Skyler Schneider

So when I went to Governor's School over the summer after my junior year, I knew that I would have to be living with a roommate for the first time. I didn't really have much apprehension about that - I'm pretty sure I can live with like 99% of people so I was sure it would be fine.

When we showed up the first day and went up to my room - I believe it was 208 - my roommate was already there. He was sitting on his bed, which I believe had only plain white sheets on it, and although he looked pretty set up, he had basically no decoration anywhere at all. I think I remember noticing a TON of things underneath his bed, but I could be wrong about that. He was scribbling in a tiny notepad when we walked in. He was probably 6'2", it was hard to tell what ethnicity he was but I'm guessing half-Jewish and half-Asian, and pretty thin, whith shortish black hair that it looked like he gelled at spiked. I can't remember what kind of shirts he wore.

As most people reading this probably know, my dad could charm his way out of the Lewinski scandal if somebody asked him to. He can get anyone to talk and he can do it without putting effort into it. So while my mom and I were setting up, my dad figured he would break the ice for me and talk to Skyler. No matter how long he talked to Skyler, though, my dad just couldn't get through to him. He would only give one word answers to my dad's questions, and he would never look up or make eye contact - he just kept scribbling in his notepad. He did find out he wanted to go to Cornell though. We asked him if he wanted to come look around the campus with us and he said no, he said something else to do, but maybe if we would go another time. We didn't go with him, although I think he did actually ask if we had gone yet at one point hoping to go with us.

The first day or second day that we met, the instructors and administrators were talking to us about the academic honesty policy at PGSS - basically, they expected that everyone would work together and that they wanted us to work together because PGSS is pretty challenging for the grade level we were at, and they wanted us to learn proper collaboration within science communities. They told us to make sure that we weren't plagiarizing or cheating, but to feel free to discuss problems and methods with other people as much as we wanted. Skyler raised his hand and said, "If we don't work with other people, are you going to come after us?" I believe Barry said something along the lines of, "No, but we aren't aware of anyone that's ever made it without working with someone else."

For the first little while, Skyler basically disappeared from my life. I didn't really interact with him in any way, not even when I was in the room I don't thing. He went to bed early and didn't hang out in the same places or with the same people I did. I saw him in class though. A lot of times he had a roll of yellow duct tape around one of his wrists. A lot of people asked him what it was, and he would either not answer or say "To fix things" or something like that. One day, my friend Jenna broke her shoes or flip-flops, and she actually used his tape to fix them during class. I remember that he would walk up the stairs in the class funnily - he would approach the first step, stop, and grandly step both of his feet onto the second step, stop, approach the third step, and repeat all the way up. One day one of the girls asked if they could touch him to make sure he was real, and he said yes, and she touched his arm confirmed that he was real.

Somewhere along the line, I was coming back up to my room around the middle of the afternoon. I went up the stairs and turned to the right to get to my room, and I saw Skyler at the waterfountain on the way there. He had two wastebaskets near him, one turned upside down, and he appeared to be filling a plastic bag with water from the waterfountain. I had NO IDEA what he was doing, just absolutely no idea.

So I went up to him and asked him, "Ummm... why are you getting water out of the waterfountain?" And he responded, "It's cold." [The water from the sinks was significantly warmer]. Then I asked him, "So uh... where did you get that second trash can?" And he said, "From a friend." It turned out that friend was ME. That was MY TRASH CAN. Anyway. Still totally baffled, and afraid that he would suffocate me in the middle of the night or drown me, I finally asked, "...What are you doing?" He responded, "You don't need to know."

((OOOOOO_OOOOOO))

We found out later he wanted to fill the trash cans with cold water and blow a fan over them to make the study lounge temperature more bearable.

One time when we were in the study lounge, we were all working on our chem homework. I think Nate was there, and Skyler was there too. We had to draw models of the molecules we were working with, and someone suggested doing a 3rd grade science project and using jujubees and toothpicks to represent the atoms and bonds in the molecule. I think I ran out to the store on Forbes Street to get some, came back, and put them together with the guys. While we were working, I remember Skyler took the container of toothpicks and made a joke like "Would you like some wood on your [forget this word]?" And I was a little shocked just because it was Skyler.

At the final speech, we knew that Skyler would have to talk. We all wondered how the hell that would work out given his fear of speaking to the rest of us. Actually, when he got up there to speak, he was flawless. He didn't stutter once or shake or get nervous or anything. He was probably just about the best public speaker out of any of us. We were totally baffled.

We found out, I believe on the last day, that Skyler's parents had woken him up at 3am or something to drive to PGSS on the first day, dropped him off with his stuff, and immediately left. The day that we had to go, they showed up, quickly picked him up, and immediately left.

//

So basically all throughout PGSS everyone thought that Skyler was really weird and basically no one hung out with him. I was a little bit nervous around him and he went to sleep early and I didn't have a terribly wonderful roommate experience. I was kind of mad that I was put with him.

We found out later that apparently he had Asperger's Syndrome.

And that sucked. If we had known that he actually had a problem, then we wouldn't have been so cold to him after we had one bad experience trying to talk to him. My entire experience would have been totally different if I knew that my roommate didn't hate me, he just had ASD. It probably would have been a lot better for him, too. It was kind of a tough choice, though. On one hand, people should have known because it would have let us understand him and his reactions to us much better and probably would have made the experience much more positive for all of us. On the other hand, its his private medical information and he has the right to tell us or not tell us, and the admins and instructors probably had no right to tell us either. I don't know, I just thought that wasn't so fun to learn.

Peace out.

The Last Set

This is the last set of pictures taken with my SD600. They're image numbers 2712-2717 respectively.













Taken 3/7/2008 at 11:25PM. Backseat of the car, I think we were going over a bridge that overlooked New York City. Suzi was excited to get to this bridge because she'd never seen NYC before.













Taken at 11:26PM; you can see the really nice radio head set he had in this picture, and the directions we had on the dashboard. I think we're still on the same bridge.













Taken at 11:30PM. I don't know exactly where we were then - I think this was before we got lost trying to get onto I-95 though.













Taken at 7:07AM 3/8/2008. This is the kid we call Mailbox deflating the "mattress" he slept on in the gym floor of that high school. Below his left elbow is the corner where most of the kids from that high school in Maryland slept, I think.













