Some Facts

-i love thanksgiving.
-Family can be tricky business.
-Family can also be amazingly wonderful.
-Friends are fantastic.
-Over the break i visited the cave system at UC Santa Cruz with my brother, Travis and the Simms bros, Gregg and Dillon.
-My dad, brother, and i all helped around my grandma's house. My dad and i worked on some appliances and my brother took initiative and planted some bulbs. Yay flowers!
-My brother is applying to colleges, Arizona State, San Francisco and San Jose State, and Caly Poly San Luis Obispo are among the candidates. Yay college!
-Small group is tonight and that's great. i'm excited.
-i got the new Fighting Jacks demo in the mail from Mike today. i haven't listened to it yet, but i really want to. i just know that it will be very good.
-And lastly, guess who was on my flight from San Jose to Orange County? That's right. John Kerry. Seated in First Class.

a montage

urban autumn cactus


her distant cousin


4?


She Conquers Nonetheless


"Our house / in the middle of the street"


tribute to Aro


Excuse me, where is literacy night?


here.

two am, but i need this

-i do not understand what i do. For what i want to do i do not do, but what i hate i do. And if i do what i do not want to do, i agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer i myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. i know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For i have the desire to do what is good, but i cannot carry it out. For what i do is not the good i want to do; no, the evil i do not what to do--this i keep on doing. Now if i do what i do not want to do, it is no longer i who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
-So i find this law at work: when i want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being i delight in God's law; but i see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man i am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!
-So then, i myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

people from a different time warp

Level One across the bridge and over the tumultuous water

Level Two up in the trecherous mountainous regions

Level Three in the shrine at the inane dead end

blog hate

So here i am trying to blog and also thinking that i still need to fix my page so that non-Firefox users can view it error-free and i end up with this. NO real meaningful, analytical entry, AND my profile and archives are at the WAY WAY bottom of the page. And i still need to write! But i can't right now! Help!

this is a week. let's go.

Blog?

Who even has time to keep these things up!? School is crazy, man, just crazy. Today i have a Weight Training midterm (ha?) and i get my Spanish midterm back which NO ONE in the class finished, so that should be fun...

Work is going fine, but of course it's hard to balance school work with work work and other less important things, like, you know, sleep and time with friends... And what if i need to play my guitar? i broke a string yesterday! At least i don't have to work on the weekends, though it feels like it sometimes. Kirsten and i were going to try to go to Seattle over Christmas break, but that's not going to fly anymore. Instead we are going up to San Jose, and Simms' Tahoe cabin for a week-ish. Plus New Year's will be in NorCal! Rock on!

Sometime i will figure out how to reformat my site so that people with Internet Explorer can view it normally--i hope.

i need Jesus today.

The Mail and more

In a final, much delayed installment of "From whence becometh Aaron Choate his books from amazon.com ... eth" here's where the last two came from!

1. La Vergne, Tennessee
2. College Park, Maryland

In other news, my father, Paul Choate, was born in DC and raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, so naturally i have a special fondness for the state.

ALSO! KINDRED FALL'S SPECIAL EDITION PRE-RELEASE OF "SLOW SEASON" IS OUT!!!
i came home to a stack of them piled on my desk. Sweet. So yes, they are available for 10 United States Dollars, and i'll even ship it to you free of charge! So, if you haven't got one and would like one, buy one from me!

i am both sweaty from intramural basketball and supposed to be doing homework now, so bye!

September Eleventh

Here i was, sitting in front of my computer NOT doing my homework like i should, and i accidentally paused the cursor over the date and time box in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. "Sunday, September 11, 2005" it says to me.

And i think, wow, second anniversary of terrorist attacks and it's crazy how time has flown by and this hurricane in the south and it's damage are crazy and there's all these other tragedies, both national and international, and so many people die each year and people do horrible things to each other and gas prices are over three dollars a gallon a lot of places and people are probably getting shot at or raped or abused right now--all at once.

Aro and i were talking the other day about how in general we haven't experienced THAT many hardships or "crazy stuff" i guess was how he worded it, and we tend to think that, "Oh people are nice, and yeah they have their baggage, or personal quirks and idiosyncrasies, but so what?"

i was talking with Kyle last night about how i'm so blessed and also such a rarity since both my parents are still alive and married and together and in love with each other.

