Category: People

September 20, 2002 /

I’m going home tonight to escort my sister out onto the field at Homecoming. I guess technically I could be there to actually come home too, especially since my own (ill-fated) appearance onthe Court four years ago was the only football game I ever went to. But I’m not real big into that.

I don’t have much else to say. We did a lot of work on the play this week, and it’s going to be good, but right now the payoff is mostly exhaustion. Really I just wanted an excuse to update the cam. There ain’t much better than a reluctant girl wearin’ a plastic mullet! Well, actually there is.

September 14, 2002 /

Amanda and Jon got me a betta! Like the fish! They just about made my year. I haven’t decided what to name it yet. They inform me it’s a boy, but I think it’s going to get some kind of proper noun anyway, so that may not matter. (Does it ever, with fish?)

I’ll put up pictures soon, but right now I’m enjoying Amanda’s mullet too much. After that I think the fish may just take over everything.

“The Fish Take Over Everything” is a great name for a band.

Update 1614 hrs: Idaho! (is the name of the fish!)

September 5, 2002 /

Apartment update: There’s no stopper for the kitchen sink, so I’ve been using a wad of Saran Wrapto plug up the drain in order to do dishes. If you were to conclude from this, without other information, that I’m living in a guys’ apartment, you’d be right. But, y’know, at least we are doing the dishes (which we only dirtied four days ago).

As is usually the case when there’s actually a lot happening in my life, I haven’t had time to write it down. I have literally not spent one continuous hour in leisure activity since Monday,when it became apparent that I was going to have to personally reset the speed and duplex mode on every single Ethernet card in Cheek / Evans. There are 109 students in Cheek / Evans, and almost all of them have computers. You can imagine the rest.

I’m also way way behind on the Cento web site, which is supposed to go live next Monday (this statement and the preceding paragraph are not unrelated). I’m really unhappy about this, plus of course the fact that the middle room is a disaster zone. A lifetime of Mom’s cleaning habits is starting to drive me out of my mind. I know I don’t have time to clean up all my junk, and I don’t even really want to, but if I don’t do it soon I’m going to start screaming at random. Thanks, Mom!(I’m kidding. Mostly.)

Also I got a girlfriend. You might have guessed that.

I think I’m really going to enjoy this year if I can ever catch up enough to notice that it’s happening.

so what! say what! for your own sake
do you have a headache or heartbreak?
P.S. Anthropology rocks!

August 23, 2002 /

P.S. Today’s IdiotCam© has been one of myfavorite jokes since fourth grade. I’m almost glad Mom bought one of the stupid things, since I cannow finally capture it in low-quality digital form.

August 23, 2002 /

Today is my sister’s birthday! Caitlan is eighteen! Happy birthday, Caitlan!

In other news, Sumana has frequently plugged Bookfinder, a kickin’ service that, well, finds books. It’s kind of like the “network of bookstores” that Amazon uses to find out-of-print books, only much, much better. I was reading some of her comments on the service and how cool it was, and I kept thinking “gee, I wish I had a rare or used book that I was looking for.”

A couple days later, I was surprised to remember that I WAS looking for such a book, and had been for three years–Orson Scott Card’s short story omnibus, Maps In A Mirror. Bookfinder turned up several copies, all of which were too expensive at the moment, of course, but most of which were still cheaper than the few an Amazon search turned up two years ago.

So I went away satisfied, but came back tonight when I remembered a book that this amazing girl had showed me at a convention. The book is Anthropology, and it’s one of those forced-restriction masterpieces: 101 stories, each 101 words long. What I got to read of it was fantastic, and I wanted my own copy, but I remembered she’d said it was out of print.

Which it is–but tonight I found it for just ten bucks with shipping, and bought it. Thanks to Bookfinder! Hooray, Bookfinder!

August 16, 2002 /

The Gin Blossoms were here. Here. Last night. I saw the Gin Blossoms last night. Here.

I put up a brave front, but the fact is I know almost nothing about music. This is a vast improvement over, say, 1998, when I knew literally nothing about music (embarrassing anecdote: I once asked Erika “So, what other songs has U2 put out besides ‘With or Without You?'”).

So 98-99 was my Big Into Gin Blossoms period. I actually own their greatest hits (only they could make their third album a greatest hits album [for the record, a couple of non-hits on there aren’t bad]). I knew nothing about pop or instrumentation or songs that had more than three chords, and they were a lot of fun to listen to. This was right after they broke up, I believe, and “Hey Jealousy” was still likely to get a cheer if it came on the radio.

It is frankly bizarre to think that I saw them live in concert last night. Granted, EKU is a large school, and it’s kind of surprising they don’t get more bands, really. I think Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds were here once.

Anyway, my friend Erin (Michalik), an RA comrade for two years running, called me at 6 and asked if I’d be willing to go see the Gin Blossoms for free. We got there as they were finishing their first song (“Follow You Down,” naturally) and there were like a hundred people there.