Also taken at 7:07AM, I think this is the corner where most members of the pit were sleeping. I think Sean is leaning forward, and Keith is sitting Indian style, both towards the left.













Also taken at 7:07AM. I think the two men standing are Franco (right) and our director, Brett (left).

I think it's pretty fitting that the last pictures I took with this camera were of driving at night, and in black and white.

Peace out.

Stratford++

So we were supposed to leave for Stratford at about 5:30 the Friday before spring break. Some of the people [Jason and Brian] were going to be there loading at like 2:30, and I figured I should probably be there to help out a little bit too because they had NO idea how they were going to load the truck, basically, and this was the first time. I saw Keith earlier that day and told him that people were loading at 2:30 and that he should be there then.

So I was dragging my feet a little bit and it took me a while to get there, but I think I left my dorm for the Blue Band Building at about 3 that day. I walked up Shortlidge Road to a bus station and took a White Loop bus. I had my backpack with me, as well as a sleeping bag that I kept inside a pillowcase and a bag with all my clothes [the bag I won at GV Post Prom]. In the back of my backpack, in the smallest pocket, closed, and inside its case, also closed, was my camera. Two pockets away from that were my mittens, my hat, and a bottle of water. I also brought three packed lunches and cinnamon rolls and maybe teddy grahams or poptarts, I'm not sure.

So I got off somewhere near East Halls - or at least I thought - because I knew that BBB was somewhere around there. But once I got off the bus and oriented myself, I realized I was VERY FAR from where I wanted to be. Did I mention that it was really cold and it was raining a lot? It was. So I walked down basically a small highway [might as well have been 202] with all my stuff in the rain, then all the way up the BBB driveway - I think it took me twenty minutes in all so it was probably something like a mile. My shoes and socks were soaked through with very cold water by the time I got to the building.

So we loaded and it took a long time but we did actually get everything on the bus. I talked to Justin a lot - the youngest bass drummer - and it turns out he remembered our Synthesis show, which I thought was pretty interesting. At about 5:20, we were all loaded and ready to go, but people were hanging out for a little bit. At about 5:30, people were about to go, but Adam ["rack boy"] and myself didn't go yet because our driver wasn't there yet. We waited about ten minutes, then Mike D called him, and he said that he was picking up Suzi and that he'd be there soon. Ten minutes later he still wasn't there, so we called again, and he said that Suzi was putting her stuff in his trunk and he'd be there in a minute. About five minutes later, he finally showed up, and he ended up taking Suzi and I instead of Adam and I [Adam ended up going with Keith, our timpanist]. So by the time we got everything in order to go, it was 6:00. Already half an hour late.

So we left then, and I was told that we were going to Sheetz for food. I really really wanted to change my socks because they were still wet and freezing three hours later [they were painful at that point], but since I was getting out again into cold wet rain, I figured I'd wait. People took a really long time at Sheetz, but once we got back in the car I changed my socks to warm ones and it was WONDERFUL. We got on the road again. Probably five minutes later, our driver tensed up and shouted an obscenity - he'd forgotten his uniform. So we had to drive twenty minutes back and twenty minutes to the same spot to get on our way again, and everyone waited for us. So now we're like 1h10m late.

The drive wasn't too bad for a while - rainy and foggy but that's alright. We listened to Suzi's iPod basically the entire time, and Dan used his iPhone to navigate whenever we were feeling a little lost. Then, sometime around midnight, we were trying to get onto I95, the last road before getting into Stratford. The directions were a little confusing, so we kept trying to get off at an Exit 8, but it didn't lead to the road we were looking for. So we went down the Exit 9, got back on, came down the other direction, and tried again. We did this a few times and couldn't figure it out. We finally got frustrated and pulled to the side of the road and tried to use our directions or iPhone to navigate, but I just called Cass and Brian and they told us what to do, so we got on our way again. We were probably held up like 30 minutes with this whole ordeal.

So then we got on 95 and were looking for our exit, found it, and got off so we were in Stratford. The school was about five minutes away. But we couldn't see anything, and it was really hard to navigate, so we ended up driving around startford for like fourty minutes before we found where we were supposed to go. We actually had to drive the wrong way on a one way road to get where we needed to - okay, well, we didn't HAVE to, but we chose to because it made our lives about 100x easier and we would have been even later if it hadn't been for that.

So we were supposed to leave at 5:30, meaning we'd get there at 10:30, but instead we got there at 1AM, so we were about 2.5 hours late overall, which was wonderful because we had to wake up at 7 the next morning and we had to sleep on a school's gym floor. Thankfully I brought a sleeping bag - I considered going without it. Our director turned the lights out and it got very dark instantly, and we all pretty much went to bed as soon as we could then.

The next morning, Brett [the director] turned the lights on at 7 on the dot. He turned them on and people moaned and groaned and didn't really move, and then Brett said, "DO IT. GET UP." and all 33 of us jumped up immediately. We had until 7:30 to clear the gym, so we all moved really fast - I ended up eating and brushing my teeth at the same time. We were all pretty tired that day.

I don't want to write too much detail abou the competition part of the day because it wasn't too interesting. We practiced in the morning with Brian Stoudt [drill writer], had to move gyms, then loaded, then drove and got lost again. We unloaded into "a dungeon" at the basement of Brunnel HS because it was raining, and we stayed in an art room. Our first show was okay, but it sounded weird because there was very little echo and that made us play reserved. We didn't go back to the other school as planned because we didn't have enough time because finals got moved up, so we sang our parts instead. I got cookies delivered to me at lunch. Boston was there and I saw Ian Flint and I think I saw Gabe Cobas too, but I'm not sure. There were two schools practicing at any given time. Dartmouth was there and we watched their show in the auditorium on the screen when Franco told us we could and they had a breakdancer and we were confused. I think they made fun of one of our players and I was upset with them. Jason and Sean disappeared and we made jokes about that. A girl in the audience was enamored with Adam. Our second show was more confident and we did a little better but felt like it still wasn't perfect.

