I've been poor for the last few months and have done a good job of acting like it. I haven't been out to eat except for cheap happy hour, haven't been out to the bars at all and I've limited my impulse shopping to a pair of jeans (they actually sell straight leg girls jeans now!) and a few t-shirts. So when I found out that the MLS championship would be held in Seattle and that tickets were only $25 I thought maybe I could justify it. Then I watched on TV as the LA Galaxy qualified, meaning David Beckham would be in the final and that sealed the deal. $25 to see Landon Donovan, Beckham, Robbie Findley? To what other championship game can you get a ticket for $25? I only hope there won't be too many douchebag Seattle fans there (fat chance).
My roommate's disgusting, old, smelly dog vanished last week. Perhaps she was sick of being old and smelly and found a crevice to duck under and call it a day. Perhaps someone kidnapped her. More likely, some noseybody took a look at her patchy fur, assumed she was abused and took her away "for her own good". My money is on the Crazy Cat Lady across the street. In any case, the house smells infinitely better, but we were still getting whiffs of Wiley every now and then, so I set about vacuuming today. The adult boys' band had a show tonight, so I used the opportunity to vacuum around where their equipment normally is in the basement. I'm fairly certain that the basement has never actually been vacuumed before. The poor machine nearly exploded! No wonder I have sneezing fits down here so much.
Still looking for a new place to live, but at least my current roommate secured me a couch and a loveseat at his moving/delivery job. I'll have a place to sit! I'm looking at December and Christmas break to get a place and move in. It'll will have been over three years since I've lived alone and even then it was only for nine months. Nine months in 27 years... for a loner that's a pretty surprising stat.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Ya know what's cool?
Ya know what's really friggin' awesome? Having more money in your savings account than you owe on your credit card, that's what! I'm leery, though. The government just deposited a ridiculously large sum of money in my account. I was expecting some, but about an eighth of what they gave me and I can't quite work out how they came to that amount. It's wonderful of course, but I'm afraid they're going to realize they made a mistake and demand it all back at an inopportune time.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Plop
Here's a blogpost, since I've been so spotty recently. I've spent nearly every waking moment today on the couch. I only got up to flush the toilet repeatedly (it's partially clogged and nothing has fixed it entirely), making myself some food and coffee, and taking the gross dog out to poop. The gross dog (my roommate's dog, not mine) has developed a sudden fear of grass and so instead of pooping on the lawn she's been depositing her crap on the sidewalk, the basement carpet and the office floor. I have to physically drag her onto the grass and stand there for twenty minutes until she gives up and drops a load. God I dislike that dog, and it pains me to say that about any canine. Oh and I broke up a cat fight, which surely embarrassed our boy Butters, but I can't let our kitty get stomped on! While sitting on the couch I did a bit of homework, so let it be known that I wasn't being completely lazy, just mostly immobile.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Moving and Stuff
I mentioned in an earlier post that I was stressed out and looking for a new apartment. No, nothing's gone wrong with my roommates; I love living in this house and think my friends are the best roommates I've ever had. It's just that my main downstairs counterparts have just found out that they're expecting a baby. Good news for them! But it means that there will be three adults (including me) living there full time, two kids part-time and a baby fulltime on the main floor. It's simply too much and since infants aren't quite capable of getting their own damn house, I'm going to make way.
It's come at a bad time for me financially, too. When I came back from Europe early, I spent that money I'd saved on some stuff that I'd wanted for awhile, thinking I would pay it back with money for school. But the first setback came when the people who give me school money informed me that I'd taken too many electives and thus couldn't be certified for the term. So that left until November for me to get a full paycheck. I then had to put the trip across the country on my card and with the other stuff already on there I accrued quite a bit of interest to pay back.
And now I need to have some money saved up to move into an apartment. Lovely.
On the bright side, it's been awhile since I've lived by myself and I'm kind of looking forward to it. Hopefully I can find a small place nearby so I can still visit my friends and use the basement for music making and recording.
It's come at a bad time for me financially, too. When I came back from Europe early, I spent that money I'd saved on some stuff that I'd wanted for awhile, thinking I would pay it back with money for school. But the first setback came when the people who give me school money informed me that I'd taken too many electives and thus couldn't be certified for the term. So that left until November for me to get a full paycheck. I then had to put the trip across the country on my card and with the other stuff already on there I accrued quite a bit of interest to pay back.
And now I need to have some money saved up to move into an apartment. Lovely.
On the bright side, it's been awhile since I've lived by myself and I'm kind of looking forward to it. Hopefully I can find a small place nearby so I can still visit my friends and use the basement for music making and recording.
Oh Come On!
The Timbers lost last night and while they didn't play very well at all, the other team, Austin, spent far too much time lying on the field with phantom injuries and taking all night for goal kicks and free kicks. The Austin goalkeeper was the biggest culprit with the timewasting and the idiot ref let him get away with it.
So this morning I wake up early and follow the English games online for a bit and then decide to go to the bar and watch the later match. I get there and once my eyes adjust to the dark interior, who should I see sitting a foot in front of me? The Austin goalkeeper and one of their forwards. How unfair is that, the perfect opportunity to tell a coupla cheats what I think of them and it's 9:00 in the morning and I'm totally unprepared! I settled with glaring at them and am pretty proud of myself for not bursting into laughter when at halftime one stood up and said he needed to walk, else he'd get a cramp. Yes, then he might have to spend twenty minutes lying on the floor and that'd be fairly embarrassing. I'm also consoled by the fact that the keeper has an absolutely awful haircut. It was a mullet AND a fauxhawk! You'd think someone would let their poor Euro teammates know that those styles are simply not done in America.
So this morning I wake up early and follow the English games online for a bit and then decide to go to the bar and watch the later match. I get there and once my eyes adjust to the dark interior, who should I see sitting a foot in front of me? The Austin goalkeeper and one of their forwards. How unfair is that, the perfect opportunity to tell a coupla cheats what I think of them and it's 9:00 in the morning and I'm totally unprepared! I settled with glaring at them and am pretty proud of myself for not bursting into laughter when at halftime one stood up and said he needed to walk, else he'd get a cramp. Yes, then he might have to spend twenty minutes lying on the floor and that'd be fairly embarrassing. I'm also consoled by the fact that the keeper has an absolutely awful haircut. It was a mullet AND a fauxhawk! You'd think someone would let their poor Euro teammates know that those styles are simply not done in America.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Sometimes I'm Mildly Productive
Give me a bit of time by myself and I will actually become productive (eventually). A lot of things have happened recently that were slowly adding up the stress and so this last holiday weekend I was looking forward to going to the lake and forgetting about things for a few days. However, it poured all weekend at the lake and the power was even knocked out Sunday night, so while everyone was cheerful, joking and we made a great time of it anyway, we were all crammed indoors and none of the floating on the air mattress or going for pleasantly slow boat rides in the evening that I had envisioned occurred. My parents, who I had caught a ride with, and I opted to cut out early and I accompanied them all the way back down to their house so as to actually get that break I'd been looking for.
This morning I woke up just after everyone left to the sound of someone drilling concrete or maybe there was a monster burping across the street. In any case, there was a strange sound happening seemingly right outside my window at far too early an hour for there to be such noise. Normally I would not be awake at 8am, beautiful morning or not, but I pulled myself out of bed then had to mediate a dog-cat fight.
There's a lot of floor space at my parent's house, one of the things I love about it, so I used my dad's weight set and worked out my shoulders and lats before hopping in the shower and giving my hair a serious conditioning. Then I lounged in the sunny room and read a National Geographic all the way through, slowly. After I put that down, the dog and I had a chase-the-ball-around-the-house game and I finished off the coffee. I caved eventually and brought out the laptop I'd been avoiding and while perusing the apartment listings I tried to convince myself that I really could fit into a studio and after a few minutes I actually wasn't morbidly depressed by craigslist. I even contemplated furniture!
It was about then I looked at the clock hoping that my mom's show (she watches some soap opera) had finished recording so I could flip channels and I realized that it hadn't even come on yet because it was only 11:20. There are many days that I don't even get up until then. So I made a deal with the dog that at noon we'd go for a walk to try and kill time while it was taping. Meanwhile I found a download for Weeds season 4, which I'd been itching to watch and got it set up. We walked, I made lunch, fixed some things on iTunes and found a new Top Gear episode on the tv. It's not even two.
This morning I woke up just after everyone left to the sound of someone drilling concrete or maybe there was a monster burping across the street. In any case, there was a strange sound happening seemingly right outside my window at far too early an hour for there to be such noise. Normally I would not be awake at 8am, beautiful morning or not, but I pulled myself out of bed then had to mediate a dog-cat fight.
There's a lot of floor space at my parent's house, one of the things I love about it, so I used my dad's weight set and worked out my shoulders and lats before hopping in the shower and giving my hair a serious conditioning. Then I lounged in the sunny room and read a National Geographic all the way through, slowly. After I put that down, the dog and I had a chase-the-ball-around-the-house game and I finished off the coffee. I caved eventually and brought out the laptop I'd been avoiding and while perusing the apartment listings I tried to convince myself that I really could fit into a studio and after a few minutes I actually wasn't morbidly depressed by craigslist. I even contemplated furniture!
