10-2:  Welp kiddies, I just got Adobe photoshop so hopefully my page will be lookin' all spiffy within the next few weeks or so but don't count on it.  I'm kinda lazy and sadly, my talents as an artist are not nearly as polished as my writing ability.  I skipped all three of my classes today (mom, i hope you're not reading this) and ended up headin' down to the Tacoma mall where I had an incredibly fun day.  So there we were at Cinnabon.  I was at the end of the line and four of my friends were already sittin' down chilling.  One cinnabon left, i was pumped, though I didn't have quite enough cash for extra frosting.  But as I was standing there this asian lady and her two friends who had been waiting off to the side came up and asked if she was next or if i was.  In the spirit of fairness, I said I didn't know and offered to play paper, rock scissors for the closest spot in line.  At first she didn't know what i meant, but one of her friends explained it to her and she took to it like an old hand.  I lost.  She asks for the last cinnabon and the lady gives it to her and says it'll be a 10 minute wait for the next batch.  Discouraged, I return heavy-headed to my seat and like a true man, begin to whine.  With those two dollars burning a hole in my pocket I decided to head down to Orange Julius and get something there.  Fuck cinnabon and their overpriced cinnamon bullshit.  So, me and my friend are walking back, me with an orange julius in hand, when two other kids come up and tell me that the old ladies were looking for me.  I decide to head back and go grab a seat with them.  Then this lady starts showing me pictures of her daughter and is like "She's pretty, yes?".  Now, never before in my life this has happened to me, i musta made quite an impression with these women.  Anyway, the new cinnamon rolls get done and the worker starts to put them out.  One of the asian ladies gets up to purchase some more, so jokingly, I'm like "Buy me one, alright?".  She doesn't say anything, but comes back with a cinnamon roll for me.  I was like "fuckin' a, this rules."  We say our goodbyes and part for the day.  Does anyone else have experiences like this?  I mean, maybe it's not really that big of a deal, but I was amazed.  Fast forward some more mallwalking and messin' with people.  We all walk into this hat store and one of the ladies was in there, she comes up to me and says "Ah, you still here!", and hands me this card to The Sakura, this japanese steakhouse and walks out.  I'm excited and can't wait to go there.  I'm kinda disappointed it wasn't to some freaky asian massage parlor, but I guess a good japanese steak'll do.  I kept thinking of that movie "Two Days in the Valley" when Eric Stoltz was getting a handjob from that girl.  Maybe it's a steakhouse combination massage parlor.  Actually, I know that if I went to some "handjob hut" as they were called in the movie, I'd get scared and wouldn't go through with it.  Not much exciting happened after that, except I hit my friend Mike right inside the ear with this huge spitball and he proceeded to punch me quite a few times in front of a large crowd in the mall.  That was sort of embarrassing but funny as hell.  Last night, I went to rkcndy for the first time and saw Far and Crumb play for 8 bucks.  I had a good time (not as much fun as Botch last saturday but oh well).  I had heard of Far and figured they were going to suck some ass, but they were intense live and the singer is all nutty and freakin' out and crazy shit like that.  Yellin' and jumpin' and rollin' around.  The only bad part is that I didn't have any ear plugs (which i need to buy) and this crazy huge guy in front of me almost like knocked back into me a bunch of times when he started rockin' out headbang style.  Tomorrow, I have plans to go see Avail and then Elliott on Sunday.  It should be loads of fun, but I need to study tonight so I don't get too far behind in the old schoolwork.

10-12/11-3:  I know what you're thinking, "John, your page still looks like it was made by a two year old".  And you're right.  But anyway, I'm homesick.  Maybe I'm just getting depressed, but the more I think about it, i realize how empty my life seems and how purposeless the future seems.  Everyday is the same here.  I have a headache, and I wish I was home.  Yet, part of me knows that it wouldn't be much better there.  Maybe I need to drown in my studies for a while to take my mind off of everything.  This is actually the first time that I have had all these thoughts boiling up inside my head, yearning to get out but for some reason, I can't put them down on paper.  But anyway, here goes.

