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Waking up with a hangover has got to be the most appropriate way to welcome the anniversary of ones birth. This past Wednesday morning was such a morning, as it took me a few minutes longer than it should have to remember that I was now 24. After showering and dressing in one of the free t-shirts given to us the previous night by our favorite Mexican restaurant while we consumed multiple Margaritas, I sat down to eat a healthy breakfast of birthday cookies and think about what 23 brought me.

I never used to worry about my age. It was all relative to me, seeing as how one day I’d hang out with kids three or four years older and the next I might stay inside all day long, playing with Legos and Micro Machines while watching cartoons. The thought of “getting old” wasn’t something that I feared nor anticipated – it was just something I accepted to expect, like the changing of the seasons or the Mariners sucking. People would always ask if I felt old on my birthday and I always thought it silly to answer yes, especially when the questioner was 40 years my senior. I was baffled as to how somebody could actually feel old when they were still in their teens or twenties.

And then my perception began to change for the worse. Somewhere along the way, I started caring about what others my age were doing and comparing myself to them. Well, not quite others my current age, but instead what those older than me had done when they were my age. It’s easy to look at somebody like Condi Rice, with her old-lady scowl that almost rivals Laura Bush for the “Scariest Face” award, and think of how you might like to be Secretary of State someday when you’re “older.” It’s easy to see that day far off in the distance, though, a brief sparkle on the horizon that you don’t give much thought too since it’s “so far away.” And then you read in TIME that she earned tenure at Stanford at age 26 and suddenly that sparkle turns into a mirage.

I remember the first time I read about Lincoln freeing the slaves. History is taught in such a black & white, cut & dry type way that most figures come off as not only perfect, but magical. As a child, your perception is simply that once there was slavery. Then Lincoln snapped his fingers and it was gone. Martin Luther King Jr. talked about his dream and then equal rights flowed forth. Washington woke up and was told he was our first President. Churchill said he’d never surrender and so Britain didn’t. We’re simply shown their end accomplishment and told how wonderful they are while rarely given a glimpse of the path they took to get there. We’re told that these are great men who did great things and that if we ever want to be mentioned in the same breath as them, then we too must do something great – eventually. For these accomplishments were done later in their lives, long after they had ceased to be little kids like you, so don’t worry. Now run along and enjoy recess.

Teachers leave out how at age 23, Lincoln was already serving in the Illinois Congress. Or that the Montgomery Bus Boycott was being led by a 26 year old Martin Luther King Jr. Or how the entire state and militia of Virginia was under the protection of a war hero named George Washington, at the ripe old age of 23.

I don’t know about you guys, but the biggest battle I’ve won to date has been getting Colton to put his socks in the dirty laundry every day. It was this realization that startled me into actually feeling old. How was I ever to accomplish anything as great as Lincoln or Dr. King later in life if I couldn’t even keep up with them in my early twenties?

I never expected anything in life to be handed to me for free. In fact, I hate handouts of any kind. I’ve always felt that if I can’t earn something, I don’t deserve it.

But I always expected to be given the opportunity for everything, which is an even worse illusion to have on life.

Nothing will be given to you for free, not even opportunities. I may never free an entire race from brutal oppression or boldly lead my nation through the jaws of defeat, but I certainly will never do those things if I just sit around and wait for the opportunity to come calling. As long as I never forgot that, never accepted what I had as being the best it could be, then I could keep myself from sliding into that group of people who seem to accept and embrace mediocrity. And it was with that epiphany that I finally started to feel young again.

I’m twenty fucking four years old. Do you not know how many opportunities lie before me, just waiting for me to seek them out and grasp onto for dear life? Lincoln had a law degree and a life expectancy of 35 years. I’ve got the Internet, modern medicine, and the ability to travel from New York to central Kazakhstan in 24 hours if I so please. The only thing we have in common is pure, blind luck.

So how could I possibly feel old?

