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December 29, 1999 -January 10, 2000
Well, here it is again! My Christmas letter. I’d meant to get this out a bit sooner, but have been pretty busy recovering from surgery during the last days of 1999 and the first days of 2000, and the internet is just finally working again at the house in Greeley since it wasn't when we returned from break. More on the surgery later.
This will be the third year I’ve written this letter. It basically is a summary of what I’ve been up to over the year. The past couple of years, it has kept me in touch with the people who I might have lost touch with over the year. This year, it will serve that purpose, but also will serve as a way for me to put the year back together for myself.
I feel like this year, more than any other, has rushed past me. It’s like I’ve been going through the motions and enjoying things while they’re happening, but then have moved on to the next thing without really taking any time to think about where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing. As a result, I have felt somewhat of an emptiness at times this year when I’ve stopped to think about past events, simply because I haven’t taken the time to let them impact me in the way that I have in the past. The reason I say all of that is to say that this letter is going to be my attempt to sort through the past year and by writing the events, I will be remembering and reflecting on them for myself.
So, with all that having been said, it’s on to January.
After having one roommate (while living in the dorms), I arrived back on campus at UNC to find myself with four. During my last final before Christmas break, my roommate and my suite mates (I lived in a room connected to another room by a bathroom) decided that it would be cool to have five bunk beds in one room and have the other room be the “party” room. So when I came back from the final, they’d moved the beds.
(I will be posting what the room set-up looked like in this
space, as soon as I can draw it or find the one I originally drew.)
Anyway, you can get the idea that it was very crowded. It was a good time, but with other friends that they had over all the time, it was more like there were 7 of us than the 5 of us who actually lived there. That is also not mentioning the fact that they loved beer. Not that there is anything wrong with that, and they were good guys to live with and hang out with, but it was not uncommon for them to go through 2 cases (24 cans) in a week. This meant that I did a little more partying and a little less studying second semester, and ended up with a 2.7 GPA. But that was coupled with a couple of other events that probably had something to do with the lowered grades.
I started dating Becca, a girl who lived on my floor in the dorms. At first we were ‘just dating,’ but now that has become more and we will be coming up on one year on January 26 of this year. It’s a fun relationship, both of us not really knowing where we’re going and enjoying each other’s company for the time being.
I was Catering also for the University Center at UNC, which meant pretty crappy hours (3:00 in the afternoon-2:00 in the morning) at least once a week, and making about $6.00/hour. I guess at the time I didn’t think it was so bad because I like to make the most of any situation, but I look back on it now as a good experience to have had, but not something I would like to repeat. I learned a lot about proper rules of etiquette when setting, serving, and clearing a meal (skills which I have benefited from already), and worked with great people, but I wouldn’t want to return to catering for the University Center. I’m told caterers make pretty decent money elsewhere, so perhaps I will be doing it again somewhere down the road…you can never tell what life may bring.
Also, in December of last year, my Dad’s project within his company was outsourced, which basically means they gave up on it and let an outside company come in and try to handle it, so he and about 50 other people lost their jobs. This was coupled with the fact that he had some moles removed and biopsied, and when he got the results back, he had been diagnosed with melanoma (skin cancer), and originally given 6 months-1 year to live. This figure went away after they biopsied some other moles and found them to be non-cancerous, but he still has to be careful (moreso than before) about being out in the sun too much and just his health in general. He was out of work for about 6 months, and finally took a job in June or July with the Bureau of Land Management for the government. The new job seems to be pretty high-stress for him, and he’s not sure he’s happy with it, but for now, it’s where he’s at. These factors didn’t directly affect me, but they did have influence over where I was at mentally, knowing that my parents were going through such a difficult time.
