Megan

This is Megan.

We met in 2009 at Norwich, where we were classmates in the Military History program. During the our residency week in June, we met, found that we had a lot in common and began to date. She left, then she drove back up to Vermont. I drove down to Pennsylvania. She came back up, and I spent the New Year's with her, and drove down again a week later after her father passed away to be with her during the funeral. We talked every night on the phone, even when we had nothing to say. I gave her books, and she surprised me with cards in my mail box.

In May, I somehow convinced her to move up to Vermont, where she worked at Residency with me for a couple of weeks. We drove to work together, and then she found a job working at a school nearby. Her parents visited us over the summer, and we stopped by my parents house to visit my family's dog, Fionna (and my parents). My dad pulled me aside during one visit, and told me that while he didn't know what my plans were, she wasn't someone to let go. I agreed.

Megan moved in, prompting a flutter of change and movement around my life. My apartment was rearranged, our floors are groaning under the weight of our combined bookshelves. I've learned to cook for two people, and we take walks up and down the street or around the city every night. We rent movies together and surprise one another with a hug or a kiss when the other isn't expecting it. We've gone swimming in the local rivers nearby and we drive up to Burlington on a whim for Christmas shopping or a movie when the mood strikes us.

I've never, ever been as happy as I've been since she entered my life a year and a half ago.

I've asked her to marry me. She said yes.

Barre St. Market

I stopped by the small corner market on my street last night. It's not a place that I've visited much, despite it being just down the street from me, within an easy walk. I only went into it because while cooking dinner last night, I found that I didn't have any milk. Part of my meal was already cooking, so I grabbed my jacket and walked down to pick up something, and seeing that Shaw's was about a half-mile down the road, this would be quicker. I honestly don't know why I've never stopped by the place. I think I've been in there only once before. I think the perception of that street and the shop's size has just led me to think that there's not much there - the larger supermarkets in the area carry just about everything that I need, and as such, I tend to drive right past this place. When I walked in last night, I wasn't necessarily expecting much. I picked up my milk (Which I suspect, is currently sitting on the counter after using it last night. Crap.) went to the counter to pay, only to be told my the owner (who I think is Bangladeshi) politely told me that there was a ten-dollar minimum on debit purchases. Annoyed, I turned and looked around for something else to get so that I could complete my purchase and walk through the rain to my apartment to finish my cooking.

The store was immaculate. I hadn't so much as glanced around the room when I walked into the shop as I made a beeline for the milk. Now that I had a chance to look around the store a bit more, I saw that the shoulder-high shelves were laden with goods, and they were organized, their bright labels facing outwards, each one perched on the edge of the shelf with care. The floor was spotless, and the candy bars were behind a pane of glass, neatly arranged. Further browsing for a second revealed that this wasn't like a gas station convenience store, with the stock number of goods designed for a quick grab by a traveller looking to get in and out - there was a genuine selection here.

I grabbed a six-pack of beer, one of the things that sprung to mind that I knew I didn't have, and planned to pick up, and returned to the front, where I waited for the shop owner to sell a boy a candy bar while his dad browsed. The exchange was very homely, comforting and alien to me. In the past two years that I've lived in Montpelier, I don't think that I've exchanged more than a couple of words to the vendor, who looked about as interested in my day as I was in theirs. Similarly, I've never seen the same amount of devotion and attention to detail in the larger stores.

I'm not likely to shop there as much as I do the other stores. There's a reason why I'll make the drive over to Berlin or down the street to one of the larger stores - they have a larger selection for what I generally buy, and probably a bit cheaper. When I go shopping, I tend to go cheap, and get everything at once. But having gone down to this small street market, I'm far more inclined to stop in more. I like the feeling and ambience with the place. It is far more welcoming and interesting. Not to mention closer.

