I don't know yet whether I'm going to be working at Manito-wish; they haven't said yet, but he did say he'd let me know no later than Wednesday, which is tomorrow (or technically today). So there are a few ways this summer could go.
-If I get the Manito-wish job, I'll quite likely work the boys' half of their summer schedule, which is four weeks and ends in July. Then I think I'll come back home and work on my fonts for the rest of the summer. If possible, I may also try to get that Hillman warehouse job, and do the fonts after work. The manager has shown reservations about hiring me for a four-week shift, but this one would be five or six, and it also wouldn't include the end of the year and Christmas like the other one did. The reason I wouldn't probably work at Manito-wish all summer is that I wouldn't be going on any trips the second half - only female counselors go with the girls. All I would get to do is take canoe trips on my free time. Which is excellent, but if I'm going to be in the dishroom all day the whole time, and only getting paid something like $208 a week (though with free room and board), I think I'd rather come home and get paid much more and have an opportunity to work on fonts as well.
-Alternatively, if I somehow don't get the Manito-wish job, I'll search right away after I find out for a job copy editing for a local paper, and if I find nothing, I'll fall back on the warehouse. The warehouse is pretty much my all-purpose backup plan.
-Another plan revolves around my fonts. I want to, before the weekend, finally get all the members of the Newt family in working order. I've figured out how to use FontForge for the most part, though I still haven't gotten it to output fonts that Windows will use. I've asked tech support about that, and they were very timely with their last response, so that shouldn't take long. With any luck, I'll have some money coming in from that during the summer. FontForge is a pretty great program, and free, so I think I'll be working with that a lot. Though, TypeTool is a bit more user-friendly, so I think I'll use FontForge mainly for the technical bits and for the brute force things - it has some wonderful features that automate things that take a long time, like making accented characters and then kerning them. Oh, I just heard the sound of you falling on the keyboard bored to death. Let's move on.
-I plan to FINALLY finish that snake cage I've left alone since eighth grade. All I really need is some Plexiglas, and then I can pretty much call it finished. There's an All-Ohio Reptile Show in Columbus on August 16th, just shortly before school restarts on the 27th. So I would finish the cage before that, and then buy* a carpet python there. I think it would be far and away best for me to talk to reptile enthusiasts in person. Websites are all right and all, but I've recently been coming to the conclusion that they really can't compare to talking with a real person. Ever since I retired from the xkcd forums, I've found that getting out in real life is much more satisfying than typing messages to faceless computer people. When you think about it, it makes sense. Only in the last ten years has interaction that involves not physically seeing the other party become so common. Before that, there was telephone and mail, but those were generally a fairly subordinate way of finding out information, and if you had questions you visited the nearest expert on what you wanted to talk about. Parallel to that, in the department of friends, only in that same decade has it become possible and prominent to find out in depth about someone without ever actually seeing them. Pen pals were a fun diversion, but ultimately never ranked as high as friends you talk with. Compare these ten years with three million that humankind has devoted to making friends via actual contact. The internet is an extensive way to make friends, but not a natural one, and internet relationships typically are nowhere near as deep as those with real friends. I'm not saying internet friends can't be real friends, but usually if they start becoming real friends you go meet them in real life (or, affectionately, "meatspace" - if anyone uses that with me in any way besides sarcastic, I will smack them). To me, someone I only see through a small rectangle will always seem a bit unreal. Adding to this, exchanges by spoken language are much more efficient than exchanges by text. Again, they have three million years over the competitor. They're also much quicker and you can communicate in a much more varied way, using your full arsenal of techniques - gesture, inflection, and even drawing pictures if you need to. Text communication has, at best, emoticons. You've probably gathered that I didn't come up with all of this thinking about why attending the All-Ohio Reptile Show is better than visiting herpetologist forums online. I've actually been thinking about this for quite a while, and now I've finally ended up writing it down. (Which is slightly ironic, actually, that I wrote it on my blog.) But to return to my main point, I want to go also because I can pick out a snake based on more than a few pictures, and I can buy stuff without having to wait for shipping. That's one reason I really prefer buying stuff at stores, rather than by the internet - shipping. Can I get a "witness" on that?
-This has become quite the rambling post, and I'm up a lot later than I expected to be. I'll just leave everyone with one final question: did anyone notice that I replaced the four-year-old straight quote in this blog's title with a much prettier curly one? I'm surprised it took me (the typographical purist) so long to do it.
*Actually, I seem to recall either Mom or Dad saying that if I successfully built a cage, they would buy the snake for me. This deal was of course made upwards of four years ago, before I had any significant source of income. It would be entirely reasonable now to insist that I buy it. After all, what else am I gonna do with all this money I earn?
