I got to thinking tonight

And I honestly believe that the last time the whole family sat down at the SAME table occurred exactly one year ago.

The times this happens just get more and more rare as the years go on. It definitely makes me appreciate this fact a little more than when I was 5 and this happened daily (if Mom had her way at least).

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Wow, I'm not even mad

I actually didn't mean to post that last, well, post with nothing but a title; however, I like the artiness of it all, so I'll keep it.

But the point stands.

I don't really have anything to say. But it's been a few days since I've posted and I did have that whole "be the change you want to see in the world" shpiel less than a fortnight ago, so I feel kind of shitty not following up.

So what's going on in my life, you ask? How about a top 5 I respond. In reverse order, because I love the suspense.

5.) I bought my first ever full length video game digitally recently. Yes, I know the previous sentence will probably exclude me from any contact with the opposite sex for +/- a month, but how would that be different from the past +/- 20 years of my life, so screw it. It feels really really weird buying essentially nothing physically (meaning something that has mass) with nothing physically (meaning my credit card, the whole concept of which still blows my mind, but that's a post for another night). All in all though I'm liking the concept. Rumors have it the PS4 will have primarily a digital download means of distribution so I should probably get used to it either way.

4.) I had a little too much of the jungle joose last night and may or may not have yacked a little on the porch of the stoop. Actually, yea, I did. I tried to clean up my mess this morning, but given the ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL WEATHER today, it had caked very nicely on the already concrete-esque front dirt. So, any water splashing was in vein. I say all of that to say this: I don't know how bulemics do it (my throat kills), and I never want to drink again.

3.) Charlie needs to go. I understand the '07 team had the least talent of any ND team ever possibly, but seriously Charlie, again? This isn't the U.S. Delta Force Academy, it's the fucking Naval Academy. Start talking to your NFL connects about some openings for next year, because if there is a God, you won't be at ND.


2.) If you ain't first you're last.

1.) Nothing in life is big enough for me to give it a "#1" type of status right now, so I'm going to take the easy way out on this one, too. I mean that in the least emo way possible, I'm far from being a manic depressive about things, there just really isn't one thing I can point out as being major.

I did have a pretty prescient fortune cookie in my Chinese carry out this week though, so I guess I'll leave that both of you readers who actually got this far through my ramblings to read it:

"Stop searching forever. Happiness is just next to you."

Peace up, a town down.

Gettin back on that horse....

Yes, it's me again. I'm sure the RSS feeds did a double take before they posted me back up. To be honest, it's been a hectic month for me with plenty to talk about but not much of it being anything most anyone here would probably care to hear.

The sparknotes? Sure, I am now an uncle (congrats Sis), have been working 40-50 hours/week (but getting paid for 40), have had packed weekends (for the first time in my entire life I may label myself as a nap-taker....scary), and have done a ton of catching up with "myself." Call it what you want, I've settled with the term "Quarter-life crisis" to describe the past month.

In the end I have come out of it realizing most that in the routine of life I have not taken any time to just sit back for even an hour and reflect on me as a person. Who am I? What am I really doing with my life? Am I really going to be happy with the choices I need to make now, five, ten, even twenty years down the road? While I'm sure this may sound like some Zen bullshit, I can't recommend just getting away from everything enough. No phones, no facebook (gasp!), no internet, no PS3 (double gasp!), no friends. You'll be surprised how much you can learn about yourself in just a short time of doing this.

My "get-away" consisted of literally getting away from my comfort zone and going somewhere completely new where I would be a stranger to everyone. After looking at the prices for plane tickets (holy crap.... no wonder GE can pay me what they do....) I quickly realized that getting to LA or NYC was just not possible. So I looked closer, maybe a few nights somewhere within driving distance would be do-able. The problem with that however, is that I wasn't truly leaving any comfort zones at all. If there is anything I have gotten a lot of experience in this past year, it has been long-distance driving. I have even come to enjoy it quite a bit. While my goal wasn't to do something completely miserable, it was to push myself out of the comfort zone. That wasn't going to happen in my 2 door Escort.

