It is about 30 minutes until 2006, so I will reflect on 2005...

F**K YOU 2005

Let's see what happened in 2005...
-Beavers lost to the Ducks in football
-Beavers lost to the Ducks in basketball (twice)

BRING IN '06!

Well, Christmas Day was slightly less interesting than Christmas Eve. I'll try not to write another novel for this post.

I woke up at 11am on Christmas Day (not exactly like when we were kids) and we ate breakfast before opening presents. We started to open about noon and finished in an hour or so. I got clothes, a Fry's gift certificate, Star Wars Episode III DVD, and a few other things. Nothing special, but that's fine.

Some relatives came over at one. My aunt, her husband Bill, my cousin Ashley, the Woodruff grandma. Yup. We talked and stuff, then decided to play some Jenga. We had a really awesome game going between myself, my cousin, my aunt and my dad. This is a picture about three moves before it fell:

And this picture has the only shot of my Dad and my aunt of Christmas, so enjoy. My aunt finally toppled it right as we started dinner.

Speaking of dinner, it was capino (probably spelled that wrong) an Italian seafood dish. It's basically a bunch of random seafood thrown into a tomato soup base. It has been a tradition on Christmas Day for about six years or so, and was good as usual. A little bit after dinner, all the company left.

My sister and my cousin.



The Graf fam-bamily.

I think that was about it.... yeah. Some good basketball games were on. And Da Bears won. So all in all, it was a sucessful day.

Last night we left around 4:30 to pick my sister up to go out to cocktails before dinner. This was a tradition started last year by my sister because she was 21. Anywho, we ended up going to the Sapphire Hotel and it was really nice. I had a rasberry Italian Soda, so yeah, it was all good.

Enjoying our drinks at the Sapphire Hotel.

We had a reservation at Il Piatto for dinner at 6:00, just like last year. What happened on the way over there was something I shall never forget.

Our car was driving merrily along at 27th & Broadway (I think, Sis correct me if I'm wrong). All of a sudden, some guy rear-ends us really hard. Like snap your head forward with a large bang hard. So we're like... wtf. We look around and the car has stopped and looks like they're kinda shocked too. So we pull over to the side of the road, assuming they would do the same. So this car kinda slowly trails us, acting like they were going to comply. As soon as we turn down a less busy street to stop, the car swerves wildly into the left lane and steps on the gas. Roars past us.

My sister was yelling "Fuck you! Fuck YOU!" and banging on the window to no avail. So I jump out of the moving car (like 3mph) and start running down the busy sidewalk trying to catch the car (haha yeah right). Mind you I'm in fancy clunky business shoes or whatever that weren't very comfortable but that didn't matter. I ran about six blocks before giving up. I saw the car at a stoplight about three blocks ahead, was hoping it would stay red, but no, it turned green and hope faded. So I stopped running. And I wasn't tired... I tells you this adrenaline thing is nice.

Anyways, the car was a newer dark grey sedan. Looked like a fancy car. Wish Kenny was with us because he could probably tell us the exact make and model. My sister did get a license plate on it, but she was unsure with the last letter. So here are the probable suspect license plates:

Remember, large dark grey sedan.
So, if you knew who this is, kick their ass for us.

Maybe they'll search the internet for their license plate to see if we or the police picked it up. So here it goes:

Oregon License Plate 773 BVL or Oregon License Plate 773 BVI

Incase you're wondering driver, yes we told the police. Me thinks hit and run is a felony. We called the police once we reached the restaurant. They said an officer would be over, but we were there two hours and none ever came. Serving and proetecting the people huh? They were probably busy with something more important. They got all the important stuff over the phone... plate number, car description, time/place, etc. So anyways we'll see how that works out.

Funny thing is, we couldn't see any damage on our back bumper. And this was a very violent hit... we kinda swerved from the impact and everything... but nothing... visible at least. My dad kept telling us there could be damage we can't see and stuff, so I guess that is true. Maybe that's why the police didn't come. If I broke my back or something I'd hope they would have been there.

Anyways, that really startled me. I mean it's friggin Christmas Eve and that shit happens. What happened to peace and joy? We came to the conclusion they were drunk by the way they drove/reacted, so hopefully they didn't kill anyone that night. We were minding our own business though and that happens. So I kinda got into that "life is fragile" mood and that's no good. Oh well, the evening went on.

