JOURNAL: squall1986 (J.J. Montgomery)

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  • January 1, 2004 2004-01-04 02:19:08 Thursday, January 1, 2004
    Well, it's another new year. It's kind of creepy that it's our graduation year now. We only have a few months left of high school. Man that scares the crap out of me just to think about that. Our lives are moving on, we're all becoming adults and going our seperate ways.
    Anyway, last Friday is where I left off. That day, we had a LAN party at Chris's house. It was really fun. There was Me, Chris, Dave, Nate, Cole, Mark, Cecil, and Joe. We played Counter-Strike for nine hours straight. I was kickin ASCII (inside joke) in the maps cs_concrete and fy_pool_day with the 12 gauge. Anyway, since some (or probably most) of you people reading this will have no idea what I'm talking about, I'll just say that I was doing really good. We had set up in his front room, which faces 3100 (the main street in North Ogden) and we had the blinds open so anyone driving past could see us plain as day all huddled over our computers. Well this kid in our ward, Paul, drove by with a few of his friends. Paul is a real jock, he's a junior, and he's not into all the computer games and stuff like us, but when they saw us, they came in and thought it was so cool and then left. I thought it was pretty funny. Nate was embarassed to be seen by "cool kids," but the rest of us didn't really care.
    Cole had to leave during the night, and once he left we pretty much stopped playing and went off to bed. That was at about 3 or 4 in the morning.
    Rick (Chris's dad) said that night that he'd take us to Jeremiah's for their all-you-can-eat pancakes for breakfast the next morning if we'd be willing to wake up at 6:30. I thought it was pretty nice of him. The whole time it seemed like Rick was having us over instead of Chris. Chris isn't very hospitable, but Rick is a funny guy. Oh ya, They had this LAN party because it's just Rick, Chris, and Ben at home since Nikki (Rick's wife), Jesse, and Aaron are in Germany on vacation.
    Anyway, so 6:30 rolls around, and the only people who slept at Chris's house were me, Nate, Chris (ofcourse), and Mark. Oh ya, Ben was there, too, duh (he's Chris's little brother). So Rick goes around and wakes us all up after we've only had about 2 hours of sleep, so to say the least, it took a while. Ofcourse Nate is the hardest to get up, so it took him forever to get his eyes open. We were all ready to go and everything but we were waiting for Nate. Finally Rick said that he needed to wake up even if he wasn't going because he didn't want him there while Rick was gone. So he gets up and comes along.
    Chris, Ben, and I ride with Rick in their Suburu, and Mark and Nate go in Mark's car. As we head out, Mark goes up Nate's road and drops off Nate. He said that he'd rather sleep than eat free food. What a moron. He is the absolute laziest person I know. So out of everyone that Rick made the offer to, only Mark and I ended up going. It was really good, and really fulfilling. It was snowing really hard, so it was kinda scary geting there and back, but we made it.
    We got back to Chris's house around 8, and I fell asleep until 11:30. I had to go to wrestling, so I called my dad and had him drive me. This practice wasn't an official practice, because I think there's some rule saying that we couldn't practice so many days over the break or something like that. So none of the coaches were there, and it was held at the Roy Recreation Center.
    It was supposed to start at noon, but I (and a lot of other people) didn't show up until about 12:30. We ran a mile for a warm-up, lifted, and then swam. Then we sat in the sauna for a while. It was pretty easy and laid back for a practice. Since it wasn't a mandatory practice, most of the wrestlers didn't show up. The ones that did were either Varsity or Seniors. I was pretty much the only Senior that wasn't Varsity, and I'm not great friends with any of the wrestlers, so I felt pretty out of place. I didn't talk much, plus, since my dad drove me, I had to get a ride home with someone. That was pretty awkward, too. The whole ride I didn't say one word.
    Anyway, so I got home from wrestling on Saturday and went to get my computer back from Chris's house. I called over to see if anyone was still there, and it turned out that Dave, Nate, and Mark were there. So I just walked over because my parents had both the cars. I packed up my stuff and got a ride home with Nate, then before unpacking everything and setting up my computer I called Echo.
    It seemed like I called just at the right time because her parents were planning on coming up to Ogden to see her aunt, so she wanted to know if it was alright if she came along and we hang out. I thought it was a great idea even though we had seen an awful lot of each other the past week. Now, don't get me wrong, I love being with her, and a lot of people think we're weird for trying not to go out on so many dates, but I really love her and I want it to work, so I'm trying to do things the way the church has said to. I think the only thing that we're not in accordance with the church is that we're dating each other exclussively and not seeing other people as well. Anyway, I don't feel like trying to explain everything right now, so if you don't get it, tough for you.
    Well, she got a ride up here, and I met her at the mall. While I was waiting for her, I ran into Tiffany and her sister Meagan. They were waiting for Dave and Nate so Dave could buy some pants. I thought it would be cool if we all did something, so when Echo came, we stuck around them. The only thing was that Echo was under the impression that we were going to get our pictures taken, so she was all done up and everything. I didn't realize I had given her that impression, so I wasn't really planning on taking pictures then. I had no idea that's what she wanted to do, so I just hung around the group for a while. She didn't seem to have any objections at the time, because that's just how she is, so I thought everything was good.
    We followed Dave around for a while until he finally found a pair of pants. He was looking for some shoes when Tiffany and Meagan had to leave. Then, Dave and Nate left because they really didn't want to do anything, so it ended up just being Echo and I anyway.
    I had no idea what to do, so I decided to just drive towards Layton and see if we came up with any ideas. It was then that I started to realize that there was something she wanted to do, but she wouldn't say. Actually, she told me there was something she wanted to do, but she wouldn't say. It's not that she was playing any mind games, she just didn't want to say that she wanted to go take pictures. I think it was because she misunderstood, so she felt embarassed or something like that.
