With a bang

Star Wars wasn't really a good way of describing how reality works anyway.

Meh

Staying with my family is an interesting mixture of pleasant and overwhelmingly frustrating. I get along with everyone in my family fairly well, which is a plus. That and their kids are all older than mine, so they surprise me with things like speech, toilet usage, and moderate competency.

My cars front bumper was falling off. You know, the thing that holds the license plate that New York requires on both ends of the car. My dad tends to fix things like this easily, and I hate the idea of blowing a fortune on what I think is a technicality. So he takes the car. Normally, his fixes involve a few hours and a few bucks. It's pretty much what I was expecting. This time, not so much. Now the car is gone for a week, both delaying my trip home, and forcing me (+wife and 2 kids) to rely on borrowing a car from my sister.

Thanks. The big delay? Waiting for the paint to set. Paint?! I don't care if it matches or if it's lime green (which might make it easier to spot in a parking lot, Saturns are pretty common) I just want the dumb car. I'm back in my home town and I'm stuck in the house the entire time.

Short of borrowing a car.

Christmas was nice. It usually is, but I find myself more and more awkward with it every year. I'm waiting for science to "accidentally" create a virus that causes me to miss the awkward parts, but be there for the nice ones. Until then, I make do... somehow.

All of this past fall I kept wishing I was still back at that cabin.

And I'm spent.

I've never run a marathon before. My physique wouldn't allow for it. (Wii Fit itself being a challenge to me) I imagine that much of what I experienced in the last 6 weeks was much like running a marathon in my own head.

I learned something that caught my interest. My math class had a prerequisite, which in turn had one of its own. I wasn't aware of this fact, and would only have been made aware beforehand if I had to sign up for the class myself. (The system not letting you register if you didn't have the other classes, naturally). Rather, I was placed into the class by a member of the faculty.

...oh. Well then. I suppose having a hard time with the class was to be expected. (I passed it, but I didn't like it)

I finished with the semester. All finals done. Statistics must not be my strong suit, as the open-book final was still a grueling experience. Finishing this semester was like Wile E Coyote running off a cliff. He was still running, made it half way across, but the ground was long gone. I finished, but my head was still racing.

Since I'm not working any more, it looks like I have about 5 weeks of video games and cartoons.

...when the kids are asleep.

...and times.

and so it came to a breaking point.

Wait, let me back up.

The semester started off like any other, but my math teacher took the first day to go over 3 chapters. She said it was stuff we should already know.

...suuuuuuure.

Keeping up wasn't all that easy. My stats class is online, and it's entirely too easy to fall behind. Especially when nobody's checking up on me and I'm sleeping almost every hour that I'm home. Eventually, I couldn't force myself to stay awake long enough to get my work done. I couldn't study for my exams, and the work I was turning in was sloppy. Every assignment I did while I was at work was riddled with mistakes and the ones I did at home were half complete because I fell asleep mid problem.

In retrospect, putting a comfy couch in my office may have been a bad idea.

And so it came to a breaking point. (This is where we came in) You see, my math class is graded very simply. Two exams and a few small quizzes are all that count. Bomb one test, it's ignored. Bomb the second, and you're not going to pass the class. I need the class to get in the program in January. Otherwise... I don't actually know what I'd do then. It took me long enough to figure out what to do with myself, I don't want to let some stupid logarithmic differential get in the way. I bombed the first test. I wasn't doing well when the second test was coming around. I was too far behind in my stats work to effectively keep up any more.

I liked my job. I really did. But I realized that I needed the time. I needed to be asleep at night, I needed to be awake in class. A weekend used to both catch up on work and sleep. I only now have time to blog about it because this is my first weekend off since then. I feel surprisingly well rested. I feel far more prepared for my coursework than I have in a year.

Let's see how I do on that test.

The Cabin

I disappeared for a week. I only now have recovered my mental faculties enough to write about it.

Behold!

My sister married this awesome guy whose family has a cabin near what feels like nowhere. So last Saturday my fam in Syracuse catch up with me in Buffalo and we together finish the trip to the deep north reaches of southern Ontario.

My sister, her hubby, their son.
My brother, his wife, their 2 kids.
Myself, my better half, and our +1.
Zero cell phone reception.

