Me and My Daddy,

I just want to start by saying that I will not be blogging until Thursday, when I arrive back from my, supposed to be awesome, basketball camp. I will share my journals and the feeling of having a real shower after 5 days of sweating. Do they have showers at colleges? I hope so because I can barely stand myself after 1 game of basketball. In the words of grandma, "Sssss!"

Today was the day where my daddy was supposed to come over, and he did and it was awesome. He got to our front door at about 10 and that surprised me because, on days that he hasn't partied, he usually gets up at around 1. He told me that his bag had gotten stolen, and that made me mad because he was writing a story that I wanted to read.

We were going to watch the world cup game, but I decided that I wanted to go play basketball, and my father followed suit. I taught him some of the basics, of how to hold the balls and how to dribble them and how to hold them, while your dribbling them. I have to say that he got pretty good, at least the way he shot got better. He looked like some people that i know who are pretty good.

When we came back in, the world cup game was on and so we watched that for a while. My dad fell asleep, and eventually got to taking a nap. He was asleep for such a long time, that I went out to play and than came in, watched television, and after that he was still sleeping.

Once he woke up, me and my father went out and started to haul dirt and we realized one huge problem, we had to much dirt, and when I say to much dirt I mean that we are going to have 2 cubic feet of dirt in our driveway for the rest of our lives. We did so good, we filled in the bed and now we are okay to plant onions. Yeah!

After that we started to wash Thomas' car, because my dad needed some money. It was so fun to spray that nice blue car with water. So cool.

After that we went down to plaid pantry and me and my father had a really nice chat. All in all it was a nice, last day before basketball camp.

Grandma's House Vs. Mama's House,

This is going to be a comparison of houses, a break down of the overall coolness of each house, a contrast of the 2 different houses. This is... Grandma's House Vs. Mama's House.

1.) At grandma's house I feel more disconnected from people, but more connected with the television. At my mom's house i feel like I am in tune with my inner basketball player and socializer, but not my inner television watcher, I feel like i am more connected with people, at my mama's house.

2.) At grandma's house, when we are watching television on the couch and all of a sudden a Yaz commercial comes on, she will change the channel and make a "Ssss," sound with her lips, the same sound she makes when she sees me playing Nerf basketball. At my mama's house, if a Yaz commercial comes on, than we will talk about how, if she was grandma, she would change the channel.

3.) At my mom's house I feel more free to express my inner diva and also my inner gay person (i am not gay, but everyone has an inner gay person,) i also can say "god!" Without getting the whole "lords name in vain," speech.

4.) At grandma's house I feel like my jokes are more of the simple ones that I told in 1st grade, but at Mama's house my jokes are ones that resemble Stephen Colbert. But not really because no one can be as funny as him. Just ask Thomas. Actually I think Thomas prefers Jon Stewart. Anyway, here is an example of me and Grandma's house: I could play nerf basketball all night and than, fall asleep in a little corner in the hallway. Mama's house: Telling my mom that my friend Robert thought that Tom Petty was in The Beatles. Now this joke wouldn't work with grandma because she doesn't know who Tom Petty is. She thought Neil Young was a basketball player when I told her about my expert project.

5.) Basketball; at my mama's house I can go over to the park, and play basketball whenever I please. But at grandma's house we have to drive all the way into town and play there, and I can only go once a day.

Day #3,

Today pretty much turned out just as I had planned at the beginning of the day. The only thing that really sucked was the draft. It was a whole lot more boring than I had planned. I thought that there was going to be this big draft conspiracy where the number one team traded there picked for the number 2 pick and everyone goes crazy. Turns out not, just an old guy standing there, behind a podium, with the back ground noise of vuvuzela's. And for all of those who don't watch World Cup Soccer (Fifa is a bitch) a vuvuzela is an African noise maker that makes the most annoying sound you will ever hear. It makes you double take whn you turn on a baseball game and hear a vuvuzela. You think "I thought it was the world cup, not the world series." Hahaha thats a knee slapper and bu-dum-sh.

The day started the usual way, I got woken up by the tele-marketers and helped myself to a nice bowl of Apple-Jacks. I deserve to eat food like that after living with my mom for 12 years. Though the other day we did go to KFC and thomas bought me a KFC double down chicken sandwich, but that was ruined when he told me that they grossed HIM out! That totaly sucked, because if a food grosses thomas out you know that it must be made of mustard. Eww.

Anyway, after that I sat on my brown swivel chair and watched countless NBA draft preview shows on countless different channels. I hated listening to the same thing over and over and over again so I tuned it off and played Nerf ball with my new red and purple ball that will probably be lost once i take it to my house. I did this for a few hours until I had a nice lunch of Hebrew national Hot-dogs. they get better every time I eat them. it almost makes me want to make a commercial out of it.

"When I say Hebrew you say National, Hebrew National go blend of meats, usually chicken, beef, pork, or turkey and then meat fat, oatmeal, bread crumbs, various seasonings, and other ingredients. They are then mushed together and put into hot dog molds. Store bought hot dogs are put into cellulose casings, but homemade are usually made of intestines that people try to caaal meat! That might not make sense.

After that encounter I went to the basketball court again to make my self esteem drop again because of the shitty rim that they put there. Grandma made me bring a water bottle this time so instead of drinking out of it i poured it on my head every few minutes to keep cool. No one was there gain today. i thought that they must have been at the pool, but when I checked with grandma I found out that the only pool in Goldendale in history was the one in our back yard. On the way home, while listening to our audiobook I saw the guy who I played basketball with yesterday. He gave me the head nod and me, trying to be as black as my white skin would allow, nodded back.