//

After our second show, I really wanted to get food I packed and get my coats because I was cold and get my camera and charge my dying cell phone. To do any of those things, I needed to get into my driver's car. So when we were about to perform, I told him about that, and he said we could go later. So I asked him when we were loading and he said he needed to talk to his brother and the snare drummers first, so he did that. For a long time. Then I asked him if I could have his keys for a second so I could go do that, and he said sure. Then he didn't go inside, so I asked if he could get changed now so I could get his keys when he went inside, and he went inside, so I asked for his keys, and he said no, hold on, let me go with you. So he was changing and it was taking a long time and I wanted to help outside and eat and be warm and take pictures so I asked again and fnally got his keys, ran to his car, and got my stuff.

So I came back to the room and got myself in order and put my camera somewhere I could get to it and found my way back outside to where we were loading and I took it out of its case and I tried to turn it on and it didn't respond. So I fiddled with it a little bit and tried again and it didn't work. I fiddled with it some more and it still didn't work. No matter what I did, it wouldn't work. And there were so many things I had wanted pictures of. I wanted pictures of our truck and of all of us loading and of Bryce's face against the red brake lights of the truck and Brook hugging/protecting the bass drum from the rain while holding Rod's sticks because he went to hit on girls for more than an hour but I couldn't take any of the pictures. I was very upset. Of all the times for my camera to break, it had to be at my very first performance with Penn State.

I tried and tried to fix it every way I knew how but it still wouldn't work. I put it in rice to dry it and that didn't work either. The memory card was fine. Maybe I'll post its last picture sometime. I put it in my memory box when I got back to State College. My Canon SD600 Digital Elph from Christmas in 2006. I'll miss that camera.

Peace out.

Sorry!

Sorry for not updating this week. I have to write about drumline and my camera. Soon, promise.

Peace out.

Turbidity!

So Wednesday morning when I was putting water in my hair, I realized that the water was very, very cloudy. I actually refused to use the sink once I filled it with water because it was so disgusting. At first I just thought there was something gross lining the sink I was using, but I tried one or two other sinks and I figured it's probably the water because the same thing happened with them.

At about 3:30 that afternoon, Bill was sitting in the room playing football on XBOX or something along those lines when he got a text message and then said, "Holy crap!" And I asked, huh, what? And he said, "I just got a message from PSU Text saying not to drink water from the sinks or anything."

((o_O)) crap. There was something wrong with the water. About half an hour later I got the same text that Bill did (good thing it wasn't something important, haha!) saying not to drink the water due to high levels of turbidity (cloudiness) from overflowing water in the recent rainstorms.

So ever since then the campus has been going CRAZY about this whole turbid water thing. There are signs everywhere telling you not to drink the water - on every entrance to every dorm on campus. There are bags and papers posted on drinking fountains reminding you not to use them. Kids got text messages and it's posted on PSU's website. The cafeteria's stopped serving water and soda and ice tea and any other drink that uses water and started bringing in cartloads of bottled water and canned sodas. Milk must be about 5x more popular now than ever before. There are bags over the silverware containers in the cafeterias so that you don't use silverware washed with this water - instead we have plastic utensils. We even have plastic cups and bowls and plates. They posted papers all over the soda machines and everything as well, just in case we forget.

I filled the sink up yesterday and today to see how it looked and honestly it looked perfectly clear, but I don't think anyone's gotten official word that the warning's been lifted.

Anyway, just thought anyone reading might find it interesting that the university has been operating without tap water for almost 48 hours now.

Peace out!

STRATFORD!!!

So this Saturday, I'm competing with the PSU Indoor Drumline at the WGI Regional in Stratford, Connecticut. I know this might not seem like a big deal to some people but I've been waiting for something like this for about three years and I am VERY EXCITED.

I don't really know what to describe about it. Back in Garnet Valley we all kind of knew that we would never score very well or succeed other than having fun and trying to do the best with the crap we were given. With PSU at Stratford this year, it's totally different - I kind of get the feeling that how well we place is actually up to ME. Like I have some control over how well we do and if I do my absolute best, maybe it'll make a bit of difference and push us to the top. We actually have a rockin' show and I think we can do well if we all try hard enough - that's a huge difference from GV, where we knew that no matter how hard we tried, our book still sucked. Not to mention, "doing well" with PSU means "Winning Independent Open and moving up to Independent World," which is very different from the definition at GV which was either "Coming in not-last in the lowest school class" or "Doing okay in the lowest school class and eventually moving out of it."

I know it sounds like it but I'm not bashing GV's line. I think all you kids are super talented, I just think we were given crappy shows year after year, sadly.

Well so anyway. We have to pack the truck this Friday sometime around 1PM. We've never packed the truck with all of our equipment this year so far, and when I talked to Jason on Sunday, he said he wasn't sure if we'd be able to do it, and no one would get UHaul to give us anything so he was sort of upset about that. But I talked to him today and he said he thinks he's got it under control.

I don't know exactly how I'm getting up there yet. I talked to Brian Cuce and he said that Dan Rutherford will be sending out carpool information tomorrow for PSU kids... I just hope they don't expect me to drive. The drive from here to Connecticut will probably be about four hours... I hope it's with some cool people, or some cool music, or at least through some pretty parts of Pennsylvania. I think it'll be good no matter who I'm with though, pretty much.

So we'll probably get to CT sometime around 10PM on Friday night. We're either going to unpack and go to sleep, or we'll just go to sleep right away. We'll be sleeping in some high school near Brunnell [the HS where we perform] on a gym floor, most likely. I don't have a sleeping bag, so I don't really know what I'm going to do. I guess I could bring towels? They're pretty compact. I don't know. Anyway, the next day we'll undoubtedly wake up really early, go to our instruments, and practice. We have our first show sometime around 1:20PM, so we'll have to pack up, go to Brunnell, play, and then we have to pack up and come back to the other high school. Then we'll practice again, pack up for our second show at Brunnell, play, then pack up again. At that point, it'll be about 9 or 9:30PM, and we'll be in CT. Instead of getting us a motel or hotel or house or school floor or rides home, the drumline is just releasing responsibility and telling us to go home. For a while I didn't know that was coming, so I thought I would just take a train home the next day or something, but that messed everything up so now mom and dad are coming to pick me up after watching the show that night.

OH MY GOD. I'M PERFORMING WITH ONE OF THE BEST LINES IN WGI INDEPENDENT OPEN. I'll probably even be on wgi.org a couple days after the show. This is so exciting. I hope we do well >_<

Peace out!

Compression Shorts

Yes. It means *EXACTLY* what you think it means.

