Life's been pretty down and up the past few weeks. I've had a few major let-downs, but ultimately everything worked itself out in the end. I usually never mention this mostly because it rarely happens, but I prayed during the middle of these problems. Usually when I do, I'm not asking for help, but rather I just have a heart to heart with God. Some people do that with old friends, some people with their pets, some people with their dead family members, some people on their journals, but every once in a while I just have a nice private talk with God. I don't usually ask Him for help mostly because I really want to be able to make it through my problems by myself. However, I really do believe God steps in with little things that one, I don't really notice at first, two, seems like an inconvenience at first, and three, is not directly related to my problems. And this time, I think that would be the snow.

For the uninformed people, it's been snowing like crazy the past week. And no, this is NOT normal weather for us here. I have heard it has not snowed here in fifty years. Not only that, we have a record breaking amount of snow since 1941. And you know, I normally always chalk things up to coincidence. How come my first Oregon winter is insane like this? My first Christmas? I chose to spend the holidays up here, alone or not. Didn't want to fly home. If I did, I would've missed this snow -- this snow that hasn't come in half a century. Religious/spiritual or not, there's just something magical, something majestic, something just plain beautiful about the snow coming down and everything just turning into a brilliant white.


The second to last week of school, I was stressed out. I'd been feeling lonely because I was trapping myself in my condo to focus on my finals. Finishing projects, studying... it's always a maddening time for anybody in school. But, I was feeling lonely for a few reasons. I've been barely talking to my friends from California. In fact, I really only talk to Rob and Liz O anymore. I also had barely been seeing any of my friends up here. Liz S had been short on money, and we haven't been going to our usual bdubs hangouts for a while. Reuben was MIA, focusing on a few tests for his new career, and our schedules were just always inconveniently off. Brice was in the same boat for me since we go to the same school, except since he's in more advanced classes, he needs even more time to work on his projects. And the icing on the cake, hearing that my ex had found somebody. Quite honestly, even though I am completely sincere about my supporting of her being happy with a new guy, it still hurts a bit to hear that. I don't hold it against her, I'm not jealous mad at the other guy, nothing of that sort at all. But it's just news that can't help but sting a little, you know?

But whatever, right? After finals are over, my sister would be coming up and spending a week with me. I'd have family here for Christmas. And that was all that mattered to me then. I just wanted to make it through, pick her up at the airport, and have a good time. But in came the snow. I started worrying about whether my sister could make it up here.

And then finals hit, and I was fully focused on finishing projects. At the same time, I was getting trapped in my condo because of the snow. I was really really worried about my finals though. I had a C in astronomy, and missed two pages of the homework packet, and didn't know how the hell I was going to study for the final. I also had a 5 page paper due. The lectures in my linear algebra class were a joke, and the only graded things in our class were the midterm and the final, and I had gotten a D on the midterm. I had a shitload of modeling and texturing I still needed to do for my modeling project, which was a failing project at the time.

But I woke up on the first day of my finals, being astronomy on a Monday, and school got canceled because of the snow. My teacher gave us the choice of either making up the final at some point, or turning in the homework packet as the final and the paper on Thursday. That gave me time to postpone that final and instead work on my modeling project. With my extra time, I managed to get a finished result I was satisfied with. However, the modeling project and my linear algebra final were both on Wednesday, so I had no time to relax. I busted out my math notes, and then sadly realized that my notes were not only incomplete, but useless because the lectures, as I said before, were a joke. I didn't know how I was going to pass that class. After 5-6 hours or staring at the homework problems and my scribbled notes, I just surrended to the despair. I was going to fail. No fucking way I could pass it. I closed everything up and just went to sleep.

Woke up on Wednesday, and went to my math class. My classmate joked (because of the snow), "I thought you weren't going to make it today. Unsafe traveling in the snow haha." He then proceeded to, "So Greg (our teacher) totally forgot his book and our finals, so he took my homework questions and is now copying them for our final." Seriously? We had solution sheets to the odd problems in our homework. Even if he chose even numbers, we could at least work out the odd numbers surrounding it to make sure we know how to do the problem correctly. But not only that, it took him a while to choose out the problems and make all the copies, so by the time he got back and handed them out, we technically only had half an hour of classtime left. He told us we could just take it home, do it and email it to him over the weekend. ANOTHER final extension. How awesome is that?

