Welcome to the Planet

I've never done this before, but a friend of mine has convinced me to promote an upcoming single. When a band I've been following for a long time finally begins to find success, I feel proud of them. It's almost like seeing someone in my family accomplish something spectacular, in that I've seen all the efforts made behind the scenes. I've seen them work hard for something that was never guaranteed. And at some point in time, everyone else acknowledges and appreciates what I had seen coming for a long time.

I've followed Switchfoot since I heard my freshmen roommate playing their music on our stereo 4 years ago. Now a cd they released over a year ago has approached mainstream success. The opening track "Meant to Live" remained a solid Top 10 alternative hit for a few months and recently has experienced some Top 40 airplay. It's the upcoming single, however, that I hope makes it big. It's my favorite Switchfoot song, a song I put on a compilation disc in summer 2001. So when Switchfoot releases their new single "Dare you to Move" in March, listen to it, love it, and get it knocking people like Kelis off the charts.

$pring Break

Before this morning, this is how the itinerary of Spring Break 04 looked:
Sunday, March 7: Drive to Tampa
Monday: Fly to Vegas, win money
Tuesday: Keep winning until the end
Friday: Fly back to Tampa
Saturday, March 13: Return to Gainesville

One letter and five hours of work later, here's my new Spring Break 04:
Friday, March 5: Bum a ride to Pensacola
Saturday: Fly to New York
Monday, March 8: Interview with St. John's, Fly to Vegas
Tuesday: Arrive in Vegas, win money
Wednesday: Kepp winning until the end
Friday: Fly to Tampa
Saturday, March 13: Bum a ride to Gainesville

Election Games

We had reached the student plaza, overflowing with party boosters campaigning for the big student election. This is where we were to go our separate ways. She smiles and says bye, and at that moment I open my mouth, ready to tell her that I'd like to see her outside of school boundaries, and time has come to get her phone number. But I wasn't wearing an "I voted" sticker yet, and before the words can escape my mouth, the Innovate Presidential Candidate taps me and asks me if I've voted. I'm walking toward my voting booth, I say. Without my personal guarantee that I'd vote for his Innovate party, he proceeds to go through his platform, a platform I had heard many times, a platform I needed no further explanation of.

She, with her "I voted" sticker on display, laughs at my predicament, wishes me luck, and runs off. Walking toward the voting booth, I had been on the fence over which party to vote for, slightly leaning toward Innovate's rival, Access, but knowing that I wouldn't fully decide until the ballot was in my hand and I went with my gut. I was seriously considering voting for Innovate. But after this encounter, I promptly went upstairs, got my ballot, rushed to the booth, and darkly marked my votes for the Access Party, because they don't step in on a guy's game.

Weekend Highlights

1) Bowling on 3 different occasions, left with a jammed middle finger
2) Dave celebrating his bowling strikes by screaming "Internet tips!" because he googled "bowling tips" online beforehand
3) Racing down curvaceous Surge Road in Jamey's 1984 Civic
4) Seeing the guy I assisted in a car accident was recovering and out of his neck brace
5) Cleaning my room to where I can finally see my floor again
6) Figuring out a second word in Britney's new video "Toxic" (the first word was "toxic")
7) Almost walking over a dead dog
8) Running 3 miles and tripping over a sign on the way home (I saw the dead dog again, incidentally)
9) New invention: Beer float (Black & tan with Peanut butter cup ice cream)
10) Having a girl find it charming when I said, "Make me some pancakes, bitch!"
11) Discovering Ed Harcourt
12) Drunken walk to Bennigan's at midnight
13) The FSU joke on The Simpsons!