"Catspaw"

It is now Friday the 26th of August, and summer is nearing its end. Seems like it just began. Really though, this was the nicest summer that Jamestown has seen in about 3 years or so.

Its funny how when your growing up you can remember vividly each summer, and what fun things you did during it. Probably it was some family vacation, or maybe a week or two at camp. It just seems that once you graduated high school, summer loses something. Sure, it is still a vacation from regular school hours (if you are attending college) but unless you arent working a job, or maybe just very part time hours, it is no longer an actual vacation.

For me, my summers since high school go thusly (and trust me, it is taking time to remember which events happened during which summer.

Summer of 1999: This summer was bittersweet. We were all celebrating that we were done with high school. Most of the summer was spent at graduation parties. It was a fun happy time. But at the back of our minds was the fact that we were all getting ready for college. Friends you had seen on a regular basis for 4 to 16 years were no longer going to be around. Sure, in 99 we had ICQ, Yahoo, and AOL instant messaging, but we werent really accustomed to it yet. I was one of the unhappy few who did not go away to college. I stayed in the area because of the friends I had who still lived here that were going to JCC or were seniors now at JHS, and the one obvious person I wanted to stick around for. For me, there was no moving, or real getting ready for college. I just watched all my friends, one after another, move away. My time was then spent looking for a job. Before I got hired at Fazolis in September of 99, I had worked as my neighbourhood paperboy for 10 years. So that summer, for me at least, was still a cut and dry vacation.

Summer of 2000: This summer could not have been any different. It had its similarities to the previous summer, in that more friends of mine went away to college. This summer I was working about 35 hours a week ar Auntie Annes Pretzels. I had met many new friends there, but we really hadnt yet started hanging out too much. More graduation parties insued. This summer was the end of an era, which took a lot of emotional toll on me. Since the previous summer, my close knit group of friends were Ashley (d'uh) Kevin and Eliza, Haji and Anne, Melissa and J.P. Four couples who always ALWAYS hung out together. I swear I have a unique story for every day of the year that we all hung out, that I hold dear to my heart.

That summer itself was stressful on me, as things between me and Ashley were less than stellar. From the Fourth of July onwards, we were always fighting it seemed. Haji and Anne had broken up now, and Kevin and Eliza were getting ready to go back to school. J.P. and Melissa werent really hanging out with us as much as they had, and our group was in disarray. I will probably forever blame things going south between Ashley and myself on one certain friend of hers who I wont name (Samantha Harris...shit I named her). The summer ended when me Haji and Ashley went to visit Kevin and Eliza out at Baldwin Wallace in Cleveland. We all fought the entire weekend about everything there was to fight about. It was clear, the group was changing. Not a week later, Ashley broke up with me. A week after that Kevin dumped Eliza. Since then, I think the five of us (Haji Kevin Eliza Ashley and myself) have hung out together, maybe 5 times as a group.

To keep these articles shorter, I will put the next 2 years in my next posting.

In hockey news, the sabres acquired another defenseman, and to show how much a give a shit, I dont even know his name, now will I bother to go to www.sabres.com to find out. You can do it for yourselves.

Dave Andyrechuck signed a 2 year extension with the Tampa Bay Lightening.

buenos nachos!

~Oz