The Christmas Season: a handy guide

Christmas is coming! It's the season of giving. I know that from something I read in the Bible. Or maybe it was a poster in the mall, I don't remember which. Anyway, for any among you not schooled in what Christmas Is All About, despite having watched dozens of Disney-esqe movies on the topic, here is a helpful summary:

• Starting around the end of American Thanksgiving - the day after, in fact - money-conscious shoppers across the North American continent go on wild sprees of buying anything with a "Sale" sticker, disregarding the health and safety of anyone beside. Whether they actually need these discounted items is irrelevant, because everyone knows that the only way to save money is to buy anything with a reduced price.
• In the 30 or so days hence, any unneeded items acquired during that initial binge are categorized as "gifts" and parcelled out to friends and family members. The reasons for giving such items can range from genuine affection for the receiver and knowledge that the item given will suit them, to covering one's ass in case the receiver decides to give something to the giver. Of course, some unwritten rules for gift-giving do apply:
  
  
  
  1. The given item must be new. Anything bought used, no matter how appropriate for the situation, is not acceptable.
  2. The given item must be a physical, tangible item; preferably of a wrappable size. This means offering services, i.e. computer repair, room painting, vehicle fixing, babysitting, are not real "gifts", regardless of their usefulness.
  3. Cash, which is useful anywhere for anything, is only allowable if the giver is a grandparent and the receiver is their grandchild. Gift certificates of limited utility, however, are acceptable in almost any gifting situation.
  4. The item must not be particularly useful. In fact, the less useful it is, or the less you would want it in your own house, the more appropriate of a gift it is. Some handy examples: Oven mitts = bad gift. Fancy oven mitts stitched by a Mennonite grandmother that should never, ever be used as oven mitts = good gift. Enjoyable book bought used = bad gift. DVD player bought on sale and designed to break the moment the warranty runs out = good gift. Old computer for someone who needs one along with technical support courtesy of the giver = bad gift (this seems to send the message "ordinarily I'd charge you for this, but I'm being nice and giving you this for free"). Scented candles = good gift.
  You see? Giving appropriate gifts is quite basic overall, just as long as you remember that the only acceptable way of showing appreciation for someone is to spend money in their name in some way, any way; the exact details seldom matter.
• Either on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, or sometime thereabouts, family members put aside their distaste for each other and gather around a now-dying evergreen tree set up in the middle of a living room and bestow their gifts upon their respective recipients. Gifts are not given anonymously, in order that those receiving will know with whom to feel relatively inferior in the (likely) chance that no reciprocating gift was presented. Once the gift has been opened and its contents revealed, a suitable number of acknowledging phrases should be said. Such phrases may include:
      
  • "Thank you!"
      
  • "You shouldn't have."
      
  • "It's just what I wanted!"
      
  • "Where did you find this?"
      
  • "It's perfect, I love it."
  
  Some less appropriate phrases are:
      
  • "What is it?"
      
  • "I already have one."
      
  • "Isn't this what I gave to your brother last year?"
      
  • "Do you still have the receipt?"
      
  • "What the hell were you thinking?"
  
  Peppered enthusiasm is essential during the reaction phase in order to cover the recipient's true feelings about the item in the likely event that contradictory feelings exist, so it may be helpful to take a liberal dose of coffee or Red Bull before the ritual to increase energy levels.

Other Christmas traditions abound, such as the singing or playing of songs which are allowable for performance ONLY during the Christmas season by federal law. There's the sending of Christmas cards to anyone who will - or might - send a card to you. Simple email greetings or phone calls do not suffice, because such actions cost very little in terms of time, effort, and money. The genuine-ness of the dialogue's content is not a factor.

Christmas is everyone's favourite holiday, and not just because anyone who disagrees is automatically branded as "cheap" or "lacking the Christmas Spirit." (This does not imply that those who have the aforementioned Spirit are possessed by an irrational force that causes them to act against sound logic and their better judgement.) The retail industry and China's entire economy would barely survive without it. How else could consumers be coerced into buying what they don't want and don't need?

And so will I be joining in this method of celebrating Christ's birth, the practice of which was mandated by Jesus himself? Of course I will. Now, I know how hard it can be to buy stuff for me, since I abhor owning unnecessary stuff. So, I created an Amazon wish list for myself. Most of it is music that's hard to find in major music stores, since it's been created by artists who have talent and refuse to bow to the whims of the major labels. But, there's also a few books listed there that I'd find useful but have not bought for myself for the sole purpose of making life easier for anyone who desires - or is assigned - to buy something for and give to me.