When we got home I laid on the bed, watching several draft preview shows. it really sucked, even up until the draft too. The draft was so boring in fact, it might still be going on. Oh yeah its still going on and it started at 4:30! Portland got this guy called Elliot Williams. That totally sucked.

just another old day in Goldedale...

*Caution* this post contains lots and lots of sarcasm so don't believe everything you read... good life lesson.

Looking forward to the day ahead of me...

First off I want to start by apologizing about that video on my last blog, I had no idea that Fifa was such a bitch. Listen Fifs, if it's okay to play that video on Youtube it should be more than f***ing okay to play it on my blog! From this moment forward I am boycotting Fifa. Yeah thats right, Fifa you heard me, now NBATV is my new best friend... ha!

Anyway, before all that I wanted to talk about today. Today is the day of the 59th NBA draft and I am so excited. Portland has the 22nd pick 9not good at all) and I am hoping that they get that 6'11 Whiteside guy. I checked last night and it turns out that he is the 22nd most talented player in the draft, today. But we will see.

Also today i want to work on the story I am writing about a boy (based on me) who wants to run away. But don't worry I don't want to run away. Here is a sample.

It seemed highly improbable that a kid like me would ever come across the thought of running away, especially when his life was doing better. Maybe it was the sense of impending doom, in that my report card would be arriving in my Portland home soon. Maybe it was the sense that my life had struck the point where it was routine.

You hear some adults talking about how much they would give to have a routine life. My father, for example, he just got back from a business trip and envied me because I had a solid routine in my life. Frankly I think this is stupid. Why would someone want to do the same thing at the same time every day?

What I have learned in my life after all this was that it wasn’t really about what you do, it’s about what you don’t do or what doesn’t happen to you or something like that. As a kid I couldn’t quit grasp the thought of something happening because I didn’t do something. I seemed to think it all happened because of what did happen. Mistakes, mistakes, mistakes.

I grew up in Portland Oregon and I lived there for most of the time. Every other weekend I would go up to my grandma’s house in a small lonely town called Goldendale. When I went up to her house it was very different from being at my mother’s house down in Portland. I got to do whatever I want whenever I please and, most importantly I had free 24-hour access to the fridge.

At that time I was up there for 4 days to visit before I went away to a Basketball camp at the very Catholic, George Fox University. The only thing going on in my life, that wasn’t pleasant, was that I was expecting a final report card before summer and I did not know the contents of it and in gave me an unsettling feeling at night.

I would lay in my bed thinking “it could have come today,’ and I mixed thoughts about that.
For one thing it could come and be horrible and my mother could hate me for the entire summer. On the other hand it could come and I could be welcomed back to Portland by happy parents and signs that said, “You are smart.”

It all hit me at about 9:00 when grandma and me were sitting on the couch, watching television. We were watching a really sketchy show about a girl who can see ghosts. I don’t know where it came from but I got the sudden urge to be free and to get away from my life. Again, it was probably the sense of doom that my report card might have just arrived at my house. Maybe not. Either way I was all of a sudden determined to get out of this house, to get out of all houses, to get out of the city or town, to get away from my life.

When the idea hit me I startled back for a minute and asked grandma if she would excuse me. Kind of sudden, I know but I felt like I had been thinking about it for years and I had just realized the missing piece to it. I did the rational thing and tried to calm myself down by watching some of the basketball game that was on.

My conscience knew it was a really stupid Idea but my smarter sub-conscience told my conscience that it was a good idea. I pondered why I would be having these thoughts. I knew how it would all pan out. I would devastate my entire family and one of them might commit suicide.

Yet, I still couldn’t get myself to think it wasn’t a good idea. Instantly in my mind came a picture I saw in a magazine of a boy who had committed numerous crimes, yet he hadn’t even reached the age of 15. Was I him? Could I be the next… him? No absolutely not. I was loyal to my family. If one of them asked me to jump off a bridge I might do it. (Depending on the height of the bridge and the temperature of the murky waters below.)

I would not do this. I would not kill the rest of my family’s lives just because I felt the urge to be alone, or free. I am but 1 star in the company of Heaven.

Some of you are reading this and thinking, “what a crazy guy, this can’t happen so fast,” but you are wrong. Let me demonstrate. If you are sitting on a park bench in the middle of the day, eating a sandwich and you happen to see the most beautiful girl you have ever seen and she sees you, it is love at first sight. This is not uncommon from what I experienced just 30 minutes ago. It was love at first sight for me, and that horrible idea. But it is forbidden love. I cannot love an idea like that if it hurts my family and people that I care about. Forbidden love, forbidden love.

I lay there on my bed looking down on the newly washed green sheets that my grandma just placed there. My mind came down to one question. Should I go through with it?

My mind came up with a decision that totally surprised me. I told myself that I would sleep on it and what ever I felt like I wanted to do in the morning was my future.

After taking a cold shower I tucked myself into bed and turned off the lamp. I was so surprised at how fast I fell asleep. I fell asleep at my normal rate, which is not normal when I have something on my mind. I am the kind of person who has to think about what just happened, the kind of person who has to analyze every detail of it, but I don’t talk about it because I have learned that people find it annoying.

That is just a bit of it. i will post the whole thing on here when I am done and again don't worry I don't want to run away, I was just running out of topics and this is a pretty interesting one. Okay?

After that I am going to have a nice lunch of Hebrew National Hot-dogs followed by a nice basketball playing at the park. Hopefully they tore out the old rims and put in new ones. Maybe that guy will be there again, today/ Who knows.

