Wowee Wow Wow!!!

No words can describe my excitement at this moment and it is approximately an hour since one of the most exciting events in my life occurred to me. It's truly on the short list of moments that I will always remember (right up there under first kiss and game-tying three-pointer) and I'm gonna keep you in suspense. Ha. That's my perrogative though. . . (you're singing Bobby Brown in your head now aren't you???)

Monday was truly like any other day for me. It was my day off of work and school (and no thanks to MLK for either of those - I was just off) and I didn't do a whole lot either. I caught up on SCRUBS, watching the first disc of Season 2. Heather came over in the evening and hung around with me and the fam. We ended up watching INSOMNIA (great movie that she hadn't seen - she said it was "too stressful" for her ha ha) and the GOLDEN GLOBES and then she left for the night.

Tuesday was my busy bee day. Here was school:
- PRE-SCHOOL: No, not preschool you fools. Before school! Well I got there at 0900 and headed to the bookstore to get 2 required books. One was out of stock and the other was $63! Well I bought it and prepared to special order the other one when I called my mom and asked her to search EBAY for the books. She found them both and bought them both for more than $20 less than the school sold them for. Sweetness!

- HISTORY: I was late cuz I had to go to the bookstore (dang line was long) and had to sit on the floor in the back of the classroom. This class has at least 10 more people in it than there should be so I'm gonna have to get there much earlier than right before class starts. We talked about the West and Indians and stuff like that. Much more interesting from a desk, I'm sure.

- PHILOSOPHY: People are dumb. That's all I'm going to say.

- COMMUNICATIONS: Boring today as it was mostly lecture. After the lecture, we split up again into our pairs and discussed our introduction speeches we have to give over the next 2 classes. Not much to report here and I got out a little bit early.

- ASTRONOMY: Poor Mr. Webster said he has been suffering from kidney stones (Ouch!) so he went very quickly thru the lecture. We got out at 1500 which was quite refreshing.

I got home a little earlier than usual so I had a bit more time to myself. I watched PTI and then browsed the WWW. I changed for work and then played more DIDDY KONG RACING with Caleb. Then it was off to work. Work went fine. We weren't busy at all and went on a small wait for no more than an hour. I got outta there early cuz we died at such an early time. I went to Heather's til about midnight when I headed home to my cozy bed.

This morning I got out of bed around 1100 or so and hopped in the shower. I got ready, played a couple games of DKR with Caleb again and then headed to the MALL. I met Heather at EL TORITO for lunch at 1250. We had the world's slowest service and didn't leave (although we left full) til after 1400. This did give us time to chat a lot, which is certainly always a treat. Then we went to the MALL to browse and have fun. She bought a sweater at AMERICAN EAGLE (they were having a clearance sale) and I bought 2 CY SHIRTS (long story kinda: Cy wears those long-sleeved button-up shirts with the cool patterns on them. I've always established that only he could pull them off and that I certainly had no shot of making them work. Well $7 a shirt makes me want to try. They are forever called CY SHIRTS though. This is fo sho) at ANCHOR BLUE. We also went into ELECTRONICS BOUTIQUE for a minute to look at their used DVD section. Heather has been looking for MARIO KART 64 for Caleb and we asked if they had it. They did and we bought it for him. I also bought NBA LIVE 2003 for $3 and WHEN HARRY MET SALLY. . . for $4. Great buys!

Our next stop was her house for 2 extra N64 controllers. We brought them over and began playing almost immediately after walking in the front door. That's what we did til dinner and then the whole fam watched our beloved AMERICAN IDOL which has finally made its return. Now, I will never fully commit to liking this show (I say I watch it for Simon) but man is it hard to resist! I did my ASTRONOMY homework while it played but of course that was difficult to accomplish. After it finished, Heather had to head home and did so.

I retreated to my room where I hit the internet before I finished up my homework. I read Bill Simmons' stuff (lots of new stuff) which made me laugh a lot. He's such a great writer (his new article is a great piece of writing: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/060117) and I only hope that one day I can be as good as him.

Or Roger Ebert.

Now, let me tell a story: About a week ago (it was a bit longer ago, but go with me) he wrote an article (http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060108/COMMENTARY/601080310) in defense of CRASH, the movie he claimed was the best movie of 2005. I agreed strongly and thought I would tell him. I e-mailed the famed critic a quite lengthy response, including quotes and comments from the writer/director of the movie which I had gained at that special screening I had gone to several months ago. It was a well written thing that I composed and I was confident in it as I sent it. The next day I checked my e-mail and I saw that I had a reply from Roger Ebert himself! It said,
"I appreciate this message very much. I've heard from and about a lot of people who said the movie shook them up, and I guess Haggis is getting his wise that some love it and others sure do hate it.
Cheers,
RE"
Well I about lost it! This was exciting stuff! I showed others and they were jazzed too, although some thought that maybe it was just a drone that wrote stuff for him. Those pessimists! Well, I was looking at his site (www.rogerebert.com) tonight briefly for a new review or something and saw a new commentary article entitled "Readers Clash on 'CRASH'" and I was intrigued. I joked aloud with myself that it would be funny if my e-mail made it. I opened up the article and started reading. About 3/4 of the way down, I see an introductory sentence that looks very familiar. It was my sentence! I scrolled further down and saw my name! My name! I jumped out of my chair, ran downstairs and startled my parents, who were almost asleep. I told them and my mom came up and looked for herself. I was jazzed, stoked, elated, and all of those other words for being just plain happy. I called Heather, Justin, George, and Tom and told them all to drop whatever they were doing and look up his site. I'm just so excited. O yeah, the link: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060116/COMMENTARY/60116002 - - go here and scroll down a bit. It's awesome! It is sweetness!

So, yeah, now it's 0100 and I have to finish ASTRONOMY and get to sleep soon to get up at 0830 for school. I don't know if I will be able to do so, but we'll see - I'm still on a high!

Hope all is well with everyone --

- - - "I was spinning free with a little sweet and simple numbing me. .
This sweetness will not be concerned with me"
- - - SWEETNESS by JIMMY EAT WORLD

Still ecstatic (and now a published writer!),

JUSTIN