ahh the wonder of the snow day. i believe that i'm the only one on the face of the planet that didn't get the memo. i braved the icy sidewalks of lakewood, only to be told by the school custodian that there was no school today. even the lady sitting at the waiting room by my parents knew (they called me to let me know). my brother's surgery went well...only five hours rather than the projected seven. for those of you that don't know, my brother had a spinal fusion done today for his scoliosis. they took two steel rods and placed them on either side of the spinal cord for the vertebre to grow around, and to straighten his tremendously curved spine. he's going to gain two to three inches in the torso. he came out of the operating room at two thirty this afternoon. he didn't get a bed until about seven. ahh, the wonders of hospital limbo. he didn't have to go to picu though, which is a good sign. i'm a little worried, because the last time he was taken off of a ventilator the same day as the operation, his right lung collapsed. i'm hoping that doesn't happen this time. the only problem with this snow day is that i didn't have the daily activities of school to keep my mind off of my brother. five hours is a really long time. especially when it's the amount of time that your little brother is under a general anesthetic with a team of five to six doctors placing surgical steel rods into his vertebre. my brother, with the two steel plates, six cobalt-steel screws (in his hips) and these two supporting rods, could go through a metal detector buck naked, and would still set off the alarm. that's the only amusing thing about it. well, i'm off to see if he's awake yet. ta-ta for now.
gredge

my oh my it's been a while since i updated this thing. today i went to get my hair recolored, and hopefully it will stay this time. it's not black, it's blue-black, the darkest dye known to man, or so says my hairdresser jodi. tonight is school house rock with whoever goes and whoever i end up sitting with. i'm fairly excited for this performance, i've always enjoyed lcc's productions, and i've heard that that things have been going well. so, we'll see how it goes.
why is it that some of the coolest music is on commercials?
that good fun dance "mardi gras" is tonight, regardless of the fact that mardi gras was well over a month ago. that kind of makes me smile. i am not going, it was decided last week. it's not worth the effort to get all funkalicious, and i probably wouldn't have much fun, though more than i did last year. you know...it's kind of funny, when i was dating theresa, she came up with like five different ideas of what we could go as, and i remember thinking to myself..."will we still be going out in march?". how weird is that? and it wasn't even when things were going badly, it was like at the peak of our relationship. that's strange.
how does crayola come up with the names for it's crayons? robin's egg blue, macaroni and cheese?
so, who else is ready to smack the entire cast of "anything goes" across the face? diva syndrome abounds in this cast, even more than in "king and i". or maybe it's the same level of being pissed off, but for "king and i" we had the kids to go play with to let some steam off. i think that playing cards, and drawing and coloring with those kids kept most of us sane for this show, and were able to deal with the tremendous egos of the cast members. bob conner and bonnie farren should be illegal, and there should be a hair length regulation for males in all barnstormers shows. that's all i have to say. and now, i'm off to eat my easy mac.
gredge

so i cleaned my room this evening, for lack of anything else to do. yes, my wonderful friends have once again decided that it would be more fun not to call me on a friday night. argh. so, back to the story. i was looking through my journal that i started when i was in russia, and i've realized that i haven't talked to the people i went with since labor day. we became such a tight-knit group of people, and we promised eachother that we would never lose touch, but we have. i emailed them all tonight, because it's really hard for me to believe that i shared such an eye-opening experience with five amazing people, and that we haven't talked since september. wow, i can't even comprehend it. russia is such an incredible country, especially moscow. people who live there spend every day, walking past red square, st. basil's and the kremlin, as if it were nothing, that astonishes me. the cathedral of our lord, has five solid gold domes on the towers. solid freaking gold. during stalin's reign, they knocked down the original cathedral to build a giant public swimming pool. there's the communists for you. when stalin died, the cathedral was rebuilt, and people from all over the country sent what little money they had to pay for the solid gold domes. it is so beautiful, i only wish that i had been allowed to take pictures inside. they don't allow that type of thing in the cathedrals. and it's a shame. well, enough of the history lesson, i'm off to do something more important than teach you the history of moscow's historical sights.
gredge

ahh, what a wonderful day it has been. other than band contest (we got a ll) but, band contest wasn't that bad, because my raging hormones have resided and i no longer have the infatuated hots for a one rachel kaplan. yes, i did have the hots for her, and it has now resided, which allows me to move on with my life. it was fairly amusing today, when i realized that it had passed, becasue i was standing in the homeroom at contest with david kulma, tom blank and rachel, and i realized that i didn't really want to stand around waiting for rachel, and so i said "i'm going to the cafeteria, i'll see you there". it took me about 5 minutes to realize that i previously would not have done that. hee, it's fun to have your brain switch like that. i am now free to not worry about that anymore. i'm also seriously considering just randomly making out with people. it could be fun and probably a very healthy (though not really) way to deal with things. i'm so dumb, there's no way that any of this will happen, but it's fun to pretend. hmmm, we'll see what happens. so for those of you that were worried, my smitten state has left. bye!