After that i plan to sit on my ass for 4 hours and watch the 59th NBA draft, and eat cake... yum.

Day #2,

Before I start off about grandma's house i just want to show you this.

Isn't that just amazing. That guy is a soccer god! I was actually watching that in person and I hurt my neck, jumping up and down, when he made that goal. Now I will never forget what Landon Donovan did, to my neck.

Anyway, after all that me and grandma drove up to the Dalles, and all the while we were listening to our Mary Higgins clark audiobook. It's the first unabridged one we ever listened to and let me tell you, I can barely keep up with what is happening. I prefer the abridged ones, personally.

When we got to the Dalles we went to home depot to get some mulch for grandma's garden. It was ok but she made me cart the cart around and let me tell you it is not easy to cart a cart around with 60 pounds of mulch in there. Advice: if there are any 12 year old boys reading, when you go to home depot, make your parent drive the cart. Its much easier.

After that we went to Bi-mart and got some hangers to hold all those Victorian clothes and i lost grandma, while I was looking at camera's, but she found me eventually. I also went looking for office supply's because I have a thing for going into the office supply hal and just looking at the pencil's and binders... oh!

After that we went to Freddy's and that sucked. The other day at home my mom lost my ball and so I had to get a new one to play nerf basketball with. Thanks mom! Once that was over we went home and I went to the basketball court to play. When i got there I played with this guy who really sucked. To put that in perspective he shot with one hand and missed lay ups. Not that I can blame him, the rim's at that park are so sharp that some times the ball just bounces right off of it. it is so annoying. I told him that people at school call me the white mamba (Kobe bryant nickname: the black mamba,) and the white Rondo (rondo one of my favorite players is also black.) He totally believed me too.

The rest of my day was normal, watched television and wrote. Oh and grandma's making a cake... yum.

A 3 Hour Synopsis of Driving to Grandma's House,

Me and grandma left the house briefly after my brother's babysitter, Robin got there. We exited through the front door and almost immediately ran into Doom-dirt. In it we found a pair of radishes which made me lol until the point where I crapped my pants. Grandma asked if we put the radishes in there and I answered back saying that we would have to be crazy to put plants into dirt that, at some point, would turn into a garden. You don't put plants in dirt when the dirt isn't in a garden yet. Duuh!

She told me that we had to drive up to Oregon City to get some Victorian clothes that her friend was going to give to her. I sat there in the passenger seat reading and repeating directions until I almost memorized how to get there. I also renewed my hate of mapquest. They say that to get from 10th street to Jackson is 0.1 miles but guess what? it was more like 1 mile and just go to the website and try to get from Portland to Paris. See what I'm getting at.

After the horrible attempt to understand Mapquest we arrived at a yellow, cozy home that looked like an old English home that was built in the 20's. I was half right it was made it the 20's but it was supposed to look Victorian. Same thing! When we got inside it felt like we were in the lobby of a hotel, except considerably darker and smaller. In it there was a woman who seemed to be in her mid to late 50's and a closet full of Victorian clothing. When i say this lady had a lot of Victorian clothes it was an understatement.

Like grandma, it seemed, she was an antique collector. In the lobby of her house was an old antique cabinet. In it was a whole lot of books that were the same size color and length. I thought this lady would be crazy to keep the same book but when I took a closer look I saw that they were all readers digest. I had to stop myself from laughing. After that she went into her Victorian closet for I while and I stole an Altoid from an Altoid box on an antique table, no surprise.

When she arrived back from the journey that she had in her closet i noticed that she was wearing Sketcher's Shapeups! I had to keep myself from laughing again. Before we went she insisted that we went on a tour of her house. It looked like a Victorian Castle. oh my God. This woman didn't even have any clothes aside from her collection of Victorian clothes. Her house is Victorian. You know she seems like the kind of woman who would paint wallpaper oh wait she did that too she painted wallpaper gold and the wallpaper was on her ceiling! WALLpaper, people not ceiling paper!

Victorian wasn't the only theme in her house. I noticed that the toilet and the sinks were separated so that means she must have a New Zealand background as well. She even told us towards the end the the tour that her husband was born in New Zealand.

After we were done touring the interior of the house we went outside to the exterior and let me tell you it had Victorian written all over it. There were plants all over it and there were stone steps and everything. Now I know what a Victorian castle looks like. After a while we went back inside to pack up all the clothes. During that time we got to talking about how good god is. She told us that she went through some kind of illness and she kept saying that God saved her. That is plausible but maybe just maybe, i'm just saying, the doctor saved her.

I was so relieved when we finally left her house but right when we got in the car grandma whipped out the Mary Higgins Clark book and this time it was un-abridged. During the drive we stopped by Burgerking to get something and I was still hungry so while we were in the Dalles we did it again. They were doing this Eclipse contest, but I didn't win tickets to the movie for opening night. Sigh. The drive back was 3 hours.

Doom-dirt!

His name: Doom-dirt. His mission: killing little 12 year olds fun and hurting little 12 year olds fingers and blocking little 12 year olds moms from fully parking in the driveway. Here is the story of Doom-dirt.

He came when Eli and his mother were away getting hair products for Eli's mother's clients. He was driven there from just up the street at Mt. Scott Fuel Co. and when he was sitting there in there driveway sitting for Eli and his mother, he came across the thought "while i am here why don't I have some fun with Eli... ha ha ha!" And he kept his promise.

once Eli arrived at his house Doom-dirt's plan was in action. Eli's mother set down Jasper to bed and than went out and started to tell Eli to scoop the dirt and put it in the raised bed. Eli started to work and the first thing he noticed was that his fingers were getting stiff very fast. It was going to be a long day Eli thought.