So Penn State drumline, unlike all you losers at home in Garnet Valley, actually has their uniforms already, and would have had them in time for the first show we actually competed in if it hadn't been for the weather. We still got them before our first actual show, and due to schedule changes we got them on a rehearsal weekend too, so we could check ourselves out in them and fix what we needed to before we had to rush on the floor to perform.

I guess overall they're not too bad. The battery's uniforms are multicolored, with red, blue, and grey mostly if I remember corrected. I remember one of the snare drummers - I think we call him Bryce - held up his uniform's pants part and said "Oh my god, I'm wearing a sun dress." It did kind of look like that. The bottom piece goes all the way up and straps around your shoulders, and with those colors, it did look quite like a sundress. You have to step into them and pull them all the way up your body exactly as they are - no zippers, no buttons, nothing. Just step right in.

The tops only go down to about the bottom of your ribs, and they're the same colors for the battery. For some reason these have a zipper in the back - I think that's probably to help the battery with their harnesses but I'm not exactly sure, the zipper seems unnecessary. Anyhow, the tops have seams that pop out a little bit and sweep around your rib, basically. It kind of makes a hemicircle with the center at the far side of your fifth rib and the circle reaches out to your sternum. The girls in the pit were complaining about this because our uniforms are all black, silver, and gray, and the color and design together accentuates one side and sort of downplays the other, and they thought they looked funny. I didn't really think so but I didn't really look. I thought the pit uniforms looked good overall.

There's one thing about our uniforms though. They're very, very, very tight. Extremely formfitting and custom tailored. You can see the outline of my abs through my uniform, even though I don't even have notably defined abs. Thankfully the color and the sweeping design sort of hides my freaky chest thing, I was a little concerned about that.

However... it does not hide what we in the drumline like to call "your package." In fact, it accentuates it. It's ridiculous. Keith put on his uniform and we all swore he was smuggling a small animal in his pants [that's NOT a compliment]. Tollie was sitting against the wall and Keith came out in his uniformed glory, right near Tollie's face, and exclaimed "Hey Tollie!" and she just about died. Keith is an extreme example. Generally, for thinner people, it was less of a problem. Myself, Rod, and Zach are probably the smallest-built guys on the line and for us it wasn't much of an issue as it was for larger-built guys, but it was still an issue that we're going to have to deal with.

At one of the practices - the week we were supposed to play at CB West but instead had rehearsal - we were talking about our uniforms. Cass asked if they were going to require that we wear compression shorts, to which Brett [our director] said that yes, we would have to. For some reason I thought that wouldn't apply to me and I just though, feh, I'll be okay without them. But once I put on my uniform I knew that I would definitely have to get some. So I asked Cass where to get compression shorts, or if they were basically just UnderArmor's underwear brand, and he said yeah, just go to Wal*Mart and it'll be with the rest of the UnderArmor.

Today, reluctantly, I began my search in Wal*Mart for compression shorts. I walked in and looked around for a few minutes, but didn't find anything that looked like UnderArmor or compression on my own, but a woman working their quickly noticed I looked lost and asked if I needed help, and I said I was looking for UnderArmor. Wal*Mart doesn't actually sell UnderArmor, but a rip-off brand called Athletic Works, so I just looked at that, but they didn't really have anything that looked like (compression) shorts. I figured this store would HAVE to have it, so I kept looking around.

It was terrible. I had to look at like EVERY pack of men's underwear there was. I wanted to cry. I've never looked at so many half-naked men in my life, and it was terrible. To make it worse, did you know that they basically make male thongs now? They were on a rack with all the things that looked something like underwear for atheltic purposes, and then I saw those and I just wanted to crawl under a rock and stop living.

So I kept looking around, looking for UnderArmor, looking for anything that looked like athletic garments, looking for compression shorts, looking for someone to help me, anything. It took like twenty minutes and I didn't find anything I thought I was looking for and NO ONE came around that entire time to see if anyone in the men's section needed help. I didn't want to go to the women's section or the electronics section or anything to ask for help with this, but eventually I had to go over to the changing room to ask for help.

The woman there was very very short, with short gray hair, talking on the phone. She asked me what I needed but I didn't know if she was talking to me or the person on the phone. After I figured it out, I said, "Hey, I'm on a drumline and I wanted to know if you had compression shorts we need?" And she said, "Muscle shirts? Yeah, let me show you." To which I said, "No, no, compression shorts." I wanted to add on "...for my balls," but I didn't.

She took me to the same old woman that had shown me the Atheltic Works things before. I swear to god she did NOT understand what I was asking. I had asked her the first time for UnderArmor because I didn't want to say "Hey, I need to squeeze my private parts against my body for long periods of time and still have free hands, could you show me underwear that does this?" but I think she took that as I just wanted to find UnderArmor. So I kept trying to tell her, No, no, I'm not looking for UnderArmor, they clearly don't have it, I just need compression shorts, I just need those, do you know if you have any? And she kept showing me their stupid UnderArmor rip-off stuff. Eventually she did find shorts, but they were definitely not was I was looking for.

So I have a show this weekend in Connecticut for WGI and I am still compression shortsless.

In conclusion, on a scale of helpfulness from 0 to 10, I hate Wal*Mart.

Peace out.

Ice Scraper

I swear that just about every time I've had drumline rehearsal so far this year, when I came to the car, it was covered in snow. Well, actually, for the first couple practices and maybe one after that, I rode my bike to the Blue Band Building, but then I figured out pretty quickly that that was a terrible idea and I should drive. One time I got a ride with Keith, who also took Mailbox, Emily, Justin, and Adam, but then I got access to a car on my own and that was much more convenient, so I just went with that.

The problem with that was that it was Ryan's car, which first of all is enormous, and second of all DOES NOT CONTAIN AN ICE SCRAPER. This was a very, very big problem, because it's snowed about 75% of the days so far here, so every Saturday, there's snow on the car that you have to get off. I remember the first time, I tried to clear it off with my hands. I usually wear a t-shirt, my blue jacket, and my big black AE jacket, and I thought that cleaning the snow off with my hands would be reasonable. It was certainly not. First of all, there's a slit in my AE jacket sleeves to make the whole button thing work, so snow gets in there when you try to clean it with your hands. Second, I don't know if you've ever just stuck your hands in snow for a minute at a time, but it hurts. Extremely, extremely quickly. After about a minute I could barely feel my fingers. I actually had to just put them in my mouth to get feeling back in them. After that, I opened up the car and found some stupid plastic container that was sort of rigid and cleaned the car with that - you know, the kind of plastic container a pair of scissors or a CD player would have come in that's impossible to open on your own. So after a long, long time, I finally cleaned the car with that.