Dinner was good. I had some sausage pasta dish with a Caesar salad. It was good. The bill with tip was in the $130 range, just like last year. We finally got out of there around 8:20pm, so we were there for over two hours. Pretty intense.

Mom and Dad enjoying their dessert.


Do we have to go to church?

So next we went to church at 9:00. It was the First Presbyterian Church just like last year (and the previous what? Eight years?)

The church.

The service was much longer than last year's. Ninety minutes total. I was not in the mood and really didn't enjoy myself. My sister was going absolutely crazy as well. Anywho, finally it was over and we went home and went to bed. Another Christmas Eve was in the books. Tomorrow I will post about what happened today.

Had a good Cristmas Eve with the family. I'll post more later and probably some pictures, but it's 11:00 and my sister needs to sleep in this room.

Well the finals week report is a few days late because I wanted to wait to get my finals grades in. And well, here they are:

So yeah a 4.0 with a "P" (pass) for my freshman orientation course. I'm not exactly sure how I pulled off the A in astronomy, but I'll take it.

My Writing 214 final was the Thursday before last (it was a night class so we didn't have a time during finals week). It was just a group presentation on the probably of putting a business in Corvallis (our choice was Olive Garden). We got an A- on the final, which was pretty good. I got an "A" on my portfolio (all the work we did during the course of the class) and coupled with whatever I got for participation I managed to get an A. So wohoo.

Families in Modern America was my first final during finals week... Monday at 2:00pm. I didn't really study all that much, pulled of a 90% and a 96% for the class. My test scores went from 96 to 92 to 90 for the final. Basically I figured out I could use my ass for my brain during the tests and still pass. So with minimal effort I got an A, which you gotta love.

Next was Astronomy. I figured I had a low A/high B in the class at the time. I studied probably like four hours or so for the final. I was confident on 32/40 of my answers, which I figured was enough to secure a B. But, apparently I did well enough to get an A. Not even an A-, which doesn't even count as 4 points, so that was a bit of a surprise.

Next was Math 241, which I was pretty scared about. But the test ended up being so ridiculously easy. I got 114/120 points, or 95%. That wrapped up an A in math, which was an accomplishment considering I was lost all term.

And that was it. Finals week was over. I went home the next day with my friend Stephen. Brought my desktop home, because there was no way in hell I was using the 5 year-old Dell Dimension for a month.

Here are a few pictures from Thanksgiving, thanks to my dad actually developing the film in a timely fashion and getting a Photo CD.

MoeMoe looking throughly un-amused.

Just chilling.

Finals week report tomorrow.

Last night I went to the Beavers basketball game against UNLV. It was the big highlight out of conference game of the season, so it was pretty important, especially if the Beavers wanted to prove themselves as a tournament worthy team. I arrived with about thirty minutes until tipoff, with most of the 6500 some odd people arriving after that. It was on national TV and I can actually see myself a couple of times in the replay (the back of my head... oh boy!).

Well needless to say, the first half blew. The Beavers couldn't hit shit and fell behind 44-25 going into the break. Things looked bleaked. Kenny and Phil left (hahah you suckers, missed the game of the year).

Then the second half rolls around. Talk about a role reversal. Now UNLV can't hit shit and the Beavers are rolling. Gill is roarin' like back in the days of Ralph Miller and the Orange Express. Beavers pull within 47-43 before UNLV finally wakes up a little. They extend the lead back to 11 at 55-44. Kinda looked like the run was over, UNLV would finally wake up and put us away. Nope. Oregon State goes on another roll and before you know it, we have a tied ballgame at 57. A couple of possesions later Chris Stephens hits a three and the Beavers are ahead.

Holy shit. All the students are jumping up and down all over each other yelling. I almost lost my voice, it was pretty gravely and sore afterward. But it was worth it. This is basically why I went to college (that and the whole needing a future thing). Anywho, it was a crazy scene in the studen section during this comeback, much like the Boise State and Washington State football games this year.

After taking the lead with that three, the Beavers never looked back. They went on to win 69-63 after outscoring UNLV 44-19 in the 2nd half. 44-19... after being outscored 44-25 in the first half. So yeah, hopefully the Beavers play more like they did in the 2nd half the rest of the season. Their next game is next Saturday at Portland in the Chiles Center... I might go.