How the Heroes Season 1 Finale should have gone down: (Protip: don't read this if you haven't seen the finale)

Everyone arrives in Kirby Plaza around the same time they normally do. Matt shoots at Sylar, Sylar returns the bullets at Matt. Noah Bennet hits the wall as usual. Peter and Sylar engage in something more epic than the one-sided fist fight that unfolds in the real episode. Peter doesn't tell Niki to leave, Niki stays and starts beating up Sylar while Sylar is fighting with Peter. Sylar uses telekenesis to hold Niki at bay, though her superhuman strength is helping her out. Hiro appears and steps in to help fight, but Sylar uses telekenesis to pick up a piece of scrap metal similar to a katana and begins to sword fight Hiro with it (thereby actually validating all that time we see Hiro training, rather than Hiro just appearing, yelling, and stabbing Sylar).

Even with all three Heroes battling Sylar, he still seems to have an advantage. Suddenly, Claire, with her gun, shoots at Sylar, who finally seems overwhelmed and barely has time to block the incoming bullets. He shoots them all back into Claire like he did to Matt, but the in the fatal distraction, he loses control of the "sword" he was using to fight Hiro, Niki and/or Peter punches him, sending him reeling backwards right in the path of Hiro, who takes the opportunity to finally stab him.

Now, Claire is in the process of healing and is incapacitated and can't stop the inevitable explosion (thereby bypassing the often asked question "why did she hesitate to shoot him if she knew he would heal"), Peter is freaking out, and mentions something about how he can't seem to use any of his other powers (thereby answering another question "why didn't he fly away"). Nathan shows up as usual and flies Peter away, this time making a lot more sense, because he would be the only one left that could really prevent devastation by flying Peter away.

This would be a better finale.

I started this today, and I totally suck at it, even though it only calls for jogging 8 of the 20 minutes. Hopefully I get better. Jeeze.

YES

New short-term goal: Get a squirrel drunk and keep it as a pet for a day.

Success of sorts

Last night I didn't sleep very well at all for one reason or another. I woke up at 5:00 this morning not able to fall asleep again, so I got up and played some FFVI. I felt tired again around 8:00, so I laid down to see if I could fall asleep. I don't remember at this point what I was thinking about, but quite a while into my thoughts, I realized that I had fallen asleep, which was a startling sensation. Like my previous lucid dreaming attempts , my heart started racing (though I don't consider this time an attempt, since I wasn't trying to LD), but I managed to calm down this time and stay asleep. It was very strangely easy to do this time.

A few seconds later, I thought I had opened my eyes, since everything in front of me was perfectly normal, the way it should be. I looked across the bed at my hands and started wiggling my fingers. My fingers started spazzing inhumanly fast and flew around the room. This also startled me and I almost woke up, but I again held on. When the imagery came back, it was all unbelievably crisp and super bright and awesome.

Knowing that I was finally truly lucid dreaming, I wanted to dive in and do all sorts of awesome things. My better judgment told me to take things slow though, since I had almost woken myself up twice by now (and it's not like I could wake myself up on purpose either; I couldn't feel my body at this point, or sense where I was physically, which was bizarre).

Anyway, I ended up like, looking at the wall and opening up a giant menu from the wall. It was pink but similar to the Wii menu. For some reason, I thought of animated gifs, and suddenly the entire pink menu was full of fucking INSANE gifs. Some of them had sound, and they were all pretty fucked up in one way or another. I kept telling my brain to give me weirder and weirder images until I just thought it was so ridiculous that I stopped.

Around this time, I thought I heard some noises in real life, and figured someone must be home. I didn't want to stop this awesome experiment, but it felt like an invisible hook was dragging me back to the surface, and I woke up.

In fact, this was one of the weirdest parts of the whole ordeal. Normally, when you're awake, you feel like "you" are your outer shell, since our senses are used for things that are happening all around us, and your subconscious is just kind of there, chugging along in the background. In this case, I felt like I was inside of my body, and my "outer" body was a separate entity urging me to wake up. Bizarre indeed.