It was about then I looked at the clock hoping that my mom's show (she watches some soap opera) had finished recording so I could flip channels and I realized that it hadn't even come on yet because it was only 11:20. There are many days that I don't even get up until then. So I made a deal with the dog that at noon we'd go for a walk to try and kill time while it was taping. Meanwhile I found a download for Weeds season 4, which I'd been itching to watch and got it set up. We walked, I made lunch, fixed some things on iTunes and found a new Top Gear episode on the tv. It's not even two.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Timbers live-ish!
So I was going to live blog the Timbers game, since it'll be the first time this year I've seen a Timbers game all the way through on television. It'd be no use recalling matches I've been to live. Every call against the Timbers is crap, no matter how far away from the action I am and the action in teh stands (recently there have been a lot of fights or at least shouting/slapping matches) often overshadows the rest of the game anyway.
But I got caught up trying to figure out why I couldn't get any sound from the guitar amp through my recorder and to my headphones monitor. I guess the phones jack is broken. Crap. Anyway, better late than never....
FULL TIME 0-0
Well, the Timbers have certainly played better, haven't they? They looked slow and even though they were running in at least an inch of water in places, so were the Battery and the Timbers were still slower. Who knows what would have happened if there hadn't been an iffy red in the first half.
In any case, the streak continues with 24 games unbeaten in league play. I'ma finish off this beer and go back to musical endeavors. What's next for the Timbers? Thirsty Thursday at home against Rochester and then away on the 7th in Austin. The next three games after that (11th, 13th, 17th) are all at PGE Park. If they manage to take first place - and they should! - they'll get a by-week the first round of the playoffs. Much to look forward to! Thank you, virtual crickets, and good night.
90:00+2 - Another corner for the Timbers. Hayes to take it. It's headed away, McManus loses it and the counterattack is only thwarted by One T.
90:00+1 - Pore kicks the ball off a defender from a corner. Great kick, but it gets cleared anyway. McManus gathers in midfield and launches it out of the park.
88:00 - Charleston player goes down in the box and appears to be injured or at least winded. Never a penalty though.
86:00 - Ohhh! Great play - one two passing in the middle, then out to the wing - but Forrest somehow misses. Finally some attacking threat.
85:00 - Will someone please score (from the Timbers) so that I can go back to fiddling with my broken electronics in the basement? This is dull and I'm a bit worried we're going to concede at the last moment due to playing for a draw even with a man up. Ooo, scary screaming woman is back.
83:00 - Portland given a freekick for a foul and someone on Charleston gets a yellow for.... I dunno, making a mean face at the ref or something. Nothing happens from the free kick.
81:00 - Kevin Forrest is on the field. I imagine he's the one who replaced Nimo. Farber is hauled down and the ref calls advantage..... for Charleston. Oh USL refereeing, how I won't miss you.
79:00 - Farber called for a foul when replays show he got the ball and the player jumped over him. "Ummm, maybe it touched his little finger or something," offers the commentator.
78:00 - Aside from some strange screaming sounds from a female member of the audience, not much is happening. Nimo just came off for somebody.
75:00 - Keita off, McLaughlin on. Hmm.
72:00 - Charleston are being allowed far too much possession and too many crosses for having only 10 players. C'mon Timbers, pick it up.
69:00 - Some Timber made a nice slow square pass right at the top of the box for Charleston's Yoshitaki to rocket into Portland's Stephen Keel. Dreadful pass there. Portland's lucky to get away with that. Again, I'd like a goal or two.
67:00 - The band is now playing that "nah n-n-n-nahhhh n-n-n-nah" song. Are they warming up for college football season? Are they always there? Why?
65:00 Ref calls a foul on Charleston that probably wasn't a foul and then places the Timbers freekick about thirty feet behind where the non-foul occurred.
62:00 - Charleston almost score, but thanks to last ditch defending by Keel they didn't. Poor clearance though and they have another opportunity to kick the ball into the stands. Or, whatever those tent things are behind the goal.
58:00 - Cronin catches the freekick, Portland plays keep away for two minutes. Whoa, is that a forward pass??? Whoa. I'd like to win, please. Ooo, Savage out for Rodrigo Lopez. Lopez as you may recall scored on a gorgeous dipping freekick against Burnley last month. Immediately Timbers almost score.
56:00 - Yellow card for Hayes. Charleston get a free kick in a dangerous area. Suzuki off, Farber on in his place.
51:00 - McManus shoots(?) and it nearly goes out for a throw-in. Yikes.
49:00 - Keita whiffs a shot, then Hayes trips over the ball. Let's settle down, ok?
47:00 - Good build up for Timbers, Pore just offside. More of that, please.
46:00 - And we're off again. This better be more exciting than part one.
HALFTIME RAMBLINGS
Whoa, they just showed the commentator. He's probably 20 years younger than I pictured.
FSC has, without a doubt, the worst commercials of any television network. It's all balding cures and penis enlargement quackery and how to reduce your credit/tax debt. The worst right now though is the long distance calling card ad with all the people from foreign countries with THE WORST fake accents ever. Like they couldn't find ONE woman actually from India for five seconds of monologue? Lord.
Ryan Pore is talking. Said something flattering about the fans. *Pats self on back*
So I'm drinking a 16oz can of Rolling Rock. Mmmm, "Premium Beer". Didja know they're selling six packs of these big cans at the beloved Grocery Outlet for five bucks? Speaking of cheap beer from PA, if anyone knows where I can get some Iron City in a bottle, please let me know.
HALFTIME
45 + 2 - Ball bounces around in the Portland box making Timbers fans at home (at least me) nervous. Nimo then finds Savage who does really well for such a long-range shot. Aaaand after three minutes of stoppage it's halftime.
45:00 - Charleston have a shot on target and given a corner. Timbers knock it behind for another corner. Into stoppage.
43: - Announcer just called Suzuki a "rangey" winger. Okeeee... Battery goalkeeper shown yellow for timewasting. I say that just isn't smart to waste time in the first half. Karma says you'll need those wasted minutes before the end of the match.
42:00 - Ugh. Nimo has his great moments, but he does have a tendency to do a great move, dribble down the pitch and then hoof the ball into the stands, which is exactly what he did a moment ago.
40:00 - Boring. As you can tell by me live blogging for the online crickets I'm pretty bored today and at this point in the match, the game isn't helping. Portland has a breakaway but Pore is offside. I'd feel a lot better if the Timbers could get a goal against the 10-man Battery before the half.
35:00 - Good spell there for the Timbers. Someone in the middle finds Suzuki on the left who wins a throw in the corner. It gets back to the middle and McManus tries a nice through pass that gets broken up. Pore has tried to beat five defenders at once several times this match. Maybe passing to the open man would be the better option.
32:00 - Charleston have moved into their own half allowing the Timbers to have more slow and steady possession. Pass pass pass, not a lot of shots for the Timbers.
30:00 - This game ain't gonna be pretty. Late tackles galore. Probably doesn't help that it apparently deluged right before kickoff. Lots of standing water on the field. I just heard Nimo's name, he must have started again.
Is it strange living in a time when the Timbers are given calls and not on the receiving end of phantom red cards and suspensions? And by phantom, I mean the cards and suspensions were real, just not so much the fouls that caused them.
RED CARD!!!
26:00 - Battery player who hit/headbutted Pore is sent off. Might not have been much there on either end. Hmmm. Of course it works out well for the Timbers.
24:00 - Pore challenges the ball by running at the keeper, Battery player takes exception and hits Pore in the eye.
20:00 - Timbers fans hold their collective breath as Keita goes down with an injury. He went into two challenges and seemed all right, but then went down a few steps later. Did he twist an ankle? He jog hops off the pitch and looks like he'll be back on in a minute. Whew.
18:00 - Charleston had a corner and didn't do anything with it. Portland attempted a counter attack and made it halfway down the field before giving it away. Lotsa bad passes and giveaways by both teams. It's different watching this after Champions League all week.
13:00 - Charleston has a shot on goal, Cronin collects it.
12:00 - Charleston has a marching band. From the sound of it, not a small one either and they've been playing all game. Bit too much possession by Charleston for my tastes. Dude with English accent is doing the play-by-play with no color commentator backup.
But I got caught up trying to figure out why I couldn't get any sound from the guitar amp through my recorder and to my headphones monitor. I guess the phones jack is broken. Crap. Anyway, better late than never....
FULL TIME 0-0
Well, the Timbers have certainly played better, haven't they? They looked slow and even though they were running in at least an inch of water in places, so were the Battery and the Timbers were still slower. Who knows what would have happened if there hadn't been an iffy red in the first half.
