I’ve Got Some Bruises (Luke)

Hello everybody!! It feels like forever since I blogged about something, and that feeling probably stems from the fact that I haven’t blogged about something in forever. Despite my rustyness, I’m gonna try to write again. So we went paintballing this last weekend; we being Richard, Jason, Noah, a bunch of other people, and myself,  and it was awesome. The day started with being woken up by someone yelling, “Luke! We’re leaving in five minutes!” Which wasn’t exactly true, but it sure got me out of my bed. I’m a very heavy sleeper, in case you didn’t know. So, after dressing half in dreamland ( I’m pretty sure with my eyes closed), I walked groggily out to eat a bagel before we left. A few drives later, I found myself standing in the parking lot of the SC Village paintball park, in awe of the I-fought-in-Veitnam guy, suped up for shooting paint pellets. Luckily, I wasn’t going to be up against this commando. I had a private group. So I would be up against the commandos I came with. Once everybody who needed rentals got them, we started to play. I had a pretty awesome team, including Richard, Noah, and Jero and we were an okay team, actually, considering we were up against some really experienced guys. Unfortunately, the Dobrucks were not on my team and they were kamikazes the entire time, running out shooting and such. They struck fear in all our hearts, cause you couldn’t put suppressive fire on ‘em. Anyway, once the day was over, we cleaned up and headed towards In-N-Out where we ate and hung out. Getting home late and taking a shower to get the paint off you is all part of the experience in paintball. I wonder when we’re going again……….?

Of Holloween Haunt And Broken Down Doors(Luke)

Hello everybody!! I went to Knott’s Halloween Haunt a little more than a week ago, and it was a memorable night, to say the least. We had been planning to go(we being Noah, Jason Dobruck, and myself) for about a week, and the whole week felt like it led up to that night. After teaching karate, and selling popcorn for Boy Scouts, I was feeling pretty worn, but right when we arrived at the Dobruck’s house where we were going to leave from, energy just oozed from every pore of my being. I was ready. After an hour of driving, we set foot in Pink’s hotdog stand(awesome) for a little snack and to meet up with the rest of the group, making us nine: the people mentioned above, Mr. Dobruck(who drove us), Jeremiah Dobruck, sisters Anna and Kristi, Tim, and Ryan(I don’t know their last names). We followed the crowd into the park and began our adventure into the world of dry-ice smoke and stuffy mazes. Beginning with the mine cart ride(Black Widow’s Cavern) is always a good idea. One, when you get into the park, it’s still light out. Not very scary. So the mine car ride takes you under and when you get out, it’s dark. Two, for some reason the line gets longer later in the day. We try to avoid that as much as possible, and we would’ve done the same for the log ride(Pyromaniax), but  it wasn’t open yet. In case you didn’t know, the way Halloween Haunt works is you go to different attractions(we call them mazes), in which you walk inside and there’s a set path that you take that winds through the elaborately decorated maze, all with different themes. Between mazes, there’re street monsters that try to scare you. You can go onto the rides that are normal, but that’s lame. Anyway, the first maze we entered was Dia De Los Muertos, one themed after the mexican holiday. Mucho, mucho creepy, and way better than Las Vegas, which was in its place last year. The mazes that followed were The Doll House, and Terror of London(Jack the Ripper themed), stopping shortly to watch the The Hanging: Wrath of the Witch. The Hanging is, in decent words, inappropriately horrid. It is a comedy show, that parodies many pop culture subjects going on that year, and can really deliver a hilarious punchline, but taints their performance with jokes that make you cringe with disgust. Although it’s intended for mature audiences, some of the “jokes” cross the line even for adults. I saw it the year before, and hoping it had gotten better, went again this year, and I was surprised to find that it’s like a traffic collision: you want to look away, but it’s so bad that you can’t! Pretty much the best part is when the Jonas Brothers got shot in mid air. Anyway, God willing, it’ll get better next year. After the Hanging, we proceeded to enter Lockdown-The Asylum(a prison themed maze), Club Blood(a vampire maze that usually fails to impress), Quarantine(after the movie, creepy!!), and Uncle Bobo’s Bigtop of the Bizarre(the clowns). The next one was Cornstalkers, boasting an evil scarecrow and such theme. This maze didn’t scare me very much last year, but really got freaked out this year. Oh my gosh, they made me jump a hundred times. Soooooooo gooooooood! Following that was the Labyrinth( after Pan’s Labyrinth, the movie), and finally getting on the log ride, which makes me jump EVERY time. I’m not even kidding! After irking through Alien Annihilation, professor Freak’s Funhouse for Kids*(Not For Kids), the disclaimer is part of the title, thus ending our Halloween Haunt experience for this year. Drowsy from the late night breakfast buffet and the car ride back to Jason’s house, we perked up when we spied the police car in the front of the apartment building. Walking into the courtyard, Noah, Jason, Mr. Dobruck, and I saw the Police officers banging on the door to one of the apartments, to no reply. Quickly running into their own lodgings, we watched as the Cops warned the occupants that they would come in open door or not, and then BAM BAM BAM BAM!!! Four kicks assailed the door! They stopped and knocked on the door again, with no answer they took one last kick, and totally broke the door down. After bringing the suspect out, we found out that the occupants were having another fight, and that the neighbors heard the man allegedly abusing the woman. Once the man was on the ground in cuffs, he said that he couldn’t hear the knocking that could wake the dead. We were told that she wasn’t pressing charges, so after locking our door, we decided to watch a scary movie. A perfect ending to a an exciting day.