Ah, I also am realizing that I never fixed that rock climbing update. I'll do that later today.

I went rock climbing tonight with Mel and her friends.












Bouldering



This is Trish climbing the elevator shaft. It was infinity feet tall (i.e. 4 stories).

















The gym, Vertical Dreams, is in Manchester, NH, in an old mill building. We went into the basement after climbing. It was a very eerie place.







After that, we all ate at Margaritas in Manchester, the best one I've been to by far.

Tonight my dad took me to a sort of run down house that belonged to the church that my stepmother goes to. I guess they asked my dad to help out a little with the front porch. Anyway, I learned a little bit watching and helping my dad tear apart the rotten wood. One day I'd like to have a solid understanding of carpentry and have my own set of tools.

Welch and Dickey

Yesterday, Ben, Mel, my dad and I went on an awesome hike up in the White Mountains.

Peaks Welch and Dickey are basically one congruous mountain, with a dip in between that helps distinguish the two summits. It's easy to see here in this video from one of the mountains' dozens of awesome ledges.



The ledges themselves were one of the best parts of the trip. As I said, there were about a dozen open rock faces that required a scramble or a crawl up. The views from these ledges were great, and you could even see open granite ledges higher up the mountain with other hikers scrambling up. Some of them were slippery, however, and one ledge was almost impossible to get up. All of us ended up slipping and falling back down to the base, which was kinda fun actually.


This is the first ledge we reached. Unlike the rest, though, it wasn't steep. You can kinda see the project to rebuild the shrubs and vegetation. It was an impressive mountain garden.


Some highlights of the trip


This part of the trail featured a narrow scramble up an almost vertical rock face, which ruled.


The low point of the col in between the peaks was marked by this massive cairn.


After climbing back up the col and looking back to the peak we were just on.

Hiking up here in Holderness has reminded me of the Squam Lake Science Center that my dad used to take me to back when I was young. Though it's sort of a place for kids, I would still go today because of the bear and bobcats and foxes and otters and shit that they have there. I think I'll go when I start making money again. I need a fucking job and I can't seem to get a call back from anywhere I apply to.

Recently, I've been trying to gain the ability to Lucid Dream. There are a couple main ways this can be done:

- The simple method is to do reality checks during the day. For example, read a paragraph from a page in a book, look away, and read it again. The text will be the same. Also, plug your nose and close your mouth and try to breathe. You won't be able to. Eventually, after getting used to these habits during the day, you'll perform one during your dream and it will fail. At this point you become aware that you are dreaming. So far this hasn't worked for me, since my bullshit-o-meter is fried beyond belief from years of insane dreams (in other words, when I do the reality check in the dream, and it fails, I don't see anything wrong with it because I accept that reality can change, and that I'm not dreaming, if that makes any sense).

- The hardest but most rewarding method is called WILD (Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming i believe). Basically, you have to go to sleep--get this--while remaining conscious. It sounds impossible, but last night I tried it. I was awake for half an hour trying unsuccessfully to simply fall asleep while remaining conscious. I realized that the way I was remaining aware was by thinking "oh, I'm in bed, I can feel my body." So I decided to just start counting. This way, I could forget all about being in bed, in a room, and focus on relaxing while still retaining a conscious link.

Lo and behold, thirty numbers into the counting, something strange happened. I sort of lost touch with my body, which seemed to float off elsewhere (I was completely aware of this happening, but I couldn't really will myself to move; early sleep paralysis). Instead of seeing the back of my eyes, I rather felt I was staring into some black room with my eyes open. All I could feel was my consciousness, and I didn't really have a body so to speak. It was the most bizarre thing ever. Around this time, I expected pictures and a dream to start forming, but I became aware of something else. Part of my body came back to my attention, my heart. My heart started racing (a common side effect of the WILD technique; this along with sleep paralysis makes it one hell of an experience), and I could literally feel my heart and the arteries going up to my head as they pulsed, but nothing else in my body. Then my eyes and nose started twitching like crazy and I eventually had to stop. When I came to seconds later I had a splitting headache, which I still have well into today. I'll have to try again when the headache goes away. It was definitely one of the weirdest things that's ever happened to me.

