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Dustin's Diary

A look at the day's happenings and thoughts. ~Read at your own discretion. This blog is from the mind of the author and contains opinions that are of the author. It is no way endorced by any other company or any other body.

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Location: Rimersburg, Pennsylvania, United States

I am an enigma. A perfect right hand middle man living safely supported on the edge. Complicatedly simple or simply complicated, that's for you to decide. I lose the games I play & win the ones I don't. I'm not here to play games. I'm here, there, everywhere. Often I like to feel as if I'm the world. Other times I want to melt into the scenery. I see myself as a familiar stranger standing along the street as life speeds by. I like strangers & love my friends. I laugh when people fall but offer a helping hand. I hate people but love working with the public. The Constitution is wrong, all men are not created equal; they should be. I believe that not everyone has the same opportunities; it's what you do with the ones that lay before you that determine who you become. I like to walk. Running is too fast; but some roses are meant to be seen & not smelled. Time is an illusion created by man. I’ll create it for those who are willing to do the same. Your birthday is important to me & hope mine is to you. I tend to give more than I receive. Respect & appreciation are key. Conversation is a gold mine; knowledge is wealth & power. My intelligence is my most prized possession, don't insult it.

Thursday, September 30, 2004

3 More

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong. - Abraham Lincoln

First let me begin by saying that I hate hurricanes. Hurricane Ivan decided to miss Orlando but headed straight for Pennsylvania. If it can't get me it'll get my home. The flooding in PA was very extensive. Thankfully my home and the homes of those I hold dear were all spared. However there are some towns where it will take them years to recover from this. Hurricane Jeanne had decided to go ahead and hit Florida in pretty much the same areas the last ones hit. This hurricane season is the worst the state has seen on years. With 2 more months to go in the season I'm sure we'll get a few more.

Jeanne would be the first storm where the Rangers did not have a gathering. We all did our own thing. It seems to me that we are hanging out a lot less - or maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm just not hanging out with them as much. I dunno. Sarah and I are on the mend. However, Rachel never seems to make progress in bettering her relationship skills with people. Civility is all it seems she will be capable of receiving from people. In example: Sarah had a birthday party at TGI Friday's for her 20th birthday. There was a large group of us there. Everyone was having a good time; or so we thought. Rachel stated she was bored and wanted to leave. That was the third time that she had stated we were boring and wanted to leave the "event." Only this time it was someone's party. How immature and rude can someone get? Other than that Sarah's party was a success. She had a good time and people showed up. I made the cake. The cake itself turned out well. It was very good. The icing was too thin to actually decorate with so the decoration was limited. Then Wal*Mart being the wonderful place it is did not have fresh produce so I was forced to buy frozen strawberries which also did not work out so well. Everyone enjoyed the cake though, which makes me happy. I'll just have to concentrate harder on the next one and be sure to have all the right stuff and that my icing turns out better.

The time I am spending here at the Walt Disney Resort is getting harder and harder to endure. I find myself often toying with the contemplation of going home early. I feel so disconnected from everything. I am afraid then when I go back home that nothing will be the same. Eight months is a long time to spend away. It is plenty of time for things to change and evolve. The longer I stay the harder it will be to go back home in January. For a few reasons. One being that I won't want to leave everyone. But a big one being that I am starting to slowly suck up what funds I had in the bank from back home. This internship doesn't pay very well. So by the time January comes rolling around, I may not be able to afford to leave simply because I won't be going straight home to a job and without the ability to save up some for cushion purpose, it will be rough. I won't ask my mom for any help, nor will I ask anybody else. I got myself into this and I will get myself out. Some days I can feel myself starting to regret the decision to do this but then I just think about the opportunities that I have been given. I am meeting people from all over the world that I would not have met, otherwise. I am thinking that a huge problem is that I need to see home for a few days to refresh me. I miss home and I miss the people back home. I've not spoken to any of them in a while, since Hurricane Ivan, anyway. Where is everyone? Got phone? Three more months... three more.

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Tough Times

Trials, temptations, disappointments -- all these are helps instead of hindrances, if one uses them rightly. They not only test the fiber of a character, but strengthen it. Every conquered temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before. - James Buckham

My posting seems to have become less important to me than it used to be. For several reasons. One being that it forces those that I care about and that care about me, to call me and find out what's new in my life. It's also because I'm always busy doing something else. Between working and trying to maintain a life. Not having one but a couple groups of friends that I try and hang out with on a regular basis makes it kind of hard to have some time to myself and when I do get a moment I don't want to spend it in front of the computer. Then when I do have a moment and want to update my blog that's the time that the freaking internet decides to stop working. I'd rather have dial-up than this crap high speed they have us on. Ugh...