I want to make sure some of my friends know one important fact:

Just because you’re 23 and out of college, that doesn’t mean you have to propose to your girlfriend. You know, you can try living together while dating first or maybe waiting for a year or two if you want. There’s no law requiring you get married once you’ve been handed a degree or gotten an entry level job at the nearby Kramerica Industries factory. Just because you’re old drinking buddy decided to propose to his lady doesn’t mean you have to as well. It’s not a race, folks.

I understand we grew up in the South where tradition is king, but Christ. I couldn’t see myself getting married right now any more than I could see a small monkey crawling out of my ass tomorrow. In fact, I’d have an easier time picturing the latter. If I ask another one of my friends why they’re getting married and their response is, “Uh…isn’t that like what we’re supposed to do now?”, I may just go postal.

When are people going to stop doing things simply because they think it’s what they’re supposed to do?

I’ve never been one for New Year’s Resolutions. The thought of making a weak ass “promise” to myself every year only to fail a week later isn’t as appealing to me as it may be to others. But for the life of me, I can’t shake the feeling that 2007 is gonna be different for me somehow. Not so much “better” than this past years, but “different” in a sense I can’t quite explain. But I’ll delve into that whole can of worms sometime later. I will, however, say I feel rejuvenated after spending the past year in Virginia with my family. I’m ready to challenge myself – physically, mentally, creatively, and, uh, Shyzerly?

Thus, the new norm here at Shyzer is going to shift slightly. First, comments will be turned on much more often than not, as has been the case over the past two weeks. But more importantly, you’ll be able to comment on something new every day. That’s right, I’m going to see how long I can last posting something new here at least once a day. If that can’t pump some life back into this site, as well as challenge me somewhat creatively, I don’t know what can. If anything, this’ll be the perfect way to teach myself how to write succinctly.

I figured I’d wait until at least a week into the new year before announcing this, though – for reasons I’m sure you can quickly grasp. Oh, and for the record, this counts as today’s post. 8 down, 357 to go.

As you all know by now, Steve Irwin died yesterday off the coast of Australia while diving with stingrays. I think I first heard it on NPR and by the time I got to my computer, it was all over the web. CNN.com had it as their lead story for at least half the day, as fif MSNBC and Fox. Even ESPN.com (?!) had it on their main page and many of the local / national news stations didn’t just save the news for the backend of their broadcasts like they do with other celebrity deaths, but instead ran it earlier in the broadcast.

And while it’s sad news, I’m surprised it’s such big news.

I always thought people saw him more as a gimmick than anything else. A source of mild entertainment as they watched from the comfort of their home as he wrestled a croc or stabbed at a snake. As we saw him more on TV, we got used to seeing him around, but there really wasn’t anything beyond that. He simply was that crazy guy from Australia that we all liked listening to partially because of his cool accent and partially because he did things nobody else would do. His TV shows here in the states did moderately well in terms of ratings and his movie didn’t really set any records in terms of earnings. What I’m trying to say here is that while a celebrity, he was a D-list celebrity at best and somebody who you didn’t notice when you went a few months without seeing him on TV.

And yet I can remember when other, arguably “bigger” celebrities died recently and their deaths didn’t get near as much attention as Irwin’s has. I’m not saying it’s not sad he died, but I’m just left wondering how much of these condolences are real and how much are from the “ex-high school” crowd.

I guess I should explain the “ex-high school” crowd. One of my major pet peeves is when people display false emotion. I don’t care what emotion it is, I don’t care what the setting is, if the emotions you’re displaying aren’t real and are simply what you think they should be, then you’ve joined the crowd. In fact, there’s no group worse at this false emotion than all the people you used to go to high school with, which is where the name comes from. You know exactly who I’m talking about – say you’re in a bar and you spot somebody across the room who you went to high school with. As soon as they see you, they come running up and pretend y’all were best friends. They as how you’ve been and want to hear your whole life story just as long as you can fit it into 10 seconds. Then they cut you off, brag about their latest job or kid, and then make some over the top gesture about how you two need to get together and “catch” up sometime.