Happy Christmas! (I understand that some people don't like the word "merry", perhaps due to its association with "eat, drink and be merry" and wherever that phrase is from.)

My birthday is today

And I have been in a sour mood all day. Or , at least, I've just been feeling down in general lately. This could be caused by any number of things:

• It's my birthday, and I really can't stand that kind of attention. I wouldn't be able to explain why. It could be because the attention is unwarranted. If people are going to take notice of me, I'd rather that it's because of something good I'd said or done; with your birthday, you're suddenly special one day and then just a face in the crowd the next. Or, it could be because I rarely ever notice when it's other people's birthdays, so I feel dumb when others notice mine.


• A lack of sunlight. I've probably said before that because we're on the eastern side of our time zone, the sun sets unusually early in the winter; it starts getting dark around 4:30 right now. I wouldn't say that I'm a Seasonal Affective Disorder case, but I am pretty sure that I'm affected by this lack of sunlight to some degree. I think I'll bed down at 10:00 tonight and try to get up earlier than normal tomorrow. Today was especially bad - because of our getting back late from the movie last night, I slept in until noon.


• I wouldn't say I'm missing home, or people at home, or anything that. I also wouldn't say that I'm sick of living here. But... I do need a change. I'm thinking of what it'll be like to be back home more than I'm thinking of what I'd still like to do while I'm here. We're at the point where The End is in sight, and it looks so desirable from this distance, but there's still all those assignments and other annoyances that have to be dealt with before it arrives. Another thing: I'm very often picturing myself the first morning after I at last get home. I'll probably wake at 10, go downstairs in track pants and a t-shirt from high school, and find everyone (minus Hester) around the table having tea. There will hopefully be a fire going in the wood stove. After I take a seat and hold the warm mug of whatever in my hands, it'll suddenly hit me: it's all over. Done. In the past. And I won't like it.


• I have several assignments' due dates coming up and have made hardly and headway on any of them. It's really hard to get anything done on one particular thing when there's a whole bunch others waiting, and I usually end up getting nothing done. I mean, look at me now, I'm writing this post instead of working on more pressing things. But you know, just having gotten something done puts me up a notch.

Complex? Yes. But as long as I get a good sleep tonight, get up early tomorrow, make a plan for the day and stick to it, things will get better.

My birthday is tomorrow

I turn 22, which is a landmark age: it's the first of many birthdays which are just that - birth days. I've already passed all the standard milestones, so there's no more "Now that I'm [blank] years old, I can [blankety blank]." This won't be happening again until I'm in my 50s and can qualify for discounted car insurance.

It's a happy coincidence that I share a birthday with Ryan Kruis, another member of our hardscrabble crew of adventure-seekers/North-America-escapers. So what to do tomorrow? Well, we have to do something, right?

Well no, actually, we don't. I've never been a fan of being the focus of a celebration, so I'm more than happy to be sharing a birth date this time around. My first year at Calvin, my birthday fell smack in the middle of the Thanksgiving break, which I spent in the dorm, alone, because I couldn't find a ride home. The next two years I was home that weekend, and had very modest family-centred gatherings. Last year, all I did was I took the cake I'd gotten from my mom via Calvin around to apartments of people I knew and distributed slices to whoever desired some. (Of course, when I got to E13, Laura and Helen and them insisted on lighting a candle on it and singing... but I half-expected that.)

Still, we are going to do something to celebrate, probably tonight as well. Maybe see a movie? Of the dozen or so movies playing in this city right now, I've only heard of about 4 of them, many of which were "new" back home at least 6 months ago. We'll likely look up some reviews online and plunge into one of them sight unseen after East European Culture class tonight. That's about all the ideas we have at the moment. I'll go along with whatever gets cooked up, but I'd also be content to stay here, work on my pile of essays, and maybe call home.

A variety of Apple-related thoughts

Easter eggs. Does anyone remember those? I'm talking about the hidden surprises or programmer credits in software. For all you Mac veterans out there, you may remember the time around when System 7.5 was hot as the golden age of Easter eggs, especially the ones in the system software. Now we're up to the 6th public release of Mac OS X with the 7th fast approaching, and barely ANY eggs have surfaced, in the OS or otherwise. I know Steve Jobs has a special distaste for eggs in Apple products, but why the sudden disappearance of them across the board?

