The past few days have been rather hectic. On Monday and Tuesday, I went in for some spiffy brain scanning called SPECT (Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography) which involves the intravenious injection of Technium-99, a gamma emiting agent often used in nuclear medicene with a half-life of just 6 hours. The Technium flows to certain parts of the brain where the SPECT machine can detect it. Results should be back within a few weeks.
Then on Wednesday, I finally got my cell phone fixed. Funny story there, I had been to the Verizon store in South Center. One of the sales person their said that I was eligle to upgrade and would recieve $100 of the phone if I signed a new 2 year contract (my contract had just expired less then 2 weeks ago). However, I had to wait for my father becuase he was the one paying the bills. It makes complete sense and I had no complaints. So then the sales person puts a little note in the computer system saying that I’m eligble for the $100 rebate and that I just needed my father. Since my dad was Chicago at the time, I him call Verizon and say that it was okay for my mother to be present. We went into the Downtown store and the sales rep tells us that since I’m a second line on my mothers cellphone plan, I don’t qualify for the rebate. We tell him the entire story, he goes and looks in the database and bam…free phone. So Verizon pretty much gained some very good points in my book, at least enough to talk about them.
I get the phone, go to the airport, catch my 11am flight to Colorado on a 777. That was fun. I have pictures and will upload them as soon as I get a chance.
Then today I went to Colorado School of Mines, and toured the campus, again. I got to talk with one of the prof’s. Tomorrow I get to follow a student around for the whole day. That should prove to be exciting.
Every year, for the past 3 years, I have gone on a mission trip to Mexico with my church youth group. The youth group is for high schoolers, and as I am a senior, this will be my last trip down to Mexico. However, I didn’t realize how much I will miss going down to Mexico until today. We had our meeting to find out who was in our group and it was great fun. I started to think about all the fun stuff we get to do in Mexico, especially the small things. This year will be the best year yet…of course I always say that about everything.
I registered to vote just about a month and a half ago. I would encourage ALL of you to follow the link below and register to vote. You DO NOT need to be 18 to register, you just cannot vote until you are 18. 18-25 year olds are the most underrepresented group of all voters (lower than minorities, lower than low-income, lower than non-high school graduates, lower than independents) with somewhere between 50% and 60% of eligible voters registered. So if you plan on voting for Kerry….or Bush, register now. Your registration must be postmarked 30 days before the first election you wish to vote in, or you can register in person up to 15 days before the election.
So I turned 18 today. Shouldn’t be a big surprise for those of you who have visited the site anytime in the last few weeks and saw the countdown clock. Anyways, I had a great party…actually, I’m still having the party. But yes, Jeff Staples gave me a cigar, he turned 18 last Saturday, and I smoked it…or some of it. But it really wasn’t that good. So when I next go to Canada, I’ll have to get myself a Cuban or something nice like that.
So it started snowing outside tonight. It started with a sprinkle around 7:30ish PM PST and it’s still snowing now, at 12:02 AM…the next day. Alas there is also no school, but then again, we’re still on Winter Break, so I suppose we wouldn’t have school anyways, snow or not. And yes, I’m still wearing shorts.
Last updated 05/30/01 12:19 PM Pacific Daylight Time
That was last update from Starbase 156, the website I had before this. It was just about two and half years ago, the end of my sophmore year in high school. Looking back, I sometimes long for those days, but then I’m reminded how far I’ve come. Five more months left until I graduate…then 4 more years. I’m stuck in a place between
I went to the R.E.I. Garage sale this morning, got some nice stuff. Anyways, I managed to forget my cell phone at home. When I got home, I was checking my messages. Then I came accross this message. Now there are two flavors: R and PG. Pick the one you want. I shouldn’t have to tell you that the “R” one has swearing and the “PG” one has the swearing taken out, which kind of sounds funny in and of itself.
In any event, I thought it was sort of interesting. I couldn’t track the call, but I’m working on it. However, I managed to find out what it was. For those of you familiar with non-classical music, a field which I am not well versed, you might happen to recognize the message as Tenacious-D’s Drive Thru.
I began work on a new joint venture project between myself and Peter. Essentially, it’s a Warren Miller Film. Is it a knock-off. No. I would say more of a tribute. The guys is genius, from his poetic narriation to his artistic camera work. This project will be totally unique. I won’t say much more now except that it will be about Boundaries, and it’s going to be cool. Really quite incredibly mind blowing awsomly cool.
So 9|11 is upon once again. As I was driving home from school today, I was listen to the Dave Ross show on 710 Kiro. Mr. Ross was playing some sound bytes from the first David Letterman show after September 11th, 2001. I really liked them, and I’m still trying to find it found it. However, I have found the following…which should be a start:
—Begin—
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.