Day 1:
You'd think a 5 hour drive would feel like 5 hours, but it just didn't. It was a small cabin that *might* fit us all, but a tent housed my sister. An eclectic outhouse served more than just 2 needs. I still work nights. I tried to stay up as long as I could to push through it, but wound up falling asleep by 4PM.



Day 2:
This left me waking up at 2AM needing a serious oil change. I had aquired an obnoxiously bright flashlight, which was more than useful because I couldn't go by the glow of the local metropolis. There was none. Bored and alone, I hit the dock thinking I'll just chill on the boat.

!!!STARS!!!

Look, I look up all the time at night, but what I'm used to seeing is more of a smear of light blanketing the sky. This was like that smear had condensed down into a billion tiny points that couldn't make up their minds as to whether they were shining or not. For the win.

Later:

I'm on a boat! Exploring the area surrounding this tiny cabin and the small lake it sits on is more interesting than I thought. There was much swimming that morning. It also keeps raining on and off. I still fall asleep early, but not so much.

Day 3:
I wake a full hour later than the day before. I decide to get in the kayak and push myself out to the middle of the lake so the trees on the edge don't obscure my view of half the sky. Getting away from the shore is easy, and the sky is giving me vertigo. Then I realize just how dark it is, and I can only tell where the dock is because of the faint surviving glow of a solar light atop the steps leading to it. This is the point where I realize that I'm not terribly comfortable with being in a tiny little kayak in the center of a lake in near complete darkness while nobody knows I'm out there. Back the the speedboat.

This time my brother joins me on the boat.  A jaunt into town. I need junk food. Still thinking this is awesome. It still is. Everyone kinda swam themselves out. My better half disappeared on a Kayak for a couple hours. (As an aside, this is why I'm glad we don't live on some futuristic space station)

Day 4:
I wake up that morning deciding to see how far out in the lake I like to be. Without a boat. The sun is up, so I'm ok with this. The answer: not very far.

I'm on a boat! (This is where someone lost a bet because I said this out loud) I'm also behind a boat, going very very fast. My first time tubing, the material holding the tube to the boat ripped, so instead of pulling me across, it pulled me down. Very fast.

That hurt.

Every orifice on my head screamed in pain, but calmed in minutes. An hour later, it was just my ear. My hearing was muffled, and it hurt worse than when it first started. Three hours of this. It calmed, then faded. To this day if I pay attention I can still feel a twinge in my right ear.

Day 5:
I woke up that morning and went fishing. I caught nothing.

Later that morning, my brother in law shows me this spot where a school of fish hang out under a dock. I caught 4 little guys. MAKE NOTE, WORLD. This was the first time I ever caught a fish. Now that I have, the thrill is lost.

I'm behind a boat again. New tube, no fear. Tubing has this bizarre exhilaration to it that comes with knowing that you're riding an air filled piece of plastic at what I could only guess was 30mph (oh wait, 48.3kph. We *were* in Canada, you know). Of those of us that went tubing, only my brother and I did not fall off. I suppose holding on for dear life is genetic.

It was also someone's 4th wedding anniversary. So I got her a bear!

But that's another story.

The rest of the week is kinda muddled in my head right now. Something about more rain, a broken exhaust pipe just before the trek home, and a fever of 102.6 pushing me into some strange delirium. (No, not the awesome band from Vancouver)

I'm out.

The caller

Over and over they called. Some mysterious 800 number that only called when I was asleep.

Remember that I sleep during the day, so this isn't entirely unusual.

So day in and day out they keep calling, leaving no voice mail and the caller ID is blank. I tell myself that whatever it is must be important, otherwise they'd have stopped trying to get ahold of me. I also tell myself that it can't be that important because they never leave a voice mail.

I was awake when they called last. Once I said "hello" a machine thanked me and asked me to continue holding.

The person that invents a way to detonate a callers phone will be insanely rich.

Cronicles of a telephone

I swallowed my arrogant pride. I was always the guy that, when people started showing off the various attributes of their smartphones, would pull out a simple flip phone and state flatly that it could make phone calls. Never one to enjoy joining the ranks of... anyone, I love a gadget entirely too much.

Also, it was free.

