Dear Skeletor,

It annoyed me a little that it took such a short amount of time for the DJ to butcher Mr. Haught's name, but it was still pretty cool that she even did it. We passed under part of the Brooklyn Bridge that had been scraped up that morning by a crane passing under it on another boat and it looked pretty neat. We got to the Statue of Liberty and stopped for fifteen minutes or so, turned around, and passed it even closer than the first time, then headed back for the pier. By this time I was really tired and just wanted to get to the hotel and go to bed. Eventually, I did just that. The next day, we woke up bright and early and got breakfast. Their continental breakfast was a joke, and I just didn't eat anything and went back upstairs to clean myself up. We got on the bus and went on a tour of the city. Our tour guide was very loud and annoying. I managed to fall asleep, and when I woke up, the bus was empty. I lay awake wondering where everybody was at and Drew, Dylan, Mickey, and Spencer made their way back on the bus. Parking purposes caused the bus to move, and we went on an approximately twenty minute joy ride around town just to look at different things while the bus driver tried to make his way back to where the group was for their bathroom break. Well, I'll tell you more about it later. Actually, not really

Dear Skeletor,

I'm just going to resume my story earlier from where I left off. The second time he made it was in an old warehouse and you saw it collapse into the river in the movie. This warehouse we passed looked the same, and some other buildings were recognizable from that movie, even though a lot of it wasn't filmed in New York. I just wandered around on my own because I was getting a little bored of the cruise already. I went through the ships floors several times and stopped for a short talk on each floor before moving on to the next. There was a dance on the second floor, but I didn't really feel up to it, I need to be in the right kind of mood. I was on the top floor watching the traffic on shore when Tyler Monroe said something about getting Mr. Haught a shoutout for Pi Day- March 14th. I said I'd go with him because we had just heard a long list of things that the DJ had read off welcoming and congratulating and everything. We went down and waited for quite some time. The DJ was teaching everybody the dances to particular songs and we had trouble finding an opening, but she finally came back. We said it was to Mr. Haught several times and that it was Pi Day, but she wrote it down and less than five seconds later wished Mr. Howt a happy Pi Day. Well, you'll get my reaction the next time I write, its late and I can't finish right now.

Dear Skeletor,

I left off with the dinner cruise last time. I think we were on Pier 9 exports or something, but I could be wrong about it, I don't remember the details very well now. We got pictures taken before even getting near the cruise ship, and waited in line for a couple minutes until they let us board. On the cruise, we ate a pretty good dinner. Well, everyone else ate, I just sat there and tried to get my glass to sing by getting the edge a little wet and spinning my finger around the rim. It worked for a little bit, but I never really got it to do what I wanted it to do. I wasn't hungry. I don't know why I wasn't, but I just wasn't. Perhaps if the line wasn't so long I would have made myself eat something, but the wait up there didn't look like fun. Anyway, after the food, music was playing upstairs and on the top floor on the deck, a lot of people were just watching New York after dark. I am thoroughly convinced that I saw the warehouse used by Dr. Otto Octavius from Spiderman 2. This is the place that held his failed experiment that was supposed to stabilize a fusion reaction with tritium and something else. It was like a miniature sun that he tried to control and he lost control of it both times he made it. Dang! I lost track of time. I have to go I'll write back soon.

Dear Skeletor,

This is nearly the last time I will write to you. The other two will not be read by anybody, so I am not counting them as true entries to you. This will be my goodbye to you, even though it is really the fourth to last entry. It has been a long year, and I am glad it is finally over. I am ready to move on and get my life started. I have my summer mostly planned out, and next fall's registration is on its way. I have a couple factory jobs that I can potentially get hired at, but if all else fails, I will stay at McDonald's just to guarantee I have a job. Who knows? Maybe I will still work there on the weekends just to stay on the payroll there and come back for winters when factories don't need their temporary workers. Hopefully I can start building credit with a credit card and possibly start paying for a house this summer as well. I want to start simply investments as well, probably just five year cd's with my tax returns or something. I want to move out really badly, but I'm not sure if it will work out financially. I feel like if I move out, we will be pressed for cash, but if I live at home I will have more money than I know what to do with it. I could easily be wrong on both situations, but I do appreciate how much it will cost to move out and live independently. Well, that's probably a good summary of the first year or so after high school. I guess this is the final goodbye.

