I spent some time today looking through old journal entries and it’s really interesting to look back at a time not all that long ago. How different things were just 6 years ago. All the high school dealings. All the people I wanted to have as friends. All the friends I had at that time. The people I admired. The people I wanted to know better. All that stuff. There are things that I wish I would have done and some things that I wish I hadn’t done. Some people turned out to be so much more – others haven’t been heard from in years. Some I wonder about, some I don’t. I wish that I knew many of them better and I wish that we had kept in better contact. I tried to fix that with some people this year through “Christmas cards,” but we’ll see how things turn out and the responses that I get. I wish that I had been more honest with people and told them how I truly felt and how much I appreciated what they did.

I wonder how things would have turned out if I took a different course of action on things. What would have happened to me if I had transferred to Oasis in my sophomore year like I wanted to – or even later in my senior year as I remember. I wish that I had started taking classes at Palomar during my Junior year so that I could have gotten a couple years ahead instead of a couple years behind. Don’t get me wrong. I’m fairly happy with the course of action that I have managed to follow, but I could have done better and I _think_ I could have been happier.

As I go through these old posts, I wonder how much of this information I should be putting online. As I look back, I see that I want to be as honest with people as possible, but it is so easy to put stuff into print that can change the whole universe that I really have to think twice about what to put online. I truly wonder what life would be like if everyone knew everything about me. If there were no secrets. I admit I’m trying to be as open as I can handle, and trying to be as open as other people would want me to be at the same time.

It’s interesting to remember the people that I “fell in love with” after two weeks of knowing them or for some of them, even the first day I saw them. I wonder how things would be different if they had known… I assume that some knew and I know that others did know. For some, it changed things between us. With some people I think I pushed too hard and things backfired, with others, I know that I didn’t push hard enough or at even all.

I’ve had lots of conversations lately with people about some of this stuff and it’s been interesting to see what different people have thought. Let me know what you think… about this… about things you wish you had done or not done… words of wisdom… whatever… I know you’re out there and reading this (the hit counter has to go up somehow) and I know you must have something to share. You can do it anonymously… just make up a fake screen name to register with. Heck.. be test1 or test2 or whatever…. I don’t care!

Then there are the people that just never seemed to get represented in entries. As Batchelor pointed out the other day, I didn’t mention him in the post when we spent most of the day doing everything together (and with Pryo). I also don’t think that Ryan made it into that post and he was there for a good portion of the day too. What events have I forgotten to record because I was too busy to write them down, or I didn’t think I needed to write them down because I would remember them. Some things that don’t seem worthy of being written are many times the most important things to be written – yet they never get said. That being said.. If I’ve not mentioned your name in a post or don’t have your picture on my site or whatever, that doesn’t mean I don’t care. It could mean that we’ve lost contact and I’ve “forgotten” about you because your name isn’t in my address book or it could mean that I think about you all the time and therefore don’t mention you because I assume that I’ll always remember. Drop me a line and remind me about you… remind me what you’re doing… what you’ve done… something we used to do or how we met. For most of the people I know, I cannot for the life of me remember how we met. I can make an educated guess with some people and probably pinpoint it down to the year or so, but there are so many others that I have no clue and that makes me sad that I didn’t take the time to remember it.

Speaking of remembering things, as Chris and I were saying the other day, we wish that we had taken more pictures (or even any) back in the day to remember things. Maybe someday my camera phone will be good enough to take decent pictures and that way I’ll always have a camera on me to preserve those moments forever (or at least until my hard drive crashes and I realize that I never backed it up!). So if you have any pictures from the “good-old-days” can you please send a copy my way so that I can share in your wealth.

I think I need to spend more time looking back and remembering the past and who has been there for me throughout the times and try to make changes for the better in our lives. Some recent events have made me go back and look through yearbooks and I realize all the people that I have already momentarily forgotten because I don’t get to see them on a regular basis. Then there are all the people that I never had sign my yearbook because I was too busy or I didn’t want to leave it or we ran out of time or whatever. Sign my guestbook people….. let’s make that the new yearbook center.

