Elliot and Leon wrapped up at around 1:00. Shirley went to sleep. Then Leon went to sleep soon after that. At around 2:00 or so I suddenly hit a streak and wrote a few pages straight away. Now it’s nearly 4:00 and I have 5 complete pages total. I can finish soon. Now, should I go to sleep and finish tomorrow, or finish now? I’ve never pulled an all nighter before... why should I start now?

5-12-2003

I woke up pretty early this morning... I don’t know how. Around 9 something? And I got straight to work on my paper. All that was left was the conclusion. After mulling about over it for quite a while, I started writing it, but stopped and went back to the support paragraphs and tried to tune them as much as possible to the central themes and thesis. It’s like tying knots. You have all these loose ends lying around and you have to bring them all together into the middle so they can hold. Weird analogy, I know.

I finished at around 1:00 or so. Length checked in at 7 whole pages! Whoa! Normally, if the assignment asks for 5-7 pages, I’ll write 4½ , but this time I don’t know what happened. I filled them in to the max. I guess I just had a lot of examples to detail from the movie. At around 1:30 I went to go hand in the paper at Wheeler, and since I was in the office anyway I picked up another ticket for Kimmy. Man, no one else is getting back to me about my graduation even though I told everyone. I guess no one really wants to go... sigh.

Then I went to Ned’s to see if my size was in for the graduation gown. It wasn’t, but I signed this sheet thing so they’ll call me when they come in.

Victor came over with Leon for a while. Then Leon went to prep. I basically CHILLED for the rest of the day. Watched TV, sat around... you know. Hey, also, when fasting, instead of getting depressed or whiny when you feel hungry, you should pray. That way, you’ll be praying all day! It works!

Shirley has been typing out these study guides all day. Like ALL day. OK so there have been about two funny conversations so far today.

(After turning in his paper, Jon is watching TV while Shirley writes)

JON: *chuckle*

(Shirley hits Jon really hard with a book)

JON: Agh! Hey! If I were writing a paper, you would laugh!

SHIRLEY: Yeah, so??

JON: And I wouldn’t smack you!

SHIRLEY: Yeah, so??

Later... (talking about a certain person)

SHIRLEY: Kick him.

JON: What?

SHIRLEY: Man, I am a violent person.

LEON: And you just figured that out?

At around 7:00, Leon conked out on his bed. I was still watching TV and other random stuff. Man I was tired though. It was getting to be around 7:30 or 8:00 but it felt like it was only the afternoon. I laid my head down on one of the couch pillows and closed my eyes. I remember specifically thinking, “I’m tired, but not sleepy. If I close my eyes it’s going to look like I’m asleep, but I’m actually not. I am awake. I can still hear Shirley clicking away at her keyboard.” Then a minute or two I awoke with a start, jumping out of my seat, shouting “Whoa! Ow!” for no apparent reason. Shirley said I was asleep. I was like “No! No! I wasn’t! I can even remember what I was just thinking! I was thinking of... of....” but I had completely forgotten. I guess I was asleep for real.

At a little past nine I decided that I was just wasting my time sitting around doing nothing. So I decided to watch a movie. I picked Heist from my collection of divxs and watched it. It was pretty good! Acting was good, it was just a slick movie with a ton of twists, even though I saw half of them coming beforehand.

It was 11:00 but it seemed like it was 4:00 or something. What a weird day. Leon got up. I’m thinking about crashing early today.

Oh yeah... more fun with messing with Kimmy today... hahaha...

KIMMY (6:10:31 PM): o yah is the grad formal?

JON (6:10:36 PM): umm

JON (6:10:37 PM): I dunno

KIMMY (6:11:07 PM): o wellz.. hm.. but i dun wanna ask ur sister again.. cause she just said.. the answerrr

JON (6:11:32 PM): it's probably super formal... so you have to wear your absolute best

JON (6:11:41 PM): no question

KIMMY (6:12:04 PM): hahah

KIMMY (6:12:08 PM): i knwo you're kidddinngggg

KIMMY (6:12:09 PM): right???

JON (6:14:11 PM):

"STUDENTS: Formal; must be wearing black cap and gown."

"GUESTS: Formal; men, suit and tie a must. Ladies, skirts must be heel length, tops must have sleeves."

KIMMY (6:14:25 PM): WHATT????

KIMMY (6:14:27 PM): heel length???

JON (6:14:28 PM): GAAAHAHAHAHAHHA?

JON (6:14:32 PM): jk, I made that up

KIMMY (6:14:36 PM): ugggghh

KIMMY (6:14:39 PM): you evil!!!

Man it’s late again... I guess I won’t be going to bed early.

BAH (4:17am) Leon and I worked on this small group picture collage until now. UGH so freakin’ late.

5-13-2003

Woke up today and didn’t really do anything. Didn’t get all that much sleep because of last night, working on that photo collage. I ate and stuff, and helped Grant out a little as he was setting up, installing, or configuring the new servers, I don’t know exactly what. It was such a nice day today. It is the last day of class today, ever. That means I will never, ever, attend an undergraduate class at Berkeley again. It is all over. Man where did the time go?