Anyway, what's supposed to happen is that you go through the steps of WILD, you retain awareness, and the dream world will unfold in front of you. This is hard to accomplish at night, since a lot of dreaming occurs during REM, and you haven't entered that state yet. A better time to do this is after waking up later in the night or from a nap. Going back to bed immediately after will increase your chances of WILD working. WILD Lucid Dreams are apparently incredibly realistic and quite easy to manipulate, and more rewarding than the easier method above.

Weird shit.

Season 1 of Heroes ended tonight...

I just...

Don't know what I'm going to do anymore...

This article really sums up how I felt, actually. And about all these unanswered questions.

Also, I didn't realize that Hiro saw his father on the horse. That's actually really awesome.

Tonight was the last night of my math class that I took at NHCTC Manchester... It was a fun class, and I actually had someone to talk to for the duration (her name is Sandra), and I think I did fairly well. I'll be able to see my grades online in a day or so.

I really want to take another class this summer, one in digital photography, but I have to give it some major thought since it will cost like $600. I need to look into financial aid, maybe I can cover the entire thing with a grant.

So, my weekend turned out differently than expected, but was still exceedingly awesome. I got out of work much too late on Friday, and thus did not make it to AJs in time to head to PA (I have yet to ask him how that was).

Anyway, I started off Saturday doing tons of yard work, which is usually pretty fun for me. The lawn looks nice now.

After that I went to Ben's apartment for the first time, for a Cinco de Mayo celebration. I was the first one to get there, and Ben and I went for pizza (the pizza place we ate at is the building next to Ben's, a short walk). He lives on the fifth floor though, and the elevator is broken, so we had to take a bunch of winding stairs up. Katy and Sara were there when we got back from eating, and soon after, Ben and I went out in search for a liquor store. We ended up not finding the one that Ben was looking for, and had to go to another one, so it took us a while. We bought Goldschlager, which is really syrupy and cinamonny, and kinda gross, and it has real flakes of gold floating in it for some inane reason.

Anyway, everyone eventually showed up, and fun was had by all (especially me, hijacking Ben's desktop backgrounds with pictures of cats). At some point, someone asked Ben if there was a fire escape on the building, and there was, so someone went out on it. A few minutes later, everyone was yelling that you could see two girls doing... stuff, from the fire escape (I guess they were looking in the window?). Anyway, everyone got out onto the fire escape and started watching these lesbians have sex, and supposedly one of them looked up and saw one of the girls and said something like, "Are you fucking kidding me?" I actually didn't see anything, since I was too tired to move from Ben's apartment, but it reminded me of Ralph's story from the Simpsons, the one about making babies in the closet, and he saw a baby, and it looked at him.

The next morning, I took the Blue line back into Lynn to get my car. I reach my car, and there's a ticket on it. At first, I thought it was for $31.00, and I was flipping out, but whoever had written the amount had made the decimal point super long for some reason. So it was actually three dollars.

After the initial shock, I decided to figure out why the fuck I had a ticket, since I asked the guy on the way into the lot to give me an overnight pass. So I asked the new guy in the booth, and he told me that they had given me a one day pass, for some reason. Ok, whatever. I only had a $10 on me, but I had my tin of change in the car too, so I filled up the little ticket envelope with $3.00 of pennies (mostly Canadian ones, since I keep throwing them back in there when the CoinStar machine filters them out), and put it in the slot. Massachusetts is stupid.

I arrived home later and promptly made plans to go hiking with Mel. Things went off without a hitch and we were on our way (more hours of driving for me). We got to use my stepmom's car though, which is nice, and has a CD player. We ended up going to Mt. Major, which is near Lake Winnipesaukee.

