I met her in 1st or 2nd grade. She was the teacher's pet and plain. I remember very little about her until around the 5th or 6th grade when she ran for school office and won or something. Seventh grade rolled around and we had one class together, "Leadership".

I hated that class, and had no desire to be there. To this day it is the class that I have recieved the worst final grade in. (luckily 7th grade doesn't count towards GPA) She was the only person in that class to even talk to me, and even then she was incredibly superficial. She was also exceedingly attractive now. Well, during the long hours of doing nothing that were spent in my leadership classroom I wrote a letter to her, asking her to a dance in the distant future, no wait, asking her for a dance at a dance in the distant future. She didn't speak to me for days, and finally the day before the dance I approached her and asked her if she'd recieved my note and she quietly acknowledged that she did. I muttered something along the lines of, "Well?" and she said, "No, I'm sorry." and walked away from me. Rejection is amazingly easy in the 7th grade, but we didn't speak again for years.

Warp to this year, about January. My life was going quite well. I felt fully satisfied with where I was at, with the friends I had and my job. She approached me out of nowhere during lunch, while I was surrounded by my friends.
"David."
"Yes?"
"Can I ask you something?"
"Yes."
"We're trying to have a really awesome debate team this year, and I talked it over with some of the other members and we really want you to join."
I asked a few questions about meetings, money and whether it would interfere with drama. I said I'd join. Then before she left I turned the tables on her and said, "Can I ask you something?"
"Yes."
"Would you like to get dinner some time, just the two of us?"
"Sure."
"Alright, I'll call you."

(And now this must end, as I have to be at work in 24 minutes.)

The sleeping man lay there long before my arrival. His hand was propped against his elbow, shadowing his face from eyes such as mine. This man, although his body stationary, attacked my mind with invisible fears. Is he okay? Is he bleeding somewhere? Why does he sleep on the cold, rough cement when a soft(er) wooden bench is within feet of him?

The time was late enough that even the "Frequent Service" buses were only running hourly. I thought to myself, this man must have just missed the previous bus and knew he had an hour to wait. The loud bus hissed around the corner, and its breaks squeeled as it arrived, one minute late. Someone must have said something, because I saw at least a dozen passengers stand and gaze out the terminal side window at the dozing stranger. I walked towards the bus, but stopped at the stairway and turned to the man.

"Are you getting on?" I asked, softly. He muttered something incomprehensible and turned away from me.

"Is he alright?" the patrons of Tri-met asked. The driver answered before I could, explaining that he was fine. That is all they spoke of. I was questioned as if I'd just witnessed Princess Di's fatal accident.

"What was he doing there?" "Where was he going?" "What was his name?" "How long had he been there?" "Did you try to talk to him?" "Why didn't you call the police?"

Finally I was off the bus and began to stroll down the street, in pursuit of me was a wandering slum family, just trying to find peace.

And the heavens rumbled with a fury unheard of in recents months. The sky shook with such magnitude that one could fear the world itself would buckle under the force. And where was I? Sitting on my backporch, playing my git-box as loud as I could. You can't often get away with playing guitar at 3 am, and I wasn't about to miss my chance. The temperature was 92, and it hadn't rained in at least a month, and then it just started raining. Not like the rain of Noah, but rather the soft trickling of an overstuffed fajita with too liquidy a mix.

I think I have decided not to return to germany, not yet at least. I can't see myself doing it, and still being able to apply for all the scholarships and take the SATs and ACT that is required of me. I suppose I should write a letter tomorrow to my would-be host family, and let them know the gig is up. I shall return, however. I promised too many people that to not make good on it. OSU has a study abroad program with 13 different universities in Germany. So if all goes as planned (which never really happens) I should be on german soil again by 2007. When I return, I must promise myself not to leave until I see the streets of Prague.

I said "grosse leckere Torte" the other day, and my surroundings faded to that of a different scenario. Suddenly I was in my german classroom, but it was senior skip day and so it was only me and Zuzanka. When I think of her my heart beats at the rate of a dotted 8th note in 4/4 time and the pitch of a low E flat. Forbidden love, or some narrow aspect of Heisenberg's theory, always causes my heart to play that dull note.