No, we don’t. We didn’t talk in high school. We don’t talk now. There’s a reason I didn’t hang out with you before and I bet it has something to do with your crappy personality that you so eloquently just put on display for everyone within earshot. Don’t patronize me with this false sense of past brotherhood, as if we were close only to have drifted apart over the years. That’s not how it was, trust me, I’m a history major. Sure, come on over and chat if you want, but don’t insult my memory or my intelligence.

Some people do this far too often in their lives and it only gets worse when they talk to you about somebody who isn’t around or who might even be dead. They conjure these memories out of thin air, lamenting over what they lost and how wonderful that person was. They pretend the person was a saint and that they could do nothing wrong and I just don’t understand how or why people do it. Speaking nothing but good and completely false things about a person after they’ve died helps not their memory or legacy, but instead tarnishes and insults it. Speak the truth, no matter how little the good was.

When I die, I want people to remember and speak of me as for who I really was; warts, faults, and everything else. Don’t make me out to be my generation’s Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. I simply want to be remembered and credited with whatever I managed to accomplish, no matter how little or great. And I think other people deserve just the same treatment.

And thus, I hope that the “ex-high school” crowd didn’t highjack the Steve Irwin memorial today. That said, however, if all the condolences that people expressed were completely real and heartfelt, then so be it. You earned them, mate.

There are times I consider shutting down Shyzer if for no other reason than it’s no longer unique. I’ve talked about this before, but back when I started Shyzer, there were only a handful of sites like it out there. In fact, there were only around 100,000 total and in Internet terms, that’s minuscule, microscopic.

But the problem with blogs is that they evolved and spread. In April 2005, reports came out that 40,000 new blogs were popping up a day. Reports this month have that number in the neighborhood of 80,000.

Eighty Thousand New Blogs.

A Day.

When The Real World first aired, it was an instant success. Same goes for Survivor. The reason for this is simple: people were intrigued by the front row voyeuristic view they were given, found it refreshing in a sort of queer way, and wanted more. And more they got. Now you can turn on the television and find a hundred knockoffs that are so lacking in quality, it’s not even remotely funny. Well blogs are no different. The blogs that were hugely popular when I first discovered the trend offered a raw and clear view into the author’s life. There were no filters on what the authors published and we got to see it all; the good, the bad, and the ugly that occurs in all our lives but which few of us ever share with others. It was the next evolution of reality TV. No longer were the stations and producers deciding what we at home got to see. People could now open up their lives for anybody and everybody to peer into and the most successful ones were those that offered the most unrefined and uncensored vision possible.

But as always, people sitting at home thought to themselves, “Pfft, I could do a much better version of this.” With reality TV, that meant they had to compete against thousands of others and get cast on the show. With blogs, that meant all they had to do was create a free account and start posting.

And for every worthwhile blog that has cropped up each day due to all the attention CNN and Fox News have given bloggers in the past year or two, 79,999 horrible ones featuring high school kids giving bad movie reviews or some pissed off patriot talking about how we need to support President Bush suddenly appear on the Internet. I had hoped blogging would be a flavor of the month with the general public, like pogs or those slap bracelets people always had in middle school. God we looked retarded walking around with those on our wrists. But instead, it looks like blogging’s here to stay with every soccer mom and NASCAR car dad out there, along with those retarded terms the news media like to make up, like soccer mom and NASCAR dad.

All this does is dilute the pool even more. As a reader, I’m sure you know how hard it is to find a decent blog nowadays. Most of my all-time favorite blogs are still the ones I unearthed long before Shyzer was ever conceived. But 2005 saw the closings of the last holdouts of that generation, most notably Doc from Doctor Grosz. And with that said, given my odds, I feel confidant in saying I’d put Shyzer up against any other random blog out there – that is, whenever I have it running on all cylinders. I don’t try to be perfect in everything, but I most certainly strive for perfection in anything I do happen to partake in. If I’m going to spend my time on something, I’ll be damned if the final output isn’t as close to perfect as humanly possible.

I enjoy the uniqueness and randomness of my personality. Given the option of taking two roads, I most certainly will always select the one less traveled. Not because of some idealistic, romanticized view I hold on life, but simply for the selfish reason that I hate being like everybody else. Remember, this is the guy who as a kid, pulled out a map and found the city farthest away from his hometown when he decided he needed to pick a baseball team to root for.