My new phone is supposed to be smart, and so far it seems to be smarter than my old year old. Expanding memory, teaching it new tricks, and even getting it to shut up are really easy. My son's only current advantage is battery life.

Now if only there was an app that would pick a good retirement home, I'd be set.

Tests, Iowa, and a series of fantastical wonders.

I don't try to go this long without blogging, but being burnt out has a way of making it really easy to say 'no' when the thought crosses my mind.

I found that as the semester came closer to ending, I cared less and less about it. I once had a beat up '95 Geo with a leaking gas line. I would fill the tank, and fuel would instantly start to spill everywhere. It took most of a tank just to get it to the shop a friend of mine worked in to get the thing fixed. The last few weeks of this last semester, I felt like my old car, spending entirely too much to get a very short distance. (That and it was a Geo, so it wasn't getting very far when it was at its best already)

Spring '10 semester ended. I rejoiced not in jubilation or exhilaration, but in disgust. I'm not sure I did all that well. I don't know if grades have been posted yet, and I don't want to look. Later, perhaps, when I care.

My sister in law wanted to go home. Living with us helping out with our son through the tax season (seeing as my better half is locked in mortal combat with the IRS on behalf of the weak for 3 months of the year) was helpful. I wanted to leave town. I tend to see my in-laws about once every year and a half, and we were due.

Enter Nauvoo Illinois. A decent halfway point between A and B for everyone to meet up. Filled with enough history-touristy distractions to last a few days, a hotel across the river in Iowa with a pool (which for some unknown reason my body decided to BLEED in, thankyouverymuch), and far enough from everything else as to render the drive itself a means of wiping recent memory from my gray matter.

That and my in-laws are a special breed of [adjective]. I've never been able to properly describe them, but it would be easy to say that they live on a different plane of existence than myself, and spending time with them is like taking a vacation from my normal reality. It's a very therapeutic world filled with named automobiles, feety pajamas, and the occasional frozen custard. These things combined were, frankly, exactly what I needed.

And they brought a friend. At first I was expecting a statistical outlier, then I wasn't so sure. The boys back at the lab are still crunching the data. Either way, anyone sporting the atomic purple GameBoy Color is automatically cool.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need a drink and a nap.

Housekeeping

A week ago I got the last of my midterms back. When I got the first one, I was somewhat disheartened. When I got the second one, I was notably... I suppose 'upset' is the word I'm looking for. Taking only three classes this semester, I was seriously hoping the third one would at least cheer me up. I took the understanding that the results of the third midterm would be like a bipolar retarded puppy. Either it will make me laugh and brighten my day, or it will acquire a sudden spastic case of Montezuma's revenge while running all over my new carpet.


It was not the former.


So once I was handed the third of these disasters, I decided to avoid saying that I bombed them, seeing as bombs usually do their jobs. I took a look at what the heck was going on. I actually had a pretty good feeling about all of these tests going in, and even felt fairly optimistic when they were being handed back. So I took inventory of my life and made a clear realization.


I am a sleepy drunk.


That's not to say I get sleepy when I get drunk, (I wouldn't know, as I've never been drunk nor have I even had *a* drink to let myself figure that out) but rather I get drunk when I'm sleepy. And much like the untrained masses that horde the clubs down the street from my hotel, I have a great deal of confidence in myself when I am drunk. That's when it hit me - I'm always sleepy. 100% tired, if you could put numbers on it. I didn't know what I was doing, but I didn't realize that. I'd been falling asleep in class constantly this semester and it kicked me like the aforementioned retarded puppy. That's when I decided to put my boss between a rock and a hard place. He could either find someone to fill in 3 of my shifts a week until summer started, or find someone to fill in all 5 of them until they decided to quit. Neither prospect appealed to him very much, but I knew the one that was easier for him to do was the one I wanted.


But I have put serious thought into just quitting outright. My summer would be somewhat boring (though I'm signing up for summer classes, so nuts to that) but I can't help but find myself constantly drawn to the idea the more I think about it.


I genuinely like my job, though, so it has that going for it.

(and you thought after reading the title that this would be about room cleanliness. ha!)