Leon spent the entire morning making defacing the cover image of Wild At Heart (that book about men and how they are supposed to be “wild” and stuff) so it says “Wild At Fart” and then he put his name instead of the authors, and then he put my name, and then other people’s names, so now there’s a bunch of cover images with different “authors.” The ENTIRE morning.

JON (ready to leave): Are you going to class?

SHIRLEY (staring at computer): Yes.

(She doesn’t move)

JON: Now??

SHIRLEY: Yes.

We went off to class. This dude had a card for the professor so I signed it. There wasn’t really anything to talk about so he let us out half an hour early, after answering whatever questions we had about the paper and stuff. On the way back I stopped by Tower Records to see how much Equilibrium was. Thirty bucks! Aw, man! Might as well wait and get it from Fry’s or something. When I left the security thing went off. I realized that I had brought The Matrix up from home and it was still in my backback. So it looked pretty bad, like I had unwrapped a DVD and stuck it in my bag. Luckily the dude was cool and he knew that it was mine before. Whew.

I watched some of Office Space, which was showing on TV. What a funny movie. Leon, meanwhile, was still making up those covers... sigh. Oh yeah... Shirley got into Fuller! Yay, go Shirley!

Chorus was pretty short too... Marika just talked to us about what will be happening next year and stuff. I really am glad that we got to sing the Brahms requiem. It was so awesome. Like a once in a lifetime thing. She also had all the graduating people say some stuff about where they were going, what they are doing, etc. Mine was the lamest.

JON: Hi, I am an English major... I am going to go back home and find some sort of a job.

Afterward we filled out these evaluation forms and I took a picture with Susan so she could show her friend that she claims looks exactly like me. I also took on with Min, of us making fun of each other.

I was walking back when who should run into me but Emily (from Griffiths last year)! And she happened to be carrying my book with her! So she returned it to me. What a coincidence huh! She said she just carries it around with her everywhere so she can be prepared in the event where she either runs into me on campus or comes by my apartment to drop it off.

At 6:00 people started coming over. There was a bunch of cards to sign for each person (yikes!). They all had that collage on the front and it looked great. We just then realized that somehow we had forgotten to put David on it! I specifically remember setting a picture aside for him, but I must have left it out of the final collage. Whoops! Good thing Ryan caught that this afternoon and had a bunch of little printouts of David made so we could just glue them onto the card somewhere... haha.

At a little past 7:00 we carted off to Albany to eat at this restaurant, Macaroni Grill. On the way I got mildly made fun of for being herra freaked out by this auction thing that is in Jason’s profile... I saw it last night... I was so scared that I couldn’t even scroll down on the page. It was just an Ebay auction, not a movie or anything, but I’ve never been more scared by anything, even like a movie or something. Ugh...

The restaurant was tons of fun. They gave us crayons and the whole table cloth thing is a big sheet of paper, so you can draw on it. Tina and I drew each other because we were sitting across from each other. I gave her guns and lots of people to own in the background; it was pretty sweet. Everyone took a bunch of pictures too, it was so great. I ordered some sort of seafood plate with linguine, mussels, clams, shrimp, scallops, and I think squid too. It was pretty good. Wow I got really full.

Then we went over to Liz’s place to finish signing all the cards. On the way Wayne said something like “It’s funny how the freshmen are going to look up to us” (referring to the fact that he and Koh-Eun are going to be attending Unit 2 / Clark Kerr small group next year, as sophomores). Koh-Eun suddenly broke into this high-pitched laughter that was so funny to hear, and she couldn’t stop either, and every once in a while she would cry “oh no” or something like that. Haha that was just too funny.

We all got cracking on the 20-odd cards once we arrived at Liz’s. I wrote in everyone’s cards, but later I felt like I didn’t write enough, so I went back to some of them and added more. I had a lot of stuff to say, but it’s the kind of thing that is hard to put into words, like explaining how someone can add a unique and special part to the group by doing little things, such as smiling. Bah why am I even trying to explain it here. Anyway, that took up a good amount of time. We also took a bunch of pictures.

Ohhh man so much funny stuff was happening! I can’t even begin to remember what kind of talk went on in there. It was just so dense with hilarity, I couldn’t believe it. We were howling long into the night. OK so we were taking a group picture and then Julia said “OK let’s take a funny one.” Then Liz grabbed her and started giving her a noogie, not remembering that Julia has a huge aversion to having her neck coming even near contact with any other object (including clothes, scarves, etc.), but Liz wrapped her whole arm around her neck to get a good hold on her as she ground her knuckles into her head. Suddenly there was this steady, unwavering, not-very-loud-yet-intense shriek of terror coming from Julia. AHAHAHAHA oh man that soooo so funny I couldn’t stop laughing.

We took so many pictures of each other, and group pictures, and oh yeah, a picture with just me and all the ladies fawning over me. Fawning, and also scoffing in disgust. Various reactions. Ahhh man I wish I could remember everything else that happened. HILARIOUS-NESS!!!