In any case, the streak continues with 24 games unbeaten in league play. I'ma finish off this beer and go back to musical endeavors. What's next for the Timbers? Thirsty Thursday at home against Rochester and then away on the 7th in Austin. The next three games after that (11th, 13th, 17th) are all at PGE Park. If they manage to take first place - and they should! - they'll get a by-week the first round of the playoffs. Much to look forward to! Thank you, virtual crickets, and good night.
90:00+2 - Another corner for the Timbers. Hayes to take it. It's headed away, McManus loses it and the counterattack is only thwarted by One T.
90:00+1 - Pore kicks the ball off a defender from a corner. Great kick, but it gets cleared anyway. McManus gathers in midfield and launches it out of the park.
88:00 - Charleston player goes down in the box and appears to be injured or at least winded. Never a penalty though.
86:00 - Ohhh! Great play - one two passing in the middle, then out to the wing - but Forrest somehow misses. Finally some attacking threat.
85:00 - Will someone please score (from the Timbers) so that I can go back to fiddling with my broken electronics in the basement? This is dull and I'm a bit worried we're going to concede at the last moment due to playing for a draw even with a man up. Ooo, scary screaming woman is back.
83:00 - Portland given a freekick for a foul and someone on Charleston gets a yellow for.... I dunno, making a mean face at the ref or something. Nothing happens from the free kick.
81:00 - Kevin Forrest is on the field. I imagine he's the one who replaced Nimo. Farber is hauled down and the ref calls advantage..... for Charleston. Oh USL refereeing, how I won't miss you.
79:00 - Farber called for a foul when replays show he got the ball and the player jumped over him. "Ummm, maybe it touched his little finger or something," offers the commentator.
78:00 - Aside from some strange screaming sounds from a female member of the audience, not much is happening. Nimo just came off for somebody.
75:00 - Keita off, McLaughlin on. Hmm.
72:00 - Charleston are being allowed far too much possession and too many crosses for having only 10 players. C'mon Timbers, pick it up.
69:00 - Some Timber made a nice slow square pass right at the top of the box for Charleston's Yoshitaki to rocket into Portland's Stephen Keel. Dreadful pass there. Portland's lucky to get away with that. Again, I'd like a goal or two.
67:00 - The band is now playing that "nah n-n-n-nahhhh n-n-n-nah" song. Are they warming up for college football season? Are they always there? Why?
65:00 Ref calls a foul on Charleston that probably wasn't a foul and then places the Timbers freekick about thirty feet behind where the non-foul occurred.
62:00 - Charleston almost score, but thanks to last ditch defending by Keel they didn't. Poor clearance though and they have another opportunity to kick the ball into the stands. Or, whatever those tent things are behind the goal.
58:00 - Cronin catches the freekick, Portland plays keep away for two minutes. Whoa, is that a forward pass??? Whoa. I'd like to win, please. Ooo, Savage out for Rodrigo Lopez. Lopez as you may recall scored on a gorgeous dipping freekick against Burnley last month. Immediately Timbers almost score.
56:00 - Yellow card for Hayes. Charleston get a free kick in a dangerous area. Suzuki off, Farber on in his place.
51:00 - McManus shoots(?) and it nearly goes out for a throw-in. Yikes.
49:00 - Keita whiffs a shot, then Hayes trips over the ball. Let's settle down, ok?
47:00 - Good build up for Timbers, Pore just offside. More of that, please.
46:00 - And we're off again. This better be more exciting than part one.
HALFTIME RAMBLINGS
Whoa, they just showed the commentator. He's probably 20 years younger than I pictured.
FSC has, without a doubt, the worst commercials of any television network. It's all balding cures and penis enlargement quackery and how to reduce your credit/tax debt. The worst right now though is the long distance calling card ad with all the people from foreign countries with THE WORST fake accents ever. Like they couldn't find ONE woman actually from India for five seconds of monologue? Lord.
Ryan Pore is talking. Said something flattering about the fans. *Pats self on back*
So I'm drinking a 16oz can of Rolling Rock. Mmmm, "Premium Beer". Didja know they're selling six packs of these big cans at the beloved Grocery Outlet for five bucks? Speaking of cheap beer from PA, if anyone knows where I can get some Iron City in a bottle, please let me know.
HALFTIME
45 + 2 - Ball bounces around in the Portland box making Timbers fans at home (at least me) nervous. Nimo then finds Savage who does really well for such a long-range shot. Aaaand after three minutes of stoppage it's halftime.
45:00 - Charleston have a shot on target and given a corner. Timbers knock it behind for another corner. Into stoppage.
43: - Announcer just called Suzuki a "rangey" winger. Okeeee... Battery goalkeeper shown yellow for timewasting. I say that just isn't smart to waste time in the first half. Karma says you'll need those wasted minutes before the end of the match.
42:00 - Ugh. Nimo has his great moments, but he does have a tendency to do a great move, dribble down the pitch and then hoof the ball into the stands, which is exactly what he did a moment ago.
40:00 - Boring. As you can tell by me live blogging for the online crickets I'm pretty bored today and at this point in the match, the game isn't helping. Portland has a breakaway but Pore is offside. I'd feel a lot better if the Timbers could get a goal against the 10-man Battery before the half.
35:00 - Good spell there for the Timbers. Someone in the middle finds Suzuki on the left who wins a throw in the corner. It gets back to the middle and McManus tries a nice through pass that gets broken up. Pore has tried to beat five defenders at once several times this match. Maybe passing to the open man would be the better option.
32:00 - Charleston have moved into their own half allowing the Timbers to have more slow and steady possession. Pass pass pass, not a lot of shots for the Timbers.
30:00 - This game ain't gonna be pretty. Late tackles galore. Probably doesn't help that it apparently deluged right before kickoff. Lots of standing water on the field. I just heard Nimo's name, he must have started again.
Is it strange living in a time when the Timbers are given calls and not on the receiving end of phantom red cards and suspensions? And by phantom, I mean the cards and suspensions were real, just not so much the fouls that caused them.
RED CARD!!!
26:00 - Battery player who hit/headbutted Pore is sent off. Might not have been much there on either end. Hmmm. Of course it works out well for the Timbers.
24:00 - Pore challenges the ball by running at the keeper, Battery player takes exception and hits Pore in the eye.
20:00 - Timbers fans hold their collective breath as Keita goes down with an injury. He went into two challenges and seemed all right, but then went down a few steps later. Did he twist an ankle? He jog hops off the pitch and looks like he'll be back on in a minute. Whew.
18:00 - Charleston had a corner and didn't do anything with it. Portland attempted a counter attack and made it halfway down the field before giving it away. Lotsa bad passes and giveaways by both teams. It's different watching this after Champions League all week.
13:00 - Charleston has a shot on goal, Cronin collects it.
12:00 - Charleston has a marching band. From the sound of it, not a small one either and they've been playing all game. Bit too much possession by Charleston for my tastes. Dude with English accent is doing the play-by-play with no color commentator backup.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Good things about home
- Home grown tomatoes. How can they be so good and so so so much better than anything from a store? When I got home there were four big tomatoes ready to go, three past their due dates and no good, a couple to be ready soon and many more to come. The sungold, cherry tomato plant had gone crazy and there was a bucket's worth of the orange candy-like fruit. I ate two tuna sandwiches over the past couple days that each had an entire tomato. There were pretty much tomato and a bit of tuna and cheese between bread.
- Stars? Strangely, the stars are out tonight. I have to escort the roommate's stinky dog outside now, as she's too ill-behaved and stubborn to simply go out, pee and come back and she'll end up down the street or disappeared entirely for hours. It's not often one can see the stars in Portland, due to clouds, pollution and street lights everywhere. Usually, the sky is an eerie orange at night. But while presiding over dog's nightly pee-on-the-blueberries I spotted the Big Dipper. And right where it should be, off the handle of the Big D, was the North Star. There were even some other less famous visible stars scattered around the sky. Wish that happened more often.
- Doing nothing. I'd say that I was multitasking today, but I don't think that reading with tv on or downloading things on the computer can be called "tasks". Multilazing I guess.
- Stars? Strangely, the stars are out tonight. I have to escort the roommate's stinky dog outside now, as she's too ill-behaved and stubborn to simply go out, pee and come back and she'll end up down the street or disappeared entirely for hours. It's not often one can see the stars in Portland, due to clouds, pollution and street lights everywhere. Usually, the sky is an eerie orange at night. But while presiding over dog's nightly pee-on-the-blueberries I spotted the Big Dipper. And right where it should be, off the handle of the Big D, was the North Star. There were even some other less famous visible stars scattered around the sky. Wish that happened more often.
- Doing nothing. I'd say that I was multitasking today, but I don't think that reading with tv on or downloading things on the computer can be called "tasks". Multilazing I guess.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
I'm Back!