So let's go thru some of the major events since my last posting. In my last posting I had bitched about standing on the Viking Ship in Norway. Well, I ended up doing it again. Natalia had asked me to switch days and I in my wonderful friendliness said sure without looking or thinking and ended up switching again into the torture. I insist I was tricked but she says I agreed, but I don't remember.

Embrey left. I want to so bad to leave this paragraph at just that statement. Her leaving was very emotional for me. It was much harder than when the Spring Advantage Program left. I'm sure it some to do with that we were together for a little more time but it has more to do with the dynamics of our friendship. Embrey herself said that when she was saying goodbye to me it felt like she was breaking up with me. Other than Natalia, I was one of the Rangers that Embrey was closest to. She was indeed one of the important people to me here. I held our friendship in very high regards. I took me about three days, after I found out she was self-terminating, to be able to face her in order to say good-bye. After she did leave, Natalia and I had a conversation about her leaving. Her reasons were valid so neither of us have hold it against her. We were however slightly disturbed with how easy it was for her to leave, or how easy it appeared to us anyway. She seemed to show so little emotion and hesitation about it. We're sure it had a lot to do with her up bringing and the fact that she had lead a sheltered life. I'm sure there are a lot of other reasons as well. Neither of us hold ill feelings toward her for it, it was just surprising to us, that's all.

Embrey's not the only one of my friends to self-terminate since my last posting. There were two others. AJ left (about a week before Embrey). His leaving was in a different manner. He just up and left with very little warning and he refused to say good by to any one face-to-face. It would have been to hard for him so he wrote little notes to some of us. It was sad to see him leaving but his reasons were also valid, very valid. My friend Sarah (from upstairs, not Ranger) also left. She left the day after Embrey. Her leaving wasn't was sudden as AJ but left little time to get used to the fact she was leaving. Her reasons may not have been as valid as Embrey's or AJ's but they were decent and honorable reasons. There is a third person who is thinking of self-terminating but she hasn't told the official people yet. Her reasons are less than honorable. But that's her choice.

Another major event would be that Sarah and I had a falling out. A rather large disagreement. Like every argument there are two stories and to tell my side of it without allowing her to tell her side would be unfair but then this is my journal and contains how I feel. So I will give a general overview. Now I can take fault if I see that I was at fault. As I look back at the situation I see none on my part really, except that I shouted back. I should have been able to better compose myself in the situation but she angered me. It was over my complaining about being deployed to custodial so often. She says I complain to often about something that happens so little. Well, she's wrong yet had a small point that she didn't intend to have. But the argument itself isn't what made me so upset it's that it took place in general. Then afterward she decided to drag everyone else into it while I decided to not talk about with anyone else. She also decided to go thru the old deployment papers, for the past 3 weeks, to count up the times I was sent and the times she was sent. She's forgetting that those papers don't include the times we're pre-deployed and I am a pre-deployed Ranger; (I'm pre-deployed 3 days next week where everyone else is once if at all). The thing she did make me realize is that there are a greater number of us that are being deployed to custodial on a regular basis than there are of us not being sent. I can think of 4 rangers who rarely if ever get sent there. Compared to the number of times the rest of us got/get sent there she would be included in those 4 people. However she is indeed being sent there on a regular basis as of now, but so are the rest of us, still. Another reasons I was upset is that she was supposed to my best friend here and she snapped at me for complaining instead of offering some support. I understand that there isn't much she can do and that I complain a lot but that's me. I'm a very vocal and oral person. I speak how I feel. Besides let me bitch for five minutes and I'll move on, unlike some people who sticks to the same subject the entire conversation. The other Rangers compain about it as much as I do just not to her. I've heard them and they all told me that I have a right to complain (or observation make, as I like to call it). The whole situation was very ugly and it upset me. She did apologize to me the next day. I want more than anything to believe her apology was genuine and not just out of fear that she will be shunned from "Ranger Society". Which is silly. I do not hold that much power of the Rangers. They all have minds of their own and I am one to let people make up their own minds which is why I didn't drag any one else into it.