Summer Weddings & Growing Up

This year has been particularly weird for me, when I was asked to be the best man for my two best friends, Sam and Eric, for their respective weddings, this summer. It's not weird that they're getting married - I wholeheartedly approve of their wifes, Miranda and Marla, respectively, but I'm a little more weirded out at how this helps to point out that we're all growing up. Maybe growing up isn't necessarily the right word - we're all adults now, thrust into postitions within the working world, and we've since scattered to the wind after high school and college to our careers, lives and hobbies in our own corners of the planet.

While at Eric's wedding, I talked with a couple of friends from high school for the first time in years. I've only really kept in touch with two friends from Harwood, a larger number from college, but there is very little looking back, or effort beyond things such as Facebook, to keep in touch with people. I see what a lot of my former classmates are up to, but I rarely engage with them in any meaningful sort of conversation. I think that's good and bad, honestly. There's very few people who I want to keep in touch with from high school, and as the years go on, (Six already!) we've all changed a lot. Some people, from what I've heard, have essentially moved from student to parent, something that continually baffles me. Others have gone on to travel to other countries and do some pretty cool things.

It's a very strange feeling, looking back at my education and realizing that I'm largely out of that stage of my life, and realizing just how little high school prepared me for this sort of thing. All of my social interactions have changed with my personality and mannerisms as I've grown older, largely formed while in college, but there was just so much crap that I didn't need or have any use for, and from everything that I read and hear about, it's largely the same everywhere else. There's been very little that's prepared me for 'real life', it would seem.

I'm very happy for my friends, I think that they're embarking on some very good places in life, but jesus. We're grown up! When did that happen, because nobody told me.

This Is My Bookshelf

I bought a new bookshelf today to help accomodate the vast overflow of books that I've accumulated during the past year and a half at my apartment. Since I've moved in, I've aquired a couple hundred new books in all numbers of genres. I had a number of piles, then towers of books springing up in very strange places all over my apartment, and the time was needed to find them a new home. A trip to Staples later, and I found such a home, a five-shelf, seven foot tall tower bookshelf. After a little construction, it was up and running, and a couple hours later, it became home to all of my history, biography, geek, science and space books, all now proudly on display. The piles are now gone, and the remaining shelves have been freed up a little, so I'm not too afraid of them bursting apart any more under the stress of overburdened shelves.

I love books. I can't say why or how, really, but looking at my new shelf, now neatly organized by genre, then by author and title, I've found myself sitting and letting my eyes wander across the titles and the brightly coloured spines. There's one about the 82nd Airborne in Normandy, the British Military during the Victorian era, the Spitfire aircraft, the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, the Paris 1919 peace conference, Kit Carson, the origins of the US Navy, Smallpox, comic comic books, Isaac Asimov, Roy Chapman Andrews, Apollo 13, Dwight Eisenhower, Salt, the Falklands and on and on. At my fingertips is a thousand journeys, stories and personalities, bound together with some paper, glue and ink, almost beckoning me to discover something new.

I suppose that there is a pretentious nature to this display, and I'm okay with that. Some people deck out their cars with the finest of accessories or toys or mud, while others display their degrees on the wall. I guess I want to demonstrate that I'm well read, versed in a number of different fields, eras of history, people, concepts or opinions, while still realizing that I haven't read all of these. My own journey is one of learning, and looking at this shelf, I can see that there's still a lot of distance to go there.

My main concern right now is that after all of the books have been settled in their proper place, shifted back and forth, there's no more space left for the inevitable next couple hundred books that will be coming through the door to join them.

Randomness

I'm on spring break now - it really seemed to come quickly! Hopefully, I'll be getting a little work done with my D-Day project, at least with the background research and reading for the opening sections. After I get back, I'll have quite a bit to do with individual unit histories and things like that.

Other random things:

• The USPS will be celebrating the 30th anniversary of Star Wars by putting out a number of mailboxes that look like R2-D2. Looks fun, I'm sure that some of those will vanish to collectors. Theforce.net has some pictures.
  
• Kieth R.A. DaCandido, the hack who was assigned to the Serenity novelization is set to help degrade another favored fandom of mine, this time, the show Supernatural, which airs on the CW. I think that I'll be passing that when it hits shelves. the Serenity novelization was poorly written as it was, and I've got plenty of other things to read.
  
