Fog

I confess that I have been in a moderate slump personally, and it is not that I haven't tried mightily to pull myself out of it. I could blame it for affecting the general lack of housekeeping I have done lately, both literal and figurative. I'm sure that I'll be able to eventually pull out of it, yet I know that it will require for me to try and get back in touch with the things that I think I have lost touch with. If all of this sounds vague, it is supposed to because, after all, if I knew what exactly it was that I needed, then I wouldn't be feeling like I was in a slump.

Work continues apace. Instead of showing up for work in the morning, I decided to go in at night (thank goodness for a lenient boss) and get some of the work I've been putting off done, such as updating more web-images on the corporate site website. Three years ago, when I had a full-time job year round - not like the summer job I have now - I had to work from 3:00 p.m. to at least 11:30 p.m. everyday. Sometimes, when the schedule would change, the whole work crew, including me, would be required to work much later, to at least 3:00 a.m. or so. Often, when the moon was high, I'd drive through the forest and home, noting almost every time the utter lack of people. (I'm reminded of the highwayman poem by Alfred Noyes that begins: "The wind was torrent of darkness among the gusty trees / The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.") It got to the point where I began to feel crowded in places other people might have felt lonely. I did ten years of that. And I think that it has left a mark in my motivation to work more at night than during the day. This spiritual malaise will lift, I'm sure. I liken it to a coastal fog or winter rain storm; everyone knows that these things eventually pass, but noone really knows when.

Party People

A few days ago, at the culmination of my girlfriend's big move across Big City, we went to the block party that was occurring in her new neighborhood. Simultaneously, while we had been busy arranging, packing, and moving all of several years of her life and furniture, a few neighbors in her new neighborhood were planning a so-called "block" party, which pretty much turned out to be an excuse to meet all of the neighbors. It was pure coincidence that it the party was on the last day of my girlfriend's move.

Being a small town kind of guy, spending much of my previous years only hearing about block parties in movies - the medium of our age - I wasn't sure what to expect. Essentially, several older people who could be classified as hippies (and I use the term with a marker of kindness) had cooked a few hot dogs and bought a potato salad to feed an overwhelming number of neighborhood children who spontaneously melted into the streets without their parent's accompaniment. Therefore, much of the party was spent entertaining the children with a pinata and humoring them with candy. Fortunately, the street where the party was set-up had been blocked off at both ends; otherwise, the children surely would have been confronted with their doom in a sudden accident as they were obliviously careening around on bicycles and scooters in a dizzying frenzy. Chaos would be a kind word for the hour and a half that we spent there. Still, I maintained a certain equanimity in the midst of it being the kind of guy who has taken "go with the flow" as a personal motto.

I went away from the experience thinking about the type of people I met there - one was hippy guy who wore a grateful dead T-shirt and seemed nervous; the other was woman who talked about her years being abused by her ex-husband, but who also loved to read true crime stories; and the other was a young woman who had come abruptly to yell at someone she thought had yelled at her own kid (Noone had yelled, and if she had been there with her child, she might have known that). Sometimes it seems difficult for people to get along, and more than anything else, the recognition of the enduring conflicts we, as a society, are still struggling with, makes me feel old and very tired.

My best friend T.V.

Although I don't really feel like writing something (partially as a result of not really having anything to say), I figured that I should force myself to at least write a little. Part of the struggle of learning how to write well for me has been developing the discipline needed to practice everyday. Discipline, as a matter of fact, happens to be my personal arch nemesis; I spend much more time with my close personal friend, the television. Television, an always ready friend, can be a jerk sometimes, especially when I have chores to do. Anyway, most people generally assume that art is created by people who have a natural talent for such a thing. For instance, how often have you heard someone say, " I wish I could do that; I just don't have the talent," or instead of talent they say gift or whatever. I betting at least once.