Alas, I have given up finding love in high school. That does not mean that I am going on hiatus, as cody so often puts it. Simply, if I like a girl, I shall ask her upon a date. If she is to reject me, I move on. If we go on a few dates and it gets too serious, I break it off. Understand that I will make these intentions of casualness clear upfront.

I'm covering a shift tomorrow at the salt mines. Either everyone has very creative excuses or these people only miss work for very valid reasons. I think I've covered at least one shift every week for the last 5 in a row. Lindsey had strepth throat, Adam had graduation, Robert's grandmother died... Those are the kinds of shifts you can cover and feel good about it at the end of the day. Poor Robert, though.

I'm officially boycotting "National Hug a Post Day".In its place I am celebrating my sister's birthday.

I haven't had a journal this pretty since that truck full of graphic designers broke down infront of my house and they had to stay for two weeks and ended up drinking all our "dew" and eating all our chips. Still, I miss those guys.

I watched an obscure documentary today. It was all the color footage of World War II from the Japanese perspective. It really opened my eyes to two things. First, that there actually was color film in the 40's. And second, that other nations besides the US have Army Journalists covering wars. I don't know why, but for whatever reason it seemed like a US thing to me.

The saddest part involved footage of several japanese women and children jumping off a cliff as the americans approached. Propaganda to inspire all the men to fight told that if the americans arrived, they would rape and murder all the inhabitants of the land.

My fake software company (ie, its just me and we don't sell anything) has a name. Rocketry Softworks, aka RockSoft. It is inspired by my love for soft rock and hard gravel. I've totally built the best Tic-Tac-Toe game ever... but that said, its still just tic-tac-toe.

You ever notice how regular conventions don't always apply to blogs? For example, anyone can end any sentence with "..." and is considered 100% exceptable. It is also exceptable for me to use words that aren't correct, but sound like the correct word wearever necessary. This is all fine and dandy, so long as one can seperate blogging from technical or fantastical writing. My sister is a high school language arts teacher, and she said she has handed several papers back with F's on them simply because students wrote things like "lol" and "u" in the paper.

Language always evolves, but I think the evolution into the 'txt msg'n' world is not a step we should consider taking. Did you know that "Good bye" is derrived from "God be with you"? Thats a little known tidbit thanks to my favorite teacher Tom.

Oh, and just so I don't sound like a hipster, heres my political mumbo-jumbo of the day. Read these blogs, they are from people living in Iraq (mostly Iraqi citizens) writing about the war as they see it.

Healing Iraq

Iraq at a Glance

Iraq the Model

And my personal favorite...
Nabil's Blog is written by a 16 year old in Iraq. I will warn you, his english isn't great, but you can almost always understand what hes trying to say.

I'm just not sure if its my way of life.

It finally happened. I knew I'd get caught soon, and if I'd just turned myself in long ago my sentencing might have not been so rough. I made some bad decisions, I cut some corners I shouldn't have, but its not like I did anything like Martha Stewart did. I was going for broke, having surpassed my archnemesis company by a clever stroke of luck. (yes, luck can be clever.) I came so close to getting caught for my shady dealings, the police being on the next city block over during one such illegal activity. I should have realized the error of my ways, but I had tasted speed, and I couldn't stop now. Luck brought me $200 during a single night, that was some night on the town. I wanted to win, I was going to win! Doubles... Doubles...... Singles! It was so close, that I'd decided to give it up, and do things the legitimate way, none of this backalley auctioneering while the only other party interested is broke and imprisoned. Thats when it happened to me, snake eyes... I inspected my boot carefully, only to find a card that said "Chance" underneath it. I picked the card up from underneath me, only to find the most dreaded words a man like me could see, "Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200."

Its Karma, dude.

If I had written the rules to Monopoly the rules would be a little different... Instead of being able to build hotels and houses on the spaces you own all three establishments for, the government would split your team in half, giving each side half of your properties, and the first person to split into enough subsideries to lower the unemployment rate to 0% wins.

I'm looking to buy a truck. My friend from work has a nice '84 Ford F150 for sale for $950, but the spark plugs bubble when the engines running, and that doesn't sound like something that should be happening. Theres this little Mazda that sounds like its nice, too.

All this is assuming that the cops let me off the hook after I pay my $50 for parole or roll doubles again...