Monday, November 25, 2002

Woken Up

Well, this post is coming to you as I try to stay functioning this morning because of a hefty lack of sleeping last night. For some reason it was one of those nights where you just can’t sleep and instead just toss and turn trying to get comfy and make yourself go to sleep while not succeeding at all. I finally managed to nod off around 3 am or so and then you can only guess what happens. Someone calls at 4 am just to be stupid (and yes, I will kick your ass later on—Hank). I couldn’t really get back to sleep so I am in the process of hardly functioning right now. Holding my eye-lids open right now is a workout in itself so maybe I won’t have to go lift later……naw, I better so I don’t get any fatter.

Friday night we had a few people come hang out, which turned into a bunch, which turned into a bunch of people really drunk (all together a great amount of alcohol was consumed at our place Friday). It was really fun, though, except as the night started to wind down and people started passing out……I mean, “going to bed”. I ended up staying up and taking care of one particular person and then sleeping on the floor next to her to make sure she made it through the night ok. Just call me mommy Rick.

Saturday morning, we all rolled out of bed nice and late. After everyone was up, Chen and I cooked a nice homemade breakfast for everyone that consisted of pancakes and hash browns. Once we started getting down to the end of the pancake batter we decided to use up all that was left to make one uber-pancake. It actually turned out pretty sweet, although it did take two of us with spatulas, working in tandem, to flip it over. We all decided that doing breakfast on the weekends is going to have to become a trend, but I’m going to suggest someone else do the cooking occasionally.

Saturday night we had a big party at our place for Erica’s birthday (pictures can be found here). There were about 70 people invited so I was expecting it to be a ginormous party with an overload of drunk freshmen showing up, but we actually only had about 30 or so people come over. It was pretty packed in our place, but at least there wasn’t an overabundance of drunk kids like I thought there would be. I hardly knew many of the people there, as you will be able to tell from the pictures. The place cleared out around 11, though, as most everyone went over to the pub for a dance and free food (I also went since everyone left our place). I’m not much of a pub type person so I was there only for a little bit and then Nicole came and rescued me. I felt so old there but I didn’t want to just leave by myself and hang out by my lonesome back home so luckily she came to find Amanda and found me in the process.

We were back at our place as the night was winding down and my apartment-mates had returned and some of the people from across the hall were hanging out at our place. We were all just chilling, eating some cake, when a wonderful cake fight suddenly broke out. I don’t really remember how it started, but I’m pretty sure Nicole started it……or maybe me, like I said I don’t really remember. After we had made a thorough mess, Jared, making an astute observation for being very drunk, pointed out that we made it the entire night without a mess being made of the cakes by all the drunk people and then the two sober people of the night show up and make one. Oh well. It was fun, however, to watch Jared with the vacuum cleaning up some of the mess. Well, I’m almost off work so I’ll be done for now. More to come later.

Friday, November 22, 2002

Un-Thanksgiving

Well, I got that astronomy test back that I was awaiting……I think I could have waited longer. I managed to somehow come out with a “BC” on it, which isn’t great, but again is slightly higher than the class average. With this test I’m getting about a “B” overall in that class, which isn’t too bad considering I usually go to only one out of every two classes and don’t do any homework for the class, mainly because it is busy-work and a waste of my time. I read the book (because I don’t learn anything in class because all we do is tool around the entire time on nonsensical nonsense) and get just as much from that as from anything else in this class. I’m not too worried about my grade as I am just going to take it pass/fail so all I have to do is get a “C” or better and then I receive a pass, which doesn’t affect my GPA but gives me credit for the class.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving here at SJU for most of the students. Since we aren’t here over break, SJU celebrates thanksgiving dinner the Thursday before it is actually thanksgiving. It’s always a nice community feeling to be able to go to the nice, formal dinner they have……except for when your group gets turned away. I had a group I wanted to take to dinner yesterday and they had to be signed up before-hand in order to go. This was no big deal as that’s the way it always was so I went to sign up our group on Wednesday. As I asked to have our group signed up, they told me that all members of my group needed to be present there. Why? “Because you just need to have them here.” I repeat, why? “That’s just the way it has to be done.” How stupid is that? I couldn’t just call everyone and make them come there because some of them were at work and some were at home off-campus and I wouldn’t want them to drive all the way in. It was so completely asinine and even if all the members of my group were free, it just seems so stupid to have to have them all come in order for me to sign up a group. So instead Chen and I cooked a meal at our apartment for our group.