For what’s the point of screaming when everybody around you is screaming the exact same thing?

That said, I hate admitting to myself that Shyzer has slipped in terms of quality lately. I’m lucky if I have this baby operating like I do with a rough hangover, much less running to the standard I expect from myself. Couple that with the unnecessary stress of updating every few days and the fact that I’m partaking in an art form that everybody else seems to be enjoying, and you can see why the idea of closing shop seems appealing at times.

And yet I can’t bring myself to do it. This isn’t just some website to me. I truly view Shyzer as an extension of myself, for better or worse. What I want is for Shyzer to regain some of its uniqueness that it once held and to start properly reflecting some of my personality. I don’t want half of the people I know operating sites similar to it and since I know I can’t go back in time and prevent blogs from becoming a cultural phenomenon, I’m left with two choices. On one hand, I could take down all my material and replace everything with a simple splash page like most people who feel the way I do have done…

Or, I could force Shyzer to evolve. I was one step ahead of the curve last time, so why not do it again? Plus, if everybody before me is closing shop, wouldn’t I be contradicting my own philosophy by following suit and turning off the lights as well?

I think this whole post best exemplifies how Shyzer is indeed an extension of myself, for if you think things are a little weird around here, you should take a guided tour through my head. I’ve always been a person who simply does what feels right, not what he thinks he should do next. In times past, I’ve usually listened to my gut and while it’s been known to play tricks on me every now and then, things have always turned out right in the end. See: Mariners, Seattle. Girlfriends, past. Australia, best few months of my life spent in, etc. Yet for the first time in my entire life, nothing feels right and yet nothing feels wrong. I can’t seem to find a clear frequency to my gut and instead all I’m picking up is static. I don’t know what to do next with my life and frankly, it pisses me off far more than it scares me. Fuck not knowing what direction to take Shyzer in, I don’t even know what fucking direction I want my life to travel for the next few years.

Everything I think about doing next sounds at the same time great and horrible. I’m 23 years old and as conceited and naive as it sounds, I still know and believe that I can do something great in my lifetime. I don’t think I’m destined to do something specific, that some higher being put me here just so I could follow a path that was laid for me. But I do feel with every fiber of my being that I have the potential to do and be something great, that greatness is within my grasp if only I discover the path to it before it becomes overgrown with weeds. That’s what I worry about most, missing or ignoring my one true chance at greatness. I’ll never be able to settle on having a “regular” life. If a time traveler from the future came to me right now and told me that in 50 years, I’d be retiring as the district manager of some regional office, I think I’d lose my will to live right then and there. I’ve never been able to stomach the thought of simply becoming a small cog in the machine of life, becoming somebody who will be mourned for a few years after his death and then simply forgotten, becoming just like everybody else. Becoming Normal. Becoming Average. Come Hell or high water, I’m going to find a way to make a difference and achieve something, even if it destroys me and sends me to an early grave. And that, my friends, is something I give my word to.

To make matters worse is that despite having more friends than I’ve ever had in my entire life and living at home with a family that absolutely adores me, I feel more alone than I’ve ever felt before in my entire life. I no longer have that one deep and close friendship to rely on like I used to have with a few certain people and for the first time in my life, I’m staring down the barrel of uncertainty utterly and completely alone, with no one standing next to me who entirely and fully understand me. But like they say…well, my knowledge of quotes and proverbs has picked a wonderful time to fail me, but hopefully there’s a saying or two out there that would make me feel better.

