I've begun classes! Well, technically I started in January. I'm taking Microbiology and Psychology. Micro is very interesting, at least the new stuff is. They still are going through some biochem that I learned in high school. But soon, they will start on material that is new to me. We've been growing specimens in the lab and it looks like soon we'll be able to view them under the microscope. That's very cool. I just hope I do well on all the tests.
Psychology is... well, psych is not so interesting. I'll make it through. The professor is not too bad. :)
The hiking trip has been pushed back to 2010, which is upsetting, but necessary for financial reasons. Hopefully we'll be able to save all we need to go and be headed out that March or June.
I've been facebooking a little on my new internet connection. I tried for a while with AT&T DSL but it proved to be too sketchy a connection. I now have gone back to my nemesis Charter Communications. Hopefully our relationship will be better this time around.
Work is going well. That's about all I can say about it. It's a little hard going both to work and dedicating time that used to be free to school, but I'm coping.
Adam hopes to be coming up for a visit either in March or April. As always, I look forward to him being here. We connect on levels that are unique from most of my other friends. Too bad I'm not gay. We might make a good... nah, we'd make a terrible couple :). LOL!
Or it could mean I'm just a tad unusual. :)
On the girl front. I'm still not really looking but being passively interested. To tell the truth, if I trust my instincts, I'd say there have been several people I could have asked out already. Assuming that is I still remember how to ask someone out. LOL! But I haven't. I guess I should be asking myself "why?", but I think my answer would just involve a lot of psycho babble. I'm good at giving myself psychobabble as you know.
I've been reasonably content lately. Especially the month or so Elias was on the wagon. Things may be headed for fouler weather in that department, but I'm hopeful that we'll see the sun again.
David's getting married. I'm a little hesitant about the girl, but that may be only because I don't really know her that well. One thing is for sure, if David is happy, I'm happy for him. He deserves a special someone. I just hope he's up to the challenge. I wouldn't want to see him hurt the way I was. He came to me asking what he should do when he got into his old "shiftless" mood. I tried to be supportive and suggest that if he felt things were moving too fast to talk with Megan and perhaps slow things down a bit. To my great surprise he did talk to Megan and apparantly felt much better afterwards without the need to upset the plans they'd already made. That's Great! Just the fact that he felt comfortable enouogh to talk to her tells me a lot about their relationship. I think this may actually be the one for him. :)
Okay, that's it for now. I should be in bed already.
TTFN, �
Jacob
Well, I haven't been sleeping too well this past week. Primarily because I keep staying up til five a.m. reading Dresden novels. I swear they are like crack! What's worse it that this is the second time I've read them.�� Anyways I'm waking up around noon so that�I at least have an hour before I go to work. So I'm steadily losing hours of sleep. And this weekend has only exacerbated the matter. I'm the man with the incredibly shrinking sleep cycle! I expect to crash sometime tonight.
David has apparantly lost his spiffy apartment. He broke some of the morality clauses and failed to keep up the apartment to the owner's rigorous cleaning standards. He has thirty days to move out. He might be coming to live with me for a few months to avoid having to stay at his parents. Which means I might be recieving an extra $200 a month! That would be a nice contribution to my trail fund.�
Did I mention that Elias has a job! I think I did...But, I know more of the details now! He's one of two cooks and works Thursdays, Fridays, and weekends. He gets paid $7.50/hr,�which is kinda lackluster if you ask me, but he's getting lot's of hours so he may�actually be able to save up money for the trip.It does mean that I won't get to see him very often, but I'm sorta ready for that.
On the other hand it was nice to have someone around occasionally. But, now I may have Dave with me for a couple of months. Actually, truth to be told, I'm a little ambivelant about it.� I'll be getting paid to let a guy sleep on my couch, but he'll have the run of my apartment in the evenings. Frankly I shudder to think about what may occur around my bed with his girlfriend. Yerch! I guess I'll just have to tell him that my room is sacrosanct, my bed off limits and my stuff�inviolate. Yeah, if I set down the rules I don't think it'll be a problem.