My cell phone got stolen this morning off my front driveway, since i accidentally left it there for a little while after i was reading for school. Terrible! It rings when i call it, so wherever it is, it's on and not broken. i hope it turns up!

i just got back from the Phoenix Club in Anaheim with some of the people who went to Munich. It's is a German place with a restaurant and also where they host Oktoberfest and similar events each year. That was pretty fun and also a bit strange. The waitress decked out in her dirndle asked me what i wanted to eat. In English. SO weird. "Man hat Deutsch erwartet," sagte meine Profesorin. Ja, stimmt!

So, these are my thoughts for this eleventh of September. Now i really ought to read for this skewl i'm going to.

More!

Today's crop was comprised of a book sent from McKeesport, Pennsylvania and another from Fayetteville, Arkansas. The latter i can say that i've actually been to whilst on tour with ye olde Fighting Jacks during the Month of January in 2004 Anno Domini. Cool. Now i must read some of these blasted books i've received. i'm off!

The cool thing about having to order books

Although having to buy books each semester at Chapman can get annoying and extremely pricey, i have developed a system to keep it cheaper and also to enjoy it.

First thing is, i usually buy my books from amazon.com, which not only keeps them much cheaper and saves me money, but it also saves me waiting in line at the bookstore. Sometimes i look on half.com or various other places and will find a cheaper book, but for some reason amazon has always worked out best. What's more is i get all these sweet packages addressed to me, pretty much like my birthday or Christmas in September or whatever (which in reality is more packaged items for me than i EVER see nowadays).

...but that's not the best part. The best part is getting them and seeing where they came from and looking up the cities on mapquest. i know, i'm a freak about maps, but it's so fun! i get to learn a little of our nation's geography that i would have otherwise been uninspired to research (most likely) and i can dream about one day travelling there and i'll always secretly know that i have my own little connection with at least one citizen there, even when the books aren't always shipped by individual sellers, but rather larger companies. Today's round of books came from:

1. South Bend, Indiana
2. Iowa City, Iowa
3. Bloomington, Indiana
4. River Grove, Illinois
5. Eugene, Oregon
6. Fife, Washington

A nice spattering of middle America and the Pacific Northwest. Washington in particular has been calling my name a lot lately. Must travel.

And! Another round of 'em is probably going to come tomorrow! Yay!

Microshaft

So apparently, along with writer's block and thus a lack of new postings, my site is also experiencing some sort of html code errors which makes the whole site load improperly in Microshaft's "Internet Explorer" browser. It loads perfectly fine in Firefox. i usually never endorse products, and when i do it's not really that enthusiastically, but this is an exception mostly because i'm pissed off. Well, perhaps just annoyed, as pissed off is a little, shall we say, strong language. i spent a lot of time working on my site's new look, and most of the general population can't even view it error free! This is just one of the many reasons why Firefox is infinitely better than Microschaft, and i'm not saying you should go download it right now, but you should go download it right now.

Many thanks to Aro for pointing out the problem, and no thanks to the rest of you for not telling. Ha! Ok, i love you all. Really!

In actual news: Went to Ed's Nana's house tonight in Compton with the whole crew and it was loads of fun. Some selected highlights include:
-playing Blackjack with chips and Uncle Eliot as the dealer, who apparently really deals in Casinos? Not sure of that last bit.
-building with Lincoln logs
-eating an orange off the tree in the backyard (quite delicious)
-listening to Ed, Kyle, and Brandon jam with guitars and Kyle's mandolin and trying to learn dueling banjos.
-eating food. GOOD food, including catfish.
-Singing songs in battle.
-You know those cool viewfinder, or view-o-rama, or whatever they're called things where you put the disc in an look up to the light to see the images and flip the lever to rotate to the next one? Yeah, those. SO SWEET!
-Saying 'sayonara' to Ed's mum who is flying back to Japan tomorrow! :(
-lots of fun.

Ok, i'm tired.

Writer's Block

The past week or so has been relatively normal as far as summer life in Orange goes. i've logged in to my Blogger account several times with the intention of writing something, but for some reason just had writer's block. i thought to myself, "self, what is it that's troubling you? What's interesting? What's boring? What's going on in your life?" i just never came up with any answers to these questions and i still don't know why actually. Things are happening, but nothing was coming out onto the page. But anyway, now here's something.

