Ah summer..

The end of the semester wasn't exactly my finest hour. I had to skip dead week so I could come home and learn how to harass people at their homes so the census can pay me, which is real brain busting work, let me tell you. Then I had a final in each of my classes. Finals which I didn't exactly do well on, besides the one in my Earth History class. I was afraid that I'd get pretty average grades after what I felt to be an impressive semester on my part. As my grades were posted they started about how I expected. First a B+ in Structural Geology, not as good as I would have hoped but I can't really frown at a B+ I suppose. Then Abnormal Psych (my easy gen ed class) was posted as an A-. This pissed me off, how did I get an A- in a bonehead psychology class? Well I suppose a 71/100 on the final may have helped. Then my Earth History grade was posted, an A. I was sitting at a 3.64 with one grade left, Geophysics. The hardest class I've taken in college and likely the class I've put the most effort into. I scored a 34/100 on the midterm and my average lab grade was right around the 50-60% range. I had no idea how the professor would be curving the grades, but talking to other people in the class my grades sounded about typical. Finally, the last day to post grades, still nothing. I looked again at about 6PM. I had an A. What.. the hell? I checked my email and had a message from the professor saying "Good job, you got a 96/200 on the final. Sorry the class and our field area was so difficult, I hope you got something out of it, you put a lot of work into it. Your final grade is an A." My final GPA was a 3.75. Best grades I've ever gotten in a full time semester and I was taking all 3000 and 5000 level classes. Quite proud of that actually :)

I wanted to celebrate by buying myself something nice and getting dinner. I went shopping and ended up realizing the same thing I always realize when I go shopping. I already have everything I need and I don't want to needlessly spend money. I ended up with a new rock hammer and ate a microwavable meal for dinner. I really live a sad life sometimes, but it's completely my fault. Oh well.

It's summer! Yay, summer. The weather is warm, the sun is out, I don't have class and I can more or less just do whatever I want. I moved home and I've been having a pretty fun time so far. I've eaten some gourmet tofu, gone car shopping for someone else, beat my friends at a board game that involves cows and corn, been a census robot and hiked halfway up what looked to be a really pretty hike. Not off to a bad start other than the fact that I've been sick for most of it.

So I think I went on a date today, okay yeah it was a date. I just tell myself that it wasn't so I feel better about it. I don't know what it is about dating that terrifies me. A girl from high school randomly wrote me on facebook and was like "Hi you're cool!" and it pretty much made my day so I had to befriend her and I realized she was pretty cool and that I had to meet her.. again.. so not meet her, but .. eh whatever.

So here's what sucks about dating:

First dates. The whole time you're wondering what's an acceptable way to act. Do I act my annoying self and be loud because I'm with people I'm comfortable with or do I act calm with an effort to not make her uncomfortable? Do I say the raunchy sexual remark that just came to my mind even though it will certainly not impress her or do I hide it and act on my best manners because that's what's appropriate? Do I ask her lame get-to-know-you questions when there is a pause in conversation or is some silence acceptable? Is it cool if I sit on the same oversized chair as her at the ice cream place? Do I walk her to her door or will either of these actions make her uncomfortable? Is it even remotely okay to talk this much about rocks?

Dating can be so awkward, but it's unfortunately one of the best ways to learn if you like someone or not. Today I did something rare - I was my normal self on a first date. I guess not ALL first dates suck. I need to learn to be that way on all first dates.

I just realized if I post this on facebook like I do the rest of my blogs and she reads this I'll feel pretty stupid - so maybe I'll wait a day or two on that. How arrogant of me to think people actually read these incoherent loosely related cluster of sentences. I should just post it anyway.

I hate the Lakers.

While I'm on the subject of girls, I think I want to fall in love (Don't worry, I'm not going to sell out for someone who is anything short of incredible for the sake of being in love, like so many people do). I've been doing the whole dating around thing for about... well basically since Shelly. Sure I've had a few relationships and almost-serious flings mixed in, but really my longest relationship since Shelly was a crazy girl from Los Angeles who I saw a total of maybe 15 days, and other that that basically dated via Skype. A girl who also liked video games more than she did me, which is cool, video games have their perks, but they've got nothing on me! At least she was considerate enough to have us be a Sims 3 family and put my computer outside because it made me happy to be outside. I'm quite certain Shelly screwed with my head more than I let myself believe. I think I subconsciously let that effect my relations with girls I'm interested in more than I know.

Speaking of female horror stories, I went out with this girl a couple times last semester and I kept it at a distance because I knew she had a guy who she was semi-serious towards or at least was, but she insisted they weren't together. Then we sort of ended up making out recently and a week later she tells me she's not coming back to Logan because her boyfriend asked her to marry him and move wherever the army takes him. Was I seriously just the other guy? Wow, that.. is horrible of me. I honestly feel bad about it despite having been told by a couple people that I really shouldn't blame myself. I think the worst part is that I was just like "Oh yeah, that's cool. Good luck." and this boy is likely head over heels for her and would have his week ruined if he knew she cheated on him. I really am angry at myself for that. He'll probably never know, but the fact that it happened kinda bothers me.

I hate Kobe. (What the.. Why is Kobe in my spellchecker, but Angeles is not?)

Makes me curious.. Lebron, Carmello, Shaquille, Deron, Rondo... oh c'mon... Rondo? Firefox is weird. It depresses me to have to re-accept every year that the Jazz will never with the NBA championship under Jerry Sloan and that without Jerry Sloan the Jazz would likely suffer a few years of not making the playoffs.

I watched this movie called Pandorum. It was kind of like Titan AE meets Event Horizon. A ship was traveling across the galaxy to colonize a new planet because we screwed up Earth too badly and then some evil force invaded the ship and a few people woke up out of stasis to it all freaked out. I was a fan.

Oh yeah, back to how I want to be in love or something. I don't really think I even know what love is, but I imagine it's pretty cool. The times I've pretended to be in love have been fun, so if I was really head over heels for a girl I think that would just make my day.. or possibly quite a few days.. I suppose to do that though, I actually have to commit to someone and put my heart into something without holding back or hiding at all. That could be hard for me. It takes me 2 minutes to choose which orange juice concentrate I want to commit to drinking for the next week and sometimes I end up with grape juice because it's on sale. I should sleep, it's almost 2 and I have important door to door census sales.. I mean.. government work to do tomorrow. You know, this job is serving some purpose - next year any time I consider quitting school or not working as hard I'll just have to think back to a crazy old lady with 3 psychotic Pomeranian's screaming at me that she already has a security system and slamming the door in my face or the interesting man who kept interrupting me to tell me jokes like, "How can you tell an Irishman has had too much to drink? - He's Dublin over." and I'll remember how important this college education is.