It’s the end of the semester, and you know what that means: It’s time to get screwed over by the VCU Bookstore! So I spent $400 on textbooks back in January. Today I went down to VCU and got a whopping $13.50 back in resale value. Half of my books wouldn’t be taken back because they’re proprietary, custom VCU books that have no value once used because they change every year. I have a big problem with that. That’s just ridiculous. I spent more money than that on cheese pies yesterday at the Lebanese Food Festival. I probably spent more than that getting my Xterra down there to the VCU Bookstore and back. Textbooks are a royal ripoff. Students such as myself are getting nothing short of scammed. It’s infuriating.
One year: With certain things, it seems like an eternity, and with others, it seems the blink of an eye. A year ago this month, I was finishing out my last days of high school. It seems like forever ago. I’ve changed and grown so much in so many different ways over the past year since I left Deep Run. More than anything, I’ve gained a true sense of identity for the first time in my life. I know who I am and am on the fast track to determining my purpose in life.
One of the biggest things I’ve discovered is what defines a true friend. Looking back on my high school days, I had many people in my life who kept me around simply because I was always there and someone to use as a backup plan for everything. I was always someone who was at everyone’s beckon call. I was way too available and never too busy to give anyone some time. I guess I’ve just always been a nice guy. Too nice. I was played like a fiddle.
I was always the one who someone would call when there was nothing better to do, and I was always fun to be around until someone better came along. I was the victim of one-sided friendships in which I put in all the effort and made all the plans. Now that’s not to say I didn’t have a group of real friends, because I always have. However, there were many people in my life who completely took advantage of me.
In recent months, I’ve kind of segued into a new core group of friends. They’re some of the most caring, compassionate, genuine, and sincere group of people I’ve ever met. It seems a lot of the people I put myself around in the past, and even some who are still friends to this very day, are just complete downers, are negative, or just hold me back in general. I find more and more after being around this positive, spiritual, forward thinking group I have now that some of the other people in my life are just dragging me down.
A true friend is someone who is genuinely interested in what’s on your mind and in your heart. They’re excited for you when you’re excited. They’re there for you when you’re down. They support your endeavors and dreams and build you up. That’s what I’ve found in this amazing group.
However, this has also given me great hindsight to see all the things true friends aren’t and to see all the negative influences that I’ve had in my life. They’re not just someone who sits impatiently as you’re speaking, thinking about what they’re going to say as you talk. They’re not someone who cares only about themselves or what you can do for them when they do nothing for you (oh I could write a book of stories on this one). They don’t get mad over things that don’t make sense and then choose not to talk to you when you make a genuine effort to resolve the so-called problem and even understand what silly thing they’re upset over in the first place (that’s immaturity if I’ve ever seen it). They don’t just expect you to be around at times of their choosing and then aren’t ever available themselves when you want to hang out. They don’t belittle you, constantly mock you, or talk behind your back. These are actual examples of some of the people who have been pulling me down in recent days. This post is just the beginning, too. I have some stories, going back to fifth grade, that I’d like to share with you in the near future that will really give you some insight into what happened that year that shaped me into the person I am today. Simply put, it was moving to Wyndham that year. Oh, the stories I have to share.
I have big dreams, goals, and plans for my life that I’m actually coming to the realization of. One long-time dream of mine is already coming true. It’s amazing to see it in reality. I guess you could say I’ve just started to realize what matters (and what really doesn’t) in life. It started a few months ago and I really feel I’ve entered a new chapter in my life. I’m so happy to have found friends who fit the new productive, goal-oriented lifestyle I’ve chosen to live and who build me up, not tear me down like so many people have in the past.
I’d say it’s time to weed out the garden, so to speak, in terms of who matches up with what I want my life to be and who just drags me through the mud. Sorry, those of you who I’m speaking to have done it long enough, and I refuse to live my life that way and be such a blatant fool any longer. I’m finally truely happy with where and what I am in life, and man it feels good to be in that place for once, after being beat down and defeated so many times in the past.
I went to see Made Of Honor the other night. The plot of this movie is pretty simple.
