FOAN • Names

I lost the eBay auction on which I was going to buy the phone I wanted. It was a Motorola Motofone, and it was cool in several ways. One is that it has electrophoretic paper instead of an LCD display, meaning it's perfectly visible in broad daylight, because light illuminates it, rather than competing with the light it makes. Another is that the battery life was phenomenal. The coolest, though, was that I found a video of someone tossing one from a third-story balcony onto blacktop and then having it run over with a car repeatedly, and the phone worked fine afterward. 

-But, as I say, I lost that auction. So instead, Dad and I went to RadioShack and I bought the cheapest phone they had there. It's nothing special, but it takes calls. Well, I assume it does, because I haven't gotten any yet, because no one who knows my number has called me yet. It's summer; why would they need to?

-I looked at my phone number. The last four digits are 7628, but I decided I prefer to think of them as Sn-Au (Tin-Gold). Before I figured this out, I looked at the last five digits, which spell PROCT. I asked in my Facebook status whether that should stand for "proctor" or "proctologist". One of my friends said it's actually "Professional Connecticut". Then he said it's tough to make a living as a professional state impersonator, but it's easier with the smaller states.

-I set my answering machine message, too: "Hello, you've reached Baskin Robbins, the home of 31 flavors. If you can name 31 flavors in 31 seconds, you will win 31 dollars. Start now."

-I'll be using the phone sparingly, because I have a pay-as-you-go plan. Under this plan, the first time I use a phone on any day costs me a dollar, and then ten cents a minute. But it's only a dollar once a day, and if I don't use the phone on a day, I don't lose a dollar. I've barely used it so far.

The rest of this blog will be about names. A lot of this is copied from a journal entry I wrote last night at about 4 AM, so it might be a bit disorganized. I got to thinking about them more when I came across J.R.R. Tolkien's Wikipedia page last night. It has a copy of his signature, and when I saw it, I thought, "Man, that's way cooler than mine!" 

Mine looks like it was created by a sixth-grader—because it was. The only significant change to it since I was in probably middle school is that I added a crappy flourish at the end. It looks like a supremely messy Nﺴﺱl Dﺱ) Bﺴﺱll.  I'm a font designer! My signature should be memorable and awesome!

-Then I got to thinking, some of the reason that I haven't put a whole lot of effort into making a cool signature is probably that I'm not particularly enthusiastic about my name. My first two names are from the Bible, a book I haven't even read. They don't say anything in particular about me or anyone I'm related to or anything I've done. My last name is a little better, but as far as I know it just means "Bone Hill". Dad says that's its etymology, but Mom maintains that no one really knows. 

-I think a lot about names. Mainly it's about names for potential kids of mine, but sometimes about alternate names for me or things I need to name. The main problem I come up against is that almost all of the names we have in English are from other cultures, cultures I have no particular connection to. I'm not Jewish, so why do I have two Hebrew names? Likewise about a lot of names I think about. I look mainly at the name's meaning and the way it sounds. But I remember reading once that "Björk" is just the straight Icelandic word for "birch", and that Icelandic names are often transparent like that. And then, after I discover a meaning, I wonder, What reason do I have for putting that meaning in that language? I have no connection to Hebrew culture. I don't even know much of anything at all about German culture, which is apparently where the Charles of Chuck Masterson comes from. (I made that up because it sounded cool. It still does, and I still like it, but I bet if it were my real name I'd start thinking about it like I have with my actual name. I'd be using it a lot more, and thus thinking about it more. For example, who's this Master that I'm supposed to be the "son" of? Dad's an environmental services manager, so ho has underlings… but I don't think he'd call himself the Master.)

-A tradition I like is the Native American one—and I'm sad to say that I have no idea which tribes this includes—of earning a name. Kids have temporary names. When they come of age, they're given a name that has to do with them, and it's a name in the native language. Like (and I don't know many examples) Tahca Ushte, which means "Lame Deer". I read a semi-auto biography of him once, many years ago. Someone he mentioned was a guy whose name translated to "Man Afraid of His Horse", which sounds embarrassing until you learn that it means he's such a fierce warrior that other people are afraid when they see just his horse, even if they can't see him. Or Goyaałé, which means "One Who Yawns". They all have a story behind them. 

-I came up with my hobo name a while ago, and that's one that I like. I won't put it on here, because I'm trying to be a bit more responsible with my identities vis-à-vis the internet, but it has the characteristics I mentioned. It's made out of two words of my native English, and it describes me, and it even plays on a phrase to add more to the identity. It'll feature prominently in whatever alternate name I come up with. I don't know if I'm going to follow any sort of traditional "first, middle, last" formula with it, but if I do, it'll be one of those names, probably middle or last.

-I think what I'll do is wait until I take English Historical Linguistics next spring. I'm going to enjoy that class. I'll learn about old English naming traditions, and about their words, and I'll come up with something or other. Possibly I'll figure something out sooner. 

-What am I going to do with a new name once I figure one out? I don't know. Start introducing myself to new people by it, start signing stuff with it. I just want to come up with something that means me. It's not Mom or Dad's fault, since they could hardly foresee what sort of person I would have been when they were naming me at my birth. If anything, my slight unease with my name has to do with our naming traditions, which aren't as personal as the Native one that I was talking about. And with English, which seems to have an inferiority complex as far as forming new things out of native roots. (Almost all the new words we make up are from Latin and Greek roots.) I could go on and on. I love talking about names and etymology. But if I feel like going on and on, I'll come up with something more organized first. In the meantime, I'll close this entry out, and go think about signatures. 

Holy Toledo.

How did this happen? Was it because I left? It just seems like Micah is trying deliberately to make himself impossible to deal with.

-A few days ago, just before I came back from college, Micah got caught by the cops again, this time for buying weed. He's on house arrest and has more hours of community service to do. Meanwhile, he's under the strictest supervision he's yet had. Mom is staying home with him all the time. The thing is, she's in no state to deal with Micah. She's trying to recover from her thyroid issue, and her nerves are basically shot. So now Dad has started staying home too, as of this week. 

-Up to now, Micah has gone through three different schools. After Finneytown, he went to Wyoming, and then when he got in trouble he went to Dohn Community High School. That's where he stands right now. It's a sort of e-school, where he takes online courses and online quizzes. He goes to a building downtown some days. I'm not sure how it all works. He's upstairs working on quizzes now. 

-A while ago he was at church with Mom and found an iPod Touch on a table and brought it home. He says it wasn't theft, because he just found it on a table. Apparently, if you can't see the victim, or if the victim is forgetful, it's not theft, in Micah's conception. Mom found out about this, and was planning on returning the iPod to the church's lost and found or something, so the owner would be able to get it back. Just a few minutes ago, while I was downstairs here, Micah and Mom apparently got into a heated discussion of the iPod. At some point, Micah threw the thing on the floor and it broke.

-I don't know if he broke it because he was infuriated that Mom would give it back after he painstakingly stole it, or if he just threw it in a flare of anger and accidentally broke it. Either way, it was one more in a long line of inexplicable, infuriating things that he does. I can almost figure them out, but usually not quite. Mom and Dad are at a loss.

-Mom and Dad understand Micah on their own levels. Mom understands him as her son, who she loves more than anything, but who is going through some sort of hard time. For Mom, Micah is someone who takes all the love she gives him and then in return just goes and gets in more trouble with the law and does things like throwing the iPod. Dad understands Micah as a screw-up, who, no matter what, always seems to make the worst decision, without regard for the consequences. I try to understand Micah as he understands himself. I haven't figured it out yet, though. As near as I can tell, it's something like this:

-I should be allowed to do what I want to do, because this is my body and my self. The law and my parents shouldn't have any power over me, because they're not me. I also like hanging out with my friends, but since my friends all think like me about their rights, no one likes them—or me—and everyone tries to keep me from hanging around with them. I've screwed up a lot, but that doesn't invalidate my rights. But because I've screwed up, everyone seems to be against me. And I need to make them respect me, so in order to get back to their level, I have to assert myself and be really independent. When I do my own thing and it works for me, people will respect me.

-I'm still working on how Micah thinks of himself. I'll try and figure him out this summer. In addition to all the other stuff I'll be doing. I wish I had two summers for all the stuff I'm doing.

