Failure, occurence, success

I was prepared to accept failure on my shoelessness bill. But I wasn't expecting it to crash quite so hard. It got the fewest yes votes of all the initiatives on the ballot: 22%. It also got a significant number of no-opinion votes, and I think about 65 to 70% no votes. I was really surprised. I never thought such a hippie place as Grinnell would be so unprogressive on an issue like barefooting. Yesterday, I did an interview with a guy from KDIC, the college's radio station, and I think I pinpointed the problem: everyone here is probably only really progressive on the big, world issues, and doesn't really give a whole lot of thought to different viewpoints on small issues like barefooting. Yes, there are more important issues, but as long as you're voting, why not give barefooting a yes?

-I applied to be a GOOP leader next year. A few days later, I got a letter back saying that they had so many very qualified and experienced applicants that they had to make some very difficult cuts and we'll let you know if anything opens. I told them to please, please let me know. Nothing has opened. This summer, I'll apply to some sort of camp. Maybe Manito-wish.

-I ordered an album in the mail and got it. It's really good: The Sunset Tree. It's by The Mountain Goats, who came here before winter break, and I saw them in concert then. I like it a bunch, especially "Dilaudid".

-I made that snow sculpture. Here is a picture.

Here is a video. It shows me making it.

Demokrasy

I should stop spelling stuff wrong. Anyhow, here's my latest project. I've created a Student Initiative, which is where I come up with an issue and have the students vote on it. To get it on the ballot, which is this coming 18th and 19th, I had to collect a hundred signatures first, so I did that yesterday and Friday. I'm going to an open forum tonight to defend my position against potential detractors. What's my issue, then? I want to repeal the shoe requirement in the dining hall. What else would it be? As I was collecting signatures, I found that people had more hangups about this than I would have expected. Mostly it's just been "Wait, that's unsanitary" (it's not, at all) or "There's a law" (there definitely isn't).


-The weather is excellent here. Today we've got a big snowstorm moving through, leaving us 5 to 7 inches of snow on top of the 6 or 8 we already had. At this rate, I'll have all sorts of snow for the giant snow sculpture I'm planning. Last night I had to get out of the dorm room, so I went biking. This was at about 0100, which coincidentally was when the campus pub, Lyle's, closed after its first night of business. And, coincidentally, there was a bit of rain coming down and freezing onto the ground. So these little groups of drunk people were floating around on ice-coated campus. It made them delightfully unstable. I never saw anyone fall down, but many were evidently having trouble. For my part, I was on a bike, and discovered the ice the hard way. I thought it was slish, and took a sharp turn, and the bike bolted out from under me. I didn't get hurt, though. I just got informed. It was actually pretty amusing. After that I just kind of biked around the town. I had planned on biking north to the athletic fields, but the path leading to them hadn't been shoveled at all, so it was sleeping under five or six inches of snow. Not good for biking. Instead, I just cruised around town. It was quiet - go figure. I had to be careful of the ice, but I managed not to fall over any more. I did get some good fishtailing in.


-I've been doing stuff with the newspaper here:


Here I am being famous for krokay. (Back page)


Here's an article I wrote about our fireplace lounge. (Page 10) (Also note list of Student Initiatives on page 3, if you'd like)

Here are some pictures I've taken.

A snowy Grinnell
An art exhibition we have in the art building's courtyard

View from my window at night
View from my window by day


A train coming through the snow

The GKF

That's the Grinnell Krokay Front. We've started playing regular games; we've had one a week for the last three weeks. So far they've all been in South Campus, playing over the tracks, but I hope to diversify soon. I just need to find a way to get everyone to Krumm Preserve, where there's a pond. But it's difficult, because none of us have cars. I still have yet to come up with a way to move us. Yesterday was our third and most successful game. Five of us showed up in all, most of us somewhat crazy, as we'd probably have to be: Nicole, Dan, Seth, James, and me. Last week the railroad was a big problem, because there wasn't much snow, and if you got caught between the two rails, there was thus no way to get under the ball for a scoop shot. This week was better, because tere was plenty of snow, and no one got caught endlessly like that. Nicole and I took the lead position from the get-go, crossing the rails while the others entertainingly bogged down at the first right wicket (remember this handy diagram? It's from June).