My new roommate has moved in at the 714, so all the rooms are filled except one, and i'm not sure when it will be, though it should be soon. School starts on Monday which is both ridiculous and slightly surreal. Kirsten is going to move up to Orange this weekend i hope, and that will be quite a relief for her after such a long search, and a relief for me also. Kyle Warner is back from ambiguously noted but somehow generally understood "the island" and it has been quite a pleasure to hang with him. Just for old time's sake:


And the gum wall at SLO:

Aro always thinks my shirt says "Footloose"

In other news my Grandma sent me a care package today. SOSWEET!

Perhaps my next entry will be more focused and less random. Love you all.
-ac-

"Always have an escape plan."

After much anticipation, it's finally here!

My blog got a makeover today.

i:
learned some HTML

<--put some fun links over on the side there

decided to stop being a computer nerd for now and do something more tangible and productive, such as play my guitar

Gummi Bears and me

"Haribo macht Kinder froh und Erwachsene ebenso."

theinfintesimallyminuteme

Spreading the love:


create your own visited states map

...which is a lot more impressive than this:


create your own visited countries map
...reminding me of how little i actually have seen of God's Earth (< 7%!). They even highlighted Alaska, and i've never been there, which adds a disproportionate amount of red to my map.

Two Sagas

Two Sagas: Herrnchiemsee and My Journey Home

1. Herrnchiemsee.

This lake, the deepest in Bavaria, is one of the favorite vacation spots for Münchners due to its readily available sailing, swimming, and general water recreation activities. It is also the location of one of Ludwig II’s exquisite fairy-tale castles. Modeled after Louis XIV’s Versailles in France, Herrnchiemsee was never completed. Only 20 of the 70 planned rooms were actually finished, but the Hall of Mirrors out-stretches the one at Versailles. The most famous and most visited of Ludwig’s castles, however, is Neuschwanstein, near the town of Füssen and the Austrian border. Herrnchiemsee, on the other hand, is located on an island on the lake and is reachable only by boat. For most people. One brilliant afternoon, Chris, Gertrud, Dillon and i all piled into the McKissick family BMW and headed to Chiemsee. Chris drove. Gertrud had packed picnic items for us all which included egg sandwiches, cooked veggies, and some other miscellaneous items. The main reason for our excursion was not the water, however. Gertrud works at Lufthansa, a German airline, and thusly is able to get tickets to certain events through her contacts. This time she was able to round up expensive tickets to the Schloßkonzert or Castle Concert at Herrnchiemsee for the four of us! Excellent! i think they were valued at 34 Euro or something outrageous. Anyway, we got to the lake and to kill time before the show, we hung out by the waterfront in a campground which we probably we not supposed to be in. We ate some food, went swimming, and enjoyed the beauty. As we are sitting on this park bench enjoying our food, Gertrud nonchalantly mentions, well you could swim over to the island, and so on and so forth. That sounded like pretty good idea to me, as i tend to take advantage of every opportunity possible to get in the water, especially while abroad. So after mustering up some strength and convincing Dillon to come with me, we set off.

“You have no idea what you’re getting US into,” he said to me. “Remember the other day when we swam out to the buoy at the lake? That was far. THIS is far. Much further.” On we swam. About half way through the swim, Dillon started to shiver uncontrollably. His lips started turning purple. i began to give him small boosts by cupping my hands together and pushing him toward our destination and then swimming forward and doing it again. We both got really tired. Dillon said, “When swimming long distances, it’s always good to have a spotter in case you get tired.” Yep. Pretty much. But what were we going to do, already halfway through the lake? Keep swimming that’s what.

For those of you Nemo fans, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. What do we do? We swiiiimmmm…”

Our goal was at first a tree, then a large yellow post that seemed to be getting closer and closer. Then the current started up. Then lightning and clouds started rolling over the mountains. Things were getting pretty scary. All we could do was keep on going though. Finally, we reached the yellow post. Turns out it was stable and we could stand on it because it was a marker for a submerged rock, so that boats wouldn’t hit it. Dillon was shaking way out of control. i held him out of the water and tried to keep him warm as much as possible. After a while, i just said, “You know what, screw it man, we just need to go for the shore. So we got back in the water. After a short distance i could touch the ground, so i towed my friend to dry land. Or so i thought. Turns out, instead of there being a solid shore, we really ran into a wall of marshes and reeds. Dillon was still in no shape to go by himself, so i carried him on my back a while through the marshes. i was freaked out that i was going to get bitten by a water snake or something. When my feet started to hurt from the weight, i let Dillon down and we kept going. We walked through really thick razor grass, but couldn’t feel a thing, and we were assuming that we were getting eaten alive by disease bearing insects at the very best. After we cleared the high grass, there was a short strip of mossy-covered land which was a little more solid. However, as we walked through it, we realized that our feet sank down through the moss into freezing cold water, far colder than the lake we had just swam across. Stagnant? Yeah. Disease Ridden? Probably. Sharp Rocks at the Bottom? Most likely.