Yes, I was gone for twenty days and didn't write a single blog post. Obviously, I have some make up work to do. In my defense, I did an awful lot of driving, didn't have much wireless and my days were generally pretty long. I'll try to update in the next few days. As of now, I'm chilling out at my parents' house, waiting for them to get home before I go back up to Portland and attend another wedding.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Time for another cold shower
I was going to write something interesting about these neat devices they have in Spain (I'm sure it's an old, simple and common technology for everyone outside of the US), but all I can think now is OH MY GOD IT'S HOT. It was 102 degrees today and now that it's one in the morning it's only cooled to 82. To put things in perspective, the average high for July in Portland is 78 and the low 56. The basement is coolest place in the house, so I decided to sleep on the floor until the biggest spider I've ever seen crawled over my face. So now I'm on the couch in the basement. I'm not sure why I think that giant spiders won't make it up onto the couch, but I'm sticking with it.
Anyway, in Spain they have these things outside of all the windows that look like mini metal garage doors. Some roll up and down and some just flip up like blinds. Now in the US we have shutters on the windows, but they're purely for decoration in any house built after, say, 1840 and no office buildings have them at all. These high(er) tech Spanish shutters are on literally every window in the country. You can sleep all day in total darkness or be completely unaware of anything happening outdoors. Whyyyyyyyy don't we have these here? Imagine how much cooler the house would be if every window blocked the sun completely. Those with air conditioning would hardly have to use it and the rest of us poor AC-less folk wouldn't have to share the basement floor with the spiders.
Anyway, in Spain they have these things outside of all the windows that look like mini metal garage doors. Some roll up and down and some just flip up like blinds. Now in the US we have shutters on the windows, but they're purely for decoration in any house built after, say, 1840 and no office buildings have them at all. These high(er) tech Spanish shutters are on literally every window in the country. You can sleep all day in total darkness or be completely unaware of anything happening outdoors. Whyyyyyyyy don't we have these here? Imagine how much cooler the house would be if every window blocked the sun completely. Those with air conditioning would hardly have to use it and the rest of us poor AC-less folk wouldn't have to share the basement floor with the spiders.
Friday, July 17, 2009
New Post
There's a new post up on the travel blog. As the trip nears and begins, expect some periodic updates - internet accessibility dependent, of course.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Some pictures
From the Portland v Seattle match.
Before the gates opened. Notice there's already streamers in the sign.
Right after the national anthem. It's a party in the smoke!
Look at how many people are there!
I flung up my arms with my camera pointed behind me. Apparently the smoke was getting to some people.
After every game, win or lose, the team jogs over to the north end to thank the fans. If anyone has scored a goal, they get a slice of the log that's been sawed off for them by Timber Joey. It's a pretty nice tradition and I hope they continue it even after we move to the MLS.
Before the gates opened. Notice there's already streamers in the sign.
Right after the national anthem. It's a party in the smoke!
Look at how many people are there!
I flung up my arms with my camera pointed behind me. Apparently the smoke was getting to some people.
After every game, win or lose, the team jogs over to the north end to thank the fans. If anyone has scored a goal, they get a slice of the log that's been sawed off for them by Timber Joey. It's a pretty nice tradition and I hope they continue it even after we move to the MLS.Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Fire on the Water
My grandparents have a cabin on a lake up in Washington and every year there’s a party up there with family and their guests. There’s an indian reservation nearby so all the uncles and cousins pool their money together, pile into cars head over to stock up on fireworks that are illegal off the reservation - stuff like bottle rockets, roman candles and mortars. This year we plopped down five hundred dollars on the stuff. The kids spent literally all evening firing rockets and didn’t even come close to finishing them off. The mortars were cool as always, even if the neighbors on the lake showed us up. I can’t imagine how many thousands of dollars those guys must have spent on their display.
Most of the weekend was spent cheering up my dog who is tolerated but not exactly adored by that side of the family, swimming and trying not to get sunburned. It was hotter than I can remember it ever being at the lake, most everyone seemed to be in a good mood and I got to ride in my uncle’s new ski boat. Oh, and when I took the dog for a walk the first night I found a five dollar bill next to the road! That’s ten unearned dollars I’ve pocketed in the past week.
During the main part of the fireworks time, I scampered between the roman candle/bottle rocket lighting area and the dock, where I could see fireworks on both ends of the lake. Occasionally some of the firework lighters from our house would light a mortar off the dock and we’d have to gather up on the gangplank to avoid any shrapnel. Otherwise, it was perfectly safe. Except that someone accidently knocked over the pipe that was firing off the roman candles. Of course it would land in such a way that it was then aimed directly at the dock. My sister and I were caught in its path and I didn’t quite realize what was happening until a piece of fire went down my pants and burned my ass. Yes, that’s right. I was wearing thick, reinforced combat fatigue pants (I wore these things in Afghanistan!) with a belt, but it didn’t help. What really are the odds of one random spark ending up DOWN MY PANTS? There’s a burn mark on the inside of the pants, but not the outside. There’s a blister on my ass. I’m not joking. One in a million shot, that was.
I may head up there again this summer, since it’s only a few hours away and I’ve let everyone know that I’m bored bored bored and would love a place to swim and canoe and hang out by the fire pit, even if there are some chores involved.
Most of the weekend was spent cheering up my dog who is tolerated but not exactly adored by that side of the family, swimming and trying not to get sunburned. It was hotter than I can remember it ever being at the lake, most everyone seemed to be in a good mood and I got to ride in my uncle’s new ski boat. Oh, and when I took the dog for a walk the first night I found a five dollar bill next to the road! That’s ten unearned dollars I’ve pocketed in the past week.
During the main part of the fireworks time, I scampered between the roman candle/bottle rocket lighting area and the dock, where I could see fireworks on both ends of the lake. Occasionally some of the firework lighters from our house would light a mortar off the dock and we’d have to gather up on the gangplank to avoid any shrapnel. Otherwise, it was perfectly safe. Except that someone accidently knocked over the pipe that was firing off the roman candles. Of course it would land in such a way that it was then aimed directly at the dock. My sister and I were caught in its path and I didn’t quite realize what was happening until a piece of fire went down my pants and burned my ass. Yes, that’s right. I was wearing thick, reinforced combat fatigue pants (I wore these things in Afghanistan!) with a belt, but it didn’t help. What really are the odds of one random spark ending up DOWN MY PANTS? There’s a burn mark on the inside of the pants, but not the outside. There’s a blister on my ass. I’m not joking. One in a million shot, that was.
I may head up there again this summer, since it’s only a few hours away and I’ve let everyone know that I’m bored bored bored and would love a place to swim and canoe and hang out by the fire pit, even if there are some chores involved.
Cup Night
Since the school thing fell apart this term I’ve been pretty restricted in my activities. Not only do I have nothing to study for or anything to do downtown every weekday morning, but I don’t have any money either. But last week there were a few events that I’d either prepared for before the school crap or I was willing to splurge on.
Wednesday it was the cup match against Seattle. We’ve known for awhile that there was the possibility of this matchup, so long as we won the previous rounds of the Open Cup against some amateur or low-level pro teams. The Timbers Army did a lot of work in talking up the match and I’d even convinced three people who aren’t regulars to show up. However, a few days before the match they announced that they’d be capping attendance at 16,000 and that there weren’t many tickets left. Then the advanced tickets sold out. I called my friends and told them not to bother showing up unless they could get there well before kickoff, as it’d be miserable trying to find a seat, use the toilet or buy a beer otherwise.
One of my roommates and I got to the park fifteen minutes before the doors opened - over an hour and a half before the game was set to start. There were already hundreds of people lined up to get in and by the time the gates opened the line was stretched out of sight down the block and the crowd was chanting “Let us in! Let us in!” and booing passing Seattle fans. The singing started as soon as we got into the section and it didn’t stop until we’d left the park three hours later. Seattle actually brought down some fans this time, so we had people to chant at, even though we couldn’t hear them from our end. The people in the North End set up some pretty awesome tifo that included new flags and a display of giant cardboard cutouts that featured Timber Jim chainsawing the Space Needle. There were more smoke bombs before the match than I’ve been around all season, including one of the nasty kind that last forever and make your eyes and throat feel like it was a CS canister chucked instead of colored smoke.
Right before kickoff, the group of wannabe skinheads (the anti-racist kind at least) that are currently the bane of my existence picked my row to crowd into, despite the fact that it was already full. These guys are like my own personal black cloud; they appear at every show I go to as well as Timbers games, don’t chant (unless it’s yelling “fuck you” to the ref), don’t dance at the shows and jump anyone (male, anyway) that catches their eyes the wrong way. Immediately after shoving everyone who’d been there for over an hour out of the way, one of them got into a fight. I don’t know who started it (and frankly, I don’t care. Fact is, it wouldn’t have happened if the assholes hadn’t been there), but everyone around was pissed at the guy, tried to have him thrown out and his friends moved him closer to me to try and keep him out of trouble. During this ruckus Seattle scored a goal. So, one minute into the game, we’re losing and I’ve got a drunk, coverd-in-beer asshole squished in next to me. It threatened to ruin my evening, but when we got a goal right before halftime the celebrations cheered me up and I tried my best to not let them put a damper on the night.
