Just close your eyes, and pretend that everything's fine

Just close your eyes, and pretend that everything's fine

Just close your eyes, I'll tell you when 

Best. F^%$ing. Line. in this Mastodon song "All the Heavy Lifting" that I absolutely love to listen to when I need an extra push during my runs around town. I joke that with all the pizza and beer I've consumed this summer I'm not even running to get in better shape, I'm running to stay in the same shape!! 

Anyway, what's up guys? It's Wednesday morning. I had the last two days off which I spent doing the usual, but did have a nice evening last night for my cousin Graham's going away party so I'll start out by telling you about that. 

This might look like any other picture of cousins taken over the years (Minus Rachel who's in Mexico for a mission) but there's more behind the fact that it's being taken. 

I feel like things have changed for the better  in our family because of the effort I've made to keep in touch with my grandmother regardless of the painful situation that occurred primarily between my Dad and Ty a few years ago that basically took my Dad out of the picture entirely. I know my Grandma didn't intend for it to go as far as it did. I just think it more or less has comes down to my Grandma not wanting to deal with life alone after my Grandpa died and when Ty was willing to come in and take over the finances she was all for it. 

For about a year after that last cherry harvest where Ty wanted to fire me for messing up our already inefficient ticket system, I had no contact with anyone on that side of the family. I remember passive-aggressively making a point to my aunt how much I didn't like them by posting a status a following Thanksgiving when my Mom's side was visiting that it was "The best Thanksgiving ever." My aunt Teri and I got in an argument over Facebook shortly after and I deleted and blocked everyone on that side of the family for about a year. 

It wasn't until about Winter of my second quarter at Central when I started dealing with some major anxiety that I started trying to patch things up with my family. I started calling my Grandma when I was trying to come down from major panic attacks and her talk of mundane, day to day life would kind of put me at ease. She loves to talk so that kind of helped rebuild our relationship after not talking for two years. Since then my relationship with the rest of my family has been pretty good. We just entirely
avoid talking about the kind of sad and obvious stalemate that has occurred between my Dad and his family and just hope there can be some kind of resolution someday. 

Graham's going away party was actually a send-off for bootcamp with the Navy. He's going to Illinois to get his ass kicked, basically. But we're all really proud of him and he seems more than ready. It's pretty incredible, Graham lost 90 lbs in the last year by keeping a food diary and exercising in order to suit his recruiters needs. Only someone who really wants something could do that because losing significant amounts of weight is so hard, especially when you've had kind of the same build your entire life. So yeah I have no doubt he'll do great. 

The party was at my aunt Teri's house and she was cooking a lot of Dominoes (here I am eating pizza again!! I swear to God this summer I've been on the pizza diet...!). Teri, Traci, Grandma, Tiffany, Avery and I were all standing around the table chatting. One thing that came up a couple of times that stood out to me was the sudden death of a young Benton City woman that suffocated sleeping on a memory foam mattress. My Grandma went to the funeral because the family of the woman that passed is LDS and she is actually the older sister of a guy I graduated with. Very sad. 

....I can't help wonder if they'll file a lawsuit against temperpedic. 

I think the biggest highlight of the evening was that my uncle John and I actually related on something-- and this is a family member I've honestly never talked more than small talk bullshit to in my life! He asked me if I was returning to Central in the Fall and I told him that I'd decided to stay back and work full time for a quarter instead. 

When I told him I'd be "returning to business school in the Winter..." he asked me "So are they going to raise or lower the prime rate soon?" He was trying to see if I knew my shit and I wanted to seize the opportunity. I paused for a second... my mind was like 'God, think, Prime rate, interest, Carbaugh's class..." and I responded "The interest rate the federal reserve charges to borrow money? I'm not quite sure what they're doing now." 8-) Ha ha ha, Hell yea. I could have just bullshit and said they were going to lower it to increase spending if I wanted to sound like a real hotshot but I honestly don't know the REAL answer to that question. 

I told him that someday I want to go into forecasting stocks and portfolio building and he said he wanted to be an analyst himself if he hadn't become an engineer. He's bought and sold stocks before so I could probably learn a lot talking to him about his experience with it. 

I'm just dying to start playing around with buying and selling stocks on E-trade but before that happens obviously I've gotta MAKE some money. As of right now I'm flat ass broke and have been for a couple days. I've got a paycheck waiting for me at Caesar's but it's not worth the drive to Pasco to get it when I can just pick it up today when I go to work. 