Dan got out first, and started coming after me and Nicole, but we were pretty far ahead. Meanwhile, Seth and James realized that they had no chance of winning and that they had picked inadequate winter gear to wear, so they forfeited and went inside to warm up. Now it was a three-person race, with Nicole and me both at the 2nd left wicket - Actually, I think "2nd outbound" is a better name for it - and Dan was somewhere around the first outbound. We decided about then that we were going to forgo the poison portion of the game, because, well, there were eight inches of snow, which would make it next to impossible to actually hit anyone else without astounding luck. We could still be playing now. The endgame came. I was still slightly behind Nicole: she was between the two exit wickets, and I was before the first one. I planned to go through, take extra shots from her, and win it. I hit her ball, and it went through the last wicket, giving her the win. Gaarh! We wasted no time cleaning up the set, and we warmed up in the lounge at her dorm. And then I carried the set back to my dorm. So much fun.
-What else have I been doing? Eating ginger snaps. Learning the Dvorak keyboard layout. Writing a little. I need to write more. I'll be writing a lot these next couple days, though, for various reasons. By the way, the Dvorak keyboard looks like this:
' , . PYFGCRL?+
AOEUIDHTNS-
;QJKXBMWVZ
It keeps the most common letters on the home row, and has other various benefits. It was slow learning at first, but I'm getting a lot better. You can see I still make wistakes, though.
-I love the Iowa winter, by the way. There's been snow on the ground since about November, as far as I can tell. In Ohio, there've been 50-degree days all over the place, and very little snowfall. Iowa's pretty good, then. A trite little sentiment, but I don't really have something deep to say about it - I just like the winter here, is all.

Getting things rolling

On Wednesday, I started at my CERA job. I had expected there to be several student employees for each evening, but it turned out I was the only one. Larissa Mottl, the manager of the Prairie Studies program, drove me to the EEC (Environmental Education Center), which takes around 20 minutes to get to. On the way we talked about the snow, and how it's been melting. She's been living here since 2000, so she was able to tell me to expect probably at least one more good snowstorm, sometime arond the beginning of March. Coincidentally, we both want to build a snow sculpture with the snow when (if) it arrives. She wants to build a buffalo out front of the Prairie Studies office and even dye it brown. And I want to build this. She told me there's a snow sculpture contest in town that I could enter it into, but I haven't found out anything about it yet. The EEC is a really pleasant, curved building, and won the first LEED Gold Certification for low energy impact in Iowa. We went to a room overlooking the snow-topped prairie and she pulled out some equipment for the seed cleaning we would be doing: sieves, bins, and a grinder consisting of a rectangular boat-shaped wooden bowl lined with rough rubber and a similarly lined square block of wood with a handle. She also got out a big bag of leadplant seeds, and the showed how to go about getting them out of their hulls. We do this to make it easier to know how much seed we have, to make planting scientifically easier, and to concentrate the viable seed. It's a long process, and we'll be doing it for the next several weeks. I got to use a pretty keen blower to separate the chaff. So, I did that for my shift; she did a few other things around CERA, and then came back to work with me. We got through a fair amount of seed. It sounds like a really tedious and unrewarding job, but it's actually a lot of fun. The seeds release this hearty smell as they open up. It's a real smell, one straight from the earth, and I'd wear it before any cologne. Operating the blower is pretty neat. It doesn't get boring, somehow. I really like working at CERA.
-The Grinnell Krokay Front is now an official group. I've put up those posters, and we're going to play a game tomorrow at noon to draw interest. This game should turn out to have more players; they've said they're going to make an effort to actually come, instead of leave for D&D with no notice. So, this will start being somewhat regular fun.
-I got some books yesterday that I ordered in the mail. They're by Daniel Pinkwater. It feels really good to go back and reread these for the first time in years. This guy is so much fun. I sat reading them most of yesterday and today. I also borrowed How We Are Hungry from the library, and at some point soon I'll be getting House of Leaves. ("House" is always printed in blue in it. It's supposed to be a really interesting and odd novel. It has backwards, rotated, and labyrinthed text at parts; there's an appendix; it has footnotes, and its footnotes have footnotes.)
-And, I've been finishing the font. I was just about to sell it, but the rep said he'd like me to add some more characters first. Luckily, these characters are just the ones I have, with diacritics added, plus a few math signs, so I've been knocking out the expansions at a rate of three or four hours apiece, spread across whenever I have time. I should have them all done and ready for sale in a week or two. I ended up not needing to buy the expensive program I was going to buy, because I found a free one that will do the same stuff for me. I'll let everyone (and that's going to be a pretty inclusive "everyone", because I'll be very excited) when it goes on the market.
-Lastly, the GOOP leader training for this summer is starting next Sunday. It will only cost some time on Sundays plus $40 for a trip at some point, so I won't even need to ask for money. The leaders last summer told me they got paid $250 for the trip. Isn't that great? I'll be getting paid to go have a lot of fun!