In the end we lost, but it was still a good game and closer than the gap in talent between the two leagues would suggest it should of been. Portland got over 16,000 people to come out to a soccer game on a weekday evening on short notice and about a thousand Seattle fans made their first trip down for an away match in the Rose City. Not too shabby.
Wednesday it was the cup match against Seattle. We’ve known for awhile that there was the possibility of this matchup, so long as we won the previous rounds of the Open Cup against some amateur or low-level pro teams. The Timbers Army did a lot of work in talking up the match and I’d even convinced three people who aren’t regulars to show up. However, a few days before the match they announced that they’d be capping attendance at 16,000 and that there weren’t many tickets left. Then the advanced tickets sold out. I called my friends and told them not to bother showing up unless they could get there well before kickoff, as it’d be miserable trying to find a seat, use the toilet or buy a beer otherwise.
One of my roommates and I got to the park fifteen minutes before the doors opened - over an hour and a half before the game was set to start. There were already hundreds of people lined up to get in and by the time the gates opened the line was stretched out of sight down the block and the crowd was chanting “Let us in! Let us in!” and booing passing Seattle fans. The singing started as soon as we got into the section and it didn’t stop until we’d left the park three hours later. Seattle actually brought down some fans this time, so we had people to chant at, even though we couldn’t hear them from our end. The people in the North End set up some pretty awesome tifo that included new flags and a display of giant cardboard cutouts that featured Timber Jim chainsawing the Space Needle. There were more smoke bombs before the match than I’ve been around all season, including one of the nasty kind that last forever and make your eyes and throat feel like it was a CS canister chucked instead of colored smoke.
Right before kickoff, the group of wannabe skinheads (the anti-racist kind at least) that are currently the bane of my existence picked my row to crowd into, despite the fact that it was already full. These guys are like my own personal black cloud; they appear at every show I go to as well as Timbers games, don’t chant (unless it’s yelling “fuck you” to the ref), don’t dance at the shows and jump anyone (male, anyway) that catches their eyes the wrong way. Immediately after shoving everyone who’d been there for over an hour out of the way, one of them got into a fight. I don’t know who started it (and frankly, I don’t care. Fact is, it wouldn’t have happened if the assholes hadn’t been there), but everyone around was pissed at the guy, tried to have him thrown out and his friends moved him closer to me to try and keep him out of trouble. During this ruckus Seattle scored a goal. So, one minute into the game, we’re losing and I’ve got a drunk, coverd-in-beer asshole squished in next to me. It threatened to ruin my evening, but when we got a goal right before halftime the celebrations cheered me up and I tried my best to not let them put a damper on the night.
In the end we lost, but it was still a good game and closer than the gap in talent between the two leagues would suggest it should of been. Portland got over 16,000 people to come out to a soccer game on a weekday evening on short notice and about a thousand Seattle fans made their first trip down for an away match in the Rose City. Not too shabby.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Weirdness and Coolness
After last night's post from the side porch I came inside and took a seat near the front door and the television. My roommate and his girlfriend were cuddling and tickling each other on the couch and we were all half watching the Daily Show when some weird light patterns on the window caught my eye. Our living room is mostly windows and as we live on the corner of an intersection (is there any other kind of corner?) there are often cars passing by. I watched out the front window waiting for a car to come by and explain the dancing lights and when it eventually did it illuminated a figure across the street. It startled me and when I squinted in the dark I was made even more uneasy. The man was sitting under a tree with a weak flashlight, staring in my window. "Any reason you can think of why a man would be sitting on the ground across the street?" I asked my roommate. He frowned, took a hurling bat and walked around the side of the house and caught a glimpse of the man as he scurried down another street. What was the guy doing? I felt really uneasy the rest of the night and didn't sleep well, even after locking my windows. I *hate* sleeping without the windows at least cracked, even in wintertime. Officially creeped out.
Today though, one half of the couple who have been living in my basement gave me five dollars for giving him a ride down the street and helping him carry some pillows. Pillows! I felt bad for taking the money, but I'm not in a position to turn down cash these days. He seemed genuinely grateful for the help too, so what the hell.
Today though, one half of the couple who have been living in my basement gave me five dollars for giving him a ride down the street and helping him carry some pillows. Pillows! I felt bad for taking the money, but I'm not in a position to turn down cash these days. He seemed genuinely grateful for the help too, so what the hell.
Monday, June 29, 2009
sort life out
I've spent the evening reading on the porch. A moment ago the sunset was a brilliant orange-pink swath behind the houses across the street and the faint smell of pot wafted out of the house, presumably from my roommate's girlfriend. There are a few tasks I need to complete. Come to think of it, there are several tasks I need to complete ranging from the right now to the before-I-go-to-bed to later this week to the indeterminate future. I feel a lot like Shaun in Shaun of the Dead when he puts a to do list on his refrigerator before passing out that reads, "Go round mum's, get Liz back, sort life out." Minus the impending hangover and the zombies, of course.
So let's see. I need to bring in the cactus, definitely, and probably clear another path in my room since I was rearranging the already post-earthquake-looking apocalypse earlier. I don't know what to do tomorrow. At some point I need to return that stupid stereo receiver and one day head to the airport to exchange the pounds, Euros and Swiss Francs for legal U.S. tender. Wednesday evening the Timbers are playing Seattle in a cup match, which is bound to be epic considering they're our biggest rivals and since we're now in different leagues it's a matter of luck that we get drawn together at all. There's a possibility that we won't play each other again until 2011. Thursday is another Timbers match, but this one is an exhibition against Bayern Munich's reserve squad, and my roommate's hurling team is playing a short demo match at halftime. I'm sort of obligated to be there.
Then there is the mess of the holiday weekend. I've been locked into going up to my grandparent's lakehouse since before I left for Europe by my grandpa. For some reason, he's really excited that I'm going to be there. I have no idea why. My cousin is plotting something elaborate and probably dangerous and definitely something I won't want to participate in and he's involving my youngest sister in it, possibly because he knows I'm a big party pooper and don't like to see my family members do dumb and illegal things while inebriated. Ironically, I will probably just get smashed so as to be able to ignore everything stress-free and end up hanging out by myself for most of the weekend. I like the lake, but I like it for apparently different reasons than the rest of my family. I like to chill out and look at the trees in the breeze; my family thinks I'm depressed. I like to take the canoe out in the morning; my family likes to drive the speedboat fast and inner tube or water ski all day. My cousin especially likes to push things just slightly too far. He's always wired and has ambitious plans that require the collaboration of nearly everyone else. It's not a fault really, it's just the way he is. I'm just way too laid back and lazy for it. Just lemme alone with my beer and let me roast marshmallows or something!
Before I go camping again I need to remember to buy new batteries for the flashlights that all died at the same time (while putting on the rainfly in the dark after it suddenly started raining, of course. When else do flashlights die? Convenient times? Ha!), plus dish soap and paper towels. I also need to rinse out the gross cooler that's been stewing in the sunshine of the car.
Before the roadtrip this summer I need to get my brakes checked out and possibly replaced. I have no idea how I'm going to swing that financially after the school certification debacle.
School starts at the end of September. I have one term until graduation. Then what? Fuuuuuuuuuck dude, I dunno.
So let's see. I need to bring in the cactus, definitely, and probably clear another path in my room since I was rearranging the already post-earthquake-looking apocalypse earlier. I don't know what to do tomorrow. At some point I need to return that stupid stereo receiver and one day head to the airport to exchange the pounds, Euros and Swiss Francs for legal U.S. tender. Wednesday evening the Timbers are playing Seattle in a cup match, which is bound to be epic considering they're our biggest rivals and since we're now in different leagues it's a matter of luck that we get drawn together at all. There's a possibility that we won't play each other again until 2011. Thursday is another Timbers match, but this one is an exhibition against Bayern Munich's reserve squad, and my roommate's hurling team is playing a short demo match at halftime. I'm sort of obligated to be there.
Then there is the mess of the holiday weekend. I've been locked into going up to my grandparent's lakehouse since before I left for Europe by my grandpa. For some reason, he's really excited that I'm going to be there. I have no idea why. My cousin is plotting something elaborate and probably dangerous and definitely something I won't want to participate in and he's involving my youngest sister in it, possibly because he knows I'm a big party pooper and don't like to see my family members do dumb and illegal things while inebriated. Ironically, I will probably just get smashed so as to be able to ignore everything stress-free and end up hanging out by myself for most of the weekend. I like the lake, but I like it for apparently different reasons than the rest of my family. I like to chill out and look at the trees in the breeze; my family thinks I'm depressed. I like to take the canoe out in the morning; my family likes to drive the speedboat fast and inner tube or water ski all day. My cousin especially likes to push things just slightly too far. He's always wired and has ambitious plans that require the collaboration of nearly everyone else. It's not a fault really, it's just the way he is. I'm just way too laid back and lazy for it. Just lemme alone with my beer and let me roast marshmallows or something!
