Back in Lafayette, and reporting that sleeping 10 hours a day and then staying at home is not as refreshing or rewarding as it would seem. Hopefully by the end of the week I'll come up with something to get me out of the house. If you've got any suggestions, please let me know.

Well, it's Sunday. Tomorrow Dawn and I drive back to Lafayette (she's got an advising appointment to switch to an English major at 3:30, so we'd better get back for that [hooray for graduating in a year instead of three! {I like parenthetical statements!}]). Friday, as promised, we went to Six Flags - it was pretty cool, I hadn't been there in about six or eight years. All the rides I remember are still there, but they got some new ones too - including one which opened Friday, Superman. It's actually pretty lame, it's just a big tower with 6 columns of tracks that take seats up to the top, then drop them. For some reason, this is supposed to be the best new thing they can offer, and a lot of people were willing to wait an hour to fall 200 feet - good for them, I guess. Far cooler was The Boss, a huge wooden-track coaster that I hadn't been on before - Dawn and I saw it from the waiting line for the Screamin' Eagle (always fun), and spent a while arguing about whether it was one coaster or two - it was one, but one HUGE one. Good times. I think Dawn liked Mr. Freeze better (especially because we sat in the very front, the only ride on which that's worthwhile), but I guess I like to be on a ride for more than 30 seconds. Anyway, it was a pretty good day, not too crowded (but a little hot), and some guy let us use his discount card, so we only had to pay $10 for a funnel cake and a couple cokes, rather than like $16. $16 would have been OK after she tried to charge me $8 for a bottle of water, but I put a stop to that too. I think since the park just opened for the season a few weeks ago, the entire staff is in training or something - that or they're all colossal dumbasses. If anyone reading this works at Six Flags, let me know which it is so I know if I should apologize or ridicule some more.

So that was Friday, which was followed (as usual) by Saturday, which was the grad party. It was pretty good, we spent all morning running around collecting various trays and supplies and things we'd been assembling all week, and then some people showed up, and we had a good time, and then the people left. It all went pretty smoothly. Immediately after, I picked up my car from Best Buy, where I'd left it since that morning to fix my XM problem (NO SIGNAL!) - apparently my FM modulator thing was faulty and didn't pass the antenna signal. In any case, it works wonderfully now and I can swing to the sweet sounds of talk radio all day. It'll be nice for the drive home. After that we watched the Cards game (another win), and then up to Max's for a few drinks before bedtime.

Today (Sunday) it was up early to sit around waiting for my Mom's laundry to be done before we could go to breakfast, modding my Mom's ReplayTV so it holds like 250 hours of TV now, and then breakfast. By the way, if you don't have a Replay (or some lesser DVR), it's important that you buy one. Like, life-changingly important. I've had to watch live TV occasionally since I got mine, and it's almost physically painful now. After that, Dawn and I went to Target (to return Dawn's rust-stained swimsuit), Crate and Barrel (to see what I could get with a gift certificate I was given, I don't know that I'd ever been there), and Blockbuster (to drop off movies.) Then some brief sitting, watching the end of today's Cards game (go Cards!), and off to dinner - at the new Ruth's Chris in Clayton. I hadn't been to a Ruth's Chris since we used to have one downtown, it's been a number of years. The menu is expanded, and everything is just as huge and delicious as ever - Dawn and Ben split a pile of shoestring potatoes which was literally larger than your head - and covered in a napkin to look which looked like a headscarf. When they were first served, I was a little concerned that they were being served a french-fried woman's head. They weren't, and dinner proceeded. After that, TV watching and now here I am.

Tomorrow we leave, so I probably won't see St. Louis again until Christmas - I'd be pretty sad, but most of my friends aren't here anyway - it was pretty much just Charles and Brittany (Emily's here, but she'll be in Tacoma in the fall, so that'll be fine.) I'll have to persuade them to come to Seattle. Back to Lafayette tomorrow, then two weeks of throwing away four years of accumulated crap, a little bit of deciding whose crap is whose, and then the big move - movers come June 2, Dawn and I go to Chicago for a last hurrah (if I can afford it) that night, and on the plane June 3. Then the first day of the rest of my life.

Man, I can write a whole lot about basically nothing at all. I wish people still got paid by the word to write serial novels - I would kick ass at that job.

So, I guess I'd better catch you up on what's going on here in St. Louis - the answer is "Not Much." I was kinda sick Sunday and Monday, so we didn't really go out or anything. Tuesday we went to Max's and hung out with Charles for a while, which was good times. Wednesday was party planning day, so we ran around all day buying this and ordering that. Wednesday night we went to our first game at New Busch - a win, vs. the Mets, 1-0. The stadium is pretty cool, but definitely different than old Busch - it's nice to see the skyline though. It'll be nicer when they get the Ballpark Village thing built next door so you don't have to look into a construction site in left field, but I think that's still a few years away probably. Charles came to the game, and afterwards came over to my house. We got a pizza, Brittany came over (oh, yeah, she and Tricia showed up to Max's on Tuesday too, but only for a few minutes), and Charles' new coworker Tracy came over - we had some beers, played some pool, it was a good time.

