150 Posts (Double-edged Snowflakes)

Hey everybody, this is my 150th post! It was kind of supposed to be my last one, but I miscounted by one. But for real, this is numero cien y cincuenta! It won't be long before the one year milestone either...

In case you're wondering what's going on in my life, Boise recently got it's all-time earliest snow. October 10th, the snow came down heavy and thick. I came out of drama practice into the snow, and immediately burst into "White Christmas". The drama kids and I cheered. Christmas in October? This was going to be a great winter!

But as my title would imply, they were indeed double-edged snowflakes. Because guess what? The trees weren't really ready for snow. All of the leaves were still hanging from the branches. So when the snow came, they weighed down on the branches until they snapped. After getting home, I discovered that our neighbor's tree's branches had indeed done that all over the side yard, nearly ruining the garden over there.

We ended up running an emergency restoration mission to get the branches out of the way and shake some of the snow off of the trees, which was successful, but cold. I apparently have an uncanny ability to pick the worst damn times to wear shorts.... The year up at Bogus should be great though, with snow this early. I plan on finally getting over some of my fears and mastering some new tricks up on the slopes.

But before Winter begins to really roll up it's sleeves, I'll have to finish up with the play first, which is coming along quite well. We all have our lines fairly memorized and the props and costumes are really coming together nicely, and the set for this one is great. If you can come, I can't suggest highly enough that you do. Tell your friends.

"The Diary of Anne Frank"
A Bishop Kelly Drama Production
October 23-25, 5:30 - 9:30
October 26, 12:30 - 6:30
7009 Franklin Road, Boise, ID 83702
(I am playing Mr. Dussel.)

Repercussions (of course)

Well, I didn't really think I'd get away with my Juno McGruff stunt, so when I got called in to the Dean's (Mrs. Quillacy's) office, I knew what it was about. Of course, the note on the slip that said "per Bobby Biggs" (the janitor's name) didn't help conceal what was about to happen.

Detention.

Oh yes, of course. Repeated "Insubordination," and "Disrespect," was what I was being punished for. To be perfectly honest I suppose I deserve it, but I still wasn't looking forward to it. Luckily for me, all I got was detention, which really wasn't that bad.

On the day of reckoning, I walked to the Finances office to serve up my time with Mr. Jaszkowski. His daughter was a good friend of my family; Michael had gone out with her for quite a long time. She was incredible - national scholarships, state championship in softball, seemingly perfect. I had never met her father really, but she had been a lifeguard at Lowell a couple of years, so I did get to see her plenty.

At first, Mr. Jaszkowski was actually going to let me off the hook, worried he would run the risk of me missing my ride. But I had actually told my carpool in advance and he was happy to stay a bit late. So he gave me some stamps and some letters, and I got to stamping. What wonderful mindless work. Mr.Jaszkowski sat down next to me and asked me what I was in trouble for. "Insubordination." I told him, recalling the words of the dean.
He laughed. "I've had a lot of kids come through here for a lot of things, but never have I heard that!"

As I told him about the events of Friday, I was happy to see that he was sympathetic more than anything. He told me that he knew how Bobby Biggs could be. I nodded in agreement, beguiled by his understanding. He even told me about his own story as a kid.

When he was a kid, he went to a catholic school as well, a little bit stricter than this one, and whenever there were assemblies, one of the monks (Brother Dan, I think it was) would stand by the doorway and make sure nobody left to go home until it was done. But Mr. Jaszkowski would walk right past him, and that Brother Dan would just left him go. Because there was an unspoken agreement between Dan and Jaszkowski. Brother Dan was saying, I'll let you go home and skip the assembly. Mr. Jaszkowski was saying that he wouldn't disrupt the assembly.

Ha! What a troublemaker, huh? He reminds me of me! And he's a successful businessman, managing the funds for the best school in Boise! That cheered me up. After laughing a bit over that, he simplified Friday's situation for me. "You can walk by a pig pen and see a pig snort at you, and you can go ahead and wrestle that pig to the ground, but at the end you'll be covered in mud and pig crap. So when you wrestle with pigs, you're gonna get covered in pig crap."

I got the point.