After a little inspiration, I became dead set on a few nights of wilderness camping. Bare essentials, no outside contact, me and nature: perfect. I also (ignorantly) figured that this would be a low-cost venture; no plane tickets needed. In the end, the bill stacked well over $700. I left Monday, July 13 for Shawnee State Forest, with a ~45 lb backpack with enough in it to last three nights (four if needed) without any human contact.

The sparknotes:
- I'm amazed (and overwhelmingly appreciative) that my parents not only bought into the idea, but even supported me throughout it. Backpacking is tough. Solo backpacking is dangerous. Solo backpacking with zero backpacking experience, is about a dumb as you can get. I don't think I can thank them enough for the support.

- Maybe the only reason they didn't object too hard is because they have some weird sense of foresight beyond my wildest imaginations. After getting three miles in (of a 26 mile loop) on my first day, I stop at a creek side for lunch. After eating I take off my shoes only to find 6 blisters already formed, and popped, on both of my feet. At this point I knew that I could either trudge onward, and risk some serious - potentially long term - medical issues, or do the only smart move and turn around. After amount 10 minutes of sitting in disbelief and a fair amount of cussing, I begrudgingly started walking back the way I came.

So, mission accomplished? no. I did however, catch the "bug" and fully intend on "getting back on the horse" as soon as possible. Back to the Zen bullshit though: even in the few hours I was alone ("in the wild" as I say), I feel like I took monumental steps in discovering who I really am. I would be fooling myself to say that going on essentially a day-hike with a toddler strapped to my back solved all the craziness in my life - it did make it seem a lot more manageable.



So, that about wraps up the first 10 days of my absence. Obviously I have a lot of catching up to do, and I intend on doing it. I was not-so-subtlety reminded by someone recently why I first started this blog. It was not so much for the video game reviews (though I love talkin some polygons for a few minutes), or the youtube videos (Fuck yea!), but a way for me to stay connected to people that I don't want to lose contact with. Whether posts are monsterous (see: this), or tweet-esque (see: what I always intend on doing, but never actually do), it is still a helluva lot better than lately!

With that, I bid you adieu. Until next time - peace up, a-town down.

So much for that 365 posts thing...

Sorry about the uber-delay. Possibly the longest ever. Things have been fairly hectic (especially over the weekends when I usually mine the interwebz and Earth-in-general for exciting blog posts) what with work, and three trips out of town. Grandma is doing fine by the way...

In my delay I have decided a few things:

1.) Entourage is good. Really really good. I have been catching up on them from the library and Netflix (for the later seasons) and should be well into Season four by this weekend or so. Absolutely stellar script writing to keep what is essentially a repeated macro-storyline (guy gets movie, movie sells mass, guy celebrates with friends). Definitely recommend this one.

2.) This guy is hilarious. Basically, Chi City Mane is the realest dude from Chi town now livin' in the burbs. He chronicles his adventures with his personal Handycam (meaning you never really see his face). Yet another recommendation. As a matter of fact, I'll save you the trip:





And finally, if you don't watch any of the other one's cause they look stupid and you don't need any more ghetto slang in your life, please at least just watch this one. It'll warm your heart. A little Christmas love for the less fortunate:


3.) I'm out of shape. Trying to start working out is probably four times harder than trying to continue working out. I'm realizing this the hard way. Oh well.... onward.

4.) One of my cats now does not eat unless other people are in the room with her. I swear, this cat is quickly getting the nickname "Kevin McAlister" because I think she is afraid of the furnace, near which her main food bowl currently rests. Now we have another secondary food bowl in the living room, but that is just darn inconvenient when the Iams is down in the basement by said Main Food Bowl. The things we do for our pets...

5.) Speaking of pets, I'll be making friends (hopefully....) with three more this weekend. I'll be sure to take massive embarrassing and revealing photos chronic-(WHAT!?)-cling their living arrangements (jk doe....)

And now for something you have all seen before

Two posts today, mainly so I don't fall further behind on my "365-post" rule this early in the game:

Five Things I'm Interested in Right Now that I Will Probably Burn Out On in a Month
(A derivative of my "Top 5")

1.) Cooking - Thanks to watching Top Chef marathons pretty much all of finals week, some Pavlovian shit has made this a major curiosity/hobby/interest of mine lately. To add to it, I got Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for the Food for Christmas, and I've realized I like reading about cooking when it's not in the form of a cookbook. It's like a chem lab that you get to eat at the end, which totally revs me up.