March brought with it a new and difficult experience for me as well. Before my senior year of high school, my grandpa passed away and my family got his car, because basically we were the only ones with room to store it. Over Christmas break, Dad and I spent some time working on it getting it up and running so that I would have a car for getting around Greeley and going back and forth from home. Anyway, I don’t remember the exact date, but I was home on a Wednesday taking Becca back to Aurora so that she could catch a flight to Chicago. I decided that as long as I was in Aurora, and because I didn’t have any classes until 12:20 on Thursday, I would go home and spend the night there, and go back to Greeley the next day. So the next morning I got up and got ready to go back to Greeley. The last thing my Dad said to me was “be safe, and no tickets,” (we’re all on the same insurance). So as I was driving back to Greeley, about 1 mile outside of Fort Lupton on Colorado Highway 85, I was following a new 1999 gold Ford pickup. In front of him was a blue Toyota. (85 is more of a rural highway (4 lanes) and has lots of places for people to turn across the highway if they miss their turn or decide to head back the other direction. That is exactly what the blue Toyota did, only he did it without using his brakes or his blinker.) At 65 MPH heading North, the blue Toyota turns across the highway, almost hitting a white car going South, and heads South. As you might imagine, the guy in the gold truck in front of me freaked out and slammed on his brakes, and I tried to change lanes, but there was a car in the right hand lane next to me, so I stepped down on the brakes and I slammed into the back of the pickup. It is funny how they tell you that time slows down, because for a long time I was sure that the accident took a long time to happen, but at that speed, it must have happened in only a few seconds. Before I got out of the car, I thought that the damage might not be that bad because I wasn’t hurt initially (except for the fact that I was shaking uncontrollably), but as soon as I got out and looked at the car, and saw that there was radiator fluid all over the ground and that the car was smoking, and then looked at the front of the car, which was completely pushed back and broken, I knew that I wasn’t going to be driving away in that car. The guy from the gold truck, who had gone some distance down the road, came back, and the woman who was going South in the white car that the Toyota almost hit came over with her cell phone. The blue Toyota was gone. Within a few minutes, I’d called Dad (not a fun phone call), and the paramedics and police had arrived. The police called a tow truck and started doing all the accident report stuff. It turns out I had skidded for 165 feet before hitting the truck!
A few bad things happened as a result of the accident. First, the car was totaled. I could have spent the time and money to fix the front end, but there is no telling what other damage has been done to a car after an accident like that. Second, I got the ticket. The officer told me that in a 2-car accident, someone always has to come out with a ticket, and he determined I was at fault because I was the one who hit the pickup, and cited the reason on the ticket as that I was following too closely. It was a 2-point careless driving ticket. Third, we only had collision coverage on that car, and not comprehensive, because it was an older car and it didn’t make much sense to pay the full comprehensive cost of the insurance. So we got nothing from the insurance company for the car. Fourth, our insurance does have towing on it, but in the midst of the accident, I had forgotten that and so we had to pay the towing bill, which was $100. But the tow truck company was willing to give us the salvage value of the car, which he estimated to be at about $100. (That was very convenient for him because the car was actually worth $300 minimum in salvage value, but to have it towed somewhere else wouldn’t make much sense.)
Dad came and picked me up from Fort Lupton and took me back up to school. It was really awesome to have him there for me after the accident. He helped get the insurance and towing stuff taken care of (we left the car there at the junkyard) and made sure I was okay and settled back at school before heading back home. After sleeping for an hour, I woke up to discover that I was very sore, particularly in my neck around my spine, and it was then that I realized that I’d been in a pretty serious accident. I don’t have any permanent injuries from the accident that I know of (my neck still hurts from time to time), but it is definitely something I will remember for the rest of my life.
April 20, 1999. Columbine. If you live in this country, you know about it and what happened there. There is not too much that I can or will say about this that hasn’t already been said, except that we have got to respect and take care of each other. If this example doesn’t show us that, then we learn nothing and encourage it to continue and happen again. As for its effect on me, it didn’t directly affect me, but 3 of the four girls who lived in the room next to mine had graduated from Columbine, and knowing that was enough to make me involved. I actually went and visited the school this summer after all the TV cameras and crowds had gone. It was still boarded up and cordoned off by the police tape. It’s hard to believe that two people took their hate and anger to that level, but as more and more of these types of events happen, it’s becoming easier and easier to accept and believe them, and that’s sad.
What was really interesting and disappointing to me was that after the shootings, everyone used the event to promote their own causes. Isiaih Shoels’ parents used it as a means to express their belief that the community was a racist one. The Christian community used the shooting of Cassie Bernall (the one who was killed after saying she believed in God—perhaps some of you received the “if you love Jesus you’ll sign below” email) to preach the message of “if we could all only be like her.” These people allowed the event to even further divide and separate, instead of seeing the simple truth that hate is hate. Their messages were well intentioned, and perhaps even correct, but they still didn’t get that they were causing further division and exclusion.
So those things, put together, made for a pretty difficult semester, but also a semester that I look back on with good memories as well, of spending time with new friends on the floor and meeting new people. I also enjoyed during the semester doing a radio show with my friend (and now roommate, James). We get on campus radio (which at the time was only able to be picked up in the dorms on campus) on Sunday nights and shoot the breeze about school, girls, family, friends, and life in general. It’s a good time.
