Bogged Down

This weekend wrapped up pretty well.  Pretty darn well.  Unfortunately I haven't been able to enjoy it at all because of my 311 midterm.  I've turned it in and it's still bothering me.  I rewrote it maybe 6 times.  I didn't find myself pressed for space (he said we should be) so that worries me more.  It was not hard to fit into three pages.  I know I missed a lot of points.  I just couldn't get it straight.  So many sources seemed to say different things about the same thing.  I thought it was going to be fun.  It wasn't.   This is probably my fault.  I probably wasn't prepared.  I know I wasn't.

Gal.  Today has been the worst day of the year yet perhaps.  My head is throbbing.  and I think I'm slightly feverish.

When I can get that midterm, and the midterm in 307 I have tomorrow out of my head, I remember this weekend pretty fondly.

This has not, so far, been the quarter of my emergence as an adult.  The first week was good.  And then...the last three weeks, even without facebook, just...were terrible failures.  If I'm looking just at productivity the curve between the last 20 days and today is a full 90 degree cliff.  and the place is just...terribly messy.  Worse than ever perhaps.  But I'm pretty lugubrious. about these things.  I could spend a whole 'nother day cleaning up around here though.  But I really can't afford to this week at least.  310 essay is due Saturday at midnight, and I haven't begun to think about that.  We start the Canterbury Tales (in middle English) on Thursday, and my objective based midterm for 311 is also Thursday.  I'm advised to memorize his Powerpoint lecture notes.  So that will be my Tuesday evening and Wednesday, interspersed with some reading on Korea.  (I hoped to write my paper on this weeks theme in 310, which is the Korean Peninsula...but I am already a day behind on these weeks reading...).

Easter.  Easter service good.  Easter evening.  a bit of a blur.  Saturday.  Beautiful.  "A Serious Man."  Terrible.  Good Friday service...interesting.  Intimate?

My hair is currently faux-hawked up.  I just went insane after spending 5 hours making zero progress on that 311 midterm and plastered my hair with that moose...stuff. (Mousse? I don't know.) 

Dave Snodgrass posted an article on the higher education "bubble" in America.  My gears are grinding for sure...how is it that higher education costs outpace inflation by 651 points?

I don't know what to do but keep trudging on for this quarter right now.  But.  The more I read about the future the less time I think I want to spend in school.  I guess that's a testament to me being more about appetite than passion after all.  I don't want to be an old dude settling down.  I want to spend more than half my twenties building a family more than anything.  I don't know how to accomplish that practically though.  and I don't exactly have someone waiting to build it with me either.

I'm losing sight of the Cross.  On the day after Easter.  Well.  I'm smiling now at least.

I've got a chance to wake up early tomorrow and make it a better day than today.  So.  15 minutes later.  and I actually feel...pretty good.

I'm pretty upset.  Because that camera dated all of my pictures wrong I deleted all of my pictures from Canada.  But I still have this...

Currently listening: "Misty...", Copeland, Count Basie, "You make my dreams come true,"  David Crowder...passing from the C's into the D's.

Oh this is fun!

Sort've.  I've posted about this piece at least 3 times before this, but I found a video of it with the sheet music scrolling past, which is awesome to watch.  It's the BYU recording, which is...more full. but less dramatic than the Polyphony one in my opinion.  Look at that 18 part swell...snap (forgive for maybe trying a little too hard to sound cool/smart/cultured).

Picking up the pieces...

"It is but a shadow and a thought that you love."

GC was good.  Great even. probably the best I've been too.

To be continued...face ripping...tangled/pride and prejudice.  (too remind myself).  I'm tired. and. not feeling this right now.  Tomorrow night though.  Get ready.

Stretchiness explained!

So I know a lot of you have seen my apparently abnormally stretchy skin.  I'm pretty sure I have this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehlers-danlos

At least mildly.  I've got a lot of systems at least...starting with just the stretchy skin, which is picture perfect if you scroll through the page and look back at me. My join flexibility.  I wouldn't call myself double jointed really, but my legs and arms...they are pretty...extendable.  How I've sat/slept in the weirdest of positions.  My shoulders dislocating and relocating so many times, and so easily.  My hips feeling like they're going to dislocate. Easy bruising, paleness, crowded teeth, no earlobes! Velvety. Smooth. Skin.  On the slightly hypochondriac side of things: my early onset arthritis!  It even covers my lethargy and...interesting digestive history.  Ok.  I'm not letting it explain my lethargy.  I'm chalking that up to my poor sleep habits.

