And… August has come to an end, for today is August 31, which means that once again today is…
100Ah, another crazy ass summer full of the usual mixture of lulz and fail. Let’s review.
Got off to a slow start. On Day 7, for the hell of it, drove up to Gettysburg and drove around the battlefield a bit, and climbed on some historically significant rocks.
Day 8 I ate some awesome dumplings.
Day 10, trying to empower and embiggen (yup) the youth rights blogosphere so I started Youth Blog Tuesday on the forums. (I’ll see you in the September 1 installment!)
Day 14, went to the movies and saw Up. Movie about an old widower who somehow makes his house airborne with BALLOONS and flies to Venezuela to visit some waterfall, only for him and the stow-away eight-year-old to get back to the US at the end somehow, though never any mention how he got off the charges of reckless endangerment, crossing international borders illegally, transporting a child across international borders, etc. Cute movie.
Day 20, with the form filled out and my birth certificate, went over to the post office, got my picture taken, and was told my passport should be mailed to me in a few weeks. Win!
Day 21, woke up to some thumping on the sliding glass door. It was a bunny that kept leaping at the door and bumping its little head. Hahahaha.
Day 22, checked out the Washington Ethical Society after having read up on them a couple months earlier, like church but without all the God and thou-shalt-not crap, just the whole doing-good-things part. Seems nice. Then hopped on metro to Smithsonian American History Museum, because I went last March and meant to go back to see stuff I didn’t see before it closed then. Then went home because last board meeting of the year was that evening, when we were to vote on Justin’s position paper amendment so NYRA would officially oppose corporal punishment in school. Alex abstained because he has some problem with us even having position papers, but not enough board members were in attendance for it to go anywhere, so we waited several hours for Chip to get off the airplane and join us, and Eric and Jackie never showed up. Chip eventually showed up, voted, and the amendment passed in time to get on the ballot, and we promptly removed Eric and Jackie from the board for attendance violation and appointed Jeff and Steve. Haha, what a twist!
Day 28, spoiled sauteed mushrooms are spoiled. FAIL!
Day 29, went to WES again and afterwards had lunch with their Young at WES group. Nice people. Then hung out at Brookside Gardens in Silver Spring, which is a pretty park full of lots of plants. Then I got home to get a call from Stefan that we decided to advance NYRA by hiring a development director to do all the fundraising stuff that Alex has been failing at. Whoa! Maybe I should continue with this WES thing since it seems to be causing things to happen with NYRA! :scared:
Day 31, ZOMG, NYRA-SEFL has filed their lawsuit against West Palm Beach! They rock sooo hard!
Day 32, ZOMG, Savana Redding won her Supreme Court case 8-1!!! She rocks sooo hard!
Day 33, ZOMG, Jason Pollock’s pro-youth film “The Youngest Candidate” premiered at the LA Film Festival!!! He rocks sooo hard! (w00t! Youth rights awesomeness hat trick!)
Day 37, NYRA board conference call interview with potential development director who sounds like Ben Stein, while eating Ben and Jerry’s “Mission to Marzipan” which is OMGWTFBBQ delicious!!!
Day 42, on Independence Day, I became the proud holder of a US Passport! I can go anywhere!!!
Day 43, outdoor gathering with the WES people, played kickball, played too hard and was unable to walk well for the following week. And LOL at trying to explain Facebook to old people.
Day 44, dentist, got told to get my wisdom teeth out though I don’t want to. Told them I might kind of think about it. Fail unnecessary surgery is fail.
Day 47, oooh, sushi made with brown rice is yummy, and so much more yummy being cheap because it’s happy hour.
Day 49, looked at potential new phones, got some Dairy Queen, wandering around neighborhood, oh look some old guy walking a dog… OUCH!! Fucking dog bit me! Bit me on the back of the leg. WTF?! Oh, shit, jerk didn’t give me any info, bite is bleeding.
Day 50, well, lovely way to spend the goddamn Fifty-Fifty! Had to go to a walkin clinic to get bite checked out and got a tetanus shot (FAIL!) and prescribed some antibiotics I had to take for the following ten days.
Day 57, went to see Half Blood Prince. WTF?! Harry never flirts with some diner chick and the Death Eaters never burn down the Burrow! Whatever, that night went to see Stone Temple Pilots! Win!
Day 59, started reading Deathly Hallows for the second time, coincidentally two years to the day from when it came out and thus the first time I started reading it!
Day 63, went tubing on the Potomac with the WES folks, and got epic sunburn, gaaahhh!!!
Day 68, chop chop chop, making salad!
Day 69, sizzle sizzle sizzle, sauteing mushrooms. Then later that night, off to Alex’s house and saw Ralph and Ivy, then came Jason, Alex, Justin, and Lindsay, and we all played Apples to Apples!
