To Be A College Student for a Weekend

Hey everyone. This past Thursday was my film club's annual student film festival. Since I was a student 5 months ago, I made some short films with them and entered them into the festival. However, since I'm now a full time employee, I can't just go across the state and watch short films with my friends on a weeknight. So I had to use 2 days vacation time to have fun, and with the way my department is structured, it wasn't a problem (even though a couple of guys that know me from my internships gave me a hard time about taking vacation less than a month from starting, lol). So here's my experience.

I woke up Thursday morning and hit the road at about 10AM. I didn't have any trouble finding where I had to go, and when I broke for lunch I went to a GoodWill that was really close to the McDonald's I stopped at. I picked up a PS2 DDR dance pad for $2. The cashier was happy that someone bought it since apparently they don't sell very fast. After lunch I continued driving to my old college. I made it after about 3 hours. Once I got there, I made a quick stop at my engineering campus. I was hoping to see some old friends or maybe some professors, but neither were there. Well that figures, most of my friends that would hang out at the cafe or computer lab graduated, and it was during class hours so my professors were probably teaching a class. Oh well, it was cool seeing my second home again. After the engineering college I went to the GoodWill that was 1 mile away from campus. I bought a PS2 RF adapter, brand new for cheap.

After the GoodWill, I went to the student union where I wanted to hang out, hoping to find some old friends or just watch Toonami on AdultSwim.com. I had to re-configure my laptop so I could access the school's wifi. Now this Wi-Fi is just meant for students, but since I still have my log-in information, and they only reset log-in servers at the beginning of the school year (I think), I was able to log-in and still enjoy the student Wi-Fi. I told my friends I would be there, and one of my friends I met in my last semester stopped by to talk. Oh, I also had to use the visitor metered parking since I was a visitor. The meters at my college are a rip-off. It's 1 quarter for 10 minutes. Every meter parking I know of (down town my home town and down town my college's close city) give you 30 minutes for a quarter. I had to pay like $5 in quarters to park at the student union for the couple hours I was there. Then when I went to the auditorium parking, I had some trouble finding a spot since there was like some event going on, so I accidentally parked in "30 minute limit" parking, only to find out after pumping $1.50 in to see "the time's not increasing." I found another spot that was REALLY close to another car, so I had some fun getting out. Then I spent about another $5 on meters.

But then things got fun. I went to the building where the festival was happening, and went to where it was before. I set-up at a lounge and watched some more Toonami. Eventually one of the current members of the group told me they were meeting upstairs. I packed-up my stuff and met them up there. This is when I started filming the fun behind the scenes video I always do, and I'll get it all edited together, once I get my camera back from my friend. It was fun seeing them again. We hung out and got caught up while the others scrambled to get things all set-up for the night. And then TisLiberte, our former president of 3 years, showed up and that's when things got REALLY fun. Whereas I was one of the most dedicated member that really bled for the group in my last semester, TisLiberte was probably the most dedicated member ever and just brought a whole lot of fun to the group. Oh man we had some fun.

Now it's film time. Everyone got in and, well I'll let the video speak for itself (once I get the footage and edit it). I entered 3 shorts I filmed over the semester; got pyramid, Pokemon anime/game cross over, and School: an Educational Establishment (featuring iMonster). Halfway through the festival there was intermission. I changed into my Oddish costume. Oh that was fun, and everyone really enjoyed it. There was also photo booth fun. Here's the picture of TisLiberte and I.

Yeah it was fun. After intermission it was time for more films. After more great films, it was time for judging. I changed back into normal clothes, and took some more video. The winners were all deserving of their coveted golden VHS tapes (my idea from 3 years ago might I add when they were talking about how expensive real trophies would be). It was kind of symbolic in that the short film that had not only TisLiberte, our president of 3 years, directing it, it also had a founding father work on it, and we tried to call him in Florida to congratulate him live during the acceptance speech. We left him a fun voice mail. It was a fun 4 hours of short films, that ended at 11 PM. Why, because college. The films were really good this year. Like, previous years there were some really bad films, and not just "I'm an engineer that doesn't understand experimental art house" bad, but "film students in the group were making fun of how bad they were later" bad. This year they were quite funny/entertaining, and the worst was "well it just dragged on a little."

Afterwards, everyone that was still around went to IHOP for dinner/late night snack. There were like 9 of us that were there. It was really fun to just hang out with the film club again, while eating chocolate chip pancakes. One of the members jokingly asked the group (not the waitress) "what's on draft?" (There's no alcohol served at the international house of pancakes, so it was quite funny). Why ask something like that, because college. We were there for 2 hours having fun, hanging out, and enjoying breakfast food. One guy got a 55 and over menu option. I don't think the waitress really cared. Another member wanted a child smiley face pancake, but he decided against it and got an adult meal. Also, bear in mind that we got there at like 11 PM at night, and we stayed there until 1 AM. Why? Because college. I showed up at my friend who was letting me spend the weekend with him on one of his futons at like 1:30 AM, and he had a test the next morning at like 8:30 AM (I don't miss that part of college).

OK so it's now Friday morning. I wake up at 10 AM (because vacation), and have some coco krispies while I surf the morning web. So this was kind of funny; I'm sitting in my friend's living room with his girlfriend, and the power was cut off because he forgot to pay the electric bill or something. It was kind of funny to see it actually happen. I went to McDonald's for lunch, and then pumped $6 into the meter so I could park until they stopped enforcing it. I intended to just watch Toonami until Pokemon, but I ran into a friend and we talked for about 2 hours. After she had to leave I watched Toonami, and hopped that I could see Saint and/or Sudden, but they were busy. Oh well.

