have ever done a Marvel or DC comic, because even though I don't actively read them I appreciate all the effort that went into those. I certainly love Brooke, and Lynn, and Ann, because they do things with a piece of paper and a pencil that I only dream of doing. Musical Artist-wise, I love Relient K, Hawk Nelson, Utada Hikaru, Vanessa Carlton and Vanessa Peters. I listen to more, but I can always listen to any of these to make my day better.

Store: Express. Only because every single time I walk into that store I find a billion things I wish I could wear. They're clothes are so legit, and I think I may be in love with them. =P GameStop. Does it need saying? I could probably live off of those two stores, assuming restaurants and food places don't count as stores. =D

Candy/Cookie: Reese's. Sugar Cookies. Yea, I love me some Chocolate and Peanut Butter! I really enjoy eating the inside of the Reese's Cup first, and then eating the outer portion. Haha. As for Sugar Cookies, those are just simple and amazing! Haha.

Book: I'm going to do Series for this, because I can't pick just one. The Lost Years of Merlin. I read them so long ago, and don't remember a lot of what was in them, but I will never forget how eager I was to read all of the books in the series. I'm picky when it comes to reading, and I couldn't set these books down. Ahhh! So much awesomeness! Also, the Redwall books were pretty legit.

TV Show: I adore Merlin. I love how they are telling the story in such a different light. It's not really accurate, but it's interesting, and they pull it off really well. It doesn't help that Merlin, whom I wish to one day be more like, is played perfectly. I love how the show, while about Merlin and magic, isn't all about magic... Even though it kind of is... It's about the characters and their growth, which I love in any show. Definitely Sherlock. It's newer, and only 3 episodes exist, but boy are they good episodes. I was a fan of Sherlock when I was little, and always will be. Ah! I realized the other day that I tend to like British shows more than American shows. Also, I like shows when the main character is someone I want to be more like. I like to think that in some ways I resemble Merlin, or Sherlock. Just a little. =D

Season: I really enjoy a good Fall, or maybe Spring. Winter is known for being too cold, and Summer is way too hot. With Spring and Fall you get that nice transition weather that results in you being able to wear anything and be completely comfortable.

Day of the Week: This is a bit harder. I like Wednesdays. By Wednesday you're over despising that the weekend is over, and you're ready to be in class and learn. Also, you're not quite fed up with classes yet, because you've only had 2 days so far. It's just perfectly in the middle so that you're not too tired with the week or too frustrated, but ready to take on the day.

Holiday: I am a fan of Christmas. Mainly because I really enjoy how people are around that time of year. Aside from the crazy shopping hysteria, people are generally better people around this time. I like that something as small as a holiday can bring out the best in people, even though I hate that they don't stay that way.

Animal: I have three favorite animals. My favorite animal that lives in water is a dolphin. They're just so beautiful, and how could you not love them. My favorite land animal is a fox. I go back and forth sometimes, but it's generally a fox. They're just amazing to me. My favorite animal that can fly is the falcon or hawk. It depends on the day really. They're both so very intriguing.

Ice Cream: Vanilla. It's plain, sure, but it's really tasty. Never underestimate the simplicity of something, because sometimes the most simple thing is more complex than you could imagine. I also really like Sea Salt. I tried it over Spring Break in Dallas this year, and it was surprisingly amazing. Thank you Kingdom Hearts for introducing me to it.

Seasoning: I'm going to say salt, because I can't think of any else. Haha.

X-Man: Why do you ask questions like this! Gah! Gambit... Storm... Angel... First things first, I can not help but love the idea of having epic wings growing out of my back. If that were my mutation it would make my whole life complete. It still pains me that he was looked over for First Class, and that they made him very minor in the one movie he appeared in. Gambit is just epic. You can not tell me he isn't in any way one of the most epic characters in the X-Men Universe. Aside from Origins: Wolverine, he's been great every time he appears in something. Then you've got Storm. She's... How do you even begin to describe her? She tries to pick Xavier's pocket, joins the X-Men and becomes third in charge behind Xavier and Scott. She is revered as a goddess in Africa, and kind of is one. She's strong, and so kind hearted. I could nerd out for long periods of time over these three. Oh, and I still have wings, and all the pieces for my Angel outfit. I'm that cool.