Well, it was fun to go back and look at some history this evening. I’ve still got quite a bit to go through, but it’s a start I guess. I also have a bunch of entries that I need to find as they are scattered all of the place – some are even handwritten or only on hardcopy.

Did you know that Safari will spellcheck for you as you type? It is supposed to work in all text fields, but it isn’t working in this one. I just read about it and thought it was really freaking cool! Why doesn’t Apple publicize all these features???

Oh yeah, edit, Spelling, Check Spelling as you Type.

As most of you know, I’m back home in Fallbrook after my short trip to Tucson. It was a pretty uneventful trip, which is good and we got quite a bit of eating in. Fuddruckers and Macaroni Grill on Sunday and then Mimi’s and of course Cracker Barrel on Monday!

The drive was pretty boring as usual and I couldn’t find any good cars to follow as I have been able to do on some of the trips in the past. I got to see snow on may way through the mountains on the way out of San Diego, but there wasn’t any on the road, but it was enough for people to pull over and play in the snow. I’m just glad it wasn’t snowing when I was trying to drive through there!

As I stated in the previous post I got my mom a ReplayTV unit (even though mine isn’t working!) and it looks like we really did luck out and we managed to get a unit that had already been activated. The guy at the store said that he had opened it to make sure everything was there, but I’m guessing that this was actually a unit that had been a floor model or something along those lines. All of the packaging was perfectly intact, except for the unit itself which was not wrapped in plastic and did not have and cord all tied up. I’ll be really happy if this thing pans out and we ended up paying $150 for a “40-hour” ReplayTV with lifetime activation included… I may have to see if I can find myself another unit that has already been activated considering that I’m paying $120/year just in service fees. I’d brake down and pay the $300 lifetime fee, but I just know that as soon as I do, something will happen and I won’t get my money out of the unit. I wish they would do a liftime activation after you’ve paid your $300 in monthly fees, but I guess we can’t ask for everything.

I can’t say that we really did too much else other than eat and some shopping. We went to Mervyn’s and got me some new jeans and stuff – maybe I’ll actually be able to fit in these for a while! We also did the usual Wal*Mart and Best Buy shopping along with Costco, but I can’t say that we really got anything big at any of the stores. We tried to find some limited edition mint Hershey’s Kisses, but we weren’t able to find any. (Kind of like with the Replay!)

For those of you that know Doug (shadow)… He lost his dad yesterday … I’m sure he would appreciate your calls/help/whatever with things. I guess the memorial service will be this Saturday at Fallbrook Presbyterian Church at 1 p.m.

http://www.blurty.com/users/shadowstes

We went shopping this morning and didn’t do too bad, but we kept striking out when I was trying to find my mom a replayTV unit. For some reason everyone has stopped carrying them or was sold out. We finally gave up and came back to the house after eating lunch at Fuddruckers! At the house I hopped on the Internet with the new G network (along with all the other networks available around here) to find out who else might have one and started calling around. i finally found one at a Radio Shack and we went over to pick it up on the way to dinner at the Macaroni Grill. I think I actually got really lucky with it because it says that it has been activated already. I think that it was like the floor model or something because everything was in perfect condition, but the unit wasn’t wrapped in plastic and it had a bunch of messages about loosing power.

Well, that’s about it. I hear the Chargers actually won a game today for those of you that might care. I’ll probably be coming back to town tomorrow night, so if you want to give me a call after like 6 feel free because I’ll be driving like crazy.

I didn’t get enough driving time in yesterday so I decided to spend most of today driving to Arizona. I’m going to be spending the next couple days here in Tucson with my mom. The drive was uneventful except for when I tried to get gas in Yuma and some of the stations were out of gas and the others had huge lines! Fortunately, I seem to be smarter than the average person – so I got back on the freeway and went to the next exit where there was practically nobody! Well, it’s pretty late here, so I’m going to sleep now. Hope you all had a good Saturday.

