Easterobbers.

This weekend started weird and only got weirder as it went on.

With an exception...Friday afternoon I learned I will definitely be able to graduate with two degrees. For once I've done something good this semester. I might have to take summer school if my petition doesn't fly with the College of Liberal Arts, but I'm walking in May.

Friday night was an attempt to have fun downtown. It was okay. However, by the end of the night one of us (not me) was too intoxicated. It was a messy drunkenness. The four of us got back to Andrew/Lauren apartment complex. We thought Lauren was still downtown and we noticed a guy smoking a cigarette in front of her door. It was weird, but nothing against the law. Then we saw him walk into her apartment, even weirder. We got worried and called her, but it turned out she was already in there with another friend. Meanwhile, the night dragged on while we waited for this friend to calm down and return home.

The next day was wasted sleeping until the afternoon. Andrew and I decided to go to Lake Travis, but first we needed pizza. Then shaved ice. By the time we were leaving for the lake it was around 6PM. I thought we could at least see the sunset--looking on the positive side of things.

While we were on our way there my mom called me and informed me that my gerbil, Olive, who's been sick for a long time, finally died. My mom went upstairs and saw that there had been a bloodbath in the cage. Apparently a large tumor on Olive's stomach had exploded. Basically, my gerbil blew up. According to my mom it was very bloody and there was a hole in Olive's body. My sister, who was visiting my mom at the time, said it looked like Olive got run over. My mom threw the whole cage away because nothing could be salvaged. Olive was old and had already had a stroke. He hobbled around and couldn't really see or hear. It's probably better he finally died, but in such a terrible way, it's so sad. I know that if I'd been there I would have cried when I saw it. Now I'm just down to one hamster.

Back to the lake story. We'd taken Andrew's car. He started to notice that it felt like the clutch was going out. We didn't worry about it too much. However, we got to big hill and it started slowing down. I know very little about cars and at that point even I could tell something was so wrong. It died on the hill. Luckily his AAA saved us. We got towed back to his apartment.

Now it's Saturday night. Nothing is going on. It felt like a Monday night. Then we realized it was Easter weekend. We ate left over pizza, rode around on a skateboard, looked up funny pictures of Hillary and Obama and tried to think of something to do. We were going to make a fire in my backyard so we walked to my house. At my house we ate pita and hummus and watched part of Saturday Night Live while I read some funny excerpts from my journals from high school. Finally we decided we had to leave for some energy. We drank coffee at Epoch. Mine tasted like Spain. Then we went back to Andrew's again to see Lauren. She went to bed and we had to leave again because there was nothing to do. We went to the store to buy crayons but it was closed because of Easter. We finally bought 64 colors at CVS, went to my house and drew on big pieces of paper until I crashed from the extreme caffeine buzz.

Today we had plans to try to go back to Lake Travis in my slightly more dependable car. We made biscuits in the kitchen. Maybe they were Easter biscuits; they were Grands. Wow. Yum. My roommate left right before we did to go eat Easter with her family. We left at about 2:15PM and got out of control trying to find a place to enjoy Lake Travis. By 3PM we finally found something and my phone started ringing. I noticed it was my other roommate but since I was driving I let it go to voicemail. I listened to the voicemail on speakerphone and as soon as I heard it I pulled over. It just said to "call back right away." Scott's tone of voice scared me. It wasn't messing around. I KNEW something was wrong. I tried to remember if I turned off the oven (YES)...if I locked the front door (YES). When I called him he said someone kicked in our back door and that I needed to come home right away. I asked if stuff had been taken and he said "Oh yeah." Expletives all over the place. I immediately thought of my laptop. Life without a computer is not worth living for me. I called my parents, whimpered and whined, swore some more. Started imagining what they could have taken. I have a few valuable things, but for the most part my room is a collection of different things that only have value to me. Artifacts from my life. A bunch of clothes. A few electronics. A hamster. There's not much some thieves could want. I worried anyway.

When I got back I felt like I got out of the car before it even stopped. Scott said he hadn't been in my room. I ran up there and saw my shining, white laptop. I hugged and kissed it. All my stuff was spared! I live tucked away in the attic and I guess they hadn't made it up there. It was a selfish Easter miracle for me, but I still had to think about the rest of the house and my poor roommates. They mostly took stuff from our living/dining room and the extra bedroom that's like an office. Scott had thousands stolen, mostly videogame stuff, DVDs, music stuff and his expensive toolbox of tools. My other roommate had her laptop stolen. The police came over and dusted for fingerprints and got all our information. Someone had already called the police about suspicious activity...that suspicious activity had been in our backyard. Apparently they his the stuff in our backyard which attaches to a little road/alley. Then they got a car and loaded it all in. This is when the neighbor saw them. It was a couple of Hispanic males in a crappy car. I talked to the neighbor later and he said they looked like "scary ex-cons" with shaved heads. It makes me shiver.

The scariest part of this whole thing is that someone was paying attention to our habits or watching us. Then, that people were in our home. Scary people that we don't know. I walk around my house now thinking of all the easy ways someone could come in, though now we're going to fix all of those things so no one comes in again. I don't want to be alone in the backyard. I don't want to be home alone at all. And they had to do it on Easter. And in broad daylight. When the police were over at our house a neighbor came by and mentioned that the house next door is a halfway house. Another thing we didn't know. There's no link between that house and the robbery, that we suspect, but now I guess we understand our neighbors a little better. Initially I wanted to move out because I didn't think I could sleep at night knowing someone was in the house without our permission, but now I guess I can deal with it. As long as someone else is there.

