Just The Way You Are


Don't go changing to try and please me,
You never let me down before.
And don't imagine you're too familiar,
And I don't see you anymore.

I wouldn't leave you in times of trouble,
We never could have come this far.
I took the good times, I'll take the bad times,
I'll take you just the way you are.

Don't go trying some new fashion.
Don't change the color of your hair.
You always have my unspoken passion,
Although I might not seem to care.

I don't want clever conversation,
I never want to work that hard.
I just want someone that I can talk to,
I want you just the way you are.

I need to know that you will always be,
The same old someone that I knew.
What will it take till you believe in me,
The way that I believe in you?

I said I love you and that's forever,
And this I promise from the heart.
I could not love you any better,
I love you just the way you are.

I don't want clever conversation,
I never want to work that hard.
I just want someone that I can talk to,
I want you just the way you are.

I said I love you and that's forever,
And this I promise from the heart.
I could not love you any better,
I love you just the way you are.

-Billy Joel

Ear Infections 101


So you see.. here is how an ear infection works.

The small space behind the eardrum in the middle ear is normally filled with air. It is connected to the back of the throat by a tiny channel called the Eustachian tube.

The middle ear space sometimes becomes filled with mucus (fluid)- in my case, it is filled with nasty bacteria-infected pool water-, often during a 'cold'. The mucus may then become infected by bacteria or viruses. Please focus your attention on the diagram.




yes.. right there. My ear is covered with bacteria that just love to have more pool water and more bacteria introduced to the ear.


I think skipping practice is justified.

Swimming

So I now have two ear infections, something common of the summer swim season. This "swimmer's ear(s)" hurts like a mother because whenever you even touch it, the nerves go crazy or something and just start attacking me. It hurts so bad. So I am skipping swim team practice this morning (which isnt good because I skipped it last night to pick Jillian up from the DC airport) and my mom asked the doctor that lives across our street what to buy for the "healing potion." The doctor tells my mom some kind of mixture to make at home and save some money. Well.. it BURNS. Good god man. I think its doing better though, so whatever that secret potion is, keep it coming.

:-(


Now that I update parallel universe pretty regularly, no one reads it... That makes me sad.

Job

woo.. I think I finally found a job for this summer... well at least for a couple of weeks during the summer. Its not much money, but its good for some spending money later and stuff. Camp Hanover sounds pretty easy and I get paid by the week. I think I am only working at most two weeks though, so I'm not getting too much money. I actually don't even have the job yet, but I have an interview tomorrow for the job and it sounds like the woman is very interested in hiring me. I'm very excited. Plus I am CPR certified, so I think I get a bonus in my pay check. excellent.

I've loved these days

Now we take our time so nonchalant,
And spend our nights so bon vivant.
We dress our days in silken robes,
The money comes, the money goes...
We know it's all a passing phase.

We light our lamps for atmosphere,
And hang our hopes on chandeliers.
We're going wrong, we're gaining weight,
We're sleeping long and far too late.
And so it's time to change our ways...
But I've loved these days.

Now as we indulge in things refined,
We hide our hearts from harder times.
A string of pearls, a foreign car...
Oh, we can only go so far... on caviar and Cabernet.

We drown our doubts in dry champagne,
And soothe our souls with fine cocaine.
I don't know why I even care...
We get so high and get nowhere.
We'll have to change our jaded ways...
But I've loved these days.

So before we end and then begin-
We'll drink a toast to how it's been...
A few more hours to be complete,
A few more nights on satin sheets,
A few more times that I can say...
I've loved these days.

-Billy Joel

Swimming

Swim meet tonight at Woodmont over in Southside. I have to swim 100 IM, 100 free, and 50 back. Not too excited about it cause they are the first three events and its hard swimming them back-to-back like that. Oh well. I only have to swim peter in IM thankfully. He is really fast in IM, so there is nothing expected of me in regards to providing him with competition.

man


Billy Joel is so brilliant. He is my favorite musician. I finally made a decision. I have always been torn between Paul McCartney, Ben Folds, Elton John, etc... but man... Billy Joel is amazing.

What's your favorite Billy Joel song?