Thanksgiving dinner at our place wasn’t quite the traditional type of dinner you’d have. There was no turkey, no mashed potatoes, no cranberries, and none of the traditional fixings. Instead, we cooked beef chow mein, shrimp stir-fry, rice, and veggies and broke out a bottle of Merlot. It was a decidedly asian style thanksgiving dinner (which is more than fine with me as I love asian food). Lorri, Kate, and Megan came over to share dinner with Chen and I and Lorri even brought dessert in a home-made cake. I can say I honestly enjoyed this dinner at our place much more than some stupid formalized dinner at the reef. It just felt so much more homely to make the food ourselves and have it at our place. There were supposed to be two other people over for dinner, but they couldn’t make it, unfortunately. Now I only wonder how my family’s actual thanksgiving dinner will compare to this one, because I’ll probably be doing the cooking for that one as well. I’ll let you know when the time comes!

Wednesday, November 20, 2002

Rogue Squad, The Ongoing Story

Finally, a game without controversy. The Rogue Squad played last night and for once one of our games didn’t end with questions in everyone’s mind as to if we should have, could have, or would have won. Nope, last night we just plain old lost! This brings our record to a whopping 0-5, keeping us at the absolute bottom of the pack. I thought the game was going to be a horrible blow-out considering we were down 9-1 at half time, but we actually outscored them 8-3 in the second half to only lose by a score of 12-9. That second half of frisbee was the best our team has ever played so it was fun to be there for that. We have one game left in the regular season on Thursday, I believe. I wonder if we’ll go a solid 0-6 on the season? We can only wait and see.

Onto another sport—volleyball. My volleyball team has started playoffs on both our Sunday and Tuesday leagues. Even though we’ve advanced to one game away from the championship on Sunday night, we were eliminated yesterday from the Tuesday night playoffs, unfortunately, but that’s not the only thing we lost. We lost one of our all-star girls, Kate, to a badly sprained ankle. She went up for a spike and came down on one of the guys on the other team’s foot. He had came under the net with his feet and when Kate came down from her spike she turned it pretty bad on his foot. It wasn’t pretty looking and it swelled up extremely fast. Thank goodness nothing was broken or torn. After she went down we really didn’t have the motivation to play with her out and couldn’t pull off the third game.

Another random transition……to the Leonid meteor shower. I don’t know if any of you caught the show, but it was pretty good. This year’s shower was not quite as good as last year’s, however, as the moon was out this year whereas it was not out last year. It was still beautiful and enjoyable. Nikki came and woke Karl and I up at 4:00 am to go out and watch it with her and her roommate. The thing I didn’t anticipate was the strong wind and biting cold. It had been a nice day all that day, but since we’d gone to bed the temperature had dropped significantly and the wind picked up so much that it was so cold laying out on the ground. Because of this, we only stayed to watch the shower for about 45 minutes. I truly enjoyed the time that I had out there to watch it, though, as it was a very beautiful shower. I should get extra credit in my astronomy class for going out to watch it.

Speaking of classes, I am pretty sure that I’ve just gotten the lowest grade on an exam that I have ever gotten in my three and a half years of college. I received back the test I took in computational theory yesterday and found the grade marked on the back “75”, which is a solid C. I was not happy as I think I could have done better. The questions on the test were not quite the type that I had expected, but I should have been prepared for all options. I felt a little better knowing that the class average was a 71……but only a little bit better. I really don’t know why I didn’t do better. I understand the concepts that we go over, I constantly ask questions, and I make stupid, smart-ass remarks about what we’re going over (which obviously shows I get it, if I can formulate jocular statements about what we’re doing J ). For some reason, though, I just screwed up this test, and by doing so I brought my class grade down to an 86, a B. Grrr……and then today I also get my Astronomy test back since he didn’t have them corrected for Monday. That should be fun as well…or not. At least that class I can take pass/fail, mainly because it sucks and I don’t enjoy going to it at all because all we do is go over crap.