With my little 3 and 4 hour shifts my paycheck is going to be puny as all Hell. I'm probably just going to keep out $40 in cash, try and stretch that as long as possible and put the rest of it away. I really need to start applying for other jobs. Things have just been coming up so I haven't had a chance yet but I think seeing my first paycheck will *really* motivate me. 

peace. 

You make this easier

Awesome day

....for a number of reasons. First of all, I was able to finish my forecasting assignment that I spent nearly 5 hours on yesterday not knowing if I'd be able to finish it on time and I did. Second because Joel is here sticking this crap out with me that I haven't had to do it alone. My friend Sasa has helped me a lot on this assignment so I'm going to do a drawing for him.

I did a lot of drawing today. The drawing of my aunt Traci is going really well and because it looks so good I've been trying to squeeze in drawing time whenever possible. School has been super demanding because we're coming close to the end-- only this week, next week and "finals week" (I have one final in econ). The light at the end of the tunnel for this incredibly challenging quarter (even with 10 credits) is finally near which feels incredible. 

I met my mom in Yakima today and we had lunch. She's convinced I have pink eye and made an appointment for me at the optometrist tomorrow. I didn't think it looked that bad and that it would go away on it's own but I guess not. I'm planning on getting some new glasses tomorrow too..

Here's a picture of Joel sleeping on my couch.

It's almost 2 am. I'm going to be completely useless tomorrow unless I go to bed.

peace. 

Tomorrow is the start of a very important week.

Tomorrow is the start of a very important week. 

One where I plan on working very hard and diligently. Do everything I can to get my forecasting assignment done smoothly and still be ready for my econ test on Friday. I'm so lucky, Carbaugh is having us turn in the rough drafts for our paper on Monday so I'll have this week to work on it bit by bit and then really pull it together this weekend. 

I need to stay out of my apartment as much as possible and try to work at the library or in Shaw. I find that when I'm at home feeling frustrated and alone I start getting really panicky. This weekend I did spend about three hours total studying forecasting so I wasn't feeling *too* nervous about taking a whack at the homework that's due Tuesday. It was going fine until for some stupid reason when I'd restarted the program the "fpp" package was giving me an error when I tried to require it and the dataset that I needed seemed to have disappeared. 

So I was really angry about my bad luck tonight. I messaged Wassell about what happened and also mentioned to him how much I'm struggling with the program and when/where the tutor is available. I'm hoping he gets back to me soon. There's a couple guys in my forecasting class that seem really cool that are also in my econ 406 class that I'm hoping to maybe get together with tomorrow. 

Michael is done, I successfully bothered him enough lately to get help with this class during my time of desperation when I was spending all of my time trying to understand FIN370. I annoyed him and I don't blame him. Now here I am, six weeks later. Even after spending hours and hours trying to keep up in finance I couldn't hack it, still failed the test, and have felt like a sitting duck since day 1 in forecasting. 

There's still time to get this though. I've been working so hard to review and understand the old material to get caught up. It's just hard when I don't have a laptop to bring to class to work along with the lecture (making my notes pretty useless on most days). 

This week I'm going to try to have really good habits. I'm going to go to sleep earlier, wake up earlier to have more time to study (...and practice guitar when I'm not studying), eat healthier (no more frozen dinners!!) and take my medication at the same time every day. I don't have time to take naps, it zaps my entire day and makes me feel more stressed out later. I just need to remember to start making lunch as soon as I get back from Carbaugh's and take caffeine right after. 

This weekend was kind of fun because I hung out with my friend John yesterday and I had dinner with him and his friends. They're all really nice, easy to get along with people. I don't feel like I'm being judged or that they will suddenly decide they hate me, ha ha ha. I'm thinking Fall quarter I'm going to live in the dorms near them. John really likes art, pokemon and food so we always have a good time together ha ha ha. 

peace. 

What a freakin night, the 6 hour assignment of doom.

Forecasting is.... incredibly challenging. I don't know what I would do if I didn't have Michael's help. He saved my ass yet again on the homework.

I'll back up. As you guys know I've been working on this assignment little by little since Monday as well as try to keep up on my finance. I got about 3/4 of the homework done last night and thought I'd have no problem finishing it today. Unfortunately my forecasting homework took me 6 hours, two of which were spent correcting my code for the first problem. Like every other time I try to do anything in R, I hit a wall and wonder what the hell I should do.

