And with the sound of a snap of the fingers, nine days of so-called Spring Break have gone poof and into the air. And while I did keep myself busy doing various odd tasks and spending time with friends and most of all, rest and relaxation, none involved school work. And while on some respects that's a good thing, it's not on this night, where I've suddenly realized that it's all piled up. So how did I waste my time? Writing this, so in turn, wasting your time as well.

First and foremost, there was Iraq. We're now in day 12 of the war and we're going nowhere. Every time I hear of the progress toward Baghdad, they keep saying they are 50 miles away. Today, they were making progress as they are now 49 miles away. Protests aren't as bad as I heard coming up to it, none of the threatened bridge closings and what not, just intersections. As for the war, the bombs seem to be devastating yet all it has done is allow a small percentage of Iraqis to rise up and fight for their "dying regime" spoiling the plans by the United States to keep this war quick. How quick? President Bush budgeted this war for less than a month. Now estimates are that it's going into the summer and maybe beyond. Hussein probably believes the longer this war is, the more protests there will be against the actions of President Bush, which would force some kind of cease-fire, something Secretary Rumsfeld and Pentagon officials vow will never happen. To my father, he doesn't believe in bringing in more troops. He knows how that could fail, seeing as how we're here instead of Vietnam. As he told me, as long as the North had rice to eat, they'd be unstoppable. Bombs wouldn't do any good if you're just dropping them blindly into the jungle. And in the end, the North won after the U.S. withdrew. My dad reasons then that unless they're able to starve out Baghdad now, they should just withdraw now. But instead they're in too deep and now there's no way out. I truly hope the U.S. can tough it out soon or else we're in it for the long haul.

There was the trip to the dentist office. Another new one, I think the seventh one. Nice old guy who went to Loyola Marymount and USC. Apparently, I've got perfect teeth but a little too much plaque. So they keep poking at my teeth with various metal objects causing my gums to bleed. The hygenist asks, "Do you know why your gums are bleeding?" If I was in my usual mood, I would've said it was from the sharp objects attacking my teeth. Instead, I looked away choosing to focus on the small amount of pain. She chose to promote the line of electronic toothbrushes out on the market today. She seemed to be putting down manual toothbrushes as if they were from the stone age or something. Sorry, I'll keep with my tried and true.

There was the Sharks game against the Stars, probably the best loss the Sharks have suffered. They gave up two early goals, but managed to battle back with some hard work and hustle to tie 2-2. But very quickly, they gave up a goal to go down 3-2. A good effort by Marco Sturm tied things right back at 3. A dumb penalty by Adam Graves allowed the Stars to take a one-goal lead with 2 minutes to play, forcing the Sharks to pull their goaltender for the extra skater. Teemu Selanne gets the puck with seconds remaining and backhands it in just as time expires. But the referee waves off the goal saying he heard the horn go off before the puck went into the net. They go to video review and after 5 minutes of talking to the video judge and league officials in Toronto, they determine the replay was inconclusive and thus the goal did not stand, leading to a 4-3 loss.

There was the night of drama at home. My friends have noticed that my sister takes too many liberties nowadays. My parents second that, saying she's a bit out of control. Whenever I'm at home, they seem to be fine and I don't notice anything out of the ordinary. That changed on one night when my sister planned on going to the movies. Granted, she mentioned it in passing a couple of days earlier, but my parents don't get the message unless you tell them a couple of more times. Too many times though they'll get sick of it and they'll definitely say no. When the time came, she was ready to go but it was late and my parents had a vague notion on who was going to be with her. So predictably they said no and wouldn't let her go. Oh, did she cry her eyes out. Usually, after a few minutes, they'd let her go. But they stood their ground, like nothing I'd ever seen before. She was even willing to give up her drivers' license. After fifteen minutes, my mother let her go but it was in that tone of voice where you'd regret it if you did. So she gave up and had to break the news to her friends. In the morning, seemingly all was forgiven since there wasn't any mention of it.

There was my cousin's college plans. As every high school senior knows, March is the college admissions season and among the colleges she's been accepted to is Berkeley, albeit a Spring admit. I never understood the wisdom of Spring admissions. If they're as good as a Fall admit, they should allow them to join in the so-called fun instead of having them suffer from not having the perks available to a Fall Freshman. (I know, what perks?) Then again, I know a relative number of Spring admits doing much better than I am, so it might not be a bad idea to ease your way into a successful Berkeley career. Or they could waste away at another college.

There was Jennifer Garner. All over the television this week. She was at the Oscars wearing a powder blue dress that was obviously too small for her. She was on the rerun of Saturday Night Live, not being too funny but humorous nonetheless. And she was on Alias tonite where a bunch of stuff happened. She rode a mechanical bull. She sneaked her way into Russia and into Spain to save Christian Slater playing a scientist. She was witness to the death of Dixon's wife by way of a car bomb by Sloane, who saw that Dixon killed his wife as both were trying to get away in the last episode.

There were other things but for now, there's homework to be done and due at noon tomorrow.