They started in the back and that was really stupid because if they started in the front, than by the end they would have had room to park Eli's mom's car on the driveway. It was so stupid. He did this a lot. At the very end before they left to go to j's doctor's appointment they started to do jobs. Staci would put the dirt in the buckets and Eli would carry it to the raised bed.

Skipping: Eli went to J's doctor's appointment.

Once they got back Eli and his mother got back they kicked ass on getting dirt out of the driveway. Not much happened but all I can say is that by the end of it Eli's hands were dead.

3 Hours 4 Minutes and 22 Seconds,

I want to start with yesterday, June 19th. it was one of the most agonizing, painful and utterly itchy days of my life. yes... itchy. It all started when I woke up, I felt a very itchy, itch on both of my thighs and so I scratched it and though nothing of it until my back started to burn from itchiness too and that was when i asked my mom to scratch it for me. When I pulled my shirt of the first thing she and thomas noticed was that there was a bunch of little white dots o my back; most likely bug bites. She told me that was too bad and than she said that we should was my bed sheets because maybe there was some sort of bug species that had colonized right under my plaid bed sheets. I didn't think that was what it was. I thought it was some sort of were-bug that lived in my bed spring and only came out at night to bite me and suck my blood. So that would make it a Vamp-were-bug....

My itching didn't really act up until we went out to dinner at a mexican place called Fonda Rosa. I think it was the chairs because they were all rubbing up against my back. Me and mom went to the salon before we went home, to get her stuff and while we were there i lifted my shirt and my entire torso and bits of my back were red and some of the skin was raised. It was some pretty sick stuff. We went home and she put some lotion on me and my stomach area got better and my back too but I started to get itchy around my thighs again and so what I did was wet a wash cloth and put that in between my legs and it felt a whole lot better.

The cool thing is, that now i know how my brother Jasper feels when he scratches. its like athletes foot on your head shoulders knees and toes... and back and torso.

Back to the blog. When I was itching I was told that we were going to interview a new nanny for the J-man at brunch tomorrow. I woke up, feeling better and took a shower and got ready to go to meet her. We arrived at the restaurant at about
10:30 and we got some drinks and went to sit on a very soft, short couch next to a pool table. On the table in front of the couch was a chess set and me and Thomas started out, drinking coffee and playing chess. it was pretty fun, but he beat the crap out of me and afterwards he gave me the whole "you are getting better,' speech even though I totally sucked.

We were told by a waiter that we were going to have to wait about 45 to 50 minutes. Me and Thomas played chess and watched World Cup Soccer for about 30 minutes and that was when maybe-nanny-to-be came and sat down next to us. On first impression I thought that she was a really nice person and she was. me and Thomas continued playing chess and talking to each other for a while. The new nanny and my mom were talking about the baby and each other when the waiter came out and said that it was going to be about 8 to 10 more minutes until we were seated.

He was a liar, we were not even close to seated 30 minutes later. We were still sitting and talking about the baby and playing chess and watching World cup Soccer.

To make a long story short we were in there for 3 hours 4 minutes and 22 seconds.

What's Going on Around the Subjects of Sports and Blogging

Can anyone guess what I did today, just before I sat down to write this... of course you can I talk about it every other blog. I looked at the Blog of Note section on my blogger dashboard and guess what. Mine wasn't on there... again. I think you could have told me that, though because of the lack of web "traffic" to my blog page.

The other thing I want to talk about is all the stuff going on in the world of sports. Most of you that know me, know that when I say sports I mean basketball, but today I am going to talk about basketball and soccer. First order of business, basketball. Yesterday was the last game of the season for basketball. It was the finals and I was rooting for the celtics and, of course, they lost against the Lakers. it was one of the best finishes of all time. please watch.

The enxt order of sports is the very... weirdt game vs. Slavonia today. In the first half we were down 2 and than we came back to tie in the 2nd half and almost led if it wasn't for a really bad call by a new rookie ref. Please watch.

Who am I?

I feel like a completely different person, now that school is over. For one thing I can pretty much just sit on the couch and veg all day. For another I can sleep in and wake up when ever the hell I feel like it. just for the hell of it, I still set my alarm for 7 even though i don't wake up, then. I like the feeling of waking up, thinking it is a school day, realizing its not, and than going back to sleep.

Maybe its just the summer air but I have been having some pretty wacky dreams lately. For example, last night I had a dream that PPs had funded a trip for the entire JMP to go around the moon. Not on, just around. The teacher that would be taking us was, of course, Mr. Groom. Before we got on the rocket he made each of us sign a little waver that said if we die our relatives cannot sue PPS. I signed it. I remember 2 things that were weird from the dream. 1.) I sat next to Anna Claire (one of my worst relations of all time) and we had an argument about how she shouldn't keep her papers in a CD case because it would waste glass. I think that maybe i just wanted to argue with her. 2.) Milo (see "Supporting Cast") had a white computer from the language lab and on the screen was a weird version of the Comcast cable menu.

When I woke up I was unusually oscitant. I think it had something to do with the really weird dreams.

Thomas has been really into watching World Cup soccer in spanish and let me tell you, the people just talk a little fast for me and after a while the voices can get really annoying. oh mi gosh que era uno de los mejores movimientos del futbal de toda la hora. guau! eso era asombroso! and so on. That is the voice that is echoing in our home while I write, read, play basketball etc.

It isn't a bad thing but after a while it can get just a tad bit annoying.

Another thing that I have been doing with my summer break is reading to write. yesterday i went to the library and got 3 boks on writing, editing and fiction. One of them is called Writing Fiction for dummies.

