My first track meeting was tonight. I’ve been looking forward to playing my last high school sport ever for quite some time now.

When I walked in the room and looked around I didn’t have to remind myself this was different than my former private school — this was Division 1, not Division 5. Each guy in the room had done track before, and most of them looked big.
I can’t say that I’m often intimidated when put in a room of athletes, but I was today. The truth is, I don’t know how athletic I really am. Sure, I may have been one of the fastest kids at my private school, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot with only 130 kids to compete against. On my track team alone there are expected to be 60 teammates. That number is staggering to me. We didn’t even have track at my old school, and the most popular sport — football — has maybe 30 guys that go out for it.

Practice starts on Monday. I’m desperately scared that I’m going to suck. If I’m not as good as the majority of the guys, I’m going to be mad. I don’t want to be the guy racing in the meets that are just for guys who can’t race in the big meets. That’s just not how I roll.
Some people may consider that a little over-confident, but I’m accustomed to being the best or at least being a major contributor to a team. I don’t have to be the very best out there, but I do need to matter.

Overall, I think this experience will be a lot of fun. I’ve never done this sport, but it seems incredibly fulfilling. Another plus of joining track is it will make the school year fly by…at least, that’s what I’m hoping for.

Oh, in other news, I got wait-listed at UW-Madison. Basically that means my ACT wasn’t to die for and they are waiting for either a minority who qualifies or someone who got a better ACT. I hear back on or around March 15.
My guidance counselor says my chances are good considering I improved my GPA this last semester. I hope he’s right. If I get rejected, I did get accepted to UW-Milwaukee.

Today I went to school. When I got there, no one was there.

I hate when Sun Prairie makes their snow delays a secret to me. I watched tv this morning to see if there was a delay, I listened to the radio on the way to school — nothing. No one said a thing to me. Turns out there was a two-hour delay.

I went home and took pictures. I haven’t held my camera in a month. It almost felt foreign until I started composing the pictures.

You know, winter usually sucks for taking pictures unless it looks like this outside:

I don’t know what to think right now. I’m numb.

I’ve never been more confident in the Packers before a football game and then they lost.
I really don’t know if I’m ever going to see Brett Favre that close to the Super Bowl ever again. I don’t know if I’m ever going to see Brett Favre play again. And to think that his last pass in the NFL was an interception is really eating away at me.

The whole week leading up to this game I firmly believed the Packers were going to annihilate  the Giants. Now I’m left with one of the most lopsided Super Bowls of all-time and I’m not even sure if I’m going to watch it. It will be boring. The Patriots are going to murder the Giants and I’m going to have to hear how the Patriots are God’s gift to football for the rest of my life.

This will probably take me a few weeks to get over. I can only think of one other time where I was more disappointed in the Packers. That was when I was eight and they lost to the 49′ers in the playoffs. I cried after that game. I didn’t cry after this game…but as soon as it was over I got in my car and drove as fast as I could home.
I don’t want to call anyone and talk to them about the game.

I wish I had one of those Men in Black things that erases memories. I would definitely use that on myself.

I hate the Giants.

I’ve had many dreams about fog. More specifically, about taking pictures in fog.

Fog introduces a whole new compositional element to pictures. Not to get too technical, but the use of empty space within a frame becomes the most important part of the photograph.

Anyways, I got to shoot in the fog yesterday.
After driving to school yesterday morning and seeing the driving fog crossing the roads and fields, I hoped it would stay like that all day. When I got out of school, the fog had actually become worse…or better, depending on how I look at it.

I took around 100 pictures on the back-roads between Burke and Sun Prairie.

I thought this picture would be appropriate because the New Year is approaching quickly. (Yes, I’ve started looking at a calendar — but only because Christmas is coming, and I kind of have to know when Christmas is.)

It’s going to be nice starting a new year. Even though there is still a whole lot more left of school. I must say that I have probably learned the most in 2007 than I have in any other time in my life. It’s not necessarily something specific I’ve learned as much as it is just about life.

From the presence of a Christmas tree in my living room I am concluding that it must be around Christmas time. (I’m still boycotting calendars.) This will be my 17th Christmas celebration and I’m beginning to think I’m becoming quite good at celebrating this sort of thing.
Perhaps this experience would explain my indifference to the whole thing. I believe last year I wrote something along the lines of how Christmas is boring or something equally disturbing to Christmas enthusiasts. (I should look into my archives to make sure this statement is true, but I’m much to lazy to do that.)

The point is, Christmas is fun, but not that fun. It’s definitely not so fun that we should have yearly debates over whether to call the trees at my school “Holiday” trees or not. Sure, holiday sounds more inclusive, but…who cares? If you don’t celebrate Christmas then why should you care about the people who do? But that is a different note.