Hillsdale, How Thou Dost Love Me. (Richard)

Note: This is probably best read alongside Luke’s most recent post.

Hey all! As many of you know, school started about three weeks ago, and it’s been extremely busy for me, though most of it has thus far involved lots of reading and nothing more. Anyway, I started taking classes at Hillsdale College three weeks ago, and I, being a full time student endowed with all the rights pertaining thereof, had all of my classes scheduled for me. I cannot tell you how fantastically unannoying this process was. The college scheduled all of my classes to take place on the exact same days, leaving Tuesdays and Thursdays wide open for me to do homework or whatever else suits my fancy (and indeed I more often choose the latter rather than the former, a choice which I cannot afford to continue making, but still do nonetheless). I’m am currently taking Western Hertiage (History), Science 101 (Chemistry/Physics), Economics 202 (intro to microeconomics), and English 101. Two are amazing, one is great, and one is…pathetic. Whenever I leave History or Economics, I feel quite enriched, as though I am actually learning something. Science is entertaining because the professor is a science nerd in the best kind of way, and English is…boring, insipid, and generally terribly inconvenient. It is absolutely the teacher’s fault for English being the way it is, and it doesn’t help that the class is at 1:00 in the afternoon, right after lunch and right in the middle of nap time. Despite this, all of my classes are important and at least three are challenging, but no matter what this school year has to offer, survival, a horizontal path of progress, and saying “screw it” and doing it my own way are the only directions I plan on traveling.

Now that I am done copying and paralleling Luke, what more do I have to write about? The majority of the people here hail from the midwest, and I have found that they are the most enjoyable people to be around – they are calm, for the most part, level-headed, as long as no one mentions Obama, reliable, self-sufficient, and simply, good. Good in such a way that their faults and imperfections do little to shape their character, and do not lower my opinion of them in any significant way. At any rate, I suggest that everyone from southern California who I hang out with moves to midwest with me. The people are better, the weather is wetter (and therefor better), and we’d fit to the letter. (The last one is a bit of a stretch, but I have seen and written papers dealing with worse). And with that, I close.

