Archive for February, 2006

lol@the past

October 19, 2003. Maybe I want to be an engineer. An English major. Journalist. Maybe I’ll go to Wash. U., MIT, or Rolla.

Well, at least I made one good guess. lol

Awake/Alive

The clock tells me six fifty-three, ante meridiem.

It’s been a long day…

Woke up at like… 11:45am on Friday. Missed the 11am class, missed the noon class. It was Dad’s birthday, gave him a call. Yeah, I missed all my classes today.

Went to the news meeting at 4:30, was pretty fun and dysfunctional. Though I ended up with a photo assignment for the night and I didn’t know what time and whatever it was. It was about the RAMS (Rockin’ Against Multiple Sclerosis) Rock-It program, which basically is that frats and sororities get groups together and they do song/dance performances (lip synch, but there were a few who actually sung). I knew Julie Mercer from MUHSO (MU Honors Student Organization) was in it because I remembered her talking about how her sorority was in it, so I called her and asked for time and directions.

Now, I got out of the meeting at like, 5:45. I hear that oh, the Rock-It thing is at 6:30. My car’s still at Trowbridge lot. I just missed the bus to there. I start jogging over there. Get to car, get on I-70, make my way down to this expo center that it’s at. 6:25, all good. Was there until fucking 10:30.

That really got on my nerves. I was tired, felt like shit, etc…

Had a decent talk with Sara (my darling princess, as always)… A little bit of the hopeless romantic came out in me again, heh… It’s a side that I haven’t really put out since well… A whiles. But it was a good conversation. I smiled, it definitely made up for the shitty fraternity/sorority Rock-It thing. (Granted, it was fun, it was just so damn long.)

Apparently Erin, Emily Newsom, Jackie, Kyle, and Kati all were hanging out with the Matts. Emilee was there, too, we played cards for a while until we got bored and just hung out in the lounge until past 3am talking and hanging out. Old times and whatnot.

So yeah, I had this photo assignment about places to eat like Broadway Diner and El Rancho. Places where drunk people usually go after a long night. I talked all of us into going out there to eat. El Rancho was closed, so we went to The Diner, which was a really enjoyable experience. Staff there’s really friendly and they’ve all got stories. A+++++++++ lol. Took some photographs there perhaps for the Move Magazine, but either way, I think I like the place enough to have to randomly head there once in a while. There’s so much fire in those people, so much life, you can tell by how they talk to you and how they act… So got done eating around 4:30am, went to Mark Twain Hall just because.

At this point, we figured… Fuck it, let’s stay up til sunrise. Bad idea, but whatever, we were having fun together hanging out… We played Uno in the 3rd Floor Mark Twain Lounge. For quite some time. Went from great to hilarious to weird to dead. Sometime around 5 you could tell our motor skills and our stuff were slowly dying out… By 6, everybody was getting into the dazed mode. But the sky started to lighten, so I started doing what I normally do and took pictures

So. Clock tells me seven twenty-three, ante meridiem. I have photo assignments to be sorting and submitting because I know I’ll not want to do that shit when I wake up again.

It’s amazing what kind of fun you can have with the right kind of people. Even without alcohol, hey, all we just needed was something to do and it turned out to be pretty good.

So anyway… Good morning, and good night.

this post to be updated with spiffy thumbnail pics from 1: rams rock-it, 2: the diner, 3: sunrise, 4: walking back to the dorm at 6:45.

*yawn*

I find it interesting, the juxtaposition of all of this rambling yet somewhat logical text followed up with a clean, crisp set of photos that tell you exactly what’s going on. It’s nothing new to print and online journalism, but hey, to my blog, it’s a funny thing to actually have some visual instead of just words saying “omg i did this, i did that.” Part of why photojournalism is so powerful is that we don’t like to read as much as we like to see. It’s easier to feel through a picture than feel through a paragraph, heh.

So I lied. It’s 2:20am. Now I’m going to sleep.

Busy, busy, busy.

So like I said last post, it’s been busy times. Aside from classwork, since last Friday I’ve shot: 1) a formal dinner/ball/inauguration 2) basketball, 3) the Columbia Regional Airport, 4) a multiple sclerosis donation drive, and 5) the big Porn Debate here at Mizzou. (* official site of the debate) Got to meet Ron Jeremy, too… (Not sure if I’m proud of that or what. -.- The writer/reporter was pretty stoked.) And this weekend I’ve got to shoot pics of a new bar opening up in town, and the common late-night eateries of drunk people on Thursday-, Friday-, and Saturday-nights for the magazine. And that weekend stuff doesn’t even count the stuff I might end up getting at the newsmeeting Friday afternoon. lol. Anyway:

Thumbnails with links to all those photos mentioned can be seen at the bottom of this ol’ post.