Rockin' The Suburbs


let me tell ya'll what it's like
being male, middle class and white
it's a bitch, if you don't believe
listen up to my new cd
sham on

i got shit running through my brain
so intense that i can't explain
all alone in my white boy pain
shake your booty while the band complains

i'm rocking the suburbs
just like michael jackson did
i'm rocking the suburbs
except that he was talented
i'm rocking the suburbs
i take the checks and face the facts
that some producer with computers
fixes all my shitty tracks

i'm pissed off but i'm too polite
when people break in the mcdonalds line
mom and dad you made me so uptight
i'm gonna cuss on the mic tonight
i don't know how much i can take
girl give me something i can break

i'm rocking the suburbs
just like quiet riot did
i'm rocking the suburbs
except that they were talented
i'm rocking the suburbs
i take the checks and face the facts
that some producer with computers
fixes all my shitty tracks

in a haze these days
i pull up to the stoplight
i can feel that something's not right
i can feel that someone's blasting me
with hate and bass
sending dirty vibes my way
cause my great great great great grandad
made someone's great great great great grandaddy slaves
it wasn't my idea
it wasn't my idea
it never was my idea
i just drove to the store
for some preparation h

ya'll don't know what it's like
being male, middle class and white
it gets me real pissed off and it makes me wanna say
fuck

just like jon bon jovi did
i'm rocking the suburbs
except that he was talented
i'm rocking the suburbs
i take the checks and face the facts
that some producer with computers
fixes all my shitty tracks these days
i'm rocking the suburbs
you'd better look out because i'm gonna say fuck

Microsoft owns me.

Computer!


I am so excited about next year. We ordered my computer for next year the other week and I haven't mentioned it yet. Haha, so here it is. I am getting an Acer Travelmate 8006LCI laptop. It is BEAUTIFUL.. absolutely gorgeous. I love it.. well of course I have never actually seen it, but how bad can it be for a 2.0 pentium M processor with 1 Gb of RAM and 80 GB of Hard Drive space. The thing has a wonderful 128 MB DDR video card. Of course, the basics are there as well- windows XP Pro, 15" screen, and wireless capabilities. All of this is required by the engineering department. Not to mention that I got a little bonus with mine- a DVD +/- RW/CD-RW combo drive. WOO.. man I am excited. I can make dvds of the movies that I make on my digital camcorder. The fun will never end with this baby. If you aren't tired of hearing about it by now, go here to see in more detail.

OH and I almost forgot. Along with the computer, I am required to purchase the "engineering software package." It has a TON of crap in it man. If you are interested, check this out.

Interesting


Wow... its been a while since I wrote in here. A lot of stuff has happened since my last post... like.. a LOT of stuff. I had the senior honors assembly, baccalaureate, and graduation. Man... I graduated... I'm not in high school anymore. That is so weird. I can't handle the feeling. Anyways...


Baccalaureate


This was probably the most stressful part of my graduation weekend and the most stressful part of the end of my high school career. I kinda stretched myself too thin (surprise, surprise) and agreed to participate a LITTLE bit too much in baccalaureate. Chorus sang, I gave a speech with Susan, I played cello on "Praise...something," and I accompanied Justin and Abby on piano for their duet song. I can't remember the name of that one either. It was intense. Susan and I hadn't written our speech until like the Friday before baccalaureate... I was a bit nervous about how it was gonna go since we had little time to practice and everything. I was actually a lot more nervous before we FINISHED it, but I was very satisfied seeing how good the finished copy turned out to be. The speech didn't go over as well as I had hoped. Mrs. Linear kinda forced us to write a "serious speech" since Brent and Ashley were already doing the "funny speech," so we kinda found it hard to follow that order. I think that we should write whatever the hell we want to write and say what we want, but so it goes. We had a few funny parts in our speech and I think the reason why I don't see the speech as a complete success is because no one laughed at those "funny" parts. I suppose they might of just not been funny haha, but at least there would be someone out there giving that pity laugh. There wasn't even any of that! hmmm.. Well I am anxious to get the dvd of it all back so I can see how we really did.

Reading over this, it sounds like I am not happy with it. Thats not true. I just feel like the audience didn't really get what we had to say, or at least not appreciate it.