Bring it on.

Finally we ended up on dry land. …But this was not the end, oh no. We now faced a wall of Brennesseln, know in the English language as Stinging Nettles. Not cool. i had brushed up against this foe before, and was not about to go gung-ho right through the thick of it. So we tried to find a way around. Our feet were muddy, our legs were cold and slightly scraped, and we were probably still being eaten by ravenous insects. Zig-zagging around, we finally found a way through the nettles. Of course, they never fully went away, but they relented. i hacked a few aside, as both Dillon and i gained sticks as our trusty weapons. We were Hobbits in Lord of the Rings. We were fearsome warriors in an even more fearsome world.

We found a path. We followed the path, going tenderly along the rocks with our bare feet. The wind began to howl and whip through the trees and then it started raining. Hard. It was all very surreal. Lightning cracked and flashed around and still we continued on. We came upon a sign saying Wanderweg meaning hiking path, which did not seem very good to us, so we opted to abandon that road at the next possible point. One road forked off to the right, but seeming treacherously unused, we continued on. We turned off at what seemed like an island compost area and ran through some very disgusting bio-water. We got out of that stuff as fast as was humanly possible and splashed our feet in some clean puddles as we went. Jumping over a felled tree (possibly from the storm, who knows?) we reached a fence and an open grass field. Both good signs. Running along the rocky path, still very tenderly, we reached another open field. A lake appeared on our left and suddenly, we looked to our right, and there it was. The Herrnchiemsee Palace and all its splendor. We had popped out on the main grass terrace leading up to the entrance (i thought it was the rear entrance, but i’m not 100% certain). It had large fountain with people turning into frogs and vise-versa, just like the one i’d seen in Versailles. So here we are, sprinting down the grass through the rain in nothing but our swim shorts. We came up to the fountain and Dillon said, “Let’s go through the fountain.” Of course we did so without skipping a beat. i mean, what else were we going to do? We were already wet anyhow, and normally the water is probably way too disgusting to go in, but what did we care? We survived everything else. The water was deeper than i had expected and very warm—much warmer than any water that we’d come into contact with thus far. Coming out the other side, we encountered a very large, menacing bush. We ran around. Sprinting up the palace stairs, we could see Chris and his mom through the glass doors. We waved. Drenched and dripping, we strolled up to the doors of the palace and the formal concert, still barefoot and dressed in swim trunks. Amazingly, the man at the door let us in, granted that we go immediately to the restroom and change. Luckily Chris and his mom had brought our clothes from the car. We got lots of grins from the more down-to-earth people and side-long scowls from the grumpy and pompous. It was cool. We’re probably among a very few amount of people to have swam across the nearly two-mile gap from Prien am Chiemsee to the island of Herrncheimsee (we looked it up on the internet afterward) and most definitely the only ones to have entered the Palace soaking wet in our swim trunks on the eve of a formal concert immediately after said feat. Crazy. Our wounds in the end included overly massive mosquito bites, countless very small slices from the razor grass on our feet and legs, and a few scratches, but all in all, we were very blessed.

You know what else, Chris and his mom didn’t know that we were doing this, otherwise they would have never allowed it. They figured we’d be coming back any moment, but we never did. It turns out Gertrud had just mentioned this possibility as a joke, but didn’t think anyone would be stupid enough to do it. Those crazy Americans.

2. My Journey Home

i’ll try to make this one shorter and to the point than Saga #1, so perhaps if i introduced bullet points and narrate in incomplete sentences it will go quicker. Nonetheless, it is a saga.

-Woke up Thursday morning German time due to a hammering on the floor above Chris’ apartment. Sweet.

-Couldn’t go back to sleep so i ate breakfast and prepared to go to the airport.

-Took a shower, got my stuff together, went to the S-Bahn.

-Barely made it on the S-Bahn and zoomed off to the airport to catch my 11:25 flight to London.