    Well we ended up using the movie tickets that I got from Sue and Brent to see Elf at the theater in Layton. We got there a little early, so we decided to go get something to eat. We were driving around seeing what looked good when we came up on Fazolli's. I mentioned that it was really good, and she said that she'd never been there. So we ended up eating there. It's really nice because they give you free breadsticks for as long as you're there. We ended up being a little late to the movie, but I don't think that we missed very much of it.
    It was an okay movie. We sat in the very back row. Not to make out, but because those are the best seats. It was really nice, because we were cuddling and being realy close through most of the movie. After the movie, we went to Target and bought some cookie dough. Then we went and got some hot chocolate and drank that and ate the cookie dough at her house while we watched T.V. The time went by really fast, and I had to leave soon after that.
    Sunday, I missed Priesthood and Sunday School again, I'm kinda glad we have the late block now, so I won't be so tempted to sleep in so much. After church I came home and set up my computer and talked to Echo on messenger and the phone for pretty much the rest of the day.
    Monday, I had practice at 8:00 AM. It really sucked. It was a really hard practice, and then we conditioned forever afterwards. We ran up and down the stairs in the small gym with someone on our backs and then ran ladders across the gym floor a ton. So many guys were throwing up because it was such a hard practice. When I got home, I just sat around for pretty much the rest of the day. I don't think anything else happened that day, if I remember, I'll right it down. Oh ya, I'm pretty sure I talked to Echo, too. Oh! Now I remember what I did that day. When I got home, I felt like crap and I needed to take a shower. I was so exhausted and I didn't want to stand up for a long time, so I just took a bath instead. I can't remember the last time I've taken a bath, but it was really nice. Right after I got out of the bath, my mom said that Grandpa called and needed help getting hay. So I went out and shoveled the driveway and got ready and headed up to Grandpa Montgomery's house. When he wasn't there, I called my mom and asked if I was supposed to meet him down at the farm, and she told me that it was Grandpa Shriber that needed help. So I went down and helped him with that. We drove up to Willard to get the hay, and then drove down to drop it off at the land. The first trip up there, we got stuck when we were getting the hay in snow that went up past the tires of the truck. We made two trips total, and the whole thing lasted for three hours, so after that I was pretty tired.
    Tuesday, I had practice again at 8:00 AM. It was pretty much the same thing, but a lot less conditioning. Afterwards, I got a haircut from Dave the Barber. He's in our ward. I got one because Echo and I were planning on taking pictures that day. I headed down to Layton pretty much right after my hair cut. When I got there, her mom offered to take us over to Target because she was heading over there, and we were going to have her take pictures of us in the park anyway.
    Carli (Echo's sister) had her friend over and they came along, too. They were annoying the crap out of Echo and I, and Echo really started to get in a bad mood. We first went to Sam's Club to pick up some pictures from the Harvest dances. Then we headed over to Wal-Mart for something, and then we went to Target. When we stopped by the portrait place, the employee there said that we needed to make an appointment, and that all the appointments that day had already been filled. So we made an appointment for the next day and left. I felt really bad, because Echo got all ready and everything and again we didn't take pictures.
    When we got back to her house, her mom couldn't take pictures of us at the park, because she had to make dinner for someone, so we had to just stay there. We also couldn't take my truck anywhere because her mom parked behind it so we couldn't get out. So we were stuck there with Carli and her friend, and they just had to be as annoying as possible to us.
    After a while, her mom finally left to take the dinner over, so we could take the truck out. We were planning on going to a stake dance that Echo said started at 7. So we got something to eat at Fazolli's again and headed over to the dance. When we got there, no one was there, and we saw a poster for the dance that said it started at 9. So we decided to go over to the park to find places that we wanted to take pictures at. When we got there, Echo wanted to go walk through the lights again, so we headed over there, but they were closed off. I think since we've had so much snow, and branches have been falling down because of the extra wieght, they decided it wasn't safe, so they closed it off. So that was kind of disappointing. So we sat in the truck for a while listening to music and warming up. We were in there for a while just talking and cuddling. Well we couldn't really cuddle that much because of the console between the two seats, but oh well. After a while we got out and walked around and found places to take pictures at.
    One really cool place was the bridge. It was so nice right over the river and everything was covered in snow. She said that's where Jeremy and Julie had their wedding announcement picture taken.
    We headed over to the dance, it was ok. We tried to go over some of the dances we learned, but I hadn't really remembered them very well. It was supposed to be a New Year's Eve dance, but it was a day early for some reason. We walked around a lot and played outside in the snow for a while. We kept pushing each other in the snow and stuff it was really fun.
    When the dance was over, after midnight, we sat in the truck for a while before we left, I guess because there was really nothing else to do. Echo was acting really funny. It was almost like she'd been going through mood swings all day. Then in the car she was really hyper, it was really fun. Then I took her home and then I went home around 1:00.
    Wednesday, I had practice again at 8:00, but I really didn't want to go. So I turned off my alarm and tried to sleep in, but one of the coaches called at 8:30, and my dad made me go. It was ok, there was no conditioning, but it was a pretty tough practice.
    Afterwards, I headed down to Layton to get our pictures taken. It was so fun. We showed up at Target for our appointment, and this lady took us back in the picture place and put us in a hole bunch of different poses. It was really cute. For one of the pictures, we were both kneeling over looking at eachother, and she told us to kiss. There was a little bit of hesitation, be we did it, I thought it looked really good, so that was one of the poses that we got prints of. It was so fun.