My Crazy Friday

This was quite an eventful Friday for me. We had the day off from school, probably because it was the very first football game of the season. And the band was performing for the game, so Troy and I left for Bishop Kelly at two. That was when our band director, Mr. Haskell told us to be there. He didn't mention that he actually wouldn't be there 'til 5. So I had three hours of absolutely no obligation and virtually nothing to do.

So, I looked around the school for anything I could help out. It was a big night after all, and I though some people could help. I walked into the cafeteria to find a some mothers setting up a dinner for the football players. I asked one if there was anything I could do to help. She handed me her keys and told me to drive her car over to the Carly Center and unpack some juice and food out of the trunk for some after-game party. I felt a dilemma for a moment. I mean, I didn't really have my license. But it was only like driving around in a parking lot for God's sake. I decided to do it.

Now this is what I like to call following the spirit of the law and not the word of the law. If that makes sense.

At any rate, I did this, and after cleaning up a mess I made dropping one of the juice jugs, I returned her car exactly as I found it and handed her keys. By now the cafeteria was filled with football players in line for food. I recognized several of my friends, grabbed some food and sat down with them. After a bit, I went back to the music room. I found Troy in here and we walked to Subway to get even more food. By the time we got back, Mr.Haskell was finally there, directing people to start packing and moving all of our equipment.

It was a fairly short process, but we soon found that we didn't have near enough extension cord. So Mr. Haskell told us to go grab some from the various maintenance closets/rooms throughout the school. So two others and I set out to do so. First, we scaled the school for Kenny, one of the custodians. Had we found him, we would have asked him if he could help us find some extension cords. But we didn't. So we started searching one of the maintenance closets. We didn't find any in this one, but we did notice the ladder up to the roof, and jokingly dared each other to climb it.

That was when the trouble began. A custodian (not Kenny) walked by, overheard this, and told us, somewhat rudely, that we weren't allowed to climb the ladder. We got out of the closet and told him we were just joking around. As we were walking, he proceeded to tell us that we weren't supposed to be in the maintenance rooms anyhow. Again, quite rudely.

"Well we were looking for extension cords." I said, and I'm not sure exactly what compelled me to do it, but I followed with a sarcastic "Excuse me."

"What did you say?" He said. "Come back here!" I stopped and turned around. "What's your name, kid?"

I paused for a moment, nervous. "My name.. is Juno McGruff."

"Well Juno McGruff, the Dean of Students is going to be hearing about this." he finished, and walked off. I did as well, finally laughing when he was out of earshot. I couldn't believe I actually just did that. I couldn't believe that he bought it either!

Later, I walked into another maintenance room, looking again for extension cords. He was there again. This time, he yelled at me about my attitude. I reacted calmly and apologized, just trying to get him to lend me the cords. Eventually he let up and gave them to me.

I sighed with relief as I walked away. I brought the extension cords back to where the band was set up and connected it. As I rearranged the surge protectors, I finally set it up so that I had three keyboards to play - two in front stacked and one to the right. I had no seat so I played standing up. I may have showed off, but I was having so much damn fun doing it. The band started off the game with the Star-Spangled Banner and played other various tunes from there.

Bishop Kelly lost by three points. To be honest, I wasn't watching most of it, so that didn't bother me so much. We packed up and brought all of the stuff back to the music room. Luckily that didn't take long, but afterwards a girl told me to carry a barrel over towards the cafeteria. There was a dance there it turned out, after the game. Of course I was staying!

I got in and observed for a bit before starting to dance. This was the standard high school mob of kids, most of them grinding some girl. I jumped in and went straight through it and out when I found a couple of my favorite teachers outside. I talked to them for a bit while I got some fresh air. Something about that night was euphoric for me. I really couldn't have been happier.

The dance ended at eleven and I went home with Troy after helping set up some tables for Monday. It was among the best nights of my life. But I do have a bad feeling about the whole custodian thing. Not necessarily guilt - I mean he got what he gave. If he had wanted me to be polite, he should've been. But I've got the feeling that it's gonna come back and bite me come Monday. Hopefully though, he won't figure it out. But I can see him walking into the dean's office.

"One of your students has been giving me trouble."
"I see. Well give me his name and we'll call him in."
"His name is Juno McGruff."
"We don't have anybody by that name. Actually that's a character from the movie, Juno."
"..."