...Long distance...

2.) Converting vinyl to digital - It was a Christmas present/project to mom and dad and (like all good hobbies of mine) is turning out to be a lot more work than I had originally imagined. It helps feed into my visions of being Rick Ruben/Scott Storch. I've realized grown-ups still play pretend, it's usually just a lot more expensive than when "we" (I'm not a grown up.) were younger.
3.) Rock Band 2 - I've gotten up to being able to play aboutttt half the songs on Hard. It's those half-beat kick drum patterns that are causing me trouble right now, but I'm working through them, all the while giving myself more false hope of being musically talented. Nothing like this guy though:



3.) Meh, can't think of anything here. Put this as another long distance in between

4.) Reading good books - Finally having a shitload of time after a semester of not having much has its benefits. No more information to be divulged in this sector right now because it will make for good blog-fodder later.

5.) Dashboard Confessional - This one is taking the "right now" qualifier pretty literally. Haven't listened to Chris Carrabba in a while (like, since A Mark A Mission A Brand A Scar was released), and I must say I don't mind him.

A good family picture:

In case you were curious, this would be a solid general description of my family:

Prior to watching Step Brothers (but obviously after dinner, which mainly consisted of a random collection of whatever sounded good at the time with no culinary rhyme or reason: nachos, mac and cheese, chili maybe, chili dip, or in my case just some dry noodles) my sister and I decide it is high time for a Funfetti cake. In my family, Funfetti is the sacred cake-mix of all cake-mixes. Like a top shelf liquor, it can't be drank on just any Saturday movie-night. To give sufficient reason for this 13x9 pan of glory we ran to the cabinet with the food coloring. Since the sister teaches elementary school kids she always has a solid grasp on those holidays that I, being a college student at a school that doesn't really let us out for anything, have since forgotten about.

We mixed red, then blue, then some green, then a little more red, heck throw some yellow in while were at it, and finally a little more red and that... right... there... maybe... yes!

Our very own Martin Luther King Jr. day African-American Funfetti cake. Off color? Probably. Should I have posted this on the interwebz for (potentially) all to see? Probably not. Either way, good, fun times for all. And the Funfetti was glorious.

Disclaimer: In reality, once the mix got baked, the color didn't really stick around much. It was more of an Italian-in-the-summer tan. Oh, and this was meant in no way to be derogatory to African Americans or Italians in the summer. Thank you and have a nice day.

Ahhh

Vacations are nice. Now a week from today I will be enjoying (I hope) my first day of real work. What real entails I still have no idea, other than that it is at the aircraft engine portion of GE. So that'll be interesting....

Until then, a however-many-part-I-feel-like-making-this part series on what I have been doing. However, in an effort to make this not seem LiveJournal/Xanga-y, I will throw in completely meaningless and absurd pictures, like the one to the right >>>

Part 1
Apparently, rocking my exams. I won't go into specifics because then some smarty-mcfee will jump in the comments and rain on the parade, but it was all A's and B's. If I have a solid mix of those the rest of school I can't complain.

Part 2
Pretty much after Part 1 there was a long lull of complete randomness and non-newsworthy happenings. Costume party, to which I busted out my Elf costume famous from tacky Christmas sweater day from senior year of high school.

I'm pretty much a carbon copy

Part 3
Part 3, which could realistically be exchanged with Part 2, and could be placed either BC (Before Christmas) or AC (After Christmas) consists of a large amount of Fallout 3 (Happy Bird-day to me!) and Rock Band 2 (thanks, Santa).

Fallout 3 is pretty much the shiz-nizzle. Not recommended if, like me, you are a big weenie when it comes to post-Apocalyptic radiated zombies that look eeriely similar to the things from I Am Legend. They lurk everywhere; dark places, the middle of the block, behind you, or in abandoned buildings.

While not the same (at all really), visual similarities are there.

Overall, I have to say its a very good game. Maybe the best I have played so far on PS3. The biggest flaw is that for a console game it is still surprisingly buggy (a trend in nearly all "next-gen" multiplatform games it seems). Nothing major, just the occasional freeze.

