Things to remeber

• Making candles in class (pioneer days)
  
• fluoride cart
• getting gold in "Olympics"/sex ed
• only guy in 7th and 8th grade chorus
• trumpet
• Joesph and the coat

Early summer

On the warmer early summer late spring days you can feel it. You can feel what the day will be like in the morning or how you'll feel about the day. The latter is true in this time because with the humidity and the breeze you can give a rough estimate to how you are going to feel about the rest of your day. The thing about this time of the year is that people are more cranky than usual. It might be the heat or the stress about long term summer goals, but people are on edge. I should restate that by saying grownups are on edge. The kids don't really care about long term summer goals, they are just glad that school is out and they can see their friends. As for the rest of us, summer means sweating on your way to work, or laying on the cold floor because it's the only place that is cool enough that doesn't make you feel like you have a slow leak on your forehead.

The Movies.

When you watch movies that remind you of how much you love someone its kind of something special really. These are the same type of movies that when I try not to get moved when the main character goes to her friend in need. I roll my eyes and pretend that I don't care that much. But these aren't really the moments. Guys try and not admit to themselves that we really don't agree with the "feelings" or "emotions" that come with so called Chick Flicks. We all know these moments. When you really know that the girl is going to get back with the guy (or in some cases the guy with the girl). We all know what is going to happen. Yet we are still moved deep inside us somewhere and we feel happy that they are hugging. Is it that crescendo in the sound track, is it that we keep trying to remove ourselves from the film so much that we really do feel for them, or is it the fact that we know these same emotions. We want to feel that same way, and we do sometimes. We see our loved ones for the first time in a long time and they smile and you smile. The times when you roll over and kiss them and try to feel that moment. Maybe that is what is so special about movies. They don't really have to live the moments between the ones with ones with a soundtrack background.

But those are the moments we live for. The ones where we wish we were on that screen, holding someone we love with the music and the people watching smiling. But I don't really think it's about those. It's the ones between the small looks. When they look at you and it strikes you, knowing that they really do love you, and that you love them. These are never on the movies. The look of happiness that both of you know.

Blue Sheet

It lays on top of us every night and holds a blanket that keeps us down with soft clouds of cotton.
It's a blue, but a kind of strange blue that looks like the ocean on a white sand beach. I makes me feel comfortable even just looking at it. It reminds me of all the times I wanted to get close to my lady, or the times when I didn't feel well and the only place you want to be is bed. It makes me feel like I'll wake up without much of any problems. It's not so much a security blanket as much as it's my bed room blanket. I think I've just not really had the right blanket or something. I used to sleep on the front room couch for a large part of my "growing up" preteen years. This, I think, is when you pretty much develop your concepts of what feels right. My next blanket was a black and gray patterned cotton comforter. It lasted all through high school, I really liked it. After four years though, it was getting those small balls of rolled up cotton that happens when you wash something too much. I moved "throw away" blankets after that. They were made from weird nylon cotton mix, at least that is how they felt. They were great for early undergrad because they were light enough in the hot dorms and heavy enough to cuddle up with in my lonely cell of a room. When I finally moved out I brought the black blanket from high school. It has stayed at my room waiting for me lonely in a dark bedroom. It always reminded me at home. Maybe thats what a good blanket does, it reminds you of home. Once I moved in with Liz it was out with that blanket. I was upset at first but our new blanket was amazing. I had never had a duvet set before. It's like his sheet (which I love) wrapped around a blanket. The one we have is a this soft cotton - and now it feels close to a nice T-shirt - and a checked pattern on the top. You brush you hands across the top and it feels like this warm warp. I wish I had some profound thing to say about my blanket but I don't. Simply stated: I like it.