-Checked in, finding out that i didn’t depart until 1:40 or something like that. Dang! i just went through security anyway, and said good-bye to Chris.

-Sat in the airport for hours and watched the 11:25 flight to London leave without me.

-Waited for the 1:40 flight to London, only to discover that it was an hour and twenty minutes delayed due to “Winter weather and Fog” that morning. It’s July.

-Finally got on the plane with the likelihood that i would never be able to board my 3:45 flight to LAX out of Heathrow, even with the one hour time difference.

-i was right.

-took an hour to go through security in London, met some girls from Munich who were traveling to the Canada and then the States for two months total. Plus one German girl who was going to South Africa. Checked the departure screen in desperation, even though i knew the flight was long gone.

-stood in the Customer Service line for at least an hour.

-met and Australian named James and discussed such topics as his Spanish father and pen pal, his recent trip to Spain, Wallabies, Koala Bears, Finding Nemo, and The Rescuers Down Under. …among other topics.

-got hotel vouchers for the night and bus passes to said hotel. i’d be going to LA the next morning.

-Finally found and waited at the bus stop for H6 and rode the bus out of a very crowded Heathrow, on an hour ride which should have taken only 15 or 20 mins.

-Got to the hotel, waited to get checked in, spoke with a Serbian girl who was with her non-English speaking mother. (Her sister lived in Germany. They now live in Chicago.)

-Got my dinner and breakfast voucher, went to my hotel room, came back down and ate dinner, and set my plan into motion which i had formulated the moment i’d realized i’d be overnighting in London.

-Went to the counter, tried to figure out the bus system to get to the nearest tube and get into town, but got lost and ended up sprinting around for another hour or so. Mostly in the wrong direction.

-Finally made it onto a correct bus, but had out-of-use Pound-age, so the driver let me ride for free.

-Got to a Tube station, bought my ticket, (with my valid 20 Pound note) and was on my way. i asked a worker there what the best stop would be to get the London Eye and he said Westminster, but i had to change at Hammersmith and get on another line due to the bombings on July 7^th.

-A Londoner overheard this and started talking with me on the way downtown. He was really cool, had just got back from vacationing in Israel, and instructed me to get off at Embankment instead for a more enjoyable walk along the river. i still had to make said changes. This also happened to be where he was going in order to catch a train to his house, so i just rode with him and chatted without having to pay much attention to where i was going, except how i was going to get back.

-Said good-bye, gave him my e-mail address, and went over to the Eye. They were closed.

-Walked over to the clock tower of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, and walked around those. Learned some stuff about London and saw and Oliver Cromwell statue. Went over to the Sovereign’s entrance and over to Westminster Abbey for a look.

-Sat on the lawn and watched/listened to the clock strike eleven o’ clock—very cool—then mosey-d on back to a Tube station.

-Saw ridiculous, silly British signs such as, “Do not feed the pigeons. They are both a health hazard and a nuisance.”

-Got back to the hotel without too much trouble and went to sleep after getting in contact with Kirsten and letting her know about my delay.

-Woke up five hours later at seven o’clock to catch my 10:05 flight. Had breakfast.

-Stood in a very long line for check-in.

-Got sent to customer service when i got to the front.

-Got told i was on stand-by (again)

-The flight doors closed at 9:55, it was 9:34 and the lady at the check in was looking at the computer. i still hadn’t gone thorough security. i thought i was doomed.

-All of a sudden, the lady said, “Sir, there’s a seat available. Go.”

-Wanting to protest, but too confused to do so, i quickly gathered my things and sprinted over to the security check. i got through, and sprinted all the way to the gate and barely boarded the slightly delayed plane.

-Flew ten hours to LA, finding out upon arrival that my bags were lost. Shocking.

-Came out the gate to see Kirsten on Friday July 28^th at about 2:15 pm, several detours and time-zones after waking up in Germany.

-Drove to Orange with Kirsten, went to the house and left my stuff there which i could spare, gathered any clothes i could find, and headed to Megan and Bryan Rosenkrantz’s wedding reception in San Juan Capistrano. Very nice!

-Left the reception to drive back up to LAX and catch my flight to North Carolina for a week with my folks at the beach house in North Carolina. (thanks Kirsten for all the driving!)

-Am currently waiting to finally get back to California.

Schweizer Deutsch und mehr

Hello Blog Nation!