I really don't think I could say anything about Rock Band 2 that hasn't already been said/heard by any of you. It's sweet, and basically exactly the same as Guitar Hero World Tour. Only difference is the song selection. I'm impressed with Rock Band's and have already spent too much money downloading everything from No Doubt ("Don't Speak," if you were curious) to Boston ("Peace of Mind").

Part 3 has been the largest part of my vacation, for sure.

Part 4
That is of course unless you count Part 4 (ohhh, twist!!). Part 4 can be the coverall consisting of spending time with that one girl that lives down the street (also referred to as Stinky, because she is really really white like the uncle of the friendly ghost and has poor hygene habits). Yea, I saw her occasionally.

We went and saw the Nutcracker, with the highlight being the kid behind us telling mom, "I wanna go hoooooommmmeeeeee," about midway through Act 2. I grinned and couldn't really disagree with him. At least someone had the kahunas to say it. Don't get it twisted though, still an enjoyable time.


Overall, good break. Definitely needed to some extent. Now comes 2009, which I can already say with confidence will be nothing like 2008.... or 2007, or 06, or 05, or... you get the idea. My resolution-to-be-broken this year is to learn to cook more than eggs, mac and cheese, and cheeseburgers and to have 365 posts by the end of the year. I'm already behind, so clearly not off to a good start. Maybe this one can count as two....

Happy (end of) Holidays and New Year to all!

Moe Mashed Us Again

Went to the nati and watched the Vikes lose a heartbreaker to longtime rival Moeller, 27-17. I came away with these observatiosn:

* Nippert Stadium (and UC in general) really is a very nice venue. I may have to try to get down there for a UC football game sometime, I feel like when the place is packed it really makes some noise.

* Spencer Ware is good, but really not a thrower. Granted there were a few off throws that were more of a play miscommunication than anything, but he was constantly putting the ball at the knees. Not to say there weren't flashes of D-1 passing, but I feel like he would be much better off as a runningback or wide reciever in college (I would be surprised if any college coaches disagreed with me).

* Princeton will definitely have a good year this year. They more than doubled Moeller in offensive production, and were it not for two interceptions, probably would have walked away with a win. Both the offensive and defensive line still have a ways to go, but nothing to keep them from having a fun season.

* If the football team was even half as fun to watch as this when I were in school, I would have been very satisfied.

* The student section is really going downhill. A big Whiskey Tango Foxtrot to that one....

I are back.

I go to work in one hour (fitting...)

School starts a week from today (good for this blog)

I am reading Watchmen, not very far into it so if you ruin it I will hunt you down and castrate you and your male children from here to the end of your days.

Other than that, have a nice day :)

I really need to do something....

I will be on the homestead this week, vacation at one of America's beautiful natural wonders: Lake Erie for a week, then have a week to get stuff together for school.

So on top of being busy, I have that other problem where nothing really happens during the summer. Example: today I work until 4:15, at which point I will hate kids, be slightly closer to a skin cancer ridden body, and exponentially closer to hanging up the ole' whistle. Side effect: 0/10 motivation to type.

Here's a fun fact: I went to the Brickyard yesterday! NASCAR is still fun, so suck my toe and can the jokes. In no other sport can you bring a radio scanner (basically a high-class name for a portable CB radio) and really get into the strategy and action of the event, maybe even hear your favorite driver drop a few f-bombs and threaten to fire his entire crew.

insert terrible paragraph transition because I cannot write anymore....AH!!!

I went in not really having a favorite driver, but definitely left with a strong liking for Dale Jr. Mainly because I am a nerd who likes to know everything. In what seems fitting with the personalities of Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon, they kept radio chatter to a minimum, or just on a secure (i.e. I can't hear it) channel. No fun. Junior on the other hand was chatting it up the whole time with his crew talking about everything from the car "driving like a Cadillac" at the beginning of the race to, "how the hell did you guys fuck this thing up so bad?!" near the end.
To be honest, it wasn't even a primadona why isn't my car the shiznit type thing, but more of a, you guys are usually really good at this type of thing, what happened? type of thing.

Nearly 5 minutes after flipping shit, Junior would be right back on the radio talking about how, "fucking pumped up [he] is," and how," all this horseshit comes to this."

I love a guy that just tells it like it is.