Next came the cello. Well, chorus was in there somewhere, but that didn't really matter all that much. Chamber singers just sang a song called "Hear our prayer." Its beautiful. All of the senior chorus members came up and sang that "Praise...something" song and somehow Ms. Tyree convinced me to play the song on cello. The song begins with whats SUPPOSED to be an opening fiddle part, but she insisted that I play it on cello. This meant that I had to play in the fiddle's octave because of course Ms. Tyree doesn't settle for anything less than the absolute BEST. I was most worried about this part. It was a SOLO solo...the kinda where she is playing a couple of chords behind me and my sound is definitely heard good and clear. I was shakin'. Normally, it wouldn't be so bad because I do that kinda solo stuff at church all of the time ... well that is whenever I actually go to church...but this solo was higher than I have ever played before. Im really not exaggerating. This is the first time I have ever played in "thumb position" in public. I was so nervous that I got up at 7am the morning of baccalaureate, closed the doors to my kitchen, and practiced in there until 9 so that I wouldn't wake up the family. This was the morning after my graduation party. OH YEA ... that happened too. There was this one note in the whole solo that I just couldn't hit. I was always off when trying to get this note and it was a high B that of course had to be the climax of the whole opening. I think I only got it right about 2 of the 100 times that I practiced it. I also agreed to tutor Chris (my little middle schooler) at 9am that morning because he had his final math exam the next day. Well to make a long story short, I think I nailed it. I think that I played the opening about as perfect as I, a third-year cellest, could possibly do. I was so happy. As soon as I hit that note, my body just relaxed and I enjoyed playing the rest of the song (including the part when Justin, my page turner, dropped all of my music basically on the ground). I can't wait to hear the tape.

The piano was the final part of my participation in baccalaureate. Justin approached me a good deal in advance of the service and ask me to play for him and Abby. I was flattered that he asked me, so of course I agreed not thinking about all of the other crap I had to do. The piece he chose was "At The Beginning" from Disney's Anastasia. I learned it in the ridiculous key that was written on the sheet music that he gave me and then he asked me if we could lower the key because it was so high for him to sing. I was kinda aggravated that he wanted me to transpose the stupid thing, but I took a look at it and it really was high for a male tenor...really high. I took the time to put in every single note and rhythm one by one into the computer program and finally finished and transposed it all. I learned it in the key that he wanted to sing it in (which so happened to be incredibly MORE difficult to play) and then abby decided that it "sounded weird." We ended up taking it up a half step and there we had it. It was a lot easier to play, but I had to learn it AGAIN. The THIRD time. woo...
At baccalaureate, the whole song went well except that Justin and Abby were really far away from me and I could barely hear them at all. It sounded to me like we got off a couple of times from each other, but everyone else said it sounded fine. I played a couple of REALLY wrong notes, but I guess it went well. I think Justin and Abby were satisfied, although they might have picked Ms. Tyree to play with them if they could do it over again.


Well that was baccalaureate.
On to graduation!


GRADUATION


After all of the practices. After all of the years, months, days, and minutes of counting down, it was finally here. It was the most thrilling experience walking out in front of the thousands of people in the Siegel Center. I acheived my one and only goal for high school: get in the top ten of my class. Yes.. Number ten right here baby. woo. I was so happy. I got to sit in the first row instead of WAAAAAY back with the "smiths" in row like 80 something. I got to stand up when I was individually recognized when they said, "Tenth top scholar: Paul Smith, attending Virginia Tech School of Engineering." It was so great. I worked my butt off for that.
The student speeches were alright. I was expecting a little more out of Brent and Rodney, but they did better than I could have done, so no complaining. David McClendon's speech was superb. It was very well done. He put a lot of thought into that and I know that it paid off because it was the best graduation speech that I have heard (I have heard several, believe it or not). Haha.. the best part was spending 30 mins trying to find my family and jill in the MASSIVE crowd outside of the Siegel Center. It took me FOREVER, but I finally found Peter and he took me to everybody else. We took some pics and then we were OUTA there. What a night... what a night.


I just can't believe its all over.

Comments

comments
I fixed the comments for those of you who tried to leave one but got a fancy "sign in to blogger to leave a comment." That's no fun. I took us back to the comments previously seen with the "old" parallel universe. Just letting you know.

Weekend

Weekend

I had a wonderful memorial day weekend. I saw Shrek 2 which was about 10x better than I was expecting¹. After the movie, my car went through a little shocker... I dropped Jillian off at home and I was heading to a friend's house to feed their dog...so I take the back way out of Jill's neighborhood. Well its like midnight and I pass this big group of punk teens (like guys with shirt off bustin' the sags... you know).. and after I pass them (doors locked, windows up of course), I hear the sound of glass shattering under my tires for a good three seconds or so. I was like CRAP² and I just kept going because I didn't want to stop near those weirdos.... I swore at least two of my tires would be completely flat by the morning, but it turns out that my beast tires survived and did me well because there is nothing wrong so far... excellent.

Other than that, I really don't remember what else happened this weekend. I went to Jill's for a cookout last night. OH... and I survived through "Runaway Bride" because we rented it, so I felt obligated to get my money's worth... eh... it wasn't that bad for a chick flick.

1. I really wasn't expecting much... at all.

2. ... yea ...didnt say "crap"