Wedageddon

Thursday morning in the throes of a famous Streissand movie, The Week We Wed. Wowsers, it's been crazy. And I just got here!

Here is Rochester and more specifically the Searl kitchen, where looking out the bay windows I can see a slew of centerpiece potted flowers (called heliotropes, I believe) and two shepherd's staffs that Beck and I wove with purple/blue/white flowers. It's all quite lovely. In fact, why describe when I can show...




To catch things up, I nabbed Ben and Ali from the airport on Monday night after a weekend of taking care of the Heidster. Who is that, you ask?



Yep, Heidi rules. We had a very fun weekend together, up to and including her sleeping on top of me in the guest bed and then licking me awake at 5 am a couple of times. Hellsyeah! So on the way home from the airport, Benali and i attempted to have a little farewell dinner in Westborough and were badly shot down at the Canyon Cafe. So we went to (Gee) Willikers and "enjoyed" some subpar margaritas and "fine" dining. And an insane woman tried to bus our table. Odd.

So a solid last night with Gringoat, and I woke up CRAZY kinds of early on Tuesday to head down to school. But FIRST - the Honda dealership. I had this grand plan to get an iPod jack installed in the car for our coming cross country trek, and the price quoted to me at Bernardi was $170. So I dropped the car off there and walked the remaining 2 miles to school (uphill, snow, etc.). And then they called me at 7:45 to tell me it was actually going to be $410. WHAAAAA??? No Dice-K, man. So I had to cancel the order and after class, walk BACK to the Honda dealership. PUNKS!!!! Bernardi Honda, may you burn in a stereo-accessory-less Hell.

So that whole experience was aggravating, but the last day at the Nut was crushingly sweet. My class managed to not be complete jerks, Danielle stopped off and gave me a present, Tory and Grace baked me a cake, and the science / math departments sent me off kindly with gifts. Here are some pictorial accounts of the last day at the Hill; my Nutty friends, I will miss you.

First, the SASI Swans:


And the rest of the class:


And Danielle with mmmmGift, mmmmkay:


And Tory and Grace, and the cake:



ANd the most excellent set of Math/Science types ever to attempt the education of right-brained yahoos:


ANd the Nut as I left it:


So I then BOOKED it home to my empty apartment...


Packed (not pahked) the car and left Massachsetts in the rearview:


And now here I am, that's great it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes and aeroplanes and t-minus 2 days. YIKES! Speaking of, I have to go get some wedding-ness in gear, but I promise I will get more up here soon.

ANd don't worry, I definitely know that I still owe a graduation account and some general recall of the past week and a half or so. But now, on to the details. Be back with more soon.

P.S. I shouldn't fail to add names to the Walnut photos. That's Corin, Jon, Anne, Me, Kathi and Anne B. And the SASI class photos are Jourdan, Nicole (son of a pro baseball player!) and Hope, and the class picture is (standing) Mengting, Celine, Brad, Aaron, Jourdan, Hope, Josh, Vicky, Justine, Vicky, Enzo, Sooji (sitting) Caitlin, Nicole and (prone) Marc.

P.P.S. I also shouldn't fail to mention that my last day was very nice - I got cards from a lot of students, including some of my Taiwanese students who told me that I had helped them a lot with their confidence in math and english and everything. Good times. I will miss a selective number of my students. That SASI class, though - sheesh.

I Prefer the 4.3 Mile Version

Just went on Ali's run this afternoon, and this time made it back sans call to beck or asking for directions 15 times.

I suppose this was a horrendous risk to take - with Beck and Gringoat out of town, I had serious flashes of ending up stranded somewhere in Central Mass, crying at the lack of street signs. But don't worry, I took precautions - I looked at Google Maps right before I left to make sure I knew which road to turn on AND I hooked up "The Lady" (read: GPS device) to my forehead so I would know when to turn right. That was a life saver. As they say, fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, Baba O'Reilly.

D-Hall this morning was thoroughly stupid, but it's over... I finished cleaning the apartment yesterday, so all that's left to do this PM is truck over and put the seventeen bags of garbage out for pickup tomorrow. Yikes. That and I've gotta go pick up BenAli from el aeropuerto. Then it's one more day of the Nut, pack up the car and leave the last six years in the rearview. Ho hum.