gredge

i'm back, and this time i'm better than ever. i've been going to karate more often and i've realized how much i will miss it after i quit. unfortunatly, that is really my only option, because if i plan on doing three shows a year for two years, i can't also make two classes a week. such is life, and the rapid decline of my workout schedule. i was really hoping to go riding at some point this week, but this stupid weather has made that option a nonissue. stupid stupid stupid climate. today was a fairly good day, even though csilla and i didn't get married. if anyone wants to be in the wedding, you can't be the flower girl, best man, preacher, or matron of honor. those are already taken. sorry.just let csilla or i know, and we'll arange it. ok, i'm done with this diary entry for tonight.
gredge

welcome back to my blog, i've had a pretty boring day, but i made forty bucks babysitting and that is wonderful. tomorrow i think i'm going to wear my mock turtleneck, just so that everyone can say, ooo, greg's wearing a turtleneck, and i can say...no! it's a mock turtleneck. well there was my idiotic statement for the day.
gredge

so today was the first day of my becoming what i want to be. i've come to the realization that i have a bad attitude about myself and that i need to do a complete overhaul on my life. i've spent my entire life being someone that i'm not. the way i act around people, i do because until today, i wasn't sure who i really am. and i'm still not sure. but i can honestly say that i'm not this dorky kid who seems to have taken over my mind for the last sixteen years of my life. so today begins the overhaul. i went and got my hair cut, and dyed black. step one...change the physical appearance. i'm also going to start wearing clothes that i enjoy, rather than the clothes that i think other people will think are cool. my entire life has based on me wanting people to like me, because when i was kid, i spent all of my time trying to adapt to my new environment. the smart dorky kid who just moved into town has trouble making friends in todays society. i used to change my voice constantly, because i was afraid that my new "friends" wouldn't like the way my voice sounded, and for almost a year, i couldn't remember what my true voice sounded like. isn't that sad? there are probably a total of 3 people who knew this stuff previously, and i really don't want to share this, but every once in a while i have to let all of the emotional strain out, because otherwise it just explodes randomly, and this writing thing is a good emotional release. so anyway, what step were we on? ah yes, on to step two. the next step is my relationships. now, i'm not very good at dealing with my emotions, and i kind of bottle them up and overanalyze everything before i make a move. this includes my friendships. my next overhaul is to tell all of my friends exactly where i stand with them, if there's something going on. a lot of my friendships are going straight to hell because i haven't taken the iniative to be perfectly frank with the people i care most about. i've lost a lot of friends over the years because of this, and i want it to stop. i want all of my friends to know that i love you, and that i am here for you no matter how you treat me, because that's what i'm here for. i hope that i can expect the same from every one of you. well, i'm not sure if this is getting boring or more exciting, but i promised you angst when i started this diary and here it is. there is one final step o my complete ovehaul, though i'm not sure what it is yet. it's probably the most important one too, i feel like after i cover this stuff, that i'll have to do something more, but i'm not sure what. we'll just have to see. but that's it, not more pretending, no more lying, no more posing. from now on you get the real me, uncut, unpolished, and occassionally i leave a minty taste in you mouth. though i'm not sure why.
gredge

ahh, the trials and tribulations of a saturday. who would have known that two hours of hard exercise could clear someone's mind the way it does. when i'm at karate i can just go and not think about anything except what i'm doing right there. after a week of not training, nothing feels better than straining all of the muscles in your legs. but enough about my invigorating workout. if anyone read csillas post in morse code...and had no idea what she said... here it is "I am ignoring my homework as usual...hou typical". by the way csilla, you only made one mistake, you typed "..-" instead of ".--". but otherwise a very good rendition of morse code. see, when i was in elementary school, i had no friends, and along with all of my reading, i learned morse code to a t. it's been a while, and it's harder when it's written out, but otherwise a quite enjoyable code. but, now that i've let everyone know that i'm one of the biggest losers in town...i'm leaving/
gredge