Oh, and what the hell happened between him and Jeff Burton, because holy crap Junior really doesn't like him much.

And yes, the tire issue sucked major ballz.

Halloween in June

A costume up gathering of sorts, I am going with someone as Kriss Kross.

Educate yo'self fool


Jump




Wearing a hoodie in 90 degree weather is dumb.

Pictures later if someone takes them.

I hate my job.

I am sunburnt, tired of teaching kids how to swim and dive when I really am learning right along with them, tired of having a "routine" during the summer, and tired of being tired.

FEEL BAD FOR MEEEEEEEEEE :(

P.S. Nat Geo is the new Discovery HD. "Lockdown" and "Explorer" may be my new favs, with shows about John Gotti and Methamphetamines to boot! Discovery HD is too much car stuff and general boringness right now.

Top 5 reasons to stop by at your local festival

No particular order on this one

1.) Its like a high school reunion, but with gambling and its much easier to avoid the creepers
2.) There is no such thing as too many bratts, metts, or italian sausages.
3.) Blackjack is a great time waster.
4.) Funnel cake.
5.) ....Honestly I can't think of a fifth reason. Let's be honest, for the most part festivals suck bunghole and the only reason people go are to enjoy the wonderful vices of life. Irony at its best....

...just don't puke in the pews!! :)

Fun Fact about me:

Whenever I create myself in any baseball videogames, I have always used "Griffey" as my batting stance.

Cheers to the most beautiful swing in the game.

Power outages are fun!

Until you try to get online or get hungry and realize nothing can be cooked
and oh yea your last bag of chips is down to the crumblies
that cannot ever be used to dip into your favorite salsa
and oh now you have to pee
BUT WAIT there is no light and
grrrrreeeeeeaaaatttt the sun has since set
so you are using your bat senses to keep from hitting the side
because if a girly is the next to go
and the power is still out
she will undoubtedly sit in your liquids,
bringing about certain death.



But yea, mainly no internetz. That sucked.

The power was out for seven hours and all I got was this shitty free-verse.

Boo end of spring break

Back to school, freshly stocked with mass goodies and a little over a month to go, with enough work to keep me busy for a little over a year probably. Sweet. I'm going to try to post something on here every day from here until the end of the year (and yes, I'll try to get out of the "don't post at home" habit and keep it going through the summer). Sure, it isn't going to be groundbreaking theories on life or anything, but I'll try to keep it entertaining and/or informative.

With that, what I did over break (as best as I can remember):

Friday

In honor of St. Patrick's Weekend (a result of discrepancies in the exact day of celebration), I took Stinky out to the Claddagh Irish Pub in Mason. Good as always, and on the way out the manager gave me a free appetizer and desert coup' for if I return by April 30th. I'm a sucker, I'm sure I'll be there again. After that, back to the house to watch Donnie Darko. Too much buildup, not enough payoff. I'll probably criticker it about an 85.

Saturday
Yay, happy St. Patrick's Day! I did.... absolutely nothing. I think I started the Bengal's Madden '08 dynasty (TJ, J. Smith, Rudi, etc. all gone. I freed up ton's of cap space, traded for two first round picks, got a rookie WR and DE and built up the team from there. Note to those who care: Kenny Irons is not the answer at RB). The projector is doing wonderfully.

Sunday
Rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain...

Monday
Rain rain rain rain rain. Oh, and I went out and bought a coffee grinder finally. The fact that I never had one before baffled me. While at Target I was looking through the video games and (*gasp*) nothing caught my eye. Instead I went with The Measure of a Man, the autobiography of Sidney Poitier. I've always liked reading about what famous people have to say for themselves, and the movie class I'm taking has exposed me a little bit more to Poitier, a pretty cool actor. So far he seems like a good guy, too. More on that later, I'm sure.

Tuesday-Thursday
The three most uneventful days of my life. I meant to visit the old school then, but apparently both Wednesday and Thursday were early releases, meaning I had to wake up earlier than 11:30 to really visit. Dangit. The good news is that school is over at the beginning of May. I'll definitely make it back after that.