And I have to say it has definitely helped me and so I definitely recommend it to anyone who seeks fiction writing enlightenment.

Thats all the time we have for now.

Finally... 2

Sorry about the hold up. My mom needed to go and she had to bring her computer with her so I couldn't finish it. And for those of you who didn't read the first blog "finally..." than i urge you to read it and than read this one so you know what is happening.

Anyway, after lunch we went to Ms. Sullivan's class to get the 411 on what we were going to do today. Me and Henry took a seat on the heater so our butts would be nice and hot. She told us that first we were going to go to the covered area, because it was raining bears and frogs, and do a traditional japanese watermelon smashing. It's basically where you pick a name out of a hat and than you blind fold that person, give them a stick and they have to try to smash the watermelon open. If you can do that without sending anyone to the hospital, than you win and we start all over again.

The first person to be picked was Katie, and she totally missed every time, but towards the end she kind of bruised the melon, just a little bit. Next up was Natalie and let me tell you she gave that watermelon a whuppin. She smacked and it smashed in half and than she kept smashing it until it was watermelon juice. The whole crowd went completely insane when she did that. The next few people didn't really do anything but the last person to try it was Musashino Sensei. He was a big Ichiro fan so we told him to make like Ichiro and beat the guts out of the ball, or in this case, watermelon. He smacked and he missed and than the next time he went for a smash he smashed the stick into the ground and it broke! It was so funny, we were all laughing our a**'s off and at that point they had to stop doing it because obviously we didn't have a stick no more.

the next thing we did was play dodgeball in the gym and that wasn't fun because I kept getting out and so it was almost like I never played and so I just talked to people the whole time, it sucked.

The next thing we did was we went to Mr. Bacon's room to watch another Twilight Zone movie and this one sucked a lot so I don't really want to talk about that either.

The next thing e did was to go to Mr. Seigel's room to play board games. The cool thing is that we didn't even play games. We made towers out of Jenga blocks and than tried to knock them over by throwing other Jenga blocks at them. Note: if you ever want to get a girl really mad at you make sure to throw Jenga blocks at a tower she is building over and over again. It works... i've done it so it will actually work. Whenw e were done with that there was a whole lot of Jenga blocks on the floor and I had to clean them all up even though i probably only threw 36.7% of them.

The next thing we did was ate snacks in Sullivan's room and that was so fun because if there was anything better than eating i would stop eating and go to that. So all we did was eat.

Than we went to the gym for a final game of Tug'a'war. After that we got the whole have a nice summer speech and than the bell rang and we ran outside and kept yelling were free. When i got in the car Krys was there and she gave me the coolest late birthday present ever. It was an autographed Flogging Molly album and it was addressed to me. It said To Eli we we will see you next time and than it was signed. it was awesome to think that famous people care about me.

In the words of Forrest Gump life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what your gonna get.

Finally...

What? To tell the truth school is out and it IS summer vacation and if I want to show a freakin' High School Musical video on my blog I will and there isn't anything you can do about it. So if you are reading this blog while listening to the awesome song, than you will replace Milo and be my new best friend, so read on.

Before we start the actual blog about the last day of school I want to clear up some miscellaneous points that i forgot to wrap up last blog. When we went to the Japanese store with a long name we bought a cool triangle hat that is supposed to be for farmers, not 12 year-old boys, but I bought it anyway. Correction: my mom bought it for us.

isn't it totally sexy on me. Don't lie. Anyway...yeah. Back to the last day of school. It started when me and Thomas drove to school to the annoying sound of Collin Cowherd's voice. Collin is a local sports radio talk show host who has a reall y annoying voice and really bad timing when it comes to commercial's. He will be in the middle of a sentence and out of now where 'Oxy-clean..." and you get the idea. I was very relieved when i got to get out of the car, though i did enjoy the ride with Thomas, just not the radio.

We all hung out on our side of the hill, just like it was a regular day of school, and it kinda felt like it was to tell the truth. it didn't smell like summer and it certainly didn't look like summer, it looked like another rainy morning in Portland. The school bell rang and we all entered the school like it was just another day of school, no one was screaming and saying that it was the last time we were going to do this... nothing.

We all put our crap in our locker and went to the gym for the Taborsan Academy awards. To make a long story short, I didn't win one, but some other good news did arise. Musashino Sensei mixed up me and Milo's grades so instead of getting a B- I got an A+. I know an A+ I was so excited, that I hugged him. That might have been a bit much though. And the cool thing is that it counts for 75% of our grade so now I am bound to get at least a B in japanese. I am so excited. I want to take a minute to thank Mr. Seigel who taught me to spell the word Excited. Thanks.

We went to Math next but it wasn't really math. Ms. Sullivan told us to pile into Groom's room to watch a Twilight Zone movie. It was really hectic because, again, there was 80-100 people in one room. The hall was also really hectic because we were all supposed to bring chairs with us and we were all doing chair races and stuff. I don't know how but once it was over my right thigh really started to hurt.

The twilight thing was pretty cool but i don't want to spend the entire blog talking about it but it was called The eye of the beholder.

After that we had Lunch. it wasn't really lunch because it was 11 but it was still a meal and I was hungry so it didn't really make a difference to me. It wasn't really that interesting, but one cool thing was that me, kenji and Russian were all wearing cool bright converse. Or as nick would say Converze. Actually I say that too but what the hell.

To be continued......................

Foiled Again,

Does anyone know what I did today? Of course you do I do it everyday, I checked the Blog of Note section on the blogger page and guess what? It wasn't there! Yeah.... I mean nooo!!! So I will keep hoping and I will keep watch and see what happens, or what doesn't happen more likely.