    After that, we went to her house and her mom said that she'd be a while until she would take our pictures at the park, so we went over to the mall to kill time until she was ready. Those pictures were really fun, too. And we did end up getting a couple of us standing on the bridge.
    When we were done with that, we headed towards Salt Lake to meet Dave, Cole, and Joe at Temple Square. We got down there before them so we ate at Greek Souvlaki. Echo had never tried Greek food before. I really like it, but it's so filling. I could barely finish my Gyro and fries.
    We then went over to Temple Square and walked around looking at the lights and everything. There were not very many people there, surprisingly. After just a little while everyone else showed up and we walked around with them. Cole was taking pictures with everything with his new digital camera that he got for Christmas. We went up and saw the statue of Christ in the North Visitor's center, then we walked over to the Conference Center and walked up to the highest leve we could and took a bunch of pictures. It was really pretty to see the whole city with all the snow and lights and everything. I thought it was really romantic being there with her, even if Dave and Cole were throwing snow balls at us while we were checking out the view.
    It was really funny, when we were walking down the stairs, I held Echo's hand, and Dave saw that, and grabbed my other hand. I freaked out and Dave just started laughing. There were a lot of moments like that it seems like.
    When we went back to Temple Square, Echo and I took a carriage ride up to Memory Grove again. It was so nice in the snow and everything. It was really cold, and we were huddled together under a couple of blankets. That was really romantic, too. On our way back to downtown, I got a kiss from her. The whole ride was just so nice, I loved being there with her.
    When we got back to Temple Square, we waited for a while at the South Visitors Center and watched some of the Church's commercials. Then they closed, so we went over to the Crossroads mall but most of everything was closed off only for people with the First Night pins. We weren't planning on staying there for midnight, so we didn't bother buying one of those pins, so we couldn't walk around like last time. We made our way over to the ZCMI center, and walked through that though. I didn't realize until later that that was also closed off for First Night, but we went in some side entrance or something, so no one asked to see our pins, it was kinda funny.
    We trying to call Dave but he wouldn't answer his phone, so I just left a voice mail telling him to call me back. So we went and waited in the car for him to call back since there wasn't much else to do. We were sitting there talking and stuff and it was really nice when suddenly the phone rings and it was Dave. Really bad timing.
    Anyway, we met back up with them and then headed out back towards home. The plan was to get back to Cole's house and light off fireworks. But it didn't seem like we would make it back in time for midnight. It was 11 and we were still in Salt Lake because of all the traffic. But with a little bit of speeding and wreckless driving I managed to get back to North Ogden in just around 40 minutes. That was probably the scariest I have ever driven with Echo in the car.
    It was really fun at Cole's house. We got there at around quarter to midnight so we started lighting off a bunch of fireworks I had. These were fireworks that I had gotten for the Fourth of July up at the cabin. I got them in Evanston, so every single one of them were illegal. It was really fun, though. We launched off a bunch of mortars and Roman candles. We had a ton of bottle rockets, too, and we were throwing fire crackers at each other. When I wasn't lighting off fireworks, I was usually holding Echo in my arms. It was really nice. She told me before that she wanted a kiss at midnight for the New Year, so I was really looking forward to that. Then when midnight came around, we did kiss. Right in front of my friends. I don't think they liked that too much, but oh well, it was so nice. I thought it was a perfect way to bring in the New Year. That whole night was so spectacular. Actually, that whole day was.
    This morning, I got up around 11 and started talking to Echo on Messenger. We talked for a while until Thomas came over. He wanted to browse through my music, but I was on my other hard drive downloading stuff so I had to restart which meant I had to stop talking to Echo for a second, but when I booted up my other hard drive, it didn't work. I spent forever trying to fix it, but I didn't make any progress on it. So Thomas and I ended up going down to Media Play to spend his gift card, but they closed right as we got there, so we didn't do much.
    I had to be home for dinner, so after I got home and ate, I had my dad check out my computer, and after a while he fixed it, and I got on and talked to Echo for a little bit longer. Then she had to get off, and that leads up to right now. And right now I think it's snowing so the internet is not working, so I can't send this to Echo at the moment like I usually do. Oh well, that's everything that's happened to me so far.
    This New Year's has been the best New Year's ever because of Echo, just like Christmas was the best because of her. I'm so glad she walked into my life. 
  • December 26, 2003 2003-12-26 13:41:08 Friday, December 26, 2003
    This Christmas has been the best Christmas of my entire life. It has been the most memorable and the most fun, ever! First on Christmas Eve, my family was having a Christmas dinner, so I invited Echo over. She came up with an idea a while ago to spend Christmas Eve with one of our families, and Christmas with the other. She said that Christmas is a time to spend with people you love, and that she couldn't think of any one else she'd rather spend Christmas with. I thought it was really sweet of her to say that, and I know she meant it, too.
    So after our big dinner, I gave Echo her present. It was a silver bracelet with her name engraved on it. Then she gave me hers. She had a huge gift bag full of stuff. In it was a stuffed dog that could record messages, a little figurine of to mice hugging with a heart between them that said "Love me." She said that she had one just like it sitting in her room. I thought they were both really cute. Then she gave me some after shave, and a gift card from Target that she said we could get our pictures taken together with. Ofcourse, since it was my gift, she said that I had to decide when we'd take them, how we'd take them, and all that other fun stuff. Then at the bottom of the bag was a roll of calculator tape. I was a little confused at first, but she told me to unwrap it because there was something written on it. She took up the whole roll with one big, long message. It was so cute, I loved it, I can't believe how much effort she put into it. I gave her a big hug for it and then kissed her.