Since my last post i:
-Swam across a very large portion of Herrnchiemsee with Dillon (crazy story, more on that later)
-Went to a Concert at Schloss Herrnchiemsee (related to point 1)
-Hung around the house, did computer stuff, watched movies
-Went to Switzerland to visit The Greenes (excellent!)
-Went to the pool in Möriken (their little town)
-Played music!
-Went to the castle there after a hike through the woods
-Touched a Swiss cow's nose
-Learned Swiss numbers
-Picked up a Swiss Turtle
-Saw various other Swiss animals including bunnies, Donkeys, cats, dogs, horses, Stiere, chickens, sheep, goats, roosters, and foreign exotic birds in the aviary at the castle.
-Played more music
-Went to Thermal Baths (oh, so very relaxing and amazing)
-Watched 'Galaxy Quest' and 'So I Married and Axe Murderer' -- Two classics
-Regretfully left Switzerland
-Drove through Austria again on our way back to a campsite in Germany
-Camped in Fendt, a little town near PeiŸßenberg
-Grilled meat, slept in a tent, helped chop up a felled tree with a crazy Bavarian farmer and the rest of the crew, went on an expedition to a waterfall that we never found
-Ate some wilraspberrieses
-Had more fun
-Finished up camping
-Drove back to Ismaning

In four days i fly home! Whoa!

...after which i fly back to the East Coast for a week

...after which i'll be back in Orange on August 7th

...just you wait for the story about Herrnchiemsee

love, AC

no man's land

Bavaria is so great.
Last night i went to a party at Christian's House (a friend of Chris' and now mine) and hung out with a bunch of their friends, most of whom i either already knew, or had at least seen before. It was an AWESOME party. We brought marinated meat for the grill, there was bread and this tomato-bean salad stuff which i loved, and we all hung out on his porch for a while. Christian has it set up so that his computer monitor and mouse are on the window sill behind the table so he can control what music is playing from outside--excellent! i still feel a bit left out sometimes, because even though i speak and understand German fairly well, they often talk about things which have been happening for a long time in their town, or about trips they went on and the like. i guess that's pretty normal though, and if our roles were switched, i imagine a foreigner hanging out with my friends and i would be perhaps more alienated, because we are just CRAZY!

We are all going camping next weekend, and i'm very stoked about that!

Anyway, after the outside hang-out part, Robert, Dolly, Dillon and i went inside to play cards. We taught them Pedro, a California country game which came from my Grandma's side of the family and hardly anybody outside of California knows how to play. They picked it up quite well, and afterwards we found out why. There's this Bavaria card game called Schafkopf, which is like WAY more complicated. Dillon and i learned a little bit of it, but i am still pretty lost on a few things. Hopefully we'll have the chance to play some more though. The name means 'Sheephead' in English. At our secret hang-out spot in the basement, we just played cards into the night, and eventually into the morning without even realizing it! It was like three a.m. when we finally looked at a clock. Chris, Dillon, and i rode the bikes back to Chris' house (Dillon's bike chain broke on the way) and we got back to his apartment. i got online and spoke with Kirsten for a bit via Skype Out (hey, might as well if you're up that late/early!). The time difference thing is so annoying sometimes! i called her on her cell phone and she was hanging out with her friend Suzanne, so we didn't talk a real long time. Here comes the good part though: just as i'm about to brush my teeth and get into bed, i realized that it is starting to get bright outside the window... no way...

Yep, sure thing, the sunrise was starting and time had crept to like five a.m. when i was finally ready to go to sleep. i woke up at like three-thirty, and Dillon got up at like four-thirty. i think i'll go eat some breakfast now.

Today is Kirsten and i's sixteenth monthaversary! Yay!

Anybody have some good staying-up-until-dawn stories?

love

Zorro

"Zorro, Zorro, Zorro! He makes the sign of the 'Z'!"

i seem to remember this line from a kiddie version of Zorro somewhere in my youth or childhood. Also, 'Z' (or something resembling it) is the symbol of a car company called Opel over here in Europe. Furthermore, there are lots of words with Zs in the German language. Like way more than English.

My Family is gone. They were great.

Dillon is here.

Kirsten is not.

Friends are on my mind.

i

i love

i love you

i love you all

How's everyone doing? Or perhaps more appropriately, what's your favorite kind of apple? Mine is either Golden Delicious or Fuji. Gala is pretty up there too actually. So i guess that means list your favorites!