So what’s been up in Mike Land besides that?

I dunno. Been thinking about how to make a little more money still being as lazy as I am. Thinking about what kinds of projects to dedicate myself to (photo exibition style stuff, photo essays/photo stories). *shrug*

Whatever Sara did to me on Sunday has kinda been carrying me through this week. (Boy, that could be taken the wrong way.) But yeah, I’ve almost been on a high, riding a lot of inspiration and a lot more head-first, hard-nosed attitude towards accepting more photo things to do. I mean, for now at least… I had exams last week, so classes were definitely planned to be easy this week.

Eh, Dad’s birthday is today… Hm… Gonna need to do something for that… -.-

And I dunno. Did I ever talk about Valentine’s Day? I don’t think I did and I think Sara’s been wanting everyone to hear about it from my perspective, lol… Basically the rundown is that a certain guy basically ran out of time and resources BUT somehow made a lot of amazing things happen, all because of luck and the great care of my family. I gave her a V-day card, a birthday card (her birthday is v-day…), white roses (last minute and amazing!), a little cute cuddly beanie baby bunny, and this cute heart-shaped necklace with an emerald little butterfly design thing. (Ugh, I hate describing jewelry. It was $$$ and very shiny. LOL) She loooooooooooooooooooved it. So much. (She loves white roses, she loves emeralds, she loves cuddly things… lol. And she loves chicken and mashed potatoes which is part of what dinner was… But that’s another story.)

Jump ahead a few days and I’m all out of whack, I’m all in a funk, whatever you want to say. Why? I’d been home like, 3 times in a week and a half, I’d been stressed about exams (I did okay….) and I dunno. Whatever it was, last weekend knocked me out of it finally, and I’ve been rolling ever since.

I was out in the middle of freaking nowhere (just outside McBaine, MO), sitting under this huge tree that’s supposedly one of the largest in the state, and Sara called me and that she didn’t get a 30 on the ACT like she hoped… (The big green blob right under the red pointer on that Google Maps link is the tree.) She was really bawling and I really felt bad for her… She said it was done, she never wanted to see the test again, and I kept telling her that she still had more chances left…

In the end, she later decided to take it again… And I promised to help her out. This time, for real. Like, really try to drill some strategies into her about the math/science stuff… We’ll see how that goes.

And she still hasn’t picked a college yet (Truman or Mizzou…), but that’s okay. I didn’t decide to go to Mizzou until mid-April last year… lol.

I dunno… It’d be weird if she came here, but it’d be kinda sad if she didn’t. The more I think about it, I’d rather have it be the former, anyway. *sigh* Hate thinking that far ahead. Every time you look to the future in your personal life, it’s just… Too random and out there and you can’t even begin to guess usually. I think we’ll make it together (mmm, ), but that doesn’t mean circumstances won’t come to bother us once in a while. Eh, we’ll get there when we get there, I keep telling her…

Anyway folks, it’s 1:34am, got class tomorrow, need to catch up on sleep (was really sleepless last night, woke up before 8am today and ate breakfast for the first time during the school week since moving back from Winter Break). G’nite… Enjoy the photos.

RHA Inaugural Formal Ball-ish…thing:
RHA Election
Mizzou Men’s Basketball vs. Texas A&M:
Mizzou Men's Basketball vs. Texas A&M  Mizzou Men's Basketball vs. Texas A&M  Mizzou Men's Basketball vs. Texas A&M
RAMS Jail n’ Bail:
Rockin' Against Multiple Sclerosis Jail n' Bail
Porn Debate:
Porn Debate  Hm...  Don't know if I'm proud of this one.

[Yes, Ron Jeremy is a porn star. Again, I'll repeat for the last time, it's not like I'm a fan of his or that I'm particularly proud that I got a picture with him. I just wanted to get a picture with a celebrity, heh. But yeah. It was pretty weird/cool/out-of-the-ordinary, which is why I got excited and made a big deal of it.]

Mizzou Men’s Basketball vs. Texas A&M

Photos on Flickr

I’m too tired to post a real photo post right now, maybe I’ll update this tomorrow. Got 3 more photo assignments over the next 2 days, heh. G’nite.