While it's true that talent does play a role in artistic endeavor, the secret happens to be that much of artistic talent is really skill. For example, a musician will pratice scales to help them develop the fingering to play their instrument. But even beyond that, musicians - even really accomplished ones - will spend a long time practicing a particular musical piece that they want to learn. Writing is like music in that way. If you want to write well, then you must write often. I guess the part of the problem is that most people don't consider writing an art. While it can be used as mere communication, it can also be much, much more. It is to that goal that I aspire. (Geez, I sound like a level ten cornball!) Anyhow, all of this merely explains the reason for my entry today. I'm forcing myself to write, so that I can push myself to better writing. And so I can go to sleep tonight without feeling like I wasted the whole day with my best friend, that jerk - the television.

Burrth-day Sneakers

School approaches, and I'm finding that time is really getting short for the many tasks that I still have left to complete. The least of these projects includes cleaning my house, and on the opposite scale, planning a trip to California with my girlfriend. Somewhere in between I need to finishing reading a text that my grad. school instructors want me to have read over the summer, and clearing my desk at work of the continually mounting pile of projects that need almost immediate attention. The small silver lining to all of this work is that I've gotten a better handle on dealing with constant low-level stress that does not include long naps during the day.

The whole last week was spent at my girlfriend's apartment moving her across town in Big City. Not only did I move the heavy furniture on the day of the move, but I almost singlehandedly did all of the packing the week before. One of the more surreal episodes during this period was the one that occured at the small convenience store/market where I decided to buy well-deserved soda to cool down. As I made a purchase at the counter, a relatively attractive young woman suddenly put her things next to mine on the counter, which included a snickers bar, and loudly announced: "I am buy-ying these sneakers because it is my burrr-thday!" Imagine a voice that sounded like a cross between Chewbacca, an angry bull frog, and a chainsaw, and you get the idea. I probably should have said something like "Happy Birthday," but instead, being really creeped out, I gave a sympathetic, startled smile, and got the hell out of there.

Life is Ridiculous

Just today I managed to finish up most of the grad. school paperwork that I had left undone, including the inadvertantly brutal financial aid report, which - thanks to the Divine Big Guy - the school is going to give me even though I had missed the required deadline by a whole week. Today, I even signed up for my first grad. school classes, but I'm not sure which ones I should be taking, or even if I have to sign up at this point at all. (The person in charge of advising students on this is revising the program, and I won't know for sure about any of this until I show up for classes.) And knowing how the Registrar's office is the most unholy of college departments with the virtually unlimited power to screw up the most careful of plans, I figured that I should get my proverbial foot in the door by signing up for a couple of classes, and then trusting to fate that I will have the ability to change anything later.

Although I'm not one hundred percent sure, I think that, in order to fulfill my eventual graduation requirements, I'm going to have to take another foreign language besides the one I took during my undergraudate years. I've been struggling a bit with deciding which one I should try to learn. Essentially, Life is ridiculous, and I know this because of instances like these. On the basis of absolutely no knowledge whatsoever - on a hunch that may be wrong - I have to make a snap decision that will likely affect the next two years of my life. So, for no reason whatsoever, besides the fact that the class is offered in the afternoon, I decided that I will try to learn German. What the hell. But I hope I remember this in the future - how a thirty second (at most) decision will impact the course of my next two years, because I'm sure it will make for a good laugh depending on what kind of mood I'm in.

Frogs and Ghosts

Personally, today has been a bust all around. I should have gone into work much, much earlier, and I should have not wasted the earlier part of the day watching television and playing video games; I didn't even feed myself properly, but instead I subsisted on potato chips and soda, as if I were still a young teenager with the biological fortitude to handle that kind of abuse. Ugh. Still, I did go to work so I haven't failed on all accounts yet.