To my knowledge, eeggs.com is the most comprehensive collection of Easter eggs out there, although several of its entries are duds. The list of submitted eggs for OS X is located at <http://www.eeggs.com/tree/1141.html>, but only a few of them qualify as genuine eggs in my book. They are:

• having the Weather widget show weather for "Nowhere": <http://www.eeggs.com/items/47269.html>


• holding down shift to slow down animation effects (although it's been demonstrated publicly, it's not in the documentation anywhere): <http://www.eeggs.com/items/29318.html>


• hidden developer pictures in Mail.app; I wonder if there's an associated trigger to have these images show up in the app somehow? <http://www.eeggs.com/items/39298.html>

Everything else there is either actually a feature, or is technically part of the UNIX underpinnings of the OS, and so isn't unique to OS X itself. I know there was also some funny text in the about box of the HackTV application that was originally among the dev tools in earlier versions of OS X, but that tool is gone now.

Oh, and if you look under Computers > Hardware > Quadra 950, there's an egg listed there that I found and posted. I haven't found any references to it anywhere else on the 'net, so I think I can safely claim the title of being The First to discover it.

Also, whatever happened with XGrid? Why hasn't anyone started some sort of a "processor cycle sharing service" or something to that effect, ANYTHING that makes practical use of this incredible tool? The most I've seen has been the XGrid@Stanford project, which I'm a part of, and another project or two that are either not public or no longer operational. There's a few technical articles out there and a few XGrid-related projects, but very little in the way of living, public projects that actually use the technology. C'mon dev community - how about an a plugin that lets something like iDVD pass off some of its encoding work to other computers? If nothing happens, I may just have to tackle such a project on my own.

On photography

So we all just got back from 3 days in Sárospatak and Debrecen, out in Hungary's east end. I would be really surprised if the order of these big group multi-day trips wasn't planned to go the way it did. Our first trip to Romania was in "fixer-upper" vans to places very far away for three nights. This last one was a relatively short trip; only two nights (spent in a hotel), with few planned events and a bus to chauffeur us around. Conversations I've had lately have confirmed my feeling that we're all rather tired of travelling, and that we've reached the point where not doing this or that or not going on another trip wouldn't at all detract from the whole experience of this semester. (Case in point: that Ukraine trip? Not happening as of 20 minutes ago.) Besides, the end of the semester is fast approaching. We've got some essays to write.

But that's not what the title of this post is about. At the risk of sounding full of myself, I've gotten some compliments about the photos I've taken so far. (Admittedly, I've also taken flak for each time I manage to catch someone in a less-than-flattering pose. Remember, being able to laugh at oneself is a valuable skill.) I'm not sure if anyone's interested in hearing about developing an eye for photography, but I'll post about it anyway.

Even the cheaper consumer models of digital cameras have a lot of settings to be fiddled with. Take the time to learn about white balance, ISO, aperture, exposure, focus modes, flash settings, and how to set each of them. Usually your camera's manual will tell you everything you need to know, although there's probably far less dry tutorials available online. As you get to know each of them, you'll start to get a feel for which settings are appropriate for each situation.

Of course, the camera is only a piece of equipment. The skill of the photographer is a much bigger factor than the capabilities of the camera in the making of a great photo. You knew I was going to say this, but... practice. It's easier to do so when you're constantly exposed to new situations, but not necessary. Skill comes more from practice than talent, not just in using a camera, but in recognizing a great picture when it comes.

I say this because there are great pictures to be had everywhere, all the time, and most of them pass by without being recorded on film (or memory card). You can increase your chances of grabbing that perfect shot by having your camera handy all the time, and I don't mean just when you're sightseeing. I mean, have it on you, All The Time. At the very least, have it somewhere handy among your things, and not down in a drawer or, while travelling, buried at the bottom of your backpack.

Take a look at what you've taken pictures of so far. Are you trying to document your experience as accurately as possible by getting shots of all the settings you're in, as well as other people in those settings? Or are you trying to document people's character and relationships, without regard for setting? Are you getting any detail shots? It's my uninformed opinion that everyone tends towards one of these behaviours, and to get a good range of pictures, you'll want to get a bit of all three. I think that a lot of people, myself included, tend towards wanting to capture as much as possible, to zoom out and cram everything into the frame. This may stem from a desire to capture not just the sights, but the whole of your experience to show to your audience later, since bottling up the sights and sounds and everything else isn't possible. The trick: after getting the obligatory wide shots, pick a detail or three and focus on them. Some small piece of foliage, a door handle, some shadows, a reflection. Don't worry about what you're cutting out - your audience will never know what they're missing. And they will appreciate your attention to detail. Another thing to try is to search for patterns or themes. I've been photographing phone booths, streetcars, street signs, and graffiti. Can you do better?