El Camino, Why Dost Thou Hate Me?!(Luke)

Hello everybody!! As many of you know, school started about three weeks ago, and it’s been extremely busy for me. Technically, the full school year started this week. Anyway, I started at El Camino College three weeks ago and I, of course, had to add all my classes. Why did I have to go through this fantastically annoying process, you ask with sincerity? Well, the college gave me the absolute last day to register officially, and also failed to inform me of the prerequisites needed for my classes until that day. And get this…….the only place where I could fix it, was closed. Big surprise! And I had been freaking out the whole day over getting the prerequisites there on time. After realizing that I had to add, I attended my selected academic endeavors, and got into two of the three I wanted to get in to. One by pure providence. I’m now in German and Trigonometry, and they are awesome. Sometimes. German is AMAZING!! I’ve never taken a language before, and I’m really happy about this class. It’s really fun! Now Trig is the one that can be a drag sometimes. For one, my teacher looks like a walking turtle who’s really fun to listen to, but the subject itself is SOOOOOOO boring(unless we’re doing Trig ratio proofs ). It’s not his fault, it’s the material! And it doesn’t help that it’s like an oven in the classroom. Both classes are important and challenging, but no matter what this school year has to offer, I  think up is the only direction I plan on traveling.

I Passed!(Luke)

I think the title says everything!!

My Black Belt Test (Luke)

Hello everybody!! Unless you couldn’t understand from my fiendishly clever title, I’ve just been through a very long and grueling black belt test. I know that after every three year old now boasts a tae kwon do black belt, this might not seem that amazing, but I’ve been in karate for about eleven years now, and this test has been a long time coming. Now, the test started around eleven o’clock, and I was super nervous. Nervous enough not to want my immensely important breakfast, which I did end up forcing down, by the way. Once the test began to actually commence, my nerves began fade as I got used to the familiar testing sequence. Since I’m usually the one testing people, not being tested, it took awhile to switch the roles. In my place, I anxiously awaited my turn to preform. Our karate tests go a little differently than most, and usually consist of students being called up to show the techniques taught to them, recently or otherwise, by the leaders of the class. But black belt tests are more difficult, seeing as the one being tested, in this case me, has to show every move that they have ever taught, and do it well. The test proved to be very difficult  indeed, making me collapse on the floor once, and making me gasp for breath a little more than once. I left the karate studio at 9:00pm, and pretty much liquidated on the couch in my house. Man, was I sore the next day! Almost as bad as that one time I got a sunburn……….. I don’t know if I’ve obtained my black belt until Tomorrow, so keep me in your prayers.

I Have Nothing Better To Do (Luke)

Hello everybody!! Well, I recently went to the newly released Harry Potter film. To tell you the truth, I had uncharacteristically high expectations for some reason, and I was thoroughly let down by the whole thing. As a nerd, I am compelled to speak my mind. I was actually enjoying it in the beginning, because it was following my book into movie rule: You can add stuff to it, but you can’t take major things out! There were a few things off about it, like Fleur being gone, no Tonks/Lupin romantic troubles(they’re just suddenly together), none of the other Dumbledore memories shown, but I can overlook that, I mean, it’s a huge book. They did the quidditch tryout and match perfectly, the romantic battles, which seemed to be most of the movie, were very entertaining, and they added that whole in-the-crops fight, while not really adding anything to the plot-line and not really making any sense, it was interesting. Then Dumbledore and Harry return from the cave, and my disappointment starts to mount. I could take the fact that Harry wasn’t paralyzed, even though it didn’t run with his act-don’t-think kinda personality, but they took out the big battle?! Really?! Why? Was it because of time? They added the whole crop fight, so they obviously weren’t tied down by time. There are, in my mind, no logical answers to the question of why. Anyway, this throws off a bunch of story arcs such as Bill Weasley being werewolf-afied, and the reconciliation of Mrs. Weasley and Fleur, etc. And they totally took out the funeral. But apart from that, I came very close to enjoying the movie. Why you ask? Because of the humor. I think this is the one of the very few times that they truly captured the hilarity in the book. If only they had put the battle in……….If you’ve never read the book, I most likely sound like a ultra nerd, but I guess I am one. Well, this is what happens when I have nothing better to do.

