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The Events that are: My Life

Things that go on in my life that cannot be catagorized somewhere else, sort of a catch-all

Meet Frank Bates

Well, I decided that I needed someone who would always agree with me and never talk back. So I got a fish. His name is Frank Bates. I call him Frank…other’s call him Mr. Bates (just say it out loud). He’s a Betta fish (with two “t”s) which is good because for many reasons:

  • Only need to feed them 2-3 times a week so I can go away for the weekend without having to worry
  • Don’t need a filter or air bubble thing
  • Are used to living alone and in very small spaces
  • Don’t need to change the water often

It only cost $16.45 + tax and I have enough food to last quite a long time.

Shasta video

I spent most of the day hanging around and working on the Shasta video. It’s really cool, but also really long, just over 53 minutes. Yea…long. But’s it’s really good.

Broomfield and a BBQ

U.Kit picked me up on Friday and and took me back to Broomfield. I fixed Wendy’s computer and then had a nice time relaxing. We watched The Big Bounce on Friday night. I uploaded the Shasta MiniDV tapes I had to his computer and then transfered them over to my laptop…about 18GB worth of video. I also watched The Junction Boys with Grandma Jo. Did my laundry and then went back to the apartments for a Mines Park BBQ. I watched Reindeer Games with Eric and Dan.

Trekkies

Trekkies

I got my Netflix discs in the mail the other day. Among them was a documentry called Trekkies. And I have to say, it was a very interesting movie, even for a Trekkie like myself. I suggest all Star Trek fans watch the movie to see what the wide variety of fans are like and to learn a little bit about the orgins of the Star Trek conventions. I would also urge non-Star Trek fans to watch the movie becuase it provides a very different insight on the Star Trek universe.

Emily Przekwas

Perhaps the weirdest thing to have every happened to me. I was in CSM 101 and I asked about starting up a Chemistry study group (woah, Andrew’s actually studying? Yes, I am). Anyways after class, this girl, Emily, comes up to me and says that she would like to start a study group with me.

First off, I have no idea why I know her name. I just assumed I met her at orientation back in July. Anyways, she gives me her email address. I end up calling her later that night and we agree to meet at 8:30 to study. Jason and I go down to Bradford Hall and meet Emily and her friends down their. We study for a while and then I bring up the fact that I’m from Seattle. Emily ask’s where I live in Seattle. I ask her if she knows where UW is. She does. So I say that I live 2 miles north of the U. She ask’s what neighborhood; I say Wedgwood….and she know’s where that is. Weird, eh?

Well is get’s better. She says that she lived in the area for a few years. I ask what elementry school she went to. What did Emily say? Bryant Elementry….the same one I went to. Not only that, but we had the same teacher, Mrs. Shy.

Crap on a friggin’ stick!!! What are the odds that someone I went to elementry school with, including having the same teacher, goes to the same college as I do, 1200 miles away from where it all started? Astronomical.

We ended up talking for a good our about all the kids in our class. What fun! Emma Tupper, Sarah McCarthy, Sarah Robinson, Tyler Sandstrom, Kelty Clark Mahoney, Sophia with the 14 letter last name, Harold ‘Butt kiss’ Beltkus, and others. My gosh. I still can’t get over it. Crap on a friggin’ stick!!!

The terminal velocity of a falling human being with arms and legs outstretched is about 120 miles per hour (192 km per hour) – slower than a lead balloon, but a good deal faster than a feather!

The terminal velocity of a falling human being with arms and legs outstretched is about 120 miles per hour (192 km per hour) - slower than a lead balloon, but a good deal faster than a feather!

So I went sky diving today. And I have to say that it was awesome (If I hadn’t gone, it would have just been aweso). Anyways, I went with my Dad and two of his buddies from college, Kurt and Charlie. Despite the fact that I would be falling at close to 200kph, I received very little instruction: cross my arms and put my head on the instructors left shoulder; wait for him to tap both my arms, then stick my hands out like I’m flossing my ears. Put my feet on his butt and arch my back.