Before I go camping again I need to remember to buy new batteries for the flashlights that all died at the same time (while putting on the rainfly in the dark after it suddenly started raining, of course. When else do flashlights die? Convenient times? Ha!), plus dish soap and paper towels. I also need to rinse out the gross cooler that's been stewing in the sunshine of the car.
Before the roadtrip this summer I need to get my brakes checked out and possibly replaced. I have no idea how I'm going to swing that financially after the school certification debacle.
School starts at the end of September. I have one term until graduation. Then what? Fuuuuuuuuuck dude, I dunno.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Well Shit.
I was all ready for this intense month of school. A whole term in four weeks! Yesterday went as well as could be expected. I woke up on time, showered and caught the bus. After two and a half hours of French I filled out my VA (Veteran's Affairs. They run the GI Bill - college money for former servicemembers - among other things) certification, picked up my transit pass, bought my books and still had enough time before my afternoon history class to surf the web a bit in the computer lab.
But then this morning, I got an email from the VA office at my university. Typically, the GI Bill gives me money so long as I'm taking 12 credits. It turns out though that there's a limit to bullshit classes that you can take and I've exceeded that limit. As there are no classes offered this summer that are required for my graduation, I can't get certified for any credits, which means no money, which means I had to withdraw from all of my classes. It also means that the next pay check I was expecting isn't going to happen until maybe October. That's an awful long time to be living nearly entirely on credit. Crap crap crap.
There are a couple things I can do right away to help out financially: return the stereo receiver that finally shipped, of course, ten minutes after I gave up waiting for the backordered item and walked down to another electronics store and bought a different one; return the textbooks I just bought, though I cracked up the plastic on my $220-non-returnable-after-opening French book last night, so that's a loss; sell some older textbooks on ebay or something (though honestly that sounds like a pain in the ass). Other than that, it's eating cheap canned food and rice from the grocery store.
Any ideas for entertaining myself on the cheap/free? I do have some new gadgets related to music that I bought before I found out I wouldn't be getting paid, but I don't know if I could just do that all day.
But then this morning, I got an email from the VA office at my university. Typically, the GI Bill gives me money so long as I'm taking 12 credits. It turns out though that there's a limit to bullshit classes that you can take and I've exceeded that limit. As there are no classes offered this summer that are required for my graduation, I can't get certified for any credits, which means no money, which means I had to withdraw from all of my classes. It also means that the next pay check I was expecting isn't going to happen until maybe October. That's an awful long time to be living nearly entirely on credit. Crap crap crap.
There are a couple things I can do right away to help out financially: return the stereo receiver that finally shipped, of course, ten minutes after I gave up waiting for the backordered item and walked down to another electronics store and bought a different one; return the textbooks I just bought, though I cracked up the plastic on my $220-non-returnable-after-opening French book last night, so that's a loss; sell some older textbooks on ebay or something (though honestly that sounds like a pain in the ass). Other than that, it's eating cheap canned food and rice from the grocery store.
Any ideas for entertaining myself on the cheap/free? I do have some new gadgets related to music that I bought before I found out I wouldn't be getting paid, but I don't know if I could just do that all day.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Lazy Day
Tomorrow I start school again at 8am. It’s been three full months off and six months since I’ve put any serious effort into anything. Thankfully for my academic endurance and attention span, I’m doing all 12 credits in just over four weeks. I then have a few weeks to do nothing before heading out on a cross-country road trip in August. So today has been spent vegging in front of the television, first watching the Confederations Cup soccer games and Top Gear, then some BBC show on nature and Sky Sports.
The U.S. soccer team, sentenced last week to “virtual elimination” from the Confed tournament (in the Guardian’s words), somehow made it to the next round. They needed to win by three goals and needed Brazil to beat Italy by three goals in order to move on, and exactly that happened. Considering how the U.S. played the first two games, they absolutely did not deserve to advance, but since it came at the expense of Italy, the country whose soccer team I despise more than any other, I’ll take. I’ll take it with glee. I hope Guisseppe Rossi is crying right now, that goddamn traitor!
The starters I put in my garden are doing quite well, but of the seeds I planted, only one has done more than simply sprout. Every one of my peas was dug up shortly after planting. What the hell did that? I’m disappointed because even though beans and peas may not be my favorite vegetables, I get more satisfaction out of growing something from seed rather than just hoping I don’t kill the starter.
I went camping earlier this week and didn’t get back to my parent’s place until after three and I didn’t feel like leaving immediately to Portland, so I missed the Timbers game. And what a match to miss! The Timbers won 5-1 and Minnesota got THREE red cards! I don’t even think I’ve seen on tv one team get three red cards in a single match. Incredible!
The U.S. soccer team, sentenced last week to “virtual elimination” from the Confed tournament (in the Guardian’s words), somehow made it to the next round. They needed to win by three goals and needed Brazil to beat Italy by three goals in order to move on, and exactly that happened. Considering how the U.S. played the first two games, they absolutely did not deserve to advance, but since it came at the expense of Italy, the country whose soccer team I despise more than any other, I’ll take. I’ll take it with glee. I hope Guisseppe Rossi is crying right now, that goddamn traitor!
The starters I put in my garden are doing quite well, but of the seeds I planted, only one has done more than simply sprout. Every one of my peas was dug up shortly after planting. What the hell did that? I’m disappointed because even though beans and peas may not be my favorite vegetables, I get more satisfaction out of growing something from seed rather than just hoping I don’t kill the starter.
I went camping earlier this week and didn’t get back to my parent’s place until after three and I didn’t feel like leaving immediately to Portland, so I missed the Timbers game. And what a match to miss! The Timbers won 5-1 and Minnesota got THREE red cards! I don’t even think I’ve seen on tv one team get three red cards in a single match. Incredible!
Monday, June 15, 2009
This is pretty cool
The Guardian may infuriate me on a daily basis, but their photo galleries are usually impressive. This one is about all the species that are being reintroduced to the UK, some of which have been gone for up to 500 years. I didn't know there were lynx and wild boar and beavers in Britain! I just love this sort of stuff.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2009/jan/28/wildlife-conservation?picture=342253033
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2009/jan/28/wildlife-conservation?picture=342253033
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Well hello!
I've been back a grand total of three weeks, but it feels like forever. I was worried that when I came back I'd fall into my old routine of sleeping in too late, watching 'Scrubs' all day, then drinking too much and having a headache for the next day causing me to sleep in too late, watch 'Scrubs' all day, then... you get the picture. But I've been pleasantly busy and even productive on occasion. I renewed my driver's license, got a fishing/hunting license, fished, tore up the garden and its eight inches of demon sod and planted some veggies - beans and peas are sprouting! I also spent a great deal of money on some new electronics - a laptop, turntable, stereo receiver, the like. I figure they'll last me forever so I took the band-aid approach and did it all at once, so I only have to go through the sickening feeling of spending wads of money one time. My youngest sis graduated high school this weekend and I came down for the ceremony and to visit with my grandparents who also made the trek. I now have just under two weeks to waste until school starts and I intend to spend it doing some hiking and figuring out this new computer.
Also, I'm having impure thoughts about joining the Coast Guard. See, it counts as military service in terms of pay and retirement, but is far less... what's the word.... painfully stupid as the army. If I joined in the next year, I'd retire when I'm 42. Sigh... I don't know. Someone will talk me out of it, I'm sure.
I tried to catch up on politics since returning to the US, but it's a little overwhelming. Why are people letting Dick Cheney appear on television? Are there really people who think murdering a doctor that performs abortions is justified? Did the BNP really win seats in Europe? Sometimes I think I don't want to understand such things.
I've been asked to note that right now in my living room I'm blogging on my new Mac, my roommate's girlfriend is knitting, my roommate and my upstairs roommate are playing Magic and the History channel is on the television. What nerds.
Also, I'm having impure thoughts about joining the Coast Guard. See, it counts as military service in terms of pay and retirement, but is far less... what's the word.... painfully stupid as the army. If I joined in the next year, I'd retire when I'm 42. Sigh... I don't know. Someone will talk me out of it, I'm sure.
I tried to catch up on politics since returning to the US, but it's a little overwhelming. Why are people letting Dick Cheney appear on television? Are there really people who think murdering a doctor that performs abortions is justified? Did the BNP really win seats in Europe? Sometimes I think I don't want to understand such things.
I've been asked to note that right now in my living room I'm blogging on my new Mac, my roommate's girlfriend is knitting, my roommate and my upstairs roommate are playing Magic and the History channel is on the television. What nerds.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
The Next Few Months
As you may know, I'm headed off to Europe soon - in a few hours, to be more precise. My flight leaves at six a.m. and the earliest MAX (light rail) leaves my stop at 4:20, so I get to leave the house at the lovely hour of 3:50am. I'm attempting to just stay up (it's already ten) so I can sleep on the flight from Atlanta to Manchester.