Okay, I'm at work and being distracted by...well...work I guess, so I'm going to log off now.�
See ya!�
Not the most exciting weekend I've ever had but very relaxed. Elias came up from Georgia as usual, but this time he had some good news. He's found a job! A restaurant is reopening in Clarksville and he's one of two cooks that has been hired so far. He starts work today. Unfortunately that means I'll probably be seeing less of him, but on�the other hand maybe he can start saving for our trip this coming June. So what did we do on his last weekend up for a while? Not much. We went looking for an old video game we were wanting to try and visited the bookstore. We spent most of the time reading our aquisitions and drinking beer. As I said not the most exciting weekend, but not too bad either.
About the trip this June. I'm hoping to start saving in earnest beginning in October. Hopefully I can put away at least $400 a month. That will put me at around $4000 come June.�Things will still be a little tight on the trail because�I will have to pay for my car, storage space and student loans while I'm gone, but that amount will definitely put the trip in the "I'm going"�category. It would be nice if I could, ya know, win the lottery or something. If I did I'd help Elias and Adam out. Adam especially. His job barely pays minimum wage. And, of course, everybody still needs to get their equipment.
Most recently, I'm looking for a large map that I can put up from floor to cieling that shows the trail towns and possibly the shelters along the way. I figure it'd be a great visual aid for planning when and where we will stop and where we can restock our food supplies. Plus it'd be a great motivator just to see the shear length of the trail.
I've been rereading the Dresden novels. There is just something about them that I really, really like. So that's been taking up a lot of my time. Elias doesn't see how I can read for hour upon hour. I'm not really sure either, except that when I read everything else just kind of fuzzes out. I don't really register hunger, pain, or discomfort. I tend to move around a lot but it's kind of like my body is on autopilot. And woe betide the one who interrupts me during an exciting section in the novel! I remember chasing my brothers around the house in a fury because they interrupted my reading. LOL!
Anyways, slow weekend. Feels strange to be back at work. Later!
A comforting few days this week. Fall is here and things are cooling down outside. To celebrate I've turned off the A.C. and opened my single window and screen door. Wonderfully fall scented breezes have been entering my apartment and chasing away the stale cigarette and bachelor smell.
Tuesday I woke up full of energy and finally got all of my dishes washed and the kitchen straightnened out. They'd been in desperate need of cleaning ever since Adam left several weeks ago. It was a bit of a pain because the kitchen sink hasn't been working for, again, several weeks. I ended up filling the sinks from the tub using the water bottles usually kept in the refridgerator. After I'd done that, everything was pretty simple and only took a coupla hours.
I also managed to go out and get a cheap tv stand. It's pretty poor quality, but it will last until I move in June and released my poor hassock from tv stand duty. Man is it nice to be able to put my feet up again!
Oh, and I got the sink fixed shortly after coming back with the tv stand. The guy came in and just unscrewed the end of the faucet (the name for this part escapes me at the moment) and removed a piece of rubber that had gotten caught there plugging up the whole works. It made me feel like an idiot. I could have done that if I'd thought about it. Here I am thinking that it has something to do with running the faucet at the same time as the shower or dishwasher, or that there's air in the line or something and it's just this stupid piece of rubber! Well... I told him about the dishwasher's problem and he said he needed to order a part for it. That made me feel marginally better.
Really, it didn't bother me too much. When he'd left I sat back relaxed and drank a few Rob Roys. What a great end to a day off!
Work's been okay. I get less than excited whenever I realize it's nearing time to go, but it's...well, to be frank, it's pretty boring when I get there. I really need another line of work. But that's one of the reasons I'm going into the woods next June so...
Okay, that's enough for now. If I think of anything else momentous I'll write again.
Hah! Once again I join the realm of the living dead...er...I mean the awake...and semi-joyfully show up at my place of torture....um....work.
Actually, as I tell most people, work is not so bad on the weekends here. It's pretty slow and I usually can take a break. It is hard to wake up in the mornings though.
Elias and I had a little bit of a fight last night. Mostly I think because he was completely bored with what we were watching and then Cathy called and we basically had to wait around while we finished our conversations with her. He decided to go home and then came back a few minutes later having gotten gas and realized he still needed more to be able to get home. I leant him a fiver. I'm not sure if he's going to be home when I get out of work.
Sleep is a beautiful thing. When I got home yesterday I was supposed to wait until David called and then we were going to go over to his place and play some games. I fell asleep for two hours instead. I guess I needed it, because this morning I'm much less grouchy than yestermorn.
Also I find that if I get too tired I start getting rather depressed. It's interesting how much rest affects my disposition. It just means I pay a lot of attention to my sleep I guess.
