Victory!

So, what I eluded to in my last post was in regards to a possible employment opportunity. I actually got it. Which means two thins:

1) I have a full time job now and will no longer be harassed by dad about getting one, and

2) I am moving away from my hometown.

Where am I going? SEATTLE.

I have never ever been to Seattle and am a little worried about being able to find my way around, especially since I am extremely prone to losing my way. But, man, it's Seattle. And what's more is that it ISN'T Columbia.

I can't believe it and am really excited. Really really!

Now if only I could grab all of my Truman friends and get them in the same place again before I leave, life would be perfect.

Hope's Up

So whenever I apply to something, I always try to tell myself that I probably won't get it so that when or if I do not get something, I will not feel that down about it. In fact, if I do, I am pretty excited since I was preparing myself to not.

Well, I've done it again. I have applied for something else and I have inadvertently gotten my hopes up about achieving it. I will probably know soon if I will get accepted or not.

So, it looks like I've taken the advice of a friend given late on a Saturday night after a wedding reception sitting on a porch of a rental house while she was smoking and I was in my underwear.

We'll see if this is what I'm supposed to do with myself.

This Weekend

This weekend was another to add to the book of fun. David and Abbie got married, finally.

I went up there Friday for the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. I couldn't believe that I was actually in Abbie's hometown. Let's just say that the big news for all those gossips queens was Abbie's wedding. The town is that small.

Rehearsal went fine, except that Heath and I missed the memo that we had to dress up. Oops. The dinner afterward was also amazing. There was barbecue chicken, steak, corn on the cob, potato salad, and some other dish that I was completely confused by. And yes, lots of bread. I accidentally took some of the potato salad thinking it was actually hot potatoes or something and tried eating it. HUGE mistake. Me and vegetables don't get along and the salad was like arsenic to my palate. I survived, somehow, and just ate chicken (I will choose chicken over steak any day) and bread. I almost party fouled with that too when I flipped the plate vertically while trying to cut the chicken. I was somehow able to get everything back on the table without spilling it all over myself or Heath next to me.

After that, a large group of us went to the town's fair. We rode rides, made fun of carnies, had carnies make fun of us (Julie), watched mudding in trucks, and had some beers at the beer garden. It was actually a lot more fun than I thought it would be. But that could have been all the wine I had at dinner. I did have some wanker girl say I was hot, that was pretty trash-tastic.

Saturday was the big day. Heath and I met David for lunch and then just got ready for the wedding. Scott showed up while we were getting ready and we went to go get DQ with him as he had eaten all day. Eventually, we made our way to the church that their wedding was going to be held in. I would say that this church might hold around 200 people. David and Abbie invited close to 400. Now, with some weddings, people won't show, blah blah blah, but for this one, a crap ton of people came. We had to take chairs out of the back just to find room for everyone. Heath and I, as ushers, ended up standing for the entire wedding (which was a full mass as Abbie and David are both catholic).

However, at the reception afterwards, we got to sit at the cool people table and be served first, so that more than made up for it. All of the free jack and cokes I had probably went a long way to making up for that as well.

We got to party with a lot of our friends from college at the reception, which was so amazing. Amy, Julie, Colleen, Sara, Kayleigh, Jennifer, Scott, Heath, Justine, Tyler, Alan, and Mundle were all there. We had a blast showing these people how it's done Kville style.

After the reception cleared out, a large group of us went to a local bar. The place was dead. Apparently Saturday nights aren't big bar nights in that town. We stayed for a bit, had a few free drinks (can't remember how we pulled that off), played some shuffle board, and then went back to the hotel to pass out.

Sunday we met at Abbie's parent's house for a brunch before we all headed back. It felt so good to just relax and not have to dress up or feel like you are trying to impress people. We got to get a picture of all of us with David and Abbie which I personally would like a copy of. I honestly think that this past weekend will be the last time that some of us will ever see each other and I'd like to have something to remember it with.

Craziness

This is rediculous. Somehow I got caught up in some tangled webs of drama and I have no idea how it happened.

Here's what I do:

Whenever I go out, my intentions are to have fun. Period. That's it. If I am not having fun, I cancel and do something else (ask my friends, I would sneak away quite a bit only to turn up drunk somewhere else).

Somehow, last night I ended up being on the receiving end of some blunt statements. Haha. All I was doing was drinking with a friend at a club and somehow there was some moment where I pissed people off. They started taking digs at me over the phone to my friend. Uhh, hi pussies.

I don't know what was involved or the reason behind it. I am assuming they thought we were together and wanted my friend to be with them instead of me. Haha, lame.

Why's there always gotta be drama?

There it goes

A little piece of my heart is going back to NYC this week. Funny how things happen, how quickly they happen, and how meaningful things really can turn out to be.

See you around, lame.

Amazing

Today, after work, after I mowed my grandparents' yard, and while on the way to my running trail, I saw the most amazing thing:

Two kids riding their bikes hard up a steep hill.

You're probably like "Uhh, cool, Josh." But honestly, it was amazing. What do you think of when I say these two little boys both had buzzed haircuts, no shirt in sight, and matching jean shorts? If you're like me and you hear that description, you are probably going to be picturing two little fellas who are almost identical. But now add in this last little bit. One was Caucasian and the other was African American.