P.S.: We have kittens here! Awwwwwww… kittens.

This weblog is about cellular telephones

Unto now, I've been happy not to have a cell phone. My rationale for this was that cell phones are annoying and cost money that I could spend better somewhere else. Also, I liked being unreachable—for example, if I were out walking in the woods, I wouldn't want to talk with someone on my cell phone, because that would ruin the experience. I also always get annoyed when I'm talking with someone and they get a phone call, and talk to that person instead of me, who am currently with them in real life, and I didn't want to be the guy who does that. And after all, before the 1990s people got along just fine for centuries going to college without cell phones, so I should be able to just as well, especially since I've got an advantage over all those previous decades in that I can use email too.  But I've been coming to realize that it doesn't work quite like that. It's hard to get along without a cell phone because society has morphed to make them the first means of communication that people think about.

-For example, it seems—at least in college—that people don't honor meeting times anymore, or even think about meetings in terms of a certain time, especially if it's just two people meeting. They just ask your cell phone number, and say they'll call you and figure out when to meet. No one sets a time for hanging out anymore, as I imagine they did before cell phones. They just call someone and say, "Wanna hang out?" When I tell someone I don't have a cell phone, it throws them off, and I get the feeling when I'm setting up a meeting time with them that it's something they haven't done in a while. And since people always have the luxury of changing a meeting time, they probably don't think as hard about whether they might have some sort of conflict. It's all well and good except when they're going to meet with me, and then realize they're going to be late, and so I stand there for several extra minutes, puzzled and wondering whether I misremembered the time. 

-It also seems like, now that there are cell phones, people don't use other forms of communication with quite as much dedication. Over the last few days I've been trying to get in touch with Eric a lot to figure out when we can do another of our awesome exploits, but I've been writing to him with email, and out of probably six or seven emails that I've sent him, all of them asking for a reply, he's replied once. I just have to find him face to face, and he doesn't go to any meals, so it's caused me to have to delay our exploit. To sum up, it's annoying not to have a cell phone, because everyone else has one and it seems like it's the only way they talk to each other anymore.

-So I guess this summer I'll get one. Probably a cheap one, without a lot of features that I won't use, and probably a pay-as-you-go thing. I'm not real happy about it, but I've concluded that people just can't deal with it these days if I don't have one.

-It's been finals, so there's not a lot to say—I've been writing papers and stuff. I've also been (as you've seen) planning an exploit, but that's for another entry. I'm coming home this Friday, approximately. Then I'll do fun stuff until it's time for camp on the 11th. Then I'll do camp, which will be all sorts of fun, and then I'll drive to Duluth and do Crowduck, and then I'll work on fonts and do other fun stuff again. Wow, I just condensed my summer into one sentence. It'll be way more exciting once I get to it. I've been hanging out with people a lot, including Elissa, since it'd be good for us to get to know each other before we start living together. She has lots of plants. And likes tea a lot. I told her I have a feeling she's going to donate a lot of tea to me next year. She said probably so, and to the rest of EcoHouse too. I have this thing about tea: I drink a fair amount of it, but I've only once paid directly for a teabag, and that was last summer. Instead I get it from the dining hall; or from a stash in the building where Larissa's office is; or from Bob's when bags of it get separated from their box, which makes them unidentifiable and thus unsaleable; or from catered events; or from friends. Next year I expect I'll get an even better variety of tea, and still never pay for any.

-Oh, a couple weeks ago, I was snooping through file cabinets in Bob's, and in one of them I found a big Quaker Oatmeal canister full of CDs. I ripped a bunch of them onto my computer. Got some Radiohead, Barenaked Ladies, Die Toten Hosen (which is German for The Dead Pants), System of a Down, and some bands with interesting names: The Afghan Whigs and The Alphabetical Order. I like that around here you can just happen upon about a hundred hours of music. Too bad a lot of it was scratched beyond repair.

Failures (a prelude)

Watch for the sequel to this post, entitled "Successes", coming out sometime in the next year or so.
I've been a bit bummed, because for the second straight year I've abjectly failed to find a girlfriend. Luckily, I've also figured out why I haven't been any good at it in the past, and I've changed what I needed to change.
-Last year, the reason I failed was pretty clear: I made the internet my home. I'm sure I've written about this before, but the problem was that instead of doing something after my classes ended, I would go into my room and read crap on the internet until I had to do homework. Basically, if I wasn't in class or doing something else that I had to d, I was very likely reading the internet. It was a problem. As I went through the year, I kept discovering the problem again, and writing in my journal that today was the day I would stop spending so much time on the internet. But I would always end up there, because I hadn't realized two things. One was that I needed something to replace the internet with if I hoped to stop using it, and the other was that it was an addiction. I realized the fist of these things toward the beginning of this year, when I resolved to spend more time with real people instead of the internet. Sometime around winter break I instituted a one-hour-a-day policy for myself, wherein I was only allowed one hour per day for internet, except emails and blogging and chatting with Mom & Dad, because I kind of had to do those things. If I went over, I took the extra time out of the next day's hour. It worked pretty well. It's taken me until recently to actually call it an addiction. I noticed that I was consistently going over my hour, and I had built up a backlog of about two weeks where I should be free of the internet. So a couple days ago I decided that for the rest of the school year I wouldn't use the internet, except to check emails, write the occasional blog, and chat with Mom & Dad if one of them caught me while I was online. The first two or three days of this have worked so well that I think I'm going to make it permanent. I'm just going to accept that I can't use the internet for just a little while. It always snowballs into longer than it should, no matter what I try to do, and it's been interfering with how much time I have to dedicate to real-life pursuits. Which is why it's an addiction, and which brings us back to the matter of girlfriends.
-This year my failure was a combination of things. One thing was that I spent the whole year barking up two trees that were both the wrong one. C. worked at camp with me, and so I naturally assumed that since we both went to Grinnell and worked at Camp Manito-wish, we must have a good deal in common. Now, the other thing that came into play was that I hadn't renounced the internet yet, or replaced it effectively with something in real life—I hadn't joined any student groups or anything, nor did I hang out with friends except at the dining hall, and if I came home and successfully made myself leave the computer closed, I would just end up doing something else in my room to pass time until bed, like reading my journal or thinking about napping. That meant that I didn't hang out with C., or people who knew her, much; and so I didn't realize until after I'd spent a whole semester getting to know her that she was, as my roommate put it, "a party girl". She's nice, but not right for me.
-At about the same time, I was coming to know M., who's very outgoing and excellently strange and doesn't plan her life around parties. So after winter break I started trying to get closer to her. But because I wasn't hanging out with her, or her friends, very much, it took me a long time to catch her at a time when I could find out what her thoughts were on romance in the near future. As it turned out, she wasn't looking for someone when I was looking for her. But because I still hadn't gotten out of my fairly small, rather male circle of friends that I've been eating most meals with since I got here, I couldn't think of anyone but M., and she had suggested that she might change her mind in the near future, so I just kept thinking of her.
-Finally, though, I've started hanging around with more people, sitting at more than just one table, and above all I've given up the internet and plan to replace it with real life. I talked with M. a couple days ago, because I had never spilled all these relationship woes to anyone before. She agreed with my thoughts on why I got nowhere these two years. Then I told her I was getting to know more people, and was starting to form vague ideas of where to go now that M. herself was taken again. She asked who might be on my list of candidates. I told her a name, and it turned out we both thought the girl I'd mentioned could perhaps be a good person to go for. So now I have a direction, even though it's a vague one, because I know fairly little about this girl yet. However, I also know I'm not going to just sit around and hope something happens for me. I'm going to make it happen.

-Other stuff: I've been customizing my laptop. I now have a keyboard that allows me to type —em dashes— and –en dashes– and ¼frac½tions¾ without even flinching, and I can also go all föréìĝñ on a moment's notice. And I've bought an upgrade to my font-making program. And, I'm finally doing something I should've done long ago: I'm consolidating my computers, so I don't have to take my big unwieldy (and recently, very slow) tower back and forth between here and Ohio all the time. I'll keep it around in Ohio, but mainly for historical purposes and as a backup files repository. Oh, and I've been (poorly so far) making moccasin-sewing string out of sinew, and working on my bow, and other fun stuff. Such as hanging out. I did a good deal of that yesterday, and some more today. I'm becoming happier. And that makes me happy… so basically, life is looking nice.

