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.