Anyway before all the bickering about Blogger, I was having a wonderful day. Me and mother just got back from a Japanese store that I can't spell the name of. Let me try, Owagimaya. It looks right but knowing me its probably spelled backwards. While we were at this un-spell-able store we got some of the famous Japanese Ramen. And I'm not talkin' about Top Ramen, I'm talking about really ramen made by real people, not by the machines that you see on "How its Made." it tasted so good too. Also while we were there I bought a $14.50 pencil. Who would do that you ask? Me. You see its not just any pencil, its a Shakie pencil.

And it wasn't even this one, it was an awesome red one and it had Japanese writing around it. It also had some french writing around it. Don't ask me.

Before the fun trip to the Japanese store who's name I can't spell, we had gone to the Student-parent conferences. It had been better than I had expected. Before I went in to the room where I had it, this 8th grader came out and said that she had blown hers. That didn't exactly give me a lot of assurance but you know.

I thought it would be cool if i went in with my PJ's so I wore those and no one even pointed them out. All in all it turned out pretty good.

The 2nd to Last Day of School,

Before I start to rant and rave about how stupid the school is for making the last day of school next week, in the middle of the week, Just want to take a minute to say that 8th graders are really loud and that I hate August... hi August, I hope your having fun with your best Skinny Jeans award and satisfied with making my back hurt so much by plunging your shoe into it... all will be explained in good time, Reader.

Anyway, back to the point, some people imagine the last day of school as people walking out of school, smiling with there arms up handing out there pen and a yearbook for people to sign. Reality check people. Even though today wasn't technically the last day of school it was the PPS equivalent of the last day of school and here is what happened. As soon as the bell rang everybody ran out of the classrooms and started to yell at the top of there lungs. Holy crap where did my ear go. Oh wait I ripped it off as soon as David came over to me and said, "man this is great," and it was funny because it was actually the first time I couldn't hear David, but Dvid+other noises=Eli ripping off his ear. At this point I would like to note that, that makes me 1 more step closer to being a genius... like Van Gogh. Lol.

Let me fill you in on how all of this happened. In Japanese and Social Study's we were finishing up watching peoples videos and so that was just like anything else. Once we got to math we went immediately to Mr. Grooms room for a light bulb drop. This was rad because the day before we made contraptions that were supposed to make our light bulb be delivered safely from a 4 meter lift to the ground...our thing was so cool and we were so sure that ours was going to work but that, to will all be explained in good time.

When we got to his room it was all weird because the desks were gone and replacing them was 4 rows of chairs. It was like a giant ocean of chairs. I tried to get the best seat that I could but I ended up having to sit in the 2nd row. Mr. Groom was going to drop them in order of the classes that he see's so first 3rd period and than 7th and 8th. We were told that the peoples bulbs that were going to be dropped had to sit in the first to rows, so I had to give up my totally awesome seat to go sit in the back, where I couldn't see and darn thing.

The whole audience "woahed," when ever they heard the shattering of the bulb, except of course the group who dropped it. For them it was an emotional upset and afterwards they all looked like they needed counseling. I always went up to them and told them that it wasn't a big deal, but they always told me to shut up.

The time finally came for us to drop ours. We were so sure that it was going to work because we had a genius plan that the scissors would absorb all the shock, but obviously the bulb had experienced more shock because 3 or 4 seconds after it was drop we heard a dramatic shatter and than the popping of balloons... to bad. The rest of that was basically history and so we had advisory and than lunch and than we went to the cafeteria for the community celebration.

I arrived to the sound of justin Biebers hit, Baby, playing on the stereo and that was also the cause as to why I tore off my ear. I got a glass of water and began to sign yearbooks. The thing I said on the yearbooks was "because i'll be famous -Eli," and than everybody would be all like "pff, yeah right," oh those people will see. We were all rocking out to a B.O.B song when we were bombarded by a bunch of non-jmp d-bags.

We all looked up at Mr. Bacon and he said "oh crap," on the mic and than said "i am so sorry, I thought that I signed my name on the sheet," and than the teacher leading the other group looked at him like he was crazy. He told us to all meet up in Mr. Grooms class and so we all walked back to Groom's room and sat down. He told us that we all needed to move the tables out and put shairs out because we were about to have 130 people in 1 room and that is never good.

I chose a chair way in the back with all my friends and we started this puppy off.

We started off by announcing the winners of the citizenship award and of course my name was not called so i didn't get a poorly hand drwn picture of a guy holding a trophy with my name on it. Toooo baaaaaad. After that they started doing this thing called the "wacky" awards. They started to give out awards to people. Just to show you how stupid these were here is a sample. Best Swimmer. Best Handwriting. Most Crazy. Best Skinny Jeans. And August went crazy when he won that. He started jumping up and down and he was so pumped that he decided to come sit behind me.

He asked me if it was okay if he put his foot on my chair and when he did he completely jabbed it into my back. It was like this through the rest of the wacky awards and some of the slideshow until I moved. Some of you are asking why i didn't just ask him to move his foot? Because I can't just ask that to an 8th grader, it will make me seem bad and not help me be considered "cool" amoung there pack who they like to call, "the fresh boyz,"
.
After all that we put the tables back and unloaded our locker and than I began the trip to grandma;s house. Dun Dun Dun.... It began with Kayla waving at my grandma and my grandma waved back, a little creeped out. I couldn't blame her. When I got in the car she asked me if Kayla was mental. I said yes. F.Y.I she really isn't and if Kayla is reading this... um... anyway.