As for the television and video games (and I also include web surfing which is pretty much the same thing), I managed to catch a the special reunion show for That's Incredible, a cheesy 80's precursor to the modern reality shows. Like many things associated with my youth, I remember the show being much more cooler and interesting than it actually was. With stories about a ghost haunting a Toy-R-Us, a man who had been struck by lightning seven times, and an opera singing parrot, combined with what they called "action stunts," I can see the appeal to my eight-year-old self. Now, with an adult perspective, I see the show as mostly exploitative, yet also somehow ever-so-slightly innocent, even though I understand, after doing some modern Net research, that the show is indirectly responsible for six people losing their lives(!). No kidding.

I suppose that this was the then modern television equivalent to the "Odd Tales" and "Weird Stories" I would often read in the school library. Tucked in the corner of the youth science fiction section, the section primarily reserved for kids with strong nerdly leanings, these "odd" and "weird" stories - usually a two or three pages - purported to be true accounts of how it rained frogs in a small nebraska town in 1892, or how a deserted mineshaft in the old west has a legendary ghost that is occasionally seen by tourists. I devoured these stories whole, but now I've grown into a full fledged cynic. Which, as far as being a cynic, is - in an odd way - partially responsible for my not wanting to go to work today.

Odd Night

Last night, after a spontaneous convergence of seemingly random events, which some generous people with a mystic sensibility might call Fate, I met up with five other old-time friends in the Big City. My girlfriend and I had planned on only meeting with one of them, but she, our other friend, wanted to see the four others that she knew were going to be in the area for only just a brief while. Let it be known that the only person who lived in Big City was my girlfriend - everyone else was only in town for the day. Most of them lived two or more hours away from Big City.

To be specific: although I had earlier planned on driving that night the hour and half home, instead I found myself sitting in a dusty, somewhat useless and dilapidated barn filled with strangers in a variety of ages listening to the band my four other friends had created. Twelve years ago, I was in that nascent band's creation. My nineteen-year-old self revelled in playing the drums, not having a permanent place to live, traveling long roads to other towns at midnight, and blissfully feeling that all of the world was as open and new as I believed it to be then. And I felt that life would be just like that forever. I'm not, nor was I then, naive, but the good feelings that overwhelmed our small group almost coerced us to consider broader horizons than the work-a-day, bill-paying, child-rearing future. During my two years with the band, I didn't earn any money; I never saw a doctor, and I never bought any that cost more than ten dollars in a given month. As corny as it may sound in our cynical world, I was happy.

Which made last night so odd. Revisiting the past and seeing how we all had changed made me feel nostalgia for our earlier selves, but it also made me feel grateful for the divergent changes that occured in our lives, the changes that were further distinguishing ourselves into different people. Several of my friends had now completed college, had children, and were struggling to create a stability that was antithetical to our early band days. Now, being older is a reality for us, and we no longer live in the same world of the same possibilities.

Wal-Mart Fantasy

The other day, my car being much abused by the constant back and forth road wear I subject it to when I hurtle the seventyfive miles north and south every other day, I decided that - because it had been a couple of months overdue for an oil change - I should at least scrape up the few dollars it takes to have someone else do it. Normally, I take my car to Wal-Mart to have this sort of thing done primarily because I don't want to learn how to do it myself, but also because I think it would cost less to have them throw their wrenches around the underside of my rusting 89' Honda disaster. So, although I was in Big City, I took my car to the city Wal-Mart rather than the country Wal-Mart that I'm used to. There are tremendous differences between the two, one being that in the city there is almost always a police car parked out front, with a policeman inside likely arresting a shoplifter.

I've always thought, that in another life - one without college - I might have worked in the oil changing department at Wal-Mart. Sure, I would have probably gotten cancer later in life because of the constant contact with the oil and grime that would have been inevitably caked onto my hands. And okay, I would have probably hated the long hours, the tough physical work, the grouchy customers who "don't get it," but I still think that I could have done a good job. One of the things that always seems to happen in these car situations, regardless of which store I'm at - it can even be a gas station - men my age and younger will want to talk to me about the intricacies of cars. ("Hey, do you know if that is a Z-80X, V8, with a hemi?") For some reason, I think I really look like a guy who knows a lot about cars. While most guys I knew were reading "auto-trader," a magazine devoted to selling cars, I was honing my inner nerd by playing Dungeons & Dragons in the library with fellow nerds. (I'm pleased to say that I've since given up D&D. My nerdliness is waning.)

