July 18th, 1981
I jogged three and a half miles this morning, I didn't go this evening because we went to O'Brien's Pit Barbaque. Karen and I went roller skatting this morning.
I'm really confused about where I want to go to college. It's between the University of New Hampshire and U.C.F., I think. I don't know anything about the University of New Hampshire, and I don't even know why I want to go there. On the other hand, I know pretty much about the area around U.C.F. and I like it. I'm just not sure about campus life. I'm wondering if the people at U.C.F. stay to themselves since there aren't many dorms and a lot of peope that go there commute. I think I'll write to Terry and find out what he thought about the campus life.
I hope the Opel has been painted by the time I get home so I can do the crankase sealer and get it licensed plus find out where there's a short in the engine. I've come to the point where I don't want to mess around with it any more. I just want to get it licensed and on the road. I know it will be afun cr to drive; and I'm going to try to keep it going as long as I can.
One last thing, I'm not to sure how I'll do with the x-country team. I know that when I go to the frist practice I'll be really shocked because I've had all these daydreams about being the best guy on the team and showing everybody up. I just know I'm going to be let down, have my baloon burst, etc, etc.
July 19th, 1981
I've been thinking a lot about where I want to go to college today. I have reached the conclusion that I should wait until I have visited U.N.H.'s campus this fall before I cancel it out. Today I like the idea of going to U.N.H because: firstly, I have to start living my own life. I think one of the reasons I'd like to go to U.C.F. so much is because Terry lives down there, which is geat but I won't be ale to go and visit him all the time. Besides if I went to U.N.H I could ski in the winter and sail in the summer.
I ran 3 and a half miles this morning and then again this evening. Even if I don't do to well on the team is still want to keep up my jogging because I think it helps me physically and mentally.
This is a little out of context but the second reason for liking U.N.H. a little better is because it runs in my mind that they have majors in Petroleum Engineering. I could take Petroleum E. as my major and could minor in solar energy. This is one of my problems, I'm always trying to plan things way in the future then when I change my mind I get confused. Enough for now.
July 20th, 1981
We called Mom and Dad last night, they sounded pretty good. Dad said he was taking the Opel in to be painted today. I hope it looks okay when it's finished! I hope the guy remembers what color I wanted it painted and all the stuff I wanted done on it. For $450 of my hard earned money I expect a good job. If it's an ugly color I'll still like it because it's my car.
When I get home I think I'll see about trying to get a job at Ski Round-Top this winter. If I could work at a ski lift station it would be a real easy job. I could take my hojmework up with me and do that. I'm sure I wouldn't have to work past 11:00 since I think that's when they close. It would such a great part-time job to have since it starts after the end of the band practice and is finished before Spring band starts. I could save the money for: downhill skis, a sunfish sailboat or a bike; I could use all of these at college.
Last night for dinner we had barbaqued ranch steak. It was really great it almost melts in your mouth.
Tuesday, 21 June, 1981
Second day for my car in the paint shop. I've heard no news about it. You know what they say "No news is good news."
I just wanted to write about this kid I met on the train up from Florida. This guy looked like the rock singer, Meatloaf, just a younger version. He first said he worked in Washington and Miami then later he said his dad was the Dean at Harvard and he said he went to Harvard!!! What a screwball he couldn't have been in college. Firstly becuase he didn't look like he was college age and secondly because he got his kicks from flipping the finger at train engineers or people along the railroad tracks!! This kid was such an asshole I just couldn't believe what a jerk he was.
In this entry I would like to put ina couple of things I would like to try to do.
1. I want to learn to not judge others by their first impression. (The kid I met on the train, I did not judge or form any opinions on him until after he had done his cool tricks.
2. When I'm in a lousy situation I have to learn to use it to my advantage, and think of the situation as an educational type of experience.
3. I have to remember that a person never stops learning.
Tuesday, 28 June, 1981
I've really had it with Mom and Dad. I think Diane has too. They make me so mad they argue over the pettiest things, then don't communicate with each other and to top it off they're orneery as hell. I wish I could go to college now and get away from all of this shit. I think I loose my sensitivity to other people when I'm around these two.
I don't think I'm going to go out for cross-country. Everyone that was going to go out for it didn't! If I get a part-time job instead I could make(save) some money so I can buy some things for college.
It's ten o'clock now, we went out for dinner earlier this evening. I talked to Lugene after we came back from dinner. I think I might go to x-country practice this Thursday. I shouldn't cross it off the list yet, I haven't even gone to any of the practices. I think I'll call Trammel about x-country tomorrow.
Diane helped me choose a color fo the opel - medium wedgewood blue. I'm glad she helped me. Mom and Dad are getting along better now!!
July 29th, 1981
Today, Mom, Dad, Diane, Tom, Karen and I went to Ashland which is about sixty miles north or here. We went into an old mining tunnel and then to a museum on mining. We lunched at Snyders Ice Cream Parlor then off we went to look for fossils and found lots!! I drove home. Dad drove up.
Prince Phillip and Lady Diana were married today what a big beautiful wedding it was.
I have decided not to go out for cross country, I'll call Mr. Finnucan on Friday and tell him. I have to make an appointment to get a new contact lens. It makes me so mad that these stupid things don't last any longer. I have to make an appointment to have my seniro pictures taken.
Now I've decided that I want to go to Cornell University!! When I write to them for a catalog, I'm going to compose my own lettr instead of using the form letter I've used for all the other colleges. I'm not to sure whether or not I'd want to try architecture or mechanical engineering.
Diane and I walked to the pain shop. The fenders were inside the shop because we didn't see them on the car or in the trunk (2+2). I wiped all the water out of the trunk.
Last Saturday Diane and Bob had a party for the lawyers in the Washington firm. Some fo the people I liked were: John and Cindy Ebbrett, the Evans', Mrs. Ryan and last but not least Boone. There was a woman that was going to be a rock singer, her date (the lawyer) went to either Yale or Harvard. I say "the lawyer" because he was the one invited from the firm the rock singer was just his date. A man named Butler was a roommate of Thornburg in college.
July 30th, 1981
ReplyDeleteKaren's birthday was today, she was five years old!! I went in to Camp Hill to pick up Grandma and Grandpa, Aunt Margaret, and Aunt Doris. Before I left, Mom called Aunt Doris to find out if I should pick her up at her apartment or Aunt Margaret's. Well, she told Mom that she and Aunt Margaret were not getting along to well because of Aunt Doris' cleaning and the day for the party or something to that effect. Mom felt responsible and was all upset when I left. When I got home I was mad and now I rrealize I shouldn't have veen because there was nothing for me to be mad about. I think that I should their petty behavio as a lesson of what not to do. After they left, Diane, Karen, Tom and I went canoeing at Pinchot. We had a great time. We saw a snake, lots of small fishes and two herons.
I would lke to buy a small kayak now. It seems like it would be a lot of fun to row around in and it would be good exercise, and I could put it on the top of my car, if it is ever road worthy; I'm sure it will be soon.
July 31, 1981
Diane, Karen and Tom left today. It seems as though whenever they leave I have to fight back some tears. On Wednesday, when we went to Ashland, we found several fossils. Stones with imprints of ferns on them, it was really interesting.
Amy Souder, Steve Alderfer, Lugene's brother and I went to see the Allman Brothers in concert at the Farm Show building in Harrisburg. I enjoyed Steve and Amy's compay, but not the performance. It was too loud. I know rock conceerts are supposeed to be loud but this was way to loud, it distorted the sounds.
I called Mr. Finnucan and told him that I had to many commitments and wouldn't be able to go out for cross-country. That maybe what I wanted, but I don't know why it is that I always do that (debate). It seems like I'm afraid to try anything new.
August 6, 1981
Sophia Pipan and I went to see Arthur with Duddly Moore, and Liza Manelli. It was really funny. Sophia and I have reached an agreement: we can still go out we're just not going to go out with eaach other every weekend or two-weekends as far as that goes, and we can go out with whom ever we want, no strings attached.
This afternoon I waked to the paint and body shop. I started it up, it's been hooked up for two and a half weeks to the battery and it started!!! So much for the short in the engine. I looked around the car for about ten minutes then, when I had worked up enough nerve, I asked this guy that works for Tom when they would start to work on it. He said, "He was cleaning up the vay he was in, and then he was going to bring the Opel in there!!!" I was so happy I could have shouted. When I went to pick up Sophia it was in the bay to the right just lie he said it would be.
Cathy Messaric's exchange student came todayl. Her name is Mia. As I recall she seemed, from her picture, pretty nice.
It seems like before I go out on a date, I imagine doing these things like going parking etc, etc. And it never happens, not that it matters but I just don't understand.
Yesterday I went canoeing on Lake Pinchot, by myself. There were a lot of really nice sailboats out because it was so windy. I saw this sailboat that was smaller than a "Sunfish" but it was just as streamlined. It was called a "Snark." I'm going to have to find out about it.
Sunday evening Lugene and I played tennis. Neither one of us was too good.
August 9, 1981
ReplyDeleteWe just got back from Bob and Diane's. Tom came home with us. He's here right when we have band camp and have to go from 9:00 to 9:00. I won't be able to do anything with him while he's here. We went to Church today. It was a good sermon. Tom's bible school class sung songs that they had learned that week. I asked Tom and Karen some questions about God and Jesus. Tom told me that Jesus is like the "Lost Ark" and no one knows where he is.
The more I think about my night out with Sophia the less I like her. I'm not really interested in girls that think it's cool to be or act bored. What a waste of money.
I looked through the sailboat section of the Washington Post and saw a Super Snark Sailboat for $275 dollars. That's the kind of sailboat I saw at Pinchot on Wednesday.
August 14, 1981
Band camp is over, finally. We dnow the whole show, plus I got to know a lot of people that I hadn't really known before. I also was aquainted with a lot of new kids. I met Mia, she's really pretty. Todd Landman is really after her. I reaclly screwed thigs up today. To begin I kind of have this crush on Dana Houser. Today, Steve Kahler asked her out and I heard him ask her. So I kidded her about it, then to top it off I told a whole crowd of people in which was Steve's little sister (she's in 10th grade). I said "Hey Steve Kahler asked Dana out and she said "yes."" To make a long story short, one of Steve's sister's girlfriends told me that she was upset so I apologized to her and Debbie Kahler. Then Dana comes in and bitches me out, and last but not least Steve gives me a lecture. Did I ever feel like a jerk. It was only a joke though, but I still wonder why I'm such a bastard sometimes. Well now that I've got that off my chest, I feel a lot better.
My car was done Thursday morning, and it looks great!! Dad and I are going to pick it up tommorrow and I'm going to put all the extra stuff on it. After I clean off the parts.
I hope Tom will be able to visit when they come back from New Hampshire so I can do some stuff with him. I'm sure he had an okay time while he was here, but I'd like for him to see me in a good mood for a change, because it seemed like I wasn't in teh greatest moods when I'd come home from band and I wouldn't be able to give him my full attention.
August 19, 1981
ReplyDeleteI'm so frustrated! I could kill that fucking Bruno. When I went to pet him downstairs he started to growl at me, that really made me mad. It seems like everybody tries and succeeds at running over me. No more, I'm tired of putting up with everybody's shit!! I'm going to be my own person, and I'm not going to need another damn person to rely on. From now on when somebody does something that makes me mad I'm going to tell them instead of keeping it inside because I just get madder when I think about things. I won't yell at people I'll just tell them straight out, lay everything on the line.
Today is Wednesday, since I didn't put that on the dateline. Mom, Dad and I went skiing today, I couldn't stay up too long on one ski.
I had band yesterday, I'm getting pretty tired of finding us a ride all the time. On Monday, Joe, Kim, Connie, Deb, Holly, Jake, Cathy, Mia and I went to Hersheypark. All Cathy and Connie did was check out the guys. After a whole day of that I was getting pretty tired. Sunday, Mom and I went to the band and bandbooster's picnic at Pinchot Park. That wasn't too bad when a few more people came. Saturday I went to Val's Party. Aren't you just thrilled with what I've done?
I must be pretty insecure becasue I never have a really excellent time when I do anything, it's just okay. I don't think I'm enjoying my friends' company as much as I could.
I'm almost finished putting the car back together. I have to put the bumpers on, find out what's wrong with the turn indicators, and the headlights. I'd like to get the car on the road by this weekend, but I know it won't be ready.
I have to work on setting my priorities straight. I think my first priority should be to figure out what I want to do and what I want to major in. The second should be to figure out where I want to go. The next, to be accepted to the college of my choice. Then enjoy my Senior year. Now all I have to do is follow that program. I have to like myself, I can't play games with myself. I have to make up my mind and then stick with it. The biggest problem with me is that I imagine things in the future and make them my goals, but I don't do anything to reach my goals, I think I'm sitting in one place, sort of stagnating.
I started to use the "Bullworker" on Tuesday, this time I'm going to stick with it. I want to get rid of my skilly little arms. I'm not complaining, because it's my fault they're the way they are now. I hve to keep pushing myself to use the "Bullworker" everyday. Another thing I want to do is gain a little weight, I don't want to get fat, I just want to gain some weight by eating more healthy food and cutting back on junk food.
August 23, 1981
ReplyDeleteI went to the drive-ins last night, what a drag. Mark LLoyd, Skrit, Gink, Thompson, Cathy Turner, Paul Cooper, Joe and Beth Lewis were there. I felt really out of it, once again I was on the outside looking in.
I'm going to try and change myself so that I can be confident in ME. I'm going to start jogging again. Whenever I watch television, I'm going to do do push-ups and sit-ups during the commercials. I WILL use the "Bullworker" everyday. Things are going to start changing now. I want to get giv enough that I can walk through the school and talk to anyone I want and not worry about being laughed at because of my scrawny muscles. I'm going to make improving my mind and body a number #1 project. I've decided, for now, to write to colleges that have petroleum engineering. I'd like to go to Penn State's Main Campus. That's the only place in Pennsylvania where they offer Petroleum Engineering. A couple weeks ago I got this letter from New Mexico Tech, it said "P.E's got $26,493 starting salary. I think I could handle making that much money. They also said that they got an average of four or five job offers before graduation.
Tommy will be staying with us until Thursday, I'm glad, this time I'll be able to see a little more of him.
August 28, 1981
ReplyDeleteToday is Friday. I went bowling last night with: Whitney, Skrit, Gink, Rae Stare, Tim Thompson, Sherry, Joe, Beth, John, Greg, Lauren and I. I bowled a 104 and a 124. It was a lot of fun. I found that when I get involved I have more fun. Usually, I wait for people to invite me, I've got to start jumping in with both feet and not worry about looking like a jerk or at least what I think a jerk is which are probably two comp0letely different things, I've got to loose, and stop trying to be Mr. Proper. Last but not least I've got to talk to people, I've got to read up on stuff so I'll have conversational material.
Dad and I changed the oil in the Opel. We also added sealer to the crandcase, but it's screwed up the engine and now it hardly has any power. I don't know what I'm going to do if it doesn't straighten up. I hope it's nothing really serious.
I had a lot of fun while Tom was here, he probably was disappointed because I didn't take him to a movie and we didn't get a chance to go to Pinchot.
We have planned to get the papers through on Monday and have the car inspected Tuesday. Another thing that's wrong with the car is the air-filter case. It isn't on tightly s it rattles when the engine runs.
I still haven't started to jog yet I'm too lazy, but tomorrow I'm going to start for sure. I am still using the "bullworker." I hope that I'll be able to tell a differenece withing a couple weeks if I use it continuosly.
I've decided that I would like to go to Penn State Main Campus if I can get accepted, then I could come home for holidays. I'd also be able to take advantage of the large facilities; gyms, labs, more girls to choose from, and so on, if you get the picture. Besides, Dad said I should try to get on to the main campus, instead of going to the York Campus.
I guess that about all I have to say today; until later.
August 31, 1981
ReplyDeleteDad and I went to Harrisburg and got the license plate and registrationfor the car. By the way, it's been running a lot better lately. Tomorrow we get it inspected.
I talked to Lugene today. I feel talking badly about her a couple weeks ago. She's really nice, this time she gave ME a pep talk!! Usually it's the other way around. She's got some really good ideas; for instance, she toldme not to let what people think about me, bother me. I have this problem where I'm over-sensitive to what people say about me, or to me. Like she said I've got to realize that if someone doesn't like me that's their problem, I just have to realize there's a fine line. I can't be truthful and direct to everyone, but I caqn't worry about what people are saying behind my back. After all, I like me, and some other people like me and think I'm okay so I can't be bad. I can't put so much emphasis on what people say and their actions toward me. It seems like I'm always putting myself down and I hate to say it but I think I started doing that because I was waiting for compliments. Just because I'm not in sports doesn't mean I'm a whimp. I haven't gone jogging yet, but I'm still using the "Bullworker" and there seems to be a little bit of progress.
September 3, 1981
ReplyDeleteSo much for the car running better!! Tuesday, I took the car to be inspected. It didn't pass, there were holes rusted through the resonator. I went home called Midas drove in town again, got a new one for $61.00 then had teh car inspected agai9n, it was passed, but it still didn't run smoothly and it still doesn't now. We ran some tests and...to make a long story short..it needs new piston rings!! UGH. We'll have to take the engine out of the car and pull it apart. Another option is to get the whole engine rebuilt. I'm sure it's going to be pretty expensive to have it rebuilt, but we'll just have to wait until tomorrow.
I went jogging this morning. One and a half miles to be exact, it was great.
Not to skip back adn forth, but now that I know what's wrong with the car, I'm really relieved. It's a big thing, but when it's been repaired, I'll be really happy besides after it's fixed teh car'll run like new.
Another thing I've got to learn is that I can't be two-faced. I've got to stop sneaking around behind people to do things.
I've also decided that I have to get a job so I can restore my lo9ss off capital due to the paint job for the car, the work that's going to be done on the engine and further expenses caused by the car. My goal is to have $2,500 dollars in AARP by next summer. I think that's a reasonable goal. If I start after band is finished for the fall and really work my ass off, I should be able to have at least that much by the time my applications should be sent away to the colleges, and so I can afford a short drop in grades for one marking period.
Calculations: 9 weeks x 20 hours/week x $3.25/hr $60 a week minus tax. $540 in 9 weeks.
September 7, 1981
ReplyDeleteThe engine's out and sitting on the flor in the basement. I've taken off: the transmission, distributor, water pump, alternator, starting motor, and the exhaust manifold. You name it, it's off.
I went to Amy's last night. Lugene, Chris, her sister Patty, and brother Mike, Matt Buckly and Pam Lego. We had a "mellow" time. In other words we talked and listened to the radio. Her house is typical New England. The patio is landscaped impressively. Straight from "Yankee" magazine.
Saturday night I went to a party at Greg Cable's which was a lot of fun. I had a terrific time. Chris and Carol Itle were there not to mention Jenny Staskn, Tamysin Ford, Skrit, Gink, Christi, Greg and Sue. Christi (I have a heart drawn around her name) was really cute!!! I think I'm in love, I'm going to have to talk to Chris about her. Like where she goes to school, etc, etc. Greg's party was very good example of a party with N.B. (no booze) that turned out great.
To have a good party you have to have several cute (single, without a date) girls, good music and people willing to make the party work. A lot fo parties flop because people don't try to have fun, they expect to be entertained. A good party also needs a lot of good food, mainly junk food.
We sucked-out-the-ass at the football game, the band that is. The football team won 47- 0. Trinity was really creamed.
I guess that's all I have to say tonight.
September 9th
Dad took engine to Frasier's in Harrisburg to be rebuilt.
September 11, 1981
ReplyDeleteI have to get a job!! By the time all the work has been finished on my car, I'll be broke. Maybe I can get a job sweeping up at the fish shop in New Cumberland. Clean tanks, sweep, take out the trash, and any other little chores. At least it would be some money coming in.
School's hard as hell. And I mean hard. Physics and Calculus really confuse me. Everything's piling up on me. I haven't visited one college yet. My car doesn't work. I'm going broke. I don't know how I'm going to pass Physics and Calculus.
Lugene, Chris and I are going to see "American Warewolf in London," tonight.
I haven't been jogging or using the "Bullworker." I'm turning intoa fat - skinny armed turd.
I hope we win tomorrow. We're up against Hanover, and Northern Lebanon. I want to win so bad, I can taste it.
I'm so confused.
September 12, 1981
The footbal eam beat Wyomissing 33-12. We got third place. Our score was 59.4. We got a higher score than the third place Yankee band.
On the way home from the competition I got into a conversation about government, Religion, drinking, smoking and alcohol. I like to know what people think about things like that. Jenny Staskin isn't so bad. She knows what she likes, she doesn't go around judging people.
I went jogging yesterday and then used the "Bullworker." I'm not going to get up as early as I have been. I'll do the "Bullworker" after my jog in the afternoon.
I got a letter from Kim and a catalog and application for Penn State. I've been working on the application, I'd like to try to get it ready to mail before the end of the week so it will be there nice and early, which should improve my chances of getting in.
September 17, 1981
ReplyDeleteMy Calculus take-home test is due tomorrow, I have most of it finished except for half of one question. I got a 100% on an English quiz yesterday. Today I had a Physics lab. On the whole it was pretty easy. I went jogging todaybut I didn't use the "Bullworker." I didn't use it because I thought I wasn't getting any where with it. But tomorrow I'm going to try again. I've got my application to Penn State all ready, I have to take it in to Mr. V so he can put in my class rank, SAT scores, courses, etc, etc. On the application it say that the counselor may write a little something, but he doesn't have to. Knowing Mr. V. he won't write any "vote of confidence" for me. I'm going to ask him if I should put Uncle George down as having gone to Penn State.
Only one nmonth until Homecoming. I don't have any idea who to ask, maybe I won't go, but the dances are always a lot of fun. Usually by this time I'd have somebody in mind, but this year I have no "possibilities." Everybody keeps telling me to ask Marybeth if I don't have anyone in mind by the time it get's a little closer to the dance.
When I ask Dad if I can get a job I'll tell him that I'll pay for my Spring Band trip if he'll let me get a job. That way I can make some extra money, yet still be contributing to my expenses.
Still no word on the engine block or head yet. It will probably be a couple more weeks. If it doesn't run right aftter it's put back together I will be so mad I might just junk it. To tell the truth, I don't think I could ever junk that car. It's got too much character.
September 20, 1981
ReplyDeleteWe won last night even though the first number almost fell apart right before "the pose." The football team won, again, on Friday. They beat Susquehanna 22-0.
Sherry told me that Cedar Cliff band president asked her if I was gay because of my voice when we called about a football game between the bands. That really makes me fuckin' mad. When that stupid fuck called, I had a head cold and so it made my voice higher. The more I think about it though, I shouldn't really care what the asshole thinks because I know I'm not gay and that's all that counts. I don't know why I let what people say about me get me so mad because most of the time they don't know what the hell they're talking about. Talk about weird nights; it was a mixture of good news and bad news. I found out that Cathy Eagen likes me. I thought we wouldn't win becasue of the way the first number went. We came out on top in the competition. Lendermen tells me that I've got to do something about the way everyone yelled when our name wasn't called when they announced the second-placed band. And then Sherry tells me about the asshole band pres. from Cedar Cliff. Well, I'n not going to let it bother me, all the band news can just get lost because I don't give a crap about it.
I'm still jogging, and using the bullworker. I haven't done either, yet, today but when I do I'll write it in.
I haven't been doing too much today. It's a great day though. I've been going every once in a while to try to get a little bit of a tan. Next Tuesday I'm going to get a couple of cases of candy so I can start selling them now. I'd like to sell about twenty cases. That would be $150.00 credit, but I'll get it as soon as possible so I can start selling around the neighborhood. Candy is a lot easier to sell than being a patron or buying a ticket. It's more tangible!!
