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Sheesh, this is old. I'm starting a new one.

Holy Stromboli!

As usual, my family celebrated St. Patrick's Day the Sunday after the holiday. The Irish blood in my family brought Corned Beef & Cabbage, potatoes, Irish Soda Bread, Guinness, Harp, and Jameson's... As well as a shrimp cocktail, Caeser salad, cream puffs, and stromboli. Now, stromboli is a classic Italian turnover that I've never eaten before. Weird, right? I thought so too. I live in a neighborhood where I can name a handful of Italian restaurants off the top of my head, but I never once had stromboli. And it was goooooood.

Anyways, onto the dinner table discussion. It started out with classy compliments to my mother's cooking. Oh, I love how lean the corned beef is! The potatoes just melt in my mouth! After we all settled down, a few minutes of quiet eating. Then, my dad started up a story about the time that he and my mom went out to dinner with a new coworker of my mom and his wife. At one point during their night out he took a sip of wine, sat up startled, and half-sneezed half-coughed out his wine all over the table. It was as if someone filled up a mister and sprayed the table with a fine mist. "I don't think I even missed a spot," he said, "I thought we were becoming friends with these people. Oops, not anymore!" Later on, after consuming more than enough wine to make up for what he lost to the tablecloth, he stood up and marched off... Right into the women's restroom.

What a special father I have.

Distracted by Life

One of the reasons why I haven't posted in quite awhile is because I have been busy with life. Very busy. Way back in the beginning I said that there are four parts to my life (swimming, music, Boy Scouts, and school) besides socializing with my friends. All four of those are winding down now that I am near the end of high school.

• Swimming: My last end-of-the-year awards banquet for high school swimming was last week, concluding my high school swimming career as a four year varsity Captain of the men's team, Coaches Award recipient, First Team All-Division 500 freestyler, and school record holder in the 400 meter freestyle. As for my club team, I am taking a break for at least a month (much to my coach's disapproval... oops!).
• Music: Marching Band season is long-gone, with me earning the MVP award as one of two Drum Majors in the band. Jazz band is ongoing, and will be wrapping up sometime in April. Unless I join a music group in college for fun, I am almost done.
• Boy Scouts: As of yesterday, I have every single requirement fulfilled for the rank of Eagle. Now I submit my application and project write-up to the Council, who will approve me for earning Eagle. Then it will go off to National, who will give the official stamp of approval. Finally, it comes back to my troop and I participate in a final Board of Review before my Court of Honor. When I turn 18 in May, I am finished with Boy Scouts.
• School: Oh boy, have I become the stereotypical "second-semester senior"! Except for my two AP classes, if I can't do the work in school... it's probably not getting done. I got accepted to Fairfield University and Marist College, both with a nice academic scholarship attached. Needless to say, school is winding down.

The second reason I have neglected to keep this updated is that... well... I don't have much to say! With all my free time, I definitely plan on doing something. What that is, I have no idea. But with these few precious months that I have where nothing much of anything is going on, I'll do something. Stay tuned for... whatever it is I do!

Ahh... November. What a month.

You must be wondering why I'm writing about the coming of a month that we're already halfway through. I'm confused, that's why. I wore shorts and a t-shirt today, on November 15th. Isn't it supposed to be cold today?

I blame global warming.

But hey, who's complaining?

Paranormal Activity

Fans, I'm disappointed in Paranormal Activity. Don't worry, it's not your fault, I just wanted to let you know.

After all of the hype and all of the sponsored links on Digg.com, after all of the newspaper reviews, after the 85% "fresh" review rating on rottentomatoes, and after all of the stories of soiled underwear in the theater, I thought that I would actually get to experience having the crap scared out of me. I decided that tonight - Halloween of all the nights in the year to see a scary movie - I would go out with my friends to see the supposed "scariest movie ever".

Meh.

Mikah and Katie represent the two halves of the movie. Mikah has a goofy sense of humor that kept me laughing through the first half of the movie. Katie kept me laughing for the second half:

*SPOILER ALERT*

When she was dragged out of bed by the demon, my friends and I thought she was going to get out of bed and stand up again. When she in turn flopped on the ground and started to flail her limbs, I lost it. The giggling continued through the remainder of the movie.

The final scene was the only satisfyingly exciting part of the entire wasted two hour attempt to scare me. I wouldn't call it scary, but that is probably because I was still laughing from earlier scenes. In the theatrical trailer it looked like a pillow was being tossed at the camera, leading me to believe that there was going to be a fun-loving demonic pillow fight at the climax of the film. I was pleasantly surprised when it was the idiotic "What the **** was that" character Mikah being thrown across the room by his steroid abuser of a girlfriend. When she was laying on top of his limp body for a few moments and turned up to face the camera with that wicked possessed smile, finally I felt chills run down my spine. But then, as soon as it got interesting, it was over and the end-of-documentary-on-runaway-homicidal-maniac text epilogue was scrolling up the screen, wiping away any chance of a decent horror film.

*END SPOILER ALERT*

As a horror film, I give it a 4/10 simply for the final scene. As a comedy film, it gets a perfect 10/10. My friends and I were debating going to see "This is It", the music documentary on Michael Jackson's final years when we decided to watch "Paranormal Activity" because of the whole Halloween thing. Maybe that would have scared me more.

That being said, I find myself looking into the shadows when I hear a noise. It could just be the MSG overload from the Chinese food we went for afterwards that's creeping me out.

Maybe it wasn't so terrible a movie after all... hehe just kidding.

The Rose - Bette Midler

A very strong song for those in times of need.

I first heard it during my first retreat with my church's youth ministry, and every time I listen it grows on me.

"Some say love, it is a river, that drowns the tender reed
Some say love, it is a razor, that leaves your soul to bleed
Some say love, it is a hunger, an endless aching need
I say love, it is a flower, and you, its only seed

Its the heart afraid of breaking, that never learns to dance
Its the dream afraid of waking, that never takes the chance
Its the one who wont be taken, the one who cant seem to give
And the soul afraid of dying, that never learns to live

When the night has been too lonely and the road has been too long
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong
Just remember that in the winter, far beneath the bitter snow
Lies the seed, that with the suns love in the spring becomes the rose"

And the soul afraid of dying, that never learns to live. Learning to live is the hardest part of life.

- Green

PS: Sorry for not keeping up with this, I forgot the reasons why I record my life in here. Recently, I heard that the mother of a good friend has been hospitalized, and that friend reconnected the broken chain between us.

Smile For The Camera

Well, isn't that funny. I didn't even get a chance to go home on my two hour break!

I went out with a few of my friends to the local bagel store (Noah's Bagels, look it up; they're delicious) for my study hall. Then we came back to school at the beginning of lunch to meet up with more of my friends, and we all went out and flooded Subway with our presence. Heh, lots of fun.

During gym today, I learned that it was Picture Day, and I'd have to get my picture taken for the school ID's. Seniors get their pictures for the yearbook taken at a photo studio, and we have to dress up all nice and formal for that. As a reward, we make ridiculous faces at the camera for our student ID's. The photographer told me to give the camera lens a "big smile", so that's exactly what it got - me, stretching the skin on my face to the limit giving the camera an obnoxious "big smile".

Was I being silly? No, I was just f0llowing directions... right?