• My reading list for break: Finish Children of Men, Tempest, Good Omens, The Gunslinger, Iron Sunrise.
• Apparently, my current math teacher also taught my Uncle Kevin and Aunt Mary when they were in middle school in Bristol. Small world...

Edit: And UPS just arrived with a box of books for me, from Simon & Schulster, all hardcovers, all free. w00t!

Random Happenings

Work in the Kiosk has gone back down to pre-Thanksgiving rush for calanders. Fortunently, I've been in the store more recently than I have in the Kiosk, which gives me more to do, like organizing books and being OCD about it. I think, and some people at work have said that I'm likely to be retained for the spring, which would be really handy.
I did an interview with someone from Norwich about facebook, how the studen body percieves and uses it, which was interesting. I have a bit of a love - hate relationship with that platform. Good way to keep in touch with people, and less sketchier than myspace, but god, does it eat up time. I'm going to try and make a consious effort to avoid the computer more this semester and read more. Let's see if that actually happens.
Saw my friend Blackwell yesterday, he's going back to school today. I really haven't been around a whole lot of people this break. Maybe because of work or something, but I've been pretty much operating alone. Work, home, sleep, work, home, sleep. My roommate came back yesterday, before I'd cleaned the place a bit, but there's some company. He's been quiet.
And it's been a week since I met up with Sarah. I miss her.

What I Did Last Year

Last year, I went to First Night with my friend Sam, lost an aunt due to a lengthly illness, got ready for London, said goodbye to people, boarded a plane and flew to New York, spent the night and then flew to London. Met Barbara, Fran and Will and Flat 9 of 5 Doughty Street, took a tour of the city, got lost with Will, learned how to get around the city, walked all over the place, visited the British Museum numerous times, learned to love Indian food, visited Cambridge, Canterbury, Stratford-Upon-Avon, York, Oxford (x3), Bristol, Bath, Norwich, saw a Tintin play, drank in the Eagle and Child, watched as the muslim world erupted after some cartoons were published, watched the Olymics, went to Scotland and went hiking, saw the London theatres are much cooler than their American counterparts, saw some musicals and plays, got hooked on House MD, Supernatural, Green Wing and Prison Break, missed Battlestar Galactica and Stargate, had roommate problems, learned to live in a city, met Philip Pullman and Brian Aldiss, learned about Alexi Murdoch, KT Tunstall, the Arctic Monkeys, went through two iPods, got my heart broken, Slobodan Milosevic was found dead in his cell, learned that a camper from camp died, worked at an innercity London School, went to Athens, Marathon and Pireus, Greece and met Megan, Heather, Emily, Todd and Christopher, learned that Stanislaw Lem died, got rehired to camp, walked London at night, pub crawls with Zach and Jason, went on a trip to Eastbourne with Katherine, met up with Sara and her friends, went on long tube rides, packed to go home, said goodbye to the roommates, flew New York, then to Burlingto, met my dad at the airport, missed London terribly, went back to Norwich, was elected the President of the Tactical society, got an apartment, packed up everything in my room and moved to 46 Catamount Drive, got my movies back from Rachel, saw Mission Impossible III, got a job at the Y as a lifeguard, bought a car, got the entire series of Dr Who from Beep, went to X3 with a bunch of Abnaki people, got a mobile phone, got hooked on Veronica Mars, won a backpack from a hiking store, moved out of the apartment and up to camp as a village director for Tamakwa, went through Admin Staff training, met the two British counselors and a whole slew of new ones, sketchy Dave was fired, geeks ruled camp, we lost Grandpa Raymond from Camp, went to the funeral for that, watched as it rained for the first couple weeks, went to see Superman Returns, getting used to paperwork, switching cabins, Abnaki hated Hochelega, designed a campwide activity that went off extremely well, Carbon Leaf announced their newest album, went to see Carbon Leaf for free!!!, my friend Eric became engaged, got stressed and burned out, camp ended, went back to Northfield, scared the crap out of my roommate, grandpa died, I really messed up an oil change, went through a comic book kick, got a TV and cable and high speed internet, was hired to Walden Books in the Berlin Mall, got Carbon Leaf's new album, as well as Amos Lee's, watched the Tactics club quadruple in size, rode my bike to school, crashed three times, broke my arm once, Smith was cancelled, I got hooked on Heroes, and Studio 60, late night talks with Sarah, the halfmile walk in the rain to the telephone, missed papers, won a photo contest, watched Galactica kick ass, made impromptu plans to visit Sarah that panned out, saw Carbon Leaf for the second time with my Sister, fell in love, dressed up as a Stormtrooper for Halloween, got bored at Walden books, saw lots of sketchy people, watched as the democrats took control of the government, started a photoblog, my friend Sam and Miranda got engaged, I listened to every song on my computer, learned to make bread, managed to accomplish no work during vacation, Sam Cohn died, the funeral was depressing, Work at the mall picked up, the Beatles released a new album, and I found a band called Trilobite, I got hooked on Life on Mars, still missed London, went insane as finals came and went, went to a bar with some friends and had to pull their car out of the ditch, went on a weird trip to find a christmas tree that proved to be far more complicated than it should have been, found time to actually read, and then found that I have ten books to go through, got all As and Bs for the semester, got some cool things for christmas, making plans to go to Ohio, and went to First Night in Burlington with Sam and Miranda.