September 27th, 1981
ReplyDeleteBeavercreek Band has come and gone, and I sure have learned a lot. Tese two guys I got were okay, sometimes. Sometimes I liked them, sometimes I didn't. One was the drum major, he was in 11th grade, Tim King. And the other one was in 12th his name was Jeff Meyer. I felt like a little kid around them. I've got to start lifting. Jeff was really into jazz music, well, they both were, eally. They told me all about their school and about all the wild parties, they must go out every weekend. Therre's not a whole lot to do around where they live. I've got to learn to be more aggressive all around. When somebody asks me something from now on I'm going to give them my answer without the "I guess or something like that." It gives people the impression that I don't know what I'm talking about. I've got to learn some new words besides "wow," "neat," "I guess" and other 6th grade words of exclamation. I've got to stop bitching around about everything. And I've got to stop. No, I'm going to stop my damn back-stabbing. After I 'd get through telling people about how I've been bustin' my ass for them they turn around and do something cool for me. Besides people would raher hear about the good things we've been doing adn the good times we've been having instead of hearing my shitty problems. I'm going to be more out-going. I have to come back to this page so I can carry through with all these things. In about a week, I'm going to write a letter to their band. They won their division, by the way.
The football team tied C.V. Friday night: 7-7. There still not undefeated.
I had a hell of a lot of homework this weekend: Calc, Physics, and I had to start a three paragraph paper for english that's due Wednesday. If I get in a lot more things, I'm sure I can become a better conversationalist. I just have to talk more and become more involved in what's going on, and I have to remember things instead of letting the go right over.
Joe came back from college this weekend. He's got a girlfriend now. I hope she's nice because he really deserves someone nice. After the game Friday night, Joe, Cable and I went to Cable's house and played some of those television games.
I just realized what my problem is; I'm afraid that people won't like me so I don't do anything. Life is full of new challenges, and if I just crawl in a hole, I'll end up where I'll be stuck in the hole, and no once will care if I stay in my hole or come out. In fact, I think (feel?) pretty close to that point right now. If it wasn't for those guys coming this weekend, I don't think I would have realized all this about myself. And to tell you the truth I was living with my head in a cloud because I couldn't see half of the things that were going on around me. I sure owe them a hell of a lot. And Annette Molina helped me so much last night when I was so depressed, thank God for people like her and Tim and Jeff. I've got to learn how to be a man instead of a young teenage/boy.
October 6, 1981
ReplyDeleteOn Saturday the 3rd of October the band; marching unit went to Harrisonburg, VA to the Madison University M.B.A. competition. We made finals, and came in tenth out of ten in finals. That doesn't sound great, but it was becasue we made it to finals. After the competition we went to a college in Winchester and spent the night in their gym. I got sleep at about 3:30 a.m. and the night before I had to get up at 3:30 a.m. to get ready for the trip.
We had breakfast at Mac's on Sunday and then we went to the Shenandoah National Park. It was great, the scenery was teriffic. We stopped for a picnic at about 12:00 and eight of us went on a hike to a book out where you could see for miles. Greg and Sue Cable, Shelley Pace, Sawn Green, Mike Bush, Connie, Kevin Wrightstone and I went on this hike it was four miles round trip. We went by trails through the woods to get there and tehn we came back by the road. We could see a great big valley and four ranges of mountains it was really beautiful. On our way up to the mountains, I ate a flower for seven bucks!! It wasn't to bad. We got home at about 7:30 p.m.
On Friday, at the football game, I asked Cathy to the "Homecoming Dance," and she said, "yes."
Tonight the Wind Ensemble had to play for "Back to School Night," I have a unit test in english tomorrow:
450 - 1100 A.D. Old English Period
1100 - 1500 A.D. Middle English Period
1500 - Present Modern English,
Kennings, alliteration, personification, Epic, Lyric, similies, metaphors, Beowulf, "The Wanderer," "The Exeter Book."
I have a mechanical drafting test tomorrow, too.
From now on I'm going to get more serious about my studying. I've really beeen screwing off when it comes to my homework. I'm going to start exercising more, and I'm going to have to start cleaning up the parts for the engine so when it's done I can start right away, and put it back together and get the car back in running order. As soon as my car is back together I'm going to start looking for a job for when band is over. I have to get a job; firstly because I want to bring up my savings account, and another reason is because I want to be occupied, I have to get into the idea that I have to use every moment I have to study, since I'll be working I'll have to get into that frame of mind.
October 14, 1981
ReplyDeleteI made it through the English test with an 84, not too good. Friday I have a Calculus test. I was just watching this movie about Jacyln Bovier Kennedy; it was pretty interesting. I know it's only a movie but I'm getting a good idea of how I should be. Firstly, I am special, I'm the only one of me, and If I set my mind to it I can succeed, and do well in what ever I attempt. I have to be forceful, but clean, I have to be my own person, and I can not be pushed around by anyone. There's a difference between being pushed and doing what's required.
Last weekend Cathy and I went to see "Only When I Laugh" it was pretty depressing. I've got to learn when to stop kissing. For our first date I know I kissed her too long. The problem is I didn't really enjoy the kiss. I did it becaue I felt obligated to, plus I didn't want her to think I was scared or a whimp or something along those lines. There's something about Cathy that bothers me, and I just can't seem to figure out what it is. I've got to learn how to be charming and witty. I think after the homecoming I'm going to cool it with Cathy.
The block, head, manifold, and all the other parts that Feaser's is supposed to have are to be ready by Friday. I've got to start gearing up to start working on the engine so we can put it back in the car. I think I will plan to have the car all together by November First. That gives me about two weeks if it's eady Friday. It took about four days to unhook it and pull it out then pull the engine apart so it should take at least that many days, and I'm sure it'l take longer, but I will try to work on it as much as I can.
This coming Monday, Greg Cable and I are going to drive up to Penn State Main Campus for an interview at 10:00 a.m.. We have next Monday and Tuesday off. This Saturday I have to get some shoes, a shirt and a corsage for the homecoming. I have to get my hair cut and I have to get a gift for Diane for her birthday, and a present for mom and dad for their anniversary on the 24th of October.
October 17, 1981
ReplyDelete"The Homecoming Dance"
The dance was great, the date sucked. That could almost conclude the evening. The corsage was $6.50. I gave Amy and her date (Rick Martin - the kid's okay but he has his problems, don't we all) a ride. Amy doesn't like him. We stayed until the end of the dance. Annette Molina and I were clowing around, it was too much! After the dance we went to Chris Carson's. There was a lot of food and a lot fo the "in" peole. Hank, and Todd, Candi and Todd's date followed us there. Hank, Todd and Candi (Kandi?) are really fun to be with. If I had a better date I would have gone to Todd's house for a little getting acquainted but you know how it goes. I don't think Todd liked his date, either. There were a lot of people at the dance, by a lot, I mean lots and lots of people. It was the biggest turn out ever. Shelby Chrublich and her date needed a ride to Chris'. Talk about a bitch, she was pretty mad because we waited until the end of the dance to leave, and she wanted to leave earlier. I figured that's just tough shit because if she wanted a ride she'd jsut have to fuckin' wait until I was ready to do. I hate people tat act like "they're" doing you a favor by asking for a ride. Well, all I can say is "TOUGH SHIT.!!" If she doesn't have any more manners than that then she can just go to HELL. Enought with that fart.
On the way home, Amy and I were talking about how when we start to like someone and then find out that they like us, we don't like them anymore. When she said that she had those feelings I almost crapped, I thought I was the only one that had those kind of feelings.
This Tuesday I'm going to tell Cathy that I don't want to go out with her anymore. I think I'll cool it with asking any one out until after band is over so I'll have a job, and can support my habit. It's pretty expensive to go out anymore.
I have to call Jenny Staskin and get directions to Penn State and all that good stuff. I have to call Mr. V. to see if he'll be able to go in a little early on Monday so I can get my transcripts. But, before I call him I'll call Greg to find out if he thinks we'll need our transcripts.
I think the reason why I don't like most girls when I find out that they like me is because it ruins the chase or something, I have to keep on my toes when I'm not sure if the girl likes me or not. It's not that way with Cathy though, there's just something about her that doesn't "fly" right with me.
The football team beat East Pennsboro on Friday 17 - 6. Jana was Homecoming Queen out fo Sue Barrouk, Crystal Fulton and Jodi Brubaker. I thought Crystal would get it, but I was happy for Jana. The car, engine, wasn't ready on Friday, afterall. It'll have been in there six weeks this coming Wednesday.
October 21, 1981
ReplyDeleteGreg and I went to Penn State on Monday. It was an easy drive, and it was really senic. I really like Penn State, it's great, we didn't get lost at all. I didn't need my transcripts after all because it was a group interview, and then after that we had a tour of the campus by a student guide. The Greg and I went to Al Smolko's dorm, nice but small. After that Greg and I just walked around for about an hour. Then we drove home. On the drive up it started to snow about five miles East of Lewistown it was really suprising.
That night I went to a party at Kim McClain's for Marjiane, her exchange student. It was a lot of fun there were a lot fo people there.
I got an 82% on the Calculus tesst that we had on Friday. I was shocked. That's given me the incetive to study more so on the next test I''ll be able to get a better grade. I hope that my tests will keep improving grade-wise. Last Calculus test I got a 68% but it endded up as a 74% with extra credit problems so that means I brought my test grade up 8'% points since the last one.
This is the six week mark for the engine. WOOPIE!! I wonder if that sucker'll ever be ready. Then I wonder how long it'll be unti I get it running again.
Edward, Georgette, and Jeniene are coming home for the last week of October, I can't wait to see them.
November 4, 1981
ReplyDeleteThe Shuttle didn't go off as planned today. It was cloudy, pressure in the oxygen tanks was down, lubrication in some of the back engines had not been done since the summer. It's planned for one week to ten days from now.
Edward and Georgette and Jeniene came on Thursday (last week) and stayed until Sunday. It was great to see them. I hardly got to see them though, what with school Thursday, and Friday adn band every day except Sunday. Jenine is super cute, she is really adorable, she's always smiling.
We went to Diane and Bob's, Sunday. We had lunch then went to Tom's soccer game, they won. Then we took Ed to the airport, Washington International, Bob, Diane, Georgette, Jenine, Karen, and Tom went straight home from the game because we were coming straight home from the airport. I drove from the soccer game to the airport then home. I wish we could have stayed with Ed before he had to go, as it was it took a half an hour to get from the entrance of the airport to the place where we dropped him off, because of all the traffic. It was really packed. Then on Monday, Diane took Georgette and Jeniene to the airport and they were on their way to Florida. Ed went to Syracuse for a meeting.
Last Wednesday we won the New Cumberland parade, we finally beat Cedar Cliff. The football team won again on Friday, and are still undefeated. This Friday we go up against Mechanicsburg, they're undefeated to, but with no ties. They're expecting at least 10,000 for the game. The week before last, Diane, Bob, Karen, and Tom came up for Mom and Dad's Anniversary and Diane's birthday. We had a competition that weekend, too. We got second, and Schreiner was really mad, bercause we did such a lousy job. This last weekend we went to West Chester, an M.B.A. competition. We made it to finals, they took the top twelve bands out of the beginning twenty. We had a score of 68.55 in finals and came in eight overall, and second in our class. We beat Northern, they were ninth. However, they beat us in preliminaries. Speaking of Northern - Christi is in their rifle line. I talked to heer there!!@ She's great, every time I see her I just stand there with a glazed look. When my car's finished I'm going to ask her out, even though she lives in Dillsburg 20 miles one way. We got the engine back a couple of weeks ago. And Dad's already working on it. Mom and Dad siad they would pay for the engine work. YEAS!! That's at least $600 I won't have to worry about forking over.
Above this entry I've drawn a cube and noted RUBIK's Cube - the latest rage.
DeleteNovembwer 12, 1981
ReplyDeleteI got my acceptance to Penn State last Thursday. Of course it was an acceptance to the York Campus. SUCK SHITT!!!!! That was one of the first things that came to mind when I found out. The didn't even give any reasons for not accepting me to the Main Campus. I wrote a letter the enxt day, after Mom had called a friend of Aunt Dorie's who works in admissions. Who knows what that's going to bring about. The letter was even a form letter (the one I got from Penn State) the guy didn't even sign his name that was dittoed on the letter. If that's any example of how impersonal the University is then they can have it, I'm sure I finda hell of a lot a better place to go.
The football team beat Mechanicsburg last weekend 27 - 25. This week they play Milton Hershey it's the C.A.C. Championships. We have to leave during half-time on Saturday so we can made it to Philadelphia for "States." I hope we get first at sttes, and I hope the football team wins, too. What a great Senior year!
I'm going to join ski club this year. I figure I shoud enjoy this year as much as I can, and besides I have enough money so I can pay for it myself it's only $121.00 that's pretty good for everything, nine times. The payments can be made in three times of forty dollars each.
November 21, 1981
ReplyDeleteWe got eighth place at States last Saturday. Needless to say, we were pretty mad. "It was the best job we've ever done with the field show," said the instructors and after talking about it I didn't feel so upset about because it was a Cavalcade Show, it wasn't really the "true" "State Championships" they just call it that because it's at the end of the season and because here are a lot of bands participating.
The football team beat Milton Hershey 36 - 6, but it wasn't that big a deal. I thought I had broken my finger, but it was just sprained. The funny thing was that "Wackin' Jack" broke his foot; more like Robert Wilding stepped on it. And some other kid messed up his hamstrings.
The best news is that I went to a party with Christy (that's the right way to spell it) tonight. It was a suprise birthday party for her friend Gretchen. I felt really out of place, I was the only person from Red Land. The party was pretty boring for awhile, then they turned the lights down, and, well Christy and I began to know each other a little better. I couldn't believe it! She stroked my hair which is the one thing that really makes me purr. She's so pretty, stylish, intriquing, sweet, sensuous, I really like her. She jogs, writes poetry, skis, she eats health food, not that that turns me on, but it's just nice to know that I'm not the only one who likes carrots, etc, etc. I hope she likes me, I realldy do, there's jsut something about her that makes me like her. There's only one thing, I'm such a clutz around her; my cold didn't help much; but I'm going to have to start jogging once we get the car running. She is so interesting. As you can see this is pretty irrational tinking, I'm just jumping from idea to idea. But that's what she does to me.
December 1, 1981
ReplyDeleteSo much for Christy! We went out Friday, I mean Saturday. She didn't seem to interested in me, not that I expect her to be clinging to me like a leech, but she acted like she didn't want to be seen with me. So I guess I'll just forget that hosebag. You'[d think she'd appreciate the fact that I'd go all the way to Dillsburg to see her, and to top it off I took her to a movie in Camp Hill!! Her Dad and brother had gone hunting for the weekend so just she and her Mom were home alone. She asked me to come at about 4:00 so I got there at about 4:30 and we watched a football game for about an hour then she said let's go so we left at about 5:30 and the movie didn't start till 7:00, but anyway while we were watching the football game she sat across the room from me, on the couch with her mother. She did the same thing when we got back at about 10:30 after we went to the movie and to some family restaurant where she wanted to go. She knew a girl that worked there so that's where we went. Then when I left she acted upset because I didn't hive her a long enough good night kiss, her mother was only stnding in the kitchen when I was leaving. What was I supposed to do? She could have come out with me to the car, but no. I don't know whether or not to call her and tell her hwo I feel, or just forget her.
Jazz band tryouts are this Thursday. I don't think I'm going to try out because I'm just not into band. But then I am Band President so I guess I should be in it, but that's not the right reason for being in it. What I should do is be totally honest with Mr. Schreiner and just tell him the truth, about my feelings of being in the Jazz band. I've got to figure out on what I'm going to concentrate my efforts. I'm going to have to sit down and start working on my research paper, making out letters for scholarships, and concentrate on finding my true self.
Mom and Dad gave me an electric typewriter today becasue the other one is fucked up a bit (if you'll pardon the strong adjective.) Cosmos was on tonight, that is my latest infatuation for Tuesday nights. It is such a great show. Carl Sagan explains, or shows the viewer so much with his descriptions and analogies. He gives me so much insight into things that I've had questions about, yet he doesn't spell everything out in sixth grade words. He's very subtle with his descriptions; they're simple yet they do not over simplify the question as the effect that he is trying to show.
Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt Margaret came out for Thanksgiving. Bob and Diane and Karen and Tom came up, too. We had a great time. On Sunday we went to Diane and Bob's because Georgette came to Washington on Friday. We had an even greater time while we ere down there. Just being with them makes me have a great time.
On Saturday we started the car and it really worked. We didn't drive it but at least it idled. Tomorrow - Dad and I are going to set the timing adn take it for a spin if its not raining. I get out of school to go on an English field trip to see MacBeth put onat C.V. I won't get home until 5:00 because we get out at 12:30 and it's a three hour play!
December 3, 1981
DeleteYesterday, the 2nd of December, 1981 I was accepted to University Park of Penn State for the Summer Term.
December 8, 1981
ReplyDeleteThe car has been running terrifically. So good, in fact, taht I drove it to the school last night for ski-club. While I'm on the subject of skiing, it was great. I went down Fife and Drum then I got brave and went down Minuteman, more like slid down Minuteman. I got off the lift and biffed into a pretty nice looking girl, at the top of the slope. Needless to say I felt pretty stupid. I was pretty embarassed the whole way down becasue I fell about three times after running into that girl. I was an all around clutz when I started. Matt Buckley didn't make me feel all that great either; there's something about him that bothers me. I feel like I'm lower than him for some unknown reason. Anyway, I went back to Fife and skiied on that slope for about an hour then I went back to Minuteman. I did a lot better on that slope so kept skiing on it until we had to go. My last run I didn't even fall.
On Saturday I got the results from the S.A.T's. I had a composite score of 1130, not to bad, I was really proud. The breakdown was 530 Verbal, and 600 Math.
I saw "Eye of the Needle" last Satuday. Then I went to a party at Sue Pottieger's she had a band called the Devestators, they really sucked. There were a lot of people there.
My roungh outline for my research paper is due of Friday. I better start working on it. Tommorrow we're getting a take home test in Calculus, one problem.
I didn't try out for Jazz Band last week. No sweat, I just didn't put my name down to try out. Some people act like I committed some crime, but it doesn't matter because if they don't like it that's their problem.
December 18, 1981
ReplyDeleteThe Christmas Dance is tomorrow, I'm going with Annettte Molina. We're just going as friends though. In a way I'm kind of glad because right now I really don't feel like getting involved with ayone. I guess we're going to do something with Tom, Lugene, Kandi, and Hank, either sledding or just conversing. I doubt we'll go sledding because it's going to be a little dark to go sledding.
Tuesday night we had about three inches of snow, and on Wednesday nightw we had about four more inches. Since we've been having all this snow, I decided to try my hand as some cross country skiing. It's been really great. I go East across the fiels until I get to Fishing Creek. It's really invigorating.
Last week I was notified (Saturday) that I had been accepted to the National Honor Society. The informal induction is the 27th of December.
Terry is flying up for Christmas we're going to pick him up at B.W.I. on Wednesday on our way down to Diane's.
Tomorrow I'[m going to help decorate the lobby at 10:00, and then I'm going to zip into the mall and try to get some Christmas presents. I have an idea what to get Mom and Dad; but that's about it.
We had a Calculus test today two in-class problems and three out-of-class problems. I bombed the first two, even with help from Mrs. Forman.
January 3, 1982
ReplyDeleteI got a 99 on the Calculus test, Mrs. Forman was almost overly generous in her grading. I had a great time with Annette, she's a lot of fun. The band (Symphonic Wind Ensemble) did a pretty good job for the Christmas Concert. On the whole everyone did a pretty good job. I'm going to have to write at least once a week in the journal so I don't forget anything.
We went to Bob and Diane's on the last Wednesday before Christmas and picked Terry up at B.W.I. on the way. We went to church on Christmas Eve. I have to write a letter to thank Diane, Bob, Karen, and Tom for the presents. Let's see; Karen gave me the Duke pendants. Tome gave me the cords and Bob and Diane gave me the flannel shirt. As usual the presents were really nice. They also gave me the Cosmos record. The music goes from classical to really contemporary musics it's really interesting. Tehy also gave me a Pat Benetar record!! That's an awful lot of gifts. The food was especially good, and of course the company was esceptional. Terry gave me a record by Gershwin. We picked our own gifts and then wraped them for each other. Mom and Dad gave me the skiing lessons and ablue alligator. I'm going to have to thank Aunt Bernice and Unc for their card and money.
The car's almost ready to roll. We were going to take it to the guy to fine tune the carburetor, but the battery light has been on so we're (Dad) is going to take it to Cline's to have them check the alternator. It also make the oil pressure light work. Terry helped me a lot with the car. We pulled the dash board off to find out what was wrong with the oil pressure light. The heater fan went out, and we fixed that problem. The wires that went to it were bare and were rubbing each other.
Again Terry came up with some pretty good insights on life. He said that the Soviets wouldn't be able to go to far into other countries because they'll end up with internal problems like e had during Viet Nam. He's really against strip minning, and anything that goes against nature which ends up killing it. He doesn't watch television, he spends the T.V. watching hours, reading books. I'm going to try to watch less television and my goal is to read at least four classical books a month. I've started on Tolstoy's "War and Peace," it's a slightly abridged version, not so abridged that it takes away from the book. It's a very interesting book, which gives me a lot of new insights, and it helps me to appreciate the smaller things. I'm going to start to jog again. I'm going to increase it slowly.
Above the last entry, I scribbled a drawing of the "Preppy Handbook." with the words: "Muffy, Skip, Izod, Bloody, Cape Cod, Docksiders."
DeleteJanuary 24, 1982
ReplyDeleteIt certainly has been a long time since I've written in this journal. I suppose I'm going to have to vow to write in here at least once a week. I started to use the bullwoker last Sunday, and have stayed with it so far. I'm going to be in the jump-a-thon for the Heart Association on the 3rd of Feb. I was in County Band a couple of weeks ago, it really sucked. We practiced from 6:00 until 10:00 Thursday night, 9:00 till 5:00 Friday and 9:00 till 12:00 Saturdaay and then a concert at three. It was a last minute thing for me to be in it because I was a replacement. I'm telling you I was really glad to get out of that place on Saturday.
The Wednesday before I had County Band, Dad and I took the car to Cline's Electric and found out that it need a new regulator. Then on Thursday I took it back and they put a new one in, no more alternator light?
The night after County Band was over, I went to Dana Houser's suprise party. It was pretty nice, the had Gypsy Wind (the band from last year's Sadie). They weren't too good at the dance, but they weren't too bad at the party.
I don't know what my problem is lately but I feel really out of place. I feel guilty when I go out, so I don't go out very much. I feel like I'm being stepped on by everybody; but I'm not. I can't seem to figure out what the hell my problem is. Sometimes I act like I'm some kind of martyr trying not to do anything I like to do. I don't feel like I can communicate with anybody. I haven't gone out with a girl since Thanksgiving. And it really doesn't bother me that much, so far. I think I sound, and look pretty gawky.
I think I have to get away fromthe hosue, and parents more often. I think when I'm in schook, and even when I'm not I'm going to be really friendly, now worrying whether or not a person is going to say "Hi" to me before I say "Hi" to him/her. I've got to try to combine being tactfull, and learning when to keep my mouth shut with not worrying about what people are thinking about me. I've got to speak up, and make myself known to everybody. I have to start getting the attitude that if someone doesn't like the way I dress, talk, look, ski, etc that's not my problem. I started out pretty much with that attitude at the beginning of the school year, but now I've kind of softened up since October. I'm going to have to be my own person instead of a combination of people that I think I should be.
February 2nd
ReplyDeleteI've been trying to do what I said the last time I wrote in this. Basically I've stuck to it. I'm trying to be more friendly, and not so bound by so called stereotypes.
The ski conditions wre pretty bad last night. It rained Sunday, so the slopes wre slightly icy. Besides that, they gave us pretty raunchy boots and skis, and the guy that was supposed to adjust the bindings didn't do a very good job at all. I fell at least three times at the top of Minuteman when I tried to turn hard. My boots came right out of the bindings like noting at all. It took me awhile but I realized that I would have to tighten up the ole bindings myself. Near the end of our skiing time I had about two or three good runs down Minuteman. Even on those last few runs I fell, but I didn't bother me.
Last Saturday night Greg and I went to see "Rocky Horror Picture Show." It was pretty weird. I took rice, and toast, but forgot the lighter and newspaper. It was a lot of fun, I was surprised Mom and Dad let me go out that late.