Monday, November 18, 2002

Who's Number One?

Yippee!!! The Vikings beat Green Bay!!! I get extremely worked up for only three games during the football season—the Super Bowl and both of the Vikings/Packers games, so obviously this game meant a good deal to me. Mostly it is important just for bragging rights against all of the lame-o Packer fans here on campus. It’s so fun pointing out how the #1 team in the NFL fell to one of the crappiest. Hehehehe, ok I’m done with that.

Ok, so after the Vikes won, I didn’t think the day could get any better, but oh how it did. Volleyball playoffs started last night and our team came in ranked 9th out of 22. Not bad, but I think we should have been ranked higher. We started off by playing the 12th place team…they didn’t show up so we won by forfeit. Checking the bracket, it looked like we were going to play the #1 seed next, and that #1 seed belonged to my good pal, Jeff, and his team. This would be quite the match-up.

Jeff was pretty confident that his team would win and I also thought that it would be a good game. It didn’t turn out that way, however, as we dominated the first two games for the win, 15-2 and 15-6! Our team played so well together. We were firing on all cylinders—no missed serves (well, a couple), good blocking, precise hits, and lots of good teacupping action. For those of you who don’t play volleyball, when the other team is hitting against you, you have one or two people go up for the block and then you have two or three people form in close around the blocker to pick up tip shots and deflections. We’ve had a hard time doing that all year and so many teams took us apart with good tipping, but we’ve managed to finally get a good teacup going.

Our team was so stoked to win, and to win so well last night and I was so glad to see us all do so well. Hopefully we can continue our good play of late and possibly pull off a championship run. If we win our next game, we move on to the championship game because we have a one round bye since we knocked off the #1 seed. I’m guessing if we make it to the championship it will be a rematch against Dirkis’ team. They are a fine volleyball team, and they are one of the few teams to beat us. Last time we played them we lost in the third game 17-15 so we know it’ll be close if it ends up us playing each other.

Oh, I get my astronomy test back today. That should be fun. I’m pretty sure it destroyed me. I’ll find out soon. Let’s hope for the best.

Saturday, November 16, 2002

Well, We Couldn't Do It

0-4……that should say enough. Yes, the Rogue Squad lost their fourth straight making us the only winless team. Was this game marred by controversy just as the last three were? Yes, yes it was. I am starting to think that our team must have some horribly negative karma or something because it is as if nothing swings our way. Here’s how this one went.

The game was tied 9-9 and the time ran out. As you know from the last thought, the rules say we should play to 3 above the tied score and win by two. Both captains agreed to that, and the other team scored the final point so it was 10-9. We were prepared to play more, but a tennis team made up of elderly men claimed it was their time to use the Palestra, which it wasn’t because we had it until 9:30 pm and it was only 9:10 pm. The treated us horribly and one man, the head of their league, even went and stood on the field while we were playing our game and wouldn’t get off of it so we had to play around him. Because of the horrible attitude of the tennis players we were unable to finish our game and we had to end it with the other team winning. We have expressed our great annoyance, disappointment, and anger to the intramural and sporting office once again and I hope that they will show us the respect we deserve.

Well, we can’t do anything about it now so let’s move on to a lighter note. Yesterday Karl and I went to see the new Steven Seagal and Ja Rule action flick, “Half Past Dead”. If you’ve seen the previews for it, I’m sure most people have thought it looks absolutely horrible. We also thought it would be extremely bad, but we wanted to see it anyways because we like bad movies for some odd reason. We went in thinking it would just be unbelievably bad, but it turned out that the movie was only sort of bad. It was actually watchable……if you could manage to turn your brain off for an hour and a half.

Now for an update on the search for Josh. I got this in my email yesterday and it explains somewhat what has been going on.
1. THE INVESTIGATION
What has been done so far:
A ground search covering 20 square miles has been completed by law enforcement, fire departments, military personnel, volunteers and mounted patrol. Helicopters covered the same area and extended their search out further. All buildings on the St. John’s campus have been searched, to include roof tops and tunnels (some, 3 and 4 times). Most buildings in the 20 square mile search area have been checked. At the beginning of the search, all vehicles on campus at that time were checked. Bloodhounds and Search/Rescue dogs were used. Divers have searched and dragged Stumpf lake. All major media had been contacted and the missing person information has been broadcasted. Flyers have been posted in the area. A broadcast message was sent statewide via the Crime Alert Network. Tri-County Crime Stoppers has posted the information with a reward. Stearns County Detectives have been conducting interviews and following up on leads. FBI agents have also been involved in the case. Today, Stearns County Sheriff's Department sent Search/Rescue Dogs and divers back into the Stumpf Lake/stone bridge area. We have not been able to find Joshua so far.