It was a good year.

Love! And Snow!

Anyone here a fan of the Beatles? Who isn't? Recently, they've released yet another album - this one entitled Love, which is the soundtrack to a Las Vegas show. Sounds very tacky, but with the former Beatles producer at the helm, and with the blessing of the two remaining Beatles, this is a simply amazing listen.

What they did is take 26 tracks from the album and went back to the original outtakes, as well as mixed in a number of other elements from other songs. There's something like 48 of their songs wrapped up here in this album, whether it's a drum beat or something.
The result is phenomenal - this is the Beatles as you've never heard them, and the sound is great. It's fast, deep, rich and created with quite a bit of care. Unlike their Beatles 1 album, this is a better spectrum of their works, and the album flows from song to song almost effortlessly. I've asked my sister for this for christmas, and plan on getting this for a couple of other people. If you haven't listened to it, do so. It's really, really good.

And I woke up to one of the best things that I can think of- the ground is covered in an inch or so of fresh snow. It's quite something to wake up and see the landscape an entirely different color. And you can't go wrong with snow.

Just a couple more weeks of school, and the semester will be over. It's going by fast.

Alone in the Flatland 'tween the Dream and the Real

Things have been ranging between calm to panicky to depressing to happy over the past couple of days. My lax work ethic over the break is catching up to me now, with papers due on Monday, today, Thursday and things to start working on over the next week. Not to mention reading, and other studying that I should be doing.
As of right now, I'm halfway through my five page book review for History, on the book Franklin and Winston, by Jon Meacham, a fantastic history on Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt during World War II. I was 90% done with the paper this afternoon, but when I went back over it, I decided that it wasn't worth the risk handing that particular semi-incomprehensible draft in, so two days down the drain and I'm slowly working to bring this paper from the current three pages up to the required five to seven. I think that I should make it, things are starting to fall into place.
I've taken far too many breaks, but they've been for semi-good reasons. House was on tonight, with an okay episode, then Veronica Mars with the mid season finale and conclusion to the rape case with a very typical Veronica Mars ending. The rapists are found, but to lead into the next mystery, Dean O'Dell is found with a bullet in his head. Yay for the mid season breaks to start kicking in! Veronica MarsPrison Break is off the air until January, as is LOST, Jericho will be off after this week and Heroes will be off after next week and Battlestar will be off shortly as well. Just in time for vacation, when I'll actually have the time to watch things.
And the Decemberists were on The Late Show, which was far too short. If you're going to get a musical guest on for the night, you might as well have them on for more than one song. At least talk to them a little. They're a good band, although it took me a bit longer than a year for them to grow on me - I have Sarah to thank for that. But their newer stuff sounds (at least to me) much better than some of the older stuff. They did sound good though.
And despite the work and things, I've been getting to bed earlier than usual, getting up earlier, an arrangement I'm not terribly thrilled with, but it's livable. Lonelier though.