I don’t know if you can tell from the way I act on the Internet, but I’m an extremely private person in real life. I don’t like talking about myself or my thoughts or plans or dreams or whatever with most people. Sure, I’m goofy as hell, but rarely in a serious way and more in a comedic relief type manner. Whenever things turn serious, I tighten up and retreat into my head. And that’s where Shyzer’s importance in my life came in. It was an outlet for me to come and say what I thought and be myself and do my thing. And yet, as time has gone on, the occasion of censoring myself has grown more and more frequent and the main cause for this has been due to the fact that I know who is reading Shyzer. I know people don’t want to read some cookie cutter crap that’s censored and refined and even if that’s what they want, I wouldn’t write it since it’s boring as hell to do so. I want to be as candid as possible, but there’s certainly more I wish I could say on here. Fuck, I’ll be honest here. In the past three and a half months alone, I’ve probably stopped myself 20 times from posting something in particular. “Shit, this is totally gonna piss off so and so,” or “Oh fuck, if she reads this, she’ll think I’m a fucking psycho,” or “Dear Christ, it will take all of 10 minutes for my phone to start ringing if I hit the Publish button.” I don’t enjoy defending myself or my actions. I’ve never subscribed to the belief that I should have explain myself to people, partially due to the fact that I don’t like confrontation and partially due to the fact that most people just wouldn’t understand.

I have nobody to blame but myself for getting all my friends and family into reading Shyzer and even as I type this, I hope everybody who reads Shyzer continues to do so. For years now, I’ve been known to pimp Shyzer on a daily basis and the last thing I want to do is say, “Hey you! Yeah, even though we’ve known each other for 15 years and you’ve been reading Shyzer for months now, fuck off so I can have the liberty to say whatever I want.” I promise you, that’s not what I want, at all. As a writer, you want as many people as possible to read what you have to say, even if it might ruffle a few feathers or force a family member or two to disown me.

But even more importantly, I’m going to stop writing what I think people might want to read and start writing what I want to write. If you find the new Shyzer too boring or too one-dimensional (ie, only shit I’m interested in), sorry mates. Like I’ve already said, this is an extension of me, not y’all, and I’m going to try my best to make posting a pleasurable experience for me once again compared to the chore I currently view it as.

So here’s the deal. In a few days, I’m going to open Shyzer’s doors again and try something out. The comments will be turned off, the tagboard will be taken down, and I’m not going to track my stats or see who and how many people are reading what. I desire no feedback on what I write here. If you want to read Shyzer, that’s great and if you don’t, no worries. I am still trying to find my true calling and while this may seem like I’m blaming my lack of vision and initiative on Clay or Fellner reading Shyzer, that’s not it at all. In the words of Henry David Thoreau, I’m merely trying to “simplify, simplify, simplify.” Perhaps if I clean things up and clear my head here on Shyzer, I’ll be able to do the same thing in real life.

And if that fails, at least I’ll have tried something, because what I’m doing not just ain’t working and I can already hear my window slowly closing.

I was told it was times like these that we learn to live again. So why do I feel like I’ve been lied to?

Next round of the Religion Tournament will be uploaded when I wake up. Next version of Shyzer will be uploaded whenever I feel like it.

When I woke up this morning around 0200 (yes, woke up. Don’t even begin to ask how f-ed up my sleeping patterns are right now), I decided to stay in bed and watch Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. And all I can say is, Wow.

I can see why this movie is ranked #35 over on IMDB. It’s one of those movies which is so good, you start breaking words apart simply so you can lengthen the time you spend praising it. For instance, when the movie ended, I didn’t just say out loud to Koral and Casper, “That was beautiful,” oh no, I broke it down into syllables. “That…..was….beau-ti-ful.” It’s basically Memento with a love story and I honestly don’t even think The Birthday Syndrome had anything to do with how awesome I thought the move was.

I’m a strong believer in The Birthday Syndrome. For those unenlightened souls out there who have yet to ever hear about the syndrome I made up in my head, it goes a little something like this: On your birthday, everything seems a little better than it really is. It’s almost like an extension of the childhood Stay Home From School Syndrome, where trashy soap operas and Price As Right episodes seem heavenly, simply because you appreciate the fact that you’re not sitting through math or science at that very moment. But The Birthday Syndrome extends to the entire day and goes far beyond the realm of daytime television. TBS unexplainably enhances your daily activities from morning till night. You’ll wake up feeling more refreshed, you’ll have an extra dose of energy throughout the day, and your pillow will feel softer when you finally plop your head down. The sugar in your birthday cake will taste sweeter, your rum & cokes will be, um, more rum & cokier, and suffice to say everything else will be more everything elseier.

