Fencing Picnic Speech

My speeches have sucked all year. I kept hoping that I’d be inspired
the morning of a tournament but the words never seemed to find me in
time. So I wrote something down this time.

For me, the picnic has always been my favorite event, the one where we
get to rehash the whole year, enjoy picnic food, and crappy weather.
Every year someone gives this speech to remind us of what we have
achieved in the year past and to prepare us for the year ahead. This
year we went to team events with full men’s AND women’s squads, we had
two fencers place nationally, we scared Notre Dame’s sabre squad into
breaking out the A team, we made friend, and grew old friendships.

Beyond this year is a rich history that us old folk have tried to pass
on, just as you new members will do in years to come when you’ll talk
about people named Adrienne, Mario, and Nads and they’ll look at you
half in awe of your experience, and half thinking you’re crazy. The
task laid out before you is to do one better, to show the old fogies
like me that you’ve learned a thing or two and to take your own
background and make the club excel beyond where it is today. You will
elect officers who will lead you as best as they can, but the burden of
improvement falls on to each of your shoulders. It is up to you to
become a better fencer, a better friend (or lover ), a better coach,
a better diplomat, and a better student over all because of it. We are
all at Purdue to be students, but we all fence in this club for
different reasons, and those differences are what make this a rich and
unique club unlike any other club, on or off campus.

I am confident that our club is in good hands, everyone’s hands, and I look forward to the new heights you all will take it to.

Balls! Email from this morning…

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Sixteen Candles

OMG why did I never see this movie? Why is Molly Ringwald so hot? Why does John Cusack look exactly the same as he does now? Does he know he looks the same? Why is "The Geek" Anthony Michael Hall, the guy who is the star of "Dead Zone" on USA? That guy is cool. Why Is Joan Cusack always in movies with her brother? 21 years is an amazing length of time.

Florence is

I’m still lovin’ Florence, it’s right in the middle of everything I
need, and the only stores I’ve wanted that aren’t here are Comp USA and
… and … and something else. I don’t know.

As Clint mentioned, Boone county, home of Florence, is blowing up
populations wise. What’s even weirder is that everything is new around
here. Like all the city buildings are brand spankin new, the water park
was just built three years ago, it’s all new. I love new things, don’t
get me wrong, but where is the history? I can’t find the mom and pop
eateries, I don’t see a historic district, it’s crazy.

She’s Intimidating

One of the things I’ve been thinking about the last few times I went to
the Neon Cactus and now that I’m looking at personals again is this:
Some people can be intimidating and not even be trying. The example I
gave Big Joe was to have him look around the bar, think about the women
he might actually approach and try to have a conversation with, then
look again and think about which ones you wish would come talk to you.
My suspicion is that those groups may have some overlap, but for the
most part will be different.

Now
I’m not talking about some women being scary, but rather that some just
seem to have it together, are having a good time, and are very
confident in themselves. Generally these women are also high on the
attractive scale as well. These are the women you figure could have most
any guy in the room that they want, and why would she want me? This
group is typically considered to be "out of one’s league".

There
are the women who are fairly attractive, but seem lost, or lonely, or
just sad. I don’t want to say that these are good "victims" but one
certainly can feel a lot more confident trying to start a conversation
with these types of women rather than the first type. We’ll call these
women "in league".

There will of course be women that one feels
are not to his standard, and as such they can be ignored for the
purpose of this entry. What I find most interesting is that one would
steer clear of that which he desires most for an added comfort level. I
also wonder about the conversations and how they’d differ from
each other, like how the sad lonely woman might drag you down with her,
but whereas the confident, happy woman might make your night magic just
by talking to you.

The other side of this thought is that I am
guessing women see guys much the same way. They see Big Joe as a
strong, happy, confident individual, and steer clear of him, but the
see the poor shy guy in the corner and see an easy mark. So my thought
here is that I can’t change the way people operate, but I can operate
differently myself so as to put myself in the way. I’ve been thinking
about how timid people look, how do sad people show their sadness, how
do people appear lonely, and I haven’t got a whole lot yet. I still
want to use my body language to convey to my friends, hey I’m havin’ a
rockin’ good time, but I want to be inviting to those with a little
less back bone than me. Hmmm.

If you want to smell good…

… dryer sheets are where it is at! My hoodie smelled all clean and
fresh all day at work. I never saw the value in dryer sheets so I never
used them. I only knew about the embarrassment they cause when you find
one in your sleeve half way through the day.

