Diploma.

Today was my last official day at Mill Creek. I graduated high school, after 4 full years of going to Philadelphia. I don’t really know what to say. I mean, theres so much stuff that has happened to me in the past four years since I’ve been there that one post alone wouldn’t be able to do it justice. I guess i’ll just start off by listing some of the things that have happened to me since I went to Mill Creek.

• I met my first girlfriend there.
• I lost my virginity with a girl from there.
• I set up the computer lab for the entire school with my friend Louis.
• I was there for a full four years.
• I got a job.
• I learned how to be more social and confident.
• I made a great number of friends
• I got into a lot of trouble and a lot of crazy situations.

Some of my accomplishments are the following from Mill Creek:

- Went down into the basement (catacombs) of the Kirkbride center before they declared an asbestos outbreak. Had to crouch down in order to walk, very very dark in there with all sorts of crap littered along the sides. It was a huge series of arches that were long and straight before splitting off into paths like the star on a phone. I went with Louis and Art to fix the internet for all of Mill Creek.

- Set up the computer lab with Louis and maintained all of the computers in the school for about 2 years before the staff decided to pull the plug on our unquestioned ‘administrator’ status. We told them to fix it themselves when they asked for our help again but denied our status.

- Went to 4 graduations, including my own.

- Tagged the study carol outside of the science lab. I wrote “Larson” because I hated Lisa’s Chemistry class. That’s what Greg, Mike, Dominic, Brian, and I used to call her. Larson, the really tall guy with the nail in his head from Happy Gilmore.

- Managed to go to every 6th period class for a full day except for music in one quarter.

- Painted the risers used for music. That green shit? I did it with a small roller. I got Art credit for it.

 Anyway… This is going to be all over the place since i’m kind of emotional about the whole thing. Let’s start with graduation practice for the past week. Never in my life have I had so much difficulty as to keeping a level head when kids are asked to sit down simontaneously and are unable to do so. I mean seriously, we’re about to graduate and we couldn’t all sit down at the same time. It was a nightmare. It was mostly hours of just walking together and sitting down together. Not to mention it was, as always, hot as balls in the ghetto auditorium.

I got a few teachers some gifts from me. I gave Bob a 4×6 and Janet and Jamie 8×10’s of my face to put in their office, each with their own little message on them and signed by me.  For Bob’s, I wrote “To my adopted advisor, So long and thanks for the donuts!” This was because Moira was my original advisor and Bob always brought me donuts when we celebrated my summer birthday in school. For Janets, I wrote “Now you can’t kick me out of your office anymore!” After Moira left, I started hanging around Janet. A lot. I left half of my classes this year and just showed up in Janets class until someone came and got me and yelled at me. She would always shoo me out of her office when she had to leave for class, and so I thought a giant picture of my face being a permanent addition to her office would be great. For Jamie, I wrote “Next time we meet, i’ll bring the ‘cocoa’.” I was really tired in one of her English classes one day.. Something came up about hot chocolate and I mentioned something about a cocoa plant. (Pronounced coh-coh-ah). I kept rambling on about it while she was like, “What are you talking about PJ?” I also gave a verbal gift to Mike, which I think he really appreciated. I finally had the courage to say to him that he was one of the main reasons I got my act together and really matured and grew up. I was always so intimidated by him but it felt good to finally tell him.

It felt like forever getting to 12PM, when all of the other kids left and it was just us seniors behind. I sat there with my (senior) friends who I ate lunch with this year: Dan Kimsey, Alex Bepler, and Saul Barenbaum. (Emily Geneta was off getting her hair done for prom, she had it right after graduation.) I realized how empty it was, and how different things were going to be. We sat and talked about how our loosely knit lunch group would almost entirely fall apart without us there to hold it together. I died a little on the inside and felt hollow… Pizza came. The seniors got to eat pizza and have punch… It was finally my turn after 4 years to get the seniors only pizza party. It felt different.. I still feel empty…

 Graduation itself was kind of a mess. We got to wear our robes, Black and White this year as it turned out with some Orange flower corsage. I’m not sure what kind they were. I wore a black robe. It was finally time to graduate… (My throat is tensing up as I type this, i’m starting to get emotional for the first time about this subject…) We lined up in our lines. I was behind Saul and infront of Sam M. We entered to the usual “Pomp and Circumstance.” I started walking as soon as the music picked up strongly, it made me feel important. It was blisteringly hot in the auditorium. I almost didn’t make it through the ceremony, I thought I was going to pass out from heat exhaustion. However, I made it and got my diploma!