The hike itself is short (1786 ft.), but it's fairly rewarding, offering a good view over the lake and beyond.

There's a ruined fort on the summit of the mountain, and I once knew why it was there, but I really don't know anymore, and I can't seem to find any information on the internet regarding it.

(Mel took this picture)

I did all right going up (I'm still not in the shape I want to be though), but going down, something weird was going on with my right knee (the joint felt all weird). Hopefully it was just a one time thing. Usually spring hiking is muddy and buggy, but this hike was neither, making it an excellent hike overall. Mel was good company.

Now, it's back to work. I think tomorrow is my last class for the semester... speaking of which, I may sign up for a photography class over the summer.

For some reason, when I take naps, I usually wake up in much worse shape than when I fell asleep. I don't know why. When I wake up, I'll usually either be extremely confused for at least an hour (we're talking really bad, like I can barely make conversation) or way more tired than I was in the first place. The worst is when I'm both. And then it messes up my sleeping schedule later that night, because when I take naps I usually sleep for at least three hours for some reason.

Naps suck.

Broken black pants curse

I went to Wal Mart this morning (a place that really actually depresses me, especially when I see families going there to "have fun family time"), and I found black Wrangler jeans that decently fit, and I found black work shoes that are quite comfy and nice.

The day went by fast... the job is basically a cranked up version of the Loaf (like I said, it's really like a mixture of the Loaf and the Dam View, for those of you who have experienced both). I was familiar with all of the concepts, except I still have a hard time folding the wraps. Of the entire staff, the only guys are me and another older guy who works out front. The rest of my co-workers are nice though.

Driving back from the job was interesting. On the way back, I pass two of those little fire station signs that let you know the fire danger and whether they're giving out permits. The first one I passed said the fire danger was Low, and permits were available. The second one I passed informed me that the danger today was VERY HIGH. I was a bit confused.

Also, there's a place called Left Tees that I pass. I'm not sure what they sell other than shirts, but this fucking awesome carving was out front:



Quick update: I just found out that

- My grandmother had to have her knee replaced, and now it's made of titanium Fucking sick.
- Salem State is putting on a production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch in May. Cool!

Do black pants ever fit? Or even look good?

Yet again I must purchase black pants for a job (I think this is the third time?). Every time I try to buy black pants, they look horribly shitty on me. The first pair I bought had a huge waist and tiny ankles, and just looked like silk clown pants. I wore them at Bertucci's, and the bus boys (which was what I was) carried around spray bottles hanging from either the belt buckle or the pocket. So the weight of that dragged my pants down all night, despite my belt.

And then when I started working at Staples, I bought a pair of really nice almost black jeans, and they fit REALLY well, but I wasn't allowed to wear them because they weren't completely black. So I went and bought a different shittier truly black pair, and they were terrible. And for some reason, I look like an idiot with my shirt tucked in, as always, and it was a policy.



And now I need to buy another pair of black pants. I'm going to wake up early tomorrow and head to Marshall's, and I'm going to find myself a good pair of black pants DAMMIT.

Oh, and I need black skid-free shoes. Easy.

Biking

Our house in Derry is basically halfway up a huge hill. I've been biking since I had my bike tuned up, and it's been pretty brutal either way. I go way too fast going downhill, and it's tough to get back up, but it's definitely easy to get in shape this way. I was in decent shape at the end of last summer, since I rode like 45 minutes everyday, and I thought I had lost that, but I still feel all right when biking now.

The route I take right now doesn't take me too far away from home. It ends in a cul-de-sac (which is good, because I'm usually going like 30 when I hit it, giving me enough leeway to turn around), and there is a pond that I ride by that's frequented by huge geese. I don't know if they're pets or something though, because they look really fat. I'm not ready to go on the main road, people drive like fucking idiots. I don't think I ever will go on the main road.