Work has been good thus far. Still getting everything set up to work,
apparently Visual Studio’s Remote Debugging needs some debugging itself
since it’s not working so much. *shrug*. But I’m all set up with Fifth
Third bank now and the payroll office will soon start depositing my pay
checks in there. Speaking of, I get paid on Friday toot toot!

I just got back from Lowe’s because I needed some parts for the
hand-me-down grill and I had a $10 coupon for a purchase of $25 or more.
The grill is as old as my little brother (he’s 21 this summer btw), and
so there’s a "little" rust and there’s some non-essential parts
missing, but it holds a heating element and makes food taste good, not
to mention the price was right. So I got a new electric starter, a few
1.4 inch bolts, and a new heating plate and I’m good to go. Now I just
need to scrounge up the $50 for purchasing a gas bottle (then it’s just
$10-15 for a refill/exchange) and I’ll be cookin’ with gas!

I’m also in the process of updating my Yahoo! personal ad to reflect my
new location, job change, and that I’m looking for both friends and
relationships since I know only a handful of people down here.

This weekend I’m going back up to Purdue-land to direct/ help run the
Pen Is Mightier Open which is Jefferson High’s first fencing tournament
and it’ll be at Earhart School (there’s some confusion as to it being
a middle school or an elementary school). Right now there’s only a
handful of people signed up making for one pool per weapon barely
making each event a E1 if that. But I’ll go and we’ll get it done and
be all the wiser for next time. If people don’t go out Saturday night I
might even come back here and have a real live weekend day to myself,
otherwise I’ll come back when I come back.

I’m really tired

It’s been a while since I got a solid eight hours. Admittedly I’ve not gotten less than 6 hours on any given night, but it wears away at a man slowly. I’ve got everything I needed/wanted to do tonight done or in progress and it is only 8pm. I was thinking about swinging up to Cinci to deliver some DVD’s to Meg and pick up a hard drive from Jess, but I haven’t gotten a hold of either one of them so that may have to wait for another night. Meaning I might, just might get to bed at 10… maybe.

Like I’ve Been Saying

I was talking to my parents having one of those quality conversations that keeps me going back home when I can and we got on the topics of sex and later death (not together). What we kinda disucced indirectly is how people shy away from talking about these experiences. The only thing I could think about was "Why would people ever shy away from talking about two of the most common experiences we have in life?" Aside from taxes, the only other sure thing is death, and we’re all bound to greive at some point or another. I don’t have the answer here.

While my hands are empty for an explanation presently, it does remind me why I set out to jounal and blog. I want someone down the line to feel normal, to know that someone else has had the same or similar experience that he has. To know he isn’t alone, that the problem can be overcome, or that the joy is one he should feel comfortable taking. While I may have a handful of unique experiences in my lifetime, I will have a lot more that I could share with other people and perhaps bring them comfort in letting them know that someone else went through it too.

It is beyond late

But I had a good time at all three of my major activities for this
weekend: B-day with Dad, fencing picnic, and dinner with Josette. More
about them later, but if I forget, there’s an awesome sushi place on
Main St. just West of 6th called Koroko’s. It’s owned and run by a guy
named Tony who makes all the sushi. He’s a funny old man. It was kinda
cool to go there because Josette seemed to know everyone who worked
there. I guess that’s what I liked about fencing, it was that way for
me, everyone knew my name. And now those days are over for the PFC
anyway.?

Jillian’s

Jacqui kinda mentioned the high points of the night already,
but tonight I went out with Jacqui and Clint to Jillian’s. It’s kinda
like a Dave and Buster’s or a Game Works from what people tell me. I
will say I was excited about the bowling, the billiards, and the dance
floor. There was also a hibachi grill place there. We didn’t go
dancing, which was fine, I kinda just wanted to get a lay of the land
anyway. So we played video games, sipped drinks, and finished it up
with two games of bowling.

Jacqui totally hustled us on the bowling scene.

My review is that it had a lot to do, but I was displeased with the
service overall. There was a long line for bowling, long line for
billiards, and the beepers they had were always out. The place didn’t
even feel that busy. The waitress threw away my order for a drink, then
when it came time to settle up she had our credit cards for nearly 15
minutes. We weren’t in a rush, but no one really seemed to care there.

Some of the emptiness might have been due to the huge squall we had
this evening. Ya know how the radar is yellow in bad areas, and red in
terrible areas? Well there was PURPLE on tonight’s radar. I think that
means it is bad.

To finish off the week I got donuts. I’ll eat one for every person who had a birthday this week.