Your pictures will almost always be more interesting if there's people in them. This goes double if they're candid shots; meaning, the people in view aren't posing. Candids are hard to get, because people will naturally change how they act once a camera is out. A big zoom capability can really help here, as it will allow you to shoot from a distance and stay out of people's faces.

You should probably know that each time I download a batch of pictures to my computer, I take the time to do some basic editing on each of them. This usually involves a bit of straightening and adjusting the black/white levels, two things that programs like iPhoto make simple. The best strategy is to try to take great shots from the start, but this kind of basic editing can go a long way towards making more of your photos "good enough".

For videotaping, everything here applies and then some. Tripod use: good. Rapid, handheld pans: bad. Zooming in and out: ugly. And painful to watch. There's piles of literature on videotaping out there, and it's all just a Google search away. I have just one point to make: it's true that ever since video editing became easily accessible to the masses, it's been possible to cut out the boring parts and create a video that was actually watchable. But in my case, even though I have technology and the knowhow to do that, I often can't be bothered to edit the footage I shoot, and I bet it's the same with a lot of you. So the best bet for us all (and our audiences) is to learn how to take great, watchable video right from the start.

See, the art of developing an eye for photography (and videography) is learning to turn off all the brain filters we've developed to deal with the massive amount of visual information we get each day. Learn to pause and notice patterns, shadow, outline, composition, and more. Think of what people will want to see in ten years, and document it. There is so much you see each day that would make for a great picture, things that you look at but don't actually "see" simply because you've looked at it many times before. That's why we always bring out the cameras and camcorders for birthday parties and other "special" events, but never bother to document the mundane and the everyday. Those are nice, but I can guarantee that pictures exploring normal, everyday life will be much more interesting ten years down the road. And trust me, NO ONE will be interested in footage of the entire duration of Timmy's first soccer game. Knowing when to stop the camcorder is just as important as knowing when to start.

One final caution: when on a trip, be careful you're not "living behind the lens" and snapping as much as possible. What you're doing is trying to have your camera do the looking for you so you can do the "seeing" later. This feels similar to wanting to go somewhere and see everything just so you can say you've been there. Instead, strive to take a manageable number of great pictures instead of a pile of mediocre ones. And more importantly, remember to pause, sit, and soak in the surroundings. It's more enjoyable, more relaxing, and you'll get more out of the experience.

It happened again

I've been sick. Again. This is the third time so far this semester I've been bedridden for a day or more. And I'm not the only one among our group to whom this has been happening. Is it because there's different pathogens in this part of the world that there aren't at home, which I've never been exposed to? Or has riding public transit all the time been to blame? My mom says it's because I don't eat enough fruits and vegetables - I wouldn't be surprised if that at least factors in somehow; I definitely eat a narrower range of foods here, even though the grocery stores are much closer.

What's really annoying is that I had to miss the group dinner after a guest lecture at Karoli last night. But I've got good news! I just saved money on my car insurance by switching... oh wait... I mean, a package from home arrived. Inside was a birthday card and brownie cake, a cheap watch to replace the cheaper one that failed on me in Prague, and a camera. A small Canon, it'll do perfectly to help me cover these last five weeks until I get home, when I can try to get my original camera working again or start looking for another one.

Also, for those not on facebook but interested in the photos I have there: I found that those links allowing you to browse albums without logging on are still available, they've just moved to the bottom of the album editing window. So now you can click any of my album links, here listed below My Cheesy Pictures, and view them without a facebook account.

Group dynamics (read: drama)

So, we've all been here, living and studying and travelling together for well over two months now. At what point did the drama start? You may already know what I'm talking about. Roommate issues. Little annoyances. Personality conflicts. Things said that weren't meant to be overheard - I have personally been the focus of one of those episodes.