    After that, we watched the First Presidency's Christmas Devotional on TV. I thought it was so fun, we were just cuddling up watching this Christmas special, it was really nice. And then Cole came over to give me my Christmas present. It was really cool, he gave all of our friends matching T-shirts for our gaming clan. They were black, and on the front was the Counter-Strike logo, and on the back was our gaming name and the Unreal Tournament logo. My name in the clan is always Squall, so that's what my shirt says, it was really cool. But while I was opening it and reading the card, he was just kind of sitting there; he said "Well, here I am ruining your 'romance' again," I thought it was kind of funny, he probably felt like a third wheel, but oh well. Then just after he left, Dave came over and gave Echo and I presents from Tiffany. I got a bottle of Root-Beer, Popcorn, and a Kit-Kat, and Echo got matching hat and gloves.
    After Dave left, we continued watching the Christmas Devotional. It was so nice, we just sat there and talked and none of my little sisters came down to bug us. We were talking and everything and she looked up and gave me a kiss on the cheeck. I thought it was really cute.
    I took her home pretty early (around like 10 or something) because my Mom wanted everyone in bed, so they could put out presents as early as possible. When I got home, I got online and one of my contacts on MSN Messenger was online. It was this guy from AnimeMusicVideos.org that added me to his buddy list a couple of days ago. He's the only person on my list that I didn't know personally, so I thought it was kind of weird that out of the blue he just put me on his list. I asked him why, and he said he did because I took the time to review one of his AMVs. I thought that was a little strange, but oh well. I got talking to him and he told me of this way to really reduce the size of my AMVs without sacrificing quality. It took the size down by like 40%, it was really cool. Then we got to talking about what we were doing for Christmas, and he said that he was going to sleep over at his girlfriend's house. He was only 18, so I told him that I would never be that serious with a girl until I got married. Then we started talking about religion. I told him that I was LDS, and he asked if we believed that Jesus was the son of God, and I told him that we did. Then he asked if God forsake his own son, then how would we have a chance to come back to God. I started to explain to him a lot of things, and he had a lot of questions. Luckily Cole was signed on, too, at that time, so I got some help from him a couple of times. We ended up talking for about an hour, and then my dad came down and yelled at me for "chatting" he screamed "nothing good can come of that!" I was just like "whatever" so I had to go to bed (it was like 1 or 2 in the morning by then). But I really felt like I was getting through to this guy, and then my dad had to come down and end it.
    Anyway, the next day was Christmas, and at like quarter to 7, all three of my little sisters came to get me up so that we could open presents. Just to bug them, I slept in as long as I could. But they had me upstairs by 7:15, and we started opening up presents. In my stocking, I got some Ritz crackers and cottage cheese, my favorite snack. My mom actually asked me what she could put in my stocking like that, so I just told her to get me that. I got a whole bunch of candy and some fruit also. Then Katie started handing out presents and we opened them one by one. Let's see, I got a whole bunch of socks, a book by John Bytheway called "What I Wish I'd Known Before My Mission," a little book called the Pocket Reference Book for Missionaries, Parents, and Instructors, one of those mini-remote controlled cars, a really nice color printer for my computer, a blue zip-up hoody, a winter coat, bullets, and bed sheets. That was a whole lot more than I was ever expecting considering all the money problems we had. All the girls got tons of stuff, too. It was a really nice Christmas.
    At around 2, we went to my Grandparent's house on my mom's side of the family. I only stayed for a little while, and then went to Echo's house. We were pretty early, so the only ones at my grandparent's house were us, my grandparents, and my aunt and uncle Nancy and Shaine, with their kid Damon. My grandparents gave me $5 and a Mini-Mag flashlight, so now I won't have to steal my dad's.
    I left before anybody else got there, so I didn't get to give my present to the cousin I had personally, and I didn't get my present until I came home that night. Plus, I missed out on my dad's parent's house.
    I was supposed to be at Echo's house by 3, because we were all going over to her brother Jeremy's house around that time. But since I had to go to my Grandparent's house, first, I didn't get there until about 3:30. But I didn't feel as bad about making them late, because none of them were ready, and by the time we got to Jeremy's house anyway, the turkey wasn't done yet, so it wasn't that bad.
    While we were waiting to leave Echo's house, she showed me everything she got, and then we were listening to some funny CD's for a while. When we did go to Jeremy and Julie's house, we all went in the blue van. Since they had a lot of presents for Jeremy's kids, we had to really squish together. Carli (Echo's sister) sat on Echo's lap the whole ride there to Sunset. When we got there, we had a really nice turkey dinner. I got so full, and I was really tired afterwards. We sat around and watched the kids open presents. Echo got a present from Jeremy and Julie that was a framed drawing of the Salt Lake temple, plus she got the sound track to the Book of Mormon story, and a book about one of the Young Women's values.
    We stayed there for a while and played with the kids and stuff. The drive back to Echo's house was a lot less crowded because they didn't have the boxes of presents in there, so it was a little more comfortable, and Echo didn't have her little sister sitting on her lap.
    Once we got back to Echo's house, we sat and talked for a while, and then we wathced a movie that she got for Christmas. It was called "How to Deal." It was rated PG-13, but there was a ton of swearing and a couple sex scenes. We sat there and watched it in her living room with Chad sitting on the computer the whole time. It was really surprising, because even though we were in her house, and right in front of her brother, she was really cuddly and everything, which isn't a bad thing. But I remember her not even holding hands in front of her family because it was too wierd.