Future Plans:
Detectives will continue to follow up on leads. The search will continue by law enforcement personnel only. When and if additional help is needed, the St. John’s community will be contacted for help (volunteers). We ask that anyone that may have saw a suspicious vehicle or person on campus Saturday night, or saw Joshua walking home after midnight, contact either St. John’s Life Safety Services at #2144 or the Stearns County Sheriff’s Department at 251-4240. We would like to thank all of the volunteers that assisted in the search and the individuals that have provided support over the past few days.

2. SUNDAY MASS
Beginning this Sunday, and continuing each Sunday until Joshua Guimond is located, a petition will be included in the Prayers of the Faithful during Mass in the Abbey Church. Community members of all faith traditions are encouraged to pray, meditate, and/or contemplate regularly to hasten Josh's safe return and for family and friends to persevere during this difficult time.

3. BEING SAFE
I would like to re-post a brief section of yesterday's update as a reminder to community members to re-commit to mindful living:
Students, as always, should do those things that are important to be safe: don't do anything that would compromise your abilities or judgment, don't travel alone, call ahead to friends who are expecting you and call friends and family to confirm safe arrival. Pay attention and report unusual behaviors or suspicious people.
It is essential that we care for others during this time and take good care of ourselves, too. Ask friends and family how they're doing. Utilize the counseling resources available.

4. ONGOING SUPPORT OF THE GUIMOND/CHENEY FAMILY
The family has set up a "Find Josh" fund at a bank in Maple Lake. As we receive details about how to send financial support, that information will be distributed via email and on the website: http://www.csbsju.edu/news/crisis/findjosh_guimond.htm.
In addition, the Jacob Wetterling Foundation in St. Joseph has graciously produced color flyers with Josh's picture on them that are available for distribution. Anyone who wants to distribute flyers can pick them up at the foundation office, which is at 33 West Minnesota Street in St. Joseph.

I wish each of you a restful weekend, and my hope is to share good news soon. These updates will be periodic rather than daily as new information comes to light.

Thursday, November 14, 2002

We Need to Win

I wonder if the fourth time is a charm? The third sure didn’t seem to be. Yeah, that’s right, the Rogue Squad has another frisbee game tonight. We are playing another team that is 0-3 and is, in my opinion, very beatable. I really hope we pull this one off because if we don’t that is really going to look bad for us being the only winless team and our egos will sure be hurt (some members on our team have quite big ones that could get bruised). I’ll let you know tomorrow how it turns out for us.

Today was kind of a crappy day for me. I had an astronomy test this morning and I don’t think I did very well on it. I don’t understand why our professor asks such asinine and pointless questions on the test. Instead of testing us on applying concepts that we learned, he would rather quiz us on stupid crap that is either irreverent, outdated, outmoded, or just inapplicable to anything outside of the select astronomy circle. I don’t care so much since I’m going to take the class pass/fail, which means I only have to get a “C” or better to come out with a pass which should be no problem. I just don’t want to trouble myself learning a bunch of crap that doesn’t interest me and doesn’t apply to anything else I will be doing in my life.

Today also was not too great because most of the day my throat has been raw and sore. I don’t think I’m sick or anything, I just think that it’s gotten raw from yelling at my intramural games and running in really dry air. I took yesterday off from running but I’m going to put in some more miles tonight after our frisbee game. Maybe more running on a track with really dry air will solve my problem……or maybe not, but I feel extra lazy and fat if I don’t run or exercise during the day sometime.

