not falling down

Has anybody else wondered about the logic behind constantly salting the sidewalks on, say, acollege campus? Sure, it melts the snow, but if it’s just going to get cold again at night, thatmeans it’s going to refreeze into ice and make it twice as treacherous to get around on. I’d ratherhave crusty snow–at least that way you get some traction.

Yeah, I’m kind of rambling now.

My one-act is DONE. There’s an ache in my back that says I’ve been working too hard for too long,and that I’m nowhere near done yet. But the play is done, and that’s one more load off thecamel.

I’m not as happy with this one as I have been with the other two, for several reasons, none ofwhich have to do with my lovely, fresh, hardworking cast and crew. I wasn’t as confident in thescript–I still think I could have written better, given the time–and I wasn’t comfortable withthe length of the play or the time we had for rehearsals. Also I hated having two dozen props tokeep track of. There’s a reason my plays never have more than three.

Some of it, too, has to do with the way the directing class was taught this term. Memorizationquizzes without a textbook, twelve plays in three nights, every seasoned actor in the departmentin the class–I don’t get it. Patrick’s a better teacher than this, and he’s going to get afew letters at the end of term pointing that out.

But it’s done, and now I can spend two nights watching and two days writing code and blam, fallterm is over. Why do these things always seem to barrel to a crashing stop? Can’t I have a semesterthat just gently decelerates?

abrace of hope
a pride of innocence

Three entries in one day? That’s crazy! But not as crazy as this: JON AND AMANDA GOT ENGAGED!WHOO!

(By “crazy” I mean “good.”)

Managed to sleep for three hours. For me, Mister Doesn’t Nap, that’s fairly hardcore. I feelbetter, if not nearly better enough to do everything I have to do tonight. Onward, men! Bring me mysword and red shirt!

Anyway, music. I recently rediscovered that the soundtrack to Sneakers is excellent walking-around music, especially in winter. I think itwould also be great music for a silent underwater documentary, or a console RPG, and would like totest those theories someday. BrendanCo: Where the music for everything is the soundtrack toSneakers!

Something about providing great semi-rare music illegally, blah blah blah. Listen to this, it’s myfavorite track.

Yesterday I went biking for the first time in years–not on my own bike, alas, which still waits patiently on the porch for resuscitation, but on David’s. I figured out that you could shift out of sixth on it at the top of the last hill. I am a genius! Walking afterwards felt like I was underwater. I expected to be sore today, legwise, but fortunately I wasn’t. Exactly. (More on this in a moment.)

This bike trip was actually something of a quest–borrowing a foot-measurement thingy from Shoe Sensation for my play. Shoe Sensation: where the shoes are great, the people are friendly, and they let earnest college students borrow their foot-measurement thingies without even showing ID.

On the way back I rewarded myself with a trip to the comic book store, which appears to be closing. This makes my heart sad, even though I’ve actually been there maybe three times. I did pick up a pack of Fluxx for half price, though, and learned to play it with the Halo Chumps later that night. I found it enormously fun, and now have a burning desire to buy blank cards and make up game-unbalancing rules (“Draw All,” “Keeper Limit 0,” “Brendan Just Wins”).

Anyway, today I woke up feeling not sore in my legs, but rather over the entirety of my body. I finally caught whatever everybody else has been battling, I guess, and it’s just in time for my play and two major Comp Sci projects! I’ve been stuffy and nauseous too, though that went away after I slept through Software Engineering. Hmm… maybe my problem isn’t a virus at all!

I have another post to write soon, about music, but I can’t do it from here. Remind me in a couple hours.

Terrifying spam subject line:

St. Louis was quite nice, especially the Botanical Gardens, which were even fun in November. That’s pretty much all we did except driving. There was a lot of driving. Next up: Putting a play together in two days.