After about 20 minutes of driving and talking she hadn't pulled out the Mary Higgins Clark Audiobook out yet and it was a little weird. She than told me that it was in a hard to reach bag under all her suit cases and she told me it would be really hard to get. Remind me to never trust grandma again because it was so easy to get, that I bet Jasper could have gotten it.

Well we are all out of time... bye.

ABC Family? Yeah right!

I just want to dedicate this blog to all my friends at school who hate ABC Family and all my spy's at the headquarters wh-you know what, never mind. The one thing that bugs me about ABC Family is that they come out with a new show every 1 day. I am not even joking, go to ABC Family right now and I bet $50 that there will be a new show there that I haven't even seen... and I watched that channel last night. What did I watch on ABC Family you ask. Well that is a good question. I was watching the premiere of there show that had been introduced 3 hour previous, Pretty Little Liars.

The plotline of this story is that there were these 5 girls who were in a pact and they told all of the pact all there secrets, and one night one of them goes missing. The girls name is Alison. And than 1 year later they all keep getting these messages from "A" and everyone knows this is Alison. But there is a twist. They find her body in her old attic and she is dead, and than at her funeral all the girls get a message that says "I am here Bitches and I know everything," and than the episode ends.

The thing that is weird about it is that they go into the details of everyones life and its just really gay. My point is that ABC Family should change there name to ABC When the Kids go to Bed. Eli out.

Italic's...

Does anyone want to know why, I am using the italic's setting while I am writing. Well to tell you the truth they came out with the new blogs of note and guess what? mine wasn't there, but there was a new blog on there called Girl and Guitar and they were always using italics and it really annoyed me but I am going to try to do it and see what happens. Obviously the blog is still the same it is just that there is italics everywhere.

Anyway, besides that I want to tell everyone about the all important 3rd part of the Expert Project... the Movie or "documentary" if you will, even though none of anyones documentary weren't even close to the island of Around the Idea of a Documentary. So the whole thing went like this. Mr. Musashino would go on stage and introduce the next person and than the crowd would clap and the person would go on stage, give pre-written speech that Mr. Bacon wrote and than they would play his/her movie and it would all be done and good. There were 3 main days where we were going to show the documentary but it seems like we are going to bleed into a 4th day because we didn't finish the list for today. I, stupidly, decided to sign up to do it on the first day, today.

I felt really stressed and nervous. I hadn't even memorized the whole thing and I was the 11th person to do it today. Right as the whole thing started I started to practice the speech over and over and after the 5th or 6th person i was so ready it wasn't even funny. If I could have done it right after that feeling I would have kicked ass on stage and afterwards everyone would come up to me and say "oh Eli that was the best pre-written speech that you didn't write but you performed it, ever," and I would say "little boy... you can be as good as me to, all it takes it practice," and than I would sign his forehead and do it again.

For the next few video's I totally lost my mojo. I was starting to get paranoid and I could stop telling julian how nervous I was and he kept telling me to shut up. At this point I was scared as hell but I reassured myself and told myself that we were still on the 9th one and it would be okay. And than I looked at the sign and discovered something that would change my day forever. I WAS NEXT!!!! I looked at Julian and said I am next and cursed a lot and he said "yes!" because apparently he really wanted to see mine.

The movie before mine was really fast and quicker than I knew it the teacher was on stage introducing me. As soon as he got off the stage and walked to the comuter, i got off the bench and started to waddle over to the stage. A carefully stepped up the step because I knew that when I get nervous I am really clumsy. Once I got up there I waved and I heard some people in the crowd yelling my name and saying "yeah" and that kind of made me feel better, but on the scale that Air Resistance effects a tennis ball in my hand.

As soon as I heard my voice in the mic i knew that my life was over, my humanity was gone and my courage and stick to attitude were gone faster than a roman candle on the 4th of July. I knew that I had to finish it. But i couldn't i was embarrassing myself in front of everyone that I have known since the beginning of my school career. The worst thing wasn't that I was embarrassing myself, the worst part of it was that I knew that I was embarrassing myself. I know that no one knows japanese but i pretty much forgot the whole middle so in English it sounded like "hi...bye" and than I got off stage and everyone applauded and i was thinking that maybe I didn't mess up, but when I got in my seat Julian hastily reminded me that I sucked so much on stage.

The good part was that when my video came on everybody loved it. The big thing was that I was interviewing myself. The story is that i found out that my filming partner Milo was a suckish excuse of an actor so I knew that I had to improvise. # days before we started filming I came up with the idea that i could interview myself, i could wear a costume for being the host and than I could to a costume change for when I was Neil Young. For the host my costume was Sweatshirt and Jeans and for Neil Young my costume was an Oregon Ducks shirt and a cowboy hat that my mom dug out of her closet.

The cool thing is that on Friday we are doing a thing called the Taborsan Academy Awards and it is where they have category's and they give you a mini oscar if you win and I totally think that I am going to win one. I saw Musahino Sensei when he was grading me and he was watching the movie and smiling and the only other one that he had smiled to had been Owen and Sam's video and there's was by far the best video out of all of the video's ever.

When Musashino Sensei got on stage to introduce the next person he said that it was weird and he thought he saw the same face on 2 different people. I am still praying to God that he was joking.