Friday
Woke up feeling like I was about to have a heart attack. Mildly scary moment considering my intake of caffine. The whole shoulder pain, pukey feeling. As it turns out, sleeping on your stomach with both arms kinda, above your head? is a bad idea. Especially when my right shoulder is double-jointed (is this a real medical term? or is it just exessive flexibility?). My shoulder was in the "popped out" mode all night, gradually pinching on a nerve for about 8 hours. Not fun to wake up with.

After that little self-diagnosis I sat on the couch all day with an ice pack and watched the first couple episodes of Season 1 of Dexter on Netflix. Definitely a fun show, though I'm not sure how they are going to show it on network TV without making it become CSI Jr.

Saturday
Spent the day working on the sister-and-husband's future duplex. Long story short, some old lady lived there for 30 years and the guy just collected rent on it. Old ladies never complain (or redecorate) so he never had to put money into it. Now that she moved out, the thing looks like a timecapsule from 1973. Were talking one grounded plug in the whole place, no cable, no shower. It's like our own little Trading Spaces or something, because the renter pretty much told us he will pay all the expenses of recarpeting/painting/decorating-in-general, without charging rent while the place is being updated. I'm kinda disappointed I'm missing the fun.

One room after carpet removal and a little cleaning of the ceiling. I wish I had a before picture, because wow the carpet looked something like this, but worse.

Sunday
Easter at grandma's. Ham was eaten.


Today
Went to get some shopping done for the room. With the Easter money I got myself some Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee (not a blend or anything, the real stuff). I'm definitely about to use my new grinder and make some right after I post this bad boy!

That's about all I can think of right now. I hope all you teaching types (or student types, if any of you read this...) at P-town have a nice break this week. Just don't sleep wrong, it puts a damper on a day.

On a lighter side

Something else has come to my attention that I can't pass up. According to some notoriously unreliable sources (so take it for what its worth...) the Princeton-Moeller game will restart after a short (see: three of my years in high school) break.

Nice. Reserve my ticket now.

Watch me continue to beat the horse

After a healthy amount of sluthing around the interwebz, I found a little nugget of information that states that school board membership starts and ends with a new year. It also just so happens that (if you haven't noticed lately) 2007 has become 2008, and one person in particular seems to have expired his/her time (I'll leave that bit of "where's Waldo" to those who care enough).

Having a vested interest in figuring out whether or not this was true, I have searched up and down to see who the new incumbents are, but have had absolutely no luck. The best I can find is a January 14th meeting PDF file stating that there was a reception for new board members (how quaint), but not who these people are. Now, I know that school board positions are usually about as highly contested as the Hamilton County Auditor, but it would still be nice to have somewhere to look and easily see that information.

So I ask the audience, any changes in the glorious five from the list linked above? And if not, I'm pretty sure a few of us know who to contact to give a slight nudge to update the expiration dates.

---

P.S. - If you haven't already noticed, I'm pretty much in that frustrated stage of now being old enough to vote and be heard, while at the same time having no control over what has happened up to this point. Most refer to this as "youthful idealism." Don't worry, I'm sure this stage will pass like the rest, but until then, let me have my fun.

P.P.S. - The more I think about it, the more the whole situation down in P-town front office urks me. And trust me, it already urked me quite a bit. First off, according to the list linked, 4/5 of a school board representing a district of ~42,000 (I looked it up...) all live in the same city. Sure, thats nit-picky at best, but in a district that prides itsself on diversity, this is a bit hypocritical. I will admit though, at least its not Evendale or Lincoln Heights (in terms of polar ends of the spectrum).
Secondly, sure the numerous familial relationships between the former (and maybe still current?) President within the district are not illegal or anything (nor should it be), but it still doesn't quite sit right. I'll be honest, it hasn't since I was still a student but I felt too involved with the whole situation to bitch and moan about it (for lack of a better word). I'm just going to save myself the frustration of trying to concisely say what I'm trying and just make another post sometime covering it.

---

Sorry for:

- the italics-heavy post... Just a lot of unorganized thoughts roaming through the head.
- focusing on one topic lately. Actually, no, I'm not really that sorry. There is a lot that needs to be said here. I'm trying to keep it as factually based as possible from here on out, with the stuff I want the lawyers to ignore in italics. Blogging is all about a perception of a public forum, right? That and I'm pretty sure the readers here care about my local public school district and its inner-workings than the gentlemen of my dorm. Hell, who knows, maybe someone will actually care enough to read what a kid fresh out has to say. Novel idea...