Tom (Patrick Dempsey) and Hannah (Michelle Monaghan) became best friends in college. Almost ten years later, after becoming absolutely inseparable, the two part ways when Hannah goes to Scotland for a six week period.
While she’s gone, Tom realizes how much she means to him and wants to tell her when she gets home. However, he’s horrified to find out she’s met a man on her trip and plans on marrying him. She subsequently asks him to be her maid of honor in the wedding. The plot unfolds around Tom’s plans to convince Hannah he’s the more worthy man.
This was a lighthearted comedy that was filled with smart humor and a great storyline. The character development is somewhat stagnant, but this was overall a great film.
Overall Rating:
I’ve been doing a whole lot of deep thinking lately, especially yesterday. I could write a full-fledged post on each topic, and I might do that with some of these at a later date, but I just wanted to share what’s been running through my head over the past week or so. These are all randomly-ordered questions, ponderings, discoveries, and thoughts I’ve had.
– You can’t change other people. You can only change yourself and be a positive example for others to follow.
– When you put God at the center of your life, everything else just falls into place exactly the way it’s supposed to.
– If you try to do too many things at once you won’t get anything done at all. Focusing on one thing will get you a lot farther.
– Why is it that practically everyone I know is in a relationship now, and all over the course of the past month?
– I’ll be getting to that point in a few years when everyone I know is starting to get married, and man, that seems unreal. When did I get to this age?
– I’ll be twenty in July? Twenty? Two decades down. Wow.
– I finally know exactly what I want and that I am once again ready to be in a relationship.
– Am I only good enough to talk to or does she (come on you didn’t think you were actually gonna get a name, did you?) actually want something more with me?
– Why am I always second best, and how do I change that?
– Sushi from the VCU Commons is great at the beginning of the week, but practically a biohazard by Friday.
– I need to nail down what I’m doing this Summer job-wise, and really soon.
– I need to decide on my major for sure by next Fall. Graphic Design, Mass Communications, Film, or Business?
– The old saying is absolutely right: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
– Running is a great stress reliever.
– Change is constant and life is fluid.
– There are two options: Get in the game or be left behind.
– I need to spend less money on eating out, and that would also help me with my goal of getting in shape.
– I’ve got an incredible group of friends who are more supportive, caring, and genuine than anyone else I’ve ever been around in my life.
– I need to stop making this list and go get ready to head to VCU for my second-to-the-last day of classes.
Glad I got all that out. I feel a lot better now! Comment and share your thoughts.
A big congratulations goes out to Ashley Crossman, winner of Miss Virginia 2008! She’s the sister of one of my friends at VCU, and I had the privilege of designing her an ad for inclusion in the pageant program and other uses. Many of her sponsors were local businesses in her hometown of Montross, Virginia and had no logos for use, so I designed the majority of them. It was a lot of fun creating this and working with her. She’s incredibly nice, very talented, and is beautiful on the inside as well as out. She’s extremely deserving of her win. Here’s the ad I created for her in preparation for the pageant:
WARNING: Spoiler Review! If you haven’t seen this movie and plan on it, you’ve been warned.
I went to see the movie Smart People last night. Dennis Quaid stars as Lawrence Wetherhold, widowed, a self-centered, slightly arrogant English professor at Carnegie Mellon University. After jumping a fence at a university impoundment lot to get a briefcase out of his car, he injures himself and ends up in the hospital. There he meets a former student of his, played by Sarah Jessica Parker.
After a few awkward incidents, he finally asks her out on a date. He proceeds to drive her away on their first date, though, after talking about a book he’s writing for forty-five minutes without letting her get a single word in. He then goes back to the ER to ask her for one more chance, and the second date goes much better.
He ends up finding a publisher for his new book and decides to bring her along to New York City for the meeting. She ends up getting pregnant and tries to tell him, but he’s being too arrogant and unapproachable to notice. They end up together and relatively happy in the end, though.
Ellen Page, star of last year’s hugely successful film Juno, plays Quaid’s daughter and provides comic relief, along with Thomas Haden Church, who plays his adopted, sedentary, do-nothing brother. They do little more than lighten the mood, though. Their characters both remain very stagnant and have hardly any dimension to them throughout the duration of the film.