On a completely different note, I've gotten my final financial aid award letter from my grad. school of choice, and while I'm going to fall further into the infernal crevice of debt, it will cover all my current expenses. I was really worried that I wouldn't get anything and would have to rely on the teaching assistantship to pay for it all. I could have pulled it off, but my hair might have also fallen out due to poor nutrition caused by a month long consumption of nothing but noodle Ramen. Which, of course, would have been uncool - even for a nerd.

Egret (Hunting)

Today was the day for commuting; not only will I drive the approximately two hours it will take to get to Big City tonight, but I have already made several short trips in my car totaling a coupe of hours already. I spend so much time in my car, at work, and in Big City, that I'm beginning to feel a little weird in my own apartment. (Who is the dude who lives here, and why are their chips on the floor.) I think I have still maintained my equanimity about the whole driving thing, and have even learned how to enjoy a car ride without listening to the radio, especially when nothing interesting is on.

On one of these short trips today, I glanced to the left looking straight into a hay field that had recently been cut within the last several weeks. And while glancing left to look into a field of recently cut hay is normally not worth remembering, seeing an Egret hunting for mice is. These kinds of sights are rare enough to feel surprised about when you happen upon them, and for me, rare enough to think about it during the passing of the rest of day. I suppose some might say that this sight was a gift of grace, while others would say that it is merely nothing. For me, it was pretty cool, but nothing mystical, and I think that the whole experience and my reaction to it somehow sums up my mood for the past couple of days.

The Gates of Cool

After the very minor updates that I made to this site recently, combined with the stark fact that I've now been an inhabitant in the proverbial blogosphere for the past few months, I've started to develop the desire to push my meager and significantly poor programming skills further. Eventually, I'd like to overhaul this site to be more visually appealing and give this site more of what the eternally hip and fatefully cool people call "it." While the realms of cool have never been violated by my mercurial and indivisible aura of nerdiness, I think I could at least approach the gates of cool and imperceptibly lounge around the vicinity. Here's hoping for a better, more tantalizing, vision of digitized paroxysms of delight.

Changes

If you have ever seen this site before, and - for whatever reason - somehow have managed to have miraculously remembered it, then you might notice that I have updated a lot of the information on the side of the pages. I have finally acknowledged that it is summer here on the west coast, after spending the last couple of months trying to ignore it. Regarding some of the old links I would occasionally follow, I've since lost interest, so I have correspondingly removed them. All of the things that I link to now, I have a current interest in for one reason or another.

My overall concept for this particular web design was that I would try to create a three bar design that I've often seen replicated somewhere else. It also fits my impression of what a classic newspaper format would have looked like (like the current Wall Street Journal), and since I do not have any images on the page, I figured that was the style I should try to emulate. The major limiting factor in all of this was, and still remains, my overall lack of HTML knowledge. Therefore, I only a little more than someone who knows nothing. I'm sure the guy who operates and writes Web Pages that Suck would be horrified at my little endeavor. Still, as it stretches my skills as an ultra-novice designer, and is essentially my own creation, I satisfied with it. Eventually I may overhaul it to something more presentable, but for the time being, it will remain as it is.

Holy Worrior

Being a kid during the height of the coin-operated video game boom of the early 80's meant that it was inevitable that I would be hooked on video games for life. One of the hilarious features of the Super Nintendo game "Donkey Kong Country," released sometime in the mid-nineties, was the character Cranky Kong. Cranky would moan about how when he was a young video game character he did not have all these fancy moves, nor need them - No Sir! He contented himself with what they had: 2-D environments and flat-screen mazes, a single move, and his considerable "wit." Although even that game is ancient by today's standards, I felt an odd relation to and camraderie with Cranky because I knew exactly what he was talking about. I'm spent hundreds of allowance dollars playing games that would, in the more sophisticated world of 2003, quickly bore just about everyone: case in point, The Wizard of Wor.