Tomorrow is the big Jump-a-thon.
February 14th, 1982
ReplyDeleteValentine's Day! Grandma's birthday was yesterday. Bob, Diane, Karen, and Tom came up yesterday, and left this afternoon. We had a good time, Dad got pretty drunk yesterday, they had 4 bottles of champagne.
I feel pretty insecure. On Friday night I went to a party at Kim CcClain's. There were about 40 or 50 people, her house was really packed. I tried to become a "Cardinal," but couldn't make it, maybe some other time. Chris Pipp was at this little affair, and I sort of spent some time with her, a little sucking face that's all. The point is Lugene was there too, and she kept giving me dirty looks, at least that's what I think, that day at lunch I had made a comment about her to Lugene, so now I feel pretty stupid. Oh well, I'll get over it.
I have to get out of this hole I'm in. It's a kind of destructive hole I think. Things have a way of working themselves out.
I'm in the shit house with Schreiner, too. That's too bad though. Like I said before, everything has a way of working itself out. These kinds of situations always seem worse when I'm going throug them, but I'll look back and laugh. The problem is that I'm taking everyone, and everything too seriously. Mistakes are how people learn. And I'm going to take my mistakes and learn from them.
February 16th, 1981
ReplyDeleteYesterday was the official celebration of Washington and Lincoln's birthdays. We did have the day off! Suprising isn't it? We still had ski club yesterday, it was up into the mid 50s yesterday, the snow was really nice, exception in fact. I skied by myself, but I didn't mind. When you're a single in the line, and you ride up with another single it makes you try to think of something to talk aobut. When I ski by myself, I don't rush. I just take my time, and work on my style.
Lugene was pretty mad about Friday night, just as expected. She told me that I used Chris, and that she was thinking about making me go with her to the dance. I jsut bowed and scraped around. I'm suprised I didn't kiss her feet!! But everything out, again. I just told her that I was sorry that I used her, and I truthfully don't have any attraction for her. The only thing hanging over my head now is the trouble with Schreiner. Tomorrow should prove very interesting. If I can make it through the day without being called down to Mr. Smith's office, and even if he calls me down maby it will only be a warning.
Christy Lown's name was in the paper today under Schools: East. She was awarded 3rd place in advertising in the D.E.C.A. Club. I should call her up and congratualte her, but she might not be too glad to hear from me.
Life makes for some pretty interesting situations. This past week was my week for making mistakes. This week is my week for paying for them.
February 21, 1981
ReplyDeleteI got hard lenses today. This is the first time that I have had to wear a lens in my left eye. These lenses are a lot harder to get used to. My appointment was 11:15 and I didn't get out of the office until 1:45. I know I'm going to be able to get used to wearing these. And with hard lenses my vision should not get worse.
Last night was the Sadie Hawkins. Lugene and I had planned to go to Zee's Eastery before, but then decided that we could take Tashia Maitland and her date, Jeff Findlay. Well, Tasha didn't want to go to Zee's because she had too many memorys of Fred there. They went to Zee's last year after the Sadie. So fine now we had to find a place that everybody liked because Lugene thought it would be rude to pick them up after we eat, and on our way to the dance.
February 21, 1981 ...continued
ReplyDeleteWe finally decided on Dantes which was good becasue everyone liked it, and I didn't have to drive all over Cumberland County. I got to Lugene's at about 6:05 and they told me that Jeff had called Tasha, and didn't realize that we were going to a grub out dance. Besides that, he said he wanted to eat afterwards. Six thirty rolls around and still no sign of Jeff. It was about 6:45 when he got there.
Meanwhile, Lugene and Tasha are having an argument over the phone because Tasha's mother told her not to ride with Jeff. But Tasha wanted Lugene and I to go to Dantes and order the pizza, and when Jeff got to Tasha's he could bring her over to where we were going to eat. Lugene didn't like this because she said it out loud, and her parents heard it then Mr. Alderfer got on the phone and Tasha told hiim that her mother hadn't said that. So Lugene was mad at Tash for lying, and becasue her parents were responsible for Tasha while her parents where away.
We didn't have enough time to go out before so we decided to go to Pizza Butt afterwards. The dance was fun, but I felt like a puppy following Lugene where ever she wanted to go. After the dance Lugene thought we should get Amy and have her got to Pizza Butt with us. Jeff's brother, Mike was at the dance too, but his date was pretty unsavory so Tasha decided that he should go with us. So there's five people in my Opel, that seats four comfortably. We drove to Amy's and Lugene and I went inside. Amy and Lugene went in Amy's car and everybody else went with me in my car. We finally made it to Pizza Butt, and good ole Craig should have been there all by myself. Amy and Lugene had a good old time. Tasha, Mike, and Jeff had a great time, but good ole Craig got to talk to himself. I can't believe I put up with all their fucking, god damned crap. I feel so used. I'd like to kill them all. What the hell could I have answered to all their philanthropic gestures. It didn't hurt them at all, all they had to do was make their commands known to slave Craig and I carried them out like a good little slave. The ironic part about the whole thing is, that if I tried to bitch Lugene out she would think it was unfair of me. It makes me laugh they never think before they ask any questions/request. They never think that it would be out of the way, or anything at all like that. And to top it off, when I left Pizza Hut I asked Amy if shoudl would mind taking everyone to the base becasue I was late as it is, and nobody even gave me a thanks or shit. It was as if they had all done me the favor. I don't expet anyone to get on their hands and knees, but shit they could have said a litle thanks for the ride. I'm getting pretty tired of everybody screwing me out of everything. Just because I'm not a loud mouth doesn't mean that everybody can run all over me. I think I'll give Lugene a ten dollar bill and tell her that she can go out with Amy or Tom. She'll prbably want more. I'm glad I got all that out.
On Friday, that was the only fun I had with friends all weekend, Greg, Holly, Connie, and Deb and I went to see "Cannery Row" a movie based on Steinbeck's novel. It was a great movie, and after we went to Pizza Hut. I had a great time with them.
ReplyDeletethose last posts were all from February 21, 1982 not 1981 as noted my mistake typing them in now.
ReplyDeleteFriday, March 5, 1982
ReplyDeleteFifty-six days of school left!! That number has all weekends, holidays, and trips subtracted. I've been in track now for two weeks now. Every day after school from three till four-thirty or five. With all my homework and track, I haven't been able to write in my journal lately. I just heard, on the radio, that John Belushi has died! I can't believe it. They say he wither choked or had a heart attack. He was such a funny guy; Saturnday Night Live, Animal House and 1941.
I am pretty interested in this girl named Beth Murak, she's a sophmore. The only problem is that Lorraine told me that she's going out with a black guy right now. That shouldn't bother me, but I just imagine this guy she's going out with as a "Daren Bartholemu." This guy is really cocky, to say the very least. I'm not prejudiced, I have no racial hatred it's just that I don't like this kid because of the way he acts.
I feel a real need to lift, but I just don't feel like showing everybody how weak I am. But then I have to start somewhere. I want to gai some weight, too. The only problem is that when I start to eat more, it goes to my stomach and love handles.
I haven't gone out on a date for quite awhile! Tomorrow is the great Pizza Sale, this time I sold 38 pizzas. I'm going to get up at about 6:00 tomorrow so I can jog before we have to go in and make those suckers. Our senence outlines for our research papers were due Tuesday. It's not really exciting, but it shows that my time at Red Land is slowly dwindling away. And pretty soon I'll be on my way to Penn Sate. YEAH!!!
Saturday, March 13, 1982
ReplyDeleteLast Saturday evening I went with Greg to the Avon Furtues at teh Hershey Racquet Club. It was the semi-finals. Greg got two free tickets so we went.
It was pretty interesting. The first singles match was pretty slow, we went to Wendy's during the first doubles match, and came back at the tail end of that match. It wa a pretty lively double. The second singles was pretty action packed. Jordan from PA against Temesevari from Hungary. Temesevari won her match and then won the finals on Sunday. And finally, the seond doubles match was pretty dull. Two Australians vs. two Americans. Hobbs and Leo, who were the winners of the first doubles, beat the two americans in the finals on Sunday.
I got a 96% on my sentence outline it was worth 100 points. It was pretty nice yesterday, no school, it was sunny and about 60. We had track from 9- 10:30 yesterday morning.
Greg and I went to see "Charriots of Fire" on Thursday night. it was really good. It was a little long, but it made me think about what was going on. Tonight Greg and I are going to see the musical. My only problem thise days is Beth Murak. Lorraine told me on Thursday that Beth and her boyfriend aren't going out anymore. I was really glad, but now I'm confused. First of all, I called Lorraine last night to ask her what, more like when I should ask her out. First mistake, becasue she told me I should get together tongiht with her, but I just can't drop Greg off. Then Lorraine told her Mom that Beth was going out with a black guy. Bad move! Her Mom hit the roof, not that she's prejudiced, I don't know what it is. I figured out for myself that I would just take Greg, I f I see here there, fine, if I don't fine, too. I'll make plans to do something with Greg, and Connie afterwards. And that'll be that.
Next weekend I'm going to go to Bob and Diane's and babysit (kid sit) Tom and Karen. I'm going to leave after practice. I'll come home first.
I washed (rinsed off the dirt) on the Opel today, I found that it has rust coming through under the doors, below the chrome
March 24, 1982
ReplyDeleteDad's birthday was today. He is a big 63. Yesterday we had our first track meet. We won, 84 - 56 or something to that effect.
I'm getting pretty fed up with a lot of people in school. It's probably me too, I'm sure. For example, Annette Molina she makes we want to throw up. What a bitch, she spends all her time bitching around about some one person or another. She acts like she has a chip on her shoulder, and she's just waiting for somebody to knock it off. Today I was in the library with Amy and Heidi and Anette came in and sat with Christina and Shaunna, and immediately acted like Christina was her "lesser" and was supposed to be talked down to. As we left the library Annette was walking behind me and she let out a belch that wuld have embarassed Bob, Ed, Terry, and I. She didn't even act like it was an accident. And another example is the group of couples that make out in the hall like their never going to see each other again for the rest of their lives. Maybe I'm jealous, but I really doubt it. I have a little more tact than that. I'm taking everybody seriously. I have to realize that peoplea re different, and sometimes I have to overlook their habits that bother me. Hopefully, If I have habits that make other people mad, they will overlook them. If they don't then I really don't need that person as a friend.
The play was pretty good, there were a few rough spots, but they made it more memorable. For instance, the children were off in the wings singing and the Baron Von Trap asked what that was. Greg and I thought it was pretty funny because the children's singing didn't sound to good, it sounded like someone was torturing a cat. By the way I didn't ask Beth out after the play, and now she's going out with Steve Owens. That was quick, wasn't it?
Uncle George has been named the Distinguished Alunmni for 1982 at Penn State. The ceremony is the 5th of June, and I start on the 6th. The shuttle went up perfectly on this third mission on Monday, it's supposed to be in space for a week this time.
I went to Diane and Bob's this past weekend. Mom and Dad let me skip school Friday, and so I left at about 9:30 Friday morning. I had a pretty good time. Tommy and Karen are really starting to grow up.
In the margin of this entry is a little drawing w/ Pac Man written beside it.
DeleteMarch 27th, 1982
ReplyDeleteYesterday I had a Calculus test. It was worth about 100 points. There were only three A's and all the rest of the grades were from 74 to 40. I'm afraid I didn't hit 50%. It was pretty tough. This coming Tuesday Greg and I have to go to York Penn State for testing. It has English, Math and Chemistry on it. I borrowed Anne Finnegan's notes this week so I'm going to study them today and tomorrow.
The next track meet is away at Northern on Friday, and then the Monday after that we have a meet with Trinity.
Last night I saw "Deathtrap" with Greg, Kim, Connie, Deb and Holly. It was a pretty good movie, it was really twisted, and sometimes it pretty confusing. We had a good talk afterwards about a lot of different subjects.
Once again I feel that I'm pretty skinny, I don't seem to know what I can do about it. I eat a lot; but I guess track keeps me at the same weight.
I'm going to work on my research paper this weekend, too. It's due on April 16th, I hope I can pull off as good a grade as I got on my sentence outline. The third marking period has only one more week to go. My grade in english, Today's Issues, Band, Physics, Mechanical Drafting should be in the 90s hopefully all of them will be A's, the only grade I have to worry about is Calculus.
The saying March winds, April showers...sure is true, it's been really windy the last couple of days, and cold, so much for spring.
I wonder if my problem is that I'm trying to be Mr. Perfect. It seems like I spend all my time trying to be cool, going with the flow. Or else I'm trying to be Mr. Mature trying to impress everyone, the first person that I have to worry about liking me, is me. It's so simple. I go with what everybody else says. On second thought that's not really true because I try to get my opinion through quite a lot. I know what part of my problem is; I'm living for the future way too much. It seems like everything that comes out of my mouth has to do with getting out of school, and going to Penn State. Sure I should want to get out, but the point is that I'm living all my life in anticipation of the future, I don't even notice the funny or different or sad things that are going on around me right now in school. That's why I take everything so seriously, I'm so busy passing judgement on everybody that I throw them out completely as people. If they have one bad point, something I disagree with, I sluff them off totally. I've got to start enjoying everybody because they are different and they make life different, too. I'm really suprised at this discovery.
March 31, 1982
ReplyDeleteJust so I won't look back at this and think, "What a depressing kid," I thought I'd put a little humor. And since this is the last day of March, and March is Girl Scout Cookie Month I have this humorous little story to tell. It starts off that Valerie O'Donnel, a little neighbor girl, asked my parents if they would by some cookies, so they ordered four boaxes, since they always buy band candy, pizzas, etc. from me. Then Jeniece Mock came down and asked Mom and Dad to buy some cookies so they bought four boxes of cookies from her. They did this for the same reason they bought them from Valerie, retribution, since her parents had to put up wit my band sales, and because they figured those were the only two that would "hit" us. Well, I guess little girls talk because later that day Allison Carper, a girl from a few houses up, came to ask if Mom and Dad would like to buy some cookies. Mom and Dad being the fair minded people they are, decided they would buy two. However, Allison had different plans because when she was showing Mom the order form she said, "...and you can put your four right over here...." When she was told that we were only buying two she was probably a little suprised, but she still took them. I missed this little episode, but Mom told me about it later that evening.
I never put down my times for the mile and the two mile against Northeastern. For the mile, I ran it in 5:36 and the two-mile I ran in 12:13.
I've finally figured out that I shoudn't throw an acquaintance or friendship away, just because the person has a few bad, too me, habits. If I did that I wouldn't have any friends. And if other people did that no one would like me, either. I've alos decided to stop dwelling on my weak points: thin (skinny) legs, arms, etc. I'll develop, grow out of it. No one else is worrying about them as much as I am!
Yesterday Greg and I went to York Penn State for the freshmen placement testing. It wasn't too bad, the math wasn't to tough, neither was the Chemistry, the hard part was the English; spelling, homonyms, antonyms, punctuation, and diction. I'll probably end up in remedial english class. EEGAD!!
The Shuttle landed yesterday at White Sands, New Mexico. It was delayed a day because White Sands had a wind storm.
Above this date I noted in the upper margin:
Delete54th Oscar:
Best Picture: "Charriots of Fire" also Best Score
Best Actor: Henry Fonda, "On Golden Pond."
Best Actress: Katherine Hepburn. "On Golden Pond."
April 16th, 1982
ReplyDeleteOut record is 3-1-1. Our wins are against Northeastern, Trinity, and Lower Dauphin. The loss is to Northern, and the tie is to Middletown which was yesterday. My research paper was due today. One more thing out of the way. The next big obstacle to get through is the Calculus final.
Yesterday Uncle George had triple by-pass surgery. It was a suprise to everyone including Unlce Bud. He had a stress test and his doctor didn't like the results so he was sent to Gainsville for more tests, and after the results came out the opted for immediate surgery. I hope he gets better quickly.
Betsy's wedding is tomorrow....She has been able to stir up a lot of family problems. Grandma and Grandpa aren't going neither is Aunt Margaret and neither are we, through Dad's decision. Well, at least I hope Betsy will have a long happy marriage.
My latest time for the mile is 5:32, and my newest time for the two-mile is 11:58. It came down to under 12:00 at Northern then it went up, and now it's coming down.
The Spring Dance is tomorrow. I'm not going. And so far I'm not going to the prom.
May 1, 1982
ReplyDeleteWe beat Mechanicsburg on Thursday. The score was 89-61. My, times; however, went up. Come to think of it they came down a little bit. But the three meets before my times were a lot slower. The girls didn't beat Mechanicsburg, but Janet Thomas beat Louis Braumer. Janet does a lot (several) different events (400 open, T-jump, long jump). It was amazing because Janet was put in the mile to go against Lois, and she had never run the mile before. Whereas Lois wwas second in the nation for the girls last year. Janet did beat Lois when she was down because this year Lois has a bone spur and she hasn't been running as well as she could. Our team record is 5-3-1 and we have four more meets to go. Two more weeks until the band trip, and the prom. I don't have a date, I've pretty much decided not to go.
Last Friday I went to a Rick Springfield concert in Hershey. It was okay, it wasn't great, that's for sure. It seems though as a lot of things are that way these days. No one is really giving their all. Everything is done half-heartedly. I even find myself doing it a lot in track, Calculus, a lot of things. I guess the assembly on "Heroes" got me thinking. The program made me really think about commitments, and sticking with something or someone. I've got to push myself. It's just that it is so easy to take it easy and not make anything hurt. The winners are the ones that really push themselves. The average are the ones that just go through the motions without putting a whole lot of effort into what their doing. And the so called losers don't give a crap and don't even bother to go through the motions. Maybe they're the smartest because they don't worry about anything, and have no pressures. But somehow I can't get into that way of thinking. I have to stick with my commitments and see things through, whole-heartedly. Why bother if I'm not going to give it my all. Tomorrow I'm going to sit down and really dig into studying for the Calculus final this coming week. And when I do my eight mile run tomorrow, I'm going to make it hurt. From now on I'm going to keep this attitude. I may end up with ulcers, but I'm going to make it, and I'll be a survivor.
Aunt Margaret gave me a graduation present of $200.00 two weeks ago. She wants me to buy a good watch. I was really suprised. Mom and Dad gave me their graduation present today. It's a stereo system with cassette deck, receiver and turn table. Talk about a nice set up. These gifts really make me humble.
May 5, 1982
ReplyDeleteAunt Margaret went into the hospital tonight. Her neighbor called at about 10:30 and told Mom that she was in the hospital. I hope she's doing alright. Mom and Dad left a couple minutes ago. I feel sad for Aunt Margaret, she only has Jamie with her. She's got a lot of good friends that look out for her, but I still wish I could see her more often. I hope it's not serious. I hope they will put her on the new drug for people with angina.
Not to change the subject, but we won our track meet today. I didn't hear what the final score was, but at least I heard we won. The meet was home against Palmyra. I asked Deb Supplee to the Prom at band tonight. She said yes, I think we'll have a good time. I can really get along with her. She's not an overbearing type, she's very subtle. Now, won't have people on y back asking me (telling me) to ask so and so to the Prom.
Back to the track meet, my time for the mile was 5:23 my best so far. And my tow-mile time was 11:55. I realized that I have to keep a steeady lap time to do well.
I hope Aunt Margaret makes it through okay.
May 23, 1982
ReplyDeleteI went to the prom and we had a great time. We went with Greg adn Heidi, Connie and Doug, LOugene and Gary, Becky and Troy, to Negley park and had subs, and picnic food. We went up into the playground and swung on the swings, talked and then Lugene, Gary, Heidi, Greg, Deb and I went to Elby's and talked. I didn't go to bed that night because we were leaving for Virginia Beach Sunday morning. I packed got ready and left for Virginia Beach. We did esceptionally well. 1st in inspection, 1st in parade, and 1st in field show in our class. The trip was great besides that, too. The beach was great, the pool was great, everything was great. I take that back; the food was fair to poor, but that's okay.
Less than two weeeks till I go to Penn State. Seven more school days. I have to give a speech in English tomorrow it'll be pretty tit.
Last night, Kim, Connie, Gene, Chris, Greg, Joe and I went to see "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid." It was in black and white. Steve Martin starred, but the neat thing was that the movie was filled with clips of famous actors in different parts. Like Bette Davis, Lanna Turner, Cary Grant, Vincent Price, and about Bothers. The clips were from movies they had been in when they were acting in their prime.
Aunt Margaret is still in the hospital.
May 27, 1982
ReplyDeleteThree more school days. Less than that even because tomorrow I have a dentist appointment at 10:30, so I'm going to school for the first three periods then I'll come home after I go to the dentist. I have to have thee cavities filled! The worst news is that I have wisdom teeth coming in. The dentist's technician took x-rays, and on the edge of the picture you can see the wisdoms coming in. The problem is that they are heading for the roots of my back molars. In other words, tehy have to be cut out. I guess I'll get it done between summer and fall terms if I can go that long. Enough with my teeth.
About a week or less before I went to Va. Beach, Evelyne and Bill gave me a graduation present. It was a pocketwatch that belonged to Evelyne's father. It's eighty-six years old. Uncle Jacob got it when he was 21. He was born in 1875 and lived until 1938. It sure is a sentimental gift. The thing that's so impressive about it is the ornate design on the outside.
I've been pretty cunical since I got up from sleeping, before dinner. It's starting to wear off now. I guess I was so cranky because I woke up from such a short nap.
We got our research papers back about three weeks ago. I received a 91%. We had to do speeches based on our research papers, too. I got a 97 on the speech so that should keep my English grade up pretty high since those two things alone are worth 300 pts.
I've ben kind of down on myself the last couple days. Having Cathie Martin telling John that she wanted him to introduce her into the Honor Society didn't make me feel that great. Especially John, he's okay and he's an alright guy and everything but I feel like I'm always trying to out do him in everything. I don't know why - why I- feel like I have to be on my toes when he's around. I think that I'm afraid that he is going to take away a prospective girl friend. Which is pretty stupid, because if a girl likes him then fine, and if a girl likes me then fine, too. I don't know why I can't think that way all the time. The inner competing with people is the most crap I can take about myself. It helps me understand why I get uptight when I'm around some people. It's like this little ego in me, hardly little though. It's like a consuming ego, which is a bad thing to have beause it makes hard to gain any kind of inner-peace. I'm going to learn how to co-exist with everyone - accepting the points of their character which bother me once-in-awhile and enjoying the qualities of friendship which make it a "true" friendship. This crap of being more this or more that is simply put - "a pile of shit." It does nothing for the friendhsip except screw it up I think some of the values that are emulated in television, and primary and secondary schools are what have brought out some of these types of feelings in me. That could be why I haven't experienced as much comraderie in the past few years as compared with what I have experienced this year. I think I've been able to put aside the stupid feelings except every now and again it comes out like a zit and has to be picked off. Now that I've written all that I feel a lot better, I understand myself, and what all is going on upstairs. This journal really helps me to get some of the bad emotions out of my system.
Diane and Bob gave me a disc camera for graduation. It has almost everything - automatic wind, autoflash, it's super simple to use. I just took 15 pictures so far I want to see how they'll turn out.
June 5, 1982 (Written on The Nittany Lion Inn Stationery)
ReplyDeleteWhat a day. It's been like a dream. I've met so many people. Joe Paterno, Franco Harris, the President of the Pennsylvania State University Dr. and Mrs. Oswald. The president of the Board of Trustees and his wife Mr. and Mrs. Conti. Yesterday the head of the Alumni Assoc Ross Lehman.
Today was the day for the distinguished alumni. It was so interesting to meet all the diverse people. Polly and Ted Eddig, Dick and Barb Grubb. The Meyers, Mr. Meyers is on the Board of Trustees.
I'm really glad I'm going to be a part of this great University. The best part is that every body is so hospitable. When we move into our rooms tomorrow, I will try to be as nice as I possibly can.
Tonight we had dinner at teh Old Main in the rotunda. It was so very elegant, and before that we had cocktails at the University House which used to be the President's house but due to the riots in the early 70s the Oswalds did not move into the building.