I’m too tired to write too much today, but briefly… I got the flat fixed, couldn’t find Tina her USB cable for the iPod and bought a G Router. Then Ryan and I troubleshooted the ASB sound system and the only thing that we could find that was really wrong was that the mid amp was in bridged mono mode. Then, it was over to the PAC to paint the stage. Wow! That was fun! Home for a quick shower and then up to see Aimee for dinner. We got to see her new place – small but nice a cozy. Pretty close to the beach too. We went out to a pizza/Italian place for dinner – I think it was called BJs. Then it was off to Mr. Bouse’s to give him his new pager and see what kind of trouble we could get into. We tried to fix his new winbloze machine, but as usual – things were harder than they should have been. Turned out that it was a jumper on the hard drive that was telling the computer the hard drive was only 32 gigs. I wasn’t aware of a standard that limited drives to 32 gigs, but I’m sure there was at some point. After sitting there for a while, we headed off to Fridays for a quick dessert before heading back to town. I’m most likely going to Arizona tomorrow for a couple days – so I’ll see you guys later!

Nothing big today, but it was nice to have the day off. We did the traditional stuff, open presents in the morning and dinner in the evening. I just wasn’t into it this year – I’m not really sure why. I gave Matt & Tom each a mouse, but I did that back in the day. I’m going to continue Susan’s ReplayTV subscription – although the way things are going I don’t know if I’ll be continuing mine! I got a lot of “gift certificates” to restaurants. What’s really sad is that these guys are too lazy to go out and get the certificate, so they just put a note on a $20 bill as to which restaurant the cash would be valid at.

I spent the rest of the day watching movies and just thinking. I finally got to see Pirates of the Caribbean. Not a bad movie, but I thought that they kind of dragged some of it out when it was obvious that they could have ended it.

Tomorrow it looks like I’ll be getting my tire fixed and then Ryan & I will be painting the stage at the Bob. Pyro is supposed to come up and check out the sound system and figure out what the guys were having a problem with. I’m also hoping that we get out early enough so that I can go and visit Aimee tomorrow night. It looks like I’ll be going to Arizona on Saturday and then probably come back Monday or Tuesday.

Wow! I’m ready to go to sleep tonight. Ryan and I went for a bike ride this morning and then it was off to the Bob to work on repairing the arbors. Everything pretty much went well at the Bob, it just took a little longer than I was expecting it to, but that’s part of life I guess.

Once we got out of there we joined Chris & Tina for dinner at the new Chili’s in Oceanside. That was fun and I won something like $7 from the scratchers they gave me. Not quite the $30 that Rande would have won, but hey… it all counts right? After returning back to Fallbrook, Chris and I turned around and drove some chairs out to Nathaniel so that he had room for people to sit tomorrow. It was nice to get to spend some more time talking with Mr. Bouse. How things have changed.. Somewhere along the line I picked up a nail in one of my tires so I’ll be having fun tomorrow fixing it, most likely.

Aimee it was great to see you today on your surprise visit. Sorry you had to wait outside so long. I wish that we could see you more often and I hope that we can catch up next week. I’m sorry I didn’t give you the 100% attention you deserve this evening, but we were busy with some stuff. I’ll give it back to you later…

Kristi – how long did it take you to find a card with no l?

Well, I think it is time for me to get my “beauty rest” now – we all know how much I need it! I guess I could go ahead and say this since it is today already… Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

Wow… big day today I guess. As you already know, I got myself yet another email address today. You can now reach me @student.fullerton.edu – isn’t that great? I still have yet to hear from them officially on paper, but I’m pretty sure that their system wouldn’t lie to me. I would like to see it let me register for classes though, but I think that they are keeping me from registering until they actually get my “official” transcripts from Palomar.

So what kind of advice do you all have for me to put into action in about a month? The semester starts January 28th, but classes don’t actually start until February 2nd. That means that I still have like a full month off! Or, it could mean that I have a month to figure out what the heck I’m going to be doing…

I’m waiting to hear back from university housing as to if they’re going to hook me up or not. If they can’t help me out, I’m not sure what I will do, but maybe I can crash at my uncles place in Yorba Linda a couple nights a week. I’m hoping that I can do something like what Ryan is doing with going up 3-4 nights a week and coming back to Fallbrook on the weekends for work and whatever else. Maybe for the fall semester I can work on actually moving up there or something.