Circle X (Luke)

Hello everybody! I was attending a Boy Scout(yeah, I’m a Boy Scout) summer camp last week called Circle X. It would be impossible to relay to you the entire awesomeness of the week, seeing as most of you would die of extreme boredom halfway through, so I’ll just give you a couple of the highlights. First off,  we got our recurring troop friend back, named El Cacoui. He’s amazing! I guess I should explain a few things. A troop friend is somebody from the camp staff who makes his assigned troop feel comfortable, and if the troop is new to the camp, he fills them in on procedure. His nickname is El Cacoui, all the staff up there have nicknames, and they’re not allowed to tell you there names. I hope that explains some confusion you might have. Anyway, we got him as our troop friend and had a whole lot of fun playing card games and just hanging out. Secondly, there was a new cooking team here this year, and there food, in my opinion, was AMAZING! They made turkey, BQ pineapple chicken, meatloaf(ugh! Meatloaf is pretty disgusting, but there’s didn’t really taste like meatloaf at all, so it’s all good), the best macaroni I’ve ever had (second only to Mr. Dobruck’s masterpiece, which is making my mouth water right now), and a bunch of other normal American dishes. Soooo gooood! The cooks were really kind too, and on top of that, not that it really makes a difference, when you passed the kitchen you heard something like Red Hot Chili Peppers playing instead of the weird polka and mexican mix that used to assail our ears. Thirdly, when not getting merit badges, you had hours to just sit, read, enjoy the nature, and try to kill the darn blood-sucking terrors buzzing around. I read two books that week, and it was really liberating to know that your only source of entertainment was either books, nature, or people, without all the electronic distractions around. It was really great. These are just a few things that makes this camp awesome, a few. I have always enjoyed going to this camp, and I hope to continue going to this camp for the remainder of my scouting life.

The Day the Earth Stood Still(aka Luke Cleans Something) {Luke}

Hello everybody!! This is day 6 without the Norrises, and apparently, I’m going bonkers. Let me tell you why I think this. I have just, in the loosest terms, cleaned the greater part of my house! Now if this doesn’t make sense to you, you obviously don’t know me very well. So allow me  to further explain my explanation. I am, without doubt, one of the laziest people on the face of God’s green earth. Sure, I can work when I have to, and of course I’ll work my butt off when the time calls for it, but I rarely ever strive for excellence in this important field, and I rarely do anything other than what is expressly outlined in my job description. So the fact that I not only cleaned without being asked to, but I also spiffed(I got tired of typing “clean”) a large area, and did a pretty thorough job doing it, astonishes me to the highest degree, which, as everyone knows, is the 17th. It was like an out of body experience, that I can remember, and that happened about 20 minutes ago. It inspired me to write this post actually. How, you ask, did this wonderous event transpire? Well, tonight was my parents 23 anniversary. They went out to some nice place where humans under the age of 21 are not allowed, and I decided to give them a present by spiffing the house. For the better part of the evening, I tried my usual method, which is delegating the jobs down to my younger siblings, and hoping that they don’t put up that much of a fight. They did. Obviously nothing got done by the time my parents came home, so I decided to at least finish my dishes. But I didn’t just do my dishes, after that, I did the counters around the sink, and then the kitchen, and then the dining room, suddenly I find myself  in the living room folding blankets and organizing laptop chargers. Odd, I know. I ended the evening playing wii golf, so I think I’m back to normal(I shot a 13, in case you were wondering). I guess this is just a long drawn way of saying that I really miss the Norrises! Well, at least the house is clean for tomorrow.

Congratulations!!(Luke)

Hello everybody!! This’ll be a really short post compared to my usual overly verbose endeavors. I just want say CONGRATULATIONS!!!! To Richard, my brother Noah, and any other grad worth mentioning!!!! In case you haven’t guessed, Richard has just graduated! Awesome!! It was a pretty amazing graduation, if I do say so myself, and I was very proud to see my brother speaking and Richard wearing pants. Ahahaaaha sweeeeeet! That’s about it. Just thought it was worth mentioning. Congrats again guys!!