"There are things you just can’t do in life. You can’t beat the phone company, you can’t make a waiter see you until he’s ready to see you, and you can’t go home again." Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent

so...yesterday we went to clarion. my mom, brother and i had to go see dr. snively, and my sister wanted to give christmas presents to amber and alisa.

it's very strange to go back there. while some things have changed, it's still very much the same depressing town it used to be. i don't think it's much better to say i live in ottumwa now (read addy's coming out stories and you can kind of see why), but there is some kind of life here. driving around clarion, it was just run down houses and bad christmas decorations.

and at the high school they are doing some kind of construction, while some of it is academic, some of it is also athletic. i never did appreciate how in my school athletics came first, even though we were never good at it.

i also looked at the wright county monitor. i never noticed before how bad it looks. after working on the cornellian, i guess i grew some kind of standards of what a paper should look like, and the wright county monitor certainly isn't it.

it's just kind of interesting to see how things go. a number of my classmates are already getting married, some have kids. there are still people in town that never left. sometimes, when i look back at high school, i appreciate how at my class reunions some of the people that i never liked will be far less successful than i will be-that depending on if i can find a job.

speaking of which, i told my dad today that i want to go to grad school sometime, just not now. he was okay with that, just reminded me that i'll have to pay of student loans in six months. *whew* i don't think he was surprised though. i wonder what my mom will think.