I know it happens here, because I've heard the words "drama" and "power struggles" tossed around in the conversations that drift over to wherever I happen to be sitting, usually my room or one of the kitchens. Did you really think that such a mixed bunch such as us, parachuted into a faraway country with a vastly different culture, language, and history, un-tempered by the familiar company of friends and family would get along swimmingly for the entire four months? You can't expect us all to come out of this on perfectly amicable terms. When all this ends, it'll be like coming back from a crazy March Break road trip: you're all still friends, and you'll be getting together again soon - but right now, you all really need to get away from each other for a spell. Of course, that's my own, singular, unenlightened perspective, and I may be way off base here.

Of course, you may already know I'm bad enough as it is at noticing when someone's ticked off at me, let alone seeing that happen between other people. That's why the only times I know drama is happening is because I, or I overhear other people talking about it. The second occurs more often than might be normal, because my presence is so seldom noticed. Especially when I'm on a laptop and have my giant foam headphones on. Much like right now. I'm thinking that the time it takes for drama to develop is proportional to the size of the group and influenced by the male/female ratio, which in our case, is severely skewed - there's only 5 guys out of a group of 21.

From what I can tell, there aren't any complete-polar-opposite personality pairs among us which are marked by silent toleration or, rarely, outright hostility. There also aren't any crushes, mercifully enough. (Aron and Rachel don't count; they were together long before the trip began.) Even better: in this kind of fish-out-of-water environment, everyone can act as close to their true selves as the rest of us could hope to see. For example, many of us have a boyfriend or girlfriend at home. I've gotten to know (almost) everyone in the absence of their S.O., so the behaviour modification that usually accompanies such pairings doesn't have a chance to occur, reducing tension for us all. I'm wondering how jarring it'll be to see everyone once we're back at Calvin, in more familiar surroundings.

To summarize: it's more complex than it looks, but everyone's still nice to each other.

More Bad News

Two days ago, I had my camera in my hands. I had just taken a picture of my street. I began to change some settings, when suddenly,

*BLINK*

the camera shuts off. No warning, no funny noises, no spark or smell of burnt toast, nothing. This has never happened before. I couldn't get it to turn back on, not after shaking it, nor switching the battery.

Canon PowerShot S60, disassembled

The camera is now in several pieces. No, I did not toss the thing off the roof of my dorm; I have carefully disassembled it, keeping track of which screws go where, inspecting each circuit board for loose connections or blown components. At this point I am working out a strategy for extracting the three screws that need a #00 Phillips to be removed - I'll either try to find such a tool, or scrape away at the screw head until I can fit a larger flathead inside it. Once that's done, I'll hopefully be able to inspect the connections between the power supply board and the rest of the camera - based on how the camera behaved, I feel this is where the problem likely lies. Hopefully I'll at the same time be able to get the flash working again, which quit working last week when I dropped it. The lens barrel is still extended, which has made disassembly tedious. [UPDATE: I got those screws out with a modified flathead screwdriver and some tiny pliers, though I needed another person to help me with the operation. As soon as I finish this post, I'm going to get back to working on it. Also, the flash's bulb is in two pieces, so forget about getting that working - unless I can find a spare part.] Attached is what my camera currently looks like, the picture having been taken with Nate's camera.

This is not new for me. I have taken apart, to some degree, nearly every piece of electronics I have ever owned. My headphones have been reinforced with steel plates in two places to compensate for the failure of the plastic, and the cord and plug are replacements of replacements. I replaced the battery on my iPod, attempted the same with my watch (but no, it was really dead for some other reason), fixed two manufacturing defects on my MacBook, and a lot more. Computers, stereos, discmans, Zip & SyQuest drives, cameras, you name it; nothing is safe from me and my toolbox.

And seriously, what's up with technology failing on me at the most inopportune times? In Florida in January, I had not one, but TWO cameras fail on me, on the same day. Granted, one of them took a swim in the Gulf of Mexico when my kayak flipped in crummy weather, but I've no idea what happened to the other one. Just before I left in August, my watch failed for good. The replacement I grabbed out of one of my drawers at home worked fine until that really cold day in Prague. Some wires in my headphones unsoldered themselves halfway through this semester, so I've had to keep the wires together with tape until I can get a soldering iron, which probably won't be until I get home. (Though granted, they've held up remarkably well since then.) Maybe this happens to everyone, but I notice it more because I actually work to repair such things.

But this project likely has the highest stakes, and longest odds, out of anything I've done so far. Wish me luck.