A hundred people. At a Gin Blossoms concert.

Maybe another twenty people arrived during the whole show. The Coliseum can hold something like two thousand. This is not the saddest part. No, that would be the lead singer actually asking people to try stage-diving. Or trying to run out into the crowd with a corded mike. Or getting said mike tangled around the chair he stood on (making him roughly my height). Or the fact that he dressed like he really wanted to be in The Strokes.

I felt bad for them, really. What’s it like to play to audiences of thousands, then break up, then get back together and find yourself playing for a hundred dispassionate kids at Eastern Kentucky University? Granted, this is probably just karma catching up to them for selling the same song so many times, but still.

I did have a lot of fun, in a surreal kind of way, and it was nice to hear the songs–exactly the way they sound on the albums, but much louder–again. It was good to see Erin again too.

I feel better for Angie. The man’s playing to crowds nearly as big as the Gin Blossoms, for Pete’s sake. Also, they both do Rocket Man, and Angie does it a lot better.

July 26, 2002 /

I’m going to be a chaperone at the NJCLconvention most of next week, and I don’t know how often I’ll have web access. I hope to getanother entry up before I go, but that’s there just in case. And!

June 30, 2002 /

The Handmaid’s Tale was everything I expected plus three. I mostly remember it as being one of the choices of summer assignments for Mr. Munson’s junior AP English, and even though my choices were good (Ordinary People and Catcher in the Rye), I can’t help but be impressed that he gave it to unproven high schoolers to read.

I’ve been trying to articulate this thought for like fifteen minutes now, and it’s not coming. It’s something like this: But. The fact that he had the balls to give rising juniors books like Handmaid’s Tale isn’t as impressive, really, as the fact that under him we read them and enjoyed them and understood them. Reason number five hundred sixteen I won’t be a teacher–I could never live up to that.

Anyway. The Truth was even fluffier than I expected it to be, actually, but still not bad. I’m most of the way through Enchantment now, and Card’s books are only getting talkier and I don’t like it. He wrote a book called Character and Viewpoint a long time ago, and while I still consider it one of the best books on writing I’ve ever read, he’s stopped listening to his own advice. I wish he’d show me what his characters are doing instead of telling me what they’re thinking. Ender’s Game works so well because it strikes a balance between those two. Enchantment is close, but no cigar. (Children of the Mind missed the whole damn booth.)

And Minority Report was really good, yadda yadda. I just wish, in a fashion oddly reminiscent of Vanilla Sky, that I hadn’t had to pee so bad for so much of it.

June 10, 2002 /
  • My first remote update! I am at GSP. It is planning week. I am in List-Making-Mode.
  • It’s the smells that set off my memory, and the strongest of those memories, weirdly, are of this week last year, rather than GSP proper. Maybe it’s because that’s when I first encountered these smells–the same way the smell (odor? miasma?) of Nevin still reminds me of my five weeks there during my GSP, instead of my whole freshman year.
  • Same floor. Same room. Six dumb flights of stairs or the bitchy elevator. And the lights don’t work as well this year.
  • But! I get to practice saying “Sixth Todd” as all one syllable again.
  • I got Brushfire Fairytales and Dirty Vegas. Both are really good, although I think I like the former better. (Jon, let me know if you want me to burn you a copy of the second. Just to try before you buy, ofcourse.)
  • I shouldn’t say this, because Kim and Taylor will probably read it, but I don’t think it really matters now. Last year’s campus director was named Laura. This year’s director of seminar is a different Laura. The first one is about as gone as you can get, but every time someone mentions the second Laura by name, I shudder involuntarily.
  • The new campus director is named Joe, and he’s kickass, awesome, right on. I’ve been looking forward to working with him since the retreat in April, and so far it’s every bit as good as I’d hoped.
  • I loved our staff last year, and I would have been happy to see any of them return. Not many of us did–some by choice, some not so much. But the few who did come back… well, if you’re reading this and you didn’t make it this year, don’t take this the wrong way: again, I loved you all. But Erin, Mooch, Jimmy and Caudill are the ones I would have picked if I’d had four choices, and they’re all back, and that makes me really happy.
  • But.
  • B Rich and Harney would have been in my picks too, except I knew they were going to be head RAs last year anyway. And they’re brilliant and exactly right for the job, and it’s going to be a good time, with them around.
  • There’s simply no comparison to draw between them and the people who had those jobs last year. Not just apples and oranges, but, like, apples and tungsten.
  • So it’s not that I miss last year’s head RAs because I want them doing the job again. It’s that Emma and Drew were my friends, and now that I’m here again, with these smells and that room and those memories, I miss them so much it’s like a knife in my side.
  • That said. It’s going to be a good six weeks.