Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Beef Jerky

I love titles. They're so eloquent. They mean so terribly much. You are handed one line to sum up everything that's happened in the day. One line, a few scant words, to add credibility and power to your actual post. The whole world gets wrapped up in one text field, and we call it a title.

Which brings me to my next point: My title means absolutely nothing. I've written about this phenomon before, way back when. This is similar. The truth is that I didn't have a good title, but that I just ate some beef jerky. It seemed eloquent enough.

So, no, I'm not drawing a parellel to me and my life being carefully salted and preserved in a bag of social injustices and inequality. I'm not saying that my minivan is a delicious and protein-filled treat. School is not specially peppered, and doesn't have 0 grams of trans fat.

I ate some beef jerky. Take that.

Three things. One is an explanation, two others are ramblings. The explanation first:

I'm terrible at going to bed. I haven't been to bed before 12 oclock more than 5 times in the last year. I'm just not good at it. If I'm 100% ready for bed at 10 oclock, I'll just randomly waste time till around 12. I have this insane OCD routine I go through every night, it takes a little more than an hour. It's the same routine, all the time. I check the security, drink some water. Brush my teeth, drink some water. Do some other stuff, drink more water. I chug tons and tons of water right before bed. I wake up later and dispose of said water. It's like clockwork, it's always the same time. It's always an hour after I fall asleep. It's pretty accurate, within a few minutes.

So here I am, bad at going to bed. I haven't had healthy sleeping patterns since before 7th grade. Tonight might have been different though. We had a meet today, as well as three step. I'm tired, I've done some stuff. My family wrapped up and went to bed at about 11, giving me no big distractions. Not too many fun people are online to talk to, nothing exciting to talk about. Not much keeping me up, it was nearly bed time.

But then I remembered, oh snap, I've got to wash my CC uniform tonight. See, we got new uniforms, and they are pimp. I've talked about it before. I love my uniform. Unfortunately, they're not exactly like we ordered them. They gave us a big gold T instead of the big royal blue T that we wanted. So, the man is going to remedy this, just silk screen over it. In order to do this, he needs them back tomorrow morning.

And we all know that nobody likes my sweat.

So I gotta wash it, then hang it to dry. So now I'm just chilling, waiting for the wash to get done so I can hang it up and go to bed. I might have made it before 12 tonight, I really might have. But now we play the waiting game. It's all good though, I don't really mind much. It's just sleep.

T-smash asked how I manage without too much sleep. To be honest, I don't know. You just sorta do. When your body absolutely needs it, you take a nap. Last year I functioned by sleeping a ton in classes. I was a good kid though, I only slept when it was absolutely ok. I wouldn't sleep when I still had work to do, I'd get it all done first. I tried really hard to not sleep through the flambouyant hawaiin professor videos in physics, but that didn't work too often. So, take naps when necessary, that's the technique.

Gotta go check the wash, I'll be right back.

Alright, it's getting closer. That's excellent.

So, on to item number two. Cross Country. I abbreviate that as CC, in case you hadn't picked up on that yet. Anways, we had a meet today, and I think it went pretty well. It was a tri meet at skyline. Skyline has a brand new course this year, and it's totally on campus. It's not a bad course at all. Sorta predictable, no huge twists, but not bad. Well, the team did really well. Everybody improved a ton, way more than anybody expected.

I stayed about the same, which isn't great, but I'm getting there. My main man Kirt got 6th place, he did killer. Noaksey got 8th, and I came 3rd from the team in 12th. Bryan was right behind me in 13th, and Thadeus rounded out the top 5 in 15th. It was really cool, everybody improved a ton.

Coach was really really excited about it. We weren't running like this at time trials, and we definitely weren't running like this at the grass relays. This was something new. The coaches from the two other schools came up and asked coach where we had come from, told him this was way unexpected. That made coach giddy like a school girl.

And ya know, the best part is, we've only got 2 seniors running for us, soon to be three. The rest of us are juniors, with two sophies right now. We need to beef up on the sophies, that's true. But of our top 5, 3 are juniors. Our top man is a junior. With a little work, I can get up there with him and Noaksey I think. Santy is improving a ton. I'm so happy for him, he's really getting stronger. Jared and Trevor are gonna be raging, and we've got some new talent coming in soon as well.