So I suppose that brings me to working this summer. I moved out of good ol’ Harrison Hall (which they decided to renovate after I left…..AHEM!) and moved back into my parents house in Aurora. I signed on with a temp service who found me a job working for a company called Copic. I was actually working for Gadrian, a company within COPIC, that does the credentials verification for all doctors, physical therapists, counselors, etc. in Colorado. It was the first time I’d made $10.00/hr. which I enjoyed, and also the first time I spent the whole summer working in an air-conditioned office building, which I didn’t enjoy as much. Excluding my senior summer (when I didn’t work, but just enjoyed the time before going to college), I had spent my other summers working outside mowing lawns, moving rock, pulling weeds, cleaning a pool, etc. So the slacks and tie was new for me, and there were days I liked it a lot, and other days where I was bored out of my mind and wishing I was out mowing a field somewhere. Toward the end of the summer, the work got to where it was pretty monotonous (data entry, mailing envelopes, opening and sorting returned envelopes), but it was fine that it got boring because I was going back to school anyway.
I did enjoy being at home during the summer though because it was nice to spend time with my family and Becca. Also I was here on the 4th of July to see my cousin to get married. On my mom’s side, there are 19 of us cousins, and my cousin Diann is the second oldest and was the first to get married. With that wedding there came announcements of two others for the cousins, so now Grandma and the aunts and uncles are all waiting to see who will be next. (Not me!)
Also this summer, I bought a car! (my first) which I make monthly payments on (took out a loan). It’s a 1984 AUDI CS 5000 in great condition, and since getting it, I’ve already put about 8,000 miles on it, but I guess that is to be expected between the work I did this summer, and between doing some driving back and forth between Greeley and Aurora. It’s great to have a car that I know is mine, but of course, comes with the responsibility of taking care of it and making sure it’s getting paid for on a monthly basis.
Fall brought with it my moving into a house for the first time to truly be on my own. This has proven to be a good experience as well, and I am living with a couple of friends from high school, James Laguana and Andy Kelso. We live on the top floor of a house and have a backyard and a pretty nice-sized living space. It is a little more time consuming to be in a house because you have to do your own shopping and cooking and all the other little things that come along with a house, but aside from the normal, we haven’t had any major problems (excepting the fact that we couldn’t drink our water in Greeley for a couple of days because of some story about a little bacteria in the water which got blown out of proportion, but oh well).
Fall also brought with it a couple new positions of responsibility for myself, but doing things I enjoy (most of the time), so it’s worth it.
I’m the public relations person for German club, which, in short, means I’m responsible for keeping the campus informed about events that the German Club is putting on, and for designing and developing the German Club web page. (You can visit it, BTW, at http://www.unco.edu/german—check it out…I’m making changes to it sometime during January. It’s a good site, but should be a great site for not only German fans, but for help with many foreign languages when I get all the resources together that I want to put on there.) This has been fun, but means two weekly meetings which I didn’t have to attend last year and building the web page, so it is time consuming.
Also, in addition to being a DJ on Sunday nights, I’m the head of advertising for KSRX, our campus radio. (You can visit the web page at http://www.unco.edu/ksrx—I only do little things on this page). This has been something which I view as having a huge potential, but have not been able to donate the necessary time to make it happen, which has been disappointing for me, but hey, there’s only so many hours in the day, right? I actually hate that philosophy. There’s always more time, it’s just getting everyone’s schedules to work together and motivating people to follow through. But I feel a soapbox coming on, and this letter is already in it’s fourth page.
Also this fall, I started working at USWESTDEX. Everyone who reads this letter (Excepting Dawn, my friend in Tennesee who I was lucky enough to get to see this fall when she came to visit Colorado) is probably familiar with USWESTDEX from the phone book. They took that phone book and put it on-line so that in addition to the book, you can search for what you’re looking for (restaurant, veterinarian, entertainment, etc.) on-line. It’s at www.uswestdex.com. Basically what I do for them is call businesses and let them know that they’re on-line, and then also let them know that they can either link their listing to their existing web site, or that Uswestdex can build a web site for them. I make $14/hr., which is basically unbeatable compared to any other job I’d have in Greeley, and for the most part I enjoy it, except when people hang up on me, thinking I’m only doing telemarketing. I don’t plan to stay in the field (sales) for a career, but right now don’t really know where I’m headed as far as a career, so for now, the job works pretty well for me.
Speaking of where I’m headed…Right now I’m declared as a double major in speech communications and journalism, with a double minor in music and German. So I will probably be in school for 4 ½ years, but I plan on spending a couple semesters abroad, both in Germany during second semester next year, and also (hopefully) on a program called Semester at Sea. You get on a big cruise ship with 600-700 other people and take college courses while traveling around the world to 13 different countries. It seems like too good of an opportunity to pass up, and I hope to be able to do it (financially) during second semester of my senior year at UNC.
But that doesn’t really say anything about career plans or plans for the future. Right now, I’m okay with that. I’m not great with it, and I still question all the time whether or not I’m doing the ‘right” thing right now, but it seems to be working out okay. All I know for sure is that I want to be happy when I grow up. What that means is being satisfied in a career that allows me to do more than just get by. It also means that at some point, I would like to get married, and have and raise a family. Where and when and how all this will happen, I’m not too sure yet, but I’m confident that with faith in myself and faith in God, as well as the support of my incredible family and awesome friends, I will be able to accomplish the balance needed to attain this type of lifestyle. Thank-you to you all for being there for me, in whatever capacity.