This morning I woke up early to meet with Wassell and get some help on the code but he wasn't in his office when I got there.

Colby met me upstairs in the library to work on the assignment around 7:30. He had made plans with Rylan and this other guy who's got a really good grasp of the material to work on the material as well but they were MIA. It was about the point that Colby got caught up to me that I realized we were in the exact same boat and needed help. I started calling people I knew from the class and nobody picked up, except Michael G. (and you can just imagine me thinking, THANK. GOD......) He told us that he and Jessie were actually working on the assignment in Shaw and we could meet them there. Yes! Salvation! 

So here we all are in the Shaw computer lab around 8:20 and it closes at 10'. Michael pretty much instructed us step by step how to do it on an overhead and I followed along. This program is so painfully confusing to me, I'm trying to grasp how all of this syntax works the best that I can but there's so much more to it. I have a decent understanding of statistical models but choosing the right ones and making good inferences on them is an art. One that is not easily attained in 5 weeks or however long I've been in this quarter....

Wow it's getting really late.... The GOOD news is the assignment is now done (Michael and Colby actually came over after we got booted from the lab at 10 and worked for another 2 hours on it). Michael has a ton of people bugging him all the time about helping him with R so he's going to start having weekly R sessions to go through the homework.

Michael's got such an obnoxiously huge ego from all of this. I can see why, he's the center of a lot of positive attention for being so good at this and starting graduate school next year. That's fine, I'm proud of him. I'm just tired of hearing how great he is because I have to hear about it every day. He knows that he's smarter than everyone else, and that he's helping me survive this class, and thus pretty much has a free pass to say whatever he wants and be as condescending as humanly possible.

I've been listening to so much Pantera lately.

At least tomorrow's Friday. Another week I've survived. Next week is the test week for block 2, I've got my finance test on Monday that I'll be studying for a lot this weekend and Carbaugh's test on Wednesday which I will also be studying for ahead of time because I've got the next horrible forecasting assignment due Wednesday as well.

There's also one big assignment on the backburner which is my Econ 406 persuasive paper about why I believe Japan should continue to raise taxes and cut spending.

It will never be harder than this in my life. I just have to keep pushing forward. I have no choice, the time is going to go by anyway and I can't let fear keep me from doing what needs to be accomplished.


peace. 

Happy to finally meet you

Evening, it's 9:07 pm. I'm sitting here drinking coffee waiting for my friend Michael to get here so we can do the forecasting homework.

I've had an interesting week so far. I had my finance test on Monday, which as you guys know I spent all weekend studying for. Unfortunately I put too much emphasis on studying one of the later two chapters and not enough time on the first two and neglected to write down a few of the chapter 2 equations on my notecard. When I realize the mistake I'd made I felt frustrated but what can you do. I picked up enough points to get above a C, which was my goal. I got a 72%.

My friend Daniel who seems to be really getting this material got an 80. I know I should really try to study with him or Kevin P. before the next test. I was able to see my cumulative grade in the class. I have a 74%, and I'm pretty much the exact mean/median of the class scores. I am totally fine with that. Granted that means I am going to work a lot harder on these next chapters and try to be cautious of not accidentally skipping material for the next test.


On Monday I skipped forecasting to study for my finance test and finish some assignment that I'd neglected to type over the weekend. When I was waiting outside for class to begin the guy I'd been catching glances with these passed couple weeks walked up. He's flashed the prettiest smile and was like, "Hey!! I'm so happy to finally meet you!"

Okay I don't know if he meant to say that but if he did it means I hadn't imagined it and he was noticing me these past couple weeks. We made some quick small talk before class. He seems intelligent and easy to talk too. His name's Kyle and he's a double major in econ and finance. He told me he'd been at CWU since Freshman year and that his first quarters here he had a 0.9 GPA from partying too much. Kind of cracked me up that he laid that on the line immediately like that. But to have gotten to this point he's obviously improved a lot.

I don't know what his last name is, where he's from or what he's into but I want to get to know him. I'm hoping he'll ask for my digits but we shall seeeee..... lol.

I've been getting back into metal and the guitar lately. I started really learning Domination last night by Pantera and it sounds good. I need to get back to my roots and play things that I enjoy playing instead of just the hardest shit possible. When I'm exercising I listen to a lot of Pantera so I can really hear those guitar licks in my head.

I also really love this song by symphony x. If you like symphonic metal you should give this a listen...

Love is a tragedy

All that I have, all that I'll ever need

Is right here inside

peace.