    My parents said I had to be home by 1, so I left at about 12:30. It was snowing really bad, so I started up the truck to get it warm, and I was brushing the snow off the windsheild, so I was in the driveway for a couple of minutes. Echo thought something was wrong so she came outside to check, she's always really caring. She told me to be really careful on the drive home, and I promised her that I would be, and then she gave me a really light kiss, it was really cute. In the past two days we kissed four times (five if you count the one she gave me on the cheek). Which is a lot more than we really said we would. But I figure it was a special occasion being Christmas and all, and that there was a lot of love in the air, so hopefully it wasn't bad, right? I don't know.
    Well the drive home was very uneventful. Nothing bad happened thankfully, but I was almost the only car on the road. I was going so slow on the freeway because it was snowing so much. It's still snowing right now, FINALLY! Hopefully I'll get to go out and play in it a little with my new winter coat.
    Anyway, this Christmas was the best Christmas, ever. Mostly thanks to Echo, she made everything so special this year. 
  • December 24, 2003 2003-12-24 17:01:38 Wednesday, December 24, 2003
    Ah, let's see, what has happened in the past week? Let's see, Tuesday (the 16th) - nothing. It was an A-day, and that's about all I remember. I recently registered with AnimeMusicVideos.org so I could post my AMV, and I was surfing around on that site during programming, but other than that, and wrestling, I don't remember a whole lot about Tuesday.
    Wednesday, it was a B-day, drafting was pretty fun, we have started doing drawings on the computer using Auto-CAD. That is so much easier than drawing by hand. In math, I don't remember anything exciting happening. We watched the play "The Glass Menagerie" in Lit, since we have been reading it forever. Conditioning was just another normal period of lifting, then after that I had wrestling, which was really hard that day.
    That day we had a combined activity, so Echo came along. We were putting together family home evening kits for the ward, and then we went out and distributed them. It was pretty cold and not that fun, but at least I was with Echo.
    Thursday, A-day, nothing much happened at school, but we had a wrestling meet at Northridge after school. Ofcourse I couldn't wrestle because I haven't gotten the paper work for my physical in yet. It's really starting to piss me off, because I go to practice every day, but I can't wrestle in the meets. I'm waiting for a copy of my physical to come in the mail from the Air Force, because I'm just using the one I had taken for them, but ofcourse you have to go through so many people and fill out all sorts of stuff, so it's taking forever. Anyway, so I couldn't wrestle, so I was just sitting there for like five hours. I got a lot of homework done, but other than that it was pretty boring. Northridge is one of the best wrestling teams in the state right now, but we beat them by a couple matches. Coach never tells us how we rank in state because he doesn't want it to go to our heads, but I think we're up there for number 1 or 2.
    Then Friday and Saturday was the Warrior duals where we invite 7 other schools from all over to come to wrestle. I think there was Star Valley (Wyoming), Alta, Sky View , Bear River, Pleasant Grove, Morgan, and Lone Peak. Each team would wrestle each other one on one like in a dual meet, then next round they would wrestle another team. Overall our Varsity team came in fourth. I really wish I could have wrestled at that tournament. So far I've missed out on at least nine matches (1 against Fremont, 1 against Northridge, and 7 at the Warrior Duals). If I won them all, I could have my letterman's jacket already.
    But since I didn't wrestle Friday, Echo told me about this dance at Weber State. It was like this big swing dance event and stuff, so we went to that. It was really fun. I saw Mr. Rippon (a math teacher from junior high, and somebody in my ward) in the band playing the trumpet. I don't know if he saw me or not, but I'm kinda glad he didn't come over and say anything. That would have been a little embarrassing (he's a little strange).
    I got home later than midnight, so my parents said that I couldn't take the car out again for a while. But on Saturday, Echo invited me to come along with her to one of her friends' brithday party. Since I couldn't drive, I had my dad drop me off at the mall, and then Echo's dad came and picked me up. While I was at the mall, I got Echo's present. But since she might be reading this, I won't mention what it is. Anyway I felt really embarrassed having to be driven around by Echo's parents. They really didn't seem to mind, though.
    The party was really fun. We played Murder in the Dark, Mafia, Scategories, and Cranium. We played Mafia 5 times, and the first 4 of those times, I was the Mafia. You decide by drawing cards, and every time, I got the Mafia card, it was really wierd. The whole time, since no one really knew my name, they just called me "the boyfriend." I thought it was kinda funny, but I knew Echo hated that term.
    Anyway, we walked back to her house, stopping at the park on the way. We stayed there for a while and talked about a lot of stuff. Then we got to her house and her parents drove me home.
    Sunday was pretty ok. I actually showed up to church on time. Ofcourse I was the only priest to show up for presidency meeting, so it was just me, the bishop, and Brother Garret. Preisthood quorum was pretty good. After that, we didn't have a teacher again, so instead of going in with another class of young men or young women, we went to the docrine and principles class taught by Chris's dad. We really liked it, so I think we're going to that class every week now.
    After church, Nate and I stopped by Chris's house. Chris's little sister Jesse, his little brother Aaron, and his mom all went to Germany for a couple weeks, so it's just him, his dad, and Ben (his brother in 10th grade). It's pretty cool. He says the house is really quiet without Aaron and Jesse running around.
    When I got home around 4, Echo was online. After talking with her on instant messenger for a while, we started talking on the phone. We talked until around 11 P.M. 7 hours just talking to her. It went by really fast, too. But that's the longest I've ever talked to one person before. She didn't have school Monday or Tuesday like I did, so she could stay up until whenever.
    School Monday was really boring. Weber school district is the only district in the entire state that has school on the 22nd and 23rd. It's so retarded. I think we're the only district in the whole country that had school on those days, actually. And for Spring Break, every other district gets an entire week off, and we get three days; Wednesday through Friday. I hate this school district.