June 8, 1982
ReplyDeleteLife goes on. I'm now a full time, first term freshmen that hasn't graduated from High School.
I've seen experienced a lot of different things in the few short days I've been at University Park. To start off meeting the heirarchy of the college and society was a damn good way of being introduced to the University.
People At the Dinner in Old Main:
Franco Harris, Joe Paterno, Aunt Dorie, Uncle George, Mr and Mrs, Barb and Dick Grubb, Mrs. Riley - Lion's Paw Award, Mr and Mrs Meyers - Board of Trustees. (I didn't include in my notes that Mom and Dad were also at the dinner, Dad loving getting Franco Harris' autograph. He was a die-hard Steeler's fan and we watched all their games. Tiny, demure Mom totally uncomfortable being with these folks, but thanks to some wine, had fun.)
June 10, 1982
ReplyDeleteI think I've figured out what my problem is when it comes to girls. When I start to like a girl I change. I'm not the same person I was before I started to like the girl. If I can ever get a "girlfriend" or start some type of relationship I'm just going to play it cool, not trying to impress her, overly. My problem is that I think the girl wants me to hang around all the time. Which makes me feel like I[m typed.
October 3, 1982
ReplyDeleteI've made it through one term. My cum 2.74. I got a bid from Phi Kappa Theta Friday. I was told I was the first one to get a bid this term. I'm pretty psyched, the only problem I want to pledge this winter - less work, but I've preregistered for 13 credits. I can always drop 3 adn have 10 credits for the winter then take 12 or 11 this Spring. I'm going to have to do pretty well this term to make up the difference. On the first Chem midterm I got a 57 the mean was a 59, but he's not going to make 59 a middle "C." That puts the pressure on. THE HEAT IS ON. I see what I have to do, but here I am writing and listening to the B-52s. I didn't get any exercise yesterday - all I did was heavy drinking last night. Maybe if I get some exercise - lift and then go running I'll be more able to study. I have so many different feelings rubnning through me right now. I'm really happy about getting a bid, I feel pretty honored yet I'm worried about keeping, or getting higher grades. I want to do this and I would like to do that. There's so much to do.
December 3, 1982
ReplyDeleteAnother term down, this last term I got a 2.75. I've got to keep plugging away. Just to recall a little of what's happened over the past two months. I accepted my bid Halloween night - after the flood of East Halls when the water main broke and flooded the dining hall. All the electricity and water was out for about seven hours.
Mom and Dad left for Germany on the 14th of October. They'll be coming home on the 16th of December. I struggled through finals, and barely escaped with my life in Chem 15. The teaching assistant was Joe Cool with the ladies. I got a "C" and almost hired a hit man to knock him off.
I went to Diane and Bob's on the 20th of November. Was offered drugs by two dudes in Washington bus stop, while I was looking for Tom and Karen. I went with Diane to her film class - she's got a great imagination when it comes to finding different angles for pictures. Saw a Capitals Ice Hockey game with Bob and Tom, ate a lot of food and overall had a pretty great time.
Here I am back in good old Happy Valley. I've decided not to pledge this term, and I'll probably skip Spring term too. I'm trying to figure out why. I guess for one reason I feel free, no responsibilities, yet on the other hand I feel like I've let down some of the brothers. At least I'm taking thirteen credits. I was really feeling good about my decision until I talked to some of the brothers. Now everyone else is going out to rush fraternities. Now that I think about it though I'm starting to feel a little better about my decision, besides I'm going to be here for three more years anyway. I just feel like I want to quit everything. Change my major to Marine Biology and go to school in Miami. But then I'm afraid of the uncertain and I know what it's like here. Maybe that's why I don't want to pledge because I don't know exactly what it's like. All I know is that I rushed around so much last term that I really didn't experience anything. Know I hope to take things easy, go to a few dorm parties once in a while. Work on a nice cozy relationship with this girl that I just fell in love with today, named Jackie (I think(, and just take everything at a slower pace so that I can taste life and really enjoy it.
Penn State beat Pitt on Thanksgiving. We're Super-Bowl bound against Georgia.
December 5, 1982
ReplyDeleteI've been doing homework almost the whole weekend. What it is to be a wild and swinging bach;elor, ay? Life goes on. I feel better about my decision to skip the fraternity scene, at times I feel down when people say "I hope I'll see you out there" or "We rushed Phi Who you're going to be out there for the party, right?" I just tell them no. The best part about not pledging is the freedom. I don't feel trapped or hurried. Saturday I studied a little in the morning and then played squash with Bruce, we came back to the dorm and went over to the I.M. building to lift. A whle afternoon shot. But really it wasn't because I had plety of time to do homework after dinner. We even saw "Caddyshack" last night - that movie has got to be a classic. If I could pick who I would be like, I'd choose Chevy Chase. The guy is so natural - even when he screws up he just keeps on going like nothing happened. I realize its only a move, and he's an actor, but even still I'd like to be the person he portrayed. Easy going, laid back, calm, yet naturally funny. Sometimes I wonder what other people think of me. Not whether they like me or not, but what kind of person they se me as. I never really thought about until Diane mentioned that she wondered the same thing.
Along these lines, I wonder what kind of image Greg thinks he is showing. For some reason he makes me nervous. I guess I get nervous because he does things that get me a little ticked, and then I wonder if I'm being too bitchy, or picky. A couple examples: He hears a song he likes, he turns the radio up fast too loud. This gets me mad for a couple reasons - I think it's messing up the speakers because they "crack" a lot more now. Really loud music bothers me. Need I say more? When I look back at this I'm going to say talk about a picky-assed person. If I want to be thought of a laid back person. No If I want to be a laid back, easy going person I can't let what he does bother me. Yet I don't want all my rights to be stepped on. If I just tell him in a calm way not to do so and so, then I would think that it wouldn't bother him. I'll get this straightened out. It's just that I have this internal conflict between wanting to be calm and getting upset about little things like that.
December 18, 1982
ReplyDeleteOnly one week until Christmas - two more days of class. It's going to be great to get out of here for awhile.
I'm getting tired of a couple guys that I hand around with. These two are like Mutt and Jeff. They think they're cool, they laugh at each other's jokes, and they don't let anybody in to be real friends with them. We all do a lot together, but shit they're just too cool.
Mom and Dad got home on the 16th. It'll be good to go home and kick back - sleep in my own bed. Feels pretty strange saying that, for some reason I have a feeling of homelessness. When I went to Bob and Diane's I missed being up here a little bit.
I don't know if I should change my major, and to to another school, or just stick it out here. I guess I'll stick it out for awhile. I have to admit that I do like it here despite all the rough, queezy times I've had. There's been a lot more good times than bad so I guess that's why I like it so much. We'll see as time goes by.
January 27, 1983
ReplyDeleteMidterms next week. Big deal. The big deal is that I don't understand Physics worth shit. I really wonder if I should be in engineering. It just seems like an uphill battle. But then I usually get this way around midterms. The problem is that if I don't start getting better grades I'm going to be up shit creek. The first thing I have to do is not take this so seriously. I have to realize that I'm going to have to spend a lot of time with Physics, I just have to keep going over and over and over the problems it sinks in. I've set aside almost this whole weekend to study. I'll just have to take study breaks instead of blowing off whole nights of work. I've just got to have faith in the fact that the more time I spend with it the more I'll understand it. I think I get frustrated by the fact that I spend so much time on the work, and studying and I only get C's, I just don't know what to do or how to get a high B or, God forbid, a low A. I always used to get A's in high school, and I studied about half as much. Am I stupid all of a sudden, or was high school that easy or what? When I think about the time I put into studying for the last test, and the grade I got a 66%, it's hard for me too sit down and say "if I study all this time, I'll do that much better on the test. Oh well, such is life I suppose.
March 24, 1983
ReplyDeleteDad's birthday is today. They just got back from Florida on Tuesday.
I dropped Physics last term, after the second midterm, and am taking it again this term. Classes haven't been to hard as yet, but I've onlly had them for two weeks so maybe I'm jumping the gun.
Once again I've had the opportunity to build some character. How, you may ask? Well, it started last Friday night at the house party. I meet a girl named Gabby - she's pretty from what Dave tells me, but as I was told before about the girls I go after she was a "bitch" pure and simple. I asked her up for a nightcap and she said "yes" we talked for a while and she decided a softer light should be turned on so I complied and so on and so on.
She stayed for quite a while and then I walked her home. Problem I was will to start a nice slow building relationship; and was to blind to see that a girl may be interested in a one night stand. Quite a reversal, right? Well, that's how it was because when I called to aske her out a few days later, she said she was starting to see someone. Which was pretty opposite to what she said Friday night. Now I have one hell of a cold - and wonder where I caught it? HA, HA...
At least I learned a lesson - from now on no pick up0 for me. I'll dance with a girl, and I'll walk her home, but noting else-not until I get to know her when she's sober. So to Gabby I say thanks, for a lesson that I will never forget. Even if you didn't realize that ou were making me remember something.
June 23, 1983
ReplyDeleteFinally made my journey to Europe. I met a high school girl named Ann, and a girl who works in Philadelphia as a social worker named Joyce on the flight to Frankfurt.
I was picked up by Ed and Jeniene at Frankfurt Airport. A not so drastic plunge into the german culture - next time I hope t know the language. My main pastime has been watching Jim and Jeniene while Georgette and Ed go to work.
The chore of child rearing is quite a magnanimous outset (sounds as if I've been reading too much "Moby Dick.") nevertheless I feel this brings my point across with the utmost precision. Now that I've removed the smell of two year old child feces from my sheet...I will go onward,. Looking in, I would say that raising more than one person is the ultimate test. A test at which I would fail miserably or be reduced to a sniveling, whinning child, myself. After seeing my sister's two children through what seem to be irksome beginning stages, and now seeing my brother's - I have concluded that I will not be marrying and then raising a brood of children in the coming twenty years - unless - never mind. How my mother raised me I'll never know - on second thoughts - a maid would help! Since this is a travel journal I will stick to my cultural adventures.
The German speading neighbors are very nice, but they are german and thus speak very little english. They must think me a triffle daft because I'm always smiling and nodding my head up and down. At times I wonder if they must think "How dare those loud Amercicans come to our country without even knowing the language!" But we do, so I will do my best to be amiable in my slow sort of way.
I have not done any real traveling as yet. I'm not sure what to do, and I am also taken back by lack of communication. Maybe to the mountains, maybe to England one thing is certain, my cycling plans have been washed out. Time has come for my nightly studying of guide books, maps, trains, etc...
June 28, 1983
ReplyDeleteI've made it through the culture shock - so I think. Yesterday I got on a train at Schoop in the morning and rode to Kaiserslaturn. Once I reached Kaiserslaturn, I rode on a train to Heidelburg - which was my address for the day. I just waked to the Necker and followed it North - gawking the whole way, as a typical tourist. The city is so very beautiful. I wish I would have brought this along with me, so I would have been able to write down my impressions at the first possible moment. Now I'm writing from my foggy memory; therefore, not as crisp.
I sat on the wall along the river, north of Heidelberg College, and looked at the beautiful ouses to my back; as I turn to face the river I could see the old tiled building in front of me. The Castle, the church, the old stone bridge all in the panorama. When I first arrived in Heidelberg it was very cloudy, almost ready to rain, but as I sat on my walled, stone chair a clear spot appeared in the sky, and gradually grew larger and larger until it had a beam of light coming down to earth. It looked as if this was the end of one half of a rainbow. From then on the day was sunny and warm.
I walked up the cobble-stone path to the castle - it was very steep walking. After eating some fruit on teh big wall next to the castle I walked to the inner part of the castle with the intent of taking a tour, but wound up going through an exhibit of Egyptian archaeology - very unique, but all in geman except for DO NOT TOUCH.
I walked across the locks and straight up the hill. The road got smaller but kept going up, so I followed. I ended up on top of a ridge that overlooked Heidelberg - great sight. AS I descended I went to a completely cobble-stoned path through the trees down to the famous old bridge.
On my return trip I got in first class by mistake, and found out very quickly from the conductor. It's very stange how you can go along and do all the right things without even knowing it. You sure find out quickly if your not following proper procedure.
June 29, 1983
ReplyDeleteArrived in Paris this morning at about 6:30! The city it is magnifique. There are so many sights that, as our tour guide said, " it is hard to absorb all the culture in one and a half days."
I think the favorite part is walking along the avenues and smelling all the different smells that are rolling out of the cafes. To me Paris seems like a very friendly city. Maybe it appears as such because I'm somewhat separated from the people and am also taveling with an american group of people, thus it is mch easier to communicate because many of the places we visit, the Parisians speak English.
The big trick will be getting in to the Moulin Rouge tonight. Difficulties will most likely arise because I do not have anything but blue jeans - too casual and American. We shall see - Bonjour.
June 30, 1983
ReplyDeleteThat's amazing, it seems like I just grasped the idea that it's already this late in the summer. But then again it's still only the beginning of this trip! Seeing Paris has made me understand that there is so much to see and experience in life that I shouldn't let my dreams and hopes be phushed by the wayside.
The only problem with Paris is that there is so much to see that it spoiled me. I have to get used to cities which only have one castle, or one or two monuments to past history. I'm sure it won't take too long though.
To top of the sightseeing, we went to Seplecheur, Painter's Square and also the Louvre this morning/early afternoon. The works of art in the Louvre are so magnificient. Even magnificent doesn't do them justice. Hopefully, in the future, I'll be able to stay in Paris longer - and really soad up the culture, people, atmosphere.
June 30, 1983
ReplyDeleteThat's amazing, it seems like I just grasped the idea that it's already this late in the summer. But then again it's still only the beginning of this trip! Seeing Paris has made me understand that there is so much to see that it spoiled me. I have to get used to cities which only have one castle, or one or two monuments to past history. I'm sure it won't take too long though.
To top of the sightseeing, we went to Seplecheur, Painter's Square, and also the Louvre this morning/early afternoon. The works of art in the Louvre are so magnificent. Even magnificent doesn't do them justice. Hopefully, in the future, I'll be able to stay in Paris longer - and really soak, up the culture, people, atmosphere.
July 2, 1983
ReplyDeleteMore impressions of Paris.
At first good look at the Eifel Tower we encountere black "street salesmen" that soo were to be found at every stop - lunch, the Moulin Rouge, the Seplechlur, the Lourvre, plus more: according to our tourguide, Caroline, these blokes wre brought into France illegally, and in oto stay they are forced to sell cheap little trinkets to the tourists - or else the "boss" will send them "home." They had all kinds of great "African merchandise;" the sculpture of three mondies - Hear no Evil, See no Evil, Speak no Evil. Belts (genuine leather) Picassos, bull whips, and plastic flying pigeons, wooden sculptured elephants, beautiful "silver" bracelets, rings, lighters. You name it they had it. In fact being a typical American tourist, I bought some of the beautiful silver bracelets. I was fortunate enough to be able to resist anymore further goodies from these guys. After my first purchase I engaged in bartering with them for the experience, and enjoyment - they're quite a breed apart. It must be a rough life not knowing either french or english in a city where most speak french and where many tourists speak english.
I thoroughly enjoyed the trip. The people on the bus helped to make the trip what it was. Just to name the ones near me in the back of the bus: John - a Junior from Michigan; also my roommate for our overnight in Paris.
July 6, 1983
ReplyDeleteI'm on a train to Manheim at this point. I left Ed and Georgette's housse at 8:30 and started walking to Schoop - I had walked about halfway down their street when a car stopped and the guy driving asked if I needed a ride to Kaiserslautern. It turns out that Frau Wagner had told the man across the street that I was going to the train station so he gave me a ride because he works in K-town. that just shows you that if you have an impression of people from word of mouth and not by experience you get a psychological feeling that all people are that way.
Once I get to Manheim I'm going to catch a train to Basel, Switzerland; and from there to Interlocken, it's near (on) a swiss lake. I'm really not sure how far I'm going today - I'll just go until I feel like stopping. I would like to walk around a little in Switzerland.
It's about two o'clock now, and I'm in Baden. Baden, West Germany wiating for a train to Basel.
I had a little scare when I left Manheim - I thought I was going North because there is a town called Offenback and one called Offenburg. I wanted to go to Offenburg which is south but thought I had made a mistake and got on the wrong train - I was on the right train though.
I put my sleeping bag on top of the backpack. Now it's not bumping my butt every step.
The time now is 9:45. My location - Interlaken- Ost. I met two people from Canada on the train from Luzern to here. They filled me in on the places to go in Greece, adn highly recommended a trip to Turkey. We'll see. It's really a good feeling to be able to talk to people and know what they're saying.
The most exciting thing happened when I got to Interlaken. I was trying to gigure out how to get to Milano, but didn't see any trains connecting. I went to information, but they/he gave me no help. As I walked away witha pretty disgusted look - two people man and a woman (mid-fifties) came up to me and asked if I needed any help. I explained my situation and they immediately began trying to find mea tain. They got me straightened out. I asked them where they were from and lo and behold they said, "Australia." I almost died right there. I told them I used to live in Sale and they said they new of the place because they live in Melbourne. Talk about an unbelievable coincidence. They were so friendly even in a foreign country. Here's to Australia - although she may be half way across the world, I still love her. Especially the beautiful Aussies.
I wsa enthralled by the beautiful sceneery coming through the Alps. The mountain forms, the lakes that looked so deep and cool and clear. Themountains that dared anyone to say a bad word about them. This all took my breath away. Even more majestic was the help I received from total strangers. Before I talked to them, scenery was the only thion my mind. Now all I can think of is how friendly those people were. off to Speiz. Don't forget to get a Eurail timetable.
July 10, 1983
ReplyDeleteI made it to Speiz alright and then caught a train to Brig. From Brig I got on a train to Milano which ended up in Venice. From Spiez to Brig I met a guy named Paul who was going to Venice. I slept through the stop at Milano so we went to Venice together. We spent the day in Venice and then caught a night train to Brindisi.
We got to the train station early enough to get a whole cabin to ourselves which we later found would be impossible to hold. Two girls informed us of the fact before the train left, so they joined us. These two characters were from Massachusetts. They told us of all their adventures in Europe. Quite an experience. I'm going to have quite a lot of experience with people by the time I'm through with this trip.
July 12, 1983
ReplyDeleteFor some reason I'm really anxious to get home, state-side. This is all very beautiful, but I'm just tired of being out of it. I don't know if it's me or the country or the other people, but I'm just not that happy. It's probably my outlook. I'm worrying too much about the money side of things. It might be different if I wre travelling with my friends, but then I can't expect them to be around all the time.
Although it may sound strange, I'me even looking forward to getting back to the books, a schedule, and some type of purpose. I have such a better feeling when I accomplish something. Just as an example of how my life has changed since I was going to school. For the past three days my schedule started off at 10 a.m., breakfast, then down to the beach until about 5:00 p.m. I would come back to the room, sleep, then get showered. After the shower it was on to dinner and the great night clubs. I say "great" in a faceitious way because for some reason I just can't get excited about going to dance with girls, that I'll probably never see again.
July 13, 1983
ReplyDeleteWe left Corfu today at 9:30. Had to get a cab from Pelikas at 6:00. Last night during dinner Paul and I decided to skip Athens because it's such a long trip just to see the Acropolis. So now we're off to Rome.
I met two girls from Penn State and their friends from Villanova waiting in line to get on the boat to Brindisi. I really enjoy talking to people from home. All the old words like "bag it," knowing about dorm lines, sororites, etc.
While we were in Pelikas we rented mopeds for the day. The horror stories that people tell aren't exaggerated. First, it ran out of gas before we made it to the gas station, and we had to push them (both Paul's and mine ran out of gas at about the same time.) We made it to Corfu, and stopped in a park to get our bearings. Once we decided what to do, we took off but the pedal on my bike came off, so I didn't go very far. I had to push my bike through Corfu going from moped shop to gas station asking for pliers to try to put the pedal back in. All of the owners had the same comment, "Caput." Finally got it started and went back to Pelikas. Then the kill button broke. Overall though the bikes were well worth it because the trip down to the beach was so easy that I could have not asked for more.
Meeting these people from PA has really put me in a good mood. I'm ready to see Rome and Florence now.
More on Greece...
While we were in Pelikas we stayed at Alexandros. 900 drachma a night. Our room was very small and the bathroom was down the hall. Another thing about Greece is that, at least in Pelikas, the flies were everywhere.
Meals were very cheap usually dinner was about 300 - 350 drachma. We had barbaqued chicken two nights and sishkabob one night. The fries were great as was the chocolate cake. Beer was 45 d during the day and 50 d at night. This was pretty cheap considering they were about 16 oz beers.
Before we left Greece we had to wait in Brindisi, Italy for the day. I think we sat in a cafe along the mainstreet for about four hours just talking to other people who were waiting for the boat to Corfu. My writing usually gets sloppy when I come to the bottom of the page.
Moving further back in the trip, I stopped in Venice. Before Venice we woke up at a place called Vicenzia and Paul thought this was Venice, so we got out checked our back packs and started walking through the city. Talk about stupid American tourists. It took us about half an hour of walking to realize that we weren't in the right Venice!
Once we made it to Venice we could see a great difference. I knew Venice had a lot of canals, but I though we were on the edge of town for the first Venice.
We took a taxi through and on the outside of the city. It's very pretty yet it's also a little smelly. At times it seemed like some of the smaller canals were community garbage dumps.
20 July 1983
ReplyDeleteWe had a long ride to Rome once we got to Brindisi. I couldn't find any compartments that weren't full or only had room for one person. So, we sat in the corridor and ate of cheese and drank our wine. Met a girl from Memphis. She was one of the few people I met that isn't a college graduate of '83. On the boat to Greece, I met a Page and two Australians. Robin and Ian were their names and they were both from Sydney. Robin was working as a type of nanny for an American family in Athens. I really enjoyed talking to Ian and Robin because they reminded me so much of living in Australia. We planned to meet them at a disco the next evening in Pelikas Beach but we never saw them.
Rome
The romans, the history, the culture....Lots of Italians, after all it is their country. Visited the Spanish Steps, at least we tried. I don't think we actually saw them though. I was the map director in Rome, whereas in Venice, Paul was in charge of locating our position and getting us to the next sight.
We went to the Vatican, and also the Sistine Chapel. Had lunch and walked around a little more. The prices in Rome weren't bad, but the coer charge which wasn't listed was 5000 lire just to eat at a table with a tablecloth on it! I must not be a city person.
More up to date, so I don't get bogged down with my Eurailing, I made it back to Georgette and Ed's on the 16th - ten days after I started. Minus my Ray Ban sun glasses that Dad gave me, my Eurail map and second most importantly my "Moby Dick" book which I had bought in Winter Park, FL summer of '81. So I have left little pieces of myself in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy.
On the 19th Georgette, Ed, Jeniene, Jimmy and I started on a camping vacation. We stopped at Chimsee for the first two days. It's a very large lake with lots of sailboats - I was pleased. Chimsee is in the southwestern corner of Germany, below Munchen. The second day we drove through Salzburg and went to a castle-park-zoo. Very relaxing. The gardens were very elaborate wiht trick water fountains. After Hellbrown we drove to Berchesgarten which is a small town at the bottom of some of the mountains were Hitler "hung out" in the summer months. "The Eagle's Nest."
22 July 1983
ReplyDeleteAfter Rome, Paul and I caught a night train to Florence. Actually the ride from Rome to Florence is very short so we caught a train to Genova, Italy and then rode back to Pisa, then switched to a train to Florence. We left Rome at 10:50 p.m. and got to Florence at about 12:30 the next day. It was pretty much of a pain to ride the train up back, and switch - but that's what we did. At least we had enough time in Pisa to jump off the train, run to the Leaning Tower and then run back to the train.
Florence was one of the cities where the Renaissance first started to flourish. You could see that this was so because of the very ornate churches - insides filled with marble etchings.
Let me jump back here to Rome - the marble reminded me of the beautiful frescoes in the Vatican which were donw with little square blocks each a different color, all adding up t a picture that looked like it had been painted on.