Dear Skeletor,

When I wrote last, we just got to Katie's house. She and her sister took care of the dogs and she drove me back to Hicksville High School where my car was parked. We both drove back to my house, and after a little bit she went back home. The next day, we both got up bright and early, I drove over to her house to pick her up, and we went off to Paulding High School to officiate their tournament. We got there and changed and waited for about an hour for things to start. I talked to some of the Hicksville people there and just watched the little guys warm up. That tournament was pretty small with about 165 wrestlers. Two matches stuck out in my mind from that day. The first was between a very large, burly guy that looked to be in his forties and a guy about my size, but a bit older. The big guy won easily, but they were both just having fun. The other was between two Ayersville guys I know. It was sort of one-sided, but I liked this one because they were friends just messing around too. I was laughing throughout both of these matches. Katie and I got our checks and stopped by McDonald's before going home. After that, I drove her to my house and we sat around and watched t.v., and I worked on homework a little, until I took her home. It was a long weekend, but I had a lot of fun, and even made a little money.

Dear Skeletor,

Where I last left off in Columbus, we were finding seats for finals. Katie had a nice little group to keep track of. She had to look after her little brother and sister, and there was another small group of Wayne Trace kids sitting nearby. This was a bit of a hassle, but we got everybody a seat either in the row I was in or the one right in front of us. One of the workers tried to kick us out of our seats unless we had tickets for those particular ones, and everybody who didn't have a ticket for that section left. Then they came back less than five minutes later and the guy left us alone. I don't think he even noticed it was the same kids, just sitting in a different order. Davis walked in laughing because everybody else had the same idea he had and he thought the worker was stupid for expecting us not to come back. Anyway, I watched Cade Mansfield win his first State Title, and Cody become State Runner Up. Mika Jordan, a very good division two wrestler, tech falled his opponent to take his second State Title as a sophomore. Right after Cody's match, Katie and I left with her sister. I tried to find Cody, but he was kept down on the floor for awards so I wasn't able to congratulate him before we left. After a 3 hour drive, we pulled into Katie's driveway. I need to finish this later, but the last installment in this series is coming soon.

Dear Skeletor,

They were so blunt about how cheap the place was about the prizes that it was pretty funny. Anyway, after that we just loaded up and started the long drive home. By then, the swaying and bouncing of the bus seemed normal for me and I only lasted until about 9:30. Before I fell asleep, we stopped at the same McDonald's we ate breakfast at on Wednesday morning. I ran over to the Pizza Hut Express and got a personal pan pizza and breadsticks. It came with a drink, but theirs tasted too watery so I capitalized on a deal on Powerade. It was more than I needed, but it was a pretty good deal. I was out of it until we went through Edgerton, and I was awake until we got off the bus again. When I went home, I laid down on the couch to get some sleep before officiating a wrestling tournament later that day. I couldn't sleep because the couch wasn't moving the way the bus did, I wasn't used to sleeping on a stationary surface. All in all, I did have a good time on the trip and I want to go back sometime this summer. I definitely want to go back to Chinatown because of all the different things they had for sale. A couple kids got swords while we were there, who knows what you can find? For all I know, there is a genuine Rolex watch in a Chinaman's pocket and he might be trying to sell it for cheap thinking its fake. He might be ignorant to its real value, and I might get a really good price for a luxury watch. Anyway, I don't know if this is my last journal or not, but it concludes my New York story.

Dear Skeletor,

Drew and I wondered what the pizza was like there and decided to order one. We weren't that hungry, but we had never ordered pizza from anywhere in the Big Apple and we both heard that there isn't really anything like New York pizza. When we finally got it, it was huge. The pieces were about twice as big as the ones back at home. It was a nice way to end our last full day in New York. The best part was that I wasn't hungry the next morning, because their breakfast didn't improve since the last day. We got on our bus, loaded all our luggage up again, and for Spencer, Mickey, David and I it was back to NBC studios for a tour. Our tour guide was goofy and reminded me of Amir Blumenfeld from College Humor. He was pretty goofy and made the tour pretty entertaining. When we left NBC we went to Bubba Gump's for our final meal in New York. It was the best meal on that trip, and the staff made it fun for our group while we waited for all of our food to be made. They did a trivia game where you got lame prizes for answering easy questions about the movie Forrest Gump. The waiters and waitresses knew they were dumb prizes and they said sarcastic things like “Here you go, you won this pencil! I know its a crappy prize but its all I have.” I'll tell you more about the Bubba Gump staff the next time I write, I need to get ready to go to Coronation Practice.

