Merry Christmas everyone! Last night me and my family spent Christmas Eve at my grandmother’s. The Renn side of the family was all there.

Uncle Brian was there! Heck, even Marlaina whom I haven’t seen since my high school graduation party was there. Such a wonderful time. I got lots of moolah. Which is good. I’m gonna need it! It’s going towards my survival fund for when I move out west and look for a job, haha.

This morning for Christmas, my family opened up presents. My sisters got me cartoon DVD’s haha! They picked them out for me…Tom and Jerry. So cute. I let them watch it of course. Then tonight we went back to gram’s for the rest of our Christmas day to open presents. More moolah! Yessssss.

Tomorrow, there’ll be ONE MORE DAY left until I fly out to Salt Lake to see my girlfriend Jennifer! Ohh man we’re both gonna melt into two big puddles when we see each other again! Jenny I LOVE YOU!!! ONE MORE DAY!!! Ahhh so perfect. This is going to be the best holiday season ever.

Why couldn’t they just call it the Graduation Song? Anyways, that’s right folks. I’m officially an IUP graduate as of this past Sunday. My parents, sisters, and grandparents all came down to IUP to attend the graduation ceremony.

After many long speeches and the calling of graduates from other departments, I finally shifted that tassel from right to left, signifying the achievement of my Bachelors of Science Degree in Communications Media (and that good ol’ minor in dance, heh heh). I walked up and the instant they called out my name, my mind instantly went into La La Mode. All I could remember was VP Dr. Luckey jumping out from her seat with the rest of the IUP big wigs and giving me a grand old hug. What memorable moment! What a great friend. Oh and I remember shaking the President’s hand and some other person whose cap and gown looked far more elegant than mine.

So afterwards, one of the other Comm Media students pointed out that me and Laura were the top 2 in our class. Awesome! I never imagined I would place that high, especially in college. And so graduation ended, along with my IUP undergrad career.

Packed up the car, stuck me in the trunk, and went on the 2 hour car ride home. For some reason, it’s a lot scarier watching cars go by you backwards. Anyways…I’m home now! Only 4 more days until I see my girlfriend. Needless to say, I’m so excited the butterflies are enough to make me float.

Update:

It’s not the problems we face in life that define us, but how we deal with and overcome them.

I just finished my final presentation for Business Comm today. I’m officially finished with my undergraduate career at IUP. Woohoo! So how about I go to present our BlockDock project and I forget the freaking BlockDock on my desk?!? So I had to run back to my apartment and rendezvous with Mike to get it. Haha. I’m retarded. But anyway, we finally presented and they loved it! We showed the commercials too and they all thought it was hilarious. I’ll post them online once I get a chance. Everyone just cracked up with the commercials. So happy!

Mike moved out just today. We sorta just stood there and realized that we may not be seeing each other again for a long long time. Adam left too, so he’s gone. It really sucks. They’re both my very best friends here (despite how much we tease each other). Them and dance company. It’s really hard to leave people whom you’ve come to know so well for so long.

Speak of the devil. Here I am writing about how much I’m going to miss all of my friends and Theresa, my ex, IM’s me. She congratulates me on graduating and everything. I’m grateful. And then she goes on about how she has a lot of close friends graduating. I empathize with her, and I specifically say that I know how she feels…I’m going to be leaving a lot of friends as well. But I also tell her that we can’t really dwell on it lest it just gets us depressed. We have to look ahead toward the future. But then she just tells me how I don’t understand. I’m like what the heck? The hell I don’t understand! I’m graduating…leaving EVERYTHING I’ve come to love and know behind and moving to LA. You’re saying that I don’t understand? Oh well…I guess my friends just aren’t cool enough. I guess I didn’t care enough? That I’m not as close with them as she is with all of her Wahr Hall friends? And to have her say that I don’t understand? How does that make me feel. But…that’s her. She always does this to me. Degrades every facet of my life, I say how I feel about it, and then everything is spun around like it’s all my fault and blames ME for not being able to drop it when she’s the one who just goes on and on and on and on about why she’s always upset. I’m not the only one to notice this. Good god already.

Ok.

*Whew*

Done.

Now what was I saying. Oh yes. My friends. I’m really going to miss all of them. Despite what some people may think.

But there’s a whole new world waiting for me in LA and Vegas. So here’s to optimism, making new friends, and Aladdin. A whooole neeeewww worlllldddd. Haha, I’m a freak. Here’s to the future!!

What an incredibly insane weekend…week for that matter. I spent the entire week going back and forth to Punxsutawney for dress rehearsal for the Nutcracker. As crazy as all that driving was with Maggie, Karlie, and Steph, it was a lot of fun and I got to know some people a lot better on Joan’s company and the little children…*sigh* the little children. I miss them all. I think I really do have a passion for little kids. I think it’s because when I was really little like that, I didn’t really have anyone to look up to. Not until I got into high school anyway. And it wasn’t until then that I realized the importance of having mentors in life.