Wow, was I ever hooked on this game. My mother made the mistake of allowing me to hold on to some of the money I had received for my birthday, which I'm sure was rooted in her idea of teaching me some responsibility. Obviously, she assumed that the experience of buying a nice gift at the ever-respectable department store - the place where I usually was brought only to search for school clothes - would teach me all sorts of lessons about value of money and the importance of being a smart consumer. And just maybe, daring to hope, just maybe she believed that I might even suggest that I would like to save it, or start - gasp - a savings account!

Of course, being ten, I turned that parental dream to disaster by, after school, hiking two miles - up the large hill near our place, past the imposing block of apartment buildings, past an open field strewn with litter - to the 7-11 store.

It was a holy pilgrimage.

Once inside this veritable palace of delight, once inside this virtual temple devoted childhood treasures - a place that not only sold candy, but had ice "slurpees," and kept 3 or 4 video games in a secluded corner - I made my way to the tantalizing Wizard of Wor video game, reverently dropped a quarter in (a holy sacrafice), and took on the role of Worrior. I tracked down the Burwors and the Worluks. I navigated countless mazes. I tracked the Wizard himself, only to be defeated. Yet, I was a hero preserving this virtual world from unholy destruction. TWENTY FIVE dollars later (which was spent a quarter at a time and took a few hours) I honorably admitted defeat before the more powerful wizard, but not before vowing that I would return to avenge my pride and defend the realm of 7-11 once more.

Of course, once my mom found out that I spent 25 bucks, I had trouble keeping that vow because I was grounded and banned from going to that store ever again. Then, and sometimes now, I have to ask myself: "Seeing as how (especially in 1982) for a poor ten year-old that was really a lot of money, do I regret that?" As Cranky would say, "No Sir!"

Zoo Autographs

Taking a break from the mountains of actual work that I have been actively avoiding at my data entry/internet specialist job, I updated some of the left sidebar content to include the links for the author Anthony Doerr, and his collection of short stories "The Shell Collector." I admit that I haven't even finished the first story yet; still, I'm very interested in the book so far, both in terms of the content and the artful use of writing style.

Last night, my girlfriend and I - as part of a present that she received from her mother - went to the Big City zoo to see a concert by Suzanne Vega. It was somewhat of a funny gift because her mother says that her daughter (my girlfriend), as a moody teenager, drove her crazy by constantly playing Vega's songs. Although we enjoyed the concert, and saw a lot of animals before the show (including a chimpanzee that slides on its feet in a kind of dance whenever it moves around), the most interesting part of the night occured when we stayed afterwards to get an autograph from Suzanne Vega. Normally, neither of us is the type of person to get autographs, but we thought it might be a fun thing to do since one of the security guards we were standing next to casually mentioned to another concert-goer that the line for autographs was forming up at the bottom of the stage. The real point of the whole evening was making sure that my girlfriend enjoyed herself.

As for the guard at the autograph line, he told some funny/scary stories about being an official zoo security guard at large public events: From chasing a drunk concert crasher around the zoo who, unknowingly, jumped into the grizzly bear enclosure just to escape paying for a ticket, to the five and ten-year-old who - on separate occasions - wandered into the elephant pen and started playing in and around the elephant's legs. Regarding the teenagers who, on another occasion, were dangling their feet inside the tiger enclosure just above the moat - "if they'd have accidently fallen in, the tiger would have eaten them before they even hit the ground."