Dear Skeletor,

It was raining outside, but not too hard. It was just a light misty kind of rain, but the wind was blowing and that made it much colder. We got to the theater about a half an hour early and had to stand out in the rain the whole time. Once the doors opened, we all filed in and wait then turned and went and got our tickets verified or something, went up a flight of stairs, turned and walked a short distance to some more stairs, and at the top of these we turned and waited outside the actual room where we would be sitting to watch the play. Downstairs the teachers just handed the tickets to us while we were in line, so whoever you were standing by is who you would be sitting by for the play. I was sitting by Spencer and Drew. I liked the performance, but the theater workers were too strict on enforcing the rules about no phones on or cameras out. At intermission, I finally stretched my legs a little bit, but soon it started again. It was a long time since I had seen the Lion King movie, so I didn't catch any of the different things, but some people were talking about them. After the play, we walked back to the hotel with nothing interesting occurring. After we got upstairs and changed, the four of us just sort of chilled for a while until we got sleepy. I'll finish our night the next time I write.

Dear Skeletor,

We stood there and waited, saw her across the street and remembered her warning that if police show up, we don't know her and she doesn't know us. We worked out their system, they had two look outs, one found people, one kept lookout, the finder brought the “menu” and a third did the exchange while the other two looked out. We left Chinatown for the subway and made it back in time to get ready for the play. I just showered and tried to iron my clothes again, but I was low on time so I just put them on. I wore my watch hoping to find a place that could adjust the band to fit me but I already have that taken care of. I figured out how to do it a couple days after I got home from the trip. Anyway, we walked down the street and around the corner to this nice place where we ate dinner. This place was either two or three stories tall and it was a pretty nice restaurant. Once we got done eating, we went to leave but Mr. Kuhlman wouldn't let us leave so we almost sat back down. The bus boys had already wiped down the table and taken our plates so we just stood there and talked about our adventures for a while. It wasn't long before we left for the theater. I'll tell you more about the trip to the theater in a little bit.

Dear Skeletor,

They pointed us towards it and we went on our way. Eventually, we found the area we wanted, although it wasn't the area we had been in earlier. It wasn't a big deal, they all sold the same things anyway. We stood there talking to a lady and looking at sunglasses while a cop walked by and she turned away from us and we faked taking a picture. After he passed she came back and we told her which ones we wanted and she brought them back. We paid her and got our sunglasses, asked for more, and she went and got them. Her return was slower with each trip away from us. When she did come back, she gave Austin a pair free because they had a scratch. I bought them off of him because he did pay more for his glasses than the others and I liked how they looked, and the scratch was really small and up in the top corner by the frame so it was out of the way. Then we told her we wanted watches and she brought us a paper that had their inventory on it. I saw a green one and I asked if it was a lady's watch and she said yeah and I said I'd take that for $30 and she took the others' orders and left and someone later walked us down to the corner. I can't keep going right now, I need to study for a quiz. I'll continue this in a little bit.

Dear Skeletor,

He must have been waiting for a call from a teacher saying they were ready or something because we just drove around, not really staying in the area. Eventually, everybody got back on the bus and we went off to Chinatown. That was by far my favorite place. I got some nice Avaitors for $5 and a nice looking fake rolex watch for $30. After a while, I think the people had made enough for that day because they kept turning people away that were trying to haggle for lower prices. By the end of it, Spencer was turned away for trying to get a watch similar to mine for the same price, they said they wouldn't go lower than forty. We left and went back to the hotel, where we were told we would have free time until we went to eat right before going to the Lion King. Cody, Christian, Spencer, Austin and I all went back to Chinatown. We were walking towards it and somebody mentioned a cab and another said the subway. One guy crossed the street and pointed us in the right direction after we told him where we wanted to go. In the subway itself, a guy helped us figure out how to buy tickets, and another told us which train to get on to. We wandered around the streets trying to find Chinatown again, and after a long time we asked this couple who looked not much older than us for directions. I'll tell you more later.

Dear Skeletor,

It annoyed me a little that it took such a short amount of time for the DJ to butcher Mr. Haught's name, but it was still pretty cool that she even did it. We passed under part of the Brooklyn Bridge that had been scraped up that morning by a crane passing under it on another boat and it looked pretty neat. We got to the Statue of Liberty and stopped for fifteen minutes or so, turned around, and passed it even closer than the first time, then headed back for the pier. By this time I was really tired and just wanted to get to the hotel and go to bed. Eventually, I did just that. The next day, we woke up bright and early and got breakfast. Their continental breakfast was a joke, and I just didn't eat anything and went back upstairs to clean myself up. We got on the bus and went on a tour of the city. Our tour guide was very loud and annoying. I managed to fall asleep, and when I woke up, the bus was empty. I lay awake wondering where everybody was at and Drew, Dylan, Mickey, and Spencer made their way back on the bus. Parking purposes caused the bus to move, and we went on an approximately twenty minute joy ride around town just to look at different things while the bus driver tried to make his way back to where the group was for their bathroom break. Well, I'll tell you more about it later.