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
What are YOU going to do with your summer?
Remember Camp Manito-wish? Sure you do. They're the camp that outfitted the GOOP trip at the beginning of the school year. Well, I recently applied there for a summer job. There are two summer jobs that really stick out to me as possibilities: Manito-wish, and the warehouse at the Hillman Group. The thing about the warehouse is, I would be both inside and pretty stationary all day (or, if I ended up on the third shift, all night.) Manito-wish probably pays less (Hillman was offering I think $10.50 an hour - very respectable), but I would be less than ecstatic to get up and work there every day. A thought occurred to me as I was sorting silverware in the dining hall last week. And that thought was: How perverse is it that, to survive, we actually sell hours of our lives for money? In my worldview, that's exactly the same thing as actually selling myself, because I'm giving away bits of my life that I'll never get back. Working is the process of turning your life into crude oil for someone else's consumption. Within the constraints of our civilization, the only way to get out of this macabre system of siphoning off your own vital force is to spend your time doing something you really love doing, and that you can get paid for. That's an opportunity I think Manito-wish may provide.
-Now, my details are a little shaky, because my understanding of the responsibilities of camp employees are based on very short descriptions or, more often, solely on the job title. But if I get to be a Tripping Assistant, I'll be taking something like four trips around the northern Wisconsin lakes and forests, with kids that I can make friends with, and probably peers as well.
-I have a phone interview on Thursday. So we'll see how it goes! Their application process is unusually thorough. I had to write four brief essays, and supply three references who graded me on various aspects of my character, and not only will my interview be an hour long, they're also going to actually call my references. So it's a good thing I picked good ones.
-Now, my details are a little shaky, because my understanding of the responsibilities of camp employees are based on very short descriptions or, more often, solely on the job title. But if I get to be a Tripping Assistant, I'll be taking something like four trips around the northern Wisconsin lakes and forests, with kids that I can make friends with, and probably peers as well.
-I have a phone interview on Thursday. So we'll see how it goes! Their application process is unusually thorough. I had to write four brief essays, and supply three references who graded me on various aspects of my character, and not only will my interview be an hour long, they're also going to actually call my references. So it's a good thing I picked good ones.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Modi Operandorum
I've been busy, so I've left this blog in the lurch. I'm going to update this, though I probably should be doing homework instead. So, I'm going to write about my roommates.
-Roommate #1 is Jay B. from India. At the beginning of the year, I couldn't stand him. He smoked, in and out of the room, and listened to Kanye West's "Stronger" literally to the exclusion of all other music. More recently, though, I've realized he's actually an okay guy with some annoying habits. He has a modus operandi for music. He finds a song , and listens to it, and no other song. For weeks. Or months. Then he finds a new song. And it starts all over again. He's had about five songs so far this year, none of which I've liked: "Stronger", "Sky's the Limit", some Hindi song, "Do What You Want", and now "Bleeding Love". All of them are terrible. But Jay isn't a bad person. He stopped smoking when I asked him to stop, and now he doesn't smoke in the room anymore.
-On the other hand, I never used to think Jeremy was too bad. We would talk occasionally about stuff. Nothing special. Since winter break, he's gotten really enthusiastic about his girlfriend, who lives in Chicago. Enthusiastic makes it sound cute. It's not cute. He talks on the phone with her for hours, every day. I don't think he's ever said a coherent thought to her. Come to think of it, I don't know if he's ever had a coherent thought. But, they do enjoy talking about sex, and all different kinds of it. Meanwhile, I'm doing homework. The other thing about Jeremy is that his hygiene leaves me baffled. He takes two to three showers a day, and has a vast collection of body oils and rubs and lotions. Yet, he still smells - he smells like his beauty products died and rotted. Worse, his room smells the same way, but stronger. Sometime I'll post a picture of his pillow. It is slicked with grease from a year of going to sleep with skin and hair saturated with oils and creams. Recently, he invited about five black girls into the room for a smoke. (Not of your ordinary cigarettes.) Completely unabashed. When I confronted him, he thought I was being funny. I no longer talk to Jeremy.
-Next year, I'm rooming with Aaron Barker, who like me doesn't drink or smoke. We're rooming in a substance-free dorm. Aaron is nice, unassuming, and a good guy. I foresee few problems. Room draw was just today; we didn't get either of the rooms we really wanted, but we did get a not-too-bad room on the second floor of one of the college's set of new dorms. I won't have the loggia like I did this year, though, unless the people across the hall from us are as dedicated to getting out on it as I planned to be (apparently, it's difficult to open the window), and they invite us. Well, we'll probably be friends with them, so we can encourage them. Friends, that is, with some of them. Because after we put our names down, we looked to see who had taken the two doubles we were looking at.