There's a few bike paths that I'd like to explore too. The Audubon center might have some, and I know there's ones near Lake Massabesic.

Retro Review Part 1: Secret of Evermore

I've owned Secret of Evermore since it first came out--a good twelve years ago. It's one of the only SNES games I've bought that someone actually reccomended to me. Back then, I would rent whatever game looked the coolest, and I doubt the cover art would have appealed to my ignorant tastes. Hell, I didn't rent Earthbound for a long time because I thought the box art was shitty. The only reason I ever ended up renting it was because I wanted to know why the box was so damn big.

Anyway, I recently have been playing through it again, and I'm almost done.

Story - The basic storyline is kinda cheesy, but at least it tries to be unique. You're a normal kid from the mid 90s (great already, huh?) who chases his dog into a big mansion where it's rumored that a terrible accident happened during an experiment. The owner of the mansion and his three guests went missing, and weren't heard from since. The boy encounters a strange machine inside, and the dog chews on some wires, sending both of them into a realm created entirely by the scientist (the mansion's owner) and his guests. All four of them still exist in this realm (though time seems not to have affected them), and they each live in their own respective made up worlds which span from prehistoric times to a futuristic space station.

This game has constantly been compared to Secret of Mana and criticized for not being as good. Fuck that, the Secret of Mana character development sucked. At least the kid in this game is a movie buff, and quotes fake movies all the time. And he has a 90s 'tude, typical of the decade.

Gameplay - SoE is an action RPG. Thus, you walk around hitting stuff, and numbers pop out telling you how hard you hit. It's a good system, however, borrowing from Secret of Mana. You can level up your weapons (independent from your character's levels) and subsequently charge them up to hit enemies even harder. Your dog also runs around attacking enemies as well, and you can switch to control the dog if you want (this is actually necessary later to solve puzzles).

You also learn "alchemy formulas" along the way, which you need to collect ingredients for before you use them. Alchemy in the game works similar to real life: it makes no sense. Mix oil and wax to create a flaming homing projectile? Sure! The system gets an A+ in my book. You can also level these formulas up too. While roaming the feild, your dog sniffs out stray ingredients for you, which is COOL.

The boss fights are usually strange. Each boss seems to have a haphazardly planned set of stats (some bosses go down fast, others take forever), and it almost seems there were a few different design teams that split the work load for designing the bosses. But it does work, somehow. I guess the diversity keeps me interested (i.e. they didn't just slap a different palette on an old boss, although this happens once or twice).

The dialogue itself shows attempts at humor and keeping the player interested. I have to give them that. But there are a few puns that make me want to kill myself, and there's a ton of un touched-up dialogue that's really just shitty (bad punctuation, etc.). I don't even think that it was translated from Japanese...

Graphics - They're pretty good. Like I said earlier, the design of some characters and enemies won't really mesh well with others, but it works. For the most part, you can tell they took the time to design things that didn't look "square" (like in Final Fantasy for example, everything seems almost grid-based). Minutiae abound if you know where to look.


Music and Sound - I'd have to say the weakest part of the game. Though the music is almost ambient in some points, the ambient noises just aren't convincing enough (sound very sampled). The only music I really enjoyed was during the Medieval section of the game. Being out in the pink trees with the turquoise hedgehogs and bizarre music made the area memorable. The sound effects can be glitchy too, and annoying. But the splat noise when you kill a bug is MEGA-SATISFYING. WOAH>

Overall - This is the epitome of the 90s, so that might make or break the deal for you. Regardless, I think it's a game that you need to play when you can appreciate it. I didn't like it back when I was a kid all that much. I like it a lot more now. I'd give it...

8 OUT OF 10 SCHOOLBUSES DOING WHEELIES
Click the Youtube video below to see how intense just one school bus doing a wheelie is.





Doughead Software. ...yup.