So to all you people out there who bitch and whine about how old you are when your birthday comes around, stop wasting your only Birthday Syndrome of the year and enjoy it. And if that doesn’t work, go watch Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind and stop raining on my parade. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to watch a funnier episode of The Daily Show and eat some of that sickly sweet birthday cake upstairs.

In the span of 24 hours, I received eight – count em, EIGHT – comments about my children. Which is funny, because it’s been a while since I’ve gone through the process of having sex, then asking, “so…have you peed on that stick yet, honey?” before I finally, oh you know, HAD A KID!

I should be used to this by now. And then with Colton only being six, I naturally am assumed to be his father when it’s just the two of us out and about. But Julianne is nine. Clay is thirteen. This means that if Clay was my son, I would have had to have him when I was Julianne’s age. I don’t think my 4th grade days were THAT wild and crazy.

It started when I took Juls and Clay to the dentist. Two school helpers, two nurses and one doctor later, I knew we were going to be in for a long day. By the time we’d walked out of the dentist and into the mall, I’d given up on correcting people and just started playing along: “Huh, what? Oh, Clay? Yeah, he’s a great kid, thanks. I tell ya, I can’t wait for him to grow up and start making the big bucks though, because I want to retire and let him take care of me as soon as possible!” or “Your daughter is precious as well. My little Julianne over there is a sweetheart. You should see the adorable little bracelets she makes for me. She can’t cook or clean worth a damn, but I’ll beat it into her eventually.”

And this isn’t the only misguided assumption people make about me. Last week, my mom and I were mistaken for boyfriend-girlfriend far too many times and while that may be a huge compliment to her looking young and fresh, it raises far too many Freudian issues that I would just soon rather forget. But I think the real kicker came today. The kid’s babysitter, who has got to be in her 70s, called the school and when they called back, I picked up the phone and was greeted with, “Hello, is this Clay’s father? Well, your wife called earlier”… I mean, sure, who doesn’t like older women? I just prefer mine not be on Medicare yet.

But the other night made it all worthwhile. Juls came home begging me to take her and a friend to the local skating rink since her school was having a fund raiser for a few hours. I had plenty of work to do and was kind of tired, but I could tell she really wanted to go. She spent a few minutes picking out her clothes and packing her little purse and when we arrived, she paid and got her own skates. It was around this time that she finally told me she had no idea how to skate.

Her friends tried to teach her, but after 20 minutes I could tell this wasn’t going anywhere and when I walked over to her, I could tell she was discouraged and embarrassed and ready to leave. So I did the only thing I knew to do; I went and grabbed a pair of skates myself, laced up, and as soon as I stepped into the rink, the number of people who had no idea what they were doing doubled. I never learned to skate since the skating rink near where I grew up was a tad redneck and hillbillyish. (Although, now that I think about it, every skating rink I’ve ever set foot in has fallen into that category). Juls was still grabbing onto the side, so I pulled her out into the middle with me and for the next hour and a half we twirled around like idiots and fell down approximately every seven seconds. But the whole time, we had these giant grins on our faces and by the end, Juls was getting the hang of it.

As everybody was putting their skates away and getting their coats on, one of the moms sitting nearby came up to me and said:

Hey, I wish I’d had a dad like you while growing up. Mine would have just sat over there in the corner and shouted instructions to me until I started crying.

Ok, so I guess there are worse things than being mistaken for a dad.

I’m usually not one for making New Years resolutions or doing one of those whole Year In Review type posts. They’ve always seemed so trite to me since we’re marking a new calendar year every twelve months. It’s not like it’s some once in a lifetime type event. Plus, I know myself better then to proclaim to the world on January first that I’m going to go to the gym four times a week or cut back on my daily alcohol intake. It’s basically setting yourself up for unavoidable failure and I’ve always found life is a bit sweeter when you can eliminate as much unnecessary disappointment as possible. That being said, I figured what the hell and decided to take a look back on 2005 and what 2006 has to offer.

