I'm Stuck In Kansas

As a sort of last-minute decision, I'm going to Washington DC for the March for Life!! A Benedictine-sponsored group of us is leaving on Friday afternoon on a big charter bus. We're going to stay over at some nice hotel there (can't rememeber the name), hang out around DC, go the the vigil mass at the National Shrine, go to the march, and then go home. I'll come back to campus around Tuesday afternoon.

Guys, I am so excited! It's going to be so much fun!

if anyone else is going, e-mail me at onethousanddollars@yahoo.com, so we can meet up.

I'm so excited!!

Aah, Kansas City. When you live in Atchison, with not a whole lot to do in the general area, KC is definately the place to go. Being a town of a few million, they have all kinds of diversions: stores, arcades, skating rinks, and, of course, theaters.

On Friday, me and a bunch of my friends decided it would be a good idea to go see a movie. I've been wanting to watch The Life Aquatic ever since I first caught wind of it, but I've discovered a long time ago that I have an odd taste in movies, so I wasn't suprised when no one else wanted to see it. Ok, fine, so what movie did they want to watch? Coach Carter, appearenlty. What? Coach Carter?! A friend of mine, Claire, has been wanting to see that stupid movie ever since she first saw the trailer back in like November. I've been telling her since then that the movie looks like crap. And here they are, my friends wanting to go see a movie that I've been resisting for months. So what do I do? Go, of course. Curse you, peer pressure! I thought I had seen the last of you in high school!

Needless to say, I didn't enjoy the movie. Joey loved it, but I've long been suspicious of his sanity. Okay, here's a basic idea of Coach Carter: take Remember the Titans, give the players a basketball and take away the winning the championship part, and make a movie out of it. This stupid movie is like every other "sports drama" out there. Ugh. And to make it worse, the movie quietly supported abortion!

Hooray for wastes of time and money. And of course, after all this, I still haven't seen The Life Aquatic. Stupid peer pressure. It's all good, though, because it was fun being able to hang out with my frinds out in good 'ol KC. Plus, the Chinese food we ate for dinner was pretty darn good.

Next weekend, though, I swear I'm going to find some way to watch The Life Aquatic.

"Vaporware", for those who don't know, is software that has been promised to be released and even given a release date, but still hasn't been published yet. Well, Wired's Vaporware Awards 2004 is out. Duke Nukem Forever technically isn't eligable, since it's recieved the Lifetime Achievement Award (first hinted at being released in 1998, DNF has been in development for over 7 years), but there are some other good ones in the bunch.

I was on the radio today. Sounds cool, doesn't it? It actually wasn't terriby amazing, but it was still a blast. Spirit KVSS is the local Catholic radio station, and they have a weekly teen program that my sister is a part of. Well, this week they wanted to interview an honest to goodness College Student™, and I was laying around not doing a whole lot, so they used me.

The interview lasted only about five minutes (there was a Creighton hoops game to be broadcast up next) and consisted of a bunch of easy softballs, but it was still really cool being inside a radio station. I mean, they've got all this stuff. Big, huge, mics each on its own swinging contraption thing, computer screens spitting out all kinds of information, and huge boards with buttons and slides and switches and stuff. It was, like I've said numerous times, cool.

Forget programming, I wanna be a dj now. Mass Communications major, here I come...

As my friend Katy points out, everything has been pretty silent on the blogging front during these last few holiday weeks. My blog especially. It's been over a month since I last posted, and I apologise. Hey, I get lazy, and then extended family comes over and wants to do stuff, okay? You'll be happy to know, however, that one of my new year's resolutions was to blog more, so we'll see how that goes.

You've probabally noticed the new look of my blog. I took one of the existing templates available and messed around with it a bit; I don't know a bit of CSS but it was pretty simple. Next I think I'll go formally learn myself some CSS and see what I can cook up for a really cool and unique blog. This one's not too bad, though. The blue appearently is a bit girly, but we all know I'm a guy, and I'm secure enough in my masculinity to let comments like that slide ;)

Okay. Heavy with the responsibility if this being the first blog of 2005, here goes:

-- My birthday passed by recently (Dec. 21st for those who can't remember), complete with all the celebrations of being 19. It's occured to me recently that in one more year, I won't be able to call myself a teenager- very scary thought for someone who's always been pegged as one for 8+ years. "Yep- there goes one of them dang teenagers again." I can just feel the weight that comes with living as a "young adult". Jobs, responsabilities... ugh.

I didn't really throw a party, because, like I've menioned in other posts, I'm lazy. We were driving to Colorado for Christmas anyway, so it wouldn't have really fit in. The people at Applebee's did give me a brownie-ice cream-thing and sing happy birthday to me, though! Probabally the best part of the whole thing, however, was all the calls I got from friends! People were calling me starting at midnight the night before to wish me a happy year older!! Thanks, everyone- you made me smile.

The gifts were great, too. Mom and Dad went and bought me a snazzy leather jacket, as well as a brand-spankin'-new cellphone. Now I can take pictures with it. Oooh, coolness. My littlest brother, John, drew a wondeful picture for me. He's a budding artist, you see. Peter, my other brother, gave me a sci-fi book that I plan to start soon here, as well as some tasty rootbeer. Pretty good stuff for having a birthday mere days before Christmas, huh?

-- Christmas was really cool. Being a transplanted Coloradan, most of my extended family on my Dad's side live in the Boulder area. It's long been a tradition to spend Christmas with them, so a few days before we packed up and headed over. It was great seeing all of them again, and even more great hanging out with them- losing yet another game of pool to my grandfather or one of my uncles, or playing some complex card game with them. They have a thing about card games. Yes, there were gifts exchanged as well, but I think the biggest gift was just being there.

We headed back around the 27th, since Dad had to work the following day. Christmas still awaited at our house, however, and we opened our gifts under the tree when I got back. I recieved some CDs, books, games, and posters; all kinds of stuff to keep me occupied before I go back for my Second Semester as a College Student!

-- I originally planned to go to Saint Louis for New Year's- I have a bunch of friends who live there. Parents didn't like the idea of me driving for 8 hours around that time of year (probabally a good idea), so Plan B was just to stay at home. Fortunately, it didn't end up like that. After seeing some fireworks launched by the city downtown, I counted in the new year with some friends from high school at a get-together. It was fun, and probabally more fun than Plan B. Sorry, parents ;)

School starts back up for me on the 9th, so until then I have free time beyond my wildest dreams. It's kinda nice being able to sleep in until like 11 and having no responsabilities, more or less. Well, except this thing.

That's all I can think of. Okay, now I've officially caught you up, right? And really, I promise to update I'm Stuck in Kansas an absolute ton more. It's actually kinda fun.

Cheerio, everyone!