A week

So, this was the week in which I Started classes. I have four:

Self and Society - it's a sociology class, but I'm not exactly sure what to expect from it yet. It certainly seems interesting. I signed up for it because at the time I was trying to decide between three majors - English, anthropology, and sociology - and my adviser told me I should pick a class in both of the last two so I could sample them (I'd already had three English classes). And it seemed like the most interesting one in the sōsh department. I now am pretty sure I'm not going to major in sociology, but it still looks like an interesting class.

Intro to computer science - I'm taking this for two reasons. One is to perhaps shed a little light on the more technical aspects of my font designing stuff. Previously I've felt at times as if I needed to be a programmer in order to make my font come out right, because the process is so much more arcane than anything a normal person would need to do on the computer. The other reason is that it's a prerequisite for Computational Linguistics, which I want to take to build a linguistics concentration. Also, I predict that by the end of this class I'll finally understand all the smug little inside jokes that the author of xkcd makes with his background in computer science and nerdiness. The class is fun - our professor is really enthusiastic, and she makes a real effort to connect to the students - but it seems to be moving at breakneck speed. We'll see if I'm accurate in that assessment later down the line.

Spanish 285 - The professor has a French name, which is kind of funny. Seems like all my classes have really hit the ground running, and this one is no exception. One week in, and we've already read an entire act in the play we're starting the semester with. (It's El Gesticulador, or The Imposter in an English translation that exists somewhere, and it's pretty fun.) She also has a lot of energy. I have two really energetic professors. Today in class we were host to a candidate professor; he spoke with a very Castillian accent, but it was also mixed with an American accent, so it ended up sounding pretty strange. He had a flawless command of the language, it's just that he sounded really peculiar speaking it.

And lastly, Intentional Communities - this is an anthropology class, and wouldn't you just know I'd take a class like this? We'll spend the semester talking all about these intentional communities. There are a few people in the class who I knew and liked before. There's Jordan, who drove me to Ohio once, and talked about homesteading. Also there's Cammy, who I talked with briefly one day at a loggia party (like, a minute), and she resounded so well that I was going to ask her out except that I never saw her again. But I don't think I will now, because I have a different plan that (with any luck) I'll be able to write about here soon.

Other stuff? Well, I've been snowfooting. The way I decide whether to put shoes on is, if I'm going between two places that are pretty close to each other, I won't bother, but if I'm going out specifically to be in the snow for an extended time, then I put them on. Thus, I go barefoot to all my classes and to the doors of the dining hall (where I have to put on the sandals that I keep there). But when I went out and found a couple geocaches in town, I put on not only my shoes but also all my other winter gear, including my shapka that I got from Nana & Papaw for Christmas. I found two of them, but the other one that I was looking for was buried under too much snow. I think I'll look for some more this weekend.
-I've been researching the trains here. The line is owned by Union Pacific, and they redid some parts of it this fall with ribbon rail. It goes from Marshalltown to Eddyville, something like 80 miles. Trains come south out of Marshalltown every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday afternoon (and pass through town in the evening). Then they get new cars and head back up to Marshalltown later that night, presumably to refill them. They carry almost exclusively grain hoppers and tank cars, though occasionally Weyerhaeuser sends some lumber south too. The line connects in Eddyville to a much higher-volume BNSF line that runs lengthwise across Iowa, but the UP engines apparently stay on this short line. Yesterday evening I saw engines 1924, 394, 737, and 733 go south, and the same four came back north.
-So that's the trains that come through campus. There's also a line that goes through town, the Iowa Interstate line, but I don't see that one much, so I don't know much about it - and anyway, I wouldn't want to try to compete with these people. That they have a website that extensive for the Iowa Interstate railroad (not an especially large railroad) tells you a little about what there is to do in Iowa. The two lines intersect in town next to a restaurant called the Depot. I hear there's a geocache near the rail diamond (that's what they call an intersection) there. I may go find it this weekend.

Republicans to start blaming Obama

I don't want to get into a whole lot of politics, but I'd just like to point out that we have now entered the momentous era in which the Republicans will start blaming the cascading failure of the American society on Obama. They've all been very uncertain since November, but now that Obama is officially president, they'll be sure to let everyone know that the reason America hasn't yet come out of the crippling recession-turning-depression that it's been inexorably heading toward for decades is because Obama is in office. It'll be Obama's fault that he isn't capable of the impossible task of making America solvent again. That's all I had to say about that.

-As I'm sure most of you know by now, Mom has become a statistic of the economy's implosion. What's she going to do now? Well, rather sensibly, she says she's going to start growing fruits and vegetables; in fact, the day before she got laid off, she had just bought some plants to start raising indoors. I think this is a great idea, and when I get home I'll be happy to plant lots of food. Ideally (to my mind), we would have pretty much the whole yard planted with stuff we can eat - and we could start canning the stuff when we couldn't eat it all. I don't guess that'll happen as soon as this growing season, but I think it's something we ought to work toward. Growing stuff is of course not the only thing Mom's going to work on. She says she'll also help Micah with school, and obviously look for a job too. When I heard from her last, she was hopeful about her prospects for a place she was going to visit that Monday... which would be yesterday. We'll see what happens. Mom's blog would probably be a better place to find updates about it though.

-Well, over break I've made a couple plans. One is that this spring Dad and I are going to go up to Eaton and hunt some groundhogs (whistlepigs). And also this spring, I'm going to get in touch with Mr Lorenz, the academic coach and French teacher from Finneytown, because he makes bows and arrows. He also makes trebuchets; he's got two. He says he'll teach me how to make a bow.