Things went good today at the Bob – no more problems. The stage is all prepped for painting and the bottom plates have been fixed on the arbors. Tomorrow Pyro and I guess Rande are going to come in so we can do the top half of the arbors and do the first coat of paint on the stage.

I filled up my afternoon with reading bunches of stuff about Fullerton and seeing what kinds of things I could break through their website. I finally made it into the shower and then off to Pat & Oscar’s with the de Jongs for dinner. It’s been a long time since Alison and I have had our weekly outings to Oscars. I think it is safe to say that I miss those days. They better hurry it up and make sure I have an Oscar’s close to me in Fullerton. I’m also going to need an Apple Store – so Apple: hurry it up and get me one! Riverside could use one too.

Well, I think it is off to bed now so that I can get up in the morning and go riding with Ryan before we go to the Bob.

I guess the question is no longer _if_ I will be going to Fullerton, but _how_ I’m going to be getting there on a daily basis.

I just checked the status of my admission to CSU Fullerton and it now reports that I have been admitted, but it won’t let me register for classes yet as I think they still need to receive my official transcripts from Palomar. They also probably want some money from me. Here we go!

OK… Off to actually work at the bob here… Hopefully no more problems today!

We (Ryan, Paul and myself) started on fixing the arbors today. It’s not what I thought we would be doing, but it does seem like it may help the problem. What we’re doing is changing the plastic piece on the inside whereas I thought that we would be changing the plastic pieces on the outside. We didn’t run in to any major problems with that upgrade, but we’re discovering other problems as we go – like the baton for the white cyc hitting a piece of the rear black. Of course, while we were trying to figure out these problems we got to hear a nice fire alarm and had to evac the building to figure out what the problem was. For the life of Ryan and myself, we cannot figure out what the deal is with all the different hardware and other issues with fly #38.

We got out of there about 4:30 when I came home to sit around and basically do nothing, well, I caught up on some email and stuff, until I joined pyro & batch at Outback. After that it was home to bed and watch CSI: Miami.

I just took the plunge and updated to 10.3.2 along with doing the other 8 updates that have been sitting there bugging me for a while. No problems to report yet, but then again, I did just finish restarting. The restart did seem like it may have taken a little longer than usual, but there were probably some files that needed to be updated during the process.

So much for that uptime! Hopefully my backlit keyboard will work a little better now.

Good night!

I got to enjoy another day off today which was very nice. I got to sleep in a little and then I basically just lounged around and watched TV and then a movie – Sinbad. I finally got off my lazy butt and went out to Costco and Michael’s to do some shopping with Ryan. We came back here and made some of some videos and stuff for a while and then I started watching Pay it Forward which I am still currently doing. Interesting idea presented in the movie about doing something good for three people and just asking them to pay it forward and do something nice to three more people. As they pointed out in the movie – this requires a leap of faith that the people will actually do their part and pay it forward, but even if only 2 of them do it, it would still be possible to make the world a better place.

Well, I think Ryan and I are going to go down and start working on the arbors tomorrow afternoon for a while and then we’ll get Batch in there to finish up the inspections and all that fun stuff.

Ryan and I finally went for our bike ride this morning, although I guess it was technically this afternoon. It was good to get out there and do it, but it sure didn’t help having this cold. I wish I was back in the shape I was in when I was riding with Bouse about a year ago or whenever it was. We could really go riding if that was the case. We’re going to get there again though.

After that I got to put up Christmas lights on the house. Oh boy, how fun! It actually wasn’t that bad and didn’t take too long. We didn’t do anything crazy this year, but we’ve got lights up so I guess that’s all that counts.

Even though you would have figured that after putting up Christmas lights that I would have had more than enough Christmas for the day and probably even the month, I decided to send out some “Christmas cards.” I didn’t get very far, but I did get 8 of them to the post office this evening. Of course, they won’t get out until Monday, but at least I started right! Hopefully I’ll be able to get a bunch more done tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, Ryan wants to go in to the theatre and start working on the arbors tomorrow. Pyro wants to go in on Tuesday and Wednesday and Batchelor doesn’t want to go in until January 2nd! I don’t know what to do!