Now, ideally, we should be able to say I saw two kids riding their bikes today and race shouldn't have to be a descriptive factor. However, it is definitely true that people will use race as a color significance when describing people of other origins. As an example, I will use myself. My dad mentioned that some kids were playing ball up the street outside of the Frankensmitchein's home. In my head, I have a mental picture of a bunch of white kids playing street ball, like we used to do. Is this racism? Am I being racist by only thinking about white kids? I think I am, although I would consider myself not racist and not even slightly prejudiced. A lot of growing up, experiencing, and working away from some of the family values were involved with helping me accomplish being a better person and I am so grateful for that. However, in this example, I would call myself being racist.

When I saw these two kids, I was extremely happy. They were biking, they were outside, the weather was amazing, they were having fun, and ethnicity wasn't an issue. Probably wasn't even something they had ever considered. My neighborhood has always been pretty diverse, much to the chagrinof some members of my family and other neighbors, but the level of diversity is skewing towards one side. In my opinion, this is fine. It's all good. Some others, however, do not like it all.

What I wish is that we could be like those kids. I wish we didn't notice differences or anything "abnormal" about other people. I wish everything was just easy-going and fun, that racism, prejudice, and discrimination didn't exist. I am reminded of a line in the movie Alexander where the hero says something along the lines of "what surprises me the most is your contempt for a world much older than ours" to his gathered war leaders in a heated argument. I used that and twisted it to mean "what makes you better than anyone else?" and I try to live by that. Yeah, I've been told I am conceited or stuck-up before, but those people who have said that don't know me, that's for sure. I even used that line rather vigorously during many "hush-hush" moments that I absolutely hated about being in a fraternity.

I want to be like those kids, so I try to be.

I think it was Mahatma Gandhi who said, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

A Skunk is a Skunk...

...even if it is just a baby.

Yesterday, after work I went running. Down the normal trail I use while back where I'm from and when I turned the corner under a bridge, I saw something that made me skid to an immediate halt.

There, directly in the middle of the trail was a skunk.

It was like any skunk in that it was black with two light colored stripes down its back. I wouldn't say the stripes were white, like they are in cartoons, but more of a dirty yellow-ish white. It had its back arched and tail straight up in the air. My first thought was shit, "I'm going to get sprayed." The skunk then calmed down and went back to gnawing on what looked like (and I later verified to be true) a dried-up dead frog.

Then, I realized that this was just a baby skunk. Small, very small, I would say only six inches including its tail. I turned off my ipod and looked around. I wasn't worried about the baby anymore, no not at all, I was worried about the baby's mommy. Surely something this young would still be attached to its mother. So, I scanned the nearby brush but couldn't see anything. I thought I could hear some movement in some dense bushes near the bridge, but I couldn't see anything and definitely didn't want to go looking, especially if that movement was the mom hiding from me. I hear tomato juice is the only way to get rid of skunk stink, but I wasn't willing to test that old wives's tale.

I tossed some sticks at the baby to try and scare it off the trail, but they didn't seem to phase it one bit. Eventually, the baby skunk started wobbling away farther under the bridge. It finally made its way to the side of a hill that led directly down into a creek.

I will be honest in admitting that for a second, all I wanted to do was kick the skunk into the creek to see what would happen.

Instead, I decided to watch it. I crept past the skunk to the other side of the bridge. Some man rode by on his bike and I pointed out the skunk to him. He just said "wow" and continued on his way. After the man was gone, the baby skunk crawled back onto the trail. I could faintly hear it squeaking. Its squeak isn't like a normal squeak, it's deeper or raspier somehow.

I scraped my foot along the loose sand on the trail thinking to scare it and the baby instead started wobbling towards the sound I was making.

At first, I thought the damn thing was attacking me so I panicked, and jumped away. But then I realized that it was actually following me. Or, more specifically, following the sound I was making. Clearly the baby skunk had no idea that it was following a human, something it should be trying to avoid or spraying at.

So, I played with it for a bit. Leading it on little trips around and under the bridge multiple times. It just kept on squeaking and shuffling after me the entire time. Sometimes it would speed up until it was within a certain distance of me and then just follow along, but only if I kept scraping my shoes along the trail. I am assuming that its eyesight is pretty poor when it's young and that its most important senses are its abilities to hear and smell.

Eventually, I realized that I couldn't keep doing this. I knew that I couldn't keep the skunk, because after all, a skunk is a skunk, even if it is just a baby. So, I stopped making my scraping noise and the baby skunk just stopped behind me and kept squeaking and turning around in circles.

My heart hurt when I realized I was abandoning it. This little baby skunk was helpless out here. People walk this trail all the time with their dogs, one of them could easily attack it. I've even seen cats on this trail before, one even right at this same bridge. But there was nothing I could do, a skunk is a skunk, even if it is a baby.

The only thing I could think of was to hide it. So I led it into the brush near the creek and crept away. I kept moving down the trail while watching this little bundle of fur move deeper into the greenery until I was around the corner and the baby skunk, the dead frog, the bridge, and the creek were all out of my direct line of sight.

I don't know the significance of this ending, but it felt right to include it for some reason: When I couldn't see the baby skunk anymore, I ran. I ran all the way back to the parking lot and my truck and I drove home.