Sunday, April 15, 2007

My, my, my, where do I begin?

Do I start with the road trips I've been on? The different states I've seen? The fact that I've been out of the country?

Or do I start with the changes at work?

How about all the craziness that's gone on personally?

Or maybe I start with the relationship I am in right now?

All are fine and suitable options to beginning a blog on my own site that I haven't written in since March of 2005. Hell, if I could remember anything from before the fall of last year, I could probably get into that too, but then this would become a fifteen part blog and I already do a fine job of putting people to sleep.

It's actually kind of amazing how far I let this site fall into disarray, which is where I'll begin. It used to be that I'd write in here 3 to 4 times a week, sometimes more, sometimes less, on just about anything that was happening in my life at that point in time. It used to be that if I didn't write for a week, people were asking me what was going on.

It used to be that I had time to get on here and do all the coding I like to do when I write in here.

This site was my release for 7 years, then all of a sudden I just stopped updating it. It is true that other sites started to suck up my time and writing prowess. I spent countless nights writing in other blogs instead of writing in here and I'm not even sure why. Maybe it was because I was becoming tired of coding my entries and just wanted to write quickly and easily. Maybe it was because it was easier for people to go to those other sites to read my stuff than come here.

Whatever it was, I got away from this site and subsequently forgot about it for long stretches of time. Months would pass before I'd come back, then I'd start a half-assed attempt at writing in it again before giving up and resorting to the other blogs I maintained.

Then I met Nikki and she found my site. She went through every single thing I had written in here and asked me questions on everything she found, whether it be specific events or people. She wanted to know what she was reading and I wanted to remember what I had written.

I started to revisit the site a few weeks ago and realized that I should be writing here and nowhere else. I realized that this site, not any other blog that I maintain, is personal. I have control over how this looks, I have control over the content, and I have final say. Sure, other sites let you leave comments, but that detail can still be included. All I have to do is include links from my other blogs to this site to solve the problem.

Ah, but getting back to Nikki. We met in the beginning of December when I was out with Lennie and Henny at Spy Bar downtown. I had seen her a couple of times upstairs, then again when we were downstairs. First Henny disappeared, then I lost Lennie and found myself standing by myself and I noticed her sitting on one of the couches that were against the wall.

Most who know me know the story of what happened next. Some other guy started talking to her, she saw me sitting near the bar, she came over to me, put her head on my shoulder, and said "save me." The rest is history.

Four and a half months later, I'm living with her in Avon and still trying to completely adjust to my current surroundings. Sometimes it gets a little hectic and I think we both get frustrated when things aren't going like we want, but for every bad moment there have been numerous good moments.

At the end of the day, I want to be with her and will be happy if she's the last girl I date.

Meanwhile, my mom started working as a travel nurse last year. She initially worked in Baltimore and while she didn't hate it, she wasn't exactly wowed by it either. Her stay was cut short though when she started to develop problems with her eyesight and had to come back to Cleveland to get treatment. After a while, she was able to go back to work and ended up in Elkton, Maryland, which is between Washington DC and Philadelphia.

It was around that time when the traveling started for me personally. First up was the trip that Lennie, Henny, and I took to Windsor for a night in Canada one weekend. We had a blast as we went from the Casino, where the two of them made money playing blackjack, to the clubs. We went from one club to another, some okay, some good, and some that blew us away. We drank, had fun, then came home.

Shortly after that, I went to visit my mom in Maryland and we went up to Philadelphia for the day. We visited several landmarks, stores, and took in a dinner at the Olive Garden downtown. After I started dating Nikki, we came back out to Maryland and went to Washington, although that trip was somewhat marred by the health problems that Nikki started to really experience.

The longest trip came this past February when my mom had to start her next assignment in Arizona in Sun City, which is just outside of Phoenix. We ended up traveling through Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and finally Arizona. I saw several different cities, got to cross the Mississippi, and experience just how varied this country's landscape is. My mom and I saw the Painted Desert, a number of mountain ranges (including one peak that's 13,000 feet above sea level), and deep valleys.