I am waiting on writing up the festivities of the past week (read: it's not happening) until I get a chance to use pictorial evidence - my computer is packed up, and I don't want to toss a bunch of stuff on the Sprecher computer. In exciting news, I got through the entire weekend and managed to snap NO PICS of Emily. Actually, that is a lie; I have a picture of her back and the back of her noggin that was accidentally captured as Ali walked down the graduatin' aisle. I am, like, the worst paparazzi ever.

Alright, Heidi is giving me a look normally reserved for "Cystic pressure" type indications, so I'm going to cut this short. There are pics of her on their way, too, I swear.

T-minus five...

Ground Control to Major Nyet

"Your circuit's dead, there's something wrong."

(Wow, we've been buried in busy-ness here at NyetJones, Inc. Sorry for the dearth. It will happen again).

Posting here from the upstairs study of the Gringoat, post Heidi-walk. A whirlwind week and an account is coming, I swear, but for now you'll get the brief outline form (so I can remember what to put down later). I'm relatively certain (how could one forget this, honestly) that we last left our heroes on the day of "The Song," the shutout of a Dean's Dinner and the lazy Saturday morning of tutoring. And so...

Saturday Night - The Opening Act of Vet Graduation, aka Alipalooza 2007, a party at the Sprechers' down in Newton. Featuring a bona fide celebrity* and red carpet treatment for red-haired grandmamas. Fun times, endearing speech times. Alipalooza.

(* - That was, perhaps, the worst joke ever)

Sunday Morning - Brunch with the iPFam, GrinGoat and Ali's brother, LA Actor and Honorary PBoat for the weekend Jon.

Sunday Afternoon - A threateningly rain-soaked but ultimately beautiful Vet School graduation, aka Alipalooza 2007 Main Show Under the Big Tent (featuring no fewer than 24 PGoat-Devotees, or Pgoatees, if you will. But you won't, I know). This also featured Sarah's Vet Address, which oh yeah is going to get its own post on The Ballad in a second.

Sunday Late Afternoon - Ice Cream in the Drizizzle. S & S. You Know This.

Sunday Evening - Fun dinner with iPFam at The Sole Proprietor (it's a fish restaurant, not a unique entity or a place to buy indulgences). Rumor has it that Alipalooza (now with shuttle buses) conquered a restaurant somewhere in Boston. She had her own menus. Those Wolfs do it up bigtime.

Monday - 'Nother day at school, packing, and Pizza Dinner with an Abandoned Ali. This Post is very Ali-centric, eh?

Tuesday - Test at School, Sweet Letter from a Student, Present from Fellow Teachers, Packing, and farewell dinner at Vinny T's with Gringoat and the Trinity (Christophe, Malcom and Sarha aka Sloe Bube). Let it be known that Sarah is supermom - she is unphased and handles the kid with somethign bordering on maternal instinct. Compelte with sarcasm. Quite impressive.

Wednesday - School blah blah blah, Packing, Burning myself, Ice cream and Heidi style instructions from BenAli. Beck did not leave as planned.

Thursday - Airport ride for BenAli, Politics at School, More Packing, Packing Packing Packing AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHH. Beck did not leave as planned - but we did finish stuffing the truck at about 9 o'clock AND we figured out a gigantic pneumatic gate. Let's hear it for two Rice enginee... academs.

A side note - Poor Beck. I had to work all week and she was stuck dealing with our overstuffed apartment. Possessions may be fleeting, but they are not very light. Ugh. Sorry Kwia.

Friday - Beck pushed off early early, I put in a next to last day at school, complete with an Engagement Party thrown by last year's Stat Class, which is just about as sweet as a human being can possibly take without enduring severe kidney damage and retinopathy. Seriously, just a ridiculously cute, make you cry sort of event. Nice. Came home and finished putting trash away in the apartment; the actual cleanup will happen hopefully Sunday. And came over here yesterday afternoon and have played serious amounts of fetch with Heidi. Swank.

So that's a boring account; more exciting stuff to come. In keeping with the Space Oddity theme, we are exactly 7 days away from the death of my bachelorhood. O. M. G.