So now it's Pokemon time. I wore my Oddish costume, and it went over quite well. The president has always given me a hard time about how cringey my costume was, since it's just a blue spandex morph suit with a plastic fern sticking out of the back. He was fine with it once he saw it in person, and the vice president wanted a picture with it for his snap chat. We had fun with a game of Pokemon Trivia, and it was quite a fun time, especially to be a college student again.

After Pokemon I went back to my friend's place and we ate the extra popcorn from the film festival while we watched Clerks. Oh yeah, a local movie theater donated like a couple cubic yards of popcorn for the film festival, and there was like a cubic yard left over. I took the left over and gave it to my friend as a "thank-you for letting me crash" gift. Why? Well I'm just naturally eccentric like that (it wasn't "because college" this time lol). We watched Clerks specifically because I was talking about it when we watched Bowfinger last time I was in town. In Bowfinger Steve Martin's character says something like "every movie is filmed on a budget of $1000," and Clerks really was filmed on a budget of like $1000 (though it was actually more like $23,000 according to Wikipedia). He really enjoyed it, and we had like $20 worth of movie popcorn while watching it. I also had like Indian Rammen for dinner with him (because he's Indian and a college student, so he of course had bricks of instant noodles sitting around that remind him of home). They tasted really good, but later that night I woke up with some indigestion because of the spices or something. Curse my Caucasian American intestinal system, because they were REALLY good. Oh well. After the movie we watched an episode of "Those Who Can't," because that was advertised on Crackle when we watched Bowfinger the last time I was in town, and he had a lot of fun with it.

It's Saturday now. Since I was on that side of the state, I decided I was going to take the extra hour to go visit Brandi. It was a little hard going there alone, but I still felt good to visit her. Her grave wasn't marked yet, so I spent about 5 minutes walking around the small cemetery "playing hide and seek." When I gave up looking for her headstone, I stood where I remember the burial happening and just said my prayers while looking around. Oh Brandi; even in death you're still very playful. After my last point of visit, I started the now 3 hour drive home. I got home around 5 PM and I had a lot of fun being a college student again. Well, now it's time to go back to being a real world adult. I'll be sure to link the film festival video once I get my camera back and the video edited and uploaded.

But until then, this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Losing a Friend, a Difficult Blog to Write

Hey everyone, this is not an easy blog to write, and one I don't necessarily want to write, but to honor her memory, I must share this story.

So 1 week ago I lost my friend Brandi M. She was a wonderful person who was not afraid to stand up for what she believed in. We first met in Students for Life, she was our vice president, and an active member in the pro-life movement, having founded and leading the local Young Professionals For Life group in the local area of our college. With her activism in the Pro-Life movement, it is almost befitting that the last time I and others saw her was at our Students for Life meeting just last week. It is really crazy to think that just 1 week ago we were all hanging out, talking about the pro-life movement in our local area and in the big picture.

On Tuesday November 24th we had the visitation and on Wednesday November 25th we had the funeral. I unfortunately had bad information and missed the visitation. The obituary implied that the visitation would be at the church, and when I got there they were having bingo, definitely not visitation for my departed friend. After calling a string of friends I got some directions to the funeral home. I got lost on the way, and while I think I made it to the right funeral home in retrospect, there wasn't anything saying that this was the visitation for Brandi and there was like an example book out. I thought "I'm not going to crash someone else's visitation." I wish I had good information, but the visitation is not what is important, the funeral is.

On Wednesday I woke-up, packed up my stuff to drive home for Thanksgiving break, and left for the funeral. I met up with the old president of Students for Life (my first president, and I think Brandi's as well), and we sat together. Not to much time later, her best friend and former president she worked with along with the current president of Students for Life arrived. It was a very nice service. There were some good readings, stories of Brandi, remembering her final days, and the other good but hard stuff.

After the ceremony, some of the Students for Life members and alumni met up before heading to the cemetery. What was really nice was that the former president and vice president of College Republicans also made it. While Brandi wasn't active in College Republicans, she and the president of the time started going to meetings to try to build collaboration between the 2 conservative groups (in addition to hanging out with the members that were in both groups). It was great seeing them again, even under the circumstances. Another notable person to show up was the regional coordinator for students for life. He's been to our meetings a couple of times, and I'm sure he knew Brandi rather well. Neither the College Republicans nor the regional coordinator were able to make it to the cemetery, but it meant a lot to us student for life members to know that they both made it.

The funeral was hard enough, but the cemetery was even harder. All us Student for Life members and alumni gathered together and formed a group to say our final goodbyes. All of us laid our hands on the casket together, all the while crying over the loss of our dear friend. We were some of the last people to say our goodbyes. After we left the casket, we all stood off to the side and group hugged as we cried. After the group hug broke up, we hugged each other individually, just passing from one partner to another. We were the last people to get in our cars. No one talked except for her best friend saying "thank-you" after the group hug. We were quite a sight, like something out of a movie. As we were leaving the cemetery, someone had written "BRAND ANGEL" on a piece of plywood on the other side of the fence in the trailer park neighboring the cemetery. That was nice to see.

At the luncheon immediately following the cemetery I was able to talk to the friends I haven't seen in forever about what they have been up to. It was a good hour to help me get my head around what just we just experienced. I really needed that because I had a 3 hour drive ahead of me. I was glad I had that 3 hour drive ahead of me, because it gave me the time I needed to process everything that has happened. When driving home, I saw a bill board for pro-life activism, and that hit rather hard since she was so active in the pro-life movement. The world with not be the same without you Brandi, and we will all miss you.

Well, this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

PS: If you would like to read about Brandi's journeys in the pro-life movement, you can read her blog here.