    Practice on Monday was that bad. After wards, I just came home and did a bunch of homework. Tuesday, we got out of school at 11:45. Wrestling lasted until 3:00, though, but afterwards I spent a bunch of time reviewing music videos on AnimeMusicVideos.org. That site is really cool. After that, I went down to pick up Echo for ball-room dance lessons at Weber State. They were alright, it was mostly just swing, but I was kind of hoping to do other things, too. Afterwards, we went and got hot chocolate and then I took her home.
    That's pretty much everything up to right now. I've been trying to get online, but my dad's blocked it some way. I finally figured out how to get past it, but then he realized what I was doing, and now he's blocking me some other way, so I don't know how to get past it yet. 
  • December 15, 2003 2003-12-15 20:06:28 12-15-03
    Well last Saturday up at Evanston wasn't much. Sorry I didn't write about it sooner. Let's see, we woke up at around 6:45 for the tournament. When we got over to the high school, those that were still in the tournament weighed in, and then one of the coaches went and got us breakfast at McDonald's again. Another egg mcmuffin with hashbrowns. It was pretty good. After that I slept in the wrestling room for a couple of hours. When I woke up, I did some homework in one of the empty halls in the school, but then I fell asleep, when I woke up that time, some kid was looking at me, and when I saw him, he screamed and took off down the hall.
    After that I put my stuff away and decided to walk around Evanston to pass the time and get something to eat. I knew I wasn't supposed to leave the high school, so I just slipped out and tried to make sure the coach didn't see.
    I walked for a while just wondering around until I started heading downtown. I passed by the library and decided it would be fun to visit. I got in there and just took a book off the shelf in the fiction section. It was a book comprised of a couple of short stories by various authors. I read that for a while then read some other stuff. I was there for a good two or three hours until I left.
    After the library I walked up to Arby's and got something to eat. Then I made my way back to the high school. I was gone for at least four hours and I was starting to wonder if anyone had noticed. But I got there, and no one even knew I was gone, which was both a relief and kind of a disappointment. Right as I walked in to the wrestling room where Weber had all there stuff laid out, though, one of the coaches came in and said that everybody needed to load their stuff on the bus and be ready to go, because right after our two wrestlers finished their matches in the championship round we were leaving. So I got back just in time.
    The ride back was boring and uneventful. I tried to sleep, but I wasn't tired at all and the bus was so uncomfortable. Only about 20 minutes after I got home Echo called me, it was really nice to finally talk to her again. Nothing much happened the rest of Saturday.
    As for Sunday, I don't recall much happening at church. I slept in and missed priesthood session again. But Sunday school was really cool. Thayne was our teacher that week, and it was a cool lesson.
    I don't remember much happening on Monday, just another B-day and wrestling practice. But Tuesday was really wierd. Nothing was weird about school or wrestling practice, but afterwards I just got on my computer and never fell asleep. I was going through the videos from the cabin and editing them in Adobe Premiere. I've had to wait until I fixed that stupid video problem until I could make a music video with them. But I was going through and I just made a couple clips of really dumb stuff. The first video was Dave and I running in Bear Lake in slow motion to "Chariots of Fire." Then the next one I made was everybody dancing around to "Dancing Queen" by the A-Teens, ya that one was pretty flaming. The last one I made was composed of a bunch of clips from four-wheeling set to Eminem.
    Then as I was just messing around, I started watching all the Final Fantasy Music Videos I have on my computer (tons and tons and tons) and I figured I'd try to make one. So I got looking around on the internet for a place to download some Final Fantasy VIII clips (since that is the coolest Final Fantasy I've played; just a note: I've played (nes)I, II, III, (snes)II, (ps1) VIII, IX, (ps2) X). Anyway, I was going to use this old program that could rip Play Station movies off the disc, but it didn't work with Final Fantasy VIII movies, which made me really mad. Plus I haven't used it for a long time and when I tried to install it, it wouldn't run with XP. So I was looking around for another ripper, and I found one, but I didn't bother to install it because I didn't think any program could read the movies on the Final Fantasy VIII disc. But I was reading in some forum about it, and some one said that it is the best program and it works with ANY Play Station game. So I tried it and it worked! It is so cool, you can specify the resolution you want the videos in, you can specify the codec used to rip them, it even extracts the audio files. It was like four in the morning when I discovered this and I did a little happy dance because I had been waiting so long to get those movies. Basically, I've been waiting ever since I played the game in December of 2002.
    Anyway, so I never went to sleep Tuesday night, so I was totally out of it Wednesday. It was a B-day, which meant that I had to go through Drafting, Statistics, Literature, and Conditioning, not to mention wrestling afterwards, in my groggy state. Drafting was really wierd because I had finished my drawing that was due that day, so I just kind of sat there and worked on something he gave me to do, but I kept dozing off. Then Statistics ... I don't remember much about Statistics except that Mrs. Parker was doing some presentation with the projetor so most of the lights were off. Then during Lit, we were reading this play called "The Glass of Managerie" (I don't even care about how you spell that). We were split up into groups of four to read it, and ofcourse I ended up in the same group as Chelsea. It is kind of a lame play, there's only four characters in it. I kind of followed along because we had to take notes. The biggest thing I remember about that was that one of the characters - Laura _ really reminded me of Echo. Then I don't remember anything about lunch. And conditioning, I was really really out of it. Afterwards, during the half hour between conditioning and wrestling, I just slept on the couch in the locker room. I didn't sleep for that long because somebody came and scared the crap out of me to wake me up. I remember NOTHING about wrestling, after I got home (I think I walked home because Dave wasn't there or something) I just went straight to bed. I fell asleep at like 5:30 and missed our mutual activity for Wednesday, then my mom woke me up at around 9:30 and told me they had dinner without me because they thought I was at mutual. So I ate some meat loaf that was still warm and I think I went straight to bed after that.