The next time I went to practice, I had the same problem. Snow and ice all over the windshield and no ice scraper in sight. I wanted to ask other people near me if I could borrow one, but there were either no people or I was embarrassed, I forget which. In either case, I decided the stupid plastic thing wasn't working, but I still wanted something rigid, so I used my drumline binder - thank god I listened to directions and got myself a binder, right? So I started using that to clean and thought it'd be okay since all the pages are in plastic protectors. It did an okay job, but after I finished I took a look at it and was just like.... aww crap. The cardboard that strengthens the front and back was soaked and pretty much still ruined, and snow/water got into the plastic page protectors and ruined some of the corners of my pages. But oh well.

Later, I got an ice scraper. Finally! All my problems would be solved and I could remove the eight inches of accumulation without a problem, right? No, not at all. Once I started doing it, I realized that was no effective way to use it without getting your hands on the snow, which lead to once again having my hand in snow for a minute straight, me losing feeling, and sticking my hands in my mouth to try to get feeling back. I think this was actually the case when I drove home last week because drumline was cancelled though... Oh well. Still drumline related in some sense. Count it.

It wasn't until JUST TODAY that I *FINALLY* got everything under control. T-shirt, jacket, other jacket, ice scraper, and mittens [no, not the pink mittens, ones for guys]. And I cleaned off the car almost without a problem. Some snow still got in my socks and that's sort of a pain, but it's not a big deal - I actually have an extra pair of black socks with me. I wanted to go to my room and change, but I saw Bill in the lobby before I left and he didn't take his key, so I just gave him mine... and the room is locked so I'm locked out and can't get socks.

Also, I went to practice an hour early today. I swear the schedule said 9:00 was the start time but I guess I was wrong. So that's why I'm here writing this.

Peace out!

Baby's First Speeding Ticket

The ride to and from Penn State usually takes me about two hours and forty five minutes. To be honest, I usually don't speed that much - generally not more than like 15mph over the speed limit. Mom and Dad are always really surprised at how fast I get there, but that's just because I don't have to stop for food and/or to pee every twenty minutes, so if you think about it, a 180 mile trip should take a little less than three hours if you're average speed limit is 65 and you're going maybe 10-15mph over that.

I see a lot of people going really, really fast, though. I've seen people going 90, 95, 100, 105 miles per hour as they pass me. There was a little black car on my way home once that stayed at 95mph for as long as I could see it. There was a red Lancer on my way back up this weekend that was going somewhere between 95 and 105 for as long as I could see it [until it got backed up by traffic and I felt vindicated going slower than it].

So anyway. I left at about 3:24 and I looked at my clock at about 5:24 and though, okay, it's been two hours and I am probably a half an hour or so away, I guess this was a pretty good trip. So I kept driving - I was on the two lane section of 322 West just before you get to the part where the trucks have to put on their lights, stay in the right lane, and only go 20mph for 3 miles. I was singing, I think, and I came down a hill. There was a car in front of me going exactly as fast as I was, and I believe a car behind me, too. Then I saw a cop car on the right side of the road put on his lights and pull out. I was pretty sure it wasn't me - I wasn't watching my speed, but I wasn't going any ridiculous speed, not any faster than anyone around me, so I figured there must be some crazy going 95 about to whiz by and he was going after him. Instead, he pulled out and pulled up behind me. I couldn't believe it. Really? Okay.

I'm afraid of pulling over on highways - probably more afraid of that than getting a speeding ticket - because I'm afraid someone will hit me and kill me, especially if it's on the downslope of a hill. I didn't know whether to pull to the left or right, so I signaled with my hand and he pointed to his passenger side so I pulled over and stopped. I don't remember if I put my emergency lights on or not - probably not, I like never do.

I was sort of afraid of the cop. From all those ACLU videos I thought he was going to accuse me of smoking pot or selling meth or ask to search the car or ask me to get out or pat me down or something like that and then arrest for me having an ice scraper in the back seat or something. Instead he just came up and said that he got me with radar going 76 in a 55 zone, so I would be getting a traffic citation and then I was free to go. He went back to his car after I gave him my license, insurance, and registration.

I'm pretty sure at that point I texted Gina that I was getting a speeding ticket. She got back to me really really quickly and asked how bad it was, but I just said I didn't know yet. I didn't think 21mph over in a 55mph zone would be that bad. My camera is always in my car's console when I make that drive, and I realized that the sunset was really pretty. I put it on color accent and picked the orange near the top of the mountains and took a couple pictures. Looking back I should have taken them as panoramic shots, but I was a little nervous.

Shortly after that he came back - my window was all the way down the whole time, and I can't remember if my doors were locked or not. He gave me the ticket and all my papers back and said I could go. I looked at the ticket - $160 !!!

I'd like to take a minute to reflect on how ridiculous this whole thing is. First of all, PA doesn't even have a penalty for going 1-5mph over the speed limit, so they already admit it's really not even a speed limit. Furthemore, when's the last time anyone went down that highway with a speed limit 55mph going less than 65mph? What if someone was going 68mph? would they be arrested? So let's assume the realistic speed limit is 65mph. So I was going 11mph over the limit. Okay. Whatever. I'll take that. But $160? That's ridiculous. I could understand if I was driving wrecklessly, or on my cell phone, or drunk, or something like that, but I wasn't. I just don't really see the crime part of speeding. Oh well.

When I pulled back onto the highway, I think I forgot to use my blinker and I was afraid he would pull me over again. I went to get gas because I was pretty low - it was a really sketchy gas place where you had to go inside, give them your credit card, fill up, and then go back in later, and it didn't feel very secure at all. I took some pictures with my ticket while I was there to celebrate my very first time screwing up my life (!).