In the morning

When I sit out on the desk its not hard to see why people love the city. It's not really about the fresh air, because as my sister tells it - it smells like burning tires and garbage. Now I'm not sure if I agree with that, but I do think there are some places a stench so horrendously bad that it has to push through the concrete. But the mornings are something else. It's mid spring and the sun feels like a warm bath, its not like the summer sun that forces you to seek shelter. The wind is smooth and cool, but not so cool that it makes you shiver. It's the type of cool that brushes off some of the hot sun and sooths you.
The city has a strange feeling in the morning too though. Maybe its just a Sunday, but it's like there is something resting and relaxed about it. Now I'm sure there are some people having a fire or got shot or something somewhere in the millions of people living here, but I don't think they can ignore the feeling. That might just pile on top of their anxieties, knowing full well that there are people like me sitting around typing stupid nonsense like this out.
It's nice, and I think this is the "just right" place for me.

Missing

Is it that you are actually missing someone or is it that you miss the way they make you feel about yourself? Are those two mutually exclusive? I myself am not sure. When I miss someone it's first about how I'm going to feel. The initial feeling that you know will come sooner or later when you are alone sitting and thinking: "well it would be nice if they were here." Then later you are laughing really hard at the TV, and want to turn to that person and get a response - they aren't there. Later when you go to sleep and you lie and have that moment right before you go to lay down and know they won't be there. Or that single moment right before you drift off to sleep and you dwell on them, you think about what they might be doing, if they are thinking the same about you. Sometimes you forget about them being gone, and you hear something funny or want to ask them a question, but they aren't there to hear it. Missing someone isn't about them really, it's about yourself in a way. The missing puzzle piece like in those lawyer commercials late at night, or the drug adds about Alzheimer's, or autism ads, they are gone from your life. They, usually, feel the same way. Maybe that is what missing someone is really about. The mutually shared emotion of felling helpless with out each other. That you feel like your day could not possibly go on with out them. It does, and so does theirs. Missing a person is like forgetting to set the clock on the VCR. You don't really know what the feeling is until you have it, yet everyone knows what it's like. Everyone forgets about it at times in their day, but its somehow still there glaring, blinking to tell you to fix it.

You try and live the memories of them though. The way they look when they laugh, or the way they roll their eyes when you say stupid things. It makes everything worthwhile when you see them again, in that one moment everything is forgotten when reunited.

Groggy and rolled over.

When I woke up this morning, a single white cloud floated by my window.

Columbia

God damn, just tell me where to send my graduation info, please.

Gaming

There is this weird connection that I get when playing online. It's not really of true friendship, nor is it a distant aquantence that you nod to on the street. 95% of the people that I talk to on a daily basis online I would never know if I saw them on the street. Only a hand full I may notice because I've seen pictures but nothing that I could tell a sketch artist.

I don't sit in a random chat room talking to strangers. These are people that I have, in a way, gotten to know over a full year period. The strangest thing is I'm not sure I would have enjoyed my last year in college as much without them. I confided in a few, and even would tell them things I wouldn't tell a best friend (and didn't). Maybe there is something that could be said about the faceless disconnection and how I fell like I can say anything to a person that way.

Dive Bar

It wasn't the smell of old smoke and the fresh air rushing in, it was the smell of everything. It combined and rolled into this growing feeling of sadness. The ceiling was dropped so low I could run my hand across the blackened tiles. I'm sure they used to be bright shinny silver that reflected light into the now dark dust covered corners. The guy's bathroom was a hallway with a toilet at the end of it and a smudged mirror from waist high up on the left side. It was positioned in such a way that if someone came barging in they could catch your eye and see what you were holding in a glance. I tried to situate myself so all they saw was my back, but exposed myself on the right side to a quick glance down the tunnel of piss. I only call it this because only twenty minutes after getting there pee was covering the floor. Stickers coverd the far wall too, white squares with a picture of unraveled TP saying something about poopoo and food. A green sticker used to be on the inside of the door, streaks of lime green show the direction at the attempted removal. There was a room next door full of smelly people that when the door the sweat stink of that kid from middle school's armpit would waft into the bar.