 The reception was kind of nice, even though it was outside. The weather was 90 something degrees with 85% humidity. It was hell. However, I still managed to have a good time. I invited my mom, dad, sister, grandmother, Sarah, Joe, and Louis to graduation. I got to see some old friends who were invited to graduation and the family of some of my friends that I haven’t seen in a long time. I also felt a slight connection with Alicia again, but it was brief and it was because we were happy for the other for making it. I feel so lonely… After spending a long time there, I ended up being almost the last person to leave the reception. The teachers were already picking up chairs and stuff. I gave each of them a hug goodbye and left. I’m going to go back on wednesday to the Marsh Creek trip…

My graduation crew and I headed out to Marra’s. It’s an italian resteruant that Saul said was very good. It was actually, but I was already kind of full and the adrenaline from being on stage in front of that many people was going through me. I’m surprised that I was able to keep my cool and wasn’t nervous at all. I’ve really changed because of Mill Creek. We ordered far too much food. They came out in family portions. I had spaghetti and some pepperoni pizza. To make some strange events known that happened during dinner: I spilled a little bit of birch beer all over the table and a little on myself, I think I went into the woman’s restroom instead of mens (I can’t read Italian!), and we all got parking tickets for going over our time on the meters.

After we finished eating and all of that stuff went down, Joe went home in his own car and we took Louis to the train station before Sarah and I went home. Sarah left as soon as we got home and I opened a bunch of cards. I got around $750 worth of cash from all the cards and such. I was pretty happy. I’m going to seriously save for a car now that I have a decent chunk of change. I feel so sad all of a sudden while writing this. I’ve been at Mill Creek for 4 years. I’m not going there anymore… I feel scared and lost. (I’m starting to ‘tear up’.) I still haven’t applied to college yet or gotten my permit.. I’m a deadbeat. I’m afraid that I won’t do anything with my life… I’m afraid for all those kids that looked up to me at Mill Creek. What is it going to be like without me? Will they even care? (I think I might cry…)

I’m scared.

DVW.

First thing that happened to me when I woke up this morning, I rolled over.. I was suddenly in an amazing amount of intese pain as I had a huge charlie horse in my right calf. I’ve never had one that bad before, it was awful. Anyway, today was my first day of a weekend off since I started working at Target… and only because I haggled for it. I took it off to go with John to his wrestling thing, Death Valley Wrestling. It’s his own backyard wrestling sort of thing.

We eventually got to Chris’s house (John’s friend) at around 2:45-3PMish. It was mostly Johns friends and wrestling buddies there. I only knew Chris and John’s other friend, Sam. I got to meet all the other people though so it was fun. I was the camera guy or atleast I intended on being it. However, no one else with a camera showed up so we ended up sitting around waiting for like 3 hours trying to get someone with a camcorder. No one ever showed up. We also needed more padding for the ring and so we went to Target in Cherry Hill. They actually have holsters for their PDTs! At my Target we just stick them in between our pants and belt… Jordan from Mill Creek met us in the parking lot of Target and he came to the show with us.

I ended up doing all of the camera work with my digital camera and it came out pretty good. The audio was pretty terrible though. Overall, I had a ton of fun today. I remember at one point where someone was pushed so hard into a folding metal chair that it BROKE. Also a cooking sheet was brought out to smack Chris and it dented after he got hit with it. It was really crazy, reckless, dangerous, and a pissload of fun. I’m hoping to get more invovled with it next time if I can manage to go…

Of Records, Webslingers, and Puppies.

John and I had decided to go see Spiderman 3 today. …As usual, this entry will be filled with various necessary backstories that are totally out of place. For example. yesterday I bought the tickets for not only tonight, but yesterday (accidentally) as well at 7:30. We went to see it at the Moorestown theatre. However, this was after a frantic day at work.

