The Crow and the Beanfield
(9-18 September 2000)
18 September 2000
-Okay, time for more about my view. Looking out
my window all night, as I've been required to do since I'm soaking my battered
feet, I've watched the moon gradually rise from just to the left (north) of
Beantown all the way to its current peak just to the right (south) of the city.
It's pretty cool. I'm still getting used to the idea that there's
SKY on the Eastern seaboard.
-DogGONE it! Okay, now I'm pissed. Careful what I wish for... like
not wanting anything to interfere with my first day of work. Well, I just
had my first day of work bumped back 12 days. Crud. Lisa, my new
boss, calls me up & tells me that the people at Kutz (lovely people, dontchya
think?) RETURNED my work forms & chewed her out for hiring me because I'm
not on work-study. Not ONLY has this not been an issue for Lisa's hiring
in the past, they made it utterly non-negotiable & inexplicable. So
now I'm outta work for 2 weeks & my momentum is sliding out from 'neath
me. I mean, it makes sense to me... the library's hopelessly behind in
its shelving, needs all the help it can get, has had fewer people than EVER
sign up for shelving jobs, & now I won't be able to work until my classes
are actually demanding some of my time & energy, rather than now when I
have no work. WONDERBAR. Systems don't work. That's all there
is to it.
-All this extra time & I dunno what to do with it... ay!
17 September 2000
-Ow. Now you may recall that I made it through the
entire Grand Canyon trip & accompanying 50-mile hike with NO blisters. Zero.
Nada. This weekend, primarily initiated after Friday's insane Beantown-based
rainstorm left me soaking for the entire car-ride down to NY & left my socks
soaking for the whole weekend, I acquired major blisters on about half my toes.
Too much walking in NY with wet socks. Yippee. Here's the
kicker, though... they aren't behaving like normal blisters. It's much
more like the blisters aren't fully developed yet, hurt just as much as they
would if they WERE fully developed, & consume the entirity of the toe they
occupy. So half my toes, including both big toes feel like swelled balloons
on the verge of bursting. I'd pop them, but there's no clear focal point
of the blister at which TO pop. Maybe I won't go to basketball tomorrow...
I just hope that my first day of work (also tomorrow) won't be threatened. If
anyone has any suggestions for dealing with this, I'd be glad to hear them...
-Reading the above entry, I realize it may sound a little silly. Especially
if you've never had experience with blisters. Trust me, it's difficult
to walk & took me an extra hour to fall asleep last night. It feels
like a vaguely big deal.
-They're BACK! Suddenly, spontaneously, & almost simultaneously, both
Lisha & Kate have revived their update pages. So go there. But
note that the more recent update from Kate is more gibberish-font... again.
16 September 2000
-The weekend was good. Ups & downs, as per usual.
Ran into Alice Boone on the streets of NY, as well as having dinner with
Mica(h) Rosenberg & her cute friend also from Albuquerque who apparently
is going to Columbia grad school. Crazy older women. Oh well. A
couple teams went 3-1 & we have some lasting potential. But Jordan
made sure I didn't spend the weekend in NYC with Gris (as per previous plans),
so that kinda stank. Crazy Jordan & his crazy needs. When I
run this club... oh wait...
-The Olympics just aren't capturing my imagination this year like they used
to. Watching the opening ceremonies in a Manhattan bar with Gris &
Mica(h) just didn't captivate me. Maybe they were just too disorganized
& too prone to amusing banter. That poor little girl in the pink dress
has had her lifetime peak, though... it's all downhill from there. 50-80
years of "Do you remember the 2000 Olympics?! I WAS that girl in
the pink dress! That was ME...."
-"Tales of the Night" by Peter Hoeg might be the all-around best book
I've read in about 2 years. Perhaps longer. To think that I read
a translation boggles my mind.
15 September 2000
-Wow wow wow. Inspiration on a scale I haven't felt
in years. Probably not since the production of my play. Teaching
debate, from scratch, to 5 novices who'd been unsure & convincing them they
were all very prepared to go to the tournament tomorrow after they'd debated
a practice round... what more does one need? This is what I want to do
with my life. This feeling, this influence on people's lives, this boost
to their existence. This is what I want to provide for people. I
even convinced one person to change her schedule around just so she could come
to the tournament as she'd not been planning to do. Right now, I have
an acute awareness of the vast potential & limitless momentum that ebbs
& flows through the universe, waiting to be harnessed & utilized, leaving
us breathless in our captivation. This weekend is going to rock, but this
year, if things keep going with this team, could make this weekend look like
small potatoes.
14 September 2000
-Beware people offering the choice between nothing now
& less later.
-Flakiness abounds. Why, oh why?!
-Mmmmmm... sprayed macaroni! The hiring practices of the lovely Usdan
cafeteria certainly leave a lot to be desired. I'm all for the equal opportunity
to work, but well, lines do have to be drawn in my 'umble opin'. &
Usdan makes Wal-Mart look like a haven of rational approaches to work these
days.