Lock your doors. Hide your stuff. Be suspicious.

I'm just saying.

I've got a plan? I had a Spring Break.

I'm totally overdoing it with this Easter candy. I made the mistake of buying a bag of Robin's Eggs (basically Easter Whoppers) and now the bag is less than half full. I lose my self control when it comes to malty candy I suppose.

It's been some time since I've written. I think Spring Break threw me off track. I took a road trip to California with Andrew. It was so many hours in the car, but overall an excellent vacation. I feel like trips always seem much better when you think about them in the past. I don't think I appreciate them enough when they're actually happening.

We started in Austin, made our way to Fort Stockton where we ate at a terrible restaurant. Then we got pulled over by a State Trooper because my license plate light was burned out. Ugh, so lame. Finally we got to El Paso for the night. Next day we drove through New Mexico and Arizona. Encountered problems in Tuscon trying to exit I-10 for lunch. Resulted in a two hour ordeal. Very late that night we finally reached San Diego, our main destination. We stayed with our friend Ashwan in La Jolla near UCSD. The next three days consisted of many beaches, strolling around, eating and sleeping. It was how Spring Break should be. It was too cold for real swimming, but it was good to see a beach again. My dad happened to be in town for a business conference on Monday so I was able to meet him for lunch. I also got to see my roommate from Barcelona a couple of times since she also goes to UCSD.

On Tuesday we left for LA, but only for the day. LA, like the rest of California, was mostly how I imagined it to be. It's somewhere I might like to visit once again when I have some money, but I can't imagine myself ever living somewhere like that. We saw Hollywood Blvd. and Sunset Blvd. with Beverly Hills and Bel-Air. We parked at Santa Monica Pier and walked along the ocean to Venice Beach. We finally found shaved ice. So good! That day ended with us sitting in traffic. We got out of the LA area and ate dinner in another city before finally making our way to Joshua Tree National Park. It was so late when we arrived. We set up a tent and went to bed but it was really cold. We struggled all night to stay warm. It makes sense being a desert though. The next day was warm and I got a horrible sunburn after we hiked around for more than five hours. We saw an old gold mine and scrambled around on large rocks. Joshua Trees are so crazy looking in large quantities.

That day we drove to Phoenix, which was the biggest problem of the whole trip. We got there at 8:30PM and it took us until after 11PM to find a hotel. Apparently the Angels were in town for Spring Training and so all the hotels were full. In the process we drove around the city multiple times and got stuck in a traffic jam. We ate dinner at a Denny's at 2AM because it was the only thing open and witnessed some hooligans who had dined and dashed. I tipped the waitress a lot because I felt so bad for her. Phoenix seemed trashy, but I guess we were in the wrong place. We slept so well, got up the next day and drove to Las Cruces where we camped again. It was late when we arrived and our campsite was basically at the top of a mountain between El Paso and Las Cruces. I was scared the whole time because it was dark and creepy and too windy. We made a fire, grilled kebabs, made s'mores and tried to sleep. The tent almost blew away too many times. We'd wake up in the middle of the night and the slanted roof would practically be touching our heads. We didn't sleep well.

On the last day we drove to El Paso, ate lunch and then prepared to get back to Austin by that night. About 30 minutes outside of El Paso we realized we couldn't stay awake. We had to pull over at a rest stop and get out the sleeping bag. We napped on the side of the road for an hour until we felt awake enough to continue. We drove until after midnight. We were delirious and had resorted to playing 20 Questions. I didn't know George Washington Carver invented peanut butter. This is common knowledge? No one even taught me that. In Austin we crashed until the next afternoon.

My sister was in town when I woke up. I hung out with her. That night we watched her friend, who is a "noise" musician, at this little venue for SXSW. I saw him flailing around to loud SuperNintendo type music. It was hilarious. We ate dinner with him and some other people later that evening and I learned that he is mostly normal. Somehow. Since it was the last night of Spring Break there was some slightly inebriated foolishness out of me. Maybe some playful violence and a crashing need for sleep. The next day we watched the Rockets win their 22nd game and feebly played a game of basketball. It was a fun group of people that day. Sunday seems like a year ago, but Monday seems not long ago at all. Time is messed up.

My sunburn has mostly recovered. I got a parking ticket. I hate when people wear fake hip looking glasses. Though I love when people wear real normal glasses. I think I figured out what I want to do with my life after graduation. I can graduate with two majors in May. I need a job in Austin before I graduate. I think I'm going to live here through this year. After that it could be anything.

My dad is turning 50 in less than two weeks! I'm going home next weekend for his huge party. I'm really excited. My sister and I are going to create a special speech for him based on his weird catch phrases and words of wisdom.

I think I sort of love that I have this scattery plan. I feel like I made my life too planned out for too many years. I realized when I was overseas that life doesn't have to be like that, and that a lot of people don't know exactly what they're doing all the time. I don't think I could let go of things the way people seemed to there, but I can definitely ease it up a little bit. I am fairly confident that I won't let myself fail in life. I'm only a student for less than two more months.