The real world is upon us. What better way to get things going than a roadtrip? T-minus 2 hours. I think.

A few pointers on making some impromptu fireworks:
**note** I remove myself from any responsibility for related mishaps. Don't try this at home. Or at work. Or at school. Only at the beach. Try it at your own risk!
**note** You have to be a little crazy to do this. Sane people shouldn't even consider it.

1) build a fire, preferably at the beach in a bonfire pit
2) produce a nice cold carbonated beverage in a sealed aluminum soda can
3) insert said beverage into the fire
4) wait
5) enjoy!

A few modifications for advanced pyromaniacs:

1) make sure the fire is raging
2) insert the beverage into the center of the fire, near the bottom
3) hint: pressure is released from the top of the can (the weakest part). Think of jet propulsion. This can be a controlled, directional exertion of energy, namely the soda exiting the can from the end where the top used to be. The momentum of soda is opposite the momentum of the can....
4) don't be discouraged if your hear hissing (soda escaping the can slowly). Pressure can build better with more air space in the can
5) important: move all your belongings at least 10 feet away from your fire. 15 feet is even better.

Yes, we pulled it off. Who? My friends from high school and I. Sprite can directly to the center of a rolling inferno. Upside down. One amateur tried it by placing the can on top of the fire (we had stacked several pallets on the fire). These resulted in little pops. Nothing to rave about. Being a veteran of bonfire pyrotechnics, I manuevered a sprite can right to the center. People scoffed at the hissing, telling me it didn't work. A few minutes later...

BOOM

It was like the sound you make when you jump on an inflated juice box. I was standing within 10 feet of the fire and had to duck the embers that flew everywhere. Everywhere. The flames rose maybe 10 feet in the air and little red specks flew all over the place. Our stuff was still littered about near the fire pit, so we had to go around extinguishing the embers. My towel almost got burned. One the the girls (Zerlene) had a sweater laying on the ground. She put in on later only to find two quarter-sized holes burned right through the front of it. Sorry Zerlene! My roommate Martin was to the side of the blast as it happened. He was okay, but got soda in his hair and had some light burns on his skin. I had soda in my hair too. When I went to my friend's birthday surprise, I looked in the mirror and it looked like I had black freckles all over my face and my arms. Luckily, no of the embers burned me, but they turned to ash on my skin. We even found the can, a good 5 feet from the fire. It was buried under all that burning wood, so it really kicked out of there. It looked like the used shell from a shotgun, except it was charred black and the top looked like it was peeled backed like those fruit cans you would eat in elementary school. Man, I have to post some pictures. My friend almost got it on camera, but he fumbled it around while he was dodging flaming embers. This ranks as my most vivid bonfire memory. I can't wait to try a six pack. Maybe it'll actually put out the fire...

I've been out of the house for almost 12 hours... 6pm till now. Bonfire with high school friends until 10:30, surprise birthday party for Eileen until 1:30, then going away party/chill thing for Maricris. It was mad fun. Maybe I'll write about it tomorrow. Or later today. Once I wake up.

I sing in honor of Your love
Even in Your sleep You save us
In Your slumber do we pray
That no matter how we stray away
Forever we will stay
Within in Your love
I sing in honor of Your love
I sing in praises of Your good Father up above...

There are so many signs of change everywhere.

A gallon of milk in the fridge. Labeled.
Going away parties.
Rental applications sitting on the table.
Roommate talks.
Transitional retreat.
The "younger generation" is already almost 21.
Emptied out apartments.
People blogging from home.

And here I am. Sitting at home. I get the feeling I'm being left behind.

I had a scary little incident last night. My computer was running hella slow since it's been running nonstop for the last week or so. I restarted it and went to go brush my teeth. I came back and the monitor read (in DOS):

No Operating System Found

Oh hell no. Oh hell no. I did not just get a virus or something. Freaking Kazaa. Freaking stupid mother humping #@(%**!!! CTRL+ALT+DEL...

No Operating System Found

Sh*t... All my mp3s are gone. All 2500 mp3s. More than 11 gigs worth. All renamed and organized too. All my digital pictures and the pictures I've been saving from photo.net. That's 1500+ pictures. And my saved games. And my old documents. And my emails. Gone. CTRL+ALT+DEL...