Continuing after Florence - Paul caught a train to Nice to spend a few days on the French Riviera. I went my separate route back to Krickenbach, Germany. The train ride started at 1:37 and was over at 7:30 in Kaiserslautern. From K-town I caught a bus to Schoop, and from there I walked back to Ed and Georgette's. The end of my pseudo-solo travels.
Now that I'm caught up with my own travels I will now continue with the travels of my family. From Chimsee we drove to Innsbruck, Austria. It was a beautiful drive through a small portion of the Alps - the only problem was that it was a little misty, and the mountains couldn't be seen at their clearest. Yet, I was still amazed by their sheer height, and ruggedness.
24 July 1983
ReplyDeleteYesterday we left Nortersee, which was the campground outisde of Innsbruck. We were going to Aviano Air Force Base - outside Venice. By the time we stopped for lunch - half way to Venice - it was very hot and humid. As we drove through the Italian Alps I could hardly see the mountains because the sky was so hazy. We decided to drive to Lake Gorda which is a huge lake in the middle of the Italian Alps.
We got to the Northern edge of the lake and there were tons of people - we were looking for a campground, but no luck - I had looked at the wrong section on the campground guide. We checked one campground near the lake, but it was all full. Ed and Georgette, along with the help of the rest of us, decided to back North. We drove back the same way we came, and went past Innsbruck to Garmisch, Germany.
While in Garmisch we visited Neuschwanstien Castle, Linderhof Castle - both were built by King Ludwig II, son of Maximillian. And on the fourth day we went to the Zugspietz which is a huge peak that overlooked Garmisch.
In the afternoons we usually made our way to the stream. The water was crystal clear with a blue tinge in the deeper water and very, very cold. It really felt good after sightseeing in the hot car for most of the day.
The campground in Garmsich was another one run by the AFRC, but the clientele at this place seemed to be a little better educated - manners, etc. than they were at Chimsee.
After Chimsee we drove to the Schwarzwald. Very pretty. Our campsite was right next to a stream - still clear, but not like Garmisch.
The second day at the Schapback we went to Trieberg - Ed and Georgette were looking for a grandfather clock. At our second stop they found what they were looking for, and after lunch, it was packed into the stationwagon. It's a handsome clock, made of a dark wood probably walnut - I don't know, and a brass face.
The next day, 30 July, we drove back to Krichenbach.
After traveling in the car for awhile I was able to do a lot of thinking about ambitions, goals, dislikes and likes.
2 August 1983
ReplyDeleteYesterday I received three letters. I was extremely happy because they were from Bif, Mom, and Karen. I really enjoyed reading the news, and imagined them telling it to me.
Mom's the greatest. She's always worrying about different problems. She said they would call on the seventh, but if we weren't going to be here that we should call and reverse the charges. She's so cute about those thins, I hope I can be like her when it comes to money, and just giving things to others in general.
Bif's letter was excellent also. She is a very thoughtful person too. My only worries are that she might be hurt when we get back to school, and I start going out with Karen. She had calligraphied the lyrics to "Sailing" by Christopher Cross, and had a picture of sailboats.
Finally, I especially enjoyed getting Karen's letter - it was nice to know she was thinking about me. She said she didn't know why I hadn't written - and said she hoped that she hadn't neglected me, etc because she didn't call about having a good time on our first date.
I really can't wait to get back home. I only have about ten days at home before I go back to school. I'm looking forward to seeing the picture of Annapolis, also anticipating the entirety of my pink slip, and my roommate for next semester. Things will happen so fast, once again.
When I return to school I'd like to get involved in SPE (Society for Petroleum Engineers), continue with the EMS (Earth and Mineral Sciences) student Council, join the cycling club, run for President of the dorm, and keep on running, also learn about computers, and start learning about the stock market. Sounds like a lot of extra curricular activities, but it seems like I do better when I'm busy with just more than homework. Next term I'll have (hopefully) Geosciences 1, Physics 202, Math 220, 230, Computer Sciences 201 and sailing.
I'm worried about whether I'll get the courses I requested, when I requested them it might be a major screw up, but I put sailing as my first priority. Some priority, but tough, I say - I'm going to think positively, and hope that I get a perfect pink slip.
(Sketches on opposite page of: sailing on the lake, Alpendwartz and another that started to be Jenine but didn't work out...who says you can draw?)
5 August 1983
ReplyDeleteThinking again. I've made a small discovery - at least for me. What keeps you young is an attitude that anything is possible - hope.
It's strange how people react to you in different ways. For example, ope for the next generation. Dad on today's economic, social, and political problems - "I don't have to worry about it's their problem" referring to the young. The only problem with that analysis is that people his age are congressmen - not just a few, but a good deal - FIND OUT HOW MANY ARE OVER 65.
Other things that bother me are people who are always talking about other people. And generalizing them into big groups. Georgette - "The germans are so nosy, the europeans are so... Does she realize she's doing this? Good question.
People who rush to have things done - just to have them that way. Me - this morning with Jimmy. I was ready to scream just because he wouldn't go to sleep after his bottle. Big woop. So he won't go to sleep- let him play he'll get tired, eventually, and he is!
What I'm trying to point out is that you have to keep fresh outlook, because each moment might be the very last. So make the best of everything, don't get uptight, and ENJOY LIFE'S LITTLE AND BIG CHARACTER BUILDERS.
Different frame of thought right now. A question that I came up with last night before falling asleep is - Should a person try new experiences if he's not sure of the outcome? I didn't really come up with this question - the question I have just written is my one second attempt at summing up the things circling my mind. I was trying to decide if I should go for a fraternity in the fall. Should I join the Rugby club? A more poigniant question I should ask would by, why? Writting down my reasons should make the advantages and disadvantages sharper.
Joining a fraternity:
Good side - a place to return to. Negative side
7 August 1983
ReplyDeleteHopefully, we'll hear from Mom and Dad today! Only two more days! I'm really getting psyched to go back home and then to school.
Continuing my question of joining a fraternity
Good:
1. As I mentioned before, after I graduate I'll have a place to which I'll be able to return.
2. I won't have to cook for myself - all fraternities have their own cooks.
3. I won't haee to mess around with finding an apartment, subletting next summer, if I can get a summer job, cleaning and maintaining an apartment.
4. It will help me to keep a school spirit because I'll still be involved in Greek week, etc.
Bad
1. Forced to act like you like a lot of people that you might not care to.
2. The dues - if I join an expensive fraternity.
3. I have to make a comitment to myself to work hard doing my duties, during pledging - all other previous commitments will become secondary. ie, no sailing.
Forget it. I'll figure out the question when I get to it.
The weather here has been considerably cooler. It's like what you imagine London's weather to be like. Cool, cloudy, misty. I've almost totaly lost my tan - at least it's faded a bit. One thing for sure, I don't have my tan from Greece any more - it peeled off about four days after I left there.
Reflections
Problems
Stay with my major at P.S.U.?
Why do I doubt myself, why change?
1. Future of Petroleum Industry - will it be a lifelong career? Will I have
to go to something else?
Look at all the areas that Petroleum encompasses - not only oil
wells, but gas wells. Drilling, Exploration, Marketing, Management.
2. I have to align my priorities.
3. Do I think about things to much? YES.
4. Am I a cheapskate? No
On my trip to Europe, my biggest problem has been reckoning
with this question. I have to truely believe that I'm not a cheap,
scrooge, adn not worry about it anymore.
Don't worry about money. Hard to believe? Yes. Enjoy life, other
people, and happenings - don't get drawn up into worrying about
every penny.
Working on important things like getting better grades, getting involved in more activities.
10 August 1983
ReplyDeleteBack in PA.
It's really strange how your feelings for a place change with years. I remember when we first moved to Etters. I really hated Pennsylvania - no this, no that, it's so boring, blah, blah, blah. Now that I've been away from it for awhile - I really enjoy being back.
The plane ride from Frankfurt to Philadelphia was pretty long. What was worse yet was picking up the luggage. Since the plane first stopped in Philadelphia the people from New York had to get their luggage first before they put our luggage on the conveyor belt. It's strange how people have to push in everywhere. We were waiting for the luggage, and people rushed up so close to the belt that if you didn't stand squeezed in with them you couldn't see your luggage. Oh well.
My problem since I've been home seems that I'm very nervous. I don't feel that way, it's just that I've been rushing through things like there's no tomorrow.
January 4, 1984
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm writing in here once again. A few notes from Europe are in another book. One of thee days I'm going to consolidate all these things. As the date tells I am now in the year of the book written by George Orwell. Lots of things are going on in my life, and I look forward to writing and hypothesizing more and more.
I just returned home from a ski trip to Breckenridge Colorado. Diane, Bob, Karen and Tom and I left on Christmas day and stayed until the first. The scenery of the mountains, and pines and deep, deep snow was truely a sight to behold. Breckenridge was an old mining town during the gold rush days, and now there are many of the old buildings which have been restored, nestled amongst the new buildings built during the latest gold rush days - skiing. Condos are everywhere, but it seems that the snow is not prejudiced against the old or the new because it covers all of them, more later...
January 8, 1984
ReplyDeleteOnce again I write - I find that I'm more interested in writing because I've been reading a little more. I've just finished "The Three Musketeers." I enjoyed the book. It's so opposite to today with the chivalrous musketeers who would kill any man if he looked at them crossly, and the rich women who were so caniving, and the women who weren't. I guess maybe it is a little more like today than I realized at first. It has the fast talkers who must talk around tight situations, and lovers - I guess some things never change. Now I'm going to start reading "Moby Dick" again! I started to read it last spring and had reached an all time depth during my trip to Germany. But unfortunately it fell out of my backpack as I was boarding the train in Switzerland..and no more friend. I don't mind reading it again because each time I go through it I see something that I had missed before. And Melville's writing, although it may seem like the works are crashing down around you and your drowning in them, is so much like a painting made of words. And since the song says "a picture paints a thousand words" then I can assume it takes a thousand words to paint a picture.
So now I will take my lessons in writing from Melville, and my digestions of life will be written down in overly descriptive fashion. Today I am worried, slightly, about my grades for the last semester, but I am excited about what awaits in the coming semester. Truthfully, I am more excited than worried because it's too late to worry about the past anyway. So much is possible - I feel like I can soar. I'm almost positive that I want to go into Environmental Engineering. I'm gong to go talk with the person in charge of major. I'm also going to talk with the "dean' of the marine sciences minor, and finally I'm going to take the computer guided tour. I don't think this major will be easy, but if I'm behind what I'm doing then I should be able to do better. Problems seem to be getting worked out.
January 9, 1984
ReplyDeleteOnce again I report into the log of my mind's travels. Yesterday I get satisfaction from planning out my whole life. As an example - I've thought a lot about my career goals as of late and I've come to the point were two roads begin. Sounds like Frost, right? I will record and go on...Now I would like to major in Environmental Engineering and take both options ie. air pollution, adn water and waste water management, and also marine sciences. The minor because I like (so I think) it and if I feel like going on later to do graduate work with the possibility of becoming a professor. When I look at these goals I sometimes think that I'm to impressed by my environment (Penn State), but what the hell, goals are made to be broken.
The other road that comes to mind is that of looking at my continual planning. This planning could be a result of me being at home. Since this is where I've done the most daydreaming. With lack of activity, the mind has lots of time to wander - and I've chosen for it to wander down the path of my future. Yet when I get to school, it all changes. At school more things are available my mind is constantly engaged with other people and other physical activities. Spontenaity seems to be the key at getting by and coping with my peers. I wonder if making plans and establishing goals is much in tune with Zen. I think I know the answer already. No.
Zen is more concerned with being quiet and observing. yet I'm not a zen or anywhere near so I shouldn't try to mold myself.
Besides if I spend all my time thinking about the future, I loose much of my objectivity to the present. So I have a few goals for the near future, and am going to try and be more interested in what's happening today. Why wish my life away? I guess that's what I do more when I'm home because I have more time to think about the future.
This is getting to be a little too much for me.
January 10, 1984
ReplyDeleteI included this brochure of the New World Exhibit because Terry, Diane and I went to it when we got back from skiing. Not fight when we got, but you know, a few days after. Anyway...the exhibit was excellent. The paintings were remarkable some of them looked as if they were real. This style was trompe l' oeil which meant fool the eye, which is exactly what they did. One of this type was of tellers (I think I must have meant letters) put behind a strip of metal just to hold them in place. It looked as if you could just reach into the picture and pull the letters from behind the piece of metal. Taking the prerecorded tour was a good idea becasue it really brought out many good ppoints in the paintings which I would have passed right over. Especially "The Gross Clinic;" I would have taken that in a quite different attitude if I didn't have the recording.
April 14, 1984
ReplyDeleteMy outlook has changed I've been roommates with Kurt for almost a whole semester. I think we're really good friends, but sometimes he really maes me angry. I've been seeing more and more of Barb over these past few months and really enjoy being with her. I guess Kurt feels left out because he's always telling me that I've changed. I'm starting to become hen pecked now he says. I think that's bullshit. I feel like I'm caught in the middle. On one side I don't want Kurt to think my relationship with him is any less important than my relationship with Bibs but yet it seems like for him the only way for us to have a good friendship is if we party together. Honestly, I've really lost my interest in going to a fraternity or a dorm party - I did so much of both last year that they don't mean anything to me anymore. I'd much rather go to a small party with friends and relax.
April 25, 1984
ReplyDeleteSometimes I'm pretty thoughtless. I make values and expect others to cherish those values too. I think I'm doing everything in my friendship with Barb, but I don't, probably not even half. She soes so many little things and I slide right by them. Other times when she says things I take them the wrong way and make stupid faces or sounds and now I realize she probably didn't mean for me to take it the way I did. I have to tell her what I think instead of assuming and then responding.
Spring Semester, 1984
ReplyDeleteThe following is an autobiography I wrote for a three credit Residant Assistant course I took to become an RA:
"The Life and Thoughts of Craig K. Hassler"
My parents have had the biggest influence on my ability to understand and get along with peers and adults. The age differences between my family and I have made me more eager to make friends out of strangers. My sister, Diane, is twenty years older than I; Edward is sixteen years older; and Terry is ten years older. Since I'm the last, I've never had to deal with everyone fussing over the 'younger one.' Being the last has definiteoy had its advantages. I've never really felt jealout of my sister and brothers because I rearely saw them. To tell the truth, I enjoyed hearing stories about what they got into when they were growing up. My brothers and sister had broken in my parents pretty well. If mom or dad had any career goals, religious requirements, or general molding, they had twenty years before me to practice and learn what type of expectations they could reasonably hope for. My parents taught me proper manners while I was in the first few years of school, and they also emphasized respecting adults and authority throughout my years at home. I think I was very lucky in that my parents had the attitude that I should find out what I like, then do it. This was especially true in finding friends, making my own value system, and deciding on my religious values. They have geen great models, and through them I've seen which values I want to make important in my life and those which I don't.
"Life and Thoughts of Craig K. Hassler" Spring 1984 continued...
ReplyDeleteEdward Gutshall Hassler, my father, came from a very middle class family, and both of his parents came from farm families. (This is incorrect, actually his mother, Bertha Gutshall, born in 1898, came from a farm family of three boys and two girls. Their farm was in Enola, PA. His father, Edward Sparrow Hassler, born in 1896 ? was one of two children. He was in World War I and had a career with the Pennsylvania Railroad. Edward Sparrow Hassler's sister, Margaret Hassler, was born in 1900. As an adult she and her partner Rachel iived together in Camp Hill, PA while she made a career with the Pennsylvania State Education Association. Not sure if she considered herself a lesbian because I don't think people defined themselves by their sexuality at that time...just a thought. I don't really know this for a fact. Their father was a caretaker at Reservoir Park in Harrisburg, PA during the early 1900s.) Dad (Edward Gutshall Hassler) was in World War II. He came back to a wife and daughter and put himself through college. Dad is very serious and methodical about everything that he does, and through the years he's found the best way to do many things. I know dad's wanted to make things easier for me, like how to save time doing chores, by telling me what he's found to be the quickest way to do my tasks. The only problem was that if I didn't do things exactly how I was told, I was usually told again; with a very hard and sharp tone. Many times I took offense at what he said, and tried to do everything in a way that I thought wouldn't get dad upset. Trying to avoid confrontation was like walking on eggshells and made me very nervous. Our relationship suffered. He made me both frustrated and confused because I wanted to please him, but I wanted to be free to decide how I could do at least the little things. I wanted to tell dad that he made me nervous when he picked on the litle things that I did, but I could never find the courage. At times I felt like he just turned his sensitivity to me, and the rest of the world, off. This is a problem that my brothers and siter and mother have all faced. I felt like one of my father's possessions. I could get very mad at him inside, but I couldn't let him know that I was mad. I elt cheated because I was afraid to express my true feelings when I was younger. As I went through high school, I became a lot more sure of myself, and felt a little less divided from dad because I leearned not to take everything he said to heart. Now my feelings of being cheated, confused and frustrated by him have gone away, and have been replaced by appreciation and understanding. I realize now that dad has taught me a lot of lessons, whether he realizes it or not, and their importance far outweighs the tensions that were caused by our inability to communicate. My only regret is that I didn't try harder to talk to dad about feelings. I'm disappointed in myself for expecting him to open up without any help.
"Life and Thoughts of Craig K. Hassler" Spring 1984 autobiography continued...
ReplyDeleteMy mom, Jane Page Hassler, came from a small family. Mom, like my dad is the oldest of two. Her father died when she was only thirteen! Mom worked for a while after she and dad were married, and once he came back from Germany she became a housewife. I've felt very close to mom as I've grown up. She was always home when I got home from school, and I was secure knowing it would be that way. I didn't feel nervous around mom because she never raised her voice, and she was very easy to talk to. The only difficulty I had in the relatinship was dealing with my mother's chronic worrying as I grew up. As I got more involved in school and began driving and skiing her worrying began to press down on me. If the weather forecast said snow starting in the late evening, and I had plans to gou out early in the evening, she'd fuss around until she persuaded me not to go, or until the forecast changed. I'd get extremely upset with her because I felt guilty about putting her through so much anxiety. What made me the most frustrated about mom's attitude was that she said she trusted me, but not strangers on the road or strangers on the slopes. This didn't affect our relationship to the point where we didn't talk. We could always talk and she'd let me explain my side, it's just that I felt guilty when I did go because I knew she'd be worrying. I am very pleased by how mom and I communicate because it helps both of us get a lot off our chests.
My sister, Diane, has always been married as long as I can remember. She married Robert G. Hardy when I was two. She has always been fair, and very caring of me. I feel so very lucky to have a sister like Diane because she's been around when I needed help. I remember a story of a young woman who was all dressed up, and on her way to a formal when her eighteen month old little brother fell face first into a pool. Since the little boy couldn't swim his sister jumped in and saved him before anyone else could react! I guess it's kind of obvious, but the woman was my sister, and you know who the little boy was. From this and other experiences since, I have a lot of respect and love for my sister. Bob's relationship is also very important to me because he shows a caring that I wouldn't expect that a husband would show to his wife's little brother. Bob makes me laugh, he's got a great sense of humor and he's very easy going. I'm glad Bob's been there to teach me how to put things into perspective, and how to laugh at myself.
"Life and Thoughts of Craig K. Hassler" Spring, 1984 autobiography....
ReplyDeleteI can't remember Ed being home very much when I was growing up. He's usually lived at the opposite end of the country or world! When we lived in Australia he was in Thailand, when we moved to Pennsylvania he was in college in Florida, then he moved to Las Vegas and then to Germany. Of my brothers and siser, I know Ed the least. We never had much of a chance to talk. I felt sort of nervous around Ed when he came to visit because I wasn't sure if he resented me because I had it easier since dad wasn't as strict with me. I think the first time we really talked about our hopes and feelings was when I visited he and Georgette in Germany. I'm sad that I've missed out on some of the closeness that he's had with Diane and Terry, but I hope we'll be able to talk more and understand each other now that he's moving to Illinois.
Terry was home for a few years while I was in primary school, and it's with him that I have one of the closest relationships. He used to give me 'indian burns' and 'charlie horses' to keep me in line with his commands. At the time this made me mad and very angry, because I couldn't retaliate without getting more indian burns. However, most of the time I looked up to him because he was genuine with me. He'd tell me exactly what he thought without sparing my feelings. Terry also included me in games and conversations with his friends which made me feel like I belonged. Even though, sometimes, I knew he'd let me play just because I'd be the first one out of the game, that didn't make me feel any less important. Now we're good friends, and he's the one who inspires me to investigate the world and keep an open mind. I love my family because they're all I've got, and frankly I wouldn't want any of them to different because then I wouldn't be me.
"Life and Thoughts of Craig K. Hassler" Spring, 1984 Autobiography continued...
ReplyDeleteTo learn where I found my values I have to look at the experiences I've had as I've grown up. My dad worked for Exxon as a Petroleum Engineer and was usually transferred every five or six years to start new off-shore drilling. I can first remember my life in Australia. Mom, Dad and Terry where the only family I knew, so friends were very important to me. Until we moved from Sale I wasn't inhibited by many strangers - adults or peers. I had almost a blind trust for people because I hadn't had any negative experiences in dealing with these people. I felt very confident about my relationships with my friends. I think I grew the most when we lived in Australia because I wasn't sifled by unfair judgements, prejudices or stereotypes. I enjoyed Australia and the friends I had become so close to. I didn't comprehend what leaving meant because I had nothing to compare it with. At the time I was sad to leave, but thinking about what wass in the future made me overlook the loss that I would feel later. I was excited to be moving and I didn't give myself the chance to thing about the big chunk of my life that I would never see again. Now when I look back I feel some remorse because when I remember the good times with my friends I know that I can't share the feelings withmy friends now because they wouldn't understand.
"Life and Thoughts of Craig K. Hassler" Autobiography written Spring 1984 continued...
ReplyDeleteAfter being out of school for three and a half months, I was enrolled in fourth grade at Lewis Carroll Elementary School in Merritt Island, Florida. I liked our new house, and when I was at home I kept myself busy trying to net fish and pulling myself out of the canal after I missed the fish. I had no major problems at home, and felt secure knowing my brothers were in college a few hours away, and having a grandmother, cousins, and an aunt and uncle only fifteen minutes away. The most severe adjustment I had to make was to my new school. Lewis Carroll was an experiment in teaching; a whole grade (100 kids) was in one rrom with shoulder high partitions which made the larger room into four semi-private rooms. At my old school, Gippsland Grammar, each grade had only twenty students - a big difference! Now I was pushed in with a hundred strangers. I couldn't concentrate because this new teaching style was really distracting; I could hear other teachers scolding their students. I felt overwhelmed because I had to adjust to new people and new teaching. I wanted a little attention from my teacher, and I wanted to make some friends out of all the strangers. I was scared. My usually uninhibited self was locked inside because I wasn't making friends too easily. I felt ridiculed because I talked with an accent and couldn't play many sports too well I felt like an outcast with my only friends, my mom and day, at home. I hated school, the teachers, and my classmates, and would come up with a new excuse for not going to school each day. I got used to Florida because I found some friends that I really liked and fifth grade was a total switch from the year before. Things really clicked: I could play soccer as well as the rest of them, I lost weight and could run without tripping. In the spring we had a track meet and I won the first place trophy for my division! I felt much more self-confident even proud because I had been determined to show people that I could accomplish my goal.
Dad had been retired for two years, and decided that he didn't like Florida so we were off to Pennsylvania. I had just begun to feel comfortable with my friends and school and now I was uprooted again. It felt like I had just learned how to stand up and somone pulled the carpet out from under me. I felt helpless and frustrated because I wanted to tell my parents that I didn't want to go, but knew that that wouldn't change things because the decision wasn't up to me. Adjusting to sixth grade in a new school was much easier than my first move because I had prepared myself for the worst. people at this new school were much more freindly and very receptive to me. From then on I was making friends a little more easily. During high school I joined more clubs and organizations and was getting good feedback which helped me to be a little more self-confident. Having confidence in myself made it very easy for me to make friends. Plus I didn't worry as much about what other people thought of me, and became much more relaxed. Overall, I felt more secure about myself during this time that I had since we had moved to the United States.
"Life and Thoughts of CKH" Autobiography written Spring 1984 continued...
