The European Space Agency is seeking six volunteers to spend 520 days inside a sealed isolation facility to study the psychological effects of a journey to Mars.

Source: newscientist.com

Naturally my first response to this article was “Oh sweet, that’d be f’ing awesome!” But I seemed to have come to the conclusion that I’d end up having a mental break down and turning the whole place into a bloody massacre as I cut peoples limbs off and sewed them on to other peoples’ bodies. Quite literally, that is what would happen to me. How about you, could you do it?

“Success is measured by how high you bounce when you hit bottom.”
- General George S. Patton

“Serve a greater cause than your own ego, or you’ll be a one-man army.”
- Richard Marcinko

“Listen up, maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else.”
- Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), Fight Club

“Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead.“
- Benjamin Franklin

Well Sunday and Monday were pretty average days. Nothing special happened, except that I ate an egg for dinner on Monday. Next day: Tuesday. I wake up feeling sick and having the shits (I know, gross, but it’s the truth and I live an honest lifestyle). In result of this, I stay home from school. I ate an egg for lunch that day. When my dad woke up, after I had eaten the egg, to use the bathroom, he asked “Did you eat an egg?” I confirm the affirmative answer. “Those are out-of-date by like three weeks!” My jaw drops. So that’s why I’m f’ing sick. Wednesday, I wake up regurgitating what I had eaten the day before and for breakfast, so I once again stay home from the place of academics known as school. Now that I know what made me sick for the past two days I intelligently decide not too eat anymore and just throw the damn things away.

All this time something is happening with my grandpa. My grandpa has been losing blood for quite awhile now, almost six months, if my memory serves correct, maybe longer. Slowly, but surely he is losing pints of blood. Well, he has been getting blood transfusions for awhile now. Recently, this week infact, he was put back in the hospital for being incredibly weak, after just having got out of a nursing home recently. This time around, going into the hospital that is, he refused treatment, so on Wednesday, they put him back in the nursing home, but in the Hospice Center this time. On Thursday my parents went down to visit him while I was in school. They came home and said that the nurse said he only had a few days to live, considering his blood pressure was so low. I exclaimed that I NEEDED to see him this weekend. He died that same day. I’m feeling a HUGE resentment right now. You see, I hadn’t seen my grandfather since last Christmas. All summer long he was sick, off and on, off and on. Well I never wanted to drive the two hours to go visit him because I thought him being sick was just temporary.

Now that he has passed on I am so angry with myself for not visiting him. I just. . . I don’t know, I just regret not going down there. I feel like a terrible person and this is ripping me apart inside.

Today my dad and I went to Men’s Warehouse to buy suits. All I have to say is that suits are a helluva lot more expensive than what either of us thought.

Calling Hours are Monday and the funeral is Tuesday. The family asked me if I want to be a pallbearer and I feel honored that they would ask me. I said yes of course.

That’s everything that has happened this week, so far.

Tomorrow I will be going to Cedar Point with Krysten. That should be a blast. . . or just a bunch of long lines and very expensive food.

- Jake Phlieger

P.S. Below, I have attached a photo of my grandma, me, and my grandpa on Thanksgiving of 2008.