Since Hakim left, it’s been only Sharon and I at Photo which is a royal pain in the ass. This has more or less killed our entire 1 hour photo capability because we spend most of the time catching up on the next day orders and solving various machine disasters which seem to happen at just the worst possible times. John had a slightly different shift than I and I matched mine to his since it was only a 30 minute earlier difference. I went to work from 7:30AM-4:00PM instead of 8:00AM-4:30PM. Whenever John and I work together, it’s always a blast because we have so much fun together. I love lady watching with him, it’s the most hillarious thing that I do these days… It got so busy at Work that I wasn’t able to finish all of everything. I was able to catch up yesterday’s work but tommorrow since I’m the only one working again I’ll have to finish up today’s orders.

Anyway, after work I went home and found out no one was home. Katie and my mom were out picking up a new puppy… I still don’t know whatk ind of dog he is, although he’s a mix. He’s small since he’s only 4 and ah alf months old. He’s got long black wiry hair with some white tufts in it. His ears are pointed and it looks like he has a beard. However, his long tail has virtually no hair on it so he’s quite a creature. They wanted to name him “Norbert.” Seriously, how lame is that? I called him Rufus and we decided to name him that. After all.. Norbert? Seriously, come on.

I got dropped off at the mall a bit early so I could go to LensCrafters and get my glasses adjusted. It was crazy-crowded in there and I more or less had to wait for 20 minutes. However, they finally got to me and adjusted my glasses so they don’t slide down my face anymore and they gave me new nose pads. Sweet. After that, John and his son Jacob came and met me in there while I was getting my glasses fixed and we went to the dollar store. We were originally going to get some drinks but there wasn’t anything good. John got two lottery tickets instead, scratch ones. On the first one he didn’t get jack shit, but on the second one he won two dollars. He more or less won the loss of a few minutes of his life. We went to the food court so I could get some pizza. John’s words were something along the lines of, “What’s up with you and Pizza?” …Can you really ever have too much pizza? I could probably live on the stuff.. and I pretty much do. We scoped out a lot of girls at the mall.. I mean, the only thing that happens in the mall is two things. The kids who try to ‘out-goth’ each other and the girls who try to ‘out-slut’ each other with the most airheaded and gay guy friends that they hang around. All the while John and I are making racy, suggestive comments and having a good time. John’s buddy Mario shows up and we decided to get our tickets and get our seats. He’s a pretty damn awesome guy, I liked him.

Anyway, when we finally get in our seats, the floor is sticky as all hell. As I told John, I might as well have been standing in someone’s piss it was so sticky. In fact, during the movie my boots actually sealed to the floor which was totally nasty. When the movie came on, I was kind of excited but kind of disappointed at the end. I know Stan Lee’s big thing about super heroes is that they must stay true to themselves and virtue, but Spiderman 3 was total overkill on the whole zealous virtue thing. I mean, if I wanted to subtly brainwash a kid about morals and staying true to himself, i’d sit his ass in front of this movie. Granted, there were some really awesome parts… Like when Spiderman was sitting on top of the church in his black suit while it was raining? I was numb with excitement the whole time. My hairs were standing up and I had goosebumps it was so awesome. However, the amount of action and awesomeness was far underwhelmed by the amount of romance and garbage that went on. Bruce Campbell had a role as a french waiter though and that was a huge highlight for me.

I’m back home now and I was just laying with Rufus while I watched some TV shows… That dog is like a breathing stuffed animal, I swear. He’s awesome though. I also got my package from the UK, My TC record came! It’s really awesome and I can’t wait until I can listen to it. Until then, it’s just sexy. Anyway, it’s really late and I have to getu p for work soon so i’m gonna head out…

Phillies.

I cut school today. I went to hang out with my boss John before Him, Me, His kid Jacob, Tim, Rick, and Rick’s friend Andy went to the Phillies game. I didn’t go to school so I could spend time with John and his family before the game. We had all decided to wear out Target name badges so we could be the Target crowd. However, it rained at the game every so often and it was really cold to the point where I wish i had my winter jacket.

I selpt in until around noon when John woke me up by calling my cellphone. He wanted to see if I wanted to get lunch with him and his family. He ended up picking me up at my house and we went to the Cherry Hill mall. We went to the food court and I got two slices of pepperoni pizza. Unorginal, I know but it’s what I enjoy. We saw an asian kid fall out of his chair by flipping it backwards. The kid couldn’t have been more than 4. He just picked himself up, set his chair back upright and sat back down. That kid is going to grow up to be a damn ninja.