I hate making realistic plans. I use the term realistic plans because I’m all for daydreaming and imagining what I’d do if some unexpected event happened, such as a plague killing 99% of the population or being given the chance to make contact with a previously unknown race. Those I know will never happen and yet they are fun to think about. But try and get me to plan what I’m going to do for the next week, let alone year, and I cringe.

Plans never turn out like you plan them to. They always go awry, usually in the most unexpected way possible so that even had you planned for ever imaginable scenario, you’d still be amazed when you looked back and saw how far off course you’d gotten. Like the Chinese say, there are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is always the same. So there’s no need for specific plans, but instead spend your time trying to figure out what you want to ultimately accomplish. As long as you’ve got that in sight, everything else just seems to fall into place.

And yet I find that I make plans all the time. This time last year, I had a Master Plan. I knew what I wanted to do, I knew how I was going to do it, and nothing could stop me. And yet here I sit, 12 months later, amazed at how much I deviated from what I had in mind. My goals and desires completely shifted and I can’t help but wonder, come 2007, will I be thinking the same about what I have in mind today?

For starters, 2005 saw the collapse of my journal process, which to most people means absolutely nothing, but to me is monumental. In some aspects of my life, I am amazingly anal and I hate that fact with a passion. My journal and how I went about writing it every night was one of the biggest meticulous feats I went through every day. And then in February I found that I hadn’t written in it for a week. By June, I was a month behind; now, three months. I’m slowly going back and filling in the gaps, but the pure fact that I let it get to this point proves that maybe one day I’ll be able to break some of these habits of mine that I detest.

I’m sure people are sick of reading the word “Australia” on here, but when talking about 2005, there’s no way around it. Sure, I was only there for four months or so, but the impact it had on me was monumental. I almost feel as if I came home a different person and I honestly have no idea why. So many little things about me changed, for better or worse, and truth be told I’m still discovering some of the changes.

For instance, remember one of the first posts I made when I came back to the states talking about the things I’d give up to go back to Australia? Well, at the time, I said I would have ditched watching baseball in order to go back. Well, I’d say I’m one step beyond that now in the fact that I no longer live and die by the Mariners and Packers. Before, when Seattle or Green Bay were knocked out of the playoffs / didn’t even make it, I’d literally be in shitty mood for a good week or two. Now? Not so much. Sure, this is small and insignificant in the great realm of things, but for me, it’s simply strange to see the shift in myself. And there are hundreds more that I won’t even bother detailing here, but that happened all thanks to that island out in the middle of nowhere.

Then there’s the bloody obvious. My undergraduate years came to a completion in August. I still don’t know how I honestly feel about that. It’s not like school is over for me – grad school will come eventually, followed by another few years after that I’m sure. But for now, I’m not attending classes regularly for the first time in my life since I used to watch Sesame Street daily. At dinner tonight, I looked at Juls and Clay and then started laughing when I realized they had school tomorrow. Me? I get to sit around and write all day. This is most certainly the life.

And speaking of sitting around all day, I’ve been here in Virginia for a little over four months as well. It’s one of those times where you don’t realize something until you sit down and add it up and then scrunch your face all tight and go, “Huh? Have I really been here that long? Damn….”

And how could I forget last January? For the Internet junkie that I am, it’s a miracle it took me so long before finally meeting somebody like Andy. I say that because before meeting him, I’d only known him on-line, hence making him the first person I’d ever met having previously known them only via the Internet. I’ve just always thought that was kinda cool.

So what the hell should I expect from 2006? Well, some more time in Virginia for starters, which is actually a good thing. I surprise the hell out of myself when I say I’m loving it up here. I just never thought I’d enjoy living at home again, but what with the kids keeping me young and laughing at things with my mom, I find the days up here seem to just fly by. But what else might go down this year?