    Thursday, school got out early for parent teacher conferences, and we had a wrestling meet at Weber against Fremont (our rivals). I couldn't wrestle, because I hadn't provided a copy of my physical yet, and the coach was pretty ticked, so he didn't let me wrestle. We creamed them so bad, it was 67 - 6. They were first in state last year, so that puts us pretty high up there.
    Anyway, we didn't have school on Friday, so I started my Final Fantasy VIII music video on Thursday night and worked until about two in the morning. Then I woke up and finished it. I was working on the ending title when Premiere crashed, and I hadn't saved any of the work I had done Friday morning, so I had to redo like a quarter of the video, it took about an hour and a half, it really ticked me off.
    Then I still had wrestling practice at 3:00 PM on Friday, that sucked, but afterwards, Cole, Mark, Chris, and I got together to study for the ACT test for Saturday, and since Echo was taking it, too, I brought her along. I think she really felt left out because she didn't talk much, and I think I also made her feel stupid. I feel bad for that, because she said I said something before that got her thinking and that lead to her getting really depressed. She won't tell me what it was, and she just says that it's no big deal.
    Saturday, Cole invited everyone that was taking the test (at Weber, so Echo couldn't come, seeing as how she lives in Layton and was taking the test in Layton) over for breakfast before the test. Chris and I showed up at about 6:30 to help make everything. I did the pancakes, and Chris made the eggs. Joe and Dave showed up around 7:00, and Mark never made it. He woke up at 7:30 and made it just in time to the test.
    The test was alright, I think I did pretty well on Math and English, but Reading and Science, I was hurrying toward the end. They give you a break after the first to tests (English then Math), so I usually do worse on the last two tests for some reason.
    After the test, I helped around the house and sat at my computer for a few hours, then, for family night (which is usually held on Mondays) we went down to see the lights on Temple Square in Salt Lake. We invited Echo to come, so we picked her up on the way down. We first went to the Gateway mall to see my mom's friend's kids sing. So Echo and I went off and played some pool at the Tilt arcade. We then rode a double-decker bus over to Temple Square and walked around and looked at the lights. There were so many people there, it was so crowded. It would have been a lot nicer there without my family and without the crowds of people, but I really enjoyed it, and I think Echo did, too.
    After walking around Temple Square, we all ate at the Crossroads Plaza. Echo and I had Thai food. I didn't eat much because of wrestling, and I felt kinda sick after it, but it was pretty good food.
    Anyway, we took her home, and then I got home and went to sleep. But then I was woken up by Dave calling on the phone because he wanted the music videos I made from the stuff at the cabin, and some music. So he came over, and I gave him that plus my Final Fantasy music video. He and Cole both said it was really cool.
    Sunday, I slept through priesthood and Sunday School this time, only showing up for Sacrament. Chris was all alone in Sunday School, he hated me for it. I didn't do much else Sunday.
    Today, I just went to school, it was another short day for some reason. We finally started doing stuff on AutoCad 2004 in drafting. In math, I got all the way caught up homework-wise; English, we just read more of that play, it's alright. Chelsea wasn't there today, which is pretty good, we all need a break from her every now and then. Then conditioning was alright. I'm such an idiot, I dropped the bar doing my squat test. It's because it's set to just a little higher than my shoulders, so I have to get on my tip-toes to lift it up, and I got unbalanced, and fell backward, so I felt like an idiot, oh well.
    I came home from about 1:30 to 2:45 just sitting around for wrestling, then I had wrestling, I hate practice so much. It always has a way of just ruining a perfectly fine day. Oh well. After that, I just got online and that leads me to typing this up, so that's that. 
  • December 5, 2003 2003-12-15 15:02:55 Friday, December 5, 2003
    I'm sitting here in the gym of Evanston High School at the annual Evanston Wrestling Invitational Tournament. Obviously, I'm not typing this one up on my computer right now, I'll do that later. Anyway, before I go in to detail about today, I'll recap this past week.
    Monday was another A-day, I don't remember much happening during school. Oh, I forgot, I skipped the first two periods for a job interview at Convergys. It went well, they offered me a job, but I had to turn it down because it conflicted too much with wrestling. I swear, if wrestling wouldn't help me into the Air Force Academy, I'd quit right away, but since it does help, I'm putting all I've got into it. So I got back to school half-way through third period Physics with Mr. Taylor. I don't get anything in that class, plus the teacher just sits there and works through problems and doesn't explain why or how anything works. It's an AP class, so unless I start to understand stuff, I don't know if I'll take the test or not.
    Wrestling practice Monday was tough. After practice, I went home and we actually had family home evening for once. We just went down and saw the Christmas Decorations on 25th street and the girls saw Santa.
    Not much happened during school Tuesday. I had cream of brocolli soup and a small salad for lunch. During wrestling, my stomache killed because of it, though. I was out in the hall for a while with that feeling that you have to throw up, but it just won't come. My mom picked me up after wrestling so I could hurry and go see Echo. The truck has been broken down for a while, so for the time, we were stuck with just the van; so since I couldn't pick her up because my parents needed the van, the plan was for her to come to my house, and we'd just watch a movie and maybe order pizza. But the night before, I helped my dad fix the fuel pump on the truck, so he let me take that and we just did the plan we originally had - go ice skating down in Bountiful. So I showed up at her house with the truck and told her that we could go ice skating like we wanted to before.