-One of them is Jeremy.
-Why, why is he living in a sub-free hall? I assume it's because his roommate wanted to, and because it'll be quieter than a regular dorm. You can live in a sub-free hall and drink and smoke, as long as you do it elsewhere. But that doesn't save me from being near Jeremy for another year. At least I'll be in much less close quarters.
-Roommate #1 is Jay B. from India. At the beginning of the year, I couldn't stand him. He smoked, in and out of the room, and listened to Kanye West's "Stronger" literally to the exclusion of all other music. More recently, though, I've realized he's actually an okay guy with some annoying habits. He has a modus operandi for music. He finds a song , and listens to it, and no other song. For weeks. Or months. Then he finds a new song. And it starts all over again. He's had about five songs so far this year, none of which I've liked: "Stronger", "Sky's the Limit", some Hindi song, "Do What You Want", and now "Bleeding Love". All of them are terrible. But Jay isn't a bad person. He stopped smoking when I asked him to stop, and now he doesn't smoke in the room anymore.
-On the other hand, I never used to think Jeremy was too bad. We would talk occasionally about stuff. Nothing special. Since winter break, he's gotten really enthusiastic about his girlfriend, who lives in Chicago. Enthusiastic makes it sound cute. It's not cute. He talks on the phone with her for hours, every day. I don't think he's ever said a coherent thought to her. Come to think of it, I don't know if he's ever had a coherent thought. But, they do enjoy talking about sex, and all different kinds of it. Meanwhile, I'm doing homework. The other thing about Jeremy is that his hygiene leaves me baffled. He takes two to three showers a day, and has a vast collection of body oils and rubs and lotions. Yet, he still smells - he smells like his beauty products died and rotted. Worse, his room smells the same way, but stronger. Sometime I'll post a picture of his pillow. It is slicked with grease from a year of going to sleep with skin and hair saturated with oils and creams. Recently, he invited about five black girls into the room for a smoke. (Not of your ordinary cigarettes.) Completely unabashed. When I confronted him, he thought I was being funny. I no longer talk to Jeremy.
-Next year, I'm rooming with Aaron Barker, who like me doesn't drink or smoke. We're rooming in a substance-free dorm. Aaron is nice, unassuming, and a good guy. I foresee few problems. Room draw was just today; we didn't get either of the rooms we really wanted, but we did get a not-too-bad room on the second floor of one of the college's set of new dorms. I won't have the loggia like I did this year, though, unless the people across the hall from us are as dedicated to getting out on it as I planned to be (apparently, it's difficult to open the window), and they invite us. Well, we'll probably be friends with them, so we can encourage them. Friends, that is, with some of them. Because after we put our names down, we looked to see who had taken the two doubles we were looking at.
-One of them is Jeremy.
-Why, why is he living in a sub-free hall? I assume it's because his roommate wanted to, and because it'll be quieter than a regular dorm. You can live in a sub-free hall and drink and smoke, as long as you do it elsewhere. But that doesn't save me from being near Jeremy for another year. At least I'll be in much less close quarters.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Nice day declared
First thing is: I had so many pictures from the cave trip, I realized putting them on the blog would be impractical. So, here's a video.
Today I pulled out my shorts for the first time in several months. I had lunch, and then I played some krokay. Turned out, today was the perfect day for it. Even though it seemed like I was getting a lot of cancellations due to workload, four of us still managed to show up between Noyce and the Forum to take in the first really nice spring day. I had gone scouting yesterday for places to play, and decided there looked like a good place. As soon as I saw it by daylight, I knew it was perfect. I started the course at the higher end of the area, beneath some pines. From there, I dropped it down two walls, one short and one tall. It took a brief detour around some trees and a little shrine to Ganesha, and then came into a picturesque brick-laid pavilion (the center wicket was wedged into cracks between the bricks). The turn wickets were directly in front of a devilishly troublesome pit. Just to keep people guessing, I put the first inbound wicket in a completely obstacle-free area of flat grass. Thence back down to the pavilion, and finally back up two sloping tiers of a terrace in order to get back up the walls to the starting point.