Dear Skeletor,

I'm just going to resume my story earlier from where I left off. The second time he made it was in an old warehouse and you saw it collapse into the river in the movie. This warehouse we passed looked the same, and some other buildings were recognizable from that movie, even though a lot of it wasn't filmed in New York. I just wandered around on my own because I was getting a little bored of the cruise already. I went through the ships floors several times and stopped for a short talk on each floor before moving on to the next. There was a dance on the second floor, but I didn't really feel up to it, I need to be in the right kind of mood. I was on the top floor watching the traffic on shore when Tyler Monroe said something about getting Mr. Haught a shoutout for Pi Day- March 14th. I said I'd go with him because we had just heard a long list of things that the DJ had read off welcoming and congratulating and everything. We went down and waited for quite some time. The DJ was teaching everybody the dances to particular songs and we had trouble finding an opening, but she finally came back. We said it was to Mr. Haught several times and that it was Pi Day, but she wrote it down and less than five seconds later wished Mr. Howt a happy Pi Day. Well, you'll get my reaction the next time I write, its late and I can't finish right now.

Dear Skeletor,

I left off with the dinner cruise last time. I think we were on Pier 9 exports or something, but I could be wrong about it, I don't remember the details very well now. We got pictures taken before even getting near the cruise ship, and waited in line for a couple minutes until they let us board. On the cruise, we ate a pretty good dinner. Well, everyone else ate, I just sat there and tried to get my glass to sing by getting the edge a little wet and spinning my finger around the rim. It worked for a little bit, but I never really got it to do what I wanted it to do. I wasn't hungry. I don't know why I wasn't, but I just wasn't. Perhaps if the line wasn't so long I would have made myself eat something, but the wait up there didn't look like fun. Anyway, after the food, music was playing upstairs and on the top floor on the deck, a lot of people were just watching New York after dark. I am thoroughly convinced that I saw the warehouse used by Dr. Otto Octavius from Spiderman 2. This is the place that held his failed experiment that was supposed to stabilize a fusion reaction with tritium and something else. It was like a miniature sun that he tried to control and he lost control of it both times he made it. Dang! I lost track of time. I have to go I'll write back soon.

Dear Skeletor,

Watch this video! Its one of my all time favorites. Guess what its about! I'd think it would be pretty simple to figure it out, but I'll give you one guess. Spencer found this a couple years ago in study hall and we watched it over and over because it was just an instant classic. There will probably be more entries along these lines, but its better than nothing. I'm going to try to post the actual file on this blog, but I don't have the video downloaded right now, so the link will have to do. I'm also not entirely sure this is the video that I meant to post, but I'm checking it as soon as I can. I'm at school right now, so I'll have to wait a few hours (6 to be exact) before I get the chance, but I plan on staying at the school after hours to lift with a group of wrestlers because I haven't done anything to get in shape, and after that I may or may not go to Defiance to see my girlfriend, who cleans apartments there. I've gone over there several times to help her clean and just keep her company. Now, back to the video. I've loved this video since I first saw it because I just watched it and wondered who could spend so much time doing something so pointless and silly. Personally, I've edited videos and this would have taken some time, even though it is the same clips rearranged throughout the video. This person had a lot of time on their hands just with the editing, let alone the song and lyrics that went with it. All I have to say now is "Its a cat.....meow" and somebody will usually answer with "flushing a toilet!" Those days were a lot of fun. We could just mess around in study hall and have no worries about anything besides getting websites blocked because we've been on them too much and got caught by Mr. Shaffer. I miss those days, because now I have to worry about distributing my time among work, school, wrestling, getting to football games, enjoying senior year, the girlfriend, physics projects, and the all important senior project. Oh well, that's a part of growing up I guess. I'm going to head out now, I'll write again soon.

Dear Skeletor,

I'm thinking about giving you a name, but I'm not quite sure what name to give you. I'm kind of leaning away from the normal every day names like Tom or Frank. I've named my flash drive Achmed because I had some downloaded files on it and Achmed seemed like a bit of an overestimate as to how illegal it could have been. I mean, its sort of poking fun at the people who spend their lives finding illegal files on people's computers while there's still the trouble going on in the middle east with all the different religious disputes and the organized terrorists just trying to get some attention. So Achmed is out of the question, and I named my external hard drive as well, but we won't get into that right now. I might start looking through baby names and see what comes up, but putting that much effort into naming my journal seems a little pointless. My friend suggested God, but he said he was probably going to use that for his, and I don't want to take his idea. Frau gave me the idea of making it a hermaphrodite and I like that idea more than thinking of you as one gender or the other. So now I need a transgender name for you. Another idea that occurred to me is to use a past name, perhaps royalty or, as I just overheard Tyler Monroe say, Mufasa or Simba. I'm going to name you after our waiter at Golden Corral from our visit for wrestling my sophomore year. As Brian thanked him, he addressed him as Sir Nicholas. I have Drew to thank for reminding me of this visit.