All those kids so make my day. All weekend I had this huge trail of 20-30 kids CONSTANTLY following me around. On Saturday I decided to bring some cards and do magic tricks for everyone while we waited to go on stage. And all of them sat around and watched. Aww..sooo fun. So I made a bunch of cute friends this past week. Haha. This one little girl especially, Laura. She’s the one who freaked out the first day during rehearsal and started crying during the battle scene between the mice and the toy soldiers. She was my toy soldier. But she did really really well. She got me this cute little mouse figurine, her picture, and a nice little letter so I could remember her. And she wrapped it up in a nice little box. So in return, I got her this nice little toy horse ornament\wand thing and a card with a mouse on it. She’s the best toy soldier ever. After our final show, everyone wanted to leave quickly, and I lost track of Laura. But I pushed through the crowd and I found her on stage getting pictures taken. So I waited for her in the wings and and she came running to me and hugged me and said goodbye. It was so sad. She looked so disappointed that I was leaving. Such is the theater life, though. Maybe I’ll see her again all grown up someday.

The babydolls I had to carry out.

More babydolls.

Attack of the candy cane girls…

My 20 person shadow…

Ma Ginger. It was this dude on stilts and little children would come out from underneath his skirt and start dancing.

Me and Anna-Marie…one of my daughters.

Me and some of the dance girls.

Me and my toy soldier, Laura! She’s the bestest.

Me and some of my dance company girls and Laura.

Parrots during a performance. They went out of control and started doing their own thing. The staff on the wings were going nuts!

The Sugar Plum Fairy.

The final pose for the Nutcracker

Taylor and Sam being beautiful ballerinas.

Another really cute toy soldier.

She’s wearing my hat. Cute!

So speaking of growing up, I’m graduating in one week. Is that insane or what? I’ve got so much work to do too. I’ll keep everyone posted.

Holy freaking crap. My last entry was on Thanksgiving. I can hardly believe that all this time has passed already. This past week alone has been a blur. I feel like a walking zombie. So I finally have about an hour to sit down and relax and write here really quick before I get up and go at it again.

Oh my god. I looked at my schedule to figure out where I could start but it’s one really really big mess. My god I can’t believe I survived all that. Alright well, let’s start with last Thursday. I spent nearly all day in Bill’s studio filming commercials and doing general media conversion work for him. The commercials are actually pretty funny. Once I get them finished I’ll post them online.

Slept that night for about 3 hours really. Then got up really early to spend the weekend at the Seven Springs Ski Resort where I danced nearly all weekend. One, it was great to actually do some hardcore dance…well sort of hardcore. My entire body’s aching now. That Yodates class really kicked butt. And the jazz class I took was tons of fun. It’s great when total strangers come up to you and say they know who you are too just by your reputation alone. Lots of people commented on my work in breakdancing. Woohoo. Recognition. Secondly, I met quite a few of my really old high school buddies. One of them being Tim Sullivan who lives just a house away from me. Weird how he lives so close and yet I haven’t seen him for 3 years. I guess I’m just always too busy. The other was Matt DeChico. I played football with him in high school; he was a quarterback. Me and my dance company were sitting around a table and he came up to me and had to convince the girls that I really really did play football. But hey, sometimes I can’t believe I played football myself. I STILL have scars from some of those insane hits I took. And finally, it was just good to spend some time with the dance company I love so much. I haven’t hung out with anyone from dance practically all semester and it was just nice sitting up late at night in bed after dancing all day and talking and laughing with all the girls. Oh gosh, I seriously hated those beds though. It was like sleeping on a box. And I slept on a bottom bunk and the gap was just enough for me to get my body through and I would always hit my head off the bottom of the top bunk. It’s just so sad that I’m leaving all of them so soon. In fact just this past weekend, I think I’ve actually got closer to some of my friends than before. But I guess that since it’s coming down to the end, it’s easier to open up.

After nearly 3 years of preproduction, I finally launched the prototype for the Mindparticle Project just last night. How exciting is that!? Ever since Drew left, I thought I would never be able to finish it on my own. But I did! I mean there’s still a lot of work left, but it’s actually off the ground and something that people can actually SEE and HEAR. I’m going to have to admit that ever since he left, I sort of felt lost as to where to go with this thing and I completely lost confidence in myself and my faith in being able to finish this incredible project. It really took a lot of time, but finally during this semester, I sucked it up and finished the final stages of preproduction all on my own. I still can’t believe it myself sometimes. My trump card is finally starting to become a reality. While Drew showed me the path and motivated me, I realized that I really was the one making everything happen. I guess I just need to realize that more often.

Well this week is going to be absolute mayhem as well. The nice thing was that this morning, we unexpectedly had to present our final project in Human Computer Interaction today. I thought we were supposed to go Wednesday, but we went today instead. Luckily, things turned out well and the speakers in our group got it all finished and it seemed we got some pretty good feedback. So that’s out of the way! Thank god! So I’m DONE with HCI finally! Wow. Only my written TV production final, Business communication final and presentation, and my dance final to go and then I’ll be DONE WITH COLLEGE! AHHHH HOLY HECK! Cmon Howie, Focus and pull yourself together. You can do it. I have tech rehearsal for the Nutcracker all week until Saturday so I really have to step it up and find ways to get work done while I’m away from school for so long. I just need strength and support from all of you…all of my friends out there to carry me through this. I really need someone(s) to keep me motivated through all this. And I know everyone will. Thanks guys! Everyone. You all know who you are.