After that, we went back to John’s house and chilled for a brief period of time before we had to go and pick up Tim. He got in the car and was kind of a jerk like he usually is. I don’t think he really understands how obnoxious he can be but whatever. We then went back to Johns house and watched TV but realized that Tim forgot his name badge! We had to go back and get Tim’s name badge on the way to the ballpark. We then started driving towards Philly but we decided to stop at Wawa since we were all pretty hungry. John and I went inside and we got a bag of potato chips, a bag of beef jerky (which i’m munching on now), a donut for me, an energy drink for me, an iced tea for Tim, and a Rockstar for John. When we got back in the car we cranked up Pantera and blasted it the whole way to the ballpark.

When we got there, Rick and Andy were very late and didn’t get there until much later. To make things worse, there was some confusion in my directions of where we were waiting for them! They ended up going to a different arena and waiting there for us. We finally realized this after about 10-20 minutes of standing around and we met up and bought tickets. They were $44 each. We sat in section 116, row 25 which in right next to first base and behind the Phillie’s dugout. The Phillies were playing the Washington Nationals. The final score was 9-3 with the Phillies winning. The game was very exciting because there were atleast 2 home runs that I can think of. John and I made a lot of funny comments reguarding hot women. My favorite one that I made was when the Kick’s dancers were done dancing with the phanatic ontop of the bullpen and were coming back up. Those girls were amazingly attractive. The thing I jokingly said was, “Hey baby, theres room in this Poncho for one more…” I made sure that only John could hear me and he got a giant kick out of it.

After the game we went home finally and listened to Tool on the way back. I can’t really remember most of what happened tonight since I waited so long to write about it. After all, it’s 3:16AM and I have to get up for school at 6:30 AM. I’m going to try to atleast rest for a little while..

My Revenge (Explosive Behavior)

    Well, Harry called me up and he asked me if I wanted to play Supreme Commander, so I said “Yeah, I’m down.” Which is great, because I love to play that game with him. It was the two of us against two computer controlled players again. I noticed that I’ve become much better and I actually was building my base faster and more effectively than Harry with more units and less resources being wasted. I immediately built a nuke defense system after the last time we played. However, I also built a nuke silo…

    He was in the middle of destroying one of the computer players when: “Harry, I have a present for you.” (Computer Voice): “Strategic Launch Detected.” That’s when the first nuke got launched. I ended up aiming at his support commander since they end up looking the same, but I had more in my silo. As soon as that one launched I launched another nuke at his resources to cripple him. The third that launched nailed his commander and blew him up. I can just imagine the fear that went through him as he heard the computers voice tell him that a nuke was launched. It serves him right, for doing that to me earlier.

    After that, I mopped up the two remaining computers rather easily with a lot more nukes, Bombers, and my Navy. Everything died.

Shortest Misadventure Ever.

Today has been an interesting day so far, though it is still young; not even noon yet. However, I seem to have already gotten myself into a bit of trouble. Granted, I was barely able to make it onto the bus this morning because I was so damn tired from going to bed at 1 AM last night after beating Supreme Commander. I still was able to barely make it into school anyway.

    I had study hall this morning which was kind of pointless since I am all caught up. I was going to go get my Philosophy stuff for third period when I noticed Janet was in the TV Room and having some trouble getting it started. I went in and got it all set up for her and her class and then went downstairs to get my Philosophy book. I came back upstairs and I went back to study hall to finish my work. I finished it and got bored and I kind of walked into Janet’s class while they were watching a movie and just sat and talked with her. Eventually, my teacher came looking for me and when she found me she was kind of pissed at me. I ended up staying with Janet’s class for the rest of the period trying to finish this damn driver’s manual.

    After fourth period my advisor came and tracked me down and told me I am on Restricted Status, which is more or less making me a second-class citizen of Mill Creek. Atleast, that’s my interpretation. It doesn’t mean shit really because all that it does is that it makes me not able to sit in a certain spot before classes and at lunch. Ooooooh. Big deal, right? It more or less doesn’t even affect me. I got put on it for 2 days. Sadly, it’s the worst punishment that they can give you other than suspension because there’s no way they can keep you after for detention. Atleast I had fun in Janet’s class, right?

