A Pathetic and Possibly Humorous Account of How I Just Spent My Night-Morning:

I slept most of the day away and didn’t leave my bed until around 4 pm (the point at which I had to use the facilities, grab myself a poptart pack, etc.). I went to sleep around 5 am the previous morning and woke up around 3 pm on Sunday. I had set my alarm in case I felt moved to go to my church, but seeing as I don’t even recall the alarm going off…it was a grand failure. Next, about an hour after doing nothing (no, I did read some Euro-folktales for a while in there), I set about watching more of the first season of Heroes. I watched three episodes, ending in the epic Homecoming episode (poor Charlie-I like that actress a lot even though I’ve only seen her in a few episodes of Heroes and one of Pushing Daisies – she’s just so dreadfully quirkily charming).

Around 5 I was planning on going to either of three churches, but I found legitimate excuses for missing each. Don’t scold me yet – they really are fairly legitimate excuses. One church I don’t know the name or location of, and I am waiting to attend it with a friend of mine. With the second church, I was planning on going to the Catholic Center for church this morning (because I’m not terribly fond of “my” church’s current lesson plan: gleaning general life lessons from the book of Revelations) with a friend of mine, but seeing as I woke up too late for the first services of which I assume he went to one, and as I haven’t been to a mass since I was eight-years-old and feared an improper dress code rebuke or something of a similar nature, I decided not to go. The third church I considered going to is the Austin Stone Church, a greatly spirited place, but one so tremendously loud that I didn’t wish to aggravate my intense headache further (likely received from sitting with headphones not lifting my head for long periods of time). After all this mental argumentation, I resolved to watch that last Heroes episode and then take a shower.

Alright that was all useless background.

Sometime between 6 and 7 I talked with my friend Jonathan over Facebook and he told me he was sick, and suspiciously my headache began to take on the form of some sort of cold after we spoke…darn internet viruses. After that I began the journey of The Godfather on the wonderful AMC channel – thoroughly enjoyed of course, and now I can actually declare myself as a real movie-watcher. The only downside was that 30-40% of the four hour time period in which it played was commercials. Since The Godfather is for the most part a very quiet movie, the volume had to remain high, and commercials love to raise that volume bar to the maximum. Also, I don’t ever want to see an Enzyte, Extenze, Viagra, or any other of that sort of commercial again…ridiculous - they're so explicit. Finally, to announce the return of the movie at the end of each break, ear-shattering action music would play, from which I still don’t believe I have fully recovered. There was a second downside – tonight was open door night and as we’re in a distant back hallway and didn’t leave our rooms, we didn’t meet a tremendous amount of people. But it was Godfather night! Most people that came in felt as if they were intruding with Fenton in bed and myself staring intently at the screen even while talking occasionally. The few people that did brave conversation for any real length I’ve forgotten their names already. I was planning on getting one of them a Dark Knight poster but I forgot the name so that makes for some difficulty.

Alright still all fairly useless background...

As I had not fully recovered on sleep from the week, I set out to fall asleep immediately at the movie’s end at 11. Exhaustion laid heavy on me, but as the television went off, the lights came on! Fenton had to read for class. I made a few bold attempts at sleep, and somehow dozed for 45 minutes, but then I was wide awake with no hope of sleeping, as I still am. I got up to read my homework and got through nearly all of it for the week, excluding books I couldn’t find and all the pages missing in my Folklore packet. At around one, I started to feel bad about keeping Fenton awake by the lights so I went out to the Pedernales Lounge to read a boring book about the Vietnamese Revolution. There was only one kid in there with me, who I think was just playing a video game of some sort half the time. I read for an hour or so and then realized that I had forgotten to turn the lights out when I’d left our room, thereby ruining the purpose for leaving for the uncomfortable lounge chairs of Pedernales. I went back and left my books so as to force myself to return and not to consider a sleep attempt. I brought my laptop back with me and set out to read emails and updated blogs, happened upon Andrew’s and decided to myself make some sort of list to clear my head, or to fill it with something worthwhile, whichever came from it.