-Man, we just had tons of fun. It was so much nicer today than the winter games were, since we had no snow to contend with. The course lent itself to especially cutthroat playing, with lots of interaction. The other three guys were stuck at the turn wickets for probably ten turns apiece, knocking each other into the pit and all over the place. Having Seth along makes any game instantly a bit more irrational, unpredictable, and hazardous. Even though I got away from the turn wickets far ahead of everyone else, they closed in on me pretty quickly, thanks to a wrong turn I took. I still managed to become poison well away from the others, and took Seth out directly. But in the time it took me to do that, James got out of my grasp and too far toward poison to stop, so I focused on Dan instead. After some uphill-downhill dancing, in which I had to be careful to avoid the wicket placed near the edge of the wall, I finally managed to take him out as well. By this time, James was poison, making today our first multiple-poison game of the year. Neither of us got too close to the other. We both planned our shots to end up far off in case we missed. We both hid for a couple turns around a wooden shelter some people had put up over Ganesha while we were playing. Eventually, one of James's shots left him too close to me, and I eliminated him to claim the win.
-Wow. What an absolutely excellent course. It'll be just spectacular with a full complement of six people. Imagine all the interaction, the multiple poisons! I can't wait. At the same time, though, I plan to get off campus sometime too, for a forest game.
A few days ago, I got an email to the effect that there was a spot open in the kayaking course. Since I have a lot of free time on Thursdays, I biked right on over to it. So now I'm learning to kayak. I'm beginning to have a lot more fun with my life. Dave Zeiss (who's in charge of the GOOP trip) taught it in the pool. We spent the first lesson learning how to recover from flipping over, which is actually not very hard, and learning the basic paddle strokes. I wonder what we're going to do with the rest of the semester, since we learned so much in one lesson. Incidentally, as we were kayaking we saw that it was snowing. When we got out, there was somewhere between a half and a whole inch on the ground. That was two days ago. And now it's nice. I overheard someone talking about Iowa's "schizo weather" today; sums it up excellently.
Today I pulled out my shorts for the first time in several months. I had lunch, and then I played some krokay. Turned out, today was the perfect day for it. Even though it seemed like I was getting a lot of cancellations due to workload, four of us still managed to show up between Noyce and the Forum to take in the first really nice spring day. I had gone scouting yesterday for places to play, and decided there looked like a good place. As soon as I saw it by daylight, I knew it was perfect. I started the course at the higher end of the area, beneath some pines. From there, I dropped it down two walls, one short and one tall. It took a brief detour around some trees and a little shrine to Ganesha, and then came into a picturesque brick-laid pavilion (the center wicket was wedged into cracks between the bricks). The turn wickets were directly in front of a devilishly troublesome pit. Just to keep people guessing, I put the first inbound wicket in a completely obstacle-free area of flat grass. Thence back down to the pavilion, and finally back up two sloping tiers of a terrace in order to get back up the walls to the starting point.
-Man, we just had tons of fun. It was so much nicer today than the winter games were, since we had no snow to contend with. The course lent itself to especially cutthroat playing, with lots of interaction. The other three guys were stuck at the turn wickets for probably ten turns apiece, knocking each other into the pit and all over the place. Having Seth along makes any game instantly a bit more irrational, unpredictable, and hazardous. Even though I got away from the turn wickets far ahead of everyone else, they closed in on me pretty quickly, thanks to a wrong turn I took. I still managed to become poison well away from the others, and took Seth out directly. But in the time it took me to do that, James got out of my grasp and too far toward poison to stop, so I focused on Dan instead. After some uphill-downhill dancing, in which I had to be careful to avoid the wicket placed near the edge of the wall, I finally managed to take him out as well. By this time, James was poison, making today our first multiple-poison game of the year. Neither of us got too close to the other. We both planned our shots to end up far off in case we missed. We both hid for a couple turns around a wooden shelter some people had put up over Ganesha while we were playing. Eventually, one of James's shots left him too close to me, and I eliminated him to claim the win.
-Wow. What an absolutely excellent course. It'll be just spectacular with a full complement of six people. Imagine all the interaction, the multiple poisons! I can't wait. At the same time, though, I plan to get off campus sometime too, for a forest game.
A few days ago, I got an email to the effect that there was a spot open in the kayaking course. Since I have a lot of free time on Thursdays, I biked right on over to it. So now I'm learning to kayak. I'm beginning to have a lot more fun with my life. Dave Zeiss (who's in charge of the GOOP trip) taught it in the pool. We spent the first lesson learning how to recover from flipping over, which is actually not very hard, and learning the basic paddle strokes. I wonder what we're going to do with the rest of the semester, since we learned so much in one lesson. Incidentally, as we were kayaking we saw that it was snowing. When we got out, there was somewhere between a half and a whole inch on the ground. That was two days ago. And now it's nice. I overheard someone talking about Iowa's "schizo weather" today; sums it up excellently.
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