I know I haven’t written in a long time.. I’ve just lost a lot of motivation in life.. but that’s not what this post is about.

At work today, I was thinking a lot. I know it sounds weird.. but do you really ever take time to just stop and think? It doesn’t have to be about anything, it can just be following your thoughts and memories… But.. that’s for another time.

There was an elderly couple at Target today, and they were using one of our motorized carts. The battery died and so I was told over the walkie to find another one. We didn’t have it so I had to get a wheelchair. The elderly man was trying to push his wife in this heavy motorized cart. It’s so heavy that even I have a hard time moving the thing. When we finally got them the wheelchair, I thought that it was the end of it.

I was wrong.

I went to make my final checks in my supply closet which happens to be right next to the bathrooms. Apparently the elderly woman had fallen while trying to get into the bathroom. Her husband tried to help her but he had fallen too. I saw his hand as he was leaning against the wall. His withered, wrinkled hand.. The blood vessels were almost black, and his knuckles were slightly bleeding from his fall. I talked to the front end manager and was given permission to help them out by pushing the wheelchair that the eldery woman was in so the elderly man didn’t have to.

Apparently, the elderly woman was changing her diaper; she wasn’t able to do it by herself and consequently made a mess in the bathroom. One of my co-workers that works in the clothing department went to help her as the assets protection person and I waited outside and helped as much as we could by diverting others and getting supplies. When she got out, she just wanted to get the one bottle of advil they had managed to get and go home.

I wheeled her over to Guest Services to ring up the bottle of advil. She was in tears, most likely from embarassment. As soon as she finished buying it, I wheeled her out towards her car while my co-worker helped her husband along. The things she told me.. I can’t remember the last time I was this sad. She told me about how they had no family or friends left… it was just the two of them. They were easily in their 70’s or even 80’s, and they looked it. Their skin draped from their bones with massive wrinkles and creases. Her husband’s eyes were cloudy and turning slightly yellow with a milkish texture…

The elderly woman was extremely upset but thankful that we were taking care of her. I was worried about them driving home. She told me about how her husband recently had a stroke. It looked like it too, the old man didn’t look like he had much life left in him. He didn’t remember where they parked but the woman did. It was really bad, this was right before closing at around 9:40PM and there weren’t many cars left in the parking lot. When we got closer to the car, the old woman was sobbing. They had no one, and their health was failing.

I will never forget the words she said as we got close to her car. She sobbed, “How did it come to be like this?!”  Those words pierced me whole, like a scorpion stinging a rabbit’s soft flesh. I can’t remember the last time I was shaken up this bad. It’s been a long time since i’ve felt strong emotions like that.

As we were walking back inside, my co-worker told me something the elderly lady said. She told me that the elderly woman had said she wanted to just go home, go to sleep and never wake up. That is one of the most depressing things i’ve ever heard. It made me wonder about how this country treats the elderly.

If I manage to live as long as they do, will someone take care of me? Will the way we view elderly people be different then? That’s assuming my frail body even makes it that long, which i’m not too sure about. It must be so hard, having everyone you’ve ever known, be it friends or family to all die before you and leave you alone when you need help the most. It’s certainly changed the way I look at life.

I’m going to pretend like I haven’t been lazy and have been writing all this time up until now.. If anything, blame SecondLife…

Today was the second Pay per view of DVW, Death Valley Wrestling. That’s John’s backyard wrestling thing. I went with him and it was fun as always, and I took a choke-slam from John’s friend Chris (Emperor). It didn’t hurt even though the fall was kind of far and rough.. They will probably put it up on YouTube eventually.

 I went to see Superbad with John. Oh my god.. that movie is soooo funny. I was laughing the whole time. I recommend going to see it. Sarah Bear was supposed to come with us, but she fell asleep and didn’t get my messages… I’m going to miss her when she goes off to college on Thursday. All of my friends are going off to college… I’m one of the only few staying behind. It’s so depressing… Especially since I once had feelings for some of these friends that are leaving. Julie, a friend and co-worker is leaving today (Sunday) to go to Connecticut… It feels like all of my friends are leaving… I guess me listening to Killswitch Engage – The End of Heartache isn’t exactly helping either… I’m just tired of being single. It’s been almost 4 years now… I’m not really feeling in the mood to write tonight, but hopefully i’ll start doing it again.

I still can’t stop laughing… It’s one of those super-serious Black Metal bands that utterly suck and are just an embarassment to human kind! If you’ve got a few minutes to check this out, please do!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5239245173405944700

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.