________
And my voter-registration papers are filled out and ready to mail tomorrow morning (dependent on buying stamps). Be proud, parents.

Now for the irrational side.

I see January is School Board recognition month, so I think it is only fitting for me to recongnize the school board of my alma mater. Words cannot express, so I am forced to use a picture:

Notice the steam. Majestic.

That is all.

The (fairly) rational side speaking

I'm bad at introductory paragraphs, I don't think I can state that enough. Maybe this is also a little case of random blogging, but I feel that at the very least I need to let my voice be heard.

I'm a big of a fan as any when it comes to my high school. I think that the total education a person receives there is the best. I feel that even the meaning of "total education" is misunderstood by those who did not attend.

My school taught me both that the hypotenuse of a right-angle triangle is equal to the square root of the sum length of the sides squared and that each person should be respected equally for who they are, not in spite of it.

My school taught me that sometimes you need to get out of the comfort zone a little bit to raise some money for a good cause (either through calling a couple companies or "selling a damn ad").

My school also taught me that success is not a right, but a privilege. I was actually taught that many times over, whether it be on the football field, or the basketball court against Trotwood-Madison in the playoffs, or just looking down the halls occasionally and playing the "who will still be here next year" game (no, I never played that game, at least consciously). Only you can truly make something of yourself.

However, I was also taught that success was within reach of any person who stretched hard enough. The person who taught me that was Aaron Mackey. He wasn't a teacher, or even one of our 17 school principles. He was the superintendent of the entire district. For the record (contrary to what some may believe), I was not the student council president, nor did I have rich parents (I wish) or any relationship with the school board.

I had contact with Dr. Mackey through Princeton Entertainment Group (PEG). PEG was a group of about five students who for some freakish reason or another had a vested interest in the music business. This ranged from audiophiles to tired-and-true-techies to people who saw (and still see, to keep things straight) the field as a career, or a combination of those and many other characteristics. What we lacked in numbers (and oh did we ever lack in numbers) we made up for in determination to create, in hindsight, some relatively awesome productions. This included bringing in professional artists, creating some truly professional looking stages, and going on a weeklong tour of the southwestern United States (tour busses and all) with the school's equally impressive jazz band.

I remember one meeting specifically with Dr. Mackey back in my sophomore year. At that time, PEG had visions of a lobster buffet but only had the money for catfish. All it took was one meeting at Big Boy for Mackey to meet "the kids" and it was a done deal. We were given full support of anything we deemed worthy, whether that be financially or in time spent in the school outside of school hours (see: weekend overnights). The only problem after that was all of the intermediaries up to Mackey, but that is another topic completely.

"Princeton City Schools is at a critical juncture requiring accelerated progress on the challenges and opportunities that face the district." - School Board Vice President Lillian Hawkins

I have always believed that Dr. Mackey had a vision to create Princeton High School into a statewide powerhouse. He did not have to say that he wanted to have every student succeed without boundaries, he showed it. There is no other way I can say it, he was the ONLY person within "Central Office" that showed any sort of passion for the future of my school. At a critical juncture for an organization I put a hell of a lot of effort (and one speeding ticket) into, Mackey was there so that we could accelerate forward. Shit, in two years, the man has already left a bigger mark on the district than any previous superintendent through the construction of all new elementary schools, some well before they needed it. On top of that, he is supporting a $141 million bond issue for the construction of a very necessary all new middle school and high school. In my opinion, having spent the past four years there, the construction of a new high school is proactive, to say the least.



So I ask this to the school board: What more do you want?

I feel that through not renewing his contract, you demonstrated yet again that education is sadly just another business now. As soon as I hear a reasoned, justifiable statement from the President of the School Board explaining the need for such a top-level change in a time of sweeping district-wide development there will be a very, very bitter taste in my mouth.

As the most recent alumnus the district can speak for and as a tax-paying voter (maybe that will get through to you) I find this to be a very disappointing, irrational decision. I am eager to hear from you. Who am I though, anyways? I'm just one person. Why would you care?

Dr. Mackey cared.