Check ignition and may God's love be with you...

falling...

tears don't you fall...
eyes don't you cry...
i can't break down...

Responsibility

Wah, kalo liat tanggal postingan terakhir saya yang 4 mei 2007 kemarin rasanya udah lama banget gak ngurus blog ini, banyak tetangga yang jarang dikunjungi, malahan rumah saya yang kesatron orang yang gak jelas. Whatever! Rasanya merasa bersalah juga, apa lagi waktu kemarin sempat ke tempatnya k’ aan waktu peluncuran bukunya (itupun hanya datang untuk memberi selamat) saya ketemu dengan rara, ndy, dan beberapa blogger lainnya. Rasanya sudah lama sekali. Menjadi masalah kah? Tentu saja, karena banyak cerita yang tersia, banyak cerita yang tidak sempat terkeluarkan, dan hanya membusuk di ujung pikiran.
Kali ini saya hanya ingin berbagi dengan kalian mengenai responsibility alias tanggung jawab. Yah karena inilah yang mengisi dan menyita semua waktuku selama 3 minggu terakhir ini. Kenapa tanggung jawab? Pertama, ketika mata kuliah Produksi Siaran, ternyata semua tim saya tidak ada yang kerja full, otomatis saya yang mengambil alih mulai dari pengambilan gambar, proses editing dan menyiapkan semuanya sampai sang produser datang dan bergabung kembali. Dan minggu lalu baru aja kelar workshop penyiaran yang sudah selama sebulan lebih dipersiapkan. Jadi kalau ada yang bertanya, bagaimana long weekend saya kemarin. Percayalah kalian tidak akan mau berada di posisi saya.
Kamis … rehearsal terakhir untuk live Pelangi Makassar di kampus, walaupun jadwal latihannya paling sore saya udah datang dari pagi buat latihan dan menyamakan persepsi dengan teman yang lain. Ini sampe malam, trus lanjut briefing dengan panitia workshop, karena listrik di FIS IV disabotase, sehingga mati. Sedangkan kami ingin produksi, gimana? Ini juga sampe malam
Jumat … ke kampus lagi, soalnya memfix kan semua urusan untuk workshop di hari sabtu. Workshop yang rencananya dua hari, jumat sama sabtu menjadi dipadatkan di hari sabtu saja, soalnya bingung dan ribet harus mencari listrik dari FIS 3 (dengan menggunakan 5 kabel rol) dan mencari laptop buat peserta, soalnya lab computer gak bisa dipake produksi. Jadi panitia menyarankan (soalnya kasian juga kalo mesti dibatalkan) memakai laptop saja buat produksinya. Pulang ke rumah sehabis sholat jumat, setelah itu bisa tidur sejenak dan malamnya ke Bazar anak 2005 (secara sebagian besar panitia anak 2005, entar workshopnya di boikot)
Sabtu … ke kampus untuk workshop penyiaran. Materinya bagus banget. Cuma karena ternyata masalah listrik, damn!!! Saya terjaga sampe sore, trus ke rumahnya alfie, were buat ngembaliin laptop mereka. Ke tempatnya k’ aan dan terjebak kemacetan dan berpetualang di gang-gang bersama mookz
Minggu … tidur udah jam 12 malam, bangun jam 5 subuh, trus nonton LOST plat satu sampe plat 6 dengan mengingat besok adalah final semester 6 dengan mata kuliah Komunikasi Antar Budaya dan membawa rasa bersalah mengingat lagi bahwa ternyata bahan kuliahnya besok itu dibawakan dalam bahasa inggris. Jadinya teteup nonton saja.
Jadi kembali dengan tanggung jawab. Kenapa? Karena memang saya tipe demikian. Tipe orang yang akan menyelesaikan semuanya ketika memang saya sudah dipercaya untuk mengerjakannya. Dan hari ini saya diuji lagi. Diuji oleh teman saya dan dosen saya. Untuk mata kuliah Media Format Kecil. Saya sudah mengkonformasi bahwa di semua tempat yang Bapak Dosen TERHORMAT rekomendasikan sudah tidak membuat lagi slide postif. Tapi beliau tetap keukeuh. Dan teman-teman saya bersikap, yah… whatever! Saya sebagai ketua kelas harus mencari penyelesaiannya, setelah memberi kabar, ternyata beliau menyebut satu tempat lagi di jalan yos sudarso. Dan tadi (senin, 21 mei 2007, final hari pertama) semua yang ambil mata kuliah menanyakan lagi mengenai bagaimana tugasnya dan nilai finalnya. Yah, saya langsung menceritakan saja berdasarkan kenyataannya. Dan saya mencari teman buat menemani (dalam kata lain mengantar) ke tempat yang dimaksud. Eh, tiba-tiba saja ada seseorang yang nyolot. Katanya sia-sia saja. Dan bla bla bla… buset! Sakit telingaku mendengarkan perkataannya. Saya kan tidak akan merepotkan kamu. Kalo emang gak mau, ya udah. Nanti saya yang berusaha sendiri. Jangan nyolot ke saya. Saya suruh ngomong ke dosennya langsung, gak berani juga. Sekali lagi jangan NYOLOT sama saya. Kau kira saya juga suka diginiin. Ini bukan masalah bilang sama tu dosen bahwa sudah tidak ada tempat yang bisa nyetak slide itu, tapi saya lebih kepada masalah tanggung jawab dulu. Bagaimana supaya kalian enak, tu dosen juga enak. Karena walopun udah semena-mena, tetap nilai jatuh ada pada dia. Walopun capek, tetap saya akan jalan. Karena bagaimana pun juga ini menjadi tanggung jawab saya. Toh kalian nanti hanya perlu tahu apa yang jadi tugas penggantinya kan?
*tarik napas dalam-dalam dulu
Maaf saya jadi emosi. Tapi memang ini dari dalam diri saya. Kalian bilang bodoh, silahkan. Kalian bilang sia-sia, silahkan. Tapi inilah taktik saya. Untuk mengcounter perkataan dosen nanti ketika dia menanyakan hal ini lagi. Jadi tolong saya juga capek. Tapi ketika tanggung jawab sudah ada didepan mata. Bagaimana pun juga itu harus diambil dan dihadapi.