Wednesday, November 13, 2002

Bad Luck Charm

Wow, the Rogue Squad loses its third game in a row. How could this happen? The first two games were questionable because of bungling of the rules. They couldn’t screw up three consecutive games for the Rogue Squad, could they? Hehehe, oh how I was so wrong. This game was another one lost because of screwed up time keeping. So here’s the set up: first of all, the time keeper for the game is a dude on the opposing team. That’s fine since we didn’t really care, although we should have. Now we’re playing the game and it is a running clock game. Towards the end of the game when it is tied, a person on their team needed to tie his shoe so we waited around for about a minute for him to tie it up. For a situation such as this, he should have taken an equipment time-out. Whatever, we didn’t push it.

Now the game is tied at 9-9 and there is less than a minute left. First, a rules clarification for anyone that doesn’t know Ultimate Frisbee rules. If in a running clock game the time expires while a game is in a tie, then the game should be played, untimed, until another team wins by two with a hard cap at 3 points above the current score. The time did run out while we were playing so we technically should have played to see who wins by 2 with a hard cap at 12. We didn’t do this, however, and 10 seconds after time expired they scored. They called this the winning score and walked off the field to shake hands. Bull-crap. They wasted over a minute on equipment and then scored 10 seconds after time expired. We should have played one more point to try and tie the game up if they would have kept time correctly.

Everyone gives our team crap for being the “dick” team of the league, but we have never contested any of the blatant rule violations that have caused our losing, we have the most non-frisbee players. One of the big gripes from many of the other teams was that we had the most frisbee players, but how it is so completely opposite of what they claim. We always have the cards stacked against us, yet we still go out and play our game without fighting the other teams. Maybe we should start and actually live up to the reputation our team has garnered. I don’t know.

Now on a completely different note, the situation of Josh missing still hasn’t been resolved. I received this in my email today and it should help explain a lot of what’s going on for those not in the know:
I am writing to provide an update to the CSB/SJU community about the ongoing efforts to locate SJU student Joshua Guimond. First, let me thank you for your continued prayers and especially those of you who have been assisting in the search. Today, over 200 volunteers (including 100 Minnesota National Guard troops) physically searched over 20 square miles of land, even more by helicopter, including the water and waterways on and around our campus and I-94.

Regrettably, we have yet to find any information about Josh's whereabouts or circumstances of his disappearance. As we move forward, there will be patrols strategically searching the area. The Stearns County Sheriff's Department will continue to coordinate the investigation, including identification of people who may have seen Josh before and after Saturday evening. At this point, no additional volunteers will be required unless and until specific information leads to that need-in which case we will alert you via email.

As you reflect on these events, if you should happen to remember seeing or hearing anything that seems unusual to you in light of Josh's disappearance, please contact Life Safety Services at #2144. As we seek to understand what occurred and to bring Josh back to SJU and his family, please continue to pray and to take care of yourselves. There is a forum being planned to update community members and to allow a place for prayer and discussion. Information about the forum and any additional announcements will be distributed via email.
Thank you,
Jason Laker
Dean of Campus Life
Saint John's University
I really don’t know what to think about the whole situation. The even weirder thing is the other 3 kids who have gone missing. One from Bemidji, one from Minneapolis, and one from Eau Claire, I believe. They all are from the ages of like 20-24 and were drinking before disappearing. I find it a little bit sketchy that it is all happening at the same time. Are they related? I don’t think I am qualified to even give an answer. All I know is that four kids are missing and one of them is from SJU. I just hope it all gets resolved soon. I’m getting a little weirded out by having helicopters flying overhead and having search teams scouring our woods. It makes it hard to completely focus on the work at hand, and that especially sucks since I had a big computational theory test today and I have an astronomy test tomorrow. Let’s hope they go well. Anyhow, time to study.

Tuesday, November 12, 2002

Find Josh

I’m writing today’s thought as most of the population of the campus and the local police force scour the woods surrounding the campus of SJU. Police cars are all over, news teams are reporting, helicopters are flying over head, people are wandering the woods, and groups of 4-wheelers are checking out the trails in the woods. Why? It seems that a SJU junior went missing Saturday night. He was reported missing Sunday evening and a large, organized search is now underway to find Josh, the missing student. This is an interesting and scary event in this area for many reasons.