I opened a Word Document and typed out “Life Goals:” and then a few lines down “Goals for the immediate future:”. I wrote a few idiotic sentiments and desires, but I couldn’t really think of anything. I sat and pondered what in the past had once seemed so important to me for a time, but none of my old fancies really remain with me nowadays. And so, I stooped so low as to read the goals lists of strangers – most of which had half the items begin with “Have sex on/in/near/with/outside.” The only thing I really gathered from these were that I really want to go up in a hot air balloon someday. Or maybe become a aeronautic balloonist in my later years. I tried to take a few of the silly online quizzes that five-year-olds make, but usually ended up finding the questions so idiotic that I wouldn’t finish them. I did however learn in Norse Mythology I would be Baldr, “associated with light and beauty,” in Roman mythology I would be Venus…, and in Greek Mythology I would be Hades or Morpheus. I guess it’s hard to be accurate when you throw in questions like “Do you tend to have multiple lovers at the same time? (mostly true)” and “Do you like to spread your wings and fly?”

Needless to say, I came out with nothing of use, except that I’m apparently vain in Norse mythology, and from the results of Greek and Roman, I have a terribly dark and skewed view about love…


Unable to read anymore about Vietnam, I returned back to the room and noticed how terrible my entire body felt. In addition to the fledgling sickness, my body had sufficiently atrophied during the weekend at this point, having only really transported myself from bed to chair to bathroom for two days. I decided to stretch my body out and try to alleviate the intense tension that made my body feel like a stone and my head feel like an inferno. A few leg leans and windmills and other lessons I learned from Coach Pool in junior high P.E. later…nothing. Nothing in my body would crack and now my body was feeling much worse than before. “Time to bring out the big guns” I thought to myself, and forced my memory back to my gymnastics days. Not enough room to do a cartwheel without breaking, well everything. The splits are now impossible. Ah…I know just the thing: the backwards lean into half-back handspring! In case that wasn’t a clear enough description, all that is done is the flexible individual leans backward with arms outstretched behind them and palms upward so as to catch the floor, resulting in a sort of very tall crab position, or a bodily arch. Unfortunately, I severely overestimated the extent to which I have retained my gymnastics skills from second grade. I may be limbo champion, but taking it backwards another notch is a very different scenario, especially when your body lacks strength and flexibility. My body bent right and my left arm did not bend properly, so my body bridge result was one without a certain important limb, the left arm. A surprising amount of thoughts streamed through my head between the time my right arm hit the floor and my head flew back into the recycle bin. 1. “Well this isn’t going to work.” 2. “Maybe there won’t be anything in the way.” 3. “I think I might actually be able to recover this.” 4. “Woah! My head is moving extremely quickly towards that bin.”5. “This is going to be loud…” And it was. Fenton stirred and I just lay there on my back, legs crumpled beneath me, my head in a pile of bottles, hoping he wouldn’t come to investigate. That would be a hard one to explain. I've done weirder. After a minute or two, I gathered up dignity remnants sparsely scattered among the plastic bottles, and then trained with a few more beginner-level exercises before braving the stunt again. Trial 2 was a success, except for the further shattering of my Jack Skellington wristwatch.

I guess what I've come to realize in these misadventures is that...
1. I need to fix my sleep schedule. No good comes out of being awake this late, except that I'm almost guaranteed to make it to breakfast.
2. Gymnastics should be reserved to areas with sufficient space.
3. I need to reevaluate my priorities and contemplate my future through more grounded eyes - build castles in the sky and then construct the foundations.
4. I really hope my list of goals never turns into have sex here and there.
5. The Godfather is a good'un. I can't wait to see part II next weekend.
6. I still miss the first season of Heroes
7. I need to make an effort to remember a person's name when I meet them.
8. I need to start moving occasionally.
9. I need to start writing more than just mindless blather and barely clever observations about life, which will probably mean I'm done blogging for awhile.
10. I'll start posting again once I regain some perspective on life.