If you like movies such as The Family Stone, you’ll probably enjoy this film, but will probably also notice the lack of a dynamic story line or character development. Overall, though, I really didn’t think it was a bad film at all.
Overall Rating:
Well this is a new one. I can’t count how many times people have thought my name was Travis (though I still don’t understand why that’s such a common thing that happens to me, because honestly I haven’t really met any more people named Travis than Trevor in my lifetime, but I digress). Well this morning at the Cabell Library Starbucks at VCU, I ordered my usual pick-me-up, a grande nonfat Chai Tea Latte. They ask for your name with your order at this particular location because it’s so incredibly busy, and the lady asked mine twice because I guess she couldn’t hear me. But I ended up with Thomas on my cup. I don’t know I just found that interesting. How in the world do you get Thomas from Trevor? Yet more proof that I really don’t exist, especially at VCU, like I posted about a few weeks earlier. Thought I’d snap a quick picture of it. Too funny.
VCU Police made complete fools out of themselves tonight with me, Allie, and Katelin. We were walking back to our cars in a VCU lot when all of a sudden three VCU cops on bikes roll up to my car and surround me. It was two men and one woman. They violated several of my rights and made complete idiots out of themselves. It was seriously like something off of Reno 911! (The woman cop almost kind of looked like the one from the show) It would almost be funny how ridiculous they were if it didn’t insult me so much the way they treated us. Here’s how the conversation went down:
POLICEMAN 1: “How are you this evening, sir? How much you had to drink tonight?”
ME: “Uh, nothing at all?”
POLICEMAN 1: “Why don’t you go ahead and step out of the car, sir. You were walking a little funny back there.” (I was walking a little funny? I was walking the way I always walk, and if you really want to investigate a real problem, go across the street to the hundreds of people at the Hyperlink waiting to get in the door and check them out because it definitely smelled like pot and everyone was running around and making a racket)
POLICEWOMAN: “There’s three of them, let me take one.”
POLICEMAN 2: “Shut up, I can handle this.” (I’m seriously not making this stuff up)
POLICEWOMAN: “Somebody’s been drinking, this place reeks of alcohol.”
ME: “Um, no, I haven’t had anything at all…”
POLICEWOMAN: “Yeah? What’s that under your seat?” (She points to an empty soft drink can wedged under my front seat, I pull it out, and she actually has the nerve to question it further)
ME: “I just need to clean out my car, I left that in there…”
POLICEWOMAN: “What did you have in that can and why is it empty?”
ME: “Root beer? It’s a soft drink can…” (She looks at it all suspiciously)
POLICEMAN 1: “Okay I’m gonna check your eyes out here real quick.” (He pulls out a pen and tells me to follow it with my eyes without moving my head) “What do you wear contacts for?” (You’ve got to be kidding me; what a stupid question… what do you think contacts are for?)
ME: “Farsightedness?” (I look at him in with that “Did you really just ask me that question, you idiot?” look)
POLICEMAN 2: “So do you have astigmatism or something?” (Oh come on)
ME: “Yes?”
POLICEMAN 1: “So has your passenger been drinking tonight?”
ME: “No, not at all.” (I later found out that while all of this was going on the policewoman was on the other side of the car questioning Allie and accusing us of hiding beer in a CVS bag in my back seat that had nothing in it but toothpaste and shampoo that I bought before we went down there)
POLICEMAN 1: “Okay, you’re good to go.”
Finally, we were free to go. I feel that several of our rights were violated in this situation:
1. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe you can legally search someone’s vehicle without a warrant to find things that are not in plain view.
2. What was their probable cause? The fact that I was, in one of the cop’s opinions, “walking a little funny?” I was walking completely normal.
I’d also really like to know what in the world he was doing asking me why I wore contacts and was offended that he asked “how much” I had been drinking when the correct thing to ask would have been “have you had anything to drink tonight.” I do realize that they see a lot go on down there and have to be weary, but they completely jumped to conclusions and were accusatory to the point of being very unprofessional. They were poorly coordinated, argued amongst one another, and seemed to be on major power trips. They also completely fabricated several things, the biggest being that my car “reeked of alcohol.” There wasn’t, nor had there ever been, alcohol in my car, so I was completely bewildered, offended, and angry that they would make up such a blatant lie.
