Wednesday, May 28

Today was a lot better than any other day in the last two weeks. I heard the song "Be Yourself" by Audioslave when I woke up this morning, and it didn't feel like it was in a mocking tone. It felt more like an anthem. My mom told me after I got out of the shower that we weren't going to eat at the beach club on the resort. That made me really happy.

I guess I haven't said anything about where we're staying up to this point. Since my dad was in the military for twenty years, we get to go to special military recreation places for discounts compared to other places we could stay. I've only seen the name of this place once, so I don't remember it now, but it's a very pretty military base with a lot of trees and two lighthouses, and it's on the beachfront. The cool thing is that we're on a point that juts out to the north, so even though we're on the east coast, we see the sun set over the ocean. Maybe that didn't make a lot of sense the way it was written, but that's okay.

Anyway, that's the cool part about the base. The uncool parts are that we don't really have a very nice room, except for the balcony. There's also no wireless on the premises. Well, there is wireless, but the router (Wireless Escape) costs $3.50 an hour to use (it costs a lot to escape, I guess). You'd think they could pass the cost of broadband on to the room bill or taxpayers or something, but I guess they're able to make more money this way, since they charge $3.50 an hour. The breakfast, as I've said, is really bad, and there are tons of little kids everywhere. I guess there are little kids everywhere, but you don't really notice them as much as when you're on vacation. It really amplifies the feeling of isolation that had me feeling down Monday and Tuesday.

Anyway, the resort only has rooms on the second and third floors, so we're on the third floor, and there's a lot of blue everywhere because of the ocean, and because they painted the resort blue and they went with blue comforters for the bed and they have blue carpet and pictures about sailing. All of the trees make you feel really secluded when you're driving around the base. I think that they use that fact to their advantage. I saw one building, I think it was the 703, and it was really small on the outside. I saw another building elsewhere that was on a hill, and at the base of the hill was a solid tan door. And then I see dirt roads sometimes that go really far into the trees before you even see a gate to another building. I bet that those buildings also look small on the outside.

Breakfast was great. It wasn't anything different than you can get at any other place, but it was cooked well. I had eggs, bacon, two pancakes, and coffee. Then we went to a huge aquarium in the west side of Virginia Beach. There were a lot of interesting sea creatures, and I got some good pictures. I guess I was a little disappointed that the otters were all sleeping, but the way they were huddled seemed really sweet to me, and when we walked back through on our way out, one of them was awake and just watching nothing. He was cute.

I listened to "Bat Boy" part of the drives (which is a great musical to listen to if you've ever felt like you didn't belong), but after I got through with that, I switched on my Green playlist, which is all music that makes me think of the color green. I also tried to get any kind of wireless signal I could. Mostly so that I could check my email, but I also wanted to do some things on Facebook. It was really hard to get a signal for long enough, though, and most of the day I had my inbox tell me that I had ten new messages but I couldn't read any of them.

After the aquarium, we drove to Norfolk to see the Nauticus museum. That was pretty cool, but for the most part I was distracted by the fact that I hadn't had any lunch and the fact that I was waiting to hear back from Red Robin about my training schedule. Anyway, they had a few sea creatures there, too, but it was mostly a museum about studying the oceans and water and the USS Wisconsin, which is docked in a harbor right next to the museum. They had a cefeteria, but it was under renovation.

When we got outside, I was able to get a signal from a nearby bistro, and I finally got my email messages. Then we found a mall with a lot of restaurants and we decided to eat at California Pizza. They have a lot of different kinds of pizza there, but my sister got pepperoni and my mom and dad got things that weren't pizza, so I was the only one with a cool pizza. I had the chipotle chicken pizza, and it was really good. I usually don't like ranch dressing, but it was spicy, which I do appreciate. It also had black beans and corn salsa, so it reminded me of a Chipotle burrito in that sense.

After dinner, we went to the Barnes and Noble on the second floor (if my voice sounds different in this blog, you can blame it on the fact that I got "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" while we were there. I'm already more than halfway through the book). Actually, that was before dinner. After dinner, we went to the Apple store and I talked with a really cute salesman there. The rest of my family was looking at computers that my sister could take to college, and near the end I got to show my Apple expertise and talk hardware in front of Jesse (the salesman's name). He made a comment about the store hiring, but I said it wouldn't work too well because I'm from Nebraska. Later, my mom said that he probably only said it because he liked me. I wouldn't mind if that were true, but dating would sure be a bitch.

We went to the candle store and I registered my phone for Facebook Mobile before we left the mall, and once we got into the car I started reading my new book, which is what I've been doing up until the point when I got ready for bed. I can see a few parallels between me and Charlie: thinking about almost everything, talking with my freshman writing teacher (I wonder how Doc is doing, actually), and thinking about infinity and feeling infinite, and liking the kind of music that you can't really dance to, and making thoughtful playlists and wondering if people are really happier than me. I have a habit of picking up the writing style of authors I've been reading for a little while, but my voice usually comes back after I'm done reading the book. If I keep going at the rate I was today, I'll be done tomorrow, definitely.

I don't know what I'm getting from reading this book, personally, but I know that I like it. I think about how the author thought of writing it, and what others thought when they read it. I know that there are some things I don't believe about it, but these things are usually opinions that characters in the book have about life.

I can definitely relate to Charlie on the level of a wallflower, though. I guess anybody who would read the book could, though, unless they just like to read.