And Grinnell gets weirder

So, my plan for next year was to live at EcoHouse in the spring and some dorm in the fall. I needed someone to switch out the room with - so that I'd be living in it in the fall and they'd be there in the spring. When I sent out an email to all the people going abroad in the fall, I got a letter back from the organizers of Food House, a project house like EcoHouse but devoted to food (cooking it, getting it locally, growing it) instead of ecology. They needed one extra person in the fall. So I agreed to that. However, the project houses hadn't presented their proposals to Housinge yet at this point. When Food House did that, they didn't get the 12-person house they wanted, but rather the 7-person house. I volunteered to be cut, because shortly before that, I had gotten an email from an EcoHouse person who had just gotten an internship that would extend from summer into the fall and leave a vacancy in EcoHouse in the fall. I offered to fill this vacancy. The interesting part is that that means I'm living with the person who would've been her roommate, Elissa.
-This is possible because this year Grinnell decided to make some areas of campus gender-neutral, and all the project houses are included because they only have one bathroom per floor. Gender-neutral means they don't ask the genders of the people applying to these rooms. It's meant to accommodate people who choose not to identify as either of the two widely accepted genders, but it also means that in project houses we're free to do pretty much whatever we please regarding rooommates. She and I are both cool with the whole thing. She sent me an email asking if I would have problems with various things, such as clothes strewn about, and I didn't, and she had no problems with any of the things I came up with that I might be liable to do, such as strew clothes about and have a pretty large snake cage. We've got a double with bunct beds and windows facing west and south for lots of sun. We both agree that it'll be fun and interesting.
-The snake cage is going to be one of my summer projects. It's already put together, but now I'm going to take it apart and put it together again with screws instead of nails, so I can take it apart and put it together quickly for ease of transportation. Tenzing's getting pretty big. When I got him he measured about 15 inches. Now he's about 29 inches. What I've heard about carpet pythons growing fast was true. Meanwhile, I think he's now longer than the longest dimension of his terrarium, so it's getting time for me to move him into the big cage. I think he'll enjoy it. Certainly there'll be more room for him to explore, and he'll have a better hiding place (the entire 6-inch-tall space beneath the bottom shelf).
-Another of my summer projects, I'm thinking, is going to be working at Manito-wish again. I definitely liked it. My only issue was with having to wear shoes all the time, but I think if I can find a comfortable pair of watershoes that are nicely vented and not too constrictive, I should be fine. I'm going to have to go to an outdoors store sometime before I go to Manito-wish, so I can get a nice lightweight sleeping bag and possibly some other implements. These would be handy not only for Manito-wish but also for a bit of wandering around the country that I might do sometime this summer. The part of camp that I'll be working ends on July 18th, but I've already been given the go-ahead to leave a few days early to go to Crowduck. All I have left to do is accept the job offer email that I've been sent. I think I'll do that tomorrow.
-Our books have been steadily getting done. We just sent the last one to the printer, so we should have proofs soon, and meanwhile the other two will be arriving within not too long. I'll bring copies of them all. We at Press certainly got our stuff together this semester and got the books put together much quicker, although it certainly helps that we're dealing with a competent company now.
-That's about all I've got, besides this:
-Mom, I really hope you start feeling better soon. It has to be the worst feeling ever to be held captive by your own brain's chemistry. It'll be better, soon or eventually. Take care of yourself. I wish I were there so I could help you through this. Just know that I'm doing fine, and I'll be around soon, and I'll be able to spend some of the summer at home.

Well,

Basically I've been working and reading a lot, except for some notable exceptions. The reading was for classes, and the working was mainly on the books we're making this semester. Book design is fun, but it can get tedious, and I don't think I can convey any of the sense of fun by writing about it. I'll just settle for this: We got to use so many fonts for the fantasy book! We've sent off two of our three books to the printers already, and the next one we're doing this week. These printers are far and away more competent than the company we worked with last semester. That company was, apparently, staffed by lobotomized dingos. The liaison who always got sent out to deal with us was really nice, but despite having been in the printing business for a claimed 29 years, he routinely gave us numbers that were completely wrong, lost things, couldn't understand for the life of him what exactly we wanted to print even after we made it repeatedly and abundantly clear, and once accidentally mailed something to himself that he was supposed to have at our meeting. Let that be my first lesson in dealing with incompetents, and let the present be my first lesson in dropping them like a bag of fish heads. As for how they stay in business, we think they probably hardly ever get contracted to make artsy stuff like ours, but rather for brochures like you'd get from a power tool company.
-This weekend I went on a camping trip. I biked with three friends, and five other friends drove, to Rock Creek State Park, seven miles away. Such a fun ride. When we got there we set up tents and then made a campfire. Someone had forgotten the marshmallows, so a few people went back in the car and got those and some beef and such. We made beans and hamburgers over the fire, but the grill was set too high off the pit, so it kinda took forever. As we grilled, we discussed who would be picked off first when the camping trip turned into a horror movie. The group decided it would be me, since I was competent - I would have figured it all out, but then I would be killed just as I tried to warn everyone else. (I was the competent one because I set up the campfire and fixed people's bikes on the way and had a multitool.) We sat around the fire and talked, until Max decided it was time to start the Festivities, with a capital P. (Yeah, it's college.) Only five people partook of these Festivities, and afterwards I'm quite sure that I had just as much fun as the people who had. Unfortunately, instead of playing some sort of game (I was hoping to play my first game of 1000 Blank White Cards - there was a guy who'd played it before, and somehow both of us had brought index cards, even though he wasn't planning on playing it), we all just went to bed in the big giant tent. But we all lay there for like an hour making each other laugh. Madeline and I had a long conversation in Spanish, although unfortunately we couldn't tell secrets in it or anything, because one person there was from a Hispanic family and another was in my Spanish class. Oh well. At one point I could have sworn I heard a cow mooing outside the tent, but we all remained safe.
-We woke up the next morning very cold. Tired, we had breakfast and packed up our stuff and tried to warm up without our fire. We bikers biked back, but it was nowhere near as fun as the trip to the park, because the wind that had been with us was now against us and probably twice as strong to boot. My lips are still very chapped. Even so, I would rate myself "Completely Satisfied" with regards to the camping trip in general.

-Now here's the part of the blog that's not so happy. The financial crisis has been hitting home harder and harder. When Teva bought Dad's company, they liquidated all his stocks, and that caused him to have to pay something ridiculous like half of them in taxes. So it looks like we're going to be poor for an extended period, and furthermore I'm going to have to take out bigger student loans.
-What do I think of it? Honestly, I'm resolving to take it in stride. I already knew I was going to have student loans, and have to work for a good while to pay them off. I asked my roommate how long it takes the average person to pay off student loans, because he knows this sort of thing. He said it usually takes ten years, because you're not paying off very much of them with each payment. I plan to pay off as much as I can with each payment. You may not see it now, because all my expenses are being paid for me (by my parents and by my future self), but I'm a very frugal person. I spend as little money as I possibly can, and I plan to keep going like that until, for one reason or another, I no longer have to worry much about money.
-I don't economize because I hate to do it but I know I have to; I economize because I like to live simply and make stuff myself and take care of my own needs as efficiently as I can. I think one thing that led me to act like this is that I started thinking of purchases in terms of how many hours of work it takes me to pay for an item. For example, to have lunch at Subway, I work a little over an hour in Bob's ($7.25/hr). To buy a textbook, I may have to work upwards of ten hours - and since I work eight hours a week, that's over a week of work. When I find a job that pays better (I was going to say "When and if", but $7.25 is pretty close to minimum wage, so I shouldn't have much trouble beating it), small purchases will take fewer hours, but I'll still be leery of big ones. On a related note, I think being a hobo could be a pretty fun way to spend some time. I'm not being driven to desperate measures with all this frugality that I talk about. I would have done this stuff anyhow - it's just that now it seems more appropriate, and it'll put me ahead of the credit-card-maxing, Aéropostale-wearing pack.
-So Mom, don't cry over my economic situation. I'll make everything work, and once I'm out of college I plan to start giving rectangular Christmas gifts commensurate to how much you and Dad have helped me in life. I appreciate the fact that you're giving away so many of the dollars that you've earned to put me through college. Don't worry about me, because I'll be fine as soon as possible after college. If you can, keep your teacher retirement fund - even if it is small - and use it to help you retire, because that's why it is where it is.
-Meanwhile, because it's good and also because you're getting to the point where you don't have much choice, I'm encouraging you to be frugal. Think of stuff in terms of how long it takes to earn it, versus how long it might take to earn a cheaper similar thing, or even to repair an old one. Look around for stuff you can start selling. I'm thinking of selling off my coin collection, but I also note that precious metal prices are going up, and I want to take advantage of that as much as I can. I have some gold that I bought when it was something under $400 an ounce (¼ ounce for I think $97) back when I was so into coins. Gold is now somewhere near $900 an ounce, and it's been over $1000 in the last year. What kind of stuff do you have lying around? Dad, don't feel obligated to keep the Kawasaki around on my account, if that's got any bearing on why you want to keep it. You've already given me a car. Everyone, start cooking dinners more and eating out less. I guarantee you'll feel more like a family, and you'll save money, and you'll be healthier. And Mom, learning how to cook well will give you something to do with all that time you don't know how to fill. Websites are websites. Cooking connects you with the family and the real world. I think I'm going to stop now, because I'm starting to feel like I'm lecturing on how to be money-responsible, even though I don't have what you might call experience on that front. But, don't worry about me. I'm resourceful.