Highway Camaradarie

For those of you who have spent a lot of time on the highway:

This is how I see things. Usually you're either passing someone, or someone is passing you. It's very rare to be going the same speed as someone. Every once in a while, I'll find that someone is behind me the entire time I'm on the highway, whether I'm passing someone or staying in the right lane. It's funny, but I always get this sense that I'm being complimented on my driving. The other driver is basically showing that they respect the speed I'm driving at and the choices I make while passing other cars. It's almost a sense of camaraderie. Am I crazy? Probably.

Also, I did learn something new today at the bike shop. It's a good idea to check and clean out your brake pads, as bits of rock and metal get stuck in them and scrape up your wheels. Also, pumping up your tires with the emergency pump that attaches to the bike isn't a good idea, since it can only fill the tires a certain amount. So I bought a floor pump.

I also saw an old family friend today, James Beal. It was awkward at first, because I just walked up to him and said, "Hi, I'm Matt. Matt Sweeney." Which wasn't really enough, since it had been like 12 years or something. But eventually everything was cleared up and then he gave my lil ol' big a big ol' tune-up.

All I can say is... suck it exeter!

Things at the Wrap Shak are working out perfectly. It's basically going to be a mixture of working at the Dam View and working at the Loaf and Ladle. The people working there seem nice, and I'm starting at $9.50 an hour ("how in the hell?").

On the way back from my interview, there was this dude on the side of the road, furiously scratching all his dandruff out into a sewer. It was fairly funny.

It was sunny today

I drove to SSC today and cleared up most of the nonsense going on with what I owe them. My van got stuck in a mud pit at one point. Massachusetts drivers still suck. I should open up a brake repair shop somewhere down there, since it seems the way they drive, they should be replacing their brakes every week or so.

My interview with the Wrap Shak is tomorrow. I can't forget.

Vuh-vuh-vuh-vulture

To tie in with this weeks theme of misery and death (brought by the weather), I took a picture of some fucking vulture bird eating roadkill. There were two, and it's a shame I didn't get a picture of the other one because it had intestines hanging from its mouth.



Edit: Identified! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_vulture

Nor'Easter... is that how you spell it?

I did a lot today, more than I thought I would. I saw Andy driving around when I got into Exeter, alerting me that something was up (he usually works on Tuesday mornings). I called him, and he told me the Loaf is close (and has been closed, and will be closed until probably Saturday). That means I have only one more day there, and he's not mad at me!

I called the Wrap Shak. I have an interview on Friday at 10:00 AM. Hopefully things go well, it seems like they are excited to have me. Also, it's right next to a place called Game Castle. Within is a bounteous trove of nerdly delights, but I usually stick to the D&D products. When I went in, there were tons of guys at some back tables playing Magic or Pokeemans or something. I didn't ask.

Jenna left for boot camp today. It was an awkward goodbye, because she and Dave were busy, but at least I got to see her. I'm curious to see how it affects her. But then again, it's not like she's going into the Marines. Some people I know that come back from different branches of the military seem to have lost their senses of humor and personality... it's kind of scary.

Eventually, I went to AJs and we hung out for a while. We went to Hampton Beach, which was pretty chaotic, though it seemed to have recovered from something much worse. I'm fairly sure most of the roads right on the coast were completely underwater yesterday.

Some houses still were:



The military had blocked off certain areas that were still very bad. Sorry for the shit pic.


Nature vomit




Turtle


MISERY MIRE

I have some live footage of the surf that actually doesn't do it justice, but Youtube is being slow so I'll upload that later tonight.

Later on in the day, after going to Pawn and Pizza shops, I realized while in Exeter that I had class in Manchester in half an hour. So I left pretty quick and got there a bit late. Turns out not many people were there, so she hadn't even started lecturing, and we had a minimal class anyway. Here I am. Joe's Pizza usually makes me sick. I'm just realizing that.

I guess tomorrow I ought to go to Salem State personally and figure my shit out. I'm scared about my car though, because it's acting funny again. Either the starter is starting to not work again, or I've been bad at putting it in park... hopefully the latter. I'll need to look at colleges tomorrow too, since I didn't really today.

