Mood: sleepy but awake on purpose
Listening to: Brooke's dad's Beatles records

New Year's Eve at Brooke's house!! Her parents have a party every year for all the neighbors, and the kids get the basement and all the Doritos we can eat. We watched the ball drop in Times Square on TV and Brooke's little brother fell asleep at 11:40 and missed it. HA.

My resolutions for 1998:

1. Get moved up from third trumpet (at least to second).
2. Figure out how to do tables on this page so it doesn't look like a ransom note.
3. Get my license and not hit anything.
4. Stop thinking about the thing I don't write about.

Number 4 is the hardest. Number 2 is probably the easiest. That tells you something.

Happy New Year, Internet. See you in 1998.

Mood: my butt is asleep
Listening to: the song from the movie, in my HEAD, FOREVER

Saw TITANIC today with Brooke and her cousin. It came out yesterday and the theater was PACKED. It is three hours and fourteen minutes long, which is longer than some of my relatives' marriages. (That's my mom's joke, she said it at dinner and my dad laughed so hard he coughed.)

OK, it was really good. The part where the ship splits in half, the whole theater went silent. Brooke cried from the iceberg until the credits. Her cousin cried too. I didn't cry but I had something in my eye, a dust thing.

On the way out Brooke and her cousin were going on and on about Leonardo DiCaprio, and her cousin looked at me and said "what about you, which girl in there did YOU think was pretty," and I said "the ship," and they both screamed laughing. I'm good at that. Making a joke so nobody notices you didn't answer.

Mood: STUFFED
Listening to: the football game through the wall

Thanksgiving at Grandma's. Grandma makes the best noodles in the state of Ohio, the thick homemade kind over mashed potatoes, and I will fight anybody on this. I had three helpings. My sister Megan (she's ten) had four and threw up in the car on the way home. Worth it, she said.

At the table my Uncle Rick asked me if I had a girlfriend yet. Everybody turned and looked at me like I was on a game show. I said "I'm focusing on my trumpet career," and everybody laughed, and Uncle Rick said "Don't wait too long, the good ones go fast," and my dad winked at me.

I don't know why that bugged me so much. It's just a thing people say. Everybody's uncle says it. I went and played with Grandma's dog for like an hour after.

Mood: SUPERIOR!!!!!
Listening to: the Imperial March, still, it never stops

LAST COMPETITION OF THE SEASON AND WE GOT A SUPERIOR RATING!!!! That's the top one! Mr. V. almost cried! Our show this year is all Star Wars music (because of the Special Editions last winter) and at the end the whole band turns and plays the Imperial March straight at the judges' box and it is SO COOL. The drumline wore little Darth Vader capes. I wore a normal uniform because I am third trumpet and we don't get capes.

On the bus home the guys in the back were rating girls in band from 1 to 10, and they got to me and said "Corey, who's a 10," and I said "Mr. V.," and the whole back of the bus lost it and nobody asked me again. Saved.

Here's the thing though. I don't get it. Everybody talks like there's a switch that flipped when you turned thirteen and suddenly you care about all this stuff. I keep waiting for mine to flip. It's not flipping. Or it's flipping some other direction. That's all I'm going to say about that.

Also my Tamagotchi died on the bus. RIP Tamagotchi. You were loved but I forgot to feed you during the halftime show.

Mood: blah
Listening to: Spice Girls (Megan's, through the wall, I am being tortured)

Homecoming dance was tonight. I went with a group of band kids, which is what you do when you're a sophomore and nobody asked anybody. Brooke got asked by a JUNIOR at the last minute so she went with him, but she still danced with me to the fast songs because she is loyal.

When the slow songs came on everybody paired off, and I went and stood by the punch bowl and then in the bathroom, and then I stood in the hall looking at the trophy case like I'd never seen a trophy before. I read every single plaque. I know who won the 1974 regional in wrestling now.

It's not that I'm shy. I'm not shy. I talk to everybody. It's that when I think about slow dancing with a girl, it's like thinking about doing somebody else's homework. It's fine. It's just not mine.

OK, that's enough of that. Band has a football game next Friday. We're playing the Star Wars show for the last time at home.

Mood: nerdy and proud of it
Listening to: Sousa (for band, I swear)

Some stuff about me since this is a journal and you're supposed to know who's talking:

• I'm Corey. I'm fifteen. I'm a sophomore.
• I live in a small town in Ohio. Very small. We have two stoplights and one of them just blinks.
• I play trumpet in marching band. Third trumpet, which means I play the notes nobody hears.
• My best friend is Brooke. She plays clarinet and she has been my best friend since second grade when she punched a kid who took my crayons.
• I have a little sister, Megan, who is ten and evil. And a beagle named Buckeye, who is good.
• My dad works at the plant and my mom works at the bank. My dad yells at the TV during Browns games even though the Browns don't exist right now. He yells at old tapes. I'm serious.

I learned HTML from a book at the library called something like "Teach Yourself Web Pages" and from right-clicking "View Source" on other people's pages. I am not a genius. I am just very stubborn.

This journal is for me. If you're reading it, hi. Please don't be weird.

Mood: HYPER!!!
Listening to: Hanson, "MMMBop" (DON'T LAUGH, Megan has it on repeat and it's in my DNA now)

WELCOME TO MY JOURNAL!!!!!

This is my first entry EVER! I just made this page tonight on the family computer after everybody went to bed. It took me four hours and my eyes feel like sandpaper.

I'm going to write here whenever I feel like it. Stuff about band, and school, and whatever. Maybe stuff I don't say out loud. We'll see.

And yes, I know what neighborhood this is. It was random. It was the one that had open addresses when I signed up. DON'T READ INTO IT.

OK good night, it's a school night and I have a chem quiz. Bye!!!!