I Remember

Normally I write deep-seated blogs on my personal blog, but MySpace is wigging out on me, so I had to use BlogSpot. I'll go back to happier ones next time...


I just recently finished a very engrossing novel, Nineteen Minutes. It is a fictional story about the horrors that follow a school shooting. Reading it, I felt like I was watching the whole thing unfold on CNN. Coincidently, I finished it on the tenth anniversity of the Columbine shootings. I've watched a bit of the memorial coverage from that day and I still cannot believe it's been that long. I still remember that day very vividly...

I was in 6th grade. My science teacher walked in the room and announced that a tragety had just happened in Littleton, Colorado. News was shaky at the moment, and they estimated 25 kids had died. Fortunatly it wasn't that much, but we learned later that 12 kids and one teacher had been murdered.

Suddenly, school had become a scary place. The goth kids and the rebels were looked at funny...were they crazy enough to kill the rest of us? I remember panicking once because I didn't realize that I had a knife in my bag left over from a camping trip. The knife fell out and a girl completly freaked out when she saw it. I had to beat her to the principal's office so I could turn it in myself before she thought I was a killer or something...

There was one girl who had this supposed "hit list". Rumors spread about it, how all the popular kids were on it. A lot of kids were kept home for a few days, myself included. While the school claimed there was never a list, we saw the girl in handcuffs, taken away, and never heard from again.

Columbine sparked my obsession, which turned into a passion, for the news. I watched coverage obsessively, trying to understand why. In watching all this news, I learned that I lived in a scary world...yet decent people still seemed to exist.

I feel Columbine to me was that bridge from childhood into adolescence. It was that step away from innocent bliss to awareness and acceptance. I could never forget. I don't want to. I would hope I would never be involved in something so tragic and that my future kids will feel safer in school then I did.

Sick Kid

I absolutly hate being sick.
I have now missed a full day of work as well as two classes, well, three if you count Institute. It's been nice to just lay around doing nothing, but not for two days! I want to be productive, darnit.
Judd's out of town this week on his annual motorcyle Moab trip, so I've had to suffer alone =( I think it's the flu. I'm scared, as in deathly terrified of needles, so I did not get the vaccine. I'm not sure why I'm that scared of them, I draw blood out of animals just fine at work! But I figured I'd risk the off chance of getting the flu rather than embarrasing myself and passing out at a clinic.
REGRET!!!!!
So now I'm just laying here pathetically watching America's Next Top Model reruns while waiting for my system to flush out all this crap in it. I probably should be doing something more productive like this mountain of homework in front of me. But I feel like with all this craziness, illness, and no husband around to feel sorry for me, I deserve a sick day!

Minus the sick part, of course...

Hey

-Judd Here,
Kristen decided it was my turn to add to this blog. She probably wants me to tell everybody how extremely lucky I am to have a such a wonderful girl in my life. We just got back from camping at the hotsprings yesterday. It was a blast, we love camping and we need to do it more often. Kristen is not a real big fan of the cold though probably because she has absoultely 0 body fat -I dont have that problem. Im trying to toughen her up though, we are doing more out-doorsie stuff like jogging, hiking and hopefully soon kayaking! I havnt told her yet but I just found a family friend who has one and is willing to let us use it whenever we want. We recently had two new additions to our family, I havnt taken any pictures of the little ones yet but as soon as I give them a bath I will show off how cute they are. Of course I'm talking about my Yamaha YZF426 and my Isuzu Rodeo Sport. I just spent the morning getting our trailer ready for our annual Moab trip, I am very excited for this and now I have a bike that is definatly more up to the task. The only problem with this bike is that it seems to be missing a clutch lever so I will need to figure out how to ride without it. My last bike was a real trooper and I will definatly miss it but this new one is just in annother league. Kristen, purely out of the goodness of her little heart, also decided that my old ride was ready to be retired. It also was such a good little Amigo and it definatly has a little oily place in my heart. For the past couple years I had been eyeing this newer type of truck and every now and again I would check around to see if anyone was selling one. It just so happened that we found the exact one I had been dreaming about on craigslist and so we snatched it up! :) This one is much more off-road worthy so it will definatly come in handy on campouts, picknicks and running over stuff. Anyway, thats it for now. Kristen and I have to get to writing our talks (we were called to speak in church tomorrow...)

New Apartment Tour!

We moved into our new apartment a few weeks ago! Here's the tour! We love it, so much prettier then our old one (and far less ghetto!) I look like crap here thanks to stupid allergies, but oh well.

Life is pretty good at the moment. We filed taxes for the first time as newly-weds and it's a good thing the government still recognizes married benifits (for now!). We're trying to work out a lot more. I'm going to take up raquetball so I can give Judd a run for his money! Spring break is next week. Hopefully work won't make me come in for the whole thing. I appreciate having a job during this economic crisis...but it is a BREAK!