Busy Week / Musical Note

It just seemed so wrong to work on schoolwork over spring break. So I didn't, much. I did write five pages for a 7-page paper that I've sinced finished and turned in. And I read a little. So when I got back, I had to do work more or less continuously until now. What did I do? You're about to find out.
-I decided that after all I'm not going to go to Granada. I guess there are two main things that made me decide it. One is that I really like Grinnell, and I wanted to take all the courses I could here. The other is that I feel like if I'm going to see a country, I'll get a more thorough experience if I'm not trying to take college courses and experience the country at the same time. Hopefully I'll go see another country someday. Such as Spain. Or perhaps I could go see Lake Baikal in Russia, or the Amazon - those would be cool too.
-I finally ran out of time to vacillate, and had to declare my major. So I declared anthropology. I should note that I'm also majoring in indecision, so it's quite possible that I'll change it sometime before I graduate. I am decided on the fact that I'm going to declare a linguistics concentration soon, and stick with that. I'm looking forward to some anthro courses, especially the Archaeology of North America course that I'm taking next semester. And the anthropology-linguistics course, which I think is next spring or so. Some of these are ones that I might not have had time to take if I had gone to Spain. I do know that I would've missed out on the Archaeology of North America course. I'm okay with my decision.
-I started laying out the fantasy book. We have a title now: it's called The Captives' Quest. Layout work is nice and relaxing, because you don't have to think a bunch when you do it.
-I didn't sleep much.

I wrote something on Facebook, and I thought I'd put it here too.

I'm going to collect here the bits of music that always give me an involuntary spasm of being amazed. There aren't many so far, but I'll add to this with comments whenever I find another. [The comments thing is for Facebook. Here I'll just put them in my next entry.]

1. Gustav Holst, The Planets, Mars. The moment is about 6½ minutes in, depending on the performance. All the chaos, built up the whole time by the 5/4, yields into a long, warlike chord held by what sounds like the entire orchestra in fff, and then—here's the part—the strings come in with a low note, and bend it up to their own long chord. That bend does it every time for me. Sadly, few orchestras play it that way—most play it as two separate notes, which just has no magic at all. I don't know what the name of the orchestra is that plays the version I have. I wish I could help you with that.
This uncredited performance has it.

2. Flobots, "Handlebars". The climactic verse where the song's protagonist, who has been becoming steadily more corrupt and perverse for the entire song, shouts out,

And I can end the planet in a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaaaaaaaaaaaust!

And an entire crowd screams in unison behind him. And suddenly we flash back to when he could just ride his bike with no handlebars, and that's the end.
The music video enhances it even more.

3. Jean Sibelius, 2nd Symphony, Movement 2: Andante ma rubato. This entire movement comes close to that breaking point, but the spot is right at the end. The movement leaves room for you to breathe, or hold your breath, while you listen, and is painted with minimalist strokes of bright color. At the end, the orchestra has been getting quieter for a few minutes, and is winding down for the next movement. After a silence, the basses crescendo from nothing. The trumpets join them, and together they slowly go to two or three f's. Then they stop in mid-air, they wait silently for you to move to the edge of your seat, and the trumpets blast their final three notes, falling away to nothing to let the srings quietly end the movement.
The movement is 15 minutes long, so it's in three parts here. You really ought to listen to the whole thing. The conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, is feeling the music too. At one point he has tears on his face.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Qik note

On my way back to Grinnell, I saw
-A place called "Qik N EZ".
-A truck that had skidded partially off the road and was blocking one lane.
-A truck from the Batesville Casket Company that said on the back, "Please drive safely - Heaven can wait". I wanted to take a picture, but I couldn't get to my camera from up in the front.

Bowing, Arrowing

Today I overslept, and then I picked up Aaron's brother Jeremy to go make bows and arrows with Mr Lorenz. Jeremy is still at Finneytown Secondary Campus - the poor fellow - as a senior. Mr Lorenz is the sole French teacher and the coach of the academic team, and in his spare time he makes bows, arrows, trebuchets, and other assorted awesome stuff. If you'd like to picture him, he's the tallest person on the Finneytown Secondary Campus, and he has light brown hair, and no one I know has ever seen him in a mode other than happy. I drove us to his house, although I managed to take us many miles in the wrong direction first. I've got the driving thing fine; the next hurdle is navigation. I actually don't think I'm that bad at navigation, it's just that Cincinnati is complicated in places. I do take the blame for going west instead of east. Anyhow.
-We got to his house, and went into his small backyard, where he had a table full of tools, a garage full of wood, and a few rock benches with more wood. He has a lot of stuff. He picked out a long stick of yew for Jeremy, who apparently had discussed earlier with him what kind of bow he'd like to make. Then he picked up a piece of walnut that he'd vaguely started working with, and showed me what to do with it. I started working on it with a planer, shaving it down to the right shape. With the planer it was some painfully slow going. Then he gave me a drawknife he had, and the work magically disappeared. I had the general shape of the bow fleshed out pretty soon after that, and then I spent a while fine-tuning it with the planer. Meanwhile, Jeremy sat on a Schnitzelbank and hacked away at his yew stick with a machete. Interspersed into all this bow-making action, though, we had fun. For example, we got to meet all the little Lorenzes. I think they're 11, 6, and 5. The 11-year-old was Seth, who was working on a bow of his own. The others were his two daughters, who are pretty darn cute (and like to talk a lot). Also, he got pizza for everyone for lunch, and we ate that. Also, when I went to use his bathroom, I discovered that he has the old style of toilet with the tank up above and a pull cord to flush it. Basically, he's awesome. We also made a few arrows today. I gave him one of the arrowheads I've been making on Fridays when I'm not too exhausted to go knap flint, and I used another to make an arrow for myself.
-Unfortunately, there were too few hours in the day, and we didn't get to the end of any bows. But we're going to go back next Saturday and finish the job. We didn't finish the arrows, either, because the glue holding on the flights (feathers) would've taken too long to set. Instead, Mr Lorenz is just going to fletch them all himself (he's making a few with regular metal points), and they'll be ready when we come back. Hopefully next Saturday will be enough time to finish these bows, because I do look forward to having a self-made bow. How awesome will that be?
-That's about all I've got for this post. Before you go, I want to mention this: Mom's been feeling pretty poorly lately. Mom, I hope you feel better as soon as physically possible, and everyone else, wellwishes are appreciated.

Everybody, we need to start blogging again.