I got on my jumpsuit, although I saw several other sky divers that were wearing shorts and a t-shirt, and then put on a a special tandem harness. I got one of those dinky skydiver hats that make you look like a conehead and some goggles. Myself and 22 other sky divers, including 4 from the USAF, clambered into a DHC-6 “Twin Otter” and proceeded to about the 5.5 kilometer mark (18,500 feet ASL).

Talk about an economy airline: wooden benches and no backrests, practially sitting on top of each other. I was actually glad to jump out of the plane. So we reached out jump altitude and everybody went on their merry way down. I was the second to last to jump. My instructor and I proceeded to the back of the plane. I assumed my position and we just sort of tumbled out.

Now let me take a moment to explain what my brain was thinking: You fool! You just willingly jumped out of a perfectly good plane with some stranger strapped to your back who your counting on to not kill you. You probably have a better chance of going out with Christina then landing with this fool on your back. You iddddd-iooot!

Jumping out had to be the best part, and scariest part, because when you jump out, you have zero vertical speed and 160kph of horizontal speed. However, as soon as you jump, you gain vertical speed very fast…9.8 meters/sec2 fast. And then there’s the fact that you have just jumped out of a perfectly good airplane. We were in free fall for quite some time, almost a minute. It’s really quite cool because after about 20 seconds, you’re not accelerating anymore. You’ve reached terminal velocity. A point at which your not fat enough to fall any faster…well, actually you’re not dense enough. The pull of gravity is counterbalenced by the molecules of air that are hitting your body at 200kph and you just float…just like in space.

So after minute, I pulled the shoot and we slowed down pretty quickly. We glided for a little while and then landed….which really was more falling on my butt then landing. Wow. I’m going to have to become a certified sky diver now.

I should have pictures and video up in the next few days.

Will that make any Goddamned sense?

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cold opening and applause

Thank you very much.

Welcome to the Late Show. This is our first show on the air since New
York and Washington were attacked, and I need to ask your patience and
indulgence here because I want to say a few things, and believe me, sadly, I’m
not going to be saying anything new, and in the past week others have said what
I will be saying here tonight far more eloquently than I’m equipped to do.

But, if we are going to continue to do shows, I just need to hear myself talk
for a couple of minutes, and so that’s what I’m going to do here.

It’s terribly sad here in New York City. We’ve lost five thousand fellow New
Yorkers, and you can feel it. You can feel it. You can see it. It’s terribly
sad. Terribly, terribly sad. And watching all of this, I wasn’t sure that I
should be doing a television show, because for twenty years we’ve been in the
city, making fun of everything, making fun of the city, making fun of my hair,
making fun of Paul… well…

So, to come to this circumstance that is so desperately sad, I don’t trust my
judgment in matters like this, but I’ll tell you the reason that I am doing a
show and the reason I am back to work is because of Mayor Giuliani.

Very early on, after the attack, and how strange does it sound to invoke that
phrase, “after the attack?”, Mayor Giuliani encouraged us — and here lately
implored us — to go back to our lives, go on living, continue trying to make
New York City the place that it should be. And because of him, I’m here tonight.

And I just want to say one other thing about Mayor Giuliani: As this began,
and if you were like me, and in many respects, God, I hope you’re not. But in
this one small measure, if you’re like me, and you’re watching and you’re
confused and depressed and irritated and angry and full of grief, and you don’t
know how to behave and you’re not sure what to do and you don’t really…
because we’ve never been through this before… all you had to do at any moment
was watch the Mayor. Watch how this guy behaved. Watch how this guy conducted
himself. Watch what this guy did. Listen to what this guy said. Rudolph Giuliani
is the personification of courage.

applause

And it’s very simple… there is only one requirement for any of us, and that
is to be courageous, because courage, as you might know, defines all other human
behavior. And I believe, because I’ve done a little of this myself, pretending
to be courageous is just as good as the real thing. He’s an amazing man, and
far, far better than we could have hoped for. To run the city in the midst of
this obscene chaos and attack, and also demonstrate human dignity… my God…
who can do that? That’s a pretty short list.