On fitting in

Anyone who remembers talking to me in August just before I left may remember me saying over and over again how I was deathly afraid of the kind of first impression I would make. I knew all to well from experiences on other trips and living in dorms that if you don't make some sort of a splash and build connections right from the start, you will be typecast into something you probably aren't, and it'll be that much harder to properly define yourself and "break in" to the social circles that ultimately form. And you all know I'm no good at forming my own circles, what with me preferring to be on my own 90% of the time.

I don't exactly how well I did then; I haven't asked anyone else what their first impression of me was after we'd first all met each other - heck, I may have already torpedoed my chances unwittingly after our initial meeting - but I think I did well enough. Stay quiet but not silent, attempt to participate in conversation no matter how bored it makes you, refrain from taking pictures right away, and try not to say anything too stupid. (The time for that comes later, once people learn to tell when you're joking - but I'll get back to that.) Eventually, the first impressions period passed and I was able to relax a bit.

Fast-forward several weeks to the present. The wrapping-up of the semester has already begun, so it's time to start reflecting on how things went. In summary: I never did end up fitting in.

Not because I tried and didn't succeed - it's because I never really tried. I can hear some of your faces fall and start to feel sorry for me, but it's really not as bad a thing as you may think. You see, it didn't take me long to discover that I didn't have much in common with anyone in this group. There were only 4 other guys, and 3 other Canadians. No one else likes Five Iron Frenzy, or any other music that I'm into. A few others have Macs - okay, only two - but no one else appears interested in technical stuff to the degree that we'd be able to have an actual conversation between equals about it. (Still, this has the side effect of making me the unofficial goto guy when people need help solving any of those kind of problems - a position which, in this situation, I enjoy.) No one, and I mean this, has my sense of humour. This is why I don't dare say some of the things that others can get away with, because no one ever knows how to pick up my particular cues of "I am kidding when I say this". The net effect is that I have very little common ground with people, and that makes conversation, and relationship-building, difficult for me. I know all this because I've never had the kind of free-flowing, animated conversation where I always know when and what to say next - ones like I had on the plane back from the Netherlands, and frequently at home with Ben & Heather, Christina, high school friends, and family. But I've been able to cope. For one, this is nothing new - the interim I took in Florida was similar, which was made more complicated by how a) were together for only a month, and 2) had no kind of home base the whole time.

I write about this now because it all came to a head tonight. There was a dance party in the girls' apartment. Yes, I went, but I could only take so much of it. So many others know the words to all the songs, and actually were into what they were hearing. I can, at best, mildly enjoy it. After being out of my element for so long, I felt a strong need to retreat back to my own world. It quickly became clear that I wouldn't be able to do that in there, so I left (despite many pleas to the contrary), and spent the rest of the evening listening to MY music and air-bassing with a hockey stick. I considered rejoining them after a while, but that never came to pass.

I can feel it in some of the pleasantries others exchange with me - that concern about if I'm really "OK", since I rarely ever want to do stuff with people, or just seem flat-out weird sometimes. If there's anything I want everyone to know, it's this: I'm outside my comfort zone here. This is not a place where how I really am can come out. So, when you're all back at Calvin in January, I hope you'll all take the time on a Wednesday night or a Saturday afternoon to see a men's basketball game. There, down in the pep band during time-outs and halftime, you will see me playing bass, or possibly, drums.

I will be having the time of my life.

And I want you all to share in that.

Past the halfway point... a while ago

Not only is it aleady November, we're already a week into it. Which means, I have a scant six weeks left in this country. How did this happen? It's quite simple, actually. Several weeks ago, the mid-semester break dawned. I busied myself with planning my solo travel in the Netherlands. Ten days passed. When I returned, it was the end of October, but I didn't notice, because I had about 36 hours to recover from my trip and prepare for the next: 4 days in the Czech and Slovak Republics. Then I got back and suddenly, I found we'd crossed a threshold. No longer was The End some far-off, arbitrary date, but something measurable and tangible. We used to have seemingly endless time ahead of us to do what we wanted; now, our time is limited and careful plans need to be made if we want to do everything we'd hoped to. Did I mention the 4 or 5 essays I have to write in that time? Or the 3 other books to read? This concerns me. I now look forward to home not for the familiar surroundings, but the lack (or at least reduction) of Things that are Going On. Assuming I manage to score an internship, Interim will be even more laid back.

I cannot possibly keep up with writing all this stuff when more stuff keeps happening all the time. So, that's why I've been neglecting to post for the past while. But, I have a lot I still want to write about, so stay tuned.