    I guess I do walk out of my classes often now that I think about it. Strangely, I always end up in Janet’s class too. I’m not even sure why but I would think that the staff would immediately come to Janet when I’m nowhere to be found. I know that it doesn’t really count as a misadventure, but I guess it does in a sense seeing as how I ended up getting into trouble.

    Other than that, nothing really has happened so far today. I’m gonna be working tonight which is always interesting. My friend Christie just got back from Hawaii, so I hope she will be working tonight too. It’s always fun talking to her and messing around with her when I should be working. That’s one of the main reasons why I like Target. I can always be messing around with almost all of my co-workers instead of working and still be working at the same time. Granted, that might be because of the Photo Lab position, but still.

    I’m hoping to play Supreme Commander tonight with Harry right before work. I’m hoping we have enough time for us to play against 2 random people, but it will be really pushing it. If not, I guess we could go against each other or just team up against a computer or something. He’s pretty good at getting his stuff started right away though. I really need to work on my micro-management.

    More stuff might happen later that might or might not warrant a blog post. But until there, I will be stopping here since I’ve done absolutely nothing in Latin and I want to text message some people. If something worth mentioning comes up from lunch until after work, I’ll mention it. If not, I bid you farewell.

300 in IMAX.

This is the first entry that i’ve had where I haven’t used MS Office Word 07… My laptop for some reason is dying and keeps crashing. In fact, Windows won’t even boot up… It all started when I tried to use Cygwin (Don’t use it!). Anyway, I had a Grand Misadventure today.

I ended up cutting school today so I could go out with Rick and his friend Chris to drive 45 minutes to King of Prussia, PA so that we could see 300 in IMAX. They picked me up at 1:45ish, and actually wanted to pick me up earlier but I apparently missed that call and text message. So I rushed out the door and we headed on out. Granted, Rick’s car isn’t the most comfortable or clean spot to ride in (in the back atleast) but it was still fun just messing around and doing crazy shit.

We ended up getting to King of Prussia around 3:00 or so, and we decided to get our tickets from the machine since we ordered them off the internet. We did that and there was this huge Best Buy nearby, so we went in. There wasn’t much there but they did have a whole lot of games for a Best Buy. I ended up buying this terrible/good looking game called NanoBreaker for $10. I haven’t played it yet since i’ve been playing the NHL game Mitch lent me trying to get achievements, but that’s going off-topic.

After we got the game, we went to the King of Prussia mall. That thing is huuuuugggee. So we were trying to get some food to eat, and we noticed an EB Games. I was kind of like.. Cool! But then I realized I had already spent $10 on some shitty game. So we went downstairs in the mall to where the map was to try to find the food court. The map wasn’t very good so we just kind of walked until we found it shortly. But right before we found it, there was another EB Games! It was like right underneath the other one. It turns out, it’s not a two-story EB Games but just one underneath another.. for some reason. It reminds me of a story I heard of a Starbucks across the street from another Starbucks in Dallas… I got two giant slices of pepperoni pizza and a rootbeer. It was around 3:45 so we headed back towards the theatre… (Since we walked from the theatre parking lot to the mall, which was quite a bit).

We got back to the theatre around 3:55 or so and decided to check out the mini arcade. Rick and Chris decided to play Time Crisis 3 and I found a guilty pleasure of mine, Warzaid. The game is like (at the start anyway) going up the beaches at Normany against undead soldiers armed with rifles and such. It doesn’t make any sense, but it’s so much fun. We noticed a large line forming and we jumped in it since we wanted to get good seats.

After waiting in line for a while, we finally got into the theatre. The screen was huge! We pretty much got just shy of ideal seats, which made it even sweeter. We had to sit and wait for about 30 minutes or so, but the seats were so damn comfy! I love IMAX seats.

After the movie we had to go home since I couldn’t stay out late. However; when we got back into Philly, Chris gave us the wrong directions. We ended up getting getting lost in Camden. At night. That was quite freaky indeed. I saw some crazy shit that didn’t make any sense at all to me because I don’t know shit about Black Culture.

I finally made it home alright after we had been lost for a while though, and I really enjoyed going out tonight. Granted, I did spend a good bit of money; but it was well worth the fun and adventure.