Blah-ging

It seems like the only time that I'm able to find both the time and the energy to make a post here in the cellar is when I'm also leaving to go the Big City. Technically, I've been home for a day and could have made a post yesterday. Frankly, I've not been doing too well personally and have had a few personal set-backs that are beginning to take their emotional toll, but I'm determined not to turn this into "one of those Blogs." Therefore, you'll not be hearing it from me.

Rather, I'll talk about the heat. Once, my sister traveled a few thousand miles to spend time in Florida, the furtherest southern state she, or I, had ever been to. When the temperature dropped down to 65, everyone was putting on their sweaters and jackets, bewildered by the fact that my sister could still feel hot. She says that she spent most of her day assuring people that she, indeed, was not cold and did not need to cover up. I've been thinking about that these last few hot days. Those self-same people may not think it was very warm at all; but by each sunset, I find that I'm practically drenched in sweat.

If I had enough financial resources, and could have payed for a web hosting service, I might have turned some of this site into a photoblog, because there are times when you'd like to say things with an visual image rather than one carved from words. While I do love words, it would be wonderful to share the light of a sinking sun on small blanched grey, northwestern town with someone who could appreciate it as much as I do. Enjoying those small moments in life - each one like a gift - is something I try remember and keep with me.

Entropy in Big City

Tonight, I leave again for Big City. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to accomplish much while I was home this time, except with the possible exception of paying off my electric bill. I will finish all of the other stuff, including paying more bills, when I return on Tuesday morning; and yes, I'm aware of how many intentions I communicate here and don't follow through on, but I sincerely believe this time will be different. This post is going to be very short, since I haven't done anything other than work, or really thought about anything except how tired I am.

Sunburnt Summer

Recently, I received the letter from my graduate school of choice explaining the TA (teaching assistantship) job requirements to me, some of which included having office hours, attending some of the undergraduate classes, grading papers, preparing presentations, and maybe even, giving a lecture. All of this sounds very interesting; it is beginning to feel more like an official job rather than an extension of my undergraduate studies, which is something that I'm honestly looking forward to. At some point, I'm going to travel to the city where the grad. school is at and spend a whole day exploring, investigating, and doing general reconnaisance.

Unfortunately, the summer schedule that I have chosen for myself remains hectic. I thought about many of things that I still have to do as I drove the hundred plus miles from the big city back to my meager home this morning. (One of those things includes buying some sun screen because my left arm - the one that normally hangs outside of the window on top of the car door - is getting rather burned. Each arm is now a separate color.) My diploma is messed up; despite all of the checking and double checking I tried to do during my last two terms, the registrar still goofed it up. I've also fallen a bit behind with my job, but thankfully, I think I can catch up.

Frankly, I need to figure out how to balance my social life - something I enjoy tremendously - with the part of my life that includes a job and school. At one point last year, I thought that during this summer (2003), I would work hard at applying at all of scholarships I could, devoting several hours to writing great scholarship essays. I even thought I would try to write a book - short stories at least. Unless I change tack, it is not going to happen, although I have at least been able to read a couple of books; so in that regard, I have done at least one thing that I wanted to do. We'll see what the future holds.

The Zeppelin Generation II

When I was very young, about five years old, I occasionally would wake up at about 11:00 p.m. (my bed-time was about 8:00 p.m.), walk the long hallway to the living room and loudly ask that my mother turn the stereo down, which was blasting Led Zeppelin songs like "When the Levee Breaks" and "The Rover," along with the inevitable "Stairway to Heaven." Little did I realize that I was echoing my grandparents who pretty much had said the same thing a few years earlier; truly, I had no desire to be a little "Ike" Eisenhower being a "major bummer," and "coming down hard on a bunch of 'laid back' groove riders," such as my mother and her friends; but alas, my nerdly leaning manifested itself rather early. Still, I try to redeem myself now by saying I was five, and a five-year-old does need to sleep a lot.