I think this picture of the Christmas tree in my living room (which I literally took like 20 minutes ago) explains my current view of Christmas.
I’m sure you’re asking yourself: “He thinks Christmas is about yellowish, abstract lights?”
No. Not quite. But close.
Christmas for me is a holiday. It is sentimental and nostalgic, but not a whole lot more. Christmas is ultimately a good thing that brings out the best in strangers; it lends opportunity to people who do not normally think to give, to give.

But Christmas doesn’t carry any excitement for me anymore. Which is okay because I revered Christmas with such fervency as a child that my attitude now seems like an extreme departure.

Hey, at least I’m not a ba-hum-bug…although I am pretty close to a ba-Christmas-is-boring-now-bug.

Snow, rain, rain, sleet, hail, snow.
That is what I shoveled today. I would compare it to shoveling corpses off of concrete, but I don’t know exactly if that is an accurate description as I have yet to attempt such a thing. Although, I can hardly think it would be much different.
I find that snowplows are really inconvenient. Sure, they get the snow off of the roads, but they also pile it high at the end of my driveway so that I have an icy, snowy, and packed wall of precipitation blocking the single exit from my house.

My most recent strategy of avoiding calendars  has worked quite well — last week went quite fast, and I expect nothing less of this week. However, I overheard someone say it was December already, but I will ignore this fact and pretend it is October. If I pretend it is October than May should creep right up on me and it will feel like time has flown by.

In other news, I applied to UW-Milwaukee and Madison last week. I should be hearing from Milwaukee within the next week or two, but Madison is supposed to take 6-8 weeks which is absolutely ridiculous.
Wish me luck.

I have decided it would be a good idea to stop looking at what day it is. It seems every time I know what day it is, this school year continues to feel slower and longer.

As far as I know, today is the day between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

For the past two weeks I have had Mondays off from school as well as two half-days each week. Next week we have five days off. I think I’m alone in saying this but, I am really sick of the days off.

I would rather have no days off except for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. Why not just plow through the year and get it over with?

I say high school needs to end; college needs to start.

When I first heard about the Writer’s strike, I laughed a little. I laughed because I thought there was no way that the network executives would give in to the writers’ demands. I also laughed because people going on strike is in itself funny — they have silly chants, silly signs, and they march around like silly ants.

It wasn’t until I heard that The Office (the greatest show on television right now) only has a few more episodes completely written and will go to reruns if the network honchos don’t give in. That news got me to stop laughing and made me seriously think about this issue.

Basically these writers are striking because they feel they don’t receive enough money and, with the rise of YouTube and web-streaming (which I use very frequently), believe that they aren’t getting a fair share of profit considering how much of their intellectual property is being distributed. To me, I always thought the idea of strict copyrighting was silly — this is why I only have a Creative Commons license on my photography. But, I do understand the writers’ cry for higher pay considering the massive chasm between what writers earn and what actors earn.
It isn’t fair.
Writers by comparison do so much more and possess greater talent than actors (this is, of course, my opinion).

So, my solution to this problem is to:

1. Pay actors less across the board. They don’t need to be earning 5 million a year to do a television show.
2. With the money saved from cutting the actors payroll, pay the writers more.
3. Don’t let The Office go to reruns.

As some people already know, Steven Colbert has been denied the ability to run for president in the ‘08 presidential elections by the South Carolina Democratic Party. Although I’m not sure if he was entirely serious about running for president, it does bring up a good point about our the political process of becoming elected: everyone should be able to run if they meet the requirements set in the Constitution. Those simple requirements are that the candidate must be an American born citizen, have no major criminal record, and be at least 35 years old. Colbert met all of those and yet the party wouldn’t let him run.

Why is it that even though the requirements are met, Republican and Democratic parties will not let ordinary people run? This is the problem with our two-party system — they already have a huge stage to work with and won’t let anyone else share the spotlight. In a way, this has created a sort of monopoly on our national politics. It isn’t about who votes, it is about which few leaders decide if a candidate can run. This is hardly democratic or fair and goes against basically every principle America was founded upon.

I really don’t see the harm in letting ordinary people run under the Republican or Democratic ticket. If the people don’t want that person to get elected, then they won’t get elected. What’s to worry about? Instead of this, we get stuck with two candidates who have been swimming in money their whole lives (or most of it), and are mostly removed from the values that make the majority of America work.

I’m glad Colbert is making light of the situation, he could really bring up a lot of reasons why it isn’t fair.
Maybe I’m just over-reacting because my AP Government class has been talking about the lack of third-party candidates in America all week. Although, I don’t think I’m over-reacting. I’ve thought for a long time that anyone should be able to run. I’ve never been able to come to understand why in the world ordinary people can’t/don’t run for office.
I’m curious as to what others think about this.