Now, to finish up this report, get another 500 word thing pounded out and we should be shiny.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope that everyone had a good thanksgiving (yesterday now). I had dinner with the family in the afternoon, where we were expecting to have something like 13 people, but that went down to 8, which meant that some of us weren't banished to the garage. It was a good dinner. Me, my parents, brother and sister, Uncle and his girlfriend and my grandmother were all there. It was fun, and the food was fantastic, as my mother is a great cook. I contributed bread, which people seemed to like. Lots of talking and fun, which was good.
After that, me and my sister went to go visit my friend Sam and Miranda up in Burlington, which was fun, I haven't seen them since this summer. Keelia and Miranda watched Veronica Mars while Sam and I visited my friend Blackwell in his new house. He was surprised to see us, and we hung out for a little while, played with the dog that they were dogsitting and generally caught up.
It was a good night.

Hope that everyone else had an equally as good Thanksgiving.

Throw it all Away

So, it's Vacation. Number of days in: 5. Things accomplished: Minimal. I should really get going on the school work.
Did a little work yesterday, picked up my sister at school to bring her to Physical Therapy. Before I did that, I walked around my old high school, running into an old friend whom I haven't seen in years, as well as a number of teachers and people that I knew there. It was weird being back there, and I don't go to visit very often. Teachers are the same, but there's different kids all over the place. My old TA, Ginny, was thrilled to see me, and was horribly surprised that it's been four years since graduation. Another teacher, whom I'd started with at grade 7 was also surprised that it's been a decade. God, I've never thought of it like that.
Dropped Keelia off, and met up with my friend Sarah, who's back from New Zealand for the winter, spent a couple hours catching up on various things. I've also known her for ten years now. It was good to see her. Picked Keelia up afterwards, dropped by Smalldog electronics, where I got my iPod, to get them to check it out, and while waiting, played with the small puppy that was bouncing around the store. (It's called Smalldog for a reason). Keelia practically squealed when she saw him, and he was very cute, although he kept wanting to nibble on my hand.
Yeah, rest of the day was uneventful. Tried to do some more work, got some reading done, my brother came over, watched House and Veronica Mars, both good episodes.
Today's proving to be just as uneventful, as I'm finishing up some bread and random cleaning of the place, and I've got work in a couple hours. I'm going to make a serious effort to get some more work done.

You only get what you give

Mundane day today, with an evening filled with many interesting things that will be listed. I puttered. I changed out all of the lightbulbs in my house with energy savers, finished out a couple more loaves of bread and fullfilled my obligations for Thanksgiving dinner, watched some more of Veronica Mars, did a little reading and yeah. No major progress on my reports or other readings, but that'll be coming soon. Hopefully.

Interesting / Noteworthy things:

• Prison Break, Heroes and Studio 60 were on. Prison Break was decent, but Heroes and Studio 60 were brilliant.
  
• Studio 60 made fun of Jessica Simpson and FOX and really dug at the network for product placement.
  
• Veronica Mars has been picked up for a full season, or twenty episodes.
  
• Steven Spielburg told people today that he'll be working on a Tintin miniseries and a new WWII one.
  
• The trailer for Harry Potter 5 came out, and it actually looks good.
  

Bad things:

• Peter Jackson isn't going to be directing or working on the upcoming Hobbit movie. Between financial things between his studio, Wingnut Films and New Line Cinema, over the gains from LOTR, they're not being asked back. Between that and the Halo movie, he's not having a good fall.

Also, I'm jointly posting on this blog and the livejournal that I've sorta, kinda, not really kept up for about the same amount of time.