As for what I’ve been up to more recently, here’s the news on that front.
I had some time during the summer to research and purchase a transmitter for the radio station (using the radio station’s money of course), and so the station can now be picked up on broadcast as well as in the dorms via the cable. However, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is pretty specific and powerful with regard to what can and can’t be done in radio broadcasting, and our transmitter, even though it operates at the maximum output allowed by the FCC, does not have a very large effective range, as we are not a station that is licensed by the FCC (yet). I’m about the only one at the station who knows enough about the transmitter to try to improve the signal, but the efforts (which involve climbing around and playing with large objects on top of a roof) have been slowed by my most recent injury.
On November 11th or 12th, I went skiing with my family. How ironic that in the morning, we met up with my aunt who spent one of the chairlfit rides up the slope telling me about her knee surgery, because on the last run of the day, I tore two major ligaments (the ACL and the MCL) in my knee. My brother and I had been taking jumps all day and so knew where they all were at. I went off a jump at the top of the hill, and between not landing the jump very well and landing on some crust, I ended up getting all twisted around and ended up faced down the hill with my skis crossed behind me. My brother Adam went off the jump behind me and came down the hill expecting me to get up, but there was no way I was going anywhere, walking or skiing. I knew right away what had happened because in the midst of the fall I had heard the tendon snap. I thought it was just the ACL, but in actuality was both…the MCL heals itself, the ACL does not, and so I was in a straight leg brace for the majority of November and much of December. On December 30th, I had surgery to re-attach the tendon, which went well, and I stayed the night in the hospital and watched the New Year’s celebration in Australia at 6:00 AM from a hospital bed. I don’t remember much of New Year’s Eve day or New Year’s Day, except that I came home from the hospital (Mom and Deanna came and picked me up), and know that I was here for our New Year’s party (we probably had about 25 people). Becca was great at being there for me to just make sure I was okay, as was the rest of my family. I finally woke up on the second, after getting off of the Percocet, and have spent this week writing this Christmas letter (started December 28th) and recovering while watching far too much TV. But when you have to get better and aren’t exactly mobile, TV is about the best thing you’ve got. And as far as the mobility is concerned, my family has been great taking care of me, and especially my little sister who is off-track and has been my in-home nurse for everything I’ve needed.
I also got some disappointing news in December. My dad called to say that my 90 year-old great aunt Stasia had died. She was a very strong and incredible woman, my grandpa’s (on my dad’s side) eldest sister. She had a stroke earlier this year, and had fought cancer prior to her death. I accept that she had lived a good and full life, but I was disappointed that I had not recently seen her, because she lived only about 20 minutes away from our house in Aurora.
For Christmas, I got a new cell phone from my brother, which I was able to get set up prior to sending out this email. The number is (720) 234-7272. I will be able to be reached 24-7, assuming I have the phone with me. I’m not exactly sure whether that fact is a positive or a negative thing, but know that I would have loved to have had a cell phone in the case of March’s car accident.
Last year I ended this letter by saying that you should make the most of 1999 because you wouldn’t get another chance this century. With all of the hype surrounding the Y2K bug and the year 2000 in general, I thought I would contribute my thoughts as well, but seeing as how the world hasn’t ended, and Christ hasn’t come and taken people in rapture, and the end of days didn’t come about because of some surge of the devil or because of some asteroid coming to blow us up in a fiery Armageddon (reference intended), I just decided to say this about the new millennium (BTW—this is the correct spelling of the word).
It will be whatever we make it. If we want to keep having more of the same kinds of things happen that have happened during the last ten, hundred, or thousand, we just keep on going along, not allowing world events to impact us. However, if we wish to make the world a better or different place, we must do as the Pope and many others throughout history have taught. “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.” We must allow the events to impact us and cause us to change our attitudes, therefore changing our actions. It is only in this way that the world changes to become a better place for us all.
I want to thank you for your emails, letters, your care and concern over the past year, and wish you much success and fortune in the upcoming year, wherever you are, and whatever you’re doing.
Thank you and I hope to hear from you soon!
IN GREELEY IN AURORA(not so often)
Jonathan Kraft Jonathan Kraft
1420 15th Ave. 25324 E. Kettle Place
Greeley, Colorado 80631 Aurora, Colorado 80016
(970) 356-5863 (303) 693-0872
Cell: (720) 234-7272
[email protected]
[email protected]
http://members.home/1jonathan
(this is my home page…a work in progress)
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