Good thing is, whether I'm right or not, I'll still live a normal life span.

Today is going to be a good day.  But even if I don't check everything off my list.  I stand upon grace.  Hallelujah.

Thursday.

"...Take me, have Your way.  Though I don't feel you I will believe.  Take me, Lord I pray.  Just have Your way with me."

I guess there's a song for every moment.  I've been feeling really lonely.  All week.  Progressively more so.  It's not due to a lack of good people around me though.

I still feel pretty lost at times.  Not very sure of what I'm doing.  I think that might be one of those things I'll have to do battle with all of my life.

The days go so fast.  Nowadays.  It seems.  Anyways.

I know that the creator of all things cares.  I know that I don't, and will not ever, understand everything I want to.

Looking out houses for next year with Jake, Matt, and Aaron.  All of whom...well.  They have something in common. 

 It's exciting thinking about having multiple bathrooms, possibly my own room, and above all things: a dishwasher.

It's late.  For me.  Goodnight.

Tree 63.  Eric Whitacre.  Yeah.

Spring quarter starting

Well so much for Spring Break.  It was fun.  A sufficient amount of friends, family, and Federer.

Anyways.  Today is/was the first day of the quarter.  I got up very successfully at 5:45 and went on a job across campus to visit all of my classes as the sun came up.  The environmental studies building is officially the coolest building on campus.  It looks like a piece of crap from the outside, but inside it is pretty stinking cool.  It feels like...Zaboomafoo's treehouse meets USS Enterprise. 

I had a banana and oatmeal for breakfast.  Showered. and read the first six chapters of Isaiah all on schedule.  Chapter six is loaded.  After that I went over all of the reading for 311 again, reading the case a total of five times before class I think.  I was going to be ready to get called on, let me tell you.  In class none of that seemed to matter.  I felt as inadequately prepared as I have ever been.  Luckily it didn't matter.  He didn't get to and Socratizing of the class today.

Back to where we were...at twelve I had English 307.  Medieval literature.  This professor.  Is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen.  Go look at Ian McKellan on the cover of Richard III, then put him in the most ridiculous...(tweed?) suit you've ever seen, with a fit that made him look actually more like Al Pacino than Gandalf.  He's an American.  But he talks with an almost British Accent.  Like you'd expect...a man born in the late 18th century in America to sound like.  Definitely not English but...something is there...And the mustache?

He seems pretty cool though.  I'm gonna botch this point here, but it seems like a lot of English teachers...assume a certain...(old fashioned?) way of reading texts has already been learned...except...so many of them do that no student really knows what that is....well.  That made NO sense, but this guy.  This guy is old fashioned.  and Old.  I think I will like him.  He did a little mini spiel about how many English professors in "American universities at least," seem to have developed a guilty conscience over doing nothing with their lives except look at novels and poetry for decades, and feel the need to justify their field with social utility or cultural relevance...or...whatever.  Thus...tarnishing the real "disinterested interest" (I should have paid more attention in 313) or...w/e.  Art for arts sake is good. and doesn't need to be justified.  Doesn't need...a...poignant social theme...not every dead author has to have been secretly gay Pam Hardman.

Anyway.  That made.  Very little sense.

But w/e.  It was a good first class period.  No Jake or Mikki yet though.

311 (the hardest non-hard science class at Western according to former students...according to the professor) was also enjoyable this first day of class.  I got to see the guy I judge (having not actually interacted with him) to be a pretentious half-idiot got shut up real quick by the adorable professor Paul Chen.  He said "Goodness" about 18 times during the class period.  I can't tell you how happy it makes me to here people say Goodness instead of taking the Lord's name in vain.  Bobby says Dr. Chen is a great Christian guy too.  He wore green pants with suspenders.  a white shirt blue jacket and tie.  A shorter Asian fellow.  He speaks quickly.