Word on the street is that Levi is joining up come monday. Joe Lee might come on out with us as well. We all know that Joe is automatically fast, and with a little work he can be right there with me and Kirt. Levi is definitely built better than I am, if he'll actually put forth the work he can catch us by next season.

So, the moral of the story is, things are on the up and up. The great part is, there's nothing that stands in our way right now. We're looking ahead this season, and seeing green pastures. We are improving, growing stronger and faster every day. There's no reason for us to stop doing that. Coach is working us hard, but it's so easy to see how it's paying off. Looking even further ahead, there's no reason to not expect next season to be awesome. I'm going to work crazy hard the rest of this season, and really push it in indoor. Come outdoor season, we're gonna have a pretty strong distance team. Depending on what events Kirt ends up running, we could really do well. It sounds like Bryan is gonna go for indoor track instead of soccer.

Really guys, this is starting to look dang good. We're all excited. Our girls team is growing a ton bigger, we're getting alot of talent. Our girls are doing really well, they're pro.

Let's not get confused though, we're not skyline. Skyline wins at stuff, it's what they do. But we don't want to be skyline. We want to be Taylorsville. We're growing, and we're coming for them. Alternate-Thatcher got second place today. Real Thatcher got 12th. Is that daunting? Nah, he's crazy good. I'm alright with that. We've got skills, and we're going to come catch them. We're going to work hard. It's going to hurt. Alot. That's what cross country does. But we know that it'll be worth it. It'll be worth it for coach, it'll be worth it for the school. It's going to be worth it for me, right here, right now. I'm going to be stronger than ever before. I'm going to be faster than ever before. Cross Country is the best.

If there is anyone within earshot that is considering coming out for the team, now is the time to do it. We've got a new batch of kids starting really soon, and it'd be great to be able to hop in and grow with them. We promise not to kill you. We won't make you run anything that you can't run yet. We do need more people. The more the merrier right now. Come on guys, cross country is great. I'd suggest it to everybody. If you want to, come on out. I'm not gonna force anybody to, I'm not going to bug anybody about it. I'm not going to pester y'alls. Just know that we're accepting everybody, it's walk on. Know that we'll take you, and put you in better shape than you've ever been before. You'll be part of the best team at the school. We're smart kids, good kids. We stick together. If you have any desires to run, but don't think you can make it, know we won't kill you, and come out anyways. We're gonna be strong guys, come be strong with us.

Now, the third thing.

One of the things that I love most about blogging is the permanent nature of it all. I'd be an idiot to say that anything on the internet is permanent, but this has alot of staying power. The thing that really gets me excited is the way that I can take a day, and all the ideas and thoughts and happenings, and make it stay. I can capture the way that I feel for an hour while I write a post, and stick it up there for me to find later.

That's one thing that I'm always missing when I don't accomplish things with my life. When I wake up one morning, and then go to bed later that day, I like to know that I've changed the world a little bit. If I wake up two mornings in a row and the world hasn't changed because of me, that's a little depressing.

I don't want huge changes, but it's nice to leave little marks that show you exist and that you're here. Leave things. It's nice to walk outside and see results, see the lawn that you mowed. The tree that you planted, the garbage you took out. Actually doing stuff, that's what I'm talking about here.

It's so easy to wake up and live life and never leave anything for later. I've used a large portion of my life already not leaving anything to prove that I was actually here. That's a sad thought. When someone has to write a report about you later, what are they going to find? Are they going to find someone that forget to leave fingerprints, or will they find a different world because of you?

That's why I like blogging, because it's permanent. The feelings that I have don't just influence the day that I have them, they help me to look back and remember and learn. I'm taking temporary things like thoughts and emotions and making a permanent monument out of them.

That's what I like about it. I'm leaving my dump right here. My thoughts ideas and words, here they are. It's left, not inside me anymore. It's going to be here tomorrow. For the next day, the world to come when the sun comes up on September 1st.

Hi guys. Hope you like my dump.

3 comments:

Courtney said...

I gotta say, I love the title. Wow, everything sounds like it's going great for you. That's awesome. I'll come and watch the CC team...

And Thatcher, we love your dump.

Jaron Frost said...

Second'd! Blogging and journaling just have this way of making everything seem worthwhile, it's not just one day after another anymore, it's something more. Love it.

We love your posts, Thatcher. Especially since you actually have things to talk about, as opposed to my random ramblings.

Nick said...

Yeah... I wish I had stuff to talk about. All I've got is good titles. No dump.