Pokemon: I think I have to say Squirtle here. He was my first pokemon, and will always be mine. That's the best way I can put that. I love the little guy. =D

Liberal Artsy: I can not pick a favorite Liberal Arts major. I know of only 3 people who are Liberal Arts people. I love each of them immensely, and wouldn't trade any of them. I apologize for my lack of a favorite here, but it is quite impossible. You've just got too much awesomeness pouring out of each of them that it's impossible to say one is better.

Memory From Past Year: Ouch. Another hard one. Also, another one that I will most definitely be cheating on by picking multiple memories. The past year has been crazy, consisting of Google and College, both of which made the year what it was. One of the Saturday's when I was in California, with Google, they set us free in San Francisco for a day. We had so much fun, and I remember being thankful Kasra had GPS on his phone, because otherwise we would have been lost. We took a ton of pictures, and sang Lion King on almost every bus we were on. When we were leaving the Golden Gate bridge everyone decided to sing Happy Birthday to me, even though it wasn't, and a lot of the people on the bus joined in which made it that much better. Overall, that was one of the most exciting days from that trip. I don't know how to explain why, it was just perfect. Another great memory was in October. I'd only been away at college for a few months, but it felt like ages since I'd seen anyone. In October, a lot of my friends decided they were going to meet up in Dallas and hang out for a weekend. Summer and I decided to head up there, and I'm so glad we did. Seeing everyone was amazing, and even though we got back at midnight that Sunday/Monday it was totally worth it. I was having a hard time coping with college, and seeing everyone really helped. From this last semester I would probably have to go with... Our last little hoo-rah in Austin. There are so many crazy awesome memories, but there at the end it was once again perfect. People either take a while to find a place in my life, or they are immediately key to it, and this whole group was key the moment I met them. Playing games, watching movies, snacking, watching people study... Perfect! =D

TV Show: Wait, I already did this. Yea, but I forgot Doctor Who. Oh-mah-gah! Doctor Who is so amazing. It's more than just a man saving the day, traveling through space and time, and that's why I enjoy it so much. There is almost always some sort of idea I can take away from each episode to make myself better with, and that's really why I love it as much as I do.

Ginger in Said Show, and Who She Reminds Me Of: I'm just doing this to humor you Chelsea. My favorite Ginger would have to be Donna Noble. She's such a great character, and her spirit really livens the show I think. As for Amelia Pond, I'm quite the fan of her. She's just as feisty as Donna, which may be part of the reason why I like her so much. They're both great characters, and I loved when Donna was there, and currently love Amy being there. And Amelia doesn't honestly remind me of anyone in real life, but Chelsea is Amelia Pond in my phone. =D

Favorite Video Game: Kingdom Hearts. I was expecting this to be hard, and I've been thinking about it, but it really is Kingdom Hearts hands down. The story is amazing, the art is breath taking, the music is beautiful, and Sora is every bit the man I want to be... Or kid. He's who I aspire to be more like every day.

That's it with the Best/Favorites.

Let's see, I have come to terms with Corey being beautiful, I am right handed, I love swimming, I've only ever worked as a sacker at Albertsons, I have one dog named Diamond, I went to this Summer Camp thing with Google last Summer and am going to a different Google thing this Summer (on my birthday), I am mostly a Blue (Caring and such), my dream vacation would probably be to Disney World or somewhere in Japan because I love Japan and Disney, the animal that I think best describes me is a monkey because I can be serious and pensive or playful and curious, and I prefer books, music, and movies (I think each one brings something new to the board and each of those can make you re-evaluate yourself so you can grow).

Then, my mother asked, "What kind of girl would win your heart and make you throw your jacket over a puddle for her to walk across?"

I would probably throw my jacket over a puddle for most girls to walk across anyway, just to be nice. However, the girl that would win my heart would be a girl who is smart, a girl with ideas and ideals. Someone who I could learn from every time I was with them, and someone who could never cease to make me smile. That's vague, I know, but I never really think about this much, so that's what I've got.

So that's that. I've spent a couple weeks working on answering all that, and putting together my own little about me. What I write here is a compilation of who I see myself as, and who I strive to be, something I can look at and hold myself to while also being able to remember where I was at this time.