And it has been a while, too. It's been a busy few weeks, the last ones before spring break, resulting in oogobs of work piling up. Actually, it wasn't all that bad, because most of my professors seemed to think we were probably being overloaded by our other professors, and so they compensated by giving me a lightish workload. There was only one class that had a whole bunch due - my sociology class, for which I had to do a 4-page paper and a take-home exam within a week of each other. So there was only one night where I stayed up really late. I ended up going to bed at 6:15 AM that night. So I got about one REM cycle, which is better than zero. The good thing is that I get two weeks of spring break, but the bad thing is that I have a 7-page paper to write sometime before I get back in town. I'm going to make a sincere effort to get that done before this weekend, so I don't have to think about it later.
-What other stuff happened before I left? Oh, here's one. I got accepted to live in EcoHouse for my second semester next year. EcoHouse is a college-owned project house whose residents strive to make as little impact on the environment as they can while being college students also. This isn't Trendy Green stuff, like "Put in compact fluorescents!" and "Recycle a little more!". It's well-considered actions that do more than just make the residents look Green. For example, EcoHouse is big about buying local foods to as great an extent as possible. A couple people last year actually went on a 100-mile diet, where everything they ate came from within a 100-mile radius (except for a few little things like coffee and sugar). I don't know what they ate (corn, corn byproducts, corn derivatives, corn extracts), but they didn't ship in every meal from halfway across the globe. Relatedly, there's a garden out back, which we're expanding 44% for next year, and which will grow tomatoes, squash, various spices, pumpkins, lettuce, carrots, cabbage, and all sortsa other good stuff. The garden is fed with compost from the house's meals, which the EcoHouse people cook themselves a good deal. There's one meal every week, Sunday evenings, where the whole house gets together and cooks a meal and then has a meeting to talk about how the week went for everyone, and what chores still need to be done, and what debts need to be settled, and so on. The house has been renovated to be more water- and energy-efficient: low-flow toilets, sinks, and showerheads; an energy monitoring system and soon some window quilts to keep warm (or cold) air in. I think I'm really going to like living there.
-Press has started working on its projects for this semester. We have three: a set of postcards from around the college, a book of photography of subtropical animals (the photographer went to Costa Rica and Florida for a college thing), and a fantasy novel that takes place in the land of Insanity, and whose protagonists are two kids who were a little bit too crazy for Reason, so the elves snatched them away. I'll be sure to bring everyone copies. They're all fun.
-I visited the Amana Colonies with my intentional communities class. Our professor is pretty much the premier scholar on the Amanas - in one of the pieces he gave us to read, a guy wrote about them, and cited Professor Andelson almost exclusively, except for a newspaper columnist from the 1800s. So we had a good and informative tour, especially since Professor Andelson teamed up with Lanny Watts of the Amana Heritage Society. (I just looked up how to spell Watts, and in the Amana Heritage Society I only found references to Lanny Haldy, so I don't know exactly Watts up with that.) I bought some Millstream root beer, and it was very tasty. At first I didn't think it was all that great, but it grew on me. I like that it uses real sugar, not corn syrup.
-I worked at CERA a few times. Once, our manager Larissa ("our" being mine and Jacob's - he's an EcoHouse guy who works there too this semester with me) had an owlet with her, because someone she knew had found it on his farm, injured. Larissa was keeping it at CERA for a while because it was closer to where she was going to take it eventually, a raptor rehabilitation place. It was a very cute owlet. Owlet! If you're ever depressed, Google for pictures of owlets. I just did it, and I think they're even cuter than kittens.
-I also worked at Bob's. One night, there was a big party in the lounge next door. One very drunk guy came in while I was playing 碁* with a friend in the dining area, and he asked if he could get some water from the tap. I said sure, so he went over to the sink. After a few moments, he called over to me, "It's not working." "You're maybe turning it the wrong way?" I told him, and went over to look. It transpired that he had been trying to use the soap dispenser.
-I've also started training to be a leader for GOOP next year. You may recall that I applied to be a GOOP leader last year, but I didn't get in. This year they kind of couldn't refuse me, since I worked at Manito-wish last summer. It looks like it'll be fun. I'm definitely looking forward to it. We've only had one training session so far, where we talked about blisters and sunburn and CPR and such. Unfortunately for my Spain trip, the two don't look like they can both happen next year, and I have to say that I'm probably going to side with GOOP. However, Aunt Irene, I did appreciate you sending me that letter that you wrote for Leah. I do hope to go overseas sometime, but it looks like I might not do it for a college semester. I guess that'll leave me room to do something a little more unstructured, which may well give me a better opportunity to experience the culture anyhow. Maybe I'll even do the stereotypical college-student thing and go backpacking around Europe for a while after I graduate - who knows.
-And, I'm going to be turning twenty in six days. That, to me, is really weird. I wrote something about it in my journal a couple days ago:

Speaking of which, that's something it's hard for me to reconcile myself with. In eight days, I'm going to be twenty. Teenagedness will be behind me forever. I suppose I won't have actually changed, since life is continuous and not broken up into discrete decades - "The Growing Up Decade", "The Rebellion Decade", and now "The Forming-Your-Life-and-Career Decade"** - but it still feels mighty weird to be coming up on a new tens-place digit. Twenty! I know I'm not allowed to yet, but I feel old! If all goes typically, I've already lived a quarter, maybe a fifth of my life! Holy hell, I only get to do this three or four more times before I keel over and croak! I should probably stop that now, all the morbidity, since I'm only turning twenty. But it feels really weird, and I wanted that on the record. It feels alarming, too. That's a word I needed.

I haven't done much with my spring break yet. I'll put up bulletins as it goes by. A few fun things are definitely going to happen. Meanwhile, since I was looking at my journal, I'll put out something else I found in there:
-I dreamt that I was going to do something dangerous on my bike, and that I knew I might lose a leg doing it, but I did it anyhow. I did lose a leg, the right one. So did a woman named Ida Mose, and a guy I didn't know. We commiserated.

*That's "go", but I like to use the Japanese character, because it's hard to confuse it with the verb "go".

**Followed by "The Parenthood Decade", "The Mid-Life Crisis Decade", "The Working a Lot Decade", "The End-of-Work and Free-Time Decade", "The Last Hurrah Decade", "The Rest Home Decade", the "Extra Innings Decade", and any following decades would be part of "The Your-Days-Are-Numbered Era". This is purposely a very pessimistic classification system. I'm sure things look much better from down the road a ways.

A walk in the park • Rendezvous • Misc.

I do like my Saturdays. Here's what happened on the 7th, taken from my journal.
-I got up about 1130 and had lunch. I was going to invite [my friend] to come along geocaching, but I couldn't find her. It's just as well - I'm probably the only person on campus crazy enough to go through everything I did today. I got some water and such ready, and then around 1330 I took off for Jacob Krumm Preserve.
-The biking went pretty smooth until I turned onto the gravel road - then I discovered that "gravel" was really a euphemism for "mud covered with gravel". But, I found enough purchase on the roadway to get to the preserve. Pretty uneventful. The roads were so wet because it's been melting the last few days, in volume. The gravel road at points had a creek running alongside it in the drainage ditch.
-I entered Jacob Krumm Preserve, and found the trail. The first cache I looked for was supposed to be on a grassy hill scattered with tiny dead-looking trees, but I searched under every tussock and found nothing. So I moved on to the next one.
-It was easy to find when I got close: just a peanut butter jar in a log. I noted that it was getting wet on the ground as I moved on. I came across a field with a huge dirt mound and a wooden tower in it, with the trail bypassing it to the left, and a "fire lane" trail going approximately to the tower. I took the trail, but then it turned out to be a stream - no kidding, a real stream with a real current. I slorshed across some slushy ice to the field I'd left, and quickly found the geocache at a post of the tower I'd seen. There were kids playing on the tower while their dad looked at something through binoculars from the top. I moved on, because I also found a trail that wasn't actively flowing.
-This led me to where the trail comes near the railroad line. There was supposed to be a cache there, but no such luck, or at least I didn't see it. There was a bridge, over Sugar Creek. Sugar Creek was creeking right along at a good clip, coming out from a tunnel beneath the IAIS. Every few seconds a good-sized chunk of ice would float by. The water was dirty, cold, and roaring.
-I moved on, to the West Loop of the trail, which circles a big pond. To get to the West Loop I had to slog up a big hill covered in snow that had half melted, so that with the push-off part of each step I would sink down an inch or so. It got maddening. But I kept walking (my feet steadily getting wetter despite my water-resistant shoes). The first cache on the West Loop is hidden somewhere on a big dirt mound by a little stream, but the catch is you have to walk through solid bramble to get there. It was the thickest bush I've ever whacked, and practically every plant had thorns. I mentally composed the cache log: "For this cache: A curse on you, and your children, and your children's children, unto the seventh generation." It was pretty damn bad - and when I got there, it was too covered in snow for me to find anything. So I bushwhacked back to the trail, mystifying a group of girls who were walking past, and moved on.
-I finished out the trip with two easy caches, one in an oak tree and one in a dead log near the parking lot. As I moved between those two, I saw a bunch of guys ice-fishing. Apparently, despite three days of thawing, the ice is still 18 inches thick.
-Krumm is rich with potential krokay courses. I'm getting krokay up again soon, and maybe we can play our first new game there. We'll see how the weather acts. If it stays as squishy as this, Ill probably wait a week. I'd comment on the beauty of Krumm itself, but I caught it on an off day, with all the ground a giant bog and no leaves on anything. Despite that, I guess it's a pretty nice place.
-I walked the road back to my bike, and (now with a tailwind, on the gravel road, but a headwind on the highway) biked back to town - stopping briefly at Arbor Lake to see if there was little enough snow for me to find the cache I missed the other day. (No.)