ReplyDeleteLooking at my values and how they were formed, I think my parents, again, and early school years had the biggest impact on me. I started school at Gippsland Grammar, a church affiliated, all male school. We had seperate uniforms for spring and winte. The faculty was especially concerned with teaching manners and respect to the student body. If an adult entered the room the whole class was expected to stand. Talking to the teacher in a disrespectful tone was looked down upon, as was swearing, and both mean a free trip to the headmaster's office - you were lucky if you came back with both arms and legs (well, not that bad) The headmaster and all male faculty (Actually the faculty was coed. The Administration was also coed and were the ones wearing black gowns) wore black gowns (like graduation gowns). Looking up at someone with a long black robe who towered over me definitely instilled the feelings of both fear and respect in me. At home my politeness was emphasized: "please," "thank-you," and "excuse me" were drilled into my brain. I didn't resist these lessons because they didn't bother me, and too I didn't want to embarass anyone (namely me) by being rude. Another mannerism that my father enforced with all of his kids including the dog was not talking back. So many times I wanted to tell him what I thought about his temper affected me, but knew that it would make him madder. So I'd internalize my anger which made me bitter towards Dad. Once we moved to Florida, I was confused because the kids my age were rude and loud. I thought the only way for me to be accepted would be to act like them, but I didn't and fortunately found some friends who were a little more like me.
Having other's respect and giving them mine is very important to me because I don't think my dad respected me and I felt pretty worthless. Also, I was never comfortable expressing my individuality because it was understood that I do exactly what dad said without questioning. The fear of being punished kept me out of a lot of trouble, but on the negative side I became serious about everything and found it hard to take a joke without being hurt. Many times dad would get so aggravated with the way I was doing some small thing that he would yell until I understood. I was confused by my dad's infrequent but overly quick temper because it seemed like he would get angry about the weirdest things. But then he'd let other things, problems that would make anyone else's parents mad at their kids, go right by as if he understood that kids tend to get into more trouble. If he would've just said that he had a bad day then I could've understood. I felt left out of my dad's personal life. I could ask for money or material objects if I had a good reason, but asking for feelings couldn't be done. My emotions were very changeable because sometimes I was annoyed at myself for not trying harder to be close to Dad, and other times I was distressed at Dad's lack of sensitivity. I learned how to be sensitive from my mother, and I show consideration for other people's feelings as my way of showing respect.
"Life and Thoughts of CKH" Autobiography written Spring, 1984 continued...
ReplyDeleteAnother value which I feel very strongly about is not judging other people. The best example of my appreciating this value was in my adjustment to Florida. I must have been the worst athlete because I could never do anything right in gym class. Not one guy wanted me on his team, and the sad part was that they weren't afraid to let me know, before, during, and after class. I really disliked these kids because they were only concerned with winning, and they didn't seem to care who got hurt in the process. Word got around that I wasn't too coordinated, and no one wanted anything to do with me. It seemed that they had labeled me as a loser and this hurt because I had no friends that I could talk to about it. As a result of this experience I've always been very conscious about whether people are judging me and whether I'm doing the same thing to them. College has made me more aware of my judging others. My first term I was very concerned about other people judging me, but I realized and was overjoyed by the fact that no one knew who I was (except my roomate), and this could be my chance to start again without any stereotypes turning people away. I have made some great friends since I've been in college, and now am more interested in trying not to make judgements of other people.
My ability to express my individuality has been increased as a result of my college experience. At school I have the opportunity to make decisions about problems that had always been dictated to me at home. I feel free to accomplish things in the way that I please to do them, and I enjoy challenges because they give me a new way to express myself. College and living in the dorms have given me specific insight into respecting other's rights. Just living in the dorms has forced me to be considerate of other people in doing things that normally wouldn't affect anyone but myself.
"Life and Thoughts of CKH" Autobiography written Spring, 1984 continued...
ReplyDeleteI didn't really consider my values: respect, judging others, and expressing individuality as possibly unrealistic until this past semester. Last year I roomed with a friend from my high school and thought that roommate problems were something that other people experienced. Teh this fall I had a new roommate. I don't know how Housing could manage to put two totally opposite people as Jim and I in one room, but they did! Jim impressed me with a very heavy, pessimistic, introverted outlook on life. He smoked, was physcially inactive, slept all day, studied until early morning, didn't seem concerned with personal hygene and kept his side of the room in complete disorder. I could never see eye to eye with Jim, probably because he laid in bed most of the day. But seriously, I think we both tried to respect each others rights, but it was very superficial. I was baffled by Jim because he was unlike anyone that I'd ever seen before, and since we didn't communicate I couldn't figure out why he was so different. Many times I thought he acted strangely just to see what my reaction would be, and becasue of this I never took him seriously. There was no way that I wanted to be cloer to this character - it was bad enough that we had to be roommates! It was a struggle for me to hold on to my values, and more than a couple times I judged him unfairly and didn't respect him for being himself. At the time it felt good to get my frustrations with him out, but I went about it unfairly and looking back feel foolish and pretty immature. As I look back on the semester with Jim, I try to reassess my values in order to see if they're realistic or a dream. I've come to the conclusion that my values are realistic, and my experiences with Jim were out of the ordinary.
"Life and Thoughts of CKH" Autobiography written Spring 1984 continued...
ReplyDeleteConcerning my educational development, I'va always had plans to go to college, it was a decision that I made without even thinking. My brothers and sister had all gone through college and I just assumed that a college education would be a good thing for me to do also. Mom and Dad never pressured me into going to school, and no one inspired me - it just naturally followed high school. Junior high school is when I frist realized that I would eventually be going to college. I had a careers course in which we took aptitude and interest tests, and then matched the results of the tests with a job. Since I scored high in math and science and had some interest, engineering was one of the choices. Having a career goal helped me to channel my effots (a little) during high school.
Throughout high school I was in the academic curriculum, taking basic sciences and maths. These courses were challenging, but didn't take much time or effort. As older friends graduated and went to college I heard stories that the work was harder, but I thught I was preparing myself pretty well by taking, physics, trigonometry, and calculus. Being inducted into the National Honor Society gave me a positive attitude toward my success in college - maybe too positive.
Once I came to Penn State, taking control of my study habits didn't overwhelm me. I felt adequate in how I was balancing my social and academic life. I was suprised by the amount of studying that I had to do, but I did as much as I could without turning into a study hound. I was disappointed in myself for not doing more, academically, in high school. I also felt extremely competetive, gradewise, during my first year, and was too worried about getting my grade point up. I made myself feel like a fool because I compared my grades with everyone else's in order to determine my intelligence. After not reaching my goal of 3.0, I've decided that I have to change my attitude. Now I have a more relaxed viewpoint concerning my grades. Some people probably get the impression that I don't take my classes seriously, and am to involved in extracurriculars. I think I've found the right balance for my personality. After getting a 'C' in a one credit chemistry lab when I had spent six hours out of class every week to write up the lab, I learned the difference between important classes and 'character builders.' Adjusting to the concept of weed-out courses has been a very trying experience for me. At first I was confused because I was paying a good deal of money to go to college, and they were trying to make me flunk out. I'm still bewildered by this practice, but have just decided not to let classes get me uptight.
"Life and Thoughts of CKH" Autobiography written Spring 1984 continued....
ReplyDeleteSince I've been in college I've given academics first priority; socializing and relaxing, second; and thinking a weak third. Trying to find time to accomplish the many contemplative activites that I used to do while I was at home has been a area that I've let slip by too many times since I've been at Penn State. Sometimes I feel totally discordant because so many people and activites are pulling me in opposite directions, and I don't take enough time to sort out my feelings and thoughts about what's happening to me. In high school I liked to read classics, it seemed that I could always get a new perspective by reading. Now it takes time that I don't seem to have to read, say "Moby Dick," but then I cheat myself of a calm state that I get when I'm quiet and think. I have difficulty rationalizing time to read for pleasure, or go to the art museum because the asthetic education is very intangible and although it's important it's not as readily seen as the structured education of classes that are recorded on paper. It's unfortunate that I didn't see this sooner, but I have the attitude that since extracurricular activities are fun, they're not a benefit. A more in depth view, I think that outside interests such as sailiing and being in student councils have helped me a lot in understanding other people as well as getting my mind off studies. I that case why shouldn't I think they've played a majore part in my intellectual development?
"Life and Thoughts of CKH" Autobriography written Spring 1984 continued...
ReplyDeleteHEALTH AND WELLNESS
As I look at my current views on taking care of myself, staying healthy, and getting physical activity as compared with my attitude during high school, the only difference now is that I must take the responsibility for keeping myself healthy. As a brief example to show how I became overly conscious of getting enough exercise: when I was in elementary school I was "chunky" or "big bonned." A nice way to say fat. I was concerned about my weight and was left out at times because of my weight. I was hurt by the fact that other kids didn't want to try to know me, but I knew that I would have to change. I became very driven to lose weight and become more athletic so I would be accepted. I started running a mile every day before school with my dad in fifth grade with the hope of fulfilling my goal. It took a few months, but I lost weight and felt proud of myself because I had set my priorities and stuck with them. It helped me a great deal knowing that my parents took me seriously and I think my relationship with them was more mature. I felt respected afterwards because they saw that I could accomplish a task when the results couldn't be seen in just a few days.
During high school I started running two or three miles a day after school. Running helped me to sort out what I had learned in school that day, and gave me time to look over what I was feeling about other people. After I ran I felt invigorated, as if I had been hooked up to a battery and charged up. Eventually, as I started running a little more, I got up the nerve to join the track team in my senior year. Through track I met several people whom I would've never met, and was glad to get to know but found this to be the only positive point about my high school athletic experience. I made a mistake of volunteering to run the mile and two mile races for every track meet. I might have enjoyed track a lot more if I would have had something to show for my efforts besides sore legs. We had practice every day which meant at the very least five miles at a pace that was much faster than I was prepared for. I dreaded practices and was drained of my energy by the time they were over. Running became a chore and I was glad to see the track season come to an end. I was suprised that I ran as often as I did during summer term considering my total lack of interest after the track season. I guess I just didn't want to have to look back fiver years from then and say, "I remember when I could run...."
Since I've been in college I've started playing squash and have found that the game really helps me to get out a lot of my pent up frustrations. Running, playing squash along with sailing have really given me a chance to take an objective view at my goals and attitudes towards other people, my future career and just coping with everyday stresses. I feel very fortunate that I've found some activities that I cherish and look forward to doing.
"Life and Thoughts of CKH" autobiography written Spring, 1984 continued...
ReplyDeleteHEALTH AND WELLNESS...continued
Another area in which my role has changed is in staying healthy with foods. Mom was continually telling me not to eat fatty foods, and to eat vegetables and take vitamins. I trusted what mom said since both my grandfather and great aunt had diabetes, most of my great uncles had died of heart attacks, and my grandmother (on my mother's side) was dying of cancer. By listening to her recitations of health magazine articles, taking vitamin c,b, zinc, gralic, and multivitamins, and eating some new vegetable with dinner I think I was helping mom cope with her feelings of helplessness with my grandmother's condition. Once in college I understood I was free to eat whatever I wanted without concerned looks. I stuck with the old eating habits not only because as I would walk through the lunch line andd, seeing a piece of broccoli, hear Mom's speech on the effects of insufficient intake of broccoli on the intestine, but also because I'd like to have a life free of health problems that could have been prevented. I think it was easier for me to stick with healthy eating habits when I came to school because now I was able to decide for myself. I wasn't being told what to eat. I felt glad and more like an adult because I was in control.
I didn't include in the autobiography that at age 13 I had blood in my stool and had to have a polyp removed from my lower intestine...the result, I assumed of the first 13 years of my life not eating veggies, especially green ones. My parents were definitely not the strict disciplinarians I've made them out to be. I was 19 when I wrote this autobiography.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, back in 1977, getting ready for the colonoscopy and other procedures required lots of enemas...Mom was the one who gave me the required enemas prior to my going to the doctors for them to run the various tests they did at that time, prior to doing a colonoscopy and removing the polyp.
Imagine being a 13 year-old male and your mom's giving you multiple enemas before you have to go to the doctor so your bowels are 'clean' so the doctor can give you a barium enema to see if there are any polyps. The experiences made mom, dad and me very conscious of what we ate after that. Actually dad felt he could eat whatever he wanted since he jogged usually 3 to 6 miles a day. Eventually he had detached retinas in both eyes and had to have the retinas frozen back in place. Dad was also an avid hunter of small game and deer and practiced by being a member of a gun club in Rossville, PA where he shot skeet competitively for several years. Not sure if the 'kick' from the 12 and 20 gauge shot guns he used may have also contributed to his detached retinas. After the detached retinas dad started bicycling up to 20 miles/day.
I shot skeet with dad periodically but used a 410, smaller shot gun. I also hunted a few times with dad after taking PA's mandatory hunter safety course. Actually I went small game hunting once on the Kohler's farm/woods with dad. We were friends with and bought eggs from Mr. Kohler, a gentleman farmer and his lovely kindergarten teacher wife. When dad would go to one side of a thicket, me to the other and Bruno and Rex, our german short-haired pointers would drive through the middle, I prayed heavily that no small game or birds would come out on my side of the thicket. Praying definitely worked. Likewise when dad and I went to north mountain to hunt deer. I prayed heavily that day when dad and I separated that I wouldn't see any deer...closing my eyes helped a lot too. Walking/hiking with dad without guns was a lot less stressful and required a lot less work, loading ammunition, cleaning guns, and whatever was killed.
As an adult and looking back on my experiences with dad, I understand now that the main reason he was so detailed in how he wanted things done was due to the nature of the things we were doing...using a power boat to go fishing and waterskiing meant the boat had to be filled with a mixture of gas and oil, cleaned and maintained plus the great power of the engines/guns meant great potential to do harm if they were used unsafely...all very stressful for everyone...but probably the most stressful for dad. He was merely trying to share his passions with his wife and children. None of us were as good as dad because we weren't driving the boat, hunting as much as he... I can only imagine how frustrated it made him yet he never made me feel bad/less/judged because I wasn't as "good." Usually, like with skeet shooting, he'd figure out an adaptation that would work for me...like using a smaller shot gun like the 410.
Also interesting my comments about his 'temper' in this 1984 sutobiography. Truth of the matter was, he rarely lost his temper but when he did, it was as if a volcano was errupting. Fortunately, for me, his explosions never involved a physical consequence of being spanked, etc.
One of the joys I was beginning to have with dad as a college student home on break was bicycling with him on the roads around Etters. It's probably what lead to my great love of bicycliing today. Had always envisioned bicycling and camping with dad some day....
ReplyDeleteAlso interesting thinking back at all the "infrastructure" dad repaired. One example related to the above story had to do with dad having to clean out the septic tank at our house in Etters after it got clogged with toilet paper that our house's excessive users, mom and me, put down the toilet.
ReplyDeleteDad sat both mom and I down after he'd dug the septic tank out and had run a snake up through the drain line to the toilet, how like a colonoscopy, to remove the clogs. He explained very calmly and cooly how many pieces of toilet paper to use: 3, fold in half then wipe. Fold in half again and wipe again, Fold in half and wipe again, fold in half and wipe again. Must've been taught to him in Boys Scouts or the Army during WWII.
No doubt this is one of many reasons I'm so fond of my simple 5 gallon bucket with lid/composting toilet. No water, put leaves in it after every use. Then when it's full, take it out to the edible landscape. Dig a trench about a foot long and about 6 to 8 inches deep in the leaves, dump in the "humanure" then cover with leaves.Viola! You've just fertilized your edible landscape for free plus not using water to flush the toilet.
Funny how the Director of Carteret County Health Department in North Carolina has still not repsonded to my call regarding the data the county was using to be able to put me in jail for the public health risk I was creating by using this technique at the house I sold in Morehead City, NC.
Oh well, not my problem. Truth be told, the phone number I gave them is no longer valid because that cell phone got stolen when I visited the Bronx Zoo on my bicycle trip from Temple Hills, MD to Montauk, NY. I visited the Bronx Zoo with hopes of checking out the Clivus Multrum composting toilet and grey water systems the zoo had installed a few years back. Turns out, "they" didn't like them and Clivus Multrum...not sure why, no one seemed to know.
I've had to put my new number on hold too because I now have a negative bank account balance after PNC bank graciously credited my account for $1,300 dollars after I ordered swimming pools to try to set up the on-site energy generation idea in Harrisburg, PA at the W?H but then cancelled the order when so many homeless people started moving in and not wanting to help do what I was doing there. Long story, mercifully short, I didn't realize that PNC had put that money in my account and ultimately spent it, then they took it back resulting in a negative bank account balance and now no phone.
Fact is, I'm loving not having a cell phone anymore. I wasted way to much time taking pictures, sending meaningless texts, posting on Facebook stuff that folks could care less about. Tis all good! Sorry for the digression from the Autobiography.
Other "infrastructure" dad maintained was transportation: the 1973 White Cadillac, the 1975 CJ5 Jeep, the two vehicles I learned to drive. He did most of the work on the 1972 Opel Manta I mentioned earlier in my "Journal of a Human Being." Dad taught me how to change the oil, which I did every 3,000 miles on:
ReplyDeletethe Opel, graciously given me by my sister, Diane, and brother-in-law Bob,
the 1992 Chevy Nova, also given to my by Diane and Bob. It was Bob's mother's car. She had to stop driving because she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Bob's dad died having succumbed to Alzheimer's in 1986. That was the same year dad died of a totally unexpected heart arrhythmia (spelling?) basically uncontrolled beating of the heart that killed him one morning while he was making coffee for he and mom.
I also changed the oil on the 1986 Ford Escort that I inherited from mom in 1996 after she had a near miss as she was driving west on the Radio Island Causeway and turning south onto Piver's Island and the Duke Marine Lab. She was taking her grand daughter, my niece Karen, and her girlfriend to an event at the Marine Lab and turned in front of another vehicle headed west. When Karen told her mom, my sister, Diane, what had happened, mom lost her license.
Good thing Mom planned ahead for not being able to drive when she moved to Beaufort from PA in 1993 after her mother in law died. She decided to live in Beaufort Town Apartments right across from what used to be the IGA, a drug store and a beauty parlor so she could walk if she ever got to the point that she couldn't drive.
Mom was also the key decision maker when dad realized that Florida was too hot for him. After a trip with Cadillac pulling a 22' Dutch Craft travel trailer in the summer of 1974 up to PA, out to the four corners region of AZ, UT, CO, and NM with dad, mom, and Rex, our german-short-haired pointer from Australia, then back through Texas and along the Gulf Coast to Florida, dad wanted to move out west. Mom, ever concerned about family, suggested we move to PA to be closer to dad's aging parents, great aunt and sister.
I also changed the oil on two pickups that I owned while living on Long Island.
The first one a white, 1965 Ford. I ended up replacing the valves on that, doing all the work myself, when I found out it didn't have any compression while taking an auto repair course at Suffolk County Community College.
Then I owned a 1996 Chevy Pick up, 6 cyclinder that I bought from the common law-wife of architect, Ed Slater, in Wainscott, Long Island, New York.
I sold that to a relative of Alex Haley, author of "Roots" when I moved to Morehead City, NC. What's now Cape Lookout Ford in Morehead City changed the oil on the 2004 White Ford Ranger pick-up, the first new vehicle that I'd ever owned and purchased for myself. I traded the Ranger in to buy the "Champagne" 2007 Mini Cooper from Flow Mini in Winston Salem, NC. They had an awesome program for maintaining the car where I didn't pay for anything for the first 100,000 miles. Plus with that car, oil changes were much less frequent, also impossible for me to do, given the complex nature of the engine.
I'm so glad to be down to a bicycle and my feet. Much simpler, less expensive and so much healthier than being seated with major muscle groups of hips and glutes flexed using up so much of the oxygen and nutrients in my blood. Now that precious oxygen and nutrients in my blood can feed my brain. Yay!
"Life and Thoughts of CKH" Autobiography written Spring 1984 continued...
ReplyDeleteSince this autobiography is about me I'll try to tell more about myself through my friends; how I met them, first impressions, and some personality characteristics that have made them important to me. I'll start with the two people that took me the longest time to get to know. Last fall term my roomate Greg and I had had the experiences of one term already behind us. Since I felt a little more comfortable with the university than the first term freshmen, I spent most of my time with people I had known during the summer. Besides I didn't get a very good first impression of a couple of the guys on the floor, Joe and Dave, which made me less willing to get to know them. For some reason I got the impression that Joe was sarcastic and materialistic and was uninterested in wanting to be friends with the people on our floor, and Dave seemed like he just followed what Joe did. I don't think I made a move to check my first impressions of Dave of Joe because I was secure with the group of friends that I had lived through the summer with. Gradually I started to drift away from my summer friends because I was tired of the dull routine we had fallen into. Two of the guys decided they were too funny, and every meal became a place where I felt alienated by their inside jokes. It wasn't until this point that I made the effort to try to get to know Dave and Joe. I feel sort of foolish, looking back, because I didn't give them more of a chance earlier. Joe was trying to get to know people on our floor, but I didn't notice becasue I was too preoccupied with what I thought were my good friends. What's brought our friendship closer has been his willingness to open up to me and share some of his past experiences. Also through being in the Sailing Club together I've found that Joe shares a similar excitement and pleasure with sailiing as I do. I like knowing that at least one person can relate to my feelings because I feel more comfortable talking to them about my stories. Another common trait for Joe and I is that we tend to be overly affected by test grades - so now we really understand each other when it comes time to go look at test scores. Concerning Dave, I think I miss-read his "go with the flow" relaxed attitude because now I see him as he really is - just trying to experience things that he'd never been in contact with until he came to college. The one overriding quality about these two is that I feel very relaxed when they're around because I know that they're not judging me. I've told Joe and Dave more about myself than I've told anyone else before. I never really shared my feeliings or concerns with anyone before I came to college because I felt safer just listening to other people than I did telling them everything I thought and felt.
"Life and Thoughts of CKH" autobiography written Spring, 1984 continued...
ReplyDeleteJust to step back for a bit, in high school I was semi-close to a few people, but when it came time for me to share a concern I kept to jmyself - that's why I say semi-close. I thought they had enough problems of their own without me breaking down and telling all. Then again I wasn't too troubled compared to friends who always told me their problems. I guess I came across as someone they could talk to if they wanted a clear view. I wasn't compelled to tell my friends my problems because when I had any they were usually small enough that I could tell my parents. Sometimes I'd get a little bored with my situation of junior psychoanalyst because these friends would run to tell me their bad news so I could cheer them up, and never realize that they didn't tell me the good things that happened. I felt used because I thought the only reason why they liked me was because I could get them out of their depression. Since I've been in college I see that the role of my friends has changed and they are more important to me. My parents are still there when I go home, but now I'm surrounded all the time by my peers and need to know that I can trust and rely on a few of them to accept me. It's good to know that someone can help me up if I fall and it makes me feel pretty secure. I guess this is why I've had the most sincere friends only since I've been in college.
"Life and Thoughts of CKH" autobiography written Spring, 1984 continued...
ReplyDeleteAnother college friend who is very important to me is my roommate, Kurt. We met during orientation week of summer term (almost two years ago) - the first term at University Park for both of us. Kurt is a year older than I and started at a branch campus. He came up for the summer term provided he went back to Ogontz for the following two terms. I think Kurt and I are complementary friends - some of our attitudes are similar and others are different in that they make me reflectively question myself. As a quick, example, Kurt studies constantly during the week and the light hours of the weekend, probably to keep his average up (obviously). Whereas I study enough so I can get what's most pressing done on time. Our common goal is to get good grades, but we have different ways of acheiving them. Since we're both pretty open-minded, we try the others' ideas and if we like them we stick with them. This situation is quite different from my first roommate because he lectured me and tried to force me to adopt his style which did nothing but make me resent him. Kurt is like the life long childhood friend that I missed out on, and summer term was the chance to make up for lost time. We've done so many things that have tied our friendship closer together during my first term, and we're continuing to now that we've become roommates. We were fraternity hounds - out to meet the beauties and beasts of Penn State. We were a true team. If Kurt wanted to talk to Cinderella, he'd drag me along so I could keep her ugly stepisister busy- luckily it worked both ways! We also sent with some friends for the first camping trip on Mount Nittany, and vowed to come back before either of us graduated. Now that we've been roommates for almost a whole semester I've had more of a chance to understand the difference in our values. I've found one specific attitude difference between us and that is that Kurt likes to plan into the future, and I'm more concerned with trying to understand what is happening to me now. I'm glad we're different in this way because I'm provoked to question my attitude to see if it's a mature view to have. I've come to the conclusion that not planning a lot for the future is what's comfortable for my personality. Although the first few examples of my experiences with Kurt may seem trivial, to me they're very important because they signify a quality of optimism, open-mindedness, and occasional light-heartedness which I've found in not only Kurt, but Joe, Dave and Barb.