Supertramp & the Retarded Song, Pt. 2

So we eventually left the Sav/Mal/Joy triumvirate to their peace and headed back along the rain-slicked streets toward Grafton. And this is when things got truly hilarious. First, ben launched into an unprecedented monologue about the restaurant Dino's in Worcester. This was excellent and contained a rather thorough and disgusting description section. Sweet. And then Ali and Ben began worrying about what they would do with Heidi that weekend, as their planned (and to be paid) dogsitter had fallen through.

"What ever shall we do?" the PGoat cried.

"I know not!" the Grin declared.

The entire car was in an uproarious state of distress over the care of Heidi over the coming weekend. It seems Ben-Ali will be traveling to Mexico this coming week, not just to counteract current Amnesty-laden congressional bills, but to attend a wedding of friends of theirs. Ben is going to be acquiring a prescription snorkel mask for the occasion, having calculated that purchasing the correct mask once would be cheaper over the long haul than renting one every time he goes to a wedding. A shrewd businessman, that one. I tried to ask what kind of wedding requires a snorkeling mask. Dead silence. Damn. Apparently the time of concern for Heidi is not a funny time at all. After roughly ten minutes of debating what to do, it occurs to them that, as planned, I am staying at their house next weekend! So they were about to hire someone to watch over Heidi and I would have been there. This is, quite plainly, highly insulting. Nevertheless, their short cancellation notice problem is solved, as now I will take care of the Heidster, free of charge. Much laughing occurred, and someone (I'm guessing Ali) asked what they could do to make me feel better about the gigantic dis. I wryly declared that it was okay, so long as they sang the "I'm retarded" song. (Please note the comedy value of offensiveness for the sake of being offensive - it's debatable how relatively heartless and cruel this is, but given that the phrase "wicked retarded" gets ballied about Bostonian parts without a second thought, it's pretty much a fair statement that we've all been brutally desensitized. If you feel the need, you can blame the Farrelly brothers circa "There's Something About Mary").

It was meant to be a passing comment. But I had inadvertently tossed a softball in the Gringoat wheelhouse.

"How does it go?" Ben asked.