Now, however, I look back on that particular memory with some nostalgia because it helps me see my mother, and everyone from my parent's generation not as parents and authority figures, but as the youth of a specific generation fixed in a specific period of time. They were the Vietnam era generation. They watched young men die in a jungle half-a-world-away during their nightly dinner (broadcast with a shocking immediacy we're not likely to ever see again). They felt oppressed by the proverbial "Man." And of course, they believed that the "revolution [would] not be televised."

There are odd intersections between the generations, and as my parents get older, I find that I may be in a position similar to the one when I was five: without saying too much, I'll just mention that unconscious expectations, the force of reality, and the circular nature of experiences through time are things that, for myself, should be reckoned with and given serious thought. Although I'm sure I'm going to have to cope with these thoughts and experiences for a long period of time, I'm going to try harder not be a "major bummer."

The Zeppelin Generation

One day, I'll try to write another post called The Zeppelin Generation which describes how sometimes it is weird living in the shadow of a generation that grew up during the Vietnam War era. There are some odd intersections with the history, daily life, and the youthful aspiration of a generation that you're decidedly not a part of. Unfortunately, I tried to write something like that just a half an hour earlier combining those thoughts with the rock group Led Zeppelin, but the downside of technology reared its digital head and sent that piece of writing into the great unknown. Unfortunately, despite my attempt to save it, I couldn't, and I don't have time to do a rewrite. Insert your own expletive here. Oh well. I'm off to the big city to spend the next couple of days trying to get my girlfriend something for her birthday. Seen you then.

Fireworks and Music

I've pretty much chosen to work on the same days that my girlfriend does, and because she works on a weird 2 days off / 3 days on and vice versa schedule, I've not been as active a poster as I was when I had to go to school during the weekday. I think that I've adjusted very easily to the summer, but I'm still excited about the upcoming school year. Today, I found out that my graduate school is going to send me my job assignment as a TA (teaching assistant) very soon. You'll be hearing about that soon.

On the night of the fourth of July, I drove the several miles on the freeway to the big city just as all of the fireworks were going. Therefore, I had an opportunity to see fireworks from about seven different communities as I passed them along the freeway at about 75 miles an hour. In one sense, it was kind of cool to see this large celebration thing occuring in several towns all at once; the sense of the larger community I had then was unlike any I had ever had before. Yet, the downside of it was that I noticed all of the illegal fireworks that were exploding in places that they shouldn't have been (i.e. crowded neighborhoods). The fire risk from those things was very high, and it was obvious that the police were having trouble being in all places at once. This was one of those occasions were you have to trust that nothing happens, and then wait until the whole thing is over.

On a more staid note, I went a music festival on Sunday in the downtown, waterfront park of the big city. The scenery at sunset was really beautiful - oddly urban and natural at the same time. The music was also pretty good; we saw Etta James, which I must admit I had heard before, but I wouldn't have been able to say so if you had asked me before the concert. Unfortunately, the place was packed. There was barely any place to sit down - and even if you did sit down, more than likely you were staring at someone else's bum, because they, unfortunately, chose to stand up. Oh well, I had a nice time anyway.

Span-glish

Soon, I'll get around to updating much of the information on the side panels. After I graduated from school, and moved out of the old cellar (read: University Computer Lab), I haven't had as much time - or as much computing power - as I would like to get most of it done. DSL and T-1 lines sure are nice; I'm still stuck in the technological dark ages with a 56k modem. Oh, well.

The summer job continues to go along, but I really would like a lot more free time to sit and read some of my critical theory books for literature. I must admit, being a huge nerd and all, I'm a bit excited about graduate school, so I'm doing my best to get caught ahead. Another nerdly thing that I've been doing is reviewing my spanish by listening to the spanish language radio station whenever I take a trip to the big city. I'm afraid that after all of the hard work that I spent trying to pass all of the tests, worrying about whether or not I would get a good grade, doing all of the laborious homewrok, and struggling to understand what was going on in class, I'm might forget all of that hard-won knowledge. Initially, I thought I would be relieved that all of the studying was over; Turns out, it was a life sentence.