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November 29, 2003 /

Incidentally, the reason I’m posting at 0230 hrs on a morning when I have no business being up is because I just got back from teching the Project Improv (scripted) show, PI Sketch, available for your viewing ONE NIGHT ONLY in about fourteen hours. Anybody who doesn’t mind a little raunch with their humor should get there between 1830 and 2000 hrs and stay until 2200, as there will be a carnival with a duck pond, and also rock songs and jokes. I’m running sound.

Unrelatedly, I’m sick. And use too many adverbs.

November 29, 2003 /

I normally don’t much like shopping the day after Thanksgiving, not so much because I mind crowds as because it’s the day Everybody’s Supposed To Go Shopping and I don’t like being manipulated by faceless corporations to engage in something that really shouldn’t involve faceless corporations so much.

As Maria and I did not previously own apartment-decorating paraphernalia, though, and as it was on sale, we went forth to Target and bought a horrifying amount of stuff, including a five-foot-or-something artificial tree (previous trees in my [non-Richmond] places of residence basically included Jon’s eighteen-inch tree, decorated with a Centre Debate 2000 button) and ordaments. We spent a LOT, just about everything I saved off the food budget this month by feeding my sister ramen noodles.

But we have shiny things now. And it’s snowing!

November 27, 2003 /

The band was okay–nice people, just the Motown they usually picked to play was not slow enough to slow dance and not fast enough to fast dance. They did get everybody out on the floor, though, for “Brown-Eyed Girl.” My mom’s song.

I saw Ben McBrayer, whom I’ve been meaning to write, and a million people whose names I didn’t know I remembered. I was terrified I’d read my Corinthians too fast, but a lot of people complimented me on that, and on how much I look like my dad. Instead of best man and maid of honor, they had Best Moms–my grandmother Virginia and my new grandmother Betty Jo. Father Pat started to prompt them, but they already knew the vows by heart.

Maria was kind enough to drive down from Louisville to get me last night, and I’ve spent Thanksgiving with her family today; Ian’s at Noah’s and Caitlan is at our family farm. This week was the only chance they’ll have for a break together before Christmas. I don’t know how they managed to pull this whole thing off in six weeks, but it was…

About halfway through the service, one of the light bulbs right above the front row chose November 26th as its day to expire. Nobody noticed: my mother and stepfather were glowing.

November 26, 2003 /

I was really tired last night, and I kind of had a micronap in the middle of a conversation with Maria–just short enough to drop me into my subconscious, but not enough that I even noticed I’d fallen asleep. The result was that I radically changed subjects in the middle of a sentence.

“Yeah, I still think so… even if–” I said, and then stopped myself.

“Even if what?” said Maria.

“Even if,” I said slowly, “my children are made of potatoes, and the only thing we’re having for dinner tonight is french fries and potato chips, because we’re out of food and I’m going to have to feed them to each other if we want to survive?”

November 25, 2003 /

There’s these two people named Sara Baase and Allen Van Gelder, right? And they wrote an algorithms textbook, and basically, fuck them. It must be nice to live in a frilly, golden fantasy world, where everyone has a pony and arrays are indexed from one instead of zero. You know, just like no computer in the world has ever done.

Yeah, I’ve been up for a while. Stupid projects. Last day of classes before MY MOM GETS MARRIED.

November 24, 2003 /

I met a girl I’d like to know better

But I’m already with someone

What a great lyric.

I met a girl.

I’d like to know better, but I’m already with someone

November 23, 2003 /

Last night I learned to play Hand and Foot, a kind of massively multiplayer Canasta, with Graham and Maria’s family. I also found out that I am a sore winner. HA HA HA.

November 21, 2003 /

Oh, right, and I updated Peeps I Read on the About page to include everything on my RSS aggregator, and some more stuff besides. Yes, you’re ALL ON THERE. This nearly tripled its length. Looking at it makes me a little bit scared. Next project is to update the rest of the page, which holds valuable archaeological evidence, dating back to the Last Summer Period.

November 20, 2003 /

I don’t know, is it still cool to like Weekly World News? Are they pre-post-hip or something? I don’t know. I can’t keep up. What I do know is that a couple of years ago I used them as my very first GSP hall theme, including stringing up multiple copies in the stalls for Quiet Reading Time, and it was a smash. I think that’s when I really fell in love with them.

And I know one other thing, which is that even when their headlines are ambiguous, they’re still some of the most refined brilliance commonly available for what, two dollars?

Osama Recruits Cloned Hitler

November 19, 2003 /

I’ve got student loans out that I need to have deferred (since I’m in grad school). There’s a six-month grace period, so I knew that November 24th was the Absolute Final Deadline for me to tell my loan provider my situation.

I’ve been freaking out at least once every other day since, oh, July, about these facts, and knowing that I really have to get around to them, but by the time I was in a position to do so that day, I’d forgotten, or there was something more important, or… you know. So today, with the specter of debtor’s prison breathing hot and heavy on my neck, I finally dug out the envelope labelled “LOAN STUFF” and pawed through it frantically. What if my response didn’t get through the mail in time? They’d extract the interest from my knees with a lead baton!

Turns out that the loans I have from Centre are provided by the same people as the loans I have at Louisville. They already know. I don’t have to do anything until 2009.

I’m an idiot, but hey, load off my back.