I have to go on the record and say I really liked Arizona. Phoenix and its surrounding areas are my kind of cities. Lots of people, lots of activity, and everything moves at a brisk pace. That and over 300 days of sunshine doesn't hurt either.

I rode the Amtrak train back and again got to experience new things. I went through Colorado, Kansas, Missour, Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana. I got to visit Chicago, albeit briefly, and if the weather had been nicer, I would've ventured outside of the station.

All in all, I've enjoyed the travel and get to travel again here soon as my mom needs me to help her drive back home to Cleveland. This time, we get to go to the Grand Canyon before heading back basically the way I went back on the train.

With a week to travel, she wants to stop more than we did when heading out to Arizona, so it should prove to be interesting.

Switching gears over to work, it's been a strange ride. Several people who were around last time I wrote are no longer there, some quit, some were fired, others relocated, but for the most part we've managed to stay above water even though it's been tricky at times. There have been opportunities where if I wanted to, I could transfer to other stores and be a lead tech there, but I just can't see any reason for me to actually leave my store.

I like the people I work with, I like the environment, and I like the pace I work at. I feel important at my store and don't know if I'd feel the same anywhere else.

The last time I wrote in here, my nephew Evin was just over a year old and my niece, Vanessa, wasn't born yet. Evin's now 3, Vanessa's 1, and my sister is pregnant again. I had told her that if she got knocked up again, I was going to knock her out, which is probably why she hadn't told me right away.

I've been back over there a couple of times and she seems to be doing well enough, although it's clear that she misses our mom terribly. The house hasn't been kept up very well, but she is trying so I can't get too mad about it all. J is working so that helps and all in all, they seem to be doing relatively well.

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I read with some interest a forum thread in MySpace about how much trouble people were having with the police in Brunswick. There were numerous threads about how the police would pull people over for no real reason, then treat people like shit for doing whatever it was they were doing.

Of course, naturally, as you read the post, you'd realize they did get pulled over for various things. Some had been pulled over for speeding, some for having the view of their license plate blocked, some for other minor violations, but all violations.

This is something that has bothered me about people for some time. I cannot stand when someone does something that's illegal, gets caught, and gets in trouble. I do not have sympathy for you. I don't. You don't want to get pulled over for speeding? Don't do 50 in a 35 on the same road the police station is located on. Don't want to get pulled over for a blocked license plate? Try putting it on correctly.

But that's too simple. I'm actually surprised because I wrote in there that I had never had a problem with the cops there or anywhere else and that if people didn't do illegal things they wouldn't get in trouble. The surprise is because I didn't get any messages or comments directed at me. I figured at least one person would take offense to what I wrote, but no one wrote anything.

It just goes back to something that's always bothered me, and that's people who do something wrong and don't take responsibility for their actions. It's why Nichole isn't working at my store anymore. She'd get in trouble and blame everyone but herself for what happened. It was never her fault. It's the same for all these other people. It's never their fault. It's someone else's and they get mad for getting in trouble.

It's worse now too because kids today do worse things than they were doing when I was growing up, at least more than they were doing. When I was growing up, you tried cigarettes, maybe drinking, and some tried to smoke weed, but that was usually the extent of it. Every now and then you'd hear about someone who was doing something harder, but it was rare.

Now kids are doing acid, snorting coke, smoking crack, drinking constantly, and smoking weed like they're cigarettes. They do things that are inexplicably stupid and think it's their right to do what they want. They think that nothing bad will happen to them and that they can live this lifestyle until they die.

And they'd be right. What they don't realize is that death could be at 30, 25, or even earlier. They won't be able to get jobs, they won't be able to support their habits, and next thing they know, they're going to jail for some sort of felony, or dead because of an overdose or deal gone wrong.

The worse thing is they don't see how dangerous things are. They don't realize just how the real world operates. They don't understand that in 10 years their lives will go to shit and they'll be the ones on the news missing, dead, or in jail.

It's just something that makes me sad. It really does. These kids have no idea what they're doing, what they're jeopardizing by doing what they're doing.

I know they don't know.