As most Minnesotans know, about a decade (or more, I’m not sure) ago Jacob Wetterling was kidnapped right here in St. Joseph. There were many accusations thrown around back then and some of them are starting to resurface now. There is a difference with this disappearance, however, in that Josh simply didn’t come home after Saturday night. He was last seen leaving a party from Metten Court on the lower campus of SJU. His whereabouts from there are unknown and the circumstances that came to lead to his missing are also unknown. They have divers in the lake that is next to Metten Court to see if he possibly fell into the lake and drown. It’s so weird seeing all of the police all over our campus. It makes it seem like we’re in some type of murder mystery movie or something.

I first heard about this Sunday night via an email that the entire campus received and by this Monday morning our campus was covered with missing posters and student lead searches were going on before the law actually came to get involved. Many people are even not going to classes in order to help find him. It’s still weird hearing helicopters fly by every now and then.

There have also been rumors surfacing about the monastery also, but I think most of these are very unfounded and are only being brought up because of the rash of abuse cases reported in the Catholic Church over the last six months or so and the putting on probation of 14 monks. I think any monk would have quite a hard time sequestering someone and kidnapping and/or killing someone here on campus without someone in the order knowing or without being very suspicious.

I was talking about the whole situation with Hank yesterday and he thought it would be interesting if it turned out that Josh just picked up and left to visit a friend on a whim or something like that. I don’t really know why he was reported missing so soon because if my roommate didn’t come home from a party one night, then I would be reporting missing person alerts pretty often. I don’t know all the details of the situation, however, so I shouldn’t really be making any judgments. Let’s just hope that he’s found soon and that this is all cleared up. The last thing I really want right now is a controversial situation like this to be propagated here on our campus.

Sunday, November 10, 2002

Sevendust

Tonight was one of the most fun nights I’ve had in a while, but it also made me realize so many things about the people in our society. Let me explain for you. Last night, Jeff, Jared, Berg, and I went to see Cinder, Closure, 30 Seconds to Mars, and Sevendust at the Del Win here in St. Joe. When me and Jeff got there, there must have already been about 300-400 people in line to get in. Thankfully, Jared and Berg had gotten there much earlier so we moseyed on up into the front of the line with them. We got in and made our way right up to almost the front for the first band.

Starting the night off was Closure, a new emo rock band. This is their first tour ever and I think they sounded very good. Pretty standard emo rock fare, but I like that. They said they’d have a disc coming out next year sometime through Interscope records and I’ll be looking forward to it. With the was that radio rock has taken off in the last year or two I could see these guys making it pretty big on the radio, but we’ll have to see come next year.

The second band on the bill was Cinder. These guys had a pretty good nu-metal sound, but their stage presence was so annoying. The bassist had a tremendously annoying head twitch that made me wish his head would snap off every time he twitched his head. The vocalist walked around like he was God’s gift to rock music, flaunting his crotch to the crowd and gyrating it at every opportunity. He was really annoying. I didn’t mind the guitarist mainly because he just stood there and played and looked like he was having a good time.

The next band up was 30 Seconds to Mars, a band I was heavily looking forward to seeing. I knew that all of the girls at the show were there for no other reason than to see Jared Leto, but that was fine because there weren’t too many of them trying to get up in front like at most concerts where band members are teeny-bopper icons. The first half of their set they played almost in the dark, which was cool for all of a minute and then it was just annoying. The second half they played in the light and tried to really get the crowd into it (and they did for the most part), but I thought their sound was very weak live. I absolutely love their cd, and it is one of my top 5 discs of the year, but their live sound was definitely lacking. I still enjoyed watching them, and it was cool that Jared came up and sang right in front of me in the crowd. All the girls were trying to touch him, but I was just enjoying the fact that he was inches from me.

After 30 Seconds to Mars finished we were treated to over an hour of downtime, for reasons unknown to the crowd, until about five minutes before Sevendust came on. A roadie came out to tell us that the show would go on but there was a slight delay because of a death in the family of one of the band members. This was quite a shock to me and I kind of actually didn’t want the band to come out because death is something very hard to deal with. They did come out, however, a short time later. They broke into “Black” but Lajon was definitely not into it and he was not even singing all of the verses. You could also see the tears on his face. The band paused after “Black” and Lajon told the crowd that his younger brother was killed earlier that night. He was physically straining to hold back his emotions and I felt so bad for him. He went on to say that his father told him on the phone to do the show anyways, even though he didn’t want to, because of his brother’s passing.