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…

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…

Today was just going to be any other weekend that I close on.. Stay up ’til 3 in the morning the night before and sleep in as late as I can before waking up and going to work. Well it turned out to be way crazier than that. Those CD’s that I had ordered that said 2-4 weeks? I got them today before work. I was shocked, but happy. I ripped three of them and added them to my Zune and took that with me to work. I haven’t even listened to all of them yet! I just opened the last two and ripped them. I’m gonna stay up and listen to them all since I don’t have work until 4:30 tommorrow.

At work, something shocking happened there too. While opening a disposable camera, I got electrocuted. Sharon had always told me how bad it hurts and how she screamed/cried from the pain because it hurts so bad… Well, it does. She really wasn’t kidding. I felt a jolt and then my hands involuntarily dropped everything in them. I fell over onto the counter and started breathing slowly. I was seeing the shit that you see when you get up too quickly and the blood isn’t all in your head… I started feeling pins and needles in my finger where I got shocked and it worked its way up to my elbow for about a minute in a half. Then the pins and needles stopped and it was just burning pain on my finger/hand. I told Katie who was the LOD for the night and she requisitioned out some Ibuprofen for me. She gave me the option of leaving work and going to a doctor or something but I stayed at work because I had a job to do. Besides, I need the extra money because I keep buying CDs. Anyway, I was disoriented and kind of dazed for the rest of the night until I came home. Now, i’m just listening to some Six Feet Under… and I ordered more Six Feet Under. Awesome, Eh? Anyway, I’m going into Second Life. Hit me up on Xfire. My Xfire name is PJesus.

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..

I went into work today thinking, “Alright, Henry said last night that it was going to be nasty weather and it wouldn’t be busy, so I shouldn’t have to do much today…” I was totally wrong. I walked in and Sharon was running around with stacks of photo envelopes towered very high. It was totally insane. Not only that, but when I got clocked in and in the photo lab, there was stuff all over the place. To make matters worse, Sharon wasn’t able to do all of the paper work since it had been so busy. You know what that means, I had to do it! I hate the paperwork so much, it’s such a pain in the ass.

Anyway, I not only had to do all the paper work, but I had to try and clean up some of the mess, file all of the orders, and help the storm of guests that kept pouring into the Photo Lab with huge orders. I wasn’t able to get half of what was put in tonight done and I feel bad for Sharon because of it. I ended up doing atleast 3 pages of paperwork which is more than I do in three days. I’m really exhausted from all of it now, so i’m going to go muck around Second Life or play some Vanguard.

Today was an interesting, yet frustrating day at work. I did get to spend a little bit of time with Sharon, my supervisor though since our schedules interlapped for the first time since my training. That was always fun. However, some woman dropped off 19 rolls of film for a Next Day order. Talk about a nightmare…

At first Amanda was working Guest Services, which always sucks. She’s fucking crazy and drives me insane, she just doesn’t stop talking and is so damn strange! To make matters worse she talks down to everyone like they are a small child, I don’t even think she realizes that she does it. However, Janelle came in later and that always makes my day better. She’s such a cool girl that I don’t think I could have a bad day when she’s working with me at Guest Services. In fact, I only offer to stay after when she’s there because she’s willing to give me a ride home and I trust her. I spent most of the day working on those next days anyway.

I bought the new Sevendust album today called Alpha. I’m listening to it now. I’m on the second track and so far it’s pretty decent. The album art on the cover and inside is utterly crazy…

There was this woman today who has by far the hottest daugther I have seen in years. Apparently her daughter and her son are both actors and do stuff like movies and tv stuff for channels like Nickelodeon and the Discovery Channel. That’s crazy! Almost as crazy as how I was able to get the woman’s MySpace page from her. The mother, not the daughter. Apparently there are trailers on her page so I can see the movies that her kids are going to be in. I found all this out when I asked her about some pictures that she had since her daughter was just so ridiculously attractive…

Carl is starting to get on my nerves. He’s like a white Steve Erkel in a way. I swear the guy is a 40 year old virgin and has good intentions, but he’s just too creepy and doesn’t know when to stop talking. He’s obsessed with trying to get me to talk about women I find attractive and insinuates about our female co-workers and such. It’s just strange and wrong. I don’t want to take a part in any of it so I usually just blow him off and laugh him off… He’s so strange and creepy…

L.O.D. Henry said I could stay after to work on photo stuff. However, Linda found out and said I couldn’t. I suspect she got Henry to change his mind which sucks. So I was there working until 10:30PM and they made me clock out. I had to sit around and wait 30 minutes off the clock for Janelle to get off so I could get a ride home. I ended up helping them clean up anyway so in fact I was working off the clock which is total bullshit. I should have just been able to stay on the clock since I was going to stay… I have work tommorrow as usual and hopefully Hakim will be back from vacation soon so I don’t have to work as much. I know i’m around 35 Hours this week on top of going to school…