I looked my ticket over a little bit later, after talking to my dad about it. (He said it wasn't a big deal, the money's not an issue even though I offered to pay, we just have to make sure I don't get too many points on my license or anything.) I thought it was ridiculous though, because in the part where it tells how much money I have to give it says:

Fine: 67.00
EMS: 10.00
MCARE: 40.00
COSTS: 33.00
J.C.P./A.T.J.: 10.00

??? Emergency Medical Services? Medical Care? I didn't require any of that... I don't really understand why I had to pay $50 for it, or why there were $33 worth of costs incurred by the state when they gave me that ticket. Really?

I realized now, looking over it, that the time of the ticket was 1745. I was a little disappointed when I read that to think that he probably rounded.

Peace out.

A Few Sentences from my English Paper

When I sit at my piano with my Christmas lights on I can feel all the good things just flow into me, things like driving at night and Smithbridge Road and candles and bonfires and rivers with blue water and the perfect wave, the perfect note, the perfect song; NPR and Tastykakes and hermit crabs and red lights and she-likes-me-back and the interplay of rhyme and rhythm and running your fastest mile and baby books and parents and children and friends and being in love; memories and futures and shutterbugs and Orion and seeing Haley’s Comet once in your life and winning both showcases and solving your first Rubik’s Cube and sunrise on the beach and staying up talking way too late and kittens and first kisses giving you butterflies, opened eyes so you can see her smile because she is happy to be with you in a field by a stream and wondering if maybe, yes, she does feel the same way after all these years of thinking no! she is so far above me; teacher and student crying on the last day because they actually care and crying over loss but at least there was something in the world good enough to care about losing in the first place; hugs and heartbeats and sleeping in on snow days and being young and believing you’re invincible and having time and being alive. I know that sentence was long and that you probably won’t believe me that these all just come into me when I play my piano, but I promise they do. And if those things aren’t what define home, then I don’t know what is.

Peace out.

Lighter II

My lighter broke. First it wouldn't spark to ignite, then I toyed with it trying to get it to work, and the thumb piece broke. About half the fluid was left. I put it in my memory box.

Peace out.

Missed

I'm often overwhelmed with sadness and regret when I think about all the things I never wrote down.

Peace out.

Synthesis 004: Souderton

I went to Souderton, I think, three but possibly four of the seasons that I did drumline. I remember the first year, it was one of the first competitions, and it seemed impossibly far away. We spent the entire day there and we were all exhausted. I think that was the time that I pretty much fell asleep next to Sarah Cory on the bus and that started the joke about me "sleeping with" all the girls in the drumline. This was my freshman year, when our show was The Devil Went Down to Georgia, and we lost every single competition we went to. I remember what the school looked like - for some reason, I have an image of it in my head as very thin but very long. I know this can't possibly be the case but that's how I remember Souderton. I also remember when I was sitting and watching other drumlines perform, one of the snare drummers from Souderton started talking to me. He was really nice, but I couldn't remember his name, even though it wasn't strange at all, probably something like Kevin. He was a senior, white guy, with short brown hair, not too tall but not very small either.

We went back to Souderton the next year with Synthesis. I think it was a little bit later in the season this time. I remember that entire competition day it was raining furiously. For some reason, both unloading and loading the bus occured at night in my memory. I guess it was just really gray... although I guess if I think about it hard enough I can remember moving in during the light now. I knew we were there because I saw a school that I thought looked really long.

So like I said, it was really really raining that day. Like, extremely, extremely rainy. My hair was soaking wet by the time we were done moving in. I don't know how we got the instruments off the bus, but it must have been in a wild rush and an absolute mess. Gina's synthesizer, I think, was taken inside the nearest door we could find even though it wasn't the one we were supposed to go in through. We never plugged her synth in like we were supposed to - we just had her hook up to a car battery. We were really afraid of that battery getting wet, and I remember we wrapped it in a trash bag and booked it indoors as soon as we got it off the bus.

I remember walking down the long thin part of the school after loading towards the unit's room sometime that day. My hair was absolutely soaked. There were two girls walking in the opposite direction down the hallway, and one of them held up a camera and flashed a picture of me and then said "Thank you!" and laughed with her friend and walked away. I didn't know whether to be flattered or embarrassed. I forgot what they looked like two seconds later so there was no way I could find them again to ask.

The snare drummer that had talked to me last year had become an instructor for the Souderton drumline. I remember they called themselves the Mirage indoor drumline, and we were jealous of their super cool name [at least, we had been when we were just the Garnet Valley drumline].

The competition ended and we were all standing outside just before the bus, waiting to go home. I can't remember if it was still raining at that point, but I'm going to assume that it wasn't if we all decided to wait outside. I suppose I was pretty good friends with Marc and Brian at that point. One of them jumped on top of the other, and then someone shouted "boy pile!" and I jumped on top of them, too. So one of them was holding the other as well as myself on their back. I'm pretty sure Viv has pictures of me doing that, sticking my tongue out, on top of a boy pile with Marc and Brian in the dark outside of Souderton.

Peace out.

Synthesis 003

One day the pit was practicing with Miss Papa right outside the chorus room. I forget where my instrument was, or which instrument exactly I was playing at the time, but I remember I was against the wall that the back door to the auditorium is on. I remember Marc and Brian were sitting down with their backs against the same wall, too. Miss Papa told me to play my run in part two, or just to play part two, or something along those lines, and asked them if they thought it was crazy or something along those lines. I remember Brian didn't really say anything, and Marc just said, "It's a lot of notes." I was still afraid of Marc and Brian then because they were from Chichester and Marc never smiled and always wore a hat. He thought I was a senior for a long time, and I think he told me later that he wasn't impressed with me because he thought I was a senior, but then when he found out I was a sophomore he thought I was a lot more impressive since I was so young. I'm not really sure on how that came about though.

//

Like I was writing about before, our sets had a "frame" basically for some drawings to be held in - of clocks and clock designs, of course. At first the plan was to have blinds that we could just quickly flick from one side to another, from design to actual clock face. I remember Evan Gibbs, the only black member of the drumline [who played bass], was an extremely good visual artist and was always pulled out of practice to help design the artwork on the props. Whenever I would walk through the band locker room in the beginning of the season, Evan would be in there bending over some huge canvas and trying to draw something. I think mostly he was there in the very beginning when we were trying to get the blinds idea to work, and I think it was partly his influence why we decided we couldn't use them and they were just unworkable. No matter what medium he tried to use, he couldn't get it to go on the blinds right, and he just knew everything would end up looking all wrong. We ended up using large bedsheets instead, I think.