Okay, that's enough for today. :)
Wow, it's been a while since I wrote on here so I'll just put in some updates. Elias went to traffic court this past Wednesday to get his suspesion taken care of. Apparantly neither the judge nor the officer showed up so they threw out the ticket! Yay for Elias! But boo for not bringing me any Cuban Pork Sandwiches. :(
I've been running a game for Elias for the past few weeks and last night David came over and I shoehorned him in for an episode. I think it's going well. I'm gradually getting more used to running a game. Already I'm starting to run them more seriously than before. I think it just boils down to nervousness, which means I just need to do it more often.
Arrrrgh! This morning I woke to the alarum at 6:00am to go to work. I woke irritable, angry and tired. I had a running commentary that sounded a bit like Douglas Adams in my head until I got to work and grabbed some coffee. You remember the bit in Hitchhikers Guide about the Mongol horde? The commontary was in a similar vein with many death threats and evil imaginings. Talk about Grouchy! I managed to remain civil to everyone though. If people knew me they'd know that when I talk in that soft, sweet voice I'm actually trying very hard not to bite their heads off! LOL!!!!
What a week! Evenbreeze, aka Adam, visited this week. It's been wonderful seeing him. If I'd had more money and we had more unscheduled time I would have taken him to the beach or to Asheville or possible to Table Rock or some other hiking locale. As it was, he was pretty busy. He only got to see Andy and Katy for about a day and wishes, I think, that he could stay longer. In a perfect world he could live in Louisiana and still be only 30 minutes away.
He was supposed to be leaving in the morning but the train is overbooked and so he can't leave until Monday morn. Elias is going to stay up with him and they'll both find out after dropping Adam off at the train station. How do I know this? Because it's already happened! I'm writing from the morning of the 7th, not the 6th.
Spoke, or rather listened, with Daddy at length about the Republican Convention. He says they've never sounded so, well, Republican as they do now. McCain also seems dead set on war with somebody, probably Iran. What a difference the Democratic Convention was! It was an open convention with people from all social classes, albeit the rich were somewhat unrepresented. The Republicans' convention by contrast was closed. You couldn't even view it on TV until it had already happened, the Democrats convention was live on TV and internet.
Seems pretty clear to me. Democrats, this once, are set to embrace an optomistic future with great strides in environment, healthcare, alternate power sources, friendly and reasonable foriegn policy, and general opportunity for all. The Republicans, as ever, are stuck in the past. They want to prolong oil dependance, pick fights with other countries, make money for their constituents and placate or dupe the masses enough to continue doing so forever.
That's it. Have a great week tomorrow! :)
I got to view the last episodes of season 2 of Dexter this past Friday. Really cool. Doakes dies and that kinda sucks but Dexter and he have a couple of short conversations that I think were revealing. I think that�they showed how much Doakes and Dexter have in common. They both had traumatic childhoods and they both are very violent people, but where Dex was encouraged to use his cravings to serve outside of the law as a vigilante and was told he was a monster, Doakes channels his rage and violence against enemies of society and considers himself restrained by the rules of that society. Doakes was in the military learning both how to release and restrain his violence. Dexter was taught to channel his cravings to give in to them and encourage them (as shown in what he's studies: martial arts, blood spatters, etc.)�on an orderly basis that would make use of it's immorality to provide a "service" to society. Doakes learned to serve by releasing his "monster". Dexter learned how to hide and feed his monster so it could "serve" society.
They both kill, but they have different focuses in their outlooks, which is something� Dexter hasn't really thought about. He's more concerned with justifying his actions than with the actual implications. He really has never dealt with his monster. Ultimately it is control of him. Harry is responsible for that. Dexter was a relatively good kid. He wasn't rebellious. He didn't have a problem with authority. he knew right from wrong. Dexter could have learned to deal with his urges but Harry came along, labeled him a serial killer and a psychopath, and then taught him to use his darkness to do what Harry always wanted to do, namely get rid of criminals who slip through the cracks in law enforcement. The very fact that Dexter has so many moral dilemmas with what he is doing attests to the possibilty that he would not have become a serial killer if left on his own.
In the�end�Harry gets a taste of the horribleness of his crime when he walks in on Dexter at work. The realization of what he's done causes him to kill himself. It should be noted that he doesn't kill Dexter. Perhaps because he realizes how little Dexter is to blame for what he has become.
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