Thursday (that's yesterday, to those of you keeping track), we went to the Missouri Botanical Gardens, because they were having an exhibition of Chihuly glass within the park - a lot of plant-form glass integrated within some of the planters, and some sculptural pieces in ponds and under bridges - but the most spectacular part was the Climatron (the rainforest simulation dome, for those of you not in the know), where there were probably 50+ pieces integrated into the environment. It was really cool to just walk around and try to spot them, some were in some pretty bizarre places, like nestled in the nooks and crannies of a giant palm tree trunk. It was pretty awesome. After that I had to go to Best Buy to get the XM radio I bought installed in my car, which I'll report more fully on after I have a little experience with it. Traditional Chinese dinner followed by visit to Sam's afterward for mass quantities of beverages for Saturday. Then off the Max's, after picking up Emily, who just arrived in town - more drinking, Tracy came over again, but then the three of us (Dawn, Emily, and myself) went over to Krueger's after Max's closed. Few drinks, then some White Castle, then some sleep.

Now it's today! Dawn and I are going to Six Flags Mid-America (which apparently was recently renamed to Six Flags St. Louis, so whatever), where I haven't been in probably 6 years - I hope this time is better than the last time I went, when it rained so much all the rides had to close. I'm sure it will be, I'll let you know tomorrow. If you're lucky, I'll post pictures tomorrow too.

If you're lucky.

I said yesterday that I'd bring everyone up to speed today, and again, I'm no liar. (Maybe this is a theme?) Anyway, here goes:

I'm REAL NAME REDACTED. I just graduated from REDACTED REDACTED yesterday with a bachelor's REDACTED in Computer REDACTED. With this degree, I'm going to work for Amazon.com in REDACTED, starting in June.

So, the last few months have been mostly me running around trying to finish school, trying to get things done at work, and figuring out what to do about going to Seattle. Fortunately, Amazon has a pretty good relocation package, so I don't need to worry so much about how to get there as I do about what to do when I'm there - finding an apartment, setting up bank accounts and insurance, finding something to do with my spare time besides homework - you know, all the crap that you never have to do until you're on your own, at which point it's either tedious and boring, or new and stressful. I'm a little stressed - a little.

Before I get there, I've got some other stuff to worry about - immediately after graduation yesterday (I shouldn't say immediately, we ate lunch too), Dawn (she's my girlfriend, I'm sure you knew that already) and I drove to St. Louis. The original plan had been to drive to Chicago first to drop my Dad off at Midway so he could fly back to Omaha, but we realized that was a silly idea, so he switched his flight to leave from St. Louis and drove back with my Mom and brother. So Dawn and I got to drive immediately to St. Louis, shaving 4 or more hours off of our potential drive time - I was pleased, and my Dad didn't have to sit at an unfamiliar airport, so everybody wins. So now we're in St. Louis.

While in St. Louis, there's plenty to do - we spent most of today shopping, though I only bought a pillow and she only bought a t-shirt. I guess shopping is better when you have money - but that's a different story. So we spent all day doing that. Tomorrow, we're to be up early so we can go down to the west end and goof off before Linds and Tim come through to have lunch - they have to pass St. Louis on their way to Arizona, so we figured we'd have some lunch or whatnot. Plans after that are a little hazy until Saturday, which is when I'll be having a graduation celebration-type deal. A few of my parents' friends, hopefully a few of my friends, and my family will be here, it should be a good time. Then back to Lafayette on Sunday.

Upon reaching Lafayette, I have to start consolidating my life - get whatever stuff I've left at Dawn's over the last year back to my house, and start going through what's at my house - starting with about 20 computers in varying states of obsolence and functionality - anyone need any of those? Then clothes, and stereo stuff, and who knows what else. By June 2, I have to be able to point at things and say whether they're coming with me or not, so I'd better be able to do that. June 2, in case you didn't realize, is when the movers come. Then it's off to Chicago that night for (hopefully) dinner, a quick stay at the Doubletree, and then on a plane June 3 to Seattle.

That's the scene so far. Now that you're all caught up, I can keep the entries short and sweet - just the day-to-day stuff, some anecdotes here and there, maybe a lesson or two. Any questions?

Well, I promised you (whoever you might be) that I'd post here starting May 14, and I'm no liar. Up 'til now, I've resisted creating a blog, even though everyone clearly needs to read everything I have to say, because my life has been fairly uneventful - I was born, I went to school, I probably skinned my knees a few times, got in some trouble, went to junior high, high school - then college. Pretty standard fare so far. Got through college, did some studying, some working, some drinking, and then this morning, I graduated.

So now I have a chance to differentiate myself from everyone else - I've done everything you're supposed to do as a child, then as a young adult, but now I'm an actual adult, college degree in hand, venturing out into the world. Moving beyond academia and into the world, where my lessons will not be calculus or sociology, but human lessons, wherein I learn how to function as a part of normal adult society.

So, if you'd like to read more about what happens to me as I enter the real world, you've come to the right place. I'll probably make pretty regular updates to this as my life unfolds, and I know you'll just love it. I'll start tomorrow by giving an outline of our scene so far.