Another interesting thing was that the clock we used on everything - our shirts and our props, etc. - read an impossible time. The minute hand was just a couple minutes past vertical, but the hour hand was halfway between two hours. I forget if we knew this was impossible when we designed the clock, but I remember they designed it that way so that the hands would be displayed properly on the sets... Oh well. I don't think the judges took points off.

Peace out.

Lighter

I bought my first lighter the other day at McLanaghan's. It's a blue/purple ACE lighter with two "compartments" for lighter fluid in it. You can adjust how high the flame goes. It cost me $.63. When I went to buy it, the cashiers were talking about 4/20, which is only slightly more than 2 months away. The oldest cashier - the woman I was talking to - was somewhat scandalized by the concept as a younger girl at the register told her about it. She said 4/20 is the day when everyone smokes pot, and the older woman I was buying from said, "How long has that sh*t been going on?" To which the younger woman responded, "I don't know, forever? Decades?" And my cashier said, NO, NOTHING could have been going on forever. She wondered if it was going on forty years ago when her daughter was born. Her birthday was 4/19, and she wondered what the people in the hospital would have thought of her if she had smoked pot the next day.

In either case, I got my lighter. My bike lock freezes a lot of times when it's cold and there's precipitation, and my dad suggested getting a lighter to unfreeze the ice inside of it so I could stick my key in. I tried it the next morning. The plastic around the metal key insert started smoking, but I held it there for a little bit. I put the key in and the plastic basically melted around it [no major damage, don't worry]. Then I tried putting the lighter up to the key to warm that up, then tried that, but it was useless as well. The lighter idea didn't work. I got to walk to class.

So now I have a lighter and I have no purpose for it. I keep it in my pocket. Sometimes when I walk and I don't wear gloves I just take it out of my jacket pocket and start it. I'm not really a pyro, I don't really like to be stupid with fire, but I think it's pretty and sometimes I just like to look at it, kind of like snow and lights. I wonder what people think of me when they see me doing it - do they assume I smoke? I wonder if anyone's noticed that I never light anything with it. If I were walking right next to myself, I'd have noticed that. I don't know what I would think of myself. Probably not much.

Sometimes I don't let the flame go for long and I just enjoy the sound and the look of the spark. Sometimes it's too windy to have a flame so I have to do that. Sometimes I let the flame go really high and really long - the metal gets hot, and I can see the body of the flame and a spike of flame that goes way higher than the rest. That's from the mechanism that brings the fluid right to the hole where the flame comes out of.

I went to the Simmons piano lounge today after I ate dinner. I had a card in my hand from my mom and two ice cream cones full of stolen Reese's Pieces and my lighter in my coat pocket. I set all of them down on the table before I went to play so I could have my hands free - that big jacket makes it hard to play. I played Samson.

I noticed that there was a girl sitting opposite the piano looking out the huge bay windows at Simmons. She had blonde curly hair and it looked like she was studying. I never realized it before, but that window actually has a beautiful view. It'd be a wonderful place to sit with a friend and watch snow or a thunderstorm or a clear night. I plan on doing this just about as soon as possible.

I wondered if I was annoying her. I wondered if she noticed me at all and I wondered if she would remember me. If someone in ten years asked her, Do you remember that time you were sitting in the Simmons piano lounge studying and some kid came and played this song called Samson on piano and came and left quickly, would she remember? What if they asked, Did you wonder what the card he was holding was for or why he had two ice cream cones full of stolen Reese's Pieces or a lighter in his pocket?

I made a list in my head of things to get when I went back to McLanaghan's after playing piano, and I forget to get milk. I don't know what I will do for breakfast tomorrow.

Peace out.

Piano Lounge

You know what I hate?

There's a piano lounge here in Atherton Halls. It has a shiny but used/worn black baby grand piano of some sort over in the corner near the huge mirror far away from the three chanedliers on the ceiling and generally far away from the chairs in the room. There are two doors to get in here, and the piano is in the corner on the wall opposite the door that actually opens. One is closed for security reasons. There's a little alcove opposite the other door that also has a door, but I don't know where it goes and I'm afraid to find out. Some people were in there when I was playing once and they went there to make out and then other people in there pointed at them.

Anyway. What I hate. There are lots and lots and lots of quiet places to study in Atherton. There's an entire basement full of silence, a computer lab, and a "zombie lounge" just ten feet away from the piano hall where you can go get quietness if you need quietness to study.

Note that there is NOT A PIANO in those places. But there is one in the PIANO HALL.

So, from my perspective, if you want a quiet place to study, you should go to a study place where there is not a piano. Why? Because pianos are much rarer than study space, so if you can find study space that does not occupy very limited piano space, you should do what you can to make sure you don't occupy piano space when you are not using a piano. Does that make sense? Don't waste a piano by requiring that it not be used because you're studying. Someone wants to play that piano.

So basically: I hate it when people study in the piano lounge. There are SO MANY other places to study and so few other places to play piano. WHY DO YOU TAKE UP THE PIANO. WHY. YOU'RE NOT USING IT. If you're not using the piano LEAVE THE PIANO LOUNGE. Okay thanks.

I get really angry about this. I hate it. I want to play the freaking piano.

Peace out.

Showers

There are some pretty significant differences between the showers here and the showers at Brown [and the showers at home, of course].

The showers at Brown - at least the ones in West Andrews - were enormous. There were only two of them in the boys' bathroom. I think each of them must have been about seven feet by seven feet and probably a nine foot ceiling. There was only one curtain on each of the showers, and it was REALLY REALLY difficult to move the curtain to cover up the shower, but really really easy to move it back to expose the inside of the shower, which made for a healthy dose of paranoia. There was only one handle you could use to adjust the flow/temperature of water, and only one "compartment" of the whole thing, so you got dressed in the huge 7' x 7' shower compartment deal.

At Penn State the showers are MUCH smaller. I think they're probably about 4' x 4', and one of the showers has this stupid overhang thing right above it so it has like a 7' ceiling. I think that shower also doesn't have hot water - at least, it didn't the last time I checked. The showers here have two compartments though. First you step in and you close the curtain for the first compartment. There's a tiny little stool there for you to put your shower caddy on, and this is where you're supposed to get changed. It's supposed to be dry but it is ALWAYS wet. Then you step forward again and close the curtain and then there's the actual shower part. There's a hot spigot and a cold spigot and you need to adjust them and it's not a very fun game. The showers here also have a ledge to hold your soap - I don't think the ones at Brown had that.