My modeling project turned out not too shabby. Classmates liked it, and the music was pretty damn well timed. It got a good laugh. I ended up getting a C on the project (and therefore the class), and I'm happy with that haha. Last final was to be on Thursday. It was my programming final, and I wasn't worried about that at all. Easy A, no problem. Just had to finish that astronomy homework packet and paper by 2pm on Thursday. Wednesday night, I get an email from my programming teacher saying that the final was canceled, and that we could email our projects to her whenever. Since I already did mine pretty fast, I sent it off to her. I then proceeded to get my homework packet done on Wednesday night, included the pages I missed. Thursday morning, since my final got canceled, I was able to spend more time on my paper, finished that with an hour to spare and emailed it. I was then finally able to relax for the next two days, planning to do my math final on Sunday while waiting for my sister to fly in at night.

Sunday morning, I wake up and start working on my final. I am getting stressed out because I have only been able to finish seven out of ten problems, and I was just stuck. During that time, I get a text from my sister saying that her flight got canceled because of the weather. I continue for another couple hours futilely. I get another text saying that it couldn't be rescheduled at all, all flights to the northwest are being canceled. I grab a couple beers and down those because I'm upset at everything about then. I, at most, could get a C on my final IF I got everything right. And now my sister couldn't come at all, meaning I was alone for Christmas. After a nice buzz and another couple hours, I just gave up. Scanned it in and sent it to my teacher. At least I was done with finals, right? I ended up getting a final grade of a C in that class. How? Who knows?! But I'll fucking take it, LOL!



Let's back it up a day. Saturday, I opened at my store. This was the day it REALLY started snowing. I made it back home after my shift, and that would be the last time I've driven my car up until this current moment. So Monday comes around, and I'm still stuck at home. Brice gives me a call and asks me if I want to get picked up and hang out at his place with his roomates (his older brother Dominic and Dom's gf, Laura). I jump at the chance to hang out with a good friend and get out of my house. They all figured I was getting sick of being stuck home alone, and they were right. So I talk to Brice about how my sister couldn't make it up, and he invites me over to spend Christmas with them, and have dinner at Laura's parents' house. I kinda felt like I was intruding, so I said "Sounds good, but yeah we'll see". I hung out with them, spent the night on Monday, and in that one day grew to really like Dom and Laura too.

Tuesday night, Andy invites me out to a movie with him and some other of his friends. Normally, I don't feel comfortably hanging out with a group of people I don't really know. But screw it, I'm sick of being stuck at home. So I jump on the max and get off at his stop, which is a short <10min ride to the 3rd stop from mine. He also lives right next to a max station, which is awesome to us cause it's pretty easy for us to hang out regardless of snow. We went and saw Yes Man, which had some pretty funny moments and a cute girl. It was worth going out. I didn't care much for his friends, but it seemed like he didn't really either. It was basically us hanging out, watching the movie and commenting on it to each other. Before the movie, I got a tour of his nice house. We talked about knives, eskrima, video games, and other random stuff. Andy's becoming a pretty good friend.

Wednesday, Christmas eve. I wake up feeling pretty lonely considering I'm going to spend Christmas eve alone. I spend the first half of the day just kinda brooding around the house. I think this was also the day Kelsey officially told me. My parents were keeping me informed about their Christmas party back in Cali, and that just made me feel even more alienated. Around 3-4pm, Brice calls me up and tells me the plans for Christmas. We were supposed to be up somewhat early (10ish - which totally didn't happen), so if I wanted to he could just pick me up then so we could hang out and I could just sleep over again. And in case you were unsure, yes he keeps picking me up because I can't drive my car through that amount of snow. So I was happy to not spend Christmas eve alone. We played a LOT of Starcraft, and I watched them three open up a few presents. Oh yeah, we had Cabana's for dinner, which is the best Mexican restaraunt I've been to up here. Of course, it doesn't compare to Mexican food in Cali, but it's still pretty damn good, and I had been craving it for a LONG time considering I was stuck at home for a long while and was eating the same food over and over.

Laura and Dom headed to sleep quite a bit earlier than Brice and me. We were up playing Starcraft til about 3, give or take half an hour. Apparently, their dog, who was sleeping in Laura and Dom's room, kept waking Laura up, so she let him out of their room sometime in the morning so she could get back to sleep. The dog came down and proceeded to wake me up at 9am. I then spent about an hour and a half to two hours on Brice's computer waiting for everybody to wake up. But after they woke up, Christmas was starting to roll. Breakfast was being prepared, Laura went to pick up her parents who weren't ready so she came back with presents that I helped carry in, and then she took off again a little later to pick up her parents.