We closed up past 12:00, like 12:30 or so. Over 6 hours of small group. Wow, what a day. I came back, and Leon and I browsed through all our pictures and had an absolute ball. Whee!

5-15-2003

Kind of a ghetto day considering my classes are over and I didn’t do any work. Maybe it’s just because I’m tired.

So I went to morning prayer today... it was just Julia and me again. It was a pretty good meeting. Julia lost her Bible... hmm, that’s no good.

Leon went out to eat or something with Victor, and Shirley went out somewhere, so I went to Safeway and got a lot of food. Then I came back and ate a bunch of strawberries for lunch. They are good. Shirley came back. Leon was still gone and he stayed gone for a long time. So Shirley was basically studying all day with those study guides she wrote the past few days. Meanwhile I don’t think I did anything particularly productive. Oh yeah, I went to Ned’s to pick up my graduation gown thingy. It was actually pretty cheap: 25 bucks for the gown, cap, and tassel; at the ASUC or whatever it costs a lot more just to rent the friggin’ thing. I get to keep mine. Although I see no reason for doing so... maybe Tim or Les can use it when they graduate... no one will notice that the tassel says “2003" on it. Haha.

Leon finally came back and got his stuff together. He is going home today because he has some sort of interview tomorrow (among other things). Shirley and I have an absolute ball messing with and laughing at Leon these days. Heh heh! At 5:00 Shirley went off to take her oral presentation final thing. Then Leon left for the BART station. I was all alone. Sniff. So I started making some pork that I had defrosted and made stew.

Shirley came back for a little while after her presentation. I think she probably did pretty well but she says she doesn’t know. I was watching random stuff on TV like “Buffy” and “Friends,” and I was really tired. I let the pork cook in the stew I was making, I let it cook for about an hour so it wouldn’t be all tough.

Completely random and out of nowhere:

SHIRLEY (coming out of her room): You should be grateful you never have to shave your legs or underarms!

JON: You’re right... I don’t.

She went of to go see Reloaded, grr, so I was all alone again. I ate my stew and watched The Matrix to prep for the sequel that I’m watching tomorrow. I was kinda tired so I fell asleep a couple of times in the middle, but once it got to the kung-fu training part I stayed fully awake for the rest of the movie. After that I took a little break, did some worship, walked around the apartment, bored, everyone is gone. I asked Jason what he was doing. He was just about to leave to see Reloaded. Grr. Andrew called me like twice to gloat about watching it also (“Now I’m sitting inside the theatre, in the middle...” “I just came out of the theatre...”). Well since no one is around and/or wants to do anything, I watched another one of my divxs, The Royal Tenenbaums. It was pretty funny, very trademark of Wes Anderson but it wasn’t quite as good as Rushmore.

Man it’s 2:30 already. Email is back up (again). I should probably take a shower and go to sleep now. And eat some ice cream. I’m still all alone in this apartment.

OH that’s right, I spent like two hours this afternoon writing a huge email to Ralph about a bunch of various issues, mostly having to do with the church and our situation right now. Man I can’t believe I wrote so much. It was like a full-length essay right there; I wonder why I can’t do that when I really have write papers.

Man these days I just feel so weird. I’m back into this depressive state. I really should trust God in everything and give it all to Him. I wrote that in my letter to God yesterday at small group (we did that activity again where you write a letter to God and then read it a year later or something). Man I just don’t know what to do. I wish I could hear the voice of God clearly. I am just so not used to it or something, like in the way that Doris said a few months ago. I takes practice and discernment I guess. Oh man, God help me...

5-14-2003

(3:12pm) Woke up at 9:00, but since I went to sleep at 3:00 I tried to get some more z’s in. No such luck; I just stayed awake until 10:00 or so. Ate food, goofed around, didn’t really do anything. Shirley woke up but she went back to sleep until noon. I just did random stuff. Tried to pick songs for Sunday. Planned out what is going to happen from now til graduation (buy tickets, see Reloaded, worship practice, church, etc. Man too much stuff on the brain). Shirley has like a bunch of in-class essay finals tomorrow but she spent all afternoon doing nothing. But eventually she went out to study somewhere. So now I’m all by myself again. I can’t wait til Reloaded.

Dude... no one wants to go to my graduation... I mean... I know it’s a crappy experience to sit in the sun for 2 hours or whatever... but it really means a lot to me if someone would want to go just because they’re my friend. I didn’t ask too many people because I didn’t want to impose it on anyone... but I was kind of hoping some people would be at least interested in going, or even be interested in what TIME it will be at. Sigh... Sometimes I feel like no one really cares about me all that much. I know it’s not true... but it seems like no one really takes interest in me as a person, or my life. It’s all about me being a clown to them whenever it’s convenient. I wish people would talk to me more. I’m pretty lonely a lot of the time. Sometimes I feel like crying, but I can’t. For real. I have a lot more that I want to say, but I don’t want to do it here.

It’s all going to be over soon. I can’t believe it. I’m going to miss everyone so much. Please don’t forget me, all. Remember me as someone who cares about you.