The rest of their set consisted of many of their less heavy songs with a few heavy ones thrown in, but lacking their heaviness mainly because you could feel the pain Lajon was in. Many times during the show he broke down appealing to the crowd, telling them that he felt lost and didn’t know how to feel. Anyone who claims that heavy metal music contains no emotion only needed to see this show and to see the tears on Lajon’s face, and the tears of many of the crowd members (myself included). They put on very heartfelt renditions of “Angel’s Son” and “Xmas Day”. Lajon could not even bear to sing most of “Xmas Day” except for the portion of the chorus where he sang “You mean everything…” As the tears streamed down his face and he sang from the deepest part of his heart, expressing so much loss, I couldn’t help but be moved, myself, to tears.

This was by far the most emotional concert that I have ever been to and I can only wish Lajon God’s graces in this time of loss and remember this concert and what it meant to him to be able to sing. “Music heals” I heard someone in the crowd say and I know that this is true. Music has always helped me heal and I know that no matter what type of music someone listens to, we all share a common bond in the mutual appreciation for the universal language of music.

Thursday, November 07, 2002

Finally Back

Sorry all for the time that my site has been down. If you’ve tried to get to it over the past couple days you will have been greeted by the wonderful 404 error. I should have put up a note a couple of days ago telling you all that it would be down. The reason for it is that the company that hosts my site decided they wanted to move all of their servers to Texas for some reason or another and while the servers were in transit my website was obviously inaccessible. Thank goodness it is back up as fast as it was, though. I didn’t know how long it would take them to transport all the servers and reset everything up at their new location. If it’s any consolation, I really haven’t had too much to write about the last couple of days anyways. In case you are still mad for some reason, I have added a new section to this page, that being the Poetry/Lyric of the Moment Section. I'll post lyrics and poems that have some special meaning for me or that I have a great appreciation for. I hope all of you will enjoy this new addition. You can find it right below the Random Thought here.

Our intramural frisbee league has started and we’ve played two games already, both filled with controversy. Our first game was against the team we dislike the most, mainly because their players have a problem with our style of game, which happens to be having fun and screwing around with the other teams (and some of our guys like to push the limits of the rules a little too). We lost it quite controversially in that the rules for how a game should end were not clearly defined so we had conflicting arguments as to how the game should be resolved. By one set of rules, which I believe we should have followed because it was the logical way of doing it, would have left our game end in a tie. The other team, on the other hand, didn’t like that option and decided to be dicks about it and come up with their own way of settling the game. We would have to have a winner and we would play to a set number of points that they decided. We lost in the end because of this. A tie was stolen from under the noses of the Rogue Squad. We were not happy.

Tonight was our other game. This game we lost because of mismanaged scheduling by the IM office. Our games are to be 40 minutes long and ours tonight was only 28 minutes long. That is a whole 12 minutes short. As the game ended, we lost by 2 (or 3, I’m not sure how it ended because our team was mostly concerned with getting more time and not on our play, unfortunately). 12 minutes is a lot of time to score many more points so we were quite pissed that we were shafted time. Many members of our team has some quite colorful remarks for the people who were taking over the courts at 9:30 (and I might add that they made us leave at 9:15 so they could set up even though they didn’t have any time signed up until 9:30). So the Rogue Squad was screwed out of another possible win. We might have won both of these games under different circumstances, but we might have also lost. I’m just saying that our team was not given a fair chance to compete, which sucks.

Our team has had a hard time winning these games and pulling ahead mainly because we have not come together as a team. All of our members are playing as individuals looking for the big play or when they get burned or broken they are looking for the person on the team they can blame. I really don’t like it, but I’m pretty much accepting that this is the way the team will be this season, which is too bad because I thought we would be more of a group of comrades instead of the conglomeration of individuals that we are at the moment. We still have time to pull it together and gel into a cohesive team, but I really don’t see it happening. Our team has too much ego for its own good. We’ll just have to see if, in the end, our extreme ego can overcome the team play of the other teams. I think it’s possible, but I think it will be hard for us to do. We’ll see.