I sang a rather tuneless melody to the lyrics "I'm retarded," complete with indecipherable accent portraying a vicious speech impediment. This is vicious and mean, I know, but again, it's in the spirit of a comedy game of "where's the line?" Well, Ben and Ali joined in and left the line well behind them. They belted, quite joyously, an impossibly loud, offensive, tuneless, enthusiastic and absurd version of the I'm retarded song. So they won the offensive game, hands down, maybe even moreso since Ali capped off the performance with "Oh, I didn't realize that was offensive." Brilliant. I burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. I am a terrible, terrible human being.

After I stopped peeing in my pants, we managed to take the GG home and headed back ourselves to get ready for the Dean's Awards Dinner. We snappy-casualed up ourselves well enough and then headed over to the Worcester Marriott to pick up the iRents. And then we hit up the country club for the first in what I'm sure will be an insurmountable mountain of graduation events. Ali quickly noted that drinks would be in order as there were approximately 37 awards being given out in the evening. iPJ gladly obliged, grabbing a Cosmo for the PG and scotches for iPMM and me. Good times! We had a fine cheese and fruit pre-dinner , ate a nice standard fare buffet meal, and spun our chairs around to the front, eager to listen to award winner's names being announced through the most fuzzed out amplification system this side of the Sex Pistols.

Well, it's a good thing Beck and Ali are friends with Almond Joy, because otherwise our little corner of Vetverse would have been totally shut out on Awards Night. Ali was near tears when I reminded her that they don't give out a Prettiest Girl of All Time award because that would be akin to giving an award to the sky for being blue; we don't need to acknowledge the blatantly obvious. This seems to cheer her Goatness up. beck, on the other hand, was not near tears at all - degree (nearly) and job in hand, she has accomplished more than enough the last four years and any award would have just been the cherry on top of the icing on the cake. Plus, as Beck pointed out, these were the types of awards that were likely swayed by isolated incidents and anecdotal evidence, and as we all know, anecdotal evidence makes an anec out of dot and al. There also seemed to be a disproportionate number of awards handed out to the ten or so male students in the class, leaving the analytic likes of ben and me to conclude that voters were allowing themselves to be swayed by stand out factors - essentially the same reason you remember the last commercial featuring Jennifer Love Hewiit you saw but probably don't remember the last general commercial you saw. Stand. Out. Factors.

So we left the shindig empty handed, but everyone knows there are no winners and losers, only people who got $500 stipends and people who didn't impress their professors enough. So it goes. We bid the GG and the iRents goodnight and headed for the homestead, where I briefly contemplated staying up to watch the Spurs scores scroll by on the monitor but opted for sleep instead. (The Spurs won, by the way, and the only asterisk that requires is the one that reads "comma, beeotch!").

Saturday has been a slow one so far - one tutoring job and a quick stopby at a Vet function at Canyon Cafe - saw Emmy and Dave and Steve and Jason and Cindy and a bunch of other Vet-peeps. Everyone looks so dolled up, and everyone in Cindy's family looks incredibly like her. Otherwise, I am apartment packing for the PM and headed down to Newton for a shindig and perhaps one of the most spectacular evenings... ever. Oh, you shall see...

Supertramp and the Retarded Song, Pt. 1

Mainly to irk Karen, I'm going to include another picture of the Beck smooching with one of our ever-so-cute dogs...


And in other news, I may now have an inkling that Darren = Wrigley. Hmmmm....

Friday was an altogether bang-up day, fraught with controversy and intrigue on the Nut Front (elections, allegations, oh my) and an afternoon of this-is-your-age-now, bildungsroman type uberevents. After surviving the Nuttiness (no really, I'll be here all week), I traveled home through blustery storms to meet up with the Beck. She got her new MacBook, so in lieu of having a conversation I just looked at a white plastic cover with an Apple logo and told it how my morning went. Oh, the detachment of modernity. Sighs and ones and zeros.

It turns out that we were waiting for the PGoat to get home from a train ride into Boston, but once she got home things kicked into high gear. We picked up Ali and Grin and headed to the Worcester Hospital to visit Mal and his rents. Let's take a moment to get a few things out of the way...

Hey Sarah, is Mal content? (giggle giggle).