I remember in band class I used to sit next to a trombonist named Jeff Smith. I must have been in last chair or something at the time to be sitting next to the trombones. Anyway, Jeff offered to sell me a Super Nintendo game called "Final Fantasy II". I can't remember why I actually bought it from him. I don't think I had heard of it before. I never played a role playing game before that except Zelda. I believe I bought it from him for $20.

Anyway, I immediately fell in love with it. I loved that you could name the characters. I also liked that it was the first video game that I played that had a real story with characters with different personalities that you actually cared about. I think I had started to write "The End of the World" already and so I was kind of in that fantasy zone already. Also, the graphics and music were unmatched at the time. I couldn't believe that there was actually a musical score with synthesized . . . Read More..

When I was in fifth grade I started writing these books called "The Adventures of Rover Robot". Rover Robot was this character I created who was from Uranus. He came to Earth on his spaceship which crash landed. It was inspired by "E.T.", "Batteries Not Included" and "Short Circuit". I was really into science fiction as a kid.

Throughout the series other characters were introduced such as "Redrina Robot", Rover's sister as well as a robot pet dog. I think that Austin and my brother and my cousins all made appearances in the books as did "Johnny 5" from the Short Circuit movie.

Rover Robot was what really got me into writing. The stories would usually be half a page of writing and an illustration at the bottom. This format continued on through "The End of the World" book series.

Rover also . . . Read More..

When I was in about 5th or 6th grade our family took a road trip out west. We spent about a week traveling out to California, and then stayed in Cali for another week. There's alot of memories to go with those travels but he's one that sticks out in my mind for some reason. Noel and I stayed at our Aunt Pamy Sue's place in San Francisco for a couple nights. I'm not sure where our parents stayed, but what are you going to do?

My bro and I always had a fantastic time with her, except on this night. We had dinner at her place and everything was going fine until she made us wash our own dishes. This was the first time we had to do anything like this because we were spoiled and grew up with a dishwasher. We weren't happy, I probally cried.

The Super Bowl is always a blast. The Stalker's and Renne's always get together and drink, eat, gamble, and celebrate Shemp's birthday. We were never sure the exact date of his b-day but we figured Super Bowl Sunday was a good day. On this particular day our front lawn was a sheet of ice(I totally don't even know what that looks like anymore). We had this trick where we threw a treat down the lawn for Shemp to get. Our front lawn is a slight hill, mind you. So Shemp would run after it only to slide down the lawn, it was funny. My dad decided to show the trick off to everyone who was over for the party. This time Shemp slide all the way down to the street as a car was coming. This car had to of been going about 40 mph and missed Shemp by inches. The dude was probally drunk and didn't even see Shemp since he's a black dog and it was dark outside. Needless to say we never did that trick again and Shemp survived another b-day.

I was once partying with some college Cross Country friends on night. This freshman girl who got pregnant by another freshman on our Cross Country team was about 6 to 8 months pregnant and she felt the need to drink.

I was sooooo freaking pissed when I saw her with a drink and I felt morally inclined to say something to her.

I pretty much yanked out her drink and told her no. But she just bitched me out.

I hope the kid is not retarded because of it.