Portrait Innovation's,

My Great Grandma (GG), for the last few months has been obsessed with dying and when she is going to die and all this crap. So because of this she wants to go and get professional pictures because she was going to "die." Every-time me and Grandma go up to Washington I will start a conversation about school and within 2 minutes it will have shifted, and turned into a conversation about drugs and in the NEXT 2 minutes the conversation will have shifted again and this time she will be venting to me about how much she thinks that GG is not going to die and that she is still recovering and that she isn't thinking clearly. Now GG is in her 80's and I don't think that the idea of dying, if I were her, wouldn't be a stupid i idea at all. I think that grandma is just trying to assure herself that GG isn't going to die anytime soon and that this is all crazytalk. Well I have news for you grandma, its not crazytalk at all its actually a rational, sensible idea...sheesh.

Anyway, the morning of these pictures I woke up and threw on one of the dress t-shirts that I only wore in Japan when there were no camera's around me, and some jeans and went downstairs and read my un-published Twilight book that someone hacked off of Stephanie Meyer's computer a while back and read that. I read until about 7:30 when my aunt, Tricia came down stairs from her shower and greeted me briefly and went to put on the all important make-up. Again I was alone downstairs reading my book. It seemed empty without the sound of my mother pumping and the clicks of the mouse on her computer and the sliding sound of her finger on the mouse-pad, on Facebook....

The clock ticked and there was still silence from the mama's room. She said earlier last night that we had to leave by 9:15 so we could get some B-ville for breakfast and still make it to the picture shop on time. If this was a regular day she would have been up nice and early to feed the baby and she would pump at put her make up on by 8:30 and this was weird because I knew that it was important to put lots of make-up for a big event like this and if I were her I would have got up earlier to spend the good part of the morning putting make-up on. But what do I know.

Finally I heard the banging necklaces that are the sign for an opening door in our house because every single one of our doors has some necklaces draped around them. finally I thought. It was 8:35 and i knew that my mom was going to be pissed when she got down so I should just shut up and read my book. But, it wasn't my mom at all, it was the Tom-Tom man (Thomas) and he was wearing his super plush white bathrobe that I envy every single time I see it and even when I don't see it. We greeted and than went back to out business. I suddenly realized that I needed a longer tie for my shirt, because the one my friend gave me a while back was really small and I had out grown it so it was more like a red, shinny bib that only covered a little bit of my chest.

Thomas went back upstairs and I didn't hear from him for a while but a few minutes later my mama 1 came downstairs and asked me why I didn't want to wear my red tie. I told her that it was to small AND i had out grown it so it wouldn't look really good when we got the pictures.

I am going to skip all the conversations that we had while my mom was doing her hair but in a nutshell my mom gave Thomas' designer ties and let me tell you, it was hot, and Thomas came downstairs and we got in the car with my aunt Tricia and hit the road to Burgerville.

When we got to the infamous Burgerville drive through I stuttered a few times and Thomas got all pissed at me and flashed me his watch and told me to just order the damn food and later he said he thought it was funny that I didn't order right away. Yeah, Thomas it really looked like you were laughing. The orderer person asked about every single detail of our order except mine and my burger ended up with Mayo on it. Grrr. When we were on our way to the photo shop we had this whole crisis about were it was and guess were it ended up being...Gresham Station. It was this little 900 Square Ft shop that had 2 photo booths things in it and on of them was being used by a family that had the cutest crying baby ever.

When we started every single picture i was in i was on the left side of every body and i was kneeling. And the photographer was a 2@#$% too and it kind of sucked. Sigh.


And it looks nothing like this.

Neil Young,

Last night me and my mother went to a really *cough* cool event. What is the event you ask? Well i'll tell you. For the last 2 months our class has been working on an expert project. I have been doing mine on Neil Young and let me tell ya, after 2 months of studying the same damn person i am wishing that i picked Lady Gaga for my e.p. Neil Young is so boring o my god. I don't even know how to describe how boring it is to talk about Neil Young all day. And we practice saying the same thing every single day.

Well last night we did 1/3 of it. We did the speech thing. Its where we make an introduction in English or Japanese depending on what the person spoke. So i dressed up in a band shirt and a cowboy hat and went to my little booth desk thing and started talking to people. When I was done with the intro i had a little sheet of questions to give them and they would "ask" them to me. Most of the people that came to my booth didn't understand that so they just went off and asked me things that i didn't know what the hell they were talking about... sigh. It made me feel really really stupid because I spent 2 entire months studying this man and these people know more about him than I do.

The Next Day... Finally.
I am just going to skip over to the part where I went to the salon. The first thing that happened was Kaht came over to me and took a picture of me and made my picture into a cave man.


And the rest was history....

Tapeman & J-walkingboy

Tapeman,
I wasn't paying attention when everyone came out of the school to join me next to the big tree were we stand, but i did note that my friend William (Babyhulk) was carrying a roll of clear Scotch tape with him. I turned my head back to my new phone but there was this big, annoying sound, like someone was scratching there nails on a chalkboard and i later found out that William was rolling all the tape around his arm and eventually his right arm was entirely covered with scotch tape. This was hilarious. He later realized what he did to himself and for the next 15 minutes he was struggling and trying to get the monstrous piece of tape off of his right arm.
Chloe tried to rip it off all at once and it ended up ripping off some of Williams skin and there was some bleeding on his finger but that was it... Tapeman to the rescue.

J-walkingboy
My friend Nick realized that his mom's car was coming and so he said that she should pull into the 7-11 parkinglot and they could get a donut. She agreed and he crossed the street, but he didn't use a crosswalk and so I yelled at him from the other side of the street. I said "J-walker, you are a badboy, you are breaking the law, I will call the cops and they will track you down and put you in a little lonely cell in prison all by your self."
He got all pissed at me and started yelling at me. He got into his mom's car and turned the corner were i was waiting for the bus and right when he drove by i yelled "J-walker," but i don't think he heard me because he yelled something to and he didn't hear me.