On a completely unrelated note, I have recently come upon four bands that I absolutely love. Two of them I purchased on a whim because they were on Tooth and Nail records, which is a label who releases many albums by bands that I enjoy, and the other two I picked up because I had listened to a song or two by them on samplers. The two T&N bands that I enjoy are Sal Paradise and Driver Eight. Unfortunately, I am pretty sure both of these bands have broken up, but it doesn’t change the fact that these are two of the most pure emo bands I have listened to in a long time. Both bands impressed me most by their lyrical content and honesty. Both sound somewhat similar to a slightly heavier and slower version of Jimmy Eat World. The other two bands I found are Places to Park and Stutterfly. Places to Park are a pretty basic punk band on the outside but they have some emo moments and, for some reason, their cd is just really catchy. Stutterfly remind me a lot of a harder version of Finch. They contain a lot of punk sound with very melodic vocals punctuated by some very heavy screamed out emotive sections. If you enjoy Finch and would like to see what a heavier version of them might sound like then check out Stutterfly. It’s not very often that I find this many bands that impress me in such a short period of time……actually, it’s not very often that I find a band that really impresses me period. Anyhow, that’s all I got for you.

Sunday, November 03, 2002

Halloween, Tommies, and DDR

Wow, it’s been a fun and busy last few days. Halloween was so much fun. The pictures from Halloween night are up here. Ryan and I dressed up as women, and some pretty darn good looking ones too, I might add. Leslie did our make-up for us while Anne did Ryan’s hair and after about a half hour of their magical work Ryan and Rick were turned into Rachel and Regina. While we were all dressed up we went around trick or treating in Anne & Leslie’s building eating most of the candy as we got it (my stomach wasn’t the happiest with me later that night, but the candy was good at the time). We also went and visited a lot of other people we knew around campus and most of them were quite shocked when they saw us, but I can’t really blame them. It was so weird because I’d be walking around thinking I look like I usually do until I would see myself in a mirror and then all of the sudden it was like, “AHH, I do look funny”.

After trick or treating Ryan headed back home because he was pretty tired and I headed to the ballroom dance club’s little Halloween gathering. It was so much fun even though I had a hard time trying to dance in my girl shoes. I think a lot of the girls were slightly distressed by dancing with another pseudo-girl for the night. I think the highlight of the night at ballroom dance, as least in comedic terms, was when Van Roy had everyone clear out to watch him do some moves, but as he was showing off his moves, he came over, grabbed me, and proceeded to swing with me for the crowd. I stumbled everywhere because I had such a hard time with the shoes I was wearing. One of the guys got it on video so I’m going to see if I can get it in digital form and post it for everyone to see.

After ballroom I headed back home and just visited some people I knew around SJU because they wanted to see me dressed up. It was quite the fun and crazy night. The only bad part was that I couldn’t get the freakin’ make-up off of my face for the life of me. I was convinced after a good 15 minutes of scrubbing that the only way I was going to get it off was to submerge my face in turpentine, but luckily I thought better of it and just kept scrubbing.

Friday night we had a bunch of people over for some DDR action, just like every other Friday it seems. I love it because I usually don’t ever have to leave my place to go see people because someone usually ends up here. I’m pretty sure that the DDR pads are the best investment Karl has made for this apartment.

Saturday was the Johnnie-Tommie game. For those not in the know, SJU has a huge rivalry with St. Thomas, which has lasted for about 100+ years. Everyone always shows up for this game from both schools, and sometimes the crowd is equal to, or bigger than our homecoming crowd. The stadium was absolutely packed and, of course, the Johnnies won 48-28. After the game Karl, myself, and Ryan just chilled at our place. Ryan then left and it was just me and Karl hanging out by ourselves doing nothing for the longest time. We thought that we might end up just spending the night by ourselves since everyone was out at parties. Just when we thought it was going to be a boring, people-less night, people just started streaming in. Why? Because of the DDR pads! We had people over until about 3:30 hanging out, playing cards, and doing the DDR thing. It was so much fun! I love having people over at our place and getting to know some of the new people that come over. Anyhow, it’s been a busy and fun filled last few days. I’m hoping all of you out there had just as fun of a time for Halloween!