The water in these showers gets SCALDING HOT if someone flushes the toilet - that never happened at Brown. Strangely, both of the showers have the same weird, semi-sweet, semi-dank smell when you turn the hot water on high... I don't know what it is but it seems specifically reserved for college showers. I guess you probably know the smell or will soon enough.

Peace out.

More Fever Dreams

Hey, I know I know I haven't written in like a week, forgive me. I was sick. On Wednesday night I started to feel a little bit sick, but I wasn't too worried because I didn't have a dry throat. Usually I have a dry throat before my body freaks out on me, so I wasn't too worried. The next day I woke up with a 101.6 degree fever. I e-mailed my PSL teacher and my English teacher and told them I couldn't go to class, even though I thought I would be missing an activity in PSL and missing the most important day to be in English for me all year. It actually turned out okay but... sort of sucked at the same time.

I had a really weird fever dream that night, too. Atherton Hall is sort of maze-like, and I'm still getting over that. That was a big part of my dream... I kept having this strange plot where I was using Atherton as like a military base for myself and I was building up underground networks of support throughout the building. Svetlana Katok, my Math 312H teacher, was in the building and on my side for some reason. It was really strange.

I stayed in bed and took Tylenol for most of that day. I thought I felt better that night so I sat at the computer for a while, but by 9 or 10 or so I felt pretty terrible again. I tried to go to sleep early, but I don't think I fell asleep until about 12:30 or 1AM. I think I had really weird dreams that night, too. In one of them I was rollerskating down this huuuge highway at night. There were lots of trucks, and police officers, and a toll both, and maybe trains. I remember earlier that day I saw on RealTV this one guy whose car was hit by two trains like at the same time, and that same thing happened in my dream on this highway. There was also an enormous hill down at about 60 degrees. I also had a dream where I came into my room and there were guys from the dorm floor on my bed taking my pictures off the wall and I was just like, "Ummm.... yeah, okay??"

Bill came into my room that morning at about 6:30. He was supposed to be at Hell Week but apparently they were playing mind games with them so they sent them home at some random time. He filled my water for me when he went to shower and told me that classes before 10AM were cancelled due to weather, which was GREAT beacause then I could only have an hour of class.

I thought I felt okay - fever was 101.3... - so I took some Tylenol and trudged through freezing cold and sleet and hail and ice to get to Katok's class to hand in my homework. I made it, and I made it back, but I just about died. I mean, not literally, but it was pretty terrible. I also had to go to two cafeterias to try to find any food I wanted [waffles or chicken]. I stole from one cafeteria to spite them, and then threw out what I stole. Jerks.

At one point when I was sick I bought some Tastykake mini doughnuts as comfort food. But then I couldn't stop eating them, so I threw them in the trashcan before I was done.

I chilled out for like all of Friday. I think Jenny came by to sign the card for Mrs. Rock so I guess I did that for like twenty minutes. I think I went to sleep early that night, too, but I had seen the doctor and decided I should take some NyQuil to help me get rest, since it's important to treat the symptoms of the flu. I fell asleep, and I think I had to go to drumline the next day, and so I had this dream where I had to help Coatesville move out of a gym, so I took one of their marimbas and fell down a huge hill with it. That sort of sucked.

So anyway, Saturday and Sunday I mostly stayed in and watched the Puppy Bowl, but I also went to drumline for a tiny bit because Jim Ancona was there and it was the most important weekend to go. I went Saturday and it was okay, and then I went Sunday morning at 7:30 and I couldn't take it so I had to go home.

I think I've weaned myself off the NyQuil now... alright, that's enough for now.

Peace out.

The Stickers

When I came into my room for the first time, I noticed there were some pretty weird stickers in our room. Specifically, one that said "CLOSE IT." on the microwave. I didn't really understand what it was doing there; I thought it belonged somewhere else.

After I stayed here a little longer, I realized that everyone has them in their rooms. And sometimes not in their rooms. The "CLOSE IT." stickers are supposed to go on the windows, so we keep them closed and our rooms don't need to use all that heating. There are ones that say "KEEP IT FULL" on the refridgerators, and then explain that refridgerators use less energy when they are full. There are ones that say "LIGHTS OUT" on all the light switches, for obvious reasons, and ones that tell you to cut your shower time to save water and heat.

I think those are the only ones I noticed. They feel a little bit like Big Brother. Just wanted to do a quick update before sleeeeeping.

Peace out!

Synthesis 002: Winter

The Synthesis year was the last year that the Garnet Valley Indoor Guard came to all the shows and on most of the bus rides with us. Actually, it might have been a combination guard as well, but I can't exactly remember. In either case, they helped up move our things and we helped them move their things, and we always watched each other's shows because we would basically be each other's floor crew if they needed any help at all.

The colorguard's show was done to a song called "Winter," by Tori Amos, I think. It was very light, with just piano and vocals and maybe a string bass or something. The chorus had some pretty ascending and descending lines with words something like, "When you gonna tell me again? / When you gonna love me as much as I do [you] ?"

Of course, Marc and Brian didn't exactly dig that style of music, and they loved to make fun of the colorguard's show. I think the best time was definitely at one of the two or three Synthesis parties we had in Schlichter's basement during the season.

Her brother had a bunch of "construction worker" toys - hard hats, fake drills, tool belts, hammers, etc. Marc and Brian, who were pretty good friends, liked to joke around and pretend to be "gay for each other," so of course when they saw the construction worker garb, they threw it on as fast as they could and put on a humorous show for us. Don't worry, nothing bad actually happened.

At one point, somebody put "Winter" on through some speakers. Brian and Marc started to dance to it with each other, in the same slow tone as the song. Bright yellow hardhat on, and toolbelt, and white tees. And while they were singing, one of them decided to serenade the other with the line, "When you gonna bust on my face?"

I think we had actually used that line before - during the colorguard shows, nonetheless - but this was definitely the best execution of that line. I also think that Evan K came up with it first, but I'm not too sure on that.

Peace out!