First off, I'm going to talk about the death of my grandfather.  During my first week at school, I received a call late one night from my mom saying that my grandfather died.  It barely fazed me.  Am I really that shallow?  I'd like to think not.  I mean, one minute, I was sitting there waiting for my pizza, and the next minute, I was sitting there waiting for my pizza minus one grandfather.  Now, the purpose of this is not to disrespect his memory, because I loved him even though we weren't close at all.  I just wasn't that sad.  Part of me hopes that it's because I know he's better off now, as he had been in constant pain for the past few years and had all kinds of medical troubles.  sadly, I know this isn't the reason.  (fast forward three weeks due to laziness and distraction).  I know why I'm not very mournful over this loss.  It's because I hadn't seen him for five years, and what conversation we had was very limited.  The same goes with my grandmother.  The same thing happened every year:  they would send money on my birthday and Christmas and most of the time, I would call or write a letter in thanks and we'd have a brief conversation on the phone.  I couldn't make the effort to really get to know these people and, unfortunately, I'm paying for it now.  I can kid myself and pretend that I still don't know why I didn't make this effort, but I know why I didn't;  because I didn't really care.  Maybe all they were to me was a check and a responsibility.  I think I can place a little of the blame on circumstance, as they lived thousands of miles away and we were too poor to visit often, but I know it's my fault.  and it hurts.  I wish things had been different, I wish they lived closer, I wish I would have called and made attempts to contact, I wish my father hadn't died.  I never really talk about his death much, which is kind of ironic because it's probably been one of the biggest influences on my life.  I've always been close to my maternal grandparents, not only because they live across the street, but also because my mom is alive and she talks to them often.  Still, I should have made the effort.  I've talked to my grandmother twice in the past few weeks and each time she excuses herself after ten or fifteen minutes and we say our goodbyes, leaving me confused.  I talked to my mom about it and she said it was because the last time she saw me was 5 years ago and really doesn't know me all that well, and I guess I can understand that.  But she doesn't seem to be making too much of an effort to get to know me, either.  Of course, if I can't make the effort, why should she?  I also talked to my Uncle Roger on the phone tonight for about 45 minutes and it had been at least as long since i'd seen him.  We mostly discussed my trip to Eugene over Thanksgiving to see them all and chatted some small talk, things about how we were doing, etc etc.  The one thing that irked me about the conversation was that he kept referring to grandma as "my mother", like she wasn't my grandma.  I felt bad.  One thing I do know is that I'm going to take advantage of this 5 day Thanksgiving break to form new relationships with all my relatives I see and to try to make up for all my past mistakes.  And I'm looking forward to it.

Ok, I'd been putting that off for a long time.  but I feel better now that I got it out of my system.  Also, the conversation with Uncle Roger was positive and I think we're gonna get along well at Thanksgiving.  I'm also looking to see my "little" cousin Jonathan who I guess is 15 now.  This should be really fun.  In more upbeat news, the 8th novel of the Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan came out and I've been trying to allocate time to reading it.  I dunno, sometimes I think I get too involved in fantasy novels because I wish I could live in a place like that, and sometimes it makes me all sad.  this scares me.  But anyway, it's an addiction I've had since I was young and will probably never grow old of.  Hurry up Virtual Reality and take me away from the technological abyss we live in.  I want to meet elves, dwarves, and giants.  I guess some people are really into things like that and give themselves "pagan" names and worship all sorts of weird deities.  But I guess that sort of requires that you actually believe that things like this occurred on the planet sometime in the past.  I wish they had, but for some reason I don't think they did.  School is going pretty good, I got a 94 on my calc/physics test the other day.  Alright, I'm gonna go read and then go to sleep, but like I will update more.  and that's a promise.

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