Anyway, I have this travel blog that often gets neglected, but I'll be posting there for the next few months as I wander around Europe. Here it is: http://maps-shmaps.blogspot.com/
Anyway, I have this travel blog that often gets neglected, but I'll be posting there for the next few months as I wander around Europe. Here it is: http://maps-shmaps.blogspot.com/
Monday, March 9, 2009
It's like Christmas,except that it only comes once in forever and may actually be a terrible, no-good event
Wednesday the Portland city council votes on the plan to bring an MLS team to the city. We currently have a USL team, which is of course tons of fun and I go to all the games when I'm in the country. But with a higher level league, we'll get more recognizable stars, more international tournament slots, and more exposure for our great city. The deal - in a very short synopsis, as the details and the trials and tribulations of putting forth the plan would take days to run down - would build a small, separate stadium for the minor league baseball team the Portland Beavers, and upgrade PGE Park to be more soccer/football/rectangular-field-sport friendly. The owner of both teams, Merritt Paulson pays the MLS entrance fee of $40 million out of his own pocket and wants the city - who own PGE Park and refuse to sell it - to put up bonds for renovations and the new baseball stadium to the tune of $85 million. These bonds would be paid back through ticket sales, player income taxes, etc etc. A bond in this case is like a big loan the city can take out - just like you can take out a loan, except that in the city's case the loan is more than you'd ever dream of making and the credit limit for the city is pretty much unknown. In the days of billion dollar ball parks, two for $85 millions is practically free. Paulson has also guaranteed the bonds, in the event that the league goes under, with his own family's fortune, even going so far as covering for construction overruns (which would be the fault of the city in negotiating poor contracts anyway).
Really, why say no? Even though I admittedly started in favor of the proposal as a local soccer fan, I've come to realize that even without the added benefit of having a top-level (well, for North America, anyway) soccer club, this deal is great for the city. The naysayers seem to be clinging onto the "roads schools drug rehab centers!!!!" mantra, regardless of the fact that these sorts of things need to be paid for somehow and refusing to accept that businesses and the jobs that they bring are exactly the kinds of things that allow us to pay for roads/schools/drug rehab centers. While it doesn't surprise me that build-our-way-out-of-the-Depression liberals become head-in-the-sand Hooverists when actually confronted with the opportunity to do so, it continues to disappoint me.
Anyway, the benefits far outweigh the risks and it seems plain as day, and yet the vote isn't seen as guaranteed. Because this has the potential to make me either incredibly happy and excited or incredibly angry and disappointed for a long period of time, the suspense in the run up to Wednesday is killing me. I'm torn between getting up early to pack into city hall to hear the testimonies of my fellow fans and the results of the actual vote itself, live, or to hide in bed until noon, at which point I will get up and make coffee, turn on ESPN Classic in preparation for the Man Utd vs Inter Milan Champions League match and then, with great trepidation and shaking hands, load the talktimbers website to see if the posts are titled "WOOFUCKINGHOO!!! LET'S SELL SOME SEASON TICKETS!!! TIFO PARTY!! I LOVE THE CITY COUNCIL!!" or "BASTARDS!! BOYCOTTBOYCOTTRECALL!!! NEED BAIL MONEY!"
And it's not even until Wednesday, which I keep thinking is tomorrow. My new shoes that got here this afternoon are simply not enough of a distraction. What to do to while the time away that doesn't cost a great deal of money, hmmmm.......
Really, why say no? Even though I admittedly started in favor of the proposal as a local soccer fan, I've come to realize that even without the added benefit of having a top-level (well, for North America, anyway) soccer club, this deal is great for the city. The naysayers seem to be clinging onto the "roads schools drug rehab centers!!!!" mantra, regardless of the fact that these sorts of things need to be paid for somehow and refusing to accept that businesses and the jobs that they bring are exactly the kinds of things that allow us to pay for roads/schools/drug rehab centers. While it doesn't surprise me that build-our-way-out-of-the-Depression liberals become head-in-the-sand Hooverists when actually confronted with the opportunity to do so, it continues to disappoint me.
Anyway, the benefits far outweigh the risks and it seems plain as day, and yet the vote isn't seen as guaranteed. Because this has the potential to make me either incredibly happy and excited or incredibly angry and disappointed for a long period of time, the suspense in the run up to Wednesday is killing me. I'm torn between getting up early to pack into city hall to hear the testimonies of my fellow fans and the results of the actual vote itself, live, or to hide in bed until noon, at which point I will get up and make coffee, turn on ESPN Classic in preparation for the Man Utd vs Inter Milan Champions League match and then, with great trepidation and shaking hands, load the talktimbers website to see if the posts are titled "WOOFUCKINGHOO!!! LET'S SELL SOME SEASON TICKETS!!! TIFO PARTY!! I LOVE THE CITY COUNCIL!!" or "BASTARDS!! BOYCOTTBOYCOTTRECALL!!! NEED BAIL MONEY!"
And it's not even until Wednesday, which I keep thinking is tomorrow. My new shoes that got here this afternoon are simply not enough of a distraction. What to do to while the time away that doesn't cost a great deal of money, hmmmm.......
Saturday, March 7, 2009
tick, tock, tick
Just over three weeks until my Europe trip! So far my travel plans only cover the first few weeks and the remaining itinerary is still up in the air. I got my renewed passport this morning, my rail pass a few days ago, and nearly everything I'll need to bring along already. The good folks in Glasgow - I'm sure you know who I'm talking about - have agreed to put me up and show me around for awhile and I'm almost more excited about that as I am about the whole trip itself. A cousin of mine who lived in Portland for years up and quit her job a year ago and moved to Spain. Didn't speak any Spanish and had never been to Europe. She loves it so much that she's still there and has offered a place to crash and some punkrock entertainment. I booked a few nights at a hostel in Malaga, on the south coast of Spain where I hope to find the sun again and thaw my feet on a beach. And, I while I haven't booked anything yet, I plan to spend my birthday weekend in Amsterdam. I'm so pumped about this whole thing that I've forgotten how to use transitional sentences or separate paragraphs! Next subject!
Shoes. I love me some Sambas. You may or may not be aware that there are two different varieties: Classics, and the fancier and slightly more expensive Millenniums. I usually just buy whatever happens to be available (in the kids' section. So I have freakishly small feet, what of it?) and for my first few pairs that happened to be Millenniums. I wore these things nearly every day and they lasted about two years. Last time out, however, I came home with the Classics. What pieces of shit. They took a month to break in, leaving bruises on the tops of my feet, and barely six months later I've worn the heel down to the rubber. Totally not worth the measly ten bucks savings. So now that I'm in the market for a new pair, I set off on the usual tour of stores, only to come home seven hours later empty-handed and still holey-heeled. Yes, you read that correctly, I spent seven goddamn hours SHOE SHOPPING! That couldn't be more out of character if I'd done it in a pink dress and donated to the Republican party on the way home.
I ended up ordering a pair online. Lesson? Never leave the house.
And if the above anecdote weren't enough to prevent you from venturing out of doors, the weather reports are calling for snow. Again. It's already snowed about 17 times more than it is ever supposed to in the Portland area, and here it is MARCH and it's coming again! The storm also thwarted my plans to drive to the coast, as the mountain passes are supposed to get hit, along with THE BEACH ITSELF. Snow on the Oregon beach is supposed to be a rare phenomenon and yet this isn't even the first time this winter. What.The.HELL!
OK, happy hour ends in twenty minutes, so I've got to finish my drink and head home to stare at Eurail maps and scheme.
Shoes. I love me some Sambas. You may or may not be aware that there are two different varieties: Classics, and the fancier and slightly more expensive Millenniums. I usually just buy whatever happens to be available (in the kids' section. So I have freakishly small feet, what of it?) and for my first few pairs that happened to be Millenniums. I wore these things nearly every day and they lasted about two years. Last time out, however, I came home with the Classics. What pieces of shit. They took a month to break in, leaving bruises on the tops of my feet, and barely six months later I've worn the heel down to the rubber. Totally not worth the measly ten bucks savings. So now that I'm in the market for a new pair, I set off on the usual tour of stores, only to come home seven hours later empty-handed and still holey-heeled. Yes, you read that correctly, I spent seven goddamn hours SHOE SHOPPING! That couldn't be more out of character if I'd done it in a pink dress and donated to the Republican party on the way home.
I ended up ordering a pair online. Lesson? Never leave the house.
And if the above anecdote weren't enough to prevent you from venturing out of doors, the weather reports are calling for snow. Again. It's already snowed about 17 times more than it is ever supposed to in the Portland area, and here it is MARCH and it's coming again! The storm also thwarted my plans to drive to the coast, as the mountain passes are supposed to get hit, along with THE BEACH ITSELF. Snow on the Oregon beach is supposed to be a rare phenomenon and yet this isn't even the first time this winter. What.The.HELL!
OK, happy hour ends in twenty minutes, so I've got to finish my drink and head home to stare at Eurail maps and scheme.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
BBC Booklist game/tag
Rumor has it, though I can't find anything to substantiate it, that the BBC thinks most people have only read 6 out of the following 100 books. I'm sure my two readers will more than meet the average.
Official Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.
