A few weeks ago I got to see some of my high school friends again, because Sarah was having a party at the neighborhood pool. Morning practice that day had cured me almost completely of the urge to swim, but the heat of the day and the blue water prevailed over my will.
After a while we were all starting to freeze, so we got out and sat around a fire eating hamburgers and roasting s’mores. I tried to break my previous record of two hamburgers and seven s’mores in a row, but I only made it to six s’mores this time, because — thank goodness — after some time they took away the s’more materials.
When it was dark, we were all sitting around trying to think of scary stories to tell each other, but didn’t progress much farther than, “Somebody should say something scary!” — that is, until Troyce suddenly exclaimed, “Did Eamon bring the Mercedes?!” And before I knew it, Troyce, Joe, and somebody I didn’t know were marching out to go “sit” in my car.
As we were all sitting in the dark car blasting Franz Ferdinand through the speakers, somebody had the idea that “we should go to 7-Eleven and get a slurpy to pour on Sarah!” So we drove half a mile to the 7-Eleven to complete this mission. When we got back, we responded to Sarah’s “can I have a sip?” with, “of course!” *pssssshshhhhhh*.
It was a great success.
But soon afterwards, I discovered my cell phone had gone missing from my pocket. We looked for it all over the car, but unfortunately it was on vibrate mode, so calling it didn’t do any good. I figured it would turn up eventually, so I borrowed someone’s phone to let my parents and Iza know I didn’t have my own with me.
Later, some of my friends started calling (on the other phone) to say they’d been getting constant foul messages from my phone. At first I thought someone from the party must have taken it as a joke, but after further investigation nobody seemed to have it. It then dawned on me that it might have fallen out of my pocket at the 7-Eleven and somebody took it.
I won’t take the time to explain the steps we took in trying to figure out if somebody at the 7-Eleven did indeed take it, but unfortunately that was the case and I’m currently (partially) phoneless. So until an iPhone finds its way magically into my hands, should you need to contact me, call my old number but with a 6 instead of a 3 at the end. (The number of my sister’s phone, which I stole BORROWED for an extended period of time).
Salem, OR has finally reached the civilization level of Federal Way, WA. There is now a laser tag place.
Not only that, but it’s located inside a pizzeria.
In celebration of this, some of my high school friends and I went laser tagging and pizza-eating on Saturday night. Then, by Andrew’s influence, we headed over to the arcade to burn off some pizza fat. It’s fun having a license.
On Saturday night we had a high school swim team party at Sirenia’s house. I had never been there before, but I was surprised to discover that it was 1.2 miles from where I live!
The main game was a relay, which consisted of several generic party events (such as carrying a LifeSaver on a straw in your mouth), but with the inclusion of a Challenge from Hell™: Debra concocted a Drink of Doom from ice cream, tarter sauce, cottage cheese, nacho cheese?, Tabasco, pretzels, ketchup, and more (the drink was pink and chunky, suspiciously similar to vomit).
Once did I taste the infernal Drink, yet thrice did I almost taste my lunch again. I’ve eaten some very questionable things in my life, but this was the closest thing to death that has ever entered my mouth.
After the relays there were plates of whipped cream set out, with a piece of bubble gum buried in each. We had to dig in with our face and find the bubble gum, then be the first to blow a bubble.
It wasn’t pretty.
After everyone had gotten cleaned up and things were starting to slow down, five of us went on a “walk”, which ended up being a 1.2 mile excursion to my house. The only problem was we forgot to tell people that we’d be gone for a while, so apparently they sent a rescue party up the road looking for us… Needless to say, they weren’t too thrilled when we came back an hour later in a van, refreshed and wondering what was all the commotion.
On Tuesday we had our last high school meet before Districts, and it was against West. This was an interesting meet, partly because I swam the 200 IM and… 100 breaststroke. My 200 IM time wasn’t phenomenal, but I broke the school record by about 0.1 (with a 2:11.56).
My 100 breaststroke was also frighteningly close, because I won by 4 hundredths of a second — I got a 1:10.57, while 2nd place got 1:10.61.
We all decided that if our team would win the meet, we’d go out to Red Robin afterwards. As it turned out, West won. But we’re all winners at heart, so we went to Red Robin anyway!
On Thursday we had a high school meet against Sprague, and beat them for possibly the first time (that I can remember). I swam the 200 IM and 100 fly, which was an epic race between myself and Emiliano. I could see we were trading off the lead at each wall, but at the end I got a 58.26 and he got 58.82. We both had been waiting for that race all season.
Afterwards some of us went out to dinner at Red Robin, where (surprise!) we also saw Sammi and some of her friends.
After a while, somebody joked that we should go bowling, but then somebody else said, “Sure!”. Well, Shawn had a car and a few empty seats, so while about four people went home, the rest of us extended the post-meet party a little longer at Firebird Lanes. This is how it was meant to be… don’t go to school, but party with the school kids at night.
Last thursday I took the bus with my high school swim team to Oregon City for a meet. I had forgotten how fun “charter bus meets” are… It’s like throwing a bunch of people with high metabolisms in a small room that moves for an hour and seeing what happens.
I swam the 200 IM, 400 free, and two relays. I got clobbered in the 200 IM by a club swimmer from Canby (Oregon City’s only club swimmer), but I sort of pwn3d in the 400. Unfortunately, I don’t know what any of my times meant because it was a short course meters pool.
The whole way back a few geeks and I were talking about Weird Al, Networking, and Leopard vs. Vista on a bus full of people. I’d like to mention that doing so takes guts. But nobody complained, so I guess it’s just more evidence that we geeks are taking over the world!