Dear Skeletor,

It took me a while just to figure out how to write this journal entry. I'm still a little uneasy about it, because I remember in previous years how it wouldn't save and I would have to redo entire pages because of some tiny error that erased hours of work. Even now I've saved it, and copied all the words and checked that they're all still there when I leave this page and come back. When that happened, it usually was followed by a very low grade from Ms. Retcher (now Mrs. Bostleman). It was Ms. Retcher when I had her as a teacher, but she got married last year and she is now Mrs. Bostleman, but it hasn't changed her much besides she has also had a kid since then. I'm not totally sure how these are supposed to be formatted either, but as they are called journal entries I suppose I may as well address it to a Journal, even though Mrs. Fleming is the one actually reading it. Because it is addressed to a Journal, I'm going to use my first one to discuss the assignment of writing these journal entries, which I think will be rather easy grades as long as I put the time in to do them right and not to rush through them shortly before they're to be turned in. The one thing I'm looking to get out of this is to become a faster typist, because just writing for the sake of writing doesn't seem like it would be very helpful, and coming up with twelve topics every so often to write about doesn't seem too likely, and by the end of all this, I might have some very pathetic topics just out of lack of ideas. Oh well, I'm sure I'm not the only one to ever fall short on topics for this assignment. Well, I'm about done with this entry, seeing as I only needed about 250 words and, excluding the address and closing, I'm now at 339.

Dear Skeletor,

As I said earlier, the papers that Mr. Kuhlman gave us were maps. They had an address on them, an actual map, and directions on how to get there. We went to where the map told us to go and I was pretty impressed at first because this building was really big and looked really nice. It did not, however, have the right name on it to be our hotel. It turns out that the map took us to NBC studios. We wandered back onto 5th Avenue and walked back, around, and still ended up at the same place. After a little arguing, we found some other people from our class and walked with them around a corner and saw a ways ahead that our class was standing outside a dark, tall building with scaffolding standing in front of it. That was our hotel. I wasn't as impressed with this one. When we got our rooms and went up to them, Drew, Spencer, Mickey and I were happy to see that we were the only ones on the fourth floor. We later found out that wasn't true, but it was pretty cool at the time. We were told what time to be ready for the dinner cruise and we all took showers and got ready for it. I saw the clothes I had packed were wrinkled and realized that I didn't know how to iron clothes. I got out the ironing board and Drew told me to make sure there was water in the iron. There was, and I tried it out. Either I'm not that good at it or I was missing something, but the clothes didn't look as good as before I packed them. I didn't have anything to shave with, so I just let my face look scruffy for the rest of the trip and let it go. I was one of the few to wear a shirt and tie, and most people were wearing the sunglasses they bought at the stands on the corners. We waited around for everybody to get down, Spencer and I ran up to the 12th and final floor and back down, and we were loading up on the bus and heading out for the dinner cruise. Well, that's all I got for now.

Dear Skeletor,

After breakfast, we continued our drive towards New York. We hit up the MetLife stadium where the Giants and Jets play, and that was pretty neat. The tour guide for that had a strong Jersey accent and I thought it was kind of funny because it seemed like she was faking it sometimes but I don't know for sure. We spent a lot of time at MetLife stadium and after that we went to eat lunch. The place that we went to was sort of small, but it being a two story building, we got the entire upstairs to ourselves. Their food was pretty good, but they ran out before long. The waiters and waitresses were also very busy. I don't think they knew just how many people were coming with us. As soon as we were done eating, we drove to Central Park. The buildings and landscape we saw on the way were like nothing I've ever seen before. The buildings weren't quite as tall as I was thinking, but I guess my expectations were pretty high. I think I overestimated the height of the city, but it was definitely bigger than I thought. As we were approaching Central Park and the place where we would be dropped off at, Mr. Kuhlman was telling us how to get to the hotel. Our hotel was called The Hotel at Times Square. I couldn't hear Mr. Kuhlman, and I assumed that the papers he was handing out were maps to the hotel. Well, I was partly right, and we'll talk about that later because those papers did have maps on them. Spencer, Mickey, David and I walked around New York on our own for a little while. We stopped at a couple stands and bought sunglasses, and walked into some stores like what we have in the mall, except these were huge. The Hollister store was at least three stories. After exploring the few stores that did spark our interest, we decided to try and find the hotel. This was where things got a little interesting.