No Operating System Found

Son of a mother. I went through the system setup to see if my computer was still recognizing the hard drive. So I restarted again and I heard the CD-ROM drive kick it. Oh, yea. You can boot from a CD. I took the damn CD out. CTRL+ALT+DEL...

No Operating System Found

What the hell? Stupid ass *@#%*!!! Wait... there's still that sound... can't be a floppy... I don't even have any floppies... wait... it is a floppy. I took the stupid thing out. CTRL+ALT+DEL...

Man, you don't know how comforting that Windows start up screen was. Usually I hate seeing it because I'm waiting for my computer to restart. I remember I found the floppy while I was cleaning my room and I put it in the floppy drive to check it, but I never got around to it. And since the floppy wasn't formatted, it didn't go to the normal

Non-system Disk Error
Abort, Retry, Fail?
Press any key to contine

Damn unformatted disks. What did I learn from all this? Floppy disks suck! And I should probably start archiving my stuff. That's going to take a while. I have enough mp3s to fill more than 16 CDs. I think that all of this happening right before I went to bed didn't help either. Oh well.

Something got to me today. My roommates have decided to stop splitting up the groceries like we normally do, so everyone has to buy their own food. It made me think... it's almost like every man for himself. I really don't like situations like that. Sure, someone's not going to like all the food that's bought, but everyone's just about broke. It's not the time to be picky, especially when splitting the food costs saves a lot of money. Instead of spending 5 bucks on a meal for yourself, 10 bucks can make 6 meals. It all seems a little wasteful to me. Maybe not wasteful per se, but uneconomical. Like John Nash's theory (remember A Beautiful Mind) that for a group of people to prosper in coexistence, each must do what is best for him and the group. I don't think anybody will save anything if we end up all buying the same crap, which is probably what's going to happen. I have the mentality that things are better shared; what's mine is yours. It's not even that expensive for everybody... 20 bucks at most for almost two weeks of a stocked fridge and freeze, plus other stuff in the pantry. That's guaranteed five meals out of that two weeks. It's probably more like six or seven or eight. If you spend that 20 bucks on yourself, you might be lucky to pay for four of those meals, and that's not including all the little things that keep your from getting sick of eating the same food all the time. Like condiments. Rice. Marinades. Drinks. Vegetables. So far, my roommates have been pretty much on the Atkins diet (all protein, no carbs), though not voluntarily. That's what happens when you have to buy your own food. You get cheap. And you don't eat well. And maybe they don't care. But I think having roommates is an opportunity for more than just saving on rent. I don't want to feel like I'm just sleeping and eating here.

We still have one month+ here. I've already cleaned the living room, kitchen, entryway, and bathroom. Only the dining room, hallway, and garage left. I wonder if I'm the only one who gives a damn how the rest of our time in this house goes. I hope not. I wouldn't be able to take it....

I had an interesting dream this morning. I would have remembered a lot more details, but blogger was still updating to their new format when I wanted to write about my dream. So here goes.

I was in a huge factory. I don't know what they were making in that factory, or even why I was in there, besides the fact that I was trying to get out of there. And people were chasing me all over the place. Some big dudes almost grabbed me, so I ran back and through a bunch of workers. I think I was in the middle east, because everyone looked Arabic. I kept dodging the guys trying to catch me. I had something they wanted I guess. I found a nice room that was connected to the factory somehow and I tried to hide there, but I guess they saw me or something because I ran out of the room and back in to the factory. I found this one guy who looked like the keymaker in the Matrix Reloaded and he told me how to get out. The directions were kind of confusing, but I just ran out into a long hallway which led to an traditional looking Arabic village. It was dark outside, but the next thing I knew, I was running around in some modern Arabic city in the middle of the day. Maybe in the morning. I was running for a while, past industrial areas and semis on the roads. I stopped because I had run far enough, and I had the cell phone of the main guy who was chasing me. I took it and buried it in the dirt because it had a tracking device and I wanted to fool him by making him think I had stopped. I ran away... and then somebody tapped my shoulder and turned on my stereo. Oh, that was Martin, interrupting my dream. Damn. My heart was pounding from all that running.