I was offended at how the situation was handled and feel that VCU Police are not doing a satisfactory job at all. I can’t speak for all VCU officers, but the unprofessional and unskilled behavior of this group leads me so far as to say that their salaries (that group specifically) are a waste of Virginia taxpayers’ money.
I feel this is something that needs to be shared, so pass it along.
I’m really starting to question my own existence. Yesterday was just my final proof that I don’t really live in this world. I guess I’m in some alternate reality or some crap like that. Okay, so I’m just being a tad bit sarcastic as usual, but it always seemed funny to me how I was left off of any and all lists that my name could be on. It’s not that no one thinks I exist, just anyone related to any educational establishment, apparently. Deep Run and VCU.
It started my Freshman year of high school. I had purchased a yearbook, but for some reason the lists at the end of the year had absolutely no indication that I had ever paid for one. The next year, when the student information sheets that everyone in the entire Henrico County Public Schools system receives to verify and update name, address, and other contact information, I didn’t get one, and they said they weren’t sure if there was a record of me in their information database. They had one somewhere and finally figured it out, but how’s that for strange?
Well, yesterday was my final indication in case I needed any more proof that I do not exist on this earth, at least according to any educational entity. I was at the Alpine Bagel Company inside the commons at VCU trying to grab a bagel before class. Not so much to ask, right? Well I guess I was wrong. The girl looked me straight in the face and took my order, I paid for it, and then she forgot she was supposed to make mine. After waiting for ten minutes while seemingly fifty more people were served who were in line behind me, she apologized and said my bagel was coming right up. Well, apparently it slipped her mind again and she served a few more people before I walked up to the counter and watched her make the freaking thing. I was like one of those dumb magic shows on prime time TV where they’re like “Watch closely as Veronica is sawed in half; this camera will not cut away…”. I barely blinked as she smeared cream cheese on my bagel until it was nestled safely in my hands.
So I wanted my typical Chai Tea Latte from Starbucks to go with it. I walked over to the Cabell Library to get my fix of my favorite drink, and, yep you guessed it, repeat situation. They forgot me once there, which I guess is a better track record than the bagel place, but wow. I’m gonna have to start lighting traffic flares from on top of my head and wave around sparklers or something to make sure people know I’m around I guess. Maybe a flashing LED “Trevor needs food just like everyone else in line” wouldn’t hurt, either. I’ll just wear it around my forehead or something.
Well, I’m shipping out my MacBook Pro to Apple’s repair headquarters in Texas today to get fixed (I’m taking it to the Apple Store and they’re taking care of the shipping). Ever since I’ve had it (last June) it’s never gone to sleep right. When you close a Mac, it’s supposed to go into sleep mode and keep all your applications running and ready to go when you open the lid again, but my computer was born a rebel and decided against going with the status quo. Whenever I close it, the screen goes to sleep, but the computer keeps running and overheats, in turn draining the battery. This is especially fun when I’m at VCU and it starts burning up in my backpack and, here’s the best part of all, the battery is dead by the time I need to use it again because it decided to keep running. The thing has a personality of its own, I’m telling you.
I also dropped it on a video shoot recently where it was used as a prop (I was the one that dropped it, everyone calm down; despite what it may have inadvertently sounded like in one of my previous posts, no one from the church video team is to blame for anything). The case was dented in the corner and the slot-loading disc drive is hard to load now, so I’m most likely getting the entire aluminum case replaced, depending on the cost. The sleep issue is covered by the AppleCare three year extended warranty I bought, but accidental damage such as my casing is most likely not covered by the plan.
I’ve backed everything up via Mac OS X Leopard’s Time Machine feature onto my 1TB hard drive, and post-dated all of my blog entries to automatically show up on my blog on the day specified (I didn’t know you could even do this until recently; pretty cool). I’ve posted a few new entries (albeit smaller and simpler) for the upcoming week and will post a few more throughout the week via Utterz and/or my iPhone. Hey, I’m in Blog 365, I’ve gotta do it! My Mac should be back by next weekend.