Who the hell knows. And that’s the beauty of it – I’ve got no idea what might happen this year and I’d be retarded if I tried to predict it. Just as long as I stay happy and accomplish some of these goals I’ve written down over the past few months, I’ll be satisfied. And with that said, I’m off to work on one of them. Enjoy 2006 folks.

Anybody who’s spent time around me and my family know we are a bit crazy. We don’t do anything normally. We try and stay contained within our own walls if at all possible, not because we are afraid of pissing off and annoying other, more civilized people, but because trying to get all of us to a certain destination is like troop movements. If we’re supposed to be someplace at noon and we show up at 2, I’m actually proud of us.

That being said, when we were trying to fly down to South Carolina for Thanksgiving, my mom was working and Jeff was going to Oklahoma and my dad was, well, in South Carolina, which meant that I was Supreme Commander of Allied Goob Siblings for the day. And trust me, after being stranded in one of the busiest airport in the world on the busiest traveling day of the year for a few hours, it wasn’t a fun job.

I finally found a few open seats and promptly parked the traveling circus in the fixed location while I went to see if I could find an area of the airport that had more than one bar of cellular reception. Eventually I found such a spot, but it was right in front of a ground gate, which meant that every few minutes the door would burst open with a loud whoosing sound as a ground agent walked in. Also, right above me, there was a giant speaker for all the gate announcements. And finally, there was a small group of people behind me whose only common bond was that they were angry at “The Man” for not allowing them to smoke in an airport.

I mention all this because of who I was calling. United’s 800 employ listing number. It’s completely automated and one of the glitchiest pieces of software still in existence. With this software, you don’t punch keys on the phone, oh no. You fucking talk to the computer and it listens. This might be cool in theory or on Star Trek, but it’s horrible over a cell phone using 2005 technology. My mom used to go into the broom closet and make us all sit quietly on the couch while she used it and even then we’d get grounded if we talked or fought or sneezed. Yet here I was, standing underneath a speaker, next to a door, and behind a bunch of people who will one day die of cancer.

“What is your destination city?”

“Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina”

“click-click-click…did you say Seoul, Korea?”

“No.”

“What is your destination city?”

“Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina”

“click-click-click….did you say Seoul, Korea?”

“NO!”

“What is your destination city?”

“Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina”

“click-click-click…did you say Philadelphia, Pennsylvania?”

“NO! JESUS, THAT DOESN’T EVEN SOUND LIKE SPARTANBURG! NO, NO, NO!”

“What is your destination city?”

“GREENVILLE FUCKING SPARTANBURG, SOUTH CAROLINA!”

It was about this time that the chick behind me turned and smirked that I shouldn’t yell at a ticket agent like that, even if it was over a phone. Now, under any other circumstance, I probably would have let it go. I mean, she was stressed about not being able to smoke and she was pretty hot, so normally I would have just smiled and walked to another location. But by this point I was tired from not having slept any the night before and frustrated from being stranded and annoyed from listening to her airhead comments behind me for the past 20 minutes.

“It’s an automated phone system, hun. I could call it’s mother a string of four letter words and it’d still want to book me on a fucking flight to Korea. Now fuck off, leave me alone, and go find a place to smoke your cancer stick.”

Ladies, they tell me my charm is irresistible.

After finally realizing we weren’t going to anywhere other than Asia via this route, I returned to Fort Goob to formulate a new strategy. Of course, by this point Juls and Clay had passed out to Dreamland and Colton was dancing around doing his “I really gotta pee but I don’t want to tell anybody” dance. I woke Juls to take sentry duty over our luggage and marched hand-in-hand with Colton to the bathroom and as we exited, an elderly lady looked at me with a level of scorn I’ve never seen before in my life. But I’ll admit, she had a giant pair of brass, because she leaned over to her husband and quite loudly proclaimed how America’s youth today were all going to hell since we all apparently are having kids at age 15. Thankfully, my tongue had already been loosened for the day and I proceeded to go off on her. As we walked back to Fort Goob, Colton asked me what a “bitchy, bitter hag” was.

I blame the Pilgrims.

Or Starbucks. It’s always fun to blame Starbucks for things.