EDIT: Here's some footage of the waves:

This isn't the first time I'm clawing my way up from the shit, but hopefully it's the last (until my mid-life crisis)

I'm not going to force this Blog to be fancy or anything. It's here to document my thrilling ascent from the cess-pool that I've drowned myself in over the last four or five years. This shit pit derived from the turd life.

Anyway, I'll start off simple with a list of things that I really oughta do for myself before they drag me deeper into the mire. Bear with me during this boring phase, things should get happier and more exciting soon. The hardest part is realizing that I have to do things for myself by myself.

1. My way of dealing with things that suck is usually to pick up and leave--to sever ties with whatever shitty situation I'm dealing with. This has left me in a couple of bad situations for a few reasons. The first is that I never actually offically withdrew from Salem State. Now they are threatening to bill me for another semester that I didn't attend. Luckily I was able to prove to them that I wasn't there at all, and so I need to call tomorrow and make sure that everything is all right (for peace of mind).

2. Another bad situation derived from running away: I left work early on Sunday. Although I'm sick of almost everyone at the Loaf now, I really shouldn't burn any bridges. I only have a few more shifts, one of them on Thursday morning. I need to apologize to Andy, even though I have a few gripes left unspoken. As I write this, I have gotten Aleah to take my Friday shifts and my Sunday shift, so I'm not working with Sara at all, the root of all the problems. Which is excellent. I'm going to ask for Saturday off too, since I want to go to PA with AJ.

I feel like the things I've been pulling are classic "Matt Sweeneys." The thought of that disgusts me. As always, I hate the reputation I've given myself, and I'm disgusted I haven't broken out of it by now.

3. Back in Salem State news: I need to figure out exactly what I owe to SSC in anticipation for when they bill me. Most likey this will happen before I am enrolled in another college. Which brings me to my fourth order of business:

4. Apply for colleges for next year's spring semester.As usual, I haven't checked out any colleges and I don't know what I want to do. This subject is too complicated to expand upon now.

5. I have a job interview opportunity at a place called the Wrap Shak. They specailize in, gasp, wraps! I would work in the kitchen, not with people. That would be ideal. I'm sick of customers for now. Hopefully I get the job, and they called me almost immediately after I dropped off the application.

6. Waiting for some internet transactions to come through. I also have to ship something tomorrow. Soon my online empire will be established (seriously, I'm hoping I'll have some sort of small success with this business endeavor; it would be nice).

7. Financial Dilemma: Pay a little over $300 for the convenience of a gym (for a year), or figure out how to get in good shape on my own? Or I guess I could get a checking account and do it monthly. If i choose to do it on my own...

8. ...I need new tires for my bike. Not a huge ordeal at all, might even be fun, I might learn something.

9. As ever, my credit card bill. It went from almost $4000 to $1400 in around 2 months. One of the only recent things I've done I'm truly proud of. With my penultimate paycheck from the Loaf, that will go down to probably $1250.

I'll be able to sell my school books back to Manchester Tech too. That should net me another $100. Wahoo.

10. Inspecting my teeth closely has revealed a decent sized cavity where recently there was just the faint whisperings of one. Dentist is a definite stop on my list of important things.

I'd also like to expand creatively (specifically in my writing) and enrich myself with different things. A few easy topics to start with would be: music, news, politics. If you ever want hit me with some knowledge, I'm game. I don't feel like I'm living up to my potential.

Tomorrow I'm going to visit Jenna. She's leaving for the Navy at 4:00 PM. I wish her luck, but I regret not getting to know her as well as I should. I'm sad that she's not as close to Mel as she once was. Such is life (ooh boy, do I sound wise or what? yeah, that's a +3 modifier to wisdom, betch).

I'm not gonna lie, I hope this blog is interesting and popular one day (or I hope it at least leads to other opportunities that I have in mind).