Other stuff!
Eric, Ben and I have been exploring the campus more. A couple weeks ago, we found an unfinished room underneath one of the buildings here, with no floor. If you weren't careful to step on the joists, you could fall straight out into outer space. That's not true. There were no joists, only a rolling landscape of a spongy white architectural substance that I couldn't identify. But there was also a tarp and some teabags and a coffeemaker and Christmas lights and a note.
-The note was addressed to whoever stumbled across this place. It said feel free to take some cookies - though there weren't any just then, we discovered - and to please not disturb anything. It was unsigned.
-So Ben and Eric and I wrote a note back. We told these people that their hideout was pretty sweet, and asked if they'd like to see more awesome places on campus. We suggested that we meet sometime, and said we'd check back in the future for a reply.
-A few days later, we checked and there was another note, saying they'd be very interested in seeing what we'd found. So we left a meeting date and time, and waited for them to approve of it. When we got their next note, it said, "Your proposed time and place are agreeable to us. Come alone and come unarmed." It was signed with an angry face and a devious face, and in a P.S. there was a happy face.
-We met in one of the theaters at 11 at night. Ben, even though he had proposed the original meeting date in the first place, had lamely decided not to come, because it was his birthday and a bunch of his friends had come over to have a party. So it was just Eric and me. Also, the theater was in use - some fool group was having auditions there. Luckily, it wasn't 11 yet, so we waited around, exploring to see what was locked and unlocked tonight. At about 10:55, we peeked in the back of the theater to hear the auditioning people closing up shop. Ha ha! So a few minutes later, we went up to the catwalk and started waiting for our contacts.
-Unfortunately, there was no light in the theater, so they wouldn't be able to see us when they came in. Instead, we went down to the stage area. While we were remarking on how good our timing was, Eric gestured to his side. There was something there in the darkness. But I couldn't make out what it was. It looked like someone sitting, but it also looked like an empty Adirondack chair. Eric called out quietly: "Hel-lo?" No answer. I was trying to decide if there was a person there, trying to psych us out before busting us for being in the theater after hours, but Eric asked, "Are you who we're looking for?" and the brightish area in the darkness said, "Yeah."
-We moved into some light. There was a guy and a girl, both first-years and neither of them people we'd known before. We introduced ourselves, and then talked about our various escapades of the past and planned exploits for the future. As some of these were probably faintly illegal, I won't describe them now, but suffice it to say that we gained a mutual respect for each other. It's hard not to respect someone who has a grappling hook and has used it - they had. We toured the building, but found doors annoyingly locked. Eventually we walked together to wherever we were going next. All in all I couldn't ask for a whole lot more out of a Wednesday night. Eric and I even got to go to Ben's birthday party and harass him for being lame.
-I've been working at CERA again, so that's cool. So far it's been a lot of database-entering stuff, but it'll get more exciting. Relatedly, I've also applied to live in EcoHouse next school year. EcoHouse is a college-owned off-campus house that aims to minimize its impact on the environment by conserving energy, buying local foods, composting, growing a garden, and other stuff. Doesn't that sound just like me? Well, I hope I get in. I think my odds are good - I talked with a current resident (a guy in my intentional communities class, the Jordan who took me back to Ohio once last school year), and he said a lot of people wanted to live there in the fall because they were going abroad in the spring. Since I'll be going in the fall if I go - another topic I'm going to address in a moment - I have a good chance of being picked to fill up an empty slot, I think.
-About Granada.
-I've applied, but that application was just to the Off-Campus Study office here - I haven't sent anything to IES yet. I'm still not totally convinced that I want to go. There are definitely advantages to going - I should know; I had to write an essay about them for the OCS office. My Spanish would improve immensely, for starters. And I'd see a corner of the world I'd never seen before. Experience a culture I've never experienced. See the sights around Europe and Morocco.
-But I like this continent a lot. Everyone I know lives here, and I know how to do things here. If I go, I'll also be gone for a whole quarter of the time that remains for me here after this semester. I like this college. All the classes teach me a lot, and I've made some great friends. Whereas in Spain I don't know anyone, and a semester probably wouldn't be enough time to get to know anyone too well. Also, next year, I inherit the leadership of Press. I like running Press, and it would also be left a bit fragile if there were only or two people next year, neither of whom have much experience with it, to run the whole thing. So, essentially, the decision about Granada comes down to stuff I like a lot versus stuff I might like a lot and that I might never have a chance to do again. I'm still quite up in the air. If I decide to stay here, my room draw number guarantees me an excellent room for the semester I won't be at EcoHouse - it's 29, out of about 1500. If I go to Spain, I'll see Spain and my Spanish will get very good. It's tough. My decision is due on April 1st. Who knows but that I might do what I did when I was deciding between colleges, and decide on the day the decision is due.
-Well, this has gone on long enough. Your dinner is probably getting cold, so I'll let you go. See you in a few. But before I go, I should congratulate Tracy & Dan again on Cammy Marjorie Troxel's arrival. Congratulations! The fun is just beginning.

What I Did

I've decided Saturdays are my days for doing something awesome, every week. I've got several things queued. But this last Saturday's was just excellent.

I made a moai. Moai are better known as "those Easter Island heads". To make it, I used a huge pile that the snowplow had made, and whittled it into this using a hatchet and a crappy plastic snow shovel I borrowed from Security. I worked on it for a couple hours Friday night, six hours or so on Saturday, and a little more on Sunday. I had forgotten since last year that snow sculpting is some of the most physically draining work there is, so at the end of the day my muscles and bones were telling me, "Damn, you must have really accomplished something!" I love working really hard, because when I'm done, I can eat dinner three times. But for now, I love it once in a while. Maybe I could be persuaded to like it more often, but only for money or if I end up learning woodsman-type skills from it. Okay, so now I'm going to give you a sense of the size of this thing.

That's right. Eight feet tall, I'm guessing. Fear it.

Since I'm putting up pictures, here's one of my roommate.

He's halfway between having his hair parted on the left and having it parted on the right. I had just discovered that he's parted his hair on the left every day of his life since first grade except once, and he decided to try it out differently since we were discussing it. We were talking about combing because I had just given my hair a thorough combing for the first time in… uh… (long, awkward silence). I don't know when I last combed my hair before today. I just let it do whatever it's going to do, usually. But I like to do something with my hands while I'm reading, and I had a long reading today.

Maybe I'll take a shot with a better background later, so you can see my hair in all its glory. It's sort of all over the place in this picture, but you'll notice it's not tangled like it was before. This is taken by the roommate pictured above. He's a photographer for the college newspaper.

Next Saturday? I'm thinking either geocaching or bowdrill fire-making. I'll probably do the geocaching first, so I can find a fireboard and other pieces of wood for the bowdrill. I'll keep you posted.

Also, Grandma & Grandpa, I got the ginger snaps, and I've been enjoying them for the last two days. Mmmmmmmmmm. I had forgotten how much I like coming back to the dorm and being able to pick up a ginger snap whenever I want one.