The twenty years we’ve been here in New York City, we’ve worked closely with
police officers and the fire fighters and…

applause

…and fortunately, most of us don’t really have to think too much about what
these men and women do on a daily basis, and the phrase New York’s finest and
New York’s bravest, you know, did it mean anything to us personally, firsthand?
Well, maybe, hopefully, but probably not. But boy, it means something now,
doesn’t it? They put themselves in harm’s way to protect people like us, and the
men and women, the fire fighters and the police department who are lost are
going to be missed by this city for a very, very long time. And I, and my hope
for myself and everybody else, not only in New York but everywhere, is that we
never, ever take these people for granted… absolutely never take them for
granted.

applause

I just want to go through this, and again, forgive me if this is more for me
than it is for people watching, I’m sorry, but uh, I just, I have to go through
this, I’m…

The reason we were attacked, the reason these people are dead, these people
are missing and dead, and they weren’t doing anything wrong, they were living
their lives, they were going to work, they were traveling, they were doing what
they normally do. As I understand it (and my understanding of this is vague at
best), another smaller group of people stole some airplanes and crashed them
into buildings. And we’re told that they were zealots, fueled by religious
fervor… religious fervor. And if you live to be a thousand years old, will
that make any sense to you? Will that make any Goddamned sense? Whew.

I’ll tell you about a thing that happened last night. There’s a town in
Montana by the name of Choteau. It’s about a hundred miles south of the Canadian
border. And I know a little something about this town. It’s 1,600 people. 1,600
people. And it’s an ag-business community, which means farming and ranching. And
Montana’s been in the middle of a drought for… I don’t know… three years?
And if you’ve got no rain, you can’t grow anything. And if you can’t grow
anything, you can’t farm, and if you can’t grow anything, you can’t ranch,
because the cattle don’t have anything to eat, and that’s the way life is in a
small town. 1,600 people.

Last night at the high school auditorium in Choteau, Montana, they had a
rally (home of the Bulldogs, by the way)… they had a rally for New York City.
And not just a rally for New York City, but a rally to raise money… to raise
money for New York City. And if that doesn’t tell you everything you need to
know about the… the spirit of the United States, then I can’t help you. I’m
sorry.

applause

And I have one more thing to say, and then, thank God, Regis is here, so we
have something to make fun of.

If you didn’t believe it before (and it’s easy to understand how you might
have been skeptical on this point), if you didn’t believe it before, you can
absolutely believe it now…

New York City is the greatest city in the world.

lengthy applause

We’re going to try and feel our way through this, and we’ll just see how it
goes… take it a day at a time. We’re lucky enough tonight to have two
fantastic representatives of this town, Dan Rather and Regis Philbin, and we’ll
be right back.

to commercial

—End—

From: http://www.ddy.com/dl13.html

I Have Prevailed!

After spending a wonderful day at Estes, we drove back into town and stopped at Best Buy because my iPod still wasn’t working. I finially convinced them to replace it. So I’m now the proud owner of a 4th Generation iPod. We have school tomorrow…that sucks.

Estes Park

Went over to the Weber’s today and watched Ryan’s soccer game. They completly dominated, winning 5-0. Then we headed up to the cabin. The house that burned down sometime ago was well on its way to being recontructed. We also caught 4 mice in the mouse traps.

EPICs, Another Fire Alarm, FCA, and The Weekend

So we’re learning how to draw in EPICs. How cool is that? Our assignment is to draw a prospective view of something and turn it in next Wednesday. When I’m done, I’ll scan it in and post it here somewhere. We also had yet another fire alarm; second one this week, different building though. I think this one was planned though. Anyways, went to the FCA get together tonight. That was pretty awesome. Grandma and Grandpa are going to stop by on Friday on their way to Colorado Springs for Grandma’s reunion and I’m going up to Estes with the Weber’s!