Day 70, NYRA ANNUAL MEETING!!! ZOMG, we’ve got the NYRA-SEFL guys and Steve Ross and Julian and Pablo and an assload of other awesome people! Flip cams galore! Jeff gave opening remarks, then Heather spoke, then Steve spoke, then Youth Venture guy, then we went to Chipotle, then the War on Kids movie, then Alex reads the annual report (and you know what that included :cute: ), and we headed back to Alex’s house while awaiting election results, where we ate hot dogs and my salad and mushrooms. Then results were announced and I was reelected, and we gained Brian Lombrowski and Jackie Ferro, but lost Chip. Oh, well, evening was fun. And I had to make four trips to the Twinbrook station picking up and dropping off people, hehe.
Day 71, second day of awesome annual meeting: CAFETY guys Brian and Eric talked about how gulag schools are bad mmmkay, Lindsay said the drinking age is bad mmmkay, two SSDP girls talked about chapter formation, and some way through that Justin and I ducked out to go pick up pizzas from Bertucci’s, since I offered to take care of the pizzas because I felt we should do better than Dominos. Came back with pizzas only to be met with mobs from Students for Liberty and Students for Democratic Society, who ate all our pizza and left barely any for the actual NYRAnians. And they didn’t even stick around after the debate to find out more about NYRA or anything. Oh, yeah, there was a debate, between those two groups. It was all hyped up, and even though Students for Liberty was the clear winner, they both sort of failed. It’s okay, because the sheer awesomeness we know as NYRA of Southeast Florida did their presentation next, all about their epic curfew battle and lawsuit. Then so sadly, Steve Ross gave the final remarks and it was all over. Another awesome annual meeting had gone by. A bunch of the group went off to explore the city, but I went back to Alex’s house with some of the others, and spent the rest of the day hanging out there with Alex, Jason, and Brian.
Day 72, I had a lot my salad left over from the meeting so ate the whole thing for lunch! Hehe.
Day 73, I don’t feel too good.
Day 74, aww, damn it, another summer cold! Why have my last three colds been during the 100 Days of Summer?
Day 77, had to accompany my mom and little brother to the zoo because she’s an epic metro n00b and would wind up in Virginia somehow.
Day 79, after lots of delays and making sure of stuff and finding a way to make it so much cheaper, I finally booked my vacation for September. Ow, my aching checkbook!
Day 80, went to Wolf Trap and saw a bunch of bands that were popular in the 60’s. Fun.
Day 83, since my camera stopped working back at the annual meeting, I needed a new one, so I got a new one at Best Buy, a Kodak EasyShare like my old one, but five years newer. And red.
Day 84, yay, NYRA-DC meeting! Baja Fresh in Dupont Circle, it was me and Alex along with Eric Goldstein, Usi Scott, and Heather Voke. Win. We passed around ideas for outreach. That evening I made a NYRA-DC Facebook group.
Day 85, first board meeting of the year. Lots of officer elections! I’m secretary again. Lulz.
Day 88, I also made a NYRA-DC Twitter.
Day 90, eep! Leaky kitchen window at work! All that rain. Window always leaks.
Day 96, went to see Collective Soul at the 9:30 Club. Awesome! Except they didn’t play Precious Declaration. Meh. At least The World I Know and Listen were played!
Day 98, first went to the Capital Area Food Bank to join WES with some volunteering there, and then off to the NYRA-DC BBQ that Heather was so awesomely hosting for us. I picked up Scott from the metro easily, then drove in circles a bit in Takoma Park looking for Hal, and finally off to Heather’s house, where a missed turn in her neighborhood got me lost for a little bit, and we finally got there over an hour late, but at least Conor and Eric and others had already arrived. Then I had to go back out and get Usi. But we were all there, minus the KP because he was in New Hampshire because he hates us. Had an impressive EIGHT people (yeah, that’s impressive, DC chapter rarely goes over three) and we chatted about local youth rights stuff we want to do and ate some great fajitas. Then I took everyone back to the metro in the pouring rain. Good times.
Day 99, meh, pretty much watched TV all day. Haha. One of those days that things kept coming on that I wanted to watch!
And finally…
Day 100, ate a yummy meatball sub for lunch, and this evening headed out to Merriweather Post Pavilion for the fourth of four concerts during this summer, this time to see The Killers. Wow, lights and pyrotechnics! And epic traffic leaving the place afterward. Eek!
And that’s about it. As these 100 Days of Summer draw to a close, I’m growing increasingly aware that, even though there will be situations well out of my control that will occur from time to time, for the most part, if I want the win and the awesome, I’ve got to seek it out and grab it. Life has infinite options, though with vastly varying difficulty of attaining, but we still must take the options ourselves and work out how to use them, for the good of ourselves and/or others.
So farewell to another 100 Days of Summer! Shall return next May for Round Ten in 2010. Goodnight!
This has been Day 100 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 9.