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,

Grenade

Everyone says I should study abroad. They say it's such a great opportunity. Well... I concur. Today I turned in my application for studying abroad in Granada, which is in Spain in case you didn't know. Specifically, it's in the south, about an hour away from the Mediterranean coast, and it's in the Sirerra Nevada. From all I can tell, it's a highly beautiful place. There are some things there: The Alhambra, which was a Moorish castle until the Moors stopped being allowed to have castles; some cathedrals that are also repurposed from Moorish buildings; and of course one can't ignore the Universidad de Granada, which is where I plan to take a class or two. I picked Granada out after asking a few people who'd studied abroad last semester - the two people who went there were pretty happy with it, whereas the guy who went to Madrid said it was alright but maybe if I wanted good academics and not just a vacation I should keep looking. My friend Dan, who incidentally looks like the Geico caveman, is going to Salamanca, where they've got the oldest university in Spain, but the adviser for the Spain programs said it's such a small city that he doesn't often recommend it. Dan's going because it has "enough linguistics courses to keep me happy," but Granada has some of those too. Also, Granada is Spanish for pomegranate. I think Granada is a good medium between small Salamanca and somewhat touristized Madrid. Though I'm sure neither of those would be bad either. So far I'm going to go spring 2010, but I think I may change that to fall 2009. It looks like it'll work better with my schedule. So, there's that.
-Press has suffered a disappointment in that our middleman miscommunicated with our printer, or something, and there was a death in the company I think, and so one of our books isn't coming out until next semester. But oh well, you know. our other two projects shoud be coming out on schedule, though. Had better be.
-Because I had to fill out my study abroad application this week, it was just awful: I not only had to meet with a bunch of people, but I also had to actually decide where I was going. So there were a couple nights when I didn't get but two or three hours of sleep. It was maddening. But now that week is over! And about time. I was getting pretty sick of it. All I have left to do now: the releases for Amenities and I Remain,; reading some stuff that I never got time to read during the semester; take two exams. And I have a whole week to do it. This is the kind of pace I'd like for the rest of the year, but up until now it's been about twice that if not more. I've had free time like twice since Thanksgiving.
-Oh, another thing is that my font is most probably going to be for sale before Christmas. I'll link to that as soon as it's up.
-I'm really looking forward to coming home for these four weeks of winter. It's going to be fun.

Just so you know

Finneytown still isn't a real school. I decide when I was home in October that I'd go to a football game, just to see the marching band. (Apparently they were having a great season.) Mr Canter had told me they'd be playing on Friday. So I biked all the way to Reading High School (up an enormous hill), only to find out that Reading's field is quite a ways away from its school. A random guy gave me directions, and so I biked back down the big giant hill, but on a different face - so steep it has ridges carved into it for traction. That was fun. So far all the mishappening has been Reading's fault.
-I got to the game and paid my $4 to get in. And the team was playing, but there were about three people in the stands for Finneytown. And none of them were for the band. I couldn't see them anywhere. I asked one of the three guys, "Is there such a thing as the Finneytown band at this game?" and he said it was senior night. So let's review:
•Mr Canter told me the band would be playing on a night that it wasn't.
•The football game drew a big home crowd from Reading, but the Finneytown crowd could've come over in a Mini Cooper.
•When I got there, the team was (predictably) losing by a lot.
•The cheerleaders were there, and their cheer went like this, with a * being a silent beat.

Let's * get * a little bit rowdy!
Wildcats are * * rowdy!

Yep, they rhymed "rowdy" with "rowdy". Still not a real school. At least Reading gave me my $4 back.

P.S. When I went there, the cheerleaders would put posters up before each game urging the Wildcats to defeat the other team, with various words used for "defeat". One of them was "twomp", as in "GO WILDCATS! TWOMP MADEIRA!" I feel bad that I just typed that.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Work piled up and kept me from blogging. Here's what some of it was:

I've been working a lot with the three projects we're doing this semester in Press. The first one is arranged and sent off to the printer: Gawain ng Diyos (God's Work), a collection of photography from the Philippines by Lawrence Sumulong, a student here and a superb photographer. The book looks very handsome and we've all been pleased with it, and we're getting proofs back on Wednesday. Another one is Amenities by Molly McArdle, a collection of short stories revolving around the Clifton Terrace projects in Washington, DC. Those are three buildings of public housing, one of which has now been gentrified and fenced off; the stories are wonderful. That one is going to go to the printer sometime this week. And the other one is a stationery collection designed by Rachel Walberg, meant to revive the lost art of paper correspondence; it's called I Remain,. And I'll bring copies home of all of them, so you can see the fruits of our labors.
-Other than that, I've been doing basically nonstop schoolwork. The plus side is that the week before Thanksgiving break seems to have basically been my Hell Week, and now the last two weeks of my semester (plus finals week) look to be pretty calm as far as schoolwork goes. So I'll be able to actually do things that I want to do, as opposed to things I'm required to do.
-So, I came home for Thanksgiving, and it was just wonderful. Heck, even the actual coming home was pretty nice, because I drove home three girls and we had a fun time the whole way. Before we even got out of town, we had had the epiphany that "A bald giraffe can give itself a hickey". I believe we also sang a lot. When we finally got to Cincinnati (less one girl, who left in Indianapolis), we met up with the remaining girls' ride in Graeter's, which was excellent because it's been probably way too long since I had Graeter's ice cream. And then I came home and played Mom at Scrabble - it's what we do.
-On Thanksgiving we went to Grandma & Grandpa's. So, I got to see the new Sierra. Dave, who has a daughter named Sierra, is getting married to a woman who has a daughter named Sierra. At first they used "Sierra 1" and "Sierra 2", but now they're making it more fair by using their middle names... which both start with G: Sierra Gwyneth and Sierra Grace. It's going to be confusing for a while, I'm pretty sure. I played in leaves with Sierra Grace (the new one). What? You're saying you don't still love to play in leaves? Liar. They had to leave partway through the day for a variety of other Thanksgiving celebrations. So then it was Dan & Tracy and Grandma & Grandpa and Mom and Micah and me. (Dad was off hunting deer in West Virginia. Wish I could've gone, but not enough time.) Dan and I played an unending game of War, which we called the Hundred Years' War. And then we sped it up by playing lines of cards against each other instead of single cards, so we called it Nuclear War. And Tracy said she could just imagine my blog post where I said: "Dan and I played War, and he was goofy." Well, he was. And then we had the Annual Thanksgiving Pool Tournament, which I lost resoundingly because Micah managed to win on a random chance (using what Dan called the John Neeb system of pool, after a friend of his - hitting everything real hard and hoping something good happened), and then in the losers' bracket I hooked the 9 ball into the wrong pocket and lost against Mom. It was the worst pool tournament ever, but I still have the Annual Christmas Pool Tournament to look forward to. We had lots and lots of food, all of it delicious. I stand by my statement that Grandma & Grandpa's house is my very favorite place to eat in the world. After dinner we all sat and talked a lot, and I ate some pumpkin pie. And a black cow. I ate too much as judged by how much I'd eat on a normal day, but for Thanksgiving I ate just enough. Ah, I love Thanksgiving.
-We went home. The next day, I hooked up with two of my high school friends, Aaron and Keith, and we went out on an excursion together. We went to Borders, because it's chess night on Fridays, but there were no boards free and we decided it was kinda boring, so instead we went to a pool hall that Keith knew of. And that was fun. Keith was on point with his random stuff.
Keith: Gimme five! (Aaron does) Down low. (Aaron does) In the creek.
Aaron: No, I'm not gonna do it... it's gonna end up with me getting hurt.
Keith: "You're a geek."
Shortly after that
Keith: Gimme five! (Aaron does) Down low. (Aaron does) In the ditch. (Aaron does) Pick up sticks.
Aaron: That doesn't make any sense, nor does it rhyme!
Keith: That's what your mom said after she gave birth to you!
(We all laugh hysterically)
Aaron: You've got me there.
A little later, he said of all the crazy stuff: "I guess that's what you get for smoking poison sumac." We played pool, but mainly we traded stories and quips and stuff. It was beautiful. And it was also profitable, because Keith knows lots of employers: "I can find anyone a job. I can get this economy back on track." Aaron has been out of work, so Friday was great for him, and Keith has promised to help me find a job for summer break too. No more bein' poor and lazin' around!
-So all in all I had a superb break. Then I drove back yesterday. Two inches of snow were forecast for Iowa. Well, when I got within a dozen miles or so of college, the snow had gotten the better of the traffic. I shifted down to fourth... then third... then second... and then spent about a half hour in first gear, creeping up a hill for a lot of the time. I was right behind a heavy equipment carrier truck, with nothing on it, but I worried from time to time that it might start backsliding. While I was still in second, I was following it just a tad too close, and then it braked, and I had to brake too, and I damn near skidded off the road, and all my passengers were in a panic, but I recovered and gave the truck a much wider berth from then on. That road was slick. Before the traffic jam, we were on track to make it before dinner closed at 7:00; after we got through all that, we arrived at around 8:30. "I'm really glad I didn't kill us all!" I said to the girls as they got out. I feel like I've matured a lot as a driver because of that drive. And maybe taken a few months off my lifespan due to nerves.