-OKAY, everybody, listen up! The Wallflowers are coming to Beantown on
the 7th of October, & Hootie & the Blowfish are coming on the 25th of
the same month. I will go to both. WHO'S COMIN' WITH ME?
-Alright, under advisement of several people who thought 20 hours a week of
work on top of school would be crazy, I'm opening up with 13. But I expect
to add to that number shortly. It's just shelving books, after all. Nothing
challenging. I think the first day I work there will almost double the
total number of hours I've spent in the 'Deis library... it's going to start
adding up quickly.
13 September 2000
-Make that 2.5-0 in Risk... yes, that still means undefeated.
Three games outta three, but one was a team-up with Zack.
-This weekend's gonna be FUN!
-No Gemma, so this weekend just got a little bit less fun. But still most
of the fun. Crew still gets the ol' thumbs-down from me, though.
-I'm the only person I know whose call-waiting would go off at 4 in the morning.
But I like that.
-Believe it or don't, but I currently have PERFECT ATTENDANCE this semester.
That's through an entire 8 (eight) days of class! I'm saying this
now, because in the next couple days, or at least by Friday, that'll change
irreparably. I still think it's crazily worth mentioning, though. So
weird, too.
-The East Quad Office now has a picture of a centipede on its doorsign. How
uncool is that?
-Ah, yes... showering AFTER basketball is much preferable to showering before...
I have learned wisely...
-Really, ultimately, everything is about everything. Everything is about
life, as far as we're concerned in this lowly temporal existence. Life
is about love & pain. That & doing what's right, which usually
end up being subsets of love & pain. Love itself is ultimately about
love & pain. Or more specifically, wasted potential, heartbreak, &
crushing loss OR fulfillment, which ends up being about perfection. Perfection
is certainly about everything, & the wasted potential/crushing loss is basically
about the potential for everything gone awry. Leaving us with pain, which
is mostly about embracing that which we know to potentially be behind everything
without fear or reservation that it'll chew on us for breakfast like it did
the last 85 times. Basically, embracing everything. & feeling
it just as much, but without fearing it. So yeah. Simple, this life
thing, really.
12 September 2000
-Well, I did the semesterly roundup... I have 21 academic
tasks to complete this term, neatly scattered across my 5 courses. Interestingly,
only 2 are due this month & only 3 total before the penatly-free drop-deadline.
So, I guess I'm sticking with these no matter what. I'm not a fan
of the change in the drop policy, but I guess they have to try to make academics
challenging here somehow, right?
-So the M's' lead in the AL West is down to a slim solitary game. Their
magic number is 20. I wonder where the focus of my nervous tension will
be the rest of this month...
-C'mon, people! Kant is NOT that hard to understand.
11 September 2000
-Vindy!
-The fog is massive tonight... not only can I not see the Beantown skyline,
but I can't even see major landmarks in Waltham. In fact, other than the
tops of the trees & the dumpster straight below my window, I can't see the
rest of campus. As Fish would say, "It makes my world a little smaller."
Indeed. I love this room!
-Yay! New mouse! It's like my computer's been entirely reborn...
it's responsive again!
-I need to cut back on my use of exclamation points.
-Meet the newest employee of the Brandeis University Library system. As
my phone identification could report, that'd be me. Somebody say woohoo
doggie.
10 September 2000
-Still undefeated (1.5-0) in Risk this year.
-Bad Andy. Good IHOP.
-Next time I go to IHOP, I'm going to tell them I don't need the cup for the
coffee. I'll just drink straight from the pot. Since that's how
much I drank tonight. No migraine for me!
-This webpage thing is so much easier to update from school! So, yeah,
check out the latest Pond update. Not a whole lot's new, honestly, but
the update needed doing nonetheless.
-That's just perfect. It really is. What more do I need? This
is everything I was hoping for & counting on & it's all just falling
into place like it should. Groovy.
-Who needs a semester/year abroad when I'll be going to Glasgow for Debate Worlds
in January?
-I'm bordering on blissful today. WOO HOO!
-Don't EVEN start with me!
9 September 2000
-Every grudge has gotta die sometime. Right?
-So much that's pretty groovy to cling to right now. Let's all cross our
fingers & hope this stuff lasts.
-Hmmm... if only we could have a little "learn-by-example" session.
Because the contrast is extreme. Bordering, perhaps, on obscene.
& yet it's unnecessary & childish, at least on the negative side
of the contrast. On the positive side, yay for 3 of the coolest &
most supportive people in my life! Not that I'd start planning
another closing-time visit to any local Indian restaurants, but you know, it's
all good...
-Via AnnaBegins.com (see link above), I've finally tracked down the full "Face
the Promised Land" version of "Rain King"! This will be
on repeat on my computer for the next, I dunno, year...
Introspection, My Worst Friend* (Current)
Ye Olde Archive (Past)
Tell me this is not the end...*
*-lyrics from an as-yet unreleased song, "The Same Old Frontiers",
by SWClayton.