The drama that goes on in the "Ranger Society" is so absurd, sometimes. I really don't understnad why some of these people get so worked up over such small things, really. So trivial are the problems that they have in comparison to those who have real problems. Something that some people need to realize is that they don't truly know the rest of us. All they know is what they see here and that's not all of us. They don't see the problems we have back home or the issues that we've faced growing up. How easy or how hard our life was is unknown to them. The inner turmoils is completely unseen. They have no desire to see or to know them really or they would take the time to understand why someone is the way they are. Nor should they if they wish not to. To get that emotionaly involved with people here is, in some ways, pointless and hard. We've not known each other that long and will be leaving each other in just a few more months. We will probably never see most of each other again. The harsh reality that is life especially on this program. Being here kind of forces you to befriend people quickly including some people that you may never have befriended on a normal basis and I think that they're not taking that into account either. That each of us has been taken from our element and have been planted in the middle of diver-CITY. I have decided to not hold against any ill feelings towards those who have pissed me off or annoyed me because of all this and more. It makes no sense to. I'll be civil with them and be content with knowing that I don't have to ever see them again, if I choose not to. I am hoping to come out of this program and experience with a few close and ever lasting friendships. I'm sure I will. It will only take a little effort on both sides of the friendship. Just need to make sure they're worth it.

My Fortune for today: Trust no one.

Thursday, September 09, 2004

Viking Ship Blues

What a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has, or how he is regarded by others. - Arthur Schopenhauer


What a rough day today was. A rough day indeed. I had switched a shift with a fellow Ranger so that she would not have to stand on the Viking Ship, in Norway twice in one week. That Viking Ship is enough to make you want to cut off some limbs for excitement. The day never seems to end. I had forgotten how terrible it was when I had agreed to switch.

After work I came home and made something to eat before heading over to Jeremy's apartment for a Ranger gathering. The Ranger gatherings are starting to pick back up and become more frequent. I really didn't even want to go. I wasn't feeling up to it. One reason being the long day I had. I was wore out and my feet hurt. Another reason being that Rachel was going to be there. I can only handle so much of her lately. It's hard to describe her and express what it is about her that is so frustrating. She just has qualities that annoys the hell out of everyone. I only went over because Sarah had called and wanted me there. Jeremy then called me, so I went over. Rachel may be annoying but if they can suck it up - so can I.

My time here at Disney is truly an experience that could never have been experienced anywhere else. In many ways I am glad that I did this. I have made such wonderful friends here that I would never have been able to meet anywhere. I have a lot of friends back home but not like I have here and not on the same level. Sarah is on a level, all on her own. I know that saying good bye to her in January is going to be next to impossible. The same with Jeremy and Jennifer. The three of them are my closest friends at this point. If not for the three of them I would never be able to make it all the way thru to January. They keep me going. I definitely plan on doing some traveling to visit these guys after this program is over. They rock.

Wednesday, September 08, 2004

At last.

Beauty, truth, friendship, love, creation - these are the great values of life. We can't prove them, or explain them, yet they are the most stable things in our lives. - Jesse Herman Holmes
Man does not live by a turkey in every oven or a color TV set in every home. Man lives by faith and hope and love, by the star on the horizon, by the trumpet that will not call retreat.- -- E. Merrill Root


Well now... How long it's been since I have posted. Let me just say that it is not entirely my fault at all. Anyone who has keep in contact with me would know the many reasons. There are a few bigger reasons which I will discuss.

The first major event would be that my roommate Bradd has moved out. He moved out over a month ago and thus our room lost the computer (since it was his.) His moving out had a lot to do with the other two roommates. The one (Daniel) used his computer for things that Bradd had repeatedly asked him not to. Then the other roommate (Jason) had driven him insane with his weirdness. Jason is indescribable. He's not a bad guy... He's just odd. He's kind of OCD about football and therefore his conversations are very limited. His only other topics are sex (how he wants it), and work. Another reason that contributed to his leaving the room would be the fact that the two of them (Jason & Daniel) constantly were butting heads over who made the mess (when it was both of them) and who was going to clean it (which was neither of them). Ugh...