I'm way too trusting. Seriously, and I know it, but I would rather trust someone and then get burned than not trust the person I needed to. Sounds a bit off, even by my standards, but it's true. I'm not stupid trusting though, I'm not going to walk down a dark alley in a strange country and expect the crowd dressed all in black not to do anything. It's hard to explain, but you tell me you can't hang out because you have to do something for your parents, and I will believe you and hold that word as law until you post the pictures of you hanging out with someone else. Even after you do that I won't hold it against you, because I know I'm kind of a boring person sometimes, and you can have a heck of a lot more fun if you go hang out with those friends that aren't weird and... Sheltered like me. Which, I'm ok with. I like being sheltered, and I love not being the party/club type, and I couldn't imagine what I'd do to myself if I ever once actually cussed, and I'm not planning on ever drinking anything alcoholic just because I don't want to or like the stigma that comes with it, and I will never willingly put a cigarette/cigar in my mouth and smoke it, and drugs are something that you won't ever see me doing as long as I'm alive, and as for sex... When I get married, and never before that. I don't mean to sound like people who do any of this are bad people. I would say show me someone who didn't cuss, but I already know 3 other people who don't, and they're some of the coolest people ever. Anyway, I'm not here to point a finger at anyone, because every single time in my life I could point a finger at someone I know I could find several reasons to point a finger at myself. On that topic, I'm a bit of a hypocrite... So which of this am I being a hypocrite about. The not judging part... And more, but mainly the judging part. I hate it, and can't stand it, but I do it. I can't help it, I just do, and it takes a while for me to move past it and stop judging, but I usually do. Sometimes though it's a good sort of judging in a way... Like, I was able to use it to find me my friends at UT, and boy did they turn out to be the best. I'm broken though, and if it's late enough, and quiet enough I realize it, but I go on. I keep trucking, and finding things in life that mend me, and I pray when I think about it, because as much as I would love to say I always do I don't, but when I do it's from the heart, and I believe without a doubt that God is listening, and he's always going to be there when I need him. I'm terrified by the idea that one of these days I'll hit that point when I realize I'm not as smart as I thought, and I can't imagine what I'll do then, what I'll do when I don't know what comes next, how to take the next step. I've never once doubted my character though, my thoughts, my mindset. Where did all of this come from, how did I decided I would never cuss, or that I was going to accept anyone anyway they are. I've been told I'll grow up, and that one day I'll learn and wisen up, but I can't help but think every single thought that runs through my head, every single moral in me is part of God's plan. Also, I don't think there is anything unwise about seeing the best in people, in being willing to overlook something to see that inside they are a good person. I don't agree with anyone who says man is basically evil, because I believe without any sort of shadow of a doubt that man is entirely good, and it's once they enter this world that evil starts to enter them. Humans are born good, and we are essentially good, it's not until we start letting the world have it's way that evil enters into us, and it's not until you succumb to that evil that you become evil. I also believe that you can't blame someone who has only ever seen one side of the story. If someone grows up and is only ever told killing is good, and they see death around them, and every piece of writing condones it, and their parents tell them it's good, then you can't necessarily blame them. They've been manipulated, and if you were born under those conditions you would be the exact same way, and so would I. It's just a fact of life, and I will not blame them for that, rather believe that there is a way that it can be fixed. I'm missing something, I know it, but this is a big stream of consciousness with breaks thrown in as I switch the tab to gather my thoughts. It's staring me in the face, and I've already alluded to it, but I can't remember when. Acceptance! I listened to a great family friend, the type who I would trust with anything talk the other day and it broke my heart. I look up to her, and always have, but the world has made her cynical. Understandable, but saddening. She was talking about how bad public school is, and maybe it is, but I loved it, and I could very well be only remembering the good things, but that's not bad at all. Anyway, she was talking about the whole "homosexual" issue, and I don't see that as an issue any more than I see "heterosexuality", which is people who are sexually driven. Either side, it doesn't matter, if there is a love between two people, and they want to get married, and be with each other, I'm fine with that. The guys who sleep with as many people as they can, and the girls who wake up in a different bed every morning are the ones that bother me. Sorry, but I'm really not... I think that a guy kissing his girlfriend in public is fine, but I don't want to see more than that, and the same goes for two girls or two guys. As long as it's love, enjoy.

I love magic, because the possibilities are endless. Dreams. The day I stop dreaming, is the day I stop existing. I'd rather be a dreamer who is let down by life, than a realist who never moves forward because it's not realistic enough. I don't see the point of being here if it isn't to dream. And no dreamers aren't stupid. A dreamer can be as, if not more, logical than a realist any day.



I'm done. My mind is racing now, and I can't get a grip on any key points for me to hit, so I'm done. That's the crash course in me, and I'm sure it took a while to read, cause I ramble a lot. I apologize for that. I need sleep, bad. Goodnight, and I'm sorry for overloading you with so much text with this post. I should be back to normal sized posts after this. I'm really off now, night.