Here's the list:
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien Now that's THREE books, isn't it? Not fair, I read one!
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (x,+)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (x) - OK, I read 3/4s of it, then read the back which gave away the ending and I refused to read any further. I know what happens. Men are jerks, especially in England and especially Way Back When. There, now you don't have to read it either.
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller(x,+)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (x)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (x) Ugh, I hated this book.
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (*)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchel
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (*)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (*)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (*)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (x)
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (X)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (x,+)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert - (*) I try and try.
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (*)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (x)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (x)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (x,+)
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac (x)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (x)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson (*) I love Bill Bryson. Read nearly everything else he's written.
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (x)
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (*)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White (x,+)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (x)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (x,+)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
SCORE: 17 and 1/3 read,
OK, so this list is a little Brit-centric, as evidenced by the million Jane Austen books and the absence of any Vonnegut, but still, a kind of fun game. Your turn! (I won't actually tag anyone)
Official Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.
Here's the list:
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien Now that's THREE books, isn't it? Not fair, I read one!
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (x,+)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (x) - OK, I read 3/4s of it, then read the back which gave away the ending and I refused to read any further. I know what happens. Men are jerks, especially in England and especially Way Back When. There, now you don't have to read it either.
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller(x,+)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (x)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (x) Ugh, I hated this book.
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (*)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchel
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (*)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (*)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (*)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (x)
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (X)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (x,+)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert - (*) I try and try.
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (*)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (x)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (x)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (x,+)
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac (x)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (x)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson (*) I love Bill Bryson. Read nearly everything else he's written.
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (x)
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (*)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White (x,+)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (x)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (x,+)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
SCORE: 17 and 1/3 read,
OK, so this list is a little Brit-centric, as evidenced by the million Jane Austen books and the absence of any Vonnegut, but still, a kind of fun game. Your turn! (I won't actually tag anyone)
Monday, February 9, 2009
Shameless advertising
My roommate is really into hurling these days. Hurling is an Irish sport that looks similar to field hockey or lacrosse. I came out to practice once and have a stick of my own that I play with every now and then, but really, I'm more into Gaelic football so I don't pay quite as much attention to our local club as I might. In any case, the club has a new website and Google doesn't seem to be recognizing it yet, so I thought I'd post it on my blog to generate some sort of reaction to the url. Here goes:
Columbia Red Branch Hurling Club. The website is hosted by the GAA, which makes it more official, but also means it has a complicated url that no one is going to remember to type in directly, but can Google for.... if Google knows about it.
Columbia Red Branch Hurling Club. The website is hosted by the GAA, which makes it more official, but also means it has a complicated url that no one is going to remember to type in directly, but can Google for.... if Google knows about it.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Poo
So I didn't finish one of my papers. There were two due, back when I wrote the last post, but one of them proved a lot more difficult than I anticipated and by the time I got it written and dealt with the hexed electronic equipment (more on that later), it was far too late to start the next paper. This means that I have to withdraw from the course and I won't graduate when I had applied to (June). I was planning on going to school in the summer anyway, since I still have G.I. Bill funds left - and why not use them? - but I was so looking forward to taking a fiction writing class and maybe a foreign language or something. Anything but anthropology and it's stupid papers. But that's the way it goes I guess.
Have I mentioned that I'm going to Europe at the end of March? The term is over (obviously I was hoping I'd be done), I have a week of spring break to clean up my room, gather funds for rent while I'm gone, make some plans, buy some gear.... and then I'm off for 2 and 1/2 months! I'm so excited I really can't articulate it. I'm probably going to spend all of my savings, but oh well. Really, have you seen the economy? My savings is gone anyway; now it won't just dwindle away on rent and booze and supporting myself between crappy jobs. I would resent every single day my bank account edged a little bit lower on absolutely nothing.
Oh yes, the hexed computers. I refuse to accept that computers are inanimate objects. There's just no way all the shenanigans that went down the morning of the due papers was all a coincidence. I wrote the paper on my desktop. I dug it out because it has a fancy keyboard and so I could use the laptop for internet research and anything else. The printer our house uses is down in the basement, so I'd have to move the files to my laptop when it came time to print. It's a bit of a pain since the desktop has Word Perfect and the lappy Word, but nothing too serious. Except that two different thumb drives wouldn't transfer the files in any form! WHY????? So I dug out a printer in my closet, but that was out of ink. So I went down to the basement, climbed on top of the refrigerator and got a face full of fiberglass from insulation on the wall while trying to unplug the printer. But then! The desktop wouldn't recognize the printer and refused to work until it had the installation software CD. Luckily, my roommate had it handy and found it before he ran off to his own class. Twenty minutes later the stupid thing was printed and I was twenty minutes late to leave the house. All before even starting the other paper! Tell me it's a coincidence.
Have I mentioned that I'm going to Europe at the end of March? The term is over (obviously I was hoping I'd be done), I have a week of spring break to clean up my room, gather funds for rent while I'm gone, make some plans, buy some gear.... and then I'm off for 2 and 1/2 months! I'm so excited I really can't articulate it. I'm probably going to spend all of my savings, but oh well. Really, have you seen the economy? My savings is gone anyway; now it won't just dwindle away on rent and booze and supporting myself between crappy jobs. I would resent every single day my bank account edged a little bit lower on absolutely nothing.
Oh yes, the hexed computers. I refuse to accept that computers are inanimate objects. There's just no way all the shenanigans that went down the morning of the due papers was all a coincidence. I wrote the paper on my desktop. I dug it out because it has a fancy keyboard and so I could use the laptop for internet research and anything else. The printer our house uses is down in the basement, so I'd have to move the files to my laptop when it came time to print. It's a bit of a pain since the desktop has Word Perfect and the lappy Word, but nothing too serious. Except that two different thumb drives wouldn't transfer the files in any form! WHY????? So I dug out a printer in my closet, but that was out of ink. So I went down to the basement, climbed on top of the refrigerator and got a face full of fiberglass from insulation on the wall while trying to unplug the printer. But then! The desktop wouldn't recognize the printer and refused to work until it had the installation software CD. Luckily, my roommate had it handy and found it before he ran off to his own class. Twenty minutes later the stupid thing was printed and I was twenty minutes late to leave the house. All before even starting the other paper! Tell me it's a coincidence.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
#$%^&*(*&^%$# Papers!!
Have I ever mentioned how much I despise writing papers for school? I am, first off, somehow completely incapable of writing them during daylight hours. Oh, I try. Not a word will come out. I always have to wait until the night before, and often, like tonight, there will be more than one paper due the following morning. This usually results in me typing a few useless lines, going to sleep with the alarm set for five, hitting snooze until seven, when in a panic, I'll get up and type something that borders on coherent.
It's gotten to the point where I don't like writing at all. I hardly write in my journal anymore and I only seem to update my blog so that people know I'm not dead. I can't wait until I can enjoy writing again, because I do love it, when I'm given the freedom to do what I want with it. I worry though that the joy may not return. Will it always be a chore? Agghhhhhhhhhh.
It's gotten to the point where I don't like writing at all. I hardly write in my journal anymore and I only seem to update my blog so that people know I'm not dead. I can't wait until I can enjoy writing again, because I do love it, when I'm given the freedom to do what I want with it. I worry though that the joy may not return. Will it always be a chore? Agghhhhhhhhhh.
Monday, January 5, 2009
What? Monday?
The holidays were equal parts lazy and stressful, which is I suppose exactly what they're supposed to be. I don't have the energy to narrate the drama that has been the weather the past few weeks, but suffice to say I've never seen anything like it in western Oregon.
At the moment I seem to be suffering from the virus called I Partied Too Much on New Year's and The Following Few Days, Too. Symptoms include:
- Fatigue
- Inability to quench thirst, no matter how many gallons of water consumed
- Confusion as to date and time; internal clock stopped at an unknown time
- Confusion about nearly everything else
- Sore throat
- Absent mindedness, manifested primarily in the consistent misplacement of one's keys, wallet and phone
- Hair, clothes smell like bar
Fortunately, one of my classes is online only, allowing me to sleep in til 12:30 on Mondays (and Wednesdays and Fridays as well) and lounge around until I feel sufficiently well enough to venture out of doors and possibly into downtown. Yes, it's a rough life, this mid-twenties college student thing. ;)
At the moment I seem to be suffering from the virus called I Partied Too Much on New Year's and The Following Few Days, Too. Symptoms include:
- Fatigue
- Inability to quench thirst, no matter how many gallons of water consumed
- Confusion as to date and time; internal clock stopped at an unknown time
- Confusion about nearly everything else
- Sore throat
- Absent mindedness, manifested primarily in the consistent misplacement of one's keys, wallet and phone
- Hair, clothes smell like bar
Fortunately, one of my classes is online only, allowing me to sleep in til 12:30 on Mondays (and Wednesdays and Fridays as well) and lounge around until I feel sufficiently well enough to venture out of doors and possibly into downtown. Yes, it's a rough life, this mid-twenties college student thing. ;)
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