They finally got everybody over and breakfast served around 12:30-1, hahaha. It was a ridiculously good "breakfast" though. We were all fucking stuffed. They then opened presents, which was really fun to watch. These people actually THOUGHT about their presents and bought cool things. My family just buys generic shit like random toys for the little kids, chocolate/wine for the adults, and cash/gift cards for everybody else. And of all the times I mention to my family "Banana Republic, Best Buy, or Fry's" they never get it. But LAURA, who on Christmas had seen me for the fourth time ever, knew that I liked BR and was going to get me a gift card from there but she didn't know they closed their store in the mall she was at, and didn't have time to stop by the other one at the other place. However, they managed to find an unused $25 Best Buy gift card and gave that to me, which is awesome! I wasn't expecting anything from them at all. It was nice enough I got to spend Christmas with them. I feel bad for not getting them anything, but I blame that entirely on the snow. Otherwise, I definitely would have driven out to get them something. But at least I didn't show up to their house empty handed. I brought over chips, soda, a bottle of wine, and a bottle of Sailor Jerry's.

We had dinner at Laura's dad's house, and it was AMAZING. Honey baked ham, potatoes, wild rice, and a port peach dessert. And for drinks, we all emptied the bottle of wine I brought, which was a major hit with everybody. They all loved the wine. After dinner, Dom, Brice, Laura's younger brother Scott (who is surprisingly extremely good at guitar - the dude can sweep pick!) and I all played some rounds of pool. Scott gave me a good run, but I managed to squeak out a win. I completely raped Dom and Brice though, but to be fair I have clocked in a lot more hours playing pool through my life so everything comes back pretty naturally.


All in all, it was an awesome Christmas. Brice, Laura, and Dom all feel like family to me now, much like my group of friends in Cali. Those three, Reuben, Andy, and Liz S. really make me feel like this is home. I have great friends up here that now I really feel like I can call up whenever I want and not feel like just a welcomed outsider. I finally feel like not only do I live here, not only do I feel like I have a home here, but now I feel like I belong. Problems aside, life isn't that bad at all. I may not have my blood family here with me, I may not have a girlfriend, I may not be that close to finishing school, but this is enough for me. It's enough to make me smile and keep me smiling.

And so, tonight Reuben calls me at 11:45pm, and tells me he's on his way to pick me up and we're meeting Andy and some other friends out at a bar. I haven't seen Reuben in much too long, so regardless of my lack of comfort at going to a bar to hang out with people I don't really know at the time of the night, I decided to go anyways. Who knows, maybe something good will happen. And it ended up being a good time. It was a cool place, had a band that played (who wasn't very good, but who cares if you're drinking haha), and there were a lot of random people and girls there. It can be like my own McLaren's (How I Met Your Mother reference - the bar they hang out at all the time and find girls to ask out and generally is just THEIR place to chill). It was a good time. Andy and I want to SUIT UP the next time we go. And we want to go every Friday night. And play the "Hi, haaaave you met ____?" game. Hahahaha. And I'm sure one of these days, I'm going to go dance while the band is playing. Which also gives me an opportunity to meet somebody and ask them to dance with me, haha. It sounds like it'd be really good times for the years to come.

Another thing I have to mention is that Dennis and I have started talking a bit more again. While I was having my problems, he was going through some of his own, and he came to me with them. If you've forgotten, Dennis is one of my best friends, the one that I consider to be most like me. And not like me as in we spend a lot of time together so we've picked up a few (or a lot) of each other's characteristics and quirks, but rather the opposite. We barely spend time together, we barely talk, but we just happen to view thing in the same way, think in the same way, and deal with things the same way. Which isn't to say we always agree with each other. We are brutally honest to each other, and will call the other out with no hesitation. So as we discussed our problems, a question came up: "If your life is just NOT going well, is it better to pretend everything is ok and awesome, or is it better to just accept that life is shit and go with it?" It's a hard one for us, because we don't like to pretend anything. "Face the facts, and then act on them." That's just how it is. But both of us surprisingly decided that you can't go through life just feeling like shit. It's better to pretend you're awesome than to show you're shit. You have to smile even if you feel like you have no reason to. And meanwhile, while you are fake smiling, you look for the little things that really do make you smile. You find all the little things you look forward to, and you take what you can get and be happy for it. The quote that I always quote doesn't mean to settle, rather it means exactly this. Life just fucking blows sometimes, but if you have the littlest reason to smile...

"Take what is offered, and that must sometimes be enough."



And to think, if it wasn't for the snow, a lot, if not all, of this post wouldn't have happened...