The second major event that took place would have been the landing of Hurricane Charley. Good ole Chuck... Disney has this odd thing about closing the park, like not doing it. They stayed open as long as they possibly could. I was sent to the Boardwalk Resort to help out. It was good times. Most of the Rangers were sent there. The Boardwalk then sent us home with pizza and Mickey Premium Bars. So we decided to have a little hurricane party. We gathered up some Rangers at Alisha's house and had ourselves a little party. The party was of interesting sorts. Alisha managed to offend most of the people there within a matter of moments. She's a little too negative and whinny but one must learn how to handle people of all types. Alisha doesn't bother me as much as she seems to other people. Charley was here and gone in no time. It only took a few hours to be over. I was personally disappointed in the intensity of his wrath until I saw the destruction outside Disney property. Though he managed to take out the internet for a couple of days. I was also busy working, covering call off shifts.

The third major event that happened would be the departure of the Spring Advantage Rangers. I wanted to spend as much time with them as possible. I had only known these guys for a total of three months but they became my family and closest friends. Saying good-bye to them was one of the hardest things. Four of them happen to live within 3-4 hours from me back home so it shouldn't be too hard to keep in touch. But as for the rest of them it's not a "see you later" type of thing. It's a "see you never again" type of thing and that makes it sucky. I was then faced with the harsh reality that in January I will again be forced with the tears of good-bye when I have to part ways with the Rangers of the Fall Advantage Program. After spending a total of 8 months with them, it'll be hard. A few of them have become like family and a significant part of my everyday life. It's been awhile since I really made mention of the Rangers and my relationship with any specific Ranger. But my relationship with Rachel has diminished to little more than a hang out buddy. She seems to get so upset over the smallest of things. No matter how minute the problem or comment. She seems to have a "holier than tho" attitude about her for most of us, especially since Lynn chose her to work in the Oz office. We all notice it but don't want to cause drama by saying anything to her about it. It just wouldn't be pretty. She doesn't take criticism very well... At all. Jenn and Jeremy are like my siblings, only cooler. I love them and will miss them so much. I can't put into words how much their friendship is helping through this. Embrey, Natalia and Allison are also important assets to my Disney life. A life that I am already feeling saddened that I will be leaving behind. Sarah... Now Sarah is especially going to be hard to say goodbye to. She has become my best friend and has been. I don't see it changing. Her and I are a lot alike in many ways. January is going to be rough times.

The third major event that took place would be my family coming down. My mom, my brother and Daniel drove down. I took off 5 days to spend with them. So I was away from my apartment for about a week. We managed to get into all the theme parks anod Blizzard Beach. I missed them guys so much. It was great to see them and spend some time with them. It gave me such a refresher. In many ways I am torn about my feelings. I can't wait to get back home and be with them again but then I don't want to say good-bye to these guys here. Daniel is going to try and come back down again before the end of my program. I am hoping that he is able to make it. It would be nice.

The fourth major event that took place would be Hurricane Frances. Damned bitch. She took her good ole sweet ass time moving along. Two days. What hurricane takes two damned days to pass on by. Of course the Rangers were on top of things and had a hurricane party planned. This time it was a slumber party at Tiffany's. So we gathered up some alcohol and provisions and set out for a Ranger slumber. Being locked up in that apartment with everyone was fun times (with a few exceptions.) I actually didn't spend the entire time at the party. I took my slumber else where. I have trouble sleeping with large groups so I slept in another apartment (next door to Tiff, my friend Tommy's) and went back to Tiffany's in the morning. Disney did in deed close down for the two days. It was rough times. My pay check this week is going to be so miniscule. But we are almost back to business as usual. However a third hurricane is on it's way and set to make landfall this weekend. It would figure that the time I do an internship in FL is the year that nature decides to break all hurricane records and bombard FL with a hurricane on a weekly basis.

This evening the Rangers had an outing. An outing that I think has been way past due. Having a party in an apartment is one thing but getting out and doing something is another. After nights out we feel refreshed and invigorated and a little more bonded. Our pool parties have been cancelled time and time again because of the weather but I'm hoping that we will soon be able to get them back on track again. Alisha's coming around and people are a little less annoyed by her. I think because she's toned it down and there are now new Rangers that have more annoying qualities. I am hoping that I'll be able to move past the hindrances that I am having with a few of my fellow Rangers. It's not their fault that they have a crappy personality. I just need to learn to live with it... They did. =P

My horoscope:

Use an area of mutual interest to cultivate a friendship with a coworker. Do something different than you would normally do. Pay attention to messages from your body. It is quite likely that you have been burning the candle at both ends and need to take a little time for yourself. If you take steps to be a little more comfortable around the office or broaden your interests, you will get a much-needed boost of energy. Tend to some needs that have been neglected lately.