For this one, I don't actually have to write anything new

These are a few related things. The first one is an email Dad sent to me, and cc'd to Karl, two work friends, his sister, and Nana & Papaw. And apparently Sean Hannity too, at some point.

[Subject: Good luck!]

Open letter to my son in college who voted for B. Obama,

President Elect Barack Obama will be taking office soon. With his left-wing agenda and his Liberal history it is likely that he will allow the Bush tax-cuts to expire, reinstate capital gains taxes on the house I'm trying to sell and increase the taxes on businesses and the majority of the middle class in order to fund his universal federalized medical coverage and the other ‘entitlement’ programs that he has promised.

This being the case, it will probably push the economy into a tailspin. This will result in any profit from the stock that I had dedicated to your tuition being re-distributed to more worthy (including those 40% who don’t pay taxes because their income is below the taxable level) individuals. Since I will not have the money, I encourage you to submit your request for free, government-subsidized, tuition promptly. President Obama has promised tuition coverage.

I will be using my 401-k and military pension to support myself and your mother in our retirement.

Best wishes,

Dad

(Mom wrote me this.)

OH FER …. Please do NOT worry about this. Things are fine. I’ll give your dad a lashing with a wet noodle.

MOM

Then I wrote this back to Dad.

Dad... the economy is already IN a tailspin. You cannot push the blame for that onto Obama. He has 75 days before he even takes office. The blame goes to the king of deregulation, Alan Greenspan, who as I recall was a Bush appointee. Obama will obviously be working to resolve the crisis, but being as how a coalition of the smartest economists in the world has had zero success in raising the Dow back up to the 14000 it was at last year or even to the 11000 it was in the first half of September, I doubt Obama will be able to make everything instantly better, and I even more doubt that McCain could have. The economy will suck for quite a while. But look at this without a conservative bias: it started tanking in mid-September, and has not come back even close to its former level, and not one bit of that crash can be attributed to Obama.

In conclusion, blame George Bush and Alan Greenspan for the failure or tanking of Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Lloyds TSB, and Iceland, and for the imminent tanking of Chrysler, Ford, and GM. Don't blame Obama for anything. When he gets into office, he'll be inheriting a country in economic shards, and it will keep failing, just like it would have if McCain had gotten elected.

And, finally, I wrote this in my journal last night.

...To be honest, I wouldn't put it past Dad to cut me off for something, but I think it'd have to be more severe than a vote. I'm still the unproblematic son - no drinking, no pot, good grades, nice friends - and his only issue with me is that I didn't absorb the Fox News hogwash that he spends half his waking hours watching. I think he also groups me as a liberal, even though he ought to know that politically I'm anarchist, and only voted for Obama because he mentality wasn't "Drill, baby, drill!" but rather something more common-sense and foresighted, and also less apt to keep destroying the planet. Not that Obama necessarily really cares deeply about the environment. I'm sure he cares, but he's also going to be of the mindset theat we need to find a "balance" between the economy and the environment. In these "balances", the environment never gets the respect we desperately need to give it, because policy-makers (ncluding Obama) see it as something that exists mainly for people who like to go on vacations in it and people who think nonhumans have rights too, beyond the right to be "developed". (What a quaint concept!) I went to Bob's tonight, and inside the graffiti-covered bathroom, there was a piece on the door that read, "This planet is not a resource to be seized and exploited." (Or something close to that.) Underneath, someone had written, "Why not?" The next person had said something about a person with a French name who (naively, they implied) believed animals and the rest of the biosphere had rights too. The next person called into question this person's philosophy, the existence of animal rights, and even perhaps the existence of rights in general. And then the debate got illegible. I believe the rest of the world has rights, but I cut right to the quick and wrote under the original "Why not?", "Because, no matter how hard we pretend otherwise, we are a part of this ecosystem just like every other species is, and if it fails, we fail too." This is the sort of concept I don't expect lawmakers and politicians to understand or, if they do understand it, to act on.

[Compelling Title Goes Here]

I finished break, unfortunately, and drove on back to Iowa. The next day, I discovered I was going to have one heck of a week. I was more or less continually working the whole week, and getting to bed around 0300 or 0400. Im short, it was pretty awful. The only upside was that it made the weekend so much better by contrast. Stuff I did included: a sociology report where I went into the Walmart in town, a lot of reading for Spanish and a lot more than that for English, and reading a whole book for anthropology. I also worked with Press some. We're working hard on getting all our books in publishable shape. And on Friday night I worked at Bob's Underground Café.
-The weekend was much better. On Saturday, I went on a trackwalk with a friend I found a while ago named James Y. We were both looking for edible plants by the railroad north of college when we first met. So, that tells you a little bit about both of us. James told me he'd found a way to CERA via the railroad, and after I checked out Google Maps, I saw that it was possible to get there. We ended up arranging the trip on the spur of the moment that day, when we ran into each other at lunch, and we headed south at 2:45. It was pretty fun. We talked about politics and stuff, which was interesting becasue we're both shades of anarchist. We also talked about plants and growing stuff. James is fascinated with the idea of growing tropical plants at his home in Buffalo; he's already ordered some small banana trees. He says plants always seem to grow really well under his care. We passed lots of rail construction equipment, which was pretty cool, and we also saw a big corn processing installation that looked like a bunch of tin cans of varying hugeness and suspended from various heights by a bunch of pipes and stuff. There was a loading dock for train cars, but the spur that led to it looked pretty disused. Which is a shame. As we went further, vague industrial buildings with giant, pointlessly manicured lawns gave way to distant motels on the state highway leading to town, and then to farms. We crossed under the interstate (a road crew had stashed some No Passing Zone signs underneath the bridge), and then passed by some emptied cornfields to a gravel road. James said this was the road he'd gone down to get to CERA a while ago on a tour of some sort. So we walked down that road for a ways, but then came to a point where we couldn't see anything even vaguely CERA-like. To be honest, I'd been expecting that since miles back, when we kept going south at the rail intersection, instead of following the perpendicular track to the west. I drew him a map showing where I thought we were, and where CERA was (several miles away), and he conceded that maybe we weren't there after all. I would've spoken up earlier, but I wasn't actually too worried about the destination. It was just a fun walk. Later, when we looked up a map, it turned out we wouldn't have gotten there anyhow - it was at least half again as far as we'd gone, and we just barely got back in time for dinner. Maybe we'll try going to CERA some other day, but probably not until the spring, because there won't be much daylight soon, and it'll be cold too. James says he finds something to like in all the seasons, except winter. It's because he likes growing plants so much. He says his dream locale would be somewhere subtropical ("Zone 10," he specified), where you can still tell what season it is, but the growing season is year-round. All in all, it was a pretty fun trip.
-On Sunday morning, I went kayaking in the pool. Now, I don't want to say a lot, because I smell a jinx lingering somewhere, but I will say that it was with a girl, and no one else showed up, so we two kayaked alone the whole time. Anything more than that is going to have to get said later. I'll just leave you all with that.
-Since I guess it's as good a topic as any to close with, I fed Tenzing today, and he's getting nice and fat. While he was swallowing his mouse, he looked awesome and you could maybe say savage; right after he got it all down, he went right back to looking cute again. Especially when he yawned to straighten his jaws back out. (Snakes do that.) He's a pretty cool snake.