"Life and Thoughts of CKH" autobiography written Spring, 1984 continued...
ReplyDeleteThe last relationship, which is one of the most signifigant that I have, is with Barb. She's the first woman that has captivated me with her sincerity, trust, and willingness to try. I'm ecstatic about our relationship because it's very relaxed and doesn't have either of us playing games or pretending to be someone else. She's willing to try sailing and cross-country skiing which makes me glad because these are two of my most cared for hobbies. Another quality that attracts me to her is her optimistic, almost to the point of naivete, attitude which is a common quality for both of us. I'm very pleased with how our relationship has progressed and am excited to see what new predicaments we can get into!
"Life and Thoughts of CKH" autobiography written Spring, 1984 continued...
ReplyDeleteI regret that I haven't written and tied harder to maintain some of the friendships that I had made during high school. I feel pretty guilty because high school friends have tried to stay in touch with me, but my writing dwindled. I called friends when I started writing less, but when the phone bill came I regretted that I'd reached out and touched so many people. My parents pay the bills and I don't want them to have to give up anything they want because of my expenses. I don't want to take advantage of them, and would feel like a heel if I did. My excuse for not writing was that I was very busy, but the hard truth was that I was too lazy to sit down and spend an hour writing a letter to a friend. I think the reason I didn't and still don't write is because I think I should send a perfect letter without any scratch outs, or grammar or spelling errors. That's why it took me an hour. I'm sure my friends would rather hear how I am, along with spelling and grammar errors over not hearing anything at all. When I start writing letters, I tell myself I'm not going to worry about making mistakes, but by the time I've made eight scratch outs I get frustrated and quit. Right now I tell myself to keep trying and to be less critical of my writing style.
"Life and Thougts of CKH" autobiography written Spring, 1984 continued...
ReplyDeleteNow to move to how I handle conflict situations with my friends. I used to handle arguments by keeping my feelings inside. Now I'm realizing that keeping anger inside doesn't help anyone, especially me. Keeping anger in made me bitter and sarcastic and I think it made people turn away from me. I've found better ways like exercising to get rid of my anger. I don't want to loose the friends I have now. Lately, when I get into an argument, I do my best to tell the person I'm having problems with what I think their saying and how it's making me feel. I've learned this from the RA (Resident Assistant) class, and thought I'd experiment with it and see if it would help me.
I'd like to include Diane in this section of interpersonal relationships because my friendship with her is very different from what I've seen of other brother-sister relationships. We've never argued, maybe because we haven't been together for more than two or three weeks at one time, but I like to think that it's something a little deeper than that. I remember when she and Bob and their year old son, Tom, came to visit us in Florida. One night Diane and Bob asked me to go with them for a walk on the beach, and after we drove around and talked. I was really happy that they asked me to go. It sounds like an every day event, but to me it showed that they still loved me. I felt this way becasue after Tom was born I wasn't sure if their interest in me would fade. Being asked made me think that they still cared.
As I've grown up, I think my sister has really been in tune with what I was feeling. She's never seemed unwilling to put her turst in me, and that's helped me a great deal in putting trust in myself. With each stage that I've gone through in growing up she's had an attitude that didn't make me think that she was trying to be my mother. I enjoyed being with her because she doesn't put any limitations on my potential to succeed. She's open-minded, and she's optimistic - all of which are qualities that I admire.
As I said before, Terry has had a big influence on me. I think he's most responsible for my love for sailing and a lot of my attitudes. I've thought a great deal about whether I do the things I do because I'm trying to imitate Terry, or whether I do them for the sole reason that I enjoy them. As far as sailing goes, I'm sure I wouldn't have been as willing to find a club and get involved if Terry hadn't taken me sailing and shown me how much fun it is. But I think I've stayed interested in sailing just because I get a thrill while I'm sailing or thinking about sailing.
I've learned a lot through Terry. he unintentionally sets an example that I try to take and make a part of myself. I think he's looking for something (what, I don't know), but the way he's going about it is what fascinates me about him. I see him keepig his mind open to everything he experiences from relating and understanding other people to understanding religions, literature, music, sailing, and living. From Terry's questions I ask myself if I know the answers, and become curious about why events happen the way they do. I get wrapped up trying to understand and figure out the questions when I'm around Terry, and then after he's been gone for a week I drift back to thinking about my little problems in the rat race. I get frustrated when I realize that I've fallen into being too concerned with small problems, but when I see Terry again I'm inspired to ask far reaching questions again. To Terry I'm grateful for making me aware of the world outside of my little sphere.
"Life and Thoughts of CKH" autobiography written Spring, 1984 continued...
ReplyDeleteLIFESTYLE AND CAREER GOALS
Today I'm happy with my new major, Environmental Engineering. Hopefully, tomorrow I will be too. Sometimes I think people place too much of an emphasis on picking a career. As I've seen for myself, it's hard to pick a career when you have no first hand experience of what the job requires of you. At one time I had wanted to be an Archeologist, then later an Architect, during high school an Engineer, my first year and a half of college a Petroleum Engineer, and finally an Environmental Engineer.
The emphasis of my expectations of a job have come through a full circle. When I first started dreaming about the future I could see myself digging around in Egypt or Africa looking for tombs of Pharohs or "missing links." To me archeology seemed like a challenge. I thought it would be a thrill to uncover history that no one else had seen in tens of thousands of years. One reason why I wanted to be an Archeologist was because I was impressed with seventh grade history class, and my teacher who left school once or twice a year to work on archeological digs in Egypt. (his name was Mr. Mumma.) I hadn't thought too seriously about career opportunites, a high salary, nice cars or any othe parts of the "American dream." I was motivated to be an Archeologist simply because it looked like fun. There was a sense of adventure.
"Life and Thoughts of CKH" autobiography written Spring, 1984 continued...
ReplyDeleteAs I thought more about what I wanted in life, I became interested in money. To money seemed to be a vital part of happiness. After all you could buy Persches, Mercedes, houses in Mexico, islands in the Caribbean, and mountains in the Alps with money. These were my early teen years and since I didn't have super close friends to bring me back to reality, I dreamt a good deal about being helplessly well off. As I thought about my new aspirations I realized that Archeology wouldn't be able to foot the bill. This was the first time that I tried to align my wants with a career that could pay for the things that I wanted. I asked myself questions like: would I be able to find a job? Would I enjoy doing this for the rest of my life? Would I be able to buy the Porsche? Unfortunately I could only see that the aswer to the last question was no, and didn't even stop to think about the more important questions. Without any research I decided that Archeology wasn't right for me, and was happy to look for a high paying career goal.
As I sketched pictures and floorplans for my dream houses I began to like the idea of becoming an Architect. I could see myself as the new Frank Lloyd Wright, designing the most functional yet abstract buildings in the world. Now my job, if I was successful, could support extravagant tastes. I thought it would be a career that would be out of the ordinary, a challenge, and surely not monotonous. I was excited about the limitless potential that being an Architect could provide.
Taking an objective look I can see that I fell into patterns when I looked at careers. First I would find something that I was remotely interested in and choose that as the "right" career, after I had taken the stereotypical view as my first impression. I never thought to investigate what the career involved as far as amount of education required, time on the job, opportunities for advancement, or working conditions were concerned. The study of jobs was all done in my head based on what I had heard. If any realistic questions came up, I was usually knocked off balance by the answer, and got up looking in a new direction. As was true with architecture. When I found out that it was common practice for an Architect to spend up to seven years after college as an apprentice I started looking for a new occupation.
"Life and Thoughts of CKH" autobiography written Spring, 1986 continued...
ReplyDeleteOther times I think I picked a job for the sole reason of having an answer to the question, "what do you want to do when you grow up?" I didn't want my answer to be the same as everyone else's. I wanted people to think that I really knew what I wanted in life. Plus I was aware that having a good deal of money was important to me, and the only way to get money would be to have a high paying job. Even when I entered college, one of the reasons I picked Petroleum Engineering was because I had seen that I could make thirty thousand dollars a year after I had graduated. And since my dad had worked for an oil company, getting a job would be no problem.
Once I hit Physics 201, or maybe when it hit me, I questioned my decision to become a Petroleum Engineer. This was the first time I seriously looked at my goals. I couldn't understand how an introductory physics course could pull me down so quickly. After being mad at myself and the university, I dropped the course feeling a little bewildered, and wondering if this was a reflection of the frustration that would follow in later courses and even my career. I asked myself if I would be happy doing this for the rest of my life (again). Then I had a new plan: I could graduate with a degree in Petroleum Engineering, save my money, adn then come back to school later and work on a degree in a field I would enjoy. I thought this was a great idea, and felt confident that I would be able to accomplish this new goal.
Last fall I was confronted with Computer Science 201, and decided that I wasn't being fair to myself by not resolving my indecision about a career. Now I was interested in Marine Biology because I thought it would give me a chance to work outside longer, and work in or near the water which is what I'd enjoy the most. I finally completed the circle. I was back to the point where I was looking at careers that I could enjoy instead of careers that would make me rich. I don't want to be misunderstood - I haven't given up the goal of being "well off," it's just that being happy with my job is my first and most important ambition.
Ed, my brother, is in a situation that I'd like to avoid. Once he graduated from college, he reenlisted in the Air Force because his fiancee was going to be in the Air Force. Now he detests his work, which has nothing to do with his degree, and has had problems getting rid of his stress constructively - he had a heart attack two years ago when he was thirty-three. But Ed's going to stay in until he has twenty years so he can keep some benefits, and so he can avoid some of the hassles of trying to find a nw job every time Georgette gets stationed at a different base. From Ed's experiences I have a great appreciation for finding work that you can enjoy.
"Life and Thoughts of CKH" autobiography written Spring, 1984 continued...
ReplyDeleteI decided that I definitely needed to change my major, but to change to Marine Biology mean transferring to another university. If I switched to another school I would loose credits, and more importantly strain the ties with my close friends. Finally I settled with Environmental Engineering because it's a cross between what I liked about Marine Biology and what I liked about Engineering. Another aspect that I like about this new major is that I'll be able to use it to help nature and the environment as opposed to exploiting it. It's very critical for me not to have any outside guilt associated with my job. For example, if I were a Mechanical Engineer and worked for a government contracted defense company to design bombs that would kill millions of people, I don't think I could be too happy with my job. Hopefully, Environmental Engineering will be a career that I can hold without offense.
Equally important, Environmental Engineers are not restriced to a specific area due to the nature of their work. So realistically I could get a job and live near the Chesapeake Bay which is another of my immediate goals. Living near the Chesapeake would have numerous advantages. I could continue to sail. I'd be centrally located to Washington, Philadelphia and New York. And I'd be close to the coast for the summer and almost as close to the mountains of Pennsylvania for skiing in the winter. It would be no problem to drive to New York City for a show on the weekend, and it would be just as easy to zip to Washington to see the cherry blossoms in April. When I get out of college, I'd like to get involved in regattas on the east coast, and take weekend trips to sail and explore the cities and small towns that I've never seen before.
"Life and Thoughts of CKH" autobiography written Spring, 1984 continued...
ReplyDeleteOver the past few years I've gotten a clearer picture of what I want to spend my life doing, but have a foggy view of whom, if anyone I'd want to spend my life with. I may be selfish, but I don't want to get married too early in my life. I enjoy the freedom of being able to make plans and then change them without anyone else being affected. Then again, when I was travelling by myself in countries where very few spoke or understood English, I made and broke plans to my heart's content, but felt pretty lonely because I had no one to share my experiences with. I think I'm at the base of a path where it breaks in two. On the one side, which I lean to now, I don't want to get married because I have a picture of myself being pinned down to responsibility after responsibility - and poof, there goes the sailboat. Yet on the other side I'm scared by the sketch of me as a lonely old man who never experienced the warmth of a wife and children.
"Life and Thoughts of CKH" autobiography written Spring, 1984 continued...
ReplyDeleteAs I've been writing this autobiography I see that my parents have had a greater influence on my personality than I had imagined. Looking at my sex role identity I can note that many of my perceptions have been taken from what my father has and hasn't done. For instance, my dad has always been polite in extending common courtesies such as opening doors for other people, and pulling chairs our for women to name a few. I've adopted many of these practices not because I was forced too, or because I thought women were not capable, but because it gave me a way to extend a courtesy to someone else without needing to be rewarded. I was never lectured by a woman about being able to open a door for herself, nor have I gotten dirty looks. In fact the response is usually a smile and "thanks." In my eyes, opening a door, for example, is simply a sign of consideration, and I enjoy doing it for other people.
Many of the deeper aspects of my sexual identity are very different from my father's. This distinction was probably a source of tension between us as I was growing up, and most likely made it harder for us to relate to each other. I've watched my father be considerate of my mother's thoughts on issues that deal with relatively unimportant topics, and totally ignore her opinions on significant issues. this made me feel caught in the middle because they would argue and then stop talking to each other, and, although I thought Dad should listen to other people once in a while, I didn't want to come across as being on either side. I can remember Dad occasionally ignoring mine or Terry's input, but it seemed like it was more natural to do that to a child than to a grown woman. As a result I try to consider seriously what other people tell me, but often overreact and take something light and make it too critical. Because of my observations of my parent's relationship I think I give people the impression that I'm wishy-washy because I spend too much time trying to make decisions without stepping on anyone else's toes. I also get the impression from dad that he thought women weren't capable of accomplishing a lot of mental activities that men do every day. Fortunately, the redeeming quality of my father is that he didn't get hung up in making me digest his identity - at least I didn't feel obliged. So notions that he had, like those on woman's mental capacity, I felt free to reject from my attitudes.
"Life and Thoughts of CKH" autobiography written Spring, 1984...continued.
ReplyDeleteFor the most part, I think my views on male/female roles are undgrudging. As an example, in occupations I'm used to seeing male Doctors, Lawyers, Judges, and Dentists. At first, I must admit, I would be apprehensive about being defended by a female attorney until I had seen her background. It might take a little longer for me to put all of my trust in a female attorney because of the time needed to get over the initial awkwardness of the new situation. But I think once I've had more experiences in dealing with women in traditionally male, roles, I'll be more at east in the situation. I've also considered my feelings associated with being in a war where women were on the front lines too. I think it would be unfair to draft women into combat, even though it's been done to men who haven't wanted to fight. Persoanlly I'd be more worried for my own life because I'd be afraid of women on my side, distraught by the itense circumstances, shooting my accidentally. (PJ, one of the instructors for this course noted by this "What about men who are distraught? Good point...Personally I'm embarassed reading what I wrote especially considering the strong, highly capable, intelligent and successful women in my family tree in addition to women friends, doctors, attorneys who have helped me since I wrote this.) I realize this is a shallow judgement, especially when I haven't been in a life or death situation with male, female, or by myself, but I can't turn away my gut feelings because they're the closest pieces of reality I have to go on. Hopefully these examples are accurately showing my ability to accept new roles for both men and women, and explain under what circumstances I haven't been able to adjust to a female in a male role.
"Life and Thoughts of CKH" autobiography written Spring, 1984 continued...
ReplyDeleteEarlier in the autobiography I had said that I had no intimate friends until I came to college. Befoe college I never felt at ease in telling men or women my feelings. The only person I related my feelings to on a continual basis was Mom. I talked to Terry and Diane about experiences when we visited, but it wasn't as consistent as with Mom. Since I talked to my mother, I guess I was better able to express my emotions to women, but when I first came to school I was afraid to tell anyone what I felt. Now that I have close male friends I find it's easier to explain my emotions to men.
I think I've missed out on a lot of value-testing experiences in my life because I haven't been in the position where I had to choose between a value that I hold high and making a decision that will move me closer to my goals. I honestly believe that all people are equal, and should be allowed to try anything they want. Yet because of circumstance I haven't been put in the situation where my only choice was to stick behind these values. Moving this idea to my sensitivity to other people, I think I can sense when people feel tense in a certain situation, or glad in another situation. Often times I've thought about my misunderstanding of problems that face minorities and women. I feel frustrated and upset for those groups when I hear that they aren't being given an equal chance, but that doesn't do them any good. I think I'm sensitive to their problems, but haven't done anything to help. So truthfully, how can I say that I'm sensitive to their needs? I guess I should stay aware of situations that would put me in the position to help.
I think sensitivity can also be used to measure the degree of intimacy in a relationship. As I pointed out earlier, my relationships with Kurt, Joe, Barb, and Dave are very close, but I think, right now, I have a more intimate relationship with Joe and Kurt of the four I've mentioned. The reason I've catagorized this way is based on what sensitivity means to me. I think sensitivity is the degree to which you can understand what the other person is thinking, and tell them without worrying about their response. It may seem strange for me to say that I have more intimate relationships with two male friends than with Barb. But you must remember that I'm using the ease of relating unspoken thoughts (sensitivity) as my definition of intimacy. I do understand that a large part of intimacy between a man and a woman includes sexual intimacy, but I think that's too personal an issue for me to explain in an autobiography that's to be given a grade! I think peole should decide for themselves if premarital sex is right or not. I'm disturbed by people who tell me they have sex because everyone else is doing it, and that's why they brought it into the relationship. To me that shows an inconsistency in that I think that they're telling me that sex is just an act, and I don't agree with that.
"Life and Thoughts of CKH" autobiography written Spring, 1984 continued...
ReplyDeleteBack to the degree of sensitivity in a relationship - I think Joe and Kurt know how I'm feeling without me even saying a word. At least when we talk I get the feeling that we're in tune to each others' thoughts and words. I haven't reached this point in my experiences with Barb, but I think it's very close. I'm not totally uninhibited from telling her what I'm thinking without being a little worried about her reaction. This small lack of communication doesn't bother me because I think we're almost past that. I guess since I have better understanding with male friends, I'm moe able to show my emotions to men. To be honest, I'm slightly reluctant to show my inner emotions to anyone, but have an easier time showing close male friends. The reason I hesitate to tell anyone my feelings and emotions is because I need to be sure of the level of trust in the friendship, first. If I think the person I'm talking to will tell others my emotions, I won't explain my deep feelings. If I make it through the first barrier, then I usually express my emotions more easily to men because I'm unsure of how women would react to an emotionally exposed male.
July 6, 1984
ReplyDeleteI'm at Raquette Lake Boys Camp now. After Spring Semester I hung around home for about tow and a half weeks as Georgette, Ed, Jeniene and Jimmy came home, went to Florida and came back, and left for Illinois. After they left I went to visit Terry for ten days. I left Bob and Diane's on Thursday morning and drove straight through to Terry's. Stopping every two hundred or so miles to get gas, do push ups, and stand on my head. It seemed like a pretty long drive. I got to Terry's late Thursday night tired but glad to see my brother. He's in the Dutch Craft travel trailer in a campground in Titusville, FL. The camp was not like any other Florida camps that I'd seen before. Tery had the trailer so it ran parallel with the Indian River. We'd get up in the mornings and go to the benches along the river and watch the big red/orange ball come into view. It was great just watching, not thinking about anything. The grey heron would step ever so carefully through the water like he was trying not to scare his reflection.
I enjoy seeing Tery and this trip was no exception. I met some more of his friends. I saw Steve Acuff again, and met Terry's new girlfriend, Judy. And finally found out what the reason is why Terry's not seeing Candy anymore.
Terry gave me some money as I left in case I'd need to stay overnight on the way home. A little foreshadowing. I thought I cold make it in one day again because I'd done it before. But on the way down the car cooperated whereas on the way back it broke down in Lumberton, North Carolina. I slept in the car overnight.
September 4, 1984
ReplyDeleteCamp's over- another event that I didn't write anythin down about. I'll save it for later.
September 4, 1984
ReplyDeleteI'm back at school now as an RA. It's so different this year. I feel separated from my floor, but as time goes by they're warming up to me, and I'm getting used to things being so changed.
Being in a room by myself, I have a lot more time to think about things that I thought I had a hold on. I'm finding out now that a lot of things I take for granted and treat too carelessly - without even thinking.
September 4, 1984
ReplyDeleteComing back to Barb after I had a relationship with Suzy Swift this summer made me realize that I'm much too thoughtless as far as people are concerned. On one hand I wanted to show to myself that I'm still free - my rationale for seeing someone elsse while I was away for the summer. Yet when I came back I realized that I had something very special with Barb. I felt like I had cheated her out of fun because I didn't say anything about us seeing other people during the summer.
I'm having difficulty trying to get everything together. My own philosophy isn't taking into consideration what I owe to other people, and what I should give them. Is my fundamental goal of trying to get the most enjoyment out of each moment realistic? It won't crumble me if I have to change. I just want to know and learn how to have a positive attitude about change, no change, problems. I know I can't have a set way of dealing with everything, but to learn from my mistakes and grow - without stepping on my friends is what I want to figure out how today. I'd like to paint a picture of myself so I can truly understand how I overlap, if I do at all.
Writing my autobiography last spring helped me to see a lot about myself, but I think I just scratched the surface. And now I have to go farther to understand what motivates me and what my true goals are. Have I changed that much already?
November 1st, 1984
ReplyDeleteI'm going to transfer to F.I.T. (Florida Institute of Technology), if they accept me! I'm going to go for it, I'm making the move that I've wanted to make for a long time. I know this will be a good move, but I'm leaving so many behind; Barb, Joe, Kurt, Mike, Dave, friends on staff.
I'm scared, maybe a little worried, maybe a lot about this move.
I want to get into Biological Oceanography, but I'll have to take 12 credits in Organic Chemistry alone! And I'm failing Organic Chemistry this semester! Can I discipline myself? There are so many goals I have for my new life. I'd like to be a serious student and be very in tune with my classes- which means being prepared for class every day, and doing well on tests. I want to get a part time job teaching windsurfing, and I'[d like to be able to not have to study on the weekends! Can all this be achieved? God I hope so! Trying to achieve these goals without failisnt is what scares me.
February 17, 1985
ReplyDeleteWhat, I'm still at Penn State! Things change, and then they don't.
I'm having a problem with my mouth these days. It seems that I can't keep it shut. Even after my New Year's resolution to speak only when spoken to. Maybe that's not too realistic, but talking without saying anything is a drag. I've got to find a medium. I don't think too much, I feel stupid. I don't have an opinion. I tell myself I don't have an opinion so I can remain objective. The truth is that I think that's a convenient way of excusing myself from not knowing the current issues.
I'm too friendly, insincerely. I try to pretend to be everybody's friend and internalize my feelings of dislike, disgust.
THOUGHTS FROM A FRIEND (Fellow RA in East Halls)
Today was such a beautiful day...Melissa was upset becasue the picnic for tomorrow might have to be cancelled because it's supposed to rain. I laughed to myself because we're so rigid.
RANGE OF MOTION AND THE MIND
Nautilus builds your muscles so they're tonned.
Nautilus has a wide range of motion.
Free weights make your muscles big, bulky and strong.
Free weights have a narrow range of motion.
VITAMIN GUM - this invention of mine.
SIDDARTAH - A BOOK FROM JOE.
Every problem is so important - can they all be?
I LIKE MIKE (PROTEVI - RA in Stuart Hall, same dorm I was RA in).
HE"S AN INDIVIDUAL.
HE"S A FRIEND.
I CAN LEARN FROM HIM.
I"LL LEARN HOW TO BE MYSELF.
TRADE - OFFS
I'll trade you my peanut butter sandwhich for your jelly sandwich.
How about if I give you half of my sandwhich and you give me half of yours?
