not falling down

Charity ad seen on the back of a bus:

Donate Your Car To Us
& End Homelessness

“The Hausenbildenmächina works at last, Greta! It could be change the future of the world! But the reaction only occurs at exactly 88 miles per hour.” Hans shakes his head in despair. “I can’t go that fast! Not even on my European racing-style bicycle!”

“Ach, Hans!” Greta takes his hands in her own. Her eyes are full and bright. “I always believed in you, always knew–if only we had some way to obtain one car! Any car! But our German-or-possibly-Austrian credit doesn’t carry over to these United States.”

“Greta,” says Hans, face suddenly alight, “I may just have a plan!”

“BIKE HELMETS ARE GOOD. I am now going to wear a bike helmet at all times, even in the shower and when sleeping.”

Matt from Man-Man discovers the joy of bike riding on Quebecois backcountry roads. This is why we should bomb Canada.

And I pulled another all-nighter (bringing our running total for this week up to–yes!–two) and I finished the whole thing this time, and it works, and it’s 18 pages of code and 10 pages of report in fourteen hours, and I am fuck yes proud of it.

Actually I’m mostly proud because last night, I learned Java. Like all of it. I’d never written anything besides a Hello World in the language before, and last night I sat down and implemented polymorphs and overrides and extensions like a fucking Sun cowboy. I’m thinking I probably won’t go to my last class of the day too often anymore, because it’s basically How To Do Java When You Only Know C++, and I think I just made that whole concept call me daddy.

It was a long night, but hell, I know a new language now. And although yes, I took a half-hour nap that turned into a one-hour nap and I was late for the class where I had to hand it in, I biked like a demon (on one hour of sleep) and got there without being too late at all. My professor didn’t seem to mind, at least. He’s bland, but he’s awfully nice.

Tonight I clean and nap and clean some more, preparing for my mother and sister to descend upon my apartment and find it wanting. Then tomorrow it’s Ian’s birthday. Happy birthday, Ian! I didn’t get you anything.

The day went very well, actually. Object-Oriented Software Development is going to be hard and a lot of fun; AI and Algorithms are going to be hard and… well, basically just hard. I managed to buy my books and a lunch and backpack. Oh! That’s a great excuse for a gimmick, because I was actually buying said backpack for Maria, and I had biked to class and had only one way to carry it. That’s right: for a few hours, mine was a metabackpack.

That biking was the first time I’ve ever actually done a real bike workout, and it was pretty cool. (It’s also longer than I thought; now that I’ve scouted the route, I think I’ll mostly TARC it.) At times I felt like an escapee of TRON, whizzing through lightfields with limitless dexterity. At others, such as when I ran into a chain link fence within five minutes of leaving my apartment, I did not. And at still others, I tried to stop, ha ha, whilst riding with a misaligned brake pad and fifty pounds of new textbooks. The other thing I learned today is “inertia.”

Also! I returned Sumana’s call and ended up talking to Leonard, who was gentle and solar-powered, the way I imagine dimetrodons. I babbled a lot, at one point, I think, engaging in extended discourse on the subject of avocados.

Yeah. I lived through one day, and tomorrow it’s already my weekly Hump Day Vacation, wherein I do nothing but hang out with Ian and get excited about secret projects. Also, try to find a longer CAT5 cable so I can get Yellow Puppy out on the interweb. Ph34r! My… vastly underpowered new computer!

About half the books I requested from the library arrived yesterday (and the magic Library Computer telephoned to tell me so!), so after I got off work I biked on down to get them. About a block away, I got a flat tire.

I really should have had them replace the tires when I got it tuned, but I thought I’d save a little money and just get new tubes. Smart me. I’ll take it in this afternoon and get two new ones–the back tire is the one that popped, but I’m sure the front isn’t far behind.

Anyway, I walked the rest of the way to the library and picked up another packful of pages (Lovecraft and Lem, both of whom I’m trying for the first time, and more) and started the trek back. A few blocks on, I noticed that this store called Twice Told Books was actually open–it had always been closed when I passed before. So I decided to check it out, locked my bike to a parking meter, walked in and was eaten.

The books were so dense there. The shelves weren’t nearly enough to hold them all, so they were stacked on top, piled at the bottom, stacked on top of the piles at the bottom, everything. It smelled like dry paper and glue, exactly like the stacks at the old EKU library, before they tore it up and made it big and glassy. I spent a lot of evenings there in middle school, while Mom was earning her Rank I (again), and read a lot of books. The shelves and the overstocking and the smell were all the same, and it was a pretty memory-intensive experience.

They apparently live to buy old sci-fi and fantasy paperbacks, too, and I picked up a lot of them–Le Guin, de Camp, all books about which I’ve thought “I should own that” but never got around to buying. I even got a book I’d been thinking about lately but never thought I’d find again, because I had no memory of the author or title, only the cover illustration. It’s called The Sword and The Satchel, as it turns out, which I learned when I found its cover staring up at me from one of the aforementioned piles.

They had to kick me out when they closed. I was enthralled, and for the first time I honestly wish I wasn’t leaving Bardstown Road. The music stores and comic shop and ice cream I could do without, but I’m going to sneak back to that bookstore whenever I can.

Think they’d give me a job?

I went running this evening and got completely lost, somehow ending up in the suburbs near some kind of park. I think I could have found my way back, but, with an oxygen-starved brain, I decided it would be easier to loop around and try to find Bardstown again. My route ended up really convoluted, and my copy of One by One had started over by the time I got home; I actually had fun, except for where it was hot and I wanted to die.

(I was going to rip a map from Yahoo and PSP it to comically illustrate my path, until it occurred to me that I had a stalker once, and I’d rather not give out directions to my apartment.)

While we’re on transportation, this evening I was fixin’ me up some brownies when I remembered that the package of mix recommended making a double batch in a 9×13 pan, and that was all I had. So I hopped on my bike and went to the store for another one. I hopped on my bike. And went to the store. I can do that now, because after four years of allowing my (mom’s) old Peugeot to rust in storage sheds, I went and took it to the shop and got it resuscitated and learned about gel-pad saddles.

I’m still very much getting used to it. I know, right, it’s just a bicycle, but the last time I rode one was exactly one trip to Shoe Sensation on Flora’s bike last fall, and the last time before that was in Brazil. (Don’t think it. If anyone could forget, I could.)

I lived, though–I didn’t even work up a sweat, which is astounding to me. I’ve been walking everywhere for long enough that going anywhere in the summer automatically means changing shirts, but this time I just… went. With almost no effort, and only a few death scares. Apparently this “mechanical advantage” thing is more than just jibber-jabber.

It’s still sinking in that I can go places now, do things, make plans. Bake. The brownies finished cooking while I sat here writing this, and they’re all mine, two different kinds of mix and fudge ribbon and chocolate chunks as inspired by the Chicago trip. There’s a lot of chocolate in those monsters. The kind of chocolate you wouldn’t want to trifle with. (Truffle with. Urk!)

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

This bike trip was actually something of a quest–borrowing a foot-measurement thingy from ShoeSensation for my play. Shoe Sensation: where the shoes are great, the people are friendly, and theylet 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 apack of Fluxxfor half price, though, and learned to play it with the Halo Chumps later that night. I found itenormously 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. Ifinally caught whatever everybody else has been battling, I guess, and it’s just in time for myplay and two major Comp Sci projects! I’ve been stuffy and nauseous too, though that went awayafter 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 couplehours.