Star Trek something something

So I've been a big fan of Star Trek pretty much my entire life. I liked watching Kirk and Khan have their grueling slug fest in the middle of a nebula, although I admit I didn't like it as much when I saw the exact same thing twenty years later later only with everything renamed. Granted, if you eat at the same cafeteria over and over again you're bound to have the same food more than once, but you can't tell me that in what is supposedly an infinitely large universe they keep running into the same problems over and over again.

Boldly going where they have been over and over again.

Having said that, I finally found the latest video game in the Star Trek franchise, simply titled "Star Trek Online". Quite likely the most original title in the history of both Star Trek and video games. Kudos to the staff on that one. But let's cut to the meat of the game. Through the opening storyline, a crisis puts my newly created ensign in command of a little starship, where I then go and fight off a Borg threat. Once the threat is averted, I report back to starfleet. That's pretty much where the story ends. Sure you'll find a various collection of GIANT WALL OF TEXT giving you your next mission, but there are really only three missions.

1. Go kill 5 of these.
2. Go scan 5 of those.
3. Go kill 5 of these while scanning 5 of those.

Perhaps it's not as bad as I'm making out to be, you think? Stop thinking. if you think, you're ahead of the game. While you have to fight a lot in the game, it's the same thing over and over. In the early stages of the game, you fight lots of small Klingon ships and a few big ones. I mistakenly assumed that as I progressed through the game, I would encounter more and newer bigger ships with bigger and better ways of trying to kill me. No, as it turns out, I just find the exact same groups of little ships with bigger ships - only they're much stronger now.

I understand that the standard qwerty keyboard allows people to use control + v with the same hand, but there are so many more keys that likely allow you to do much more. I'm starting to think that the developers idea of boldly going where no one has gone before involved sneaking a look into the unused ladies restroom. I take the understanding that the game designers have taken their tips from the series writers and just went to repeating themselves over and over again. I didn't expect that Star Trek would ever encourage me to do more exciting things, like homework.

I still work here... why?

There were five girls in the lobby last night. It was 30 degrees out, and they collectively had about 12 square inches of fabric between them. They complained about the cold. (durr o_O) They were in the lobby for an hour getting louder and louder about how their cab wasn't there yet.

They were loud. They were obnoxious. Then they had the strange sense to make fun of girls that wear very little on cold nights. There were actual people in the lobby getting annoyed with them. Skankzilla and the fabulous four had to go. So I did the only thing I could do.

I put them in the hotel van and dropped them off in the middle of downtown. I regret nothing.

Lucid nightmares

I've been having some pretty wild dreams lately. A co-worker of mine is on the patch, quitting smoking. He tells me that thing will cause some pretty vivid, highly realistic dreams. Well I'm not on the patch. I'm not quitting anything, and I'm not on anything else.

I just wish I was having the cool kind of dream where you know you're dreaming, so you can give yourself superpowers, blow up planets, or time travel. Nooooooooo, I get the dreams of either impending doom and destruction, or the actual chaos, doom, and destruction.

There certainly isn't anything wrong with me, that I know. I've been having dreams like that on and off for the last 12 years. I just wish the ratio was a little more in my favor.

I cannot predict the future.

But I can guess pretty close.

http://gizmodo.com/5439955/rumor-apple-tablet-ships-in-march-for-1000

Thinking back to last year...
http://onlyabriefmoment.blogspot.com/2009/02/my-netbook.html

My question to everyone: does this mean I now have to buy one?

Helloooo 2010

and good riddance 2009.

The Empire Strikes Back:

The rebels lose the base at Hoth.
Han is betrayed and locked in carbonite.
-then he's shipped off to Jabba.
Luke discovers that Vader is his father.
-his dad cuts off his hand.

Luke trains to be a jedi under Yoda.

The whole movie is really unbalanced. One bad thing after another, all smashed around one good thing, and capped off at the end with a smattering of hope. (It's still a darn good movie)

For me, in 2009 the Empire struck back. Without going into too much detail, I find that it's an apt metaphor. I lost a lot, made a lot of stupid mistakes, made some startling (and somewhat upsetting) discoveries, and generally had a really bad show of it.

I did, however, begin learning how to tap into a higher power from the shortest person I know.

I think we all know how the next movie ends.