I'm on the verge...

of getting my sh*t (literally) straight
of breaking old habits
of growing into my skin
of losing it
of finding some peace
of getting the best gas mileage in my car for a while now
of finding my lost eyeglass cleaning solution
of deciding to change my blog layout again
of cleaning the damn bathroom after 5 months
of choosing to go out of my way more often
of figuring out how I tick
of being in shape
of rejecting the easy way out
of going to bed after 4am for the fourth time in a row
of taking a stand
of waking from my delusions

I'm on the verge...
of stepping into oblivion

Don't catch me yet. I'm still not falling.

Eleven days to cover. This will be interesting.

It's been an interesting journey or sorts this past week and a half. I've been doing a lot of thinking, and I've started pushing off. Well, you need something to push off of. Something heavy preferably. It wasn't my intention to have some much stuff to push off of, but I'm sure it helps. I decided to move in a new direction. I'm tired of being so careless with things around me. So I started to clean my room. For the past five days, the majority of my day has gone to laundry (my whole closet plus more), opening literally hundreds of unopened letters, recycling the piles of magazine lying around the house, vacuuming the living room and entryway, cleaning and maintaining the kitchen (not an easy task in this house), organizing my ever growing glut of photos, throwing away incomprehensible notes taken half awake in class (while saving the halfway useful notes), and general stuff around the house. That adds up to maybe 30 hours of cleaning. About 6 hours each day, usually pretty long into the night too. The past two days, I had to pry myself away from my room to eat. I'm a cleaning machine.

Why am I doing all this, when I'm expecting to move in about a month anyway? I think I realized that I've been letting things fall apart and deteriorate around me for so long that I've just left a huge mess wherever I go. My laundry, my room, my house, my academics, my finances, my relationships. It's getting out of hand. I need to put some of my energy towards something before I don't have any energy left. And so I've made myself busy for the last few days, trying to do what's been long overdue. Every so often today, I'd find old letters from freshman year that were still unopened. Eventually, everything will be sorted out though. It's just a matter of time. I'd say maybe 5 more days. It's really that messy and disorganized.

After my room is finally clean, I need a job. And a place to live next year. Whatever Martin, Debbie, and I had planned for next year isn't going to work out. I've started to think that it's for the best. It goes along with my current mentality, that if I don't change something now, I'm not going to like where I'm at down the line. I can feel it, like there's nobody to share responsibility for anything I do anymore. It's a little discomforting, but I know it has to happen. Nothing happens without action, something which I've been having trouble implementing into my own life. I've got plenty of reason to now, with PUSO board, trying to get into med school, being broke, and not having a place to live next year. It's all so tedious now, but I think the payoffs will be worth it. You have to start somewhere. If that means cleaning my room, then I'm already on my way. As long as I do it right. There a real difference between being organized than just tidy. The parallels run deep. You can't have too many loose ends hanging around... the attention to detail... finding the necessary motivation... learning how to maintain something. It's all part of the growing process. And though growing pains are inherent to growth, I'm no longer afraid to endure that pain.

I've started to realize little by little that people will do what they want, regardless of what you might tell them... or show them. I'm almost scared that I'm getting caught up in all of it, but in trying to separate myself from things I don't like, I end up separating myself from people. It's hard to find that balance, where you don't like what a person believes, or does, or even says, yet you don't feel like imposing your beliefs on them. Part of that stems from the lack of connection I have with some people, but sometimes it's more than that. How do you ask a good friend "What the hell are you doing?" That's not my thing. I know how it feels to the receiving end of that. Nobody likes to be told what they're doing isn't right. Or thinking. Or saying. When does concern become judgement? I wish someone could tell me all the times I do things I don't need to be doing... things which don't benefit myself or anyone around me... these are sensitive issues. I can't say I'm above everything I don't like, but I'm working on it. The first step is understanding what the problem is. Just because it's not hurting anyone doesn't mean there aren't better ways to use your time... or your talents. Then again, I could just be wrong about everything.

My roommates have been hinting that I've been a little antisocial lately, but I think there's a antisocial vibe running through this house. There's too much being left unsaid and undone. I wish it wasn't like pulling teeth to find something to talk about or do, but I'm finding myself less and less interested in what goes on here. It's hard to have a relationship with people you don't relate to.