-So, now I'm back at college. I had another incredibly stressful drive back here. This time it wasn't actively snowing as I was driving, but it had been really cold for several days and snowed a lot during that time, and in addition, I was driving the whole time into about a 30-mph headwind. These things combined, and so the snow drifted aggressively across the road all through Iowa, sometimes piling up an inch or two high. As we moved into night, everyone started driving a lot slower. For the last 30 miles, I was going about 30 mph. At one point I was going to change lanes, and all the snow under the car held me back. I've never tried to change lanes before and had the lane say "no". I saw that happen to a guy in front of me too, and it was pretty funny. Less funny (but still somewhat) were the dozens of cars scattered hither and thither in the ditches on either side. At one point my passenger counted a cluster of eight. A lot of these were upside-down. A lot of them were also big trucks, which makes sense given how much wind there was. It was an ugly night for driving. But, despite the odds, I in my stick-shift Mustang managed to "keep it between the ditches; dirty side down", as Dad advised me before I left. So maybe I'm a good driver after all. I at least got both of us back without killing us too badly.

-I'll tell you more about my classes once I've sampled them for a little longer. I think I'm going to work at CERA this semester, and I'm also working at Bob's. If I play it right, I might not have to work in the dining hall at all. But I probably will anyhow. I have only one class on tuesdays and none on Thursdays, so that'll be nice - it'll give me some time to doo homework on those days. I think it'll be a good semester.

Newt Serif

Sorry I haven't been around. For a while there it was pretty busy.
-So, I finished my semester. And that was a relief. It was a rough semester, but at the end I pulled stuff together. And I checked my grades yesterday - all different flavors of B's. For one class that was better than I hoped, and for two it was worse - but not a whole lot worse. So I'm not complaining too much. Next semester I'll know that I have to budget my time pretty far in advance.
-I packed stuff up and washed my hands of the state of Iowa. I had to bring the snake home, and that was an interesting proposition. What I ended up doing was putting him in a cardboard box wth some of those little air-activated hand-warmer things. For a passenger I had Hugh, the other barefoot guy from campus. Unfortunately, the only food stop we did was at a Subway with one of those signs that requires shoes in the store, and we decided not to argue the point, depriving us of the opportunity to perplex some people.
-So then Christmas happened. I did all my shopping on Christmas Eve, but I didn't have much to do, so it was okay. I don't need to write a whole lot about Christmas here, because most of you who read this were with me and experienced it yourself. I like Christmas. Alas, it's over.
-A week later, then, it became 2009, marking the last year for several decades that partiers will be able to wear those glasses that have eyeholes in the zeroes and two other digits sticking out the sides. They've been able to make those since 1980. I imagine some company that's been making these the whole time, and now they're clearing out all the office furniture. "Well, folks, we knew this day would come, but that doesn't make it any less sad. I've had a great thirty years with you all. Maybe if we're alive we can get the business running again in 2060." I rang in the year in the living room with Mom, Dad, and Karl. It was a pretty tame party.
-The big story for this January is that my font is finally on the market! It sure has been a long journey. It's here, on Veer. I'm excited. I finally feel like a real font designer!

-Now I've been trying to figure out what I'm going to do with myself for the rest of this break. So far I've been reading a lot, and stuffing my CD collection onto my laptop with the iTunes I recently downloaded. And biking around when it gets too oppressing to be in the house all the time. Also I've been going to bed far too late and waking up halfway through daylight. I'm trying to change that. I've been driving a lot, which annoys me a little; I drove my bike to the bike shop for repairs, and I've driven to visit my friend Aaron a couple times.
-So, the thing I'm thinking will take up some of my time is that I might go to Nana & Papaw's house. Mom has been the motive force behind this idea, but I think it's a good one too. Nana & Papaw can teach me how to hunt well, and what to do after I succeed. So I'm probably going to call them up today and ask if it'd be possible for me to do that - whether it works with whatever they're doing and with the hunting laws. Because Mom makes a good point: I should learn from people I know who have been doing this stuff for decades before I decide to go spend good money in order to learn skills from an outdoor school that has lots of people who may or may not be legit.
UPDATED I talked to Dad to see what he thought of the plan. He thinks a better idea would be for us two to take a week during my spring break and hunt groundhogs (or, whistle pigs) out where he grew up. I'd need a pricy out-of-state hunting license to hunt in WV, and some other stuff that I don't have. Dad says he would do lots of hunting and selling pelts when he was a kid. So he's qualified.
-Stuff I've read:
You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers
A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
A little bit of a history of the Plains Indians
A book about trains
-A book I want to read:
Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes by Daniel Everett. It's about the very odd Pirahã tribe that lives somewhere in the Amazon basin. Their language has no numbers in it, and the tribe members can't reliably distinguish between a group of four things and a similarly arranged group of five things. I learned about them in linguistics or something, but I had heard about them in Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent. He had heard them called the Janamanos somewhere, but what he said about them was pretty accurate. He was talking about disc jockeys, because they were getting on his nerves during the infinite boredom of driving across the West: "Can there anywhere be a breed of people more irritating and imbecilic than disc jockeys? In South America there is a tribe of Indians called the Janamanos, who are so backward they cannot even count to three. Their counting system goes, 'One, two … oh, gosh, a whole bunch.' Obviously disc jockeys have a better dress sense and possess a little more in the way of social skills, but I think we are looking at a similar level of mental acuity."
-Okay, so until next time, remember: Never end a sentence with a comma,