Happy Jenday once again! 

   Today, I would like to talk about fate.  There seems to be a lot of it rolling around out there.  Often times just when you think you're getting the hang of things, fate pops back up and says "Hey! Miss me?  Here's the next part!"  Is this the same as destiny?  Not necessarily.  I think the distinction could be that destiny is where you're going.  Fate is what happens to make you get there.  Neither do I believe that fate has anything to do with the decisions we make.  Fate is what causes us to make those decisions.  This creates a chain of events which we, as humans, broadly term "life".  For instance...

   When I was a kid my dad ran his own landscaping business.  In California in the late 80's and early 90's we were living in a drought situation, which, as one might guess, isn't so great for people that dealing in making plants grow.  Things were getting tricky and eventually my dad had to get a job in Oregon.  So, 3 days before my freshman year of high school started, we loaded up the truck and moved to...well not Beverly. 

   Brookings, actually.  Small logging and fishing town, lots of trees, good surf, and a whole lot of nothing for 26 miles in either direction.  This is because all the towns along the southern Oregon coast were once Pony Express stops, and 26 miles was about as far as a rider could go in a day. It was in this school that my social life was reborn.  You see, I hadn't been very popular in junior high.  No no, I know you're thinking "What??", but it's true.  I was a bit of a geek, which wasn't as popular in those days as it is today.  And it was in this school that my passion for acting was realized.  It was also in this school, during my junior year, that everybody in my class had to take the ASVAB, which is sort of the military version of the SATs.  Had I been in the California school system, I might never have taken that test.  But because I had taken the test and because I'm smart enough to tell my ass from my elbows, recruiters came looking for me.  I hadn't really given any thought to life after highschool, and a brief stint in the military seemed like a good way to get out in the world, get money for college, and find out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.  As it turned out, what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, was not be in the Army.

  While in the Army, I was was stationed variously at Ft. Leonardwood, Missouri; Ft. Huachuca, Arizona; Ft. Gordon, Georgia; Yong San, South Korea; and Ft. Hood, Texas. 

   Now this is where things start getting convoluted.  When you have a security clearance, like I did, it takes a while for the clearance to get from one post to another.  So, while I was sitting in Texas waiting for my clearance to arrive from South Korea so I could actually get to do my job, I had to sit around doing a lot of odd jobs.  One of those odd jobs turned out to be life guarding for one of the pools on post.  The pool was right across the street form my barracks.  So, instead of getting up at 5:30am everyday and engaging in mindless exercise, I was getting up around 11am and strolling across the street to work on my tan. 

   This, by the way is the only time in my life I have ever been tan.  I would walk around and people would say "Man, you are tan!" and I would say "I know."

   Then, August 23rd, 1998 at around 5:30 in the afternoon, there was nobody at the pool but two regular kids and I was the only lifeguard on duty.  I went to try a double flip off the diving board, landed wrong on my right foot and fell into the water.  As it turned out I had what's called a "lys franc" fracture, which means you pretty much dislocate every bone in your foot and tear all the major ligaments and tendons.  Good times.  I finished my military career with a slight hobble.  I also finished it with an honorable discharge and a 30% disability rating from the veteran's administration.  Basically what this boils down to is that my soccer career is over.  I moved back in with my parents, who, one month after I got out of the Army, moved back down to my homeland of Marin County.

   I started going to the College of Marin, a local community college.  This is where I met Yuri and the gang.  I wanted to start studying acting again.  This stemmed from the events that happened in the "How It All Started" thread on the boards.  It's already written down there so I won't dazzle you with it again here.  Because of my disability rating I was eligible for the Vocational Rehabilitation Program, which would pay for me to get an Associate's Degree.  However, the government doesn't consider acting to be a worthwhile location.  So I started studying graphic design instead.  I tried to take some acting classes, but I always had to drop them because I was always getting cast shows...vis Yuri, and now Break A Leg.

  I guess my point is this: so far the universe has conspired to get me to this point with these people at this time.  And I 'd like to think that somewhere, somehow, that is significant in the grand scheme of things, and that fate has something more in store for us here at Break a Leg. Which introduces us to Fate's big sister, which is Hope.