Does Anyone Know What Time It Is?

It's Vacation. Finally! A relaxing frantic week of where I have nine separate things to for three different classes, seven books to read, four days of work, which will more thank likely be extremely busy as the holiday shopping season ramps up into full gear. It'll be nice to actually have people buy things than just poking around. Brought Kyle to the airport, he's home for the first time in a year, pretty excited about that.
I've also been subcontracted out to help cook part of our Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday - I learned to cook bread from scratch. It's an absurdly simple recipe, although it takes over 12 hours to finish, to give it time to rise and everything. I started the prep work on it last night and had it done by three this afternoon, whereupon I brought it home. My brother's reaction:

"You made that? It looks professional."

Cue the laughter from my sister and mother. It turned out great, and everyone seemed to like it well enough, so I've started work on some more loaves. Unfortunently, I can only make one at a time, but the time to let it sit is long enough that I'll be able to start it and leave it again later on. Tasted fantastic too. Made me happy.

I am looking forwards to sleeping in over the next couple days. That and seeing people I haven't seen in a while. And you know, the whole not going to class part.

Gar

Gah, it's definently been an eh day. I feel like crap, stomach ache, tired, and have had a headache for the past two days.
On the bright side, I finally isolated the program that's been giving me the insane number of popups, and found another program that helped get rid of a lot of the spywear, trojans and other crap on my computer. So it's at least running a little better.
The downside of that was that it took about 6 HOURS to scan the entire computer. Arg. At least it's clean though, sort of.
Now, for bed.

Before the Robots

Life has been going good recently. School's going well, work's going well, despite the increasing number of sketchy people walking around the Berlin Mall, things in general have been looking up, a big improvement over last year, where at this time, I was angry, depressed and hopeless.
Not to be depressing.
I'm enjoying work; business is picking up as the holiday season approaches. I've been making more sales while out in the kisok, which is a welcome change, as that job is horribly boring. Since we're not allowed to read while on the job, I basically have to amuse myself by walking in circles, straightening out calanders to the micron and bugging every customer if they need help with something. (They never do, they're just looking). I do get the occasional funny occurance, which is diverting. The last amusing thing happened last week: A woman burst into the mall, took about five steps in, looking like she was going somewhere important, dragging two small kids behind her. It was then that she stopped, looked around and turned to me: "Where is Optical Expression?" - the local eye glasses store and clinic. I didn't do anything but point. The store is just a store away from Walden Books. She turned and went in. The old guy sitting next to the kiosk in a wheel chair just laughed and said: "I guess she really needed those glasses." I guess so.
Today, I saw something like ten people that I a) know from school, ) know from school and haven't seen them in ages, c) knew from high school/elementary school, d) from scouts. It was weird.
The rest of the time is devoted to stewing.
I also found a movie that I really need to look into watching - The Iron Giant. I'd heard a bit about it a couple years ago, when a movie called The Incredibles, a fantastic animated film, was released, directed by Brad Bird, who had directed a box office failure called The Iron Giant. Despite it's lax returns, the movie had gained a sort of cult status (What good science fiction film DOESN'T develope a cult status nowadays?) and around the time of The Incredibles release, it was released on DVD. I'd read a couple DVD reviews, but I haven't actually gotten a chance to watch it, until I caught the last half hour or so of it on Cartoon Network this evening.
Man, what a good film - solid animation, fun storyline and likeable characters. It reminded me a lot of Titan AE, one of my favorite animated Science Fiction movies. I need to see the rest of Iron Giant, but I suspect that this will be included on the list. The basic plot is that a giant iron robot falls from the sky and lands near a small town in Maine. While there, he befriends a small boy, while the government comes after them to try and destroy the robot. I definently need to rent this at some point.
And I still need to bring my computer into Computer Services. I've been getting a bunch of popups lately, more than ever, and a lot of random applications that I suspect are spywear. I've run dozens of virus/bot/spyware checks, defragmented and optimized my harddrives, done error tests and am still having minor problems. It's driving me nuts.
And I'll post up my TV Recap sometime tonight. Haven't had a whole lot of time to finish it this week.