He described the course as a (very) little taste of what law school is.  3/4's of the class raised their hands when he asked who's considering law school.  I went ahead and raised mine too.  He said, in so many words, it's a factory that pumps out cold heartless bastards.  The kind of people who, from what I gathered, take no words for granted and tend to argue more over language than what is actually signified by the language.  I thought I was this way interacting with a lot of people in my past.  Then I met Jake and I thought I might not actually be that bad.  Jake, you are warm and full of heart though.  Don't mind that part.  He said during his three years at law school he never once heard the word justice in the classroom.  Literally.  He didn't say that was an inherently bad thing.  You're not learning about what's right or wrong, or studying a subject really at all according to him.  You're learning a new way of thinking.  The cold heartless bastard way of thinking.  He mentioned Scott Turow's book.  I felt stupidly proud that I'd read it.

Anyways.  All those hands going up in that one class, packed to the brim...sobering considering only 12 students from Western enrolled at UW law last fall.  and that's the highest I've seen the three years I've been keeping track.

There is no question I will read more pages, words, and syllables this quarter and spend more time doing it than I ever have in the past.

This is how I described my family in a recent text message "...Sara is being awesome.  Kara is also being awesome in her own less-like-me way (but really...plenty like me). Mom is recovering from uterus-removal surgery.  She has been up and about and seems fine.  Dad's sense of humor is aging like wine so far."

Here are some pictures.  From over the last month.

 I cannot describe to you.  How good this was.

 Enter: Bill

 Josh

 Nic

 Guess

 Matt (Dugan) Decided to...take a picture of his crotch.  Today.

 It is good to have someone to take semi-candid pictures of me again.

Currently listening: Sanctus Real "Pieces of a Real Heart,"  Random worship music...Fee, Shane & Shane, Todd Agnew, Chris Tomlin, David Crowder,  PETRA!!, Philips Craig & Dean, Kristian Stanfill, Matt Redman.

A New Bit!

Sort've.  I'm going to do the first (and probably only) piece in a series called "Good idea, Bad idea."  Real original right? ok.  Let's start with a positive suggestion

Good Idea: Sending personalized messages of greeting and /or encouragement to several of your friends, or someone you know could use a kind word.

Bad Idea: Regularly sending a generic mass text indiscriminately to all of your friends.  I've often been guilty of this myself.

Our good idea for today might actually do...some Good.  It let's people know you care at least enough to use their name, and might actually lead to a moment of Substantive human interaction.  Maybe even several moments (If that's something you're afraid of, or find bothersome, or feel that...it's not the point, you're in the wrong).  I would love to receive more of these real texts.  Today's bad idea, on the other hand, is not only impersonal, but more often than not is inconsequential.  For me these are at best spam, and at worst insulting.  To me it says the sender feels he/she is either too important, or thinks she/he is too busy to care about me the individual.  I see it almost as the sender trying to glorify him/herself by putting as little time as possible into letting everyone know that she/he is awesome and nice, but doesn't actually care about me. 

So in conclusion.  DO send people (especially me ;]) a personalized text with a name, full of love and encouragement.  It takes barely any more time than what you should NOT DO: regularly send all of your friends a vainglorious text trying to osmose how awesome you are into their craniums.  Ok that might not be your intent (Seach your heart.  Pray. Now. Seriously), but still.  You might not have time to reach as many people, but you will also annoy fewer people, and the ones you do reach will be more significantly impacted than they ever would with a "Hi Everyone, I'm so Nice I've got enough awesome left to tell you all to have a good day!...Every week!"  Put forth that extra bit of energy please. You will have a much more real impact on someone's day. It's good for you.  It's good for those who you reach. Texting is faceless enough without not even bothering to call someone by name.

This is just a suggestion.  I'd like to think.  Something positive someone can do.  I don't want to be all negative just bashing on people. Please Don't react by stopping; start really doing maybe. 

Yes.

"'She would of been a good woman,' The Misfit said, 'if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.'"

That sums up my conversation with my awesome sister this evening.  It ended with me reading Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" to her as she fell asleep.  We had a good time renaming the characters.  Or at least I did.