Okay.
Animals don't wife out each other in nature.
Men can; because they have a bigger brain?
To be monetarily rich, to be happy at heart.
April 25, 1985
ReplyDeleteBarb and I went home on Tuesday. We saw Grandma the Queen of "Soaps." It's more of an interesting visit when the TV isn't on. The TV is always trying to get attention.
Terry is flying to England today. I'm going to miss my teacher, brother, friend. His goal, one of probably many, is to learn how to find happiness from inside instead of relying on externalities. I've felt a little lost and very sad for the last few days. My goal is to be me, not afraid to disagree, honestly eager to learn, less talkative, a better listener.
Mom was 64 on Monday. She cleaned house and cooked dinner. Happy Birthday Mom.
pen sketch of the floor of my dorm room.
April 30, 1985
ReplyDeleteWhy is it that when you're going to leave,
and time comes to a close;
you start to appreciate what your leaving.
Why is it that I can't appreciate the present moment?
Am I just another social product?
Growing for tomorrow, thinking for tomorrow, eating for tomorrow,
running for tomorrow, running to tomorrow, living for tomorrow, longing for
tomorrow.
I want to step out of the dog chasing his tale, the rat racing, the consumer society, the GNP.
I'd like to learn how I can learn for today, appreciate today, learn from today.
Today te sun was bright. I layed in the sun's rays and was bathed in the brightness.
May 2, 1985
ReplyDeleteANGER.
Mankind, men, women use and use, shortsighted.
We're doomed unless people have respect for nature,
unless people work with nature instead of against it.
I have so much anger inside.
I'm letting it out through the pen.
But not fast enough.
It consumes my thoughts,
it boils my blood,
it makes me crazed.
How do I strike out to show people?
I'm used and used and used.
If this is how the earth feels it must have died long ago.
If this is how I'll continue I will die too.
Don't people think about anybody but themselves?
They, we are so damn stupid I could scream.
Wake up from this trance assholes!
June 5th, 1985
ReplyDeleteHangover. My neck muscles hurt. What a good time last night was. Kurt and I discover Harrisburg's Metron. I wwas profusely complimented by her lines- I felt she had put so much reality into her words that I must dance one with her and remember her name, Joyce.
My next dancing tryst (nice work, aye?) ws with Maria, a recent graduate in economics, from what school the beer won't let me recall. I could't have had more exercise at an aerobics class! I saw Lori Lahnstein, she was going to get married but sixty days before the wedding she said no go. She seemed happy but maybe it was something else?
Before dinner, Kurt and I went to Pinchot to try windsurfing but te wind just wasn't strong enough. We walked on a path along the lake and watched sunfish guarding their nests, ducks preening their feathers, and we caught sight of a turtle warming himself on a rock in a secluded bay of the lake. We walked to "boulder point" where a huge boulder was hanging out on a point of land that jutted out into the lake. We layed on a huge rock on the edge of the lake with our shirts off and let the rock and the slowly descending sun warm us. The fishermen glided by in their electric powered boats searching for the spot that would yield the biggest fish or story imaginable as my friend and I talked about why I was so quiet. It was nice to be talking about me for a change. I almost thought that I had ceased to exist as a person, and that my death's duties would be to roam the world in search of people with problems and try to counsel them or refer them to the right agency.
We talke about Barb and what I was going to do. He told me to look out for myself first. As much as I care for her, I need to go without feeling that she's waiting for me to come back to her because the truth is I don't want to! I don't love her in the all consuming way that would make me want to be with her for the rest of my life. I don't agree with everything he said but that's we're different people.
Kurt made me feel happy to know that he's my friend.
2 August 1985
ReplyDeleteThe foot and a half cliffs that were made along the beach are slowly being eaten away by the tides and feet.
The waves were small and the water was a deep clean blue-green.
As I walked along the beach and the earth spun to the east and its darkness, I noted tens of fish that had been washed up on the beach.
Each looked as if it had been scared to death.
The beach changes day after day as do I. tomorrow I will be a day older.
(I am now in Southampton, Long Island, New York for summer term after transferring there from Penn State. My major is Marine Science- biology. I'm taking an art history course...impressionists through to East End painters such as Jackson Pollock taught by Yolanda Trincere. I have a single room in Wainscott Dorm and have met a man in his mid-20s also taking the course, Joe Manino. His father, is an adjuct economics/business faculty at Long Island University- Southampton Campus. After seeing Joe in the cafeteria, I invite him to share my room since he doesn't have a room. One of the bars we go to is called The Still. It's on the edge of the Shinnecock Indian Reservation...just down the street from Southampton College's marine science station. As we learn about dutch artists and the De Stijl movement, we refer to our bar, The Still as De Stijl. Joe is a wake and bake kinda guy who creates collages. He had an apartment on the south shore of Long Island, south of Huntington which is on the north shore. I found Southampton College through a friend at the Penn State sailing club who was an awesome sailor and from Huntington, Long Island. She raced optimus prams year-round there as she grew up. When her Mom heard that I was interested in going to school for Marine Sciences she sent me info on the State University of New York at Stony Brook and Long Island University's Southampton Campus. After Barb and I skipped classes at Penn State one day in late January 1985 and drive the Opel, it ran out of gas in New Jersey on route 80 because the gas gauge didn't work and I had forgotten to check the mileage, to Long Island and back for an interview and to look at the campus and area, I was hooked.)
My Penn State sailing club friend's name was Ann Prime. Barb and I drove to Southampton College. I had an awesome interview with a woman, I can't remember her name right now but she was amazing plus sent me a post card after I visited about how much she enjoyed meeting me. So not like what I'd experienced at Penn State...to which I lovingly refer to lately as "the State Penn." I got to meet Dr. Robert Danziger and learn about the school's many internships where students worked "in the field" in various parts of the country and world. I was also amazed and impressed by the school's Marine Science Station on Shinnecock Bay and by the fact that all the marine science courses had labs where students were out in the bays sampling and identifying plants and animals in addition to learning physical and chemical oceanography.
ReplyDelete7 August 1985
ReplyDeleteStruggles With Pessimism.
Am I like a coin with two faces?
One face speaks to others with an optimistic tone
while the face of my heart slowly gets buried in the pessimism of reality.
Happiness is a hard emotion to keep at my side.
It's scared away by the inconsistencies of life.
Is this a piece of my character that I can change for good?
Can I change a piece of my character?
Enjoy the simple things.
These will entice happiness.
Go for a walk, anywhere.
Look at the clouds.
Look at people's faces like you were trying to draw them.
Think, but don't let thoughts bury you.
Look at everything again.
12 August 1985
ReplyDeleteThe Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Poor Richard's
Greenwich Village
Washington Square Park
Unique Botique
Babylon (this is where Joe had his own apartment)
Penn Station
Port Authority
Barb Graeff (these were places she and I visited)
Paul's Pizza
Halsey Neck Beach
Hither Hills, Montauk
Montauk Clam Bar
Montauk Pt. Lighthouse - fog goodbye
Arts Festival train
Burgertime sleep
Granola - home made love
Home made chocolate chip cookies talk
Road "D" Beach confusion
Gulliver's Travels (reading for "Great Books" class) flexibility
IGA optimism
A&P pessimism
Cheese, French bread, talk
Chablis wine beverage
Blogger wasn't able to show the spacing of the words as I'd placed them and copied them from my journal. The second word, where there is one created steps that undualated in and out and circled back. Whatever. Who cares but point is without knowing it I'm unconsciously combining words and space to create understanding...
ReplyDelete28 December, 1985
ReplyDeleteWinter scene of mountains, not very good or visible any more, in pencil.
Plane after plane takes off as I look out my window at the mountains outside Denver. The White faced moon is setting to the west, but the sun's light will over power the moon's before it has had a chance to run to the shadows of the white-capped mountains.
A red car, a brown car, a blue car,
the single brush stroke clouds.
"You are too serious" says Bob.
"Maybe in a month" says Barb.
A yellow car, a silver car.
Time to consume breakfast.
12 January 1986
ReplyDeleteThis book likes to travel without paying it's dues. It just hangs out in my backpack. I unloaded it into a sunny corner of our ski place (Breckenridge, CO) It sat there watching us eat breakfast, dress for skiing and trod out in our big klunking boots. Then it watched us come back for a warm lunch with smiles on our faces. It saw us rest while Bob cooked another great meal and Karen took lunch orders with her cordial waitress manners and a white hand-towel wrapeed around her nine year old waist to authenticate her role. It saw the sleepy looks in our eyes - the warm soup splashed in our stomachs as the soup bowls emptied. It saw some of us anxious to get back on to the slopes before those infernal lanes began to grow past their proper boundary lines.
The book listened to stories of newly discovered ways to get back from lift 7 and lift 8 without too many blue slopes with garrulous moguls waiting to topple the confident green slope skiier.
It heard stories of green runs, and blue, black runs and the top. It listened to fights over what was going to be watched on the TV sitting near by.
I wonder if the TV and book talked/communicated while we were gone?
It could watch the skiers during the day, and the stars and moon at night. It could see Barb and I kissing, if it could care less! But, could it read my mind as we were hugging? If it could, Barb would be sad, and so would I. I'm too...? I wonder if it could read Barb's mind. Can cou, could you read Barb's mind? Was she thinking "I wish I could be with someone I knew I had a future with?" I wish she was.
19 January 1986
ReplyDeleteRaindrops on the naked birch in the backyard. Is it a birch? A sad thing - a studying biologist who's so caught up in his books and experiments so much so that he can't even find time to ask himself "What kind of tree is that?" Does it matter if he knows what kind of tree it is? Maybe not a sad thing - a person so in awe that it doesn't matter what type of tree it is. Just that new leaves will pop out as the weather gets warmer.
The geese fly around here. They fly overhead as ghosts through the rain clouds and fog clouds. I go to the window to watch as tehy honk and flap their way past the house. What a gift it must be to flap your wings and float through the sky. I'm sure it must require a good bit of exertion, and I wouldn't find fault with a bird who landed a bit out of breath. They don't seem too flustered as they land. I guess as they glide in, they catch up on their breath.
Three pheasants flew and glided away from their spots as Terry and I walked through the amber grass of the field. They were so graceful as they glided away from us.
22 January 1986
ReplyDeleteFrom "Living the Good Life" by Scott and Helen Nearing
"A market economy seeks by ballyhoo to bamboozle consumers into buying things they neither need nor want, thus compelling them to sell their labor power as a means of paying for their purchases."
from Chihuahua and Sonora - "Round River Essays" Aldo Leopold
"There are men charged with the duty of examining the construction of the plants, animals and soils which are the instruments of the great orchestra. These men are called professors. Each selects one instrument and spends his life taking it apart and describing its strings and sounding boards. This process of dismemberment is called research. The place for dismemberment is called a university.
A professor may pluck the strings of his own instrument, but never that of another, and if he listens for music he must never admit it to his fellows or to his students. For all are restrained by an ironbound taboo which decrees that the construction of instruments is the domain of science, while the detection of harmony is the domain of poets.
Professors serve science and science serves progress. It serves progress so well that many of the more intricate instruments are stepped upon and broken in the rush to spread progress to all backward lands. One by one the parts are stricken from the song of songs. If the professor is able to classify each instrument before it is broken, he is well content."
At the Hardy's on January 24th, 1986
ReplyDeleteThe sun came up this morning but the young niece and nephew seemed unimpressed.
The sun went down last night. I made a dumb comment that the sunset was beautiful. The neice said, "I've heard that so many times before."
I don't know Hangstrom Hughes or was it Langston or Longston Hughes. "He was a great poet, I can't believe you didn't know that." says the twelve year-old nephew.
Speak softly and quietly and those who are hearing will listen.
Speak loudly and often and those who are hearing will not listen.
To the young niece and nephew, I have or always have been, one who speaks loudly and too often. Now I will change.
Be sensitive but don't let the ludicrous self-importance turn sensitivity to anguish and turbulating insides.
January 26, 1986
ReplyDeleteBook keeping for the year 1986:
$450.00 from Mom and Dad.
$250.00 to pay for rent
$100 (owe Jenn - $125.---$100 of it went to Ilise to pay for Jenn's
part of the impending oil bill which would come on the 24th
along with the oil.)
$39.00
$ 8.25
______
$47.25 Transportation from Washington, DC to Southampton
$50.00 Food for Jan 8 - Jan 21.
A fast until tomorrow at 3 p.m.
A child until forever.
Responsible for my actions starting again @ 4:00 today the train.
30 January 1986
ReplyDeleteI'm feeling up and ready to go this morning. Normally there doesn't have to be a reason behind this, but today there is. And interestingly, thought provoking discussion was held last night: Aldo Leopold's work was mentioned, the benefits of nuclear war, frustrationwith today's society of consumers, our generation's seemingly clear understanding of environmental problems, yet lack of action in trying to do anything about the problems. Fianlly, talks about how we can do things - ie not driving, but walking to school - to do something in a positive fashion towards our unconsuming end. I don't kow how influential the talk was, but at least there's more unrest than I had imagined.
10 February 1986
ReplyDeleteThe snow has come.
Slowly it has melted off the roof.
Drip by drip.
Over the edge, onto the shrub and rhododendron.
It clings just long enough for the cool air to bathe it.
Now the snow is an icicle.
Drip by drip the icicle becomes longer.
The sun warms;
The snow melts;
The icicle becomes longer
Drip, drip, drip, drip.
I walk back from town.
The slush lies along side the road.
The afternoon heater ahas been turned down by a flock of clouds.
Slosh, slosh, slosh.
I look at the overhand where the icicles clung
And now just a few hearty ice teeth remain.
Tomorrow the rest of the clinging icicles will have an adventure.
3 April 1986
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday to Ilise, tomorrow.
It is so warm these days.
I lay on the sand in the night air,
clear sky and stars above me.
Wave after wave ending the trip to sand.
I can't imitate/intimidate the peace
of wave music - it goes on not caring if others hear.
Shooting stars race across the sky not caring if anyone notices them.
I would like to be a shooting star.
The mist from the spent waves floats into the air and
anyone/anything lying on it.
It coats my nose, I breathe it deeply.
The caves of light intrigue me as I walk back to the house,
thinking of Napoleon Cake and tea.
16 April 1986
ReplyDeleteUp and down, around the sharp turns tis roller coaster bronking buck - is it trying to throw me, stample me? Am I trying to stampele me?
I feel high in the morning and low at night, not mildly different but worlds apart. The excitement, the heartfelt victory of coming through the bottomless pits of insecurity. My morals shake around me. What are my morals?
I can't blame Barb. Barb has taught me. I am master. I shall rule my moves. By myself. THE ECHO OF LONLINESS. Why do I throw myself around? Be awake, ask questions.
I want to love, but I will not in the way that all others love.
How will a person I love know that I love them?
Maybe they won't.
What is this love garbage anyway?
A new shirt, a gold ring and orgasm?
Why do I want to love in a different way?
Is this my "wanting to be different" manifesting itself in another facet of my living?
Am I doing things to be "different?"
For that sake only?
I don't know.
How shall I respect myself?
What does respect mean?
What, who is myself?
I've answered these before, yet I don't think I have, or I would have remembered the answers.
Goodbye Barb. Why? Why not? I'm moving in a different direction? Everybody's moving in different direction, so what?
Why do I want to move in a DIFFERENT direction?
I could settle, marry, live, love with Barb for the rest of my life. Couldn't I?
Here I am in the world of organisms competing for survival and competition - so says biology.
Sort of takes the zest out of living doesn't it?
I have moved from a secure situation with Barb to insecure situation with me (Craig). I need to care for myself and figure out my needs so I can deal with the nees of others.
Pen sketch of me standing in woods with two paths separating at bottom of this entry.
May 21st, 1986
ReplyDeleteDad died on May 7th.
The rush of arrangements,
the love of family and friends announced.
Cards came many,
flowers and donations too.
The cards of sympathy are dwindling,
the flowers are almost all gone.
The memories are still vivid.
And life continues to go on.
Social Security,
A.A.R.P.
Exxon Benefits,
Death Certificate,
Marriage License,
birth certificate,
The immenseness of possessions.
May 29, 1986
ReplyDelete"The Jonah Man" p. 223. Henry Carlisle
Rantumscooting - going from one place to another with no special purpose.
The ebb and flood of energies. My energies are rising as today's sun moves down to the western horizon. It's hot. My juices are flowing - ideas are awakening, energy is flowing back into me. Optimisim washes over me. I will get done what gets done. Manana principle of summer. Tomorrow I'll get out of my hammock.
Mom's energies seem to have reached a major ebb with the falling sun. Teh heat and humidity have made her mind and body sweat. Her emotions seemed drained from the day.
We worked on paying bills and getting the checkbook in order. I got frustrated and cross. Why? Mom's just learning for the first time. This is all pretty new to her; have patience. Don't get angry or she'll be adverse to asking questions for fear that she'll appear dumb. Mom needs love, patience and time; answer her questions over and over again as if it were the first time you heard them.
This is a test for you. Don't get caught up in feeling sorry for yourself, but think of others and try to help them get through. No one is right and no one is wrong. Take a DEEP BREATH and another and another if you feel you are losing your cool. Look at the I that is causing you to get upset, frustrated, cross and dismiss it. OBSERVE, OBSERVE, OBSERVE, OBSERVE, OBSERVE.
Become detatched, see.
This is not a threat to my survival. Put it into perspective.
Pastor Farr (sp?) came to talk to mom today. I like him.
Don't buy into Mom's fears, worries, etc. They are not right or wrong. They just are. Mom is Mom. She carries a lot of "stuff." I carry a lot of "stuff." Grandma carries a lot of "stuff." Aunt Doris carries a lot of "stuff." So everybody and there "stuff" is here, and I'm going to love every one of them.
Mom and I went for a walk this morning at about 6:20. We walked along Fairway Drive to Eden, up Hemlock (I think) to Red Mill (near Yocumtown) past Denise Rehm's house, down into the private valley with the cows on the hillside to the left quietly and unobtrusively eating their grass, still covered with the previous evening's dew, their udders looked as if they were about to burst. If I had a pail I would have tried to get some milk (if I could have figured out how to their milk!)
13 June 1986
ReplyDeleteRantumscooting to Illinois.
Carlyle lake - man made here in Illinois. Blue skies with puffs of white clouds. A light wind on the lake. A few sailboats trying to make the most of a little wind.
The cries of an unknown bird can be heard, but not understood. Now it is silent and the sound of a power boat with skier takes over.
The sun is high and leaves this shadow of mine (on the pages of my journal that I've traced.) It makes my neck warm.
Waves from the power boat reach the shore - is this the ocean? Would a blind man know? Sure he would. Would a sighted man know if he closed his eyes? Maybe, no? Those sailboats shouldbe over here. There's lots of wind here.
I wonder if today's waterskiers must travel in a more or less counterclockwise fashion. Or is that only something, an enigma, from Edward Abbey's experience?
21 June 1986
ReplyDeleteThe official beginning of summer.
The longest daylength, the hotes for me so far this summer -~100 F on the thermometer in the shade of the house.
Illinois roads turn from a white/grey color and dry sound to a black color and sticky wet sound.
The tractors ride by pretty frequently - BIG. Some with total enclosures around the driver, others with none - just wide open skies. Some enclosed ones have air conditioners.
The cold beer tastes good as we sit in the shade of the maple and let the hot air blow across our unacustomed bodies. The picnic begins in an hour, I better go put on some clean clothes.
22 June 1986
ReplyDeleteGrandma fell the night before we left for Illinois and broke her hip in four places. Aunt Doris didn't find her until 11 a.m. the next morning. She's been in the hospital since then. They operated - put a pin in her hip - and now she's going to be in Holy Spirit Hospital until next week, then she goes to rehab to work on getting back into the swing of things. She told Mom that she's going to need a lot of help when she gets home. Mom worries that that means she and Aunt Doris will have to play nursemaids.
"Try to put things in perspective," I suggest. Easier said than done old boy, you don't spend all year in Etters.
The farm idea is captivating. I think about it to get me through. But, then I get lost in the logistics. I could spend my whole life trying to find the right place (the right person, the right job, the right life, the right family) - the right place for me exists in my mind. Where I am is where I'll be the happiest.
My mind won't tell me when I'm happy. It'll be just a part of me always. But is it true that when you admit happiness you are also admitting sadness? If you must admit that you are happy that must mean that you are also sad?
July 4th, 1986
ReplyDeleteHappy Independence Day.
The Statue of Liberty is 100 years old today. Big celebration in New York harbor - Ellis Island. Parade of Tall ships, President Reagan relighting the statue's torch. Singers, dancers, movie stars, fireworks.
Everyone's slowly getting up here. Mom and Elaine have been up since 7 - 7:30. Now they're working on the deviled eggs and potato salad. I can hear a lawn mower a few streets over. MMMMMMMMM. BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. No rest for the wicked or good.
Maybe someday I'll be able to buy me one of them fancy new human-powered push mowers - you know the kind - no gas or electric engine. Then I could still hear the birds or myself sing as I cut the lawn.
Shanna has already called up to see if Karen can come over and play. The Etters Ambassdor.
July 5th, 1986
ReplyDeleteThe day after the 4th and the day before the 6th.
I think my mind is thinking too much, working on being offended, tensioned, stressed. My stress is caused by my mind.
Why is it picking Diane? I'd say I've been a bit over sensitive to her words. I have. Miscommunication on my part.
Karen and Joe are getting married next summer. Joe Reitmulder is getting married this August.
July 9, 1986
ReplyDeleteSo Jeniene, Jimmy and Ed arrived yesterday. I've felt pretty useless today...uncomfortable, funny, bitter. I don't know how to describe it. I guess I'm inone of the phases of gried and didn't realize it. Ed began going through all the shelves, drawers, and board downstairs today - picking out tools that he would take, etc, etc. I guess I wasn't ready for this - the stage where you keep a person's things in the same or close to the same order as when they were alive. I felt as if I was being robbed. A stranger was going through Dad's tools and there was nothing I could do about it. But Ed's not a stranger, he's my brother. Right?
Inadequacy - a feeling that overcomes me - when Diane was here and now when Ed is here. I keep thinking that they are thinking that I haven't been doing very much to help mom since I've been home. I'm living inside my little world - the one inside my head. No one is thinking what I'm thinking they're thinking. Why can't I get that into my head?
13 July 1986
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday Terry!
Today was an inspiring day! Diane and Karen, Ed, Georgette, Jeniene and Jimmy and I went to visit the farm on Valley Rd. We looked through the breezway in the back, at the rotted doors leading to the celar, walked on the grey, paint-chipped, rotten proch and headed to the barn. I was telling Georgette that I was thinking about, after I finished school, trying to come up with the money to buy the place, and a few other ideas, etc, etc and she said "You should come home, live with Momma and figure out what you want to do before you do anything rash like that." I felt a bit stepped on after that. Why? I haven't been able to place my finger on it yet, but...I'm feeling like I can prove her wrong. Maybe not about that place. We'll see when I get to that point.
Diane and Karen left after we visited Grandma at Rehab. The rest of us went to the cemetary after we picked mom up. I was still feeling mad at Georgette. It seemed so important for me to be angry at the moment after my oh so precious ideas and dreams had been slapped with a hand of "reality" earlier in the afternoon. At the cemetary everybody cried except for Jimmy, Jeniene and I. I thought back to earlier in the day when Georgette was telling me that she didn't understand why Ed was taking Dad's jackets, good pants, etc. when he only wore jeans, shorts and the like when he wasn't working. I guess it's hard for people to understand when tehy haven't gone through it. I don't mean that condescendingly...you struggle to keep little pieces of Dad, a shirt that reminds you of him, guns that you used to use when you went hunting, but know you probably won't hunt again and make the excuse that maybe when such and such happens I'll take it up again, the tools for a farm, the Jeep for emergency transport on the farm. You try to do things the way he taught you so that you can keep him alive with your actions triggering memory patterns. I walk the dogs on the paths we used to walk together wearing his indian moccasins. I ride his bike on the roads we used to travel when I was home for the summer. I walk the roads and try to remember conversations we had when we walked them together during the past couple times I was home before he died.