EDIT: YES! YES YES YES! Someone posted up the 10.23.06 Carbon Leaf Concert at the Higher Ground, the one that I went to with Keelia, where they sounded awesome - You can download all the songs here, although be warned, they're .Flac files, which are huge and require additional software to decode. You can play the files on Winamp. I'll get them all, and for those of you who know me, will be seeing me and who issued me death threats about attending this, would you like a copy?

The Saints are Coming

I finally found a copy of U2 and Green Day's collaboration, The Saints are Coming, which sounds fantastic (It'll be on their upcoming Best Of album called U218) - It was a collaborative effort after Katrina, as the song has some very strong connections with New Orleans. And, given Green Day and U2's political despositions, it's also a bit of a stab at the relief effort and the government's response. (At least the video is).

And it's been reported that Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the best show on television, has been renewed for a full 22 episode season. NBC, you've made me a very happy man.

I need to bring my computer in for fixing. There's nothing physically wrong with it, but there's still a crapload of viruses on here, giving me popups and messing with Mozilla Firefox (I switched from IE after I finally realised that IE sucked), redirecting me to random pages, usually when I go to open an image. Not to mention that I need to close about ten applications when I actually start the computer, not that it seems to do much. And in general, it seems to be operating slower and not as well as it used to. I'll stop by computer services today and see what they can do.

And there are times when I don't want to be here, here in Vermont. At times, I feel too far from certain people, disconnected and unable to go to them if needed. At times, it's all that I can do to restrain myself from running the half mile to the payphone. Why does Vermont have to seem so isolated? And why do those people I want to be with have to be so far...

Sorry, that's cryptic, but that's all that you get.

Excuse me, where are your live chickens?

Yay for only having one class today. My english professor for Gothic Lit was out of town today, so we got the period off, where I went home, got lunch and took a much needed nap. Got a little work done, caught up on Jericho, did some more work. It's been an uneventful day.
Apple needs to really make some better headphones. I fell off my bike again because of them, when one earpiece fell out of my ear. Fortunently, I found my gloves and had been wearing them, coming away with no injuries, although my wrist was quite a bit sore afterwards.

And, I found the best Star Wars parody to date: Chad Vader:

There's four episodes, all on YouTube. Episode 2, Episode 3 and Episode 4. Absolutely hilarious. I laughed my ass off each episode.

Breathe in the Night

I'm seeing Carbon Leaf tonight! This will mark the 4th time that I'll be going to one of their shows, and my third at the Higher Ground. I'm excited. They're great in person, and Love Loss Hope Repeat has some really good songs on it. I'm taking Keelia, my sister, along with me, and one of my professors from school is also going. Should be a fun time. I saw them this summer, and they sounded fantastic.

I'm actually going to remember to bring my camera this time, so I'll get some pictures. Hopefully.

I'm also getting my cast off today, officially. It'll be nice to finally not have to worry about it and get my hand back.

EDIT: 1606 : It's off! Finally!

My Parents

My parents rock. I don't think that I ever say that, or any form of a dignified thank you to them, but I need to more often. And because I know you read this:

Thank you.

Thank you for everything that you've done over the years, putting up with me, my moods, geekiness, problems, being annoying, and everything, and thank you for all those times that you've helped me, pushing me when I needed it, encouraging me to try new things and thank you for being simply wonderful. I should say it more often.

This is a Water Stop

Kinda how I'm feeling today - slow, not really tired, but unmotivated. One class was cancelled, I skipped my next one to catch up on some work and to eat lunch. Class this afternoon was short, and I got my work in.
It's dreary out today, and it's been raining out all day, and I went back out in the field with George like I did last week to help him with some of his river studies. However, it meant that we both got completely soaked taking water samples. My cast is soaked, as are my books and jeans, and it's going to be forever before they're dry.