    When we were skating, I saw my cousin Meagan there, too. That was kind of weird. After ice skating we drove around looking for a place to eat. We finally ended up at some breakfast diner somewhat like Denny's. So we ate breakfast at 9:30 at night and then went driving around to try to find the temple. It took me forever to find it. I've never seen the Bountiful temple before up close, it was really cool. We then found a place with a good view and parked the truck and sat out looking at the view and talking. It was so cool, and the view was awesome.
    On our way home, I couldn't find my way to the freeway, and then I ended up getting on the South-bound instead of the North-bound. I felt really dumb, but then just turned around on the next exit. I dropped her off, then got home around midnight. My dad reminded me that my curfew on school nights was 11:00. But I didn't get in trouble this time.
    Wednesday was mostly uneventful in school. I had a lab experiment in Chemistry, just some programming in my Java class, and more problems in Physics. Seminary wasn't that great either, we played something that could barely be classified as a game.
    After school, though, I didn't go to wrestling because I had an interview for Math Sterling Scholar. I was pretty nervous. They asked me three questions each about either Trig, Statistics, or Calculus. I really screwed up the Trig question. I was supposed to explain the organization of the numbers; like natural, real, rational, integers, all that crap. For Stats I had to talk about mean, median, and mode, that I think I got at least partially right. For the Calculus question, I had to exlain a velocity graph, that one I aced. They said we'd find out next Wednesday what their decision was.
    Thursday there was an awards assembly in the morning. I got the "W" pin for being on the Honor Roll for 8 terms. Not much happened during school, but there was a wrestling match after school against Taylorsville, whose mascot also happnes to be the Warrior. I was overweight by 3.8 pounds. That really surprised me because I haven't eaten a whole lot all week. Anyway, I didn't have a match, which was both disappointing and a relief. I still had to dress up and warm up and sit with the team, though. I told Echo she could come up when I was with her Tuesday, and she did show up. I felt really bad because she was just sitting with herself and I'm sure the wrestling match wasn't all that interesting, either. My dad was there, too, and she eventually sat over with him, after a few matches he went home since I wasn't going to wrestle. Just a little bit after that, though, one of our wrestlers dropped out so I took his match. I called my dad because I figured he'd want to see it, and right before I went out on the mat, he and my mom showed up and took a seat next to Echo. I was doing pretty well in the match, and I was leading in the third period when he caught me on my back and pinned me. When the next wrestler from Weber, Bryant Toller (189), went out for his match they found out that I had actually wrestled his 189 pounder opponent. Apparently, the kid I was supposed wrestle had passed out, so they sent their enxt match in. I was the only one on the JV team to loose, and it screwed up my 2-0 record from last week. If that stupid kid had just checked in at the table like he was supposed to, that wouldn't have happened. But oh well.
    After the JV team was done wrestling, I got showered, changed, and went to sit with Echo. I really didn't want to just sit there and watch the Varsity matches, especially since I figured that she didn't either, so we just went and walked around. We couldn't go anywhere because I had to stay after and help clean up, and my parents had both the cars. I had to call afterwards so I could get a car to take Echo home. I didn't have to be home until 11:00, so we had about an hour or so to kill so we drove around looking at Christmas lights. Not very many lights were up, so we just ended up going to that look out point abouve highway 89. I'm starting to think that we're doing this too much, and we both agreed that we would try to avoid doing that too often. It may sound weird, but I like her so much, so I want to do things right, like how the prophets have told us.
    I dropped her off and was home by 11:00, so I wasn't in trouble at all. I was getting ready for bed and reading my scriptures when I heard the sound on my computer MSN Messenger makes when somebody sends you an instant message. I went over and saw that it was Echo, she just got on to remind me to read my scriptures, I thought it was kind of cute. I finally got to bed around 11:30 or midnight, and woke up at 5:00 in the morning for wrestling.
    I got all my stuff ready and had my dad take me over to the school where we were supposed to meet. I got on the bus, fell asleep and woke up in Evanston. Those busses are so uncomfortable to sleep on. We got to the High School and weighed in. I'm wrestling at 152 in JV. After we weighed in, we got back on the bus and ate our breakfast on of the coaches had gotten us from McDonald's while we were weighing in. We then went over to the Motel 6 we were staying in and got our rooms. I just changed and then brought my equipment back to the school.
    I was one of the first matches to wrestle in the whole tournament, and I got pinned towards the end of the first period. I just saw the kid that beat me wrestle again, and he pinned the other kid in about 30 seconds, so I figure he's pretty good. I won't wrestle again for at least another hour, and there's not a whole lot to do besides watch the matches and sit around. I've been reading this really cool book based on the video game Halo. So I've been reading that a lot, plus I brought along plenty of homework to keep me busy. Well until anything else happens, I'm gonna get a bite to eat, and maybe read Hale some more, I've almost finished the book.
    (Later...)
    Well, I wrestled my second match just plain crappy. I faced some kid from Evanston and got pinned in the first minute. Now I'm out of the double-elimination tournament, and I've got another day and a half to sit on my butt and waist time.
    (Later that night at Motel 6)
    After my match, I fell asleep for about three hours. After that I just sat there and read Halo for the rest of the day. I finally finished it, which was kind of dumb, because now all I have to keep myself busy is homework. When all the matches were finally done, coach took those wrestlers who didn't have to loose weight to JB's for dinner. It was so good to finally get to eat something after only eating breakfast and a muffin for lunch. After that I just got in my room and I'm sitting here doing this. I'm going to get started on my homework and then head off to bed. Or I should say that I'll head off to sleep since there's three people in this room, and only two beds, and I'm probably the one who will end up sleeping on the floor.
    I'm not looking forward to tomorrow too much. It'll be more sitting around being bored, so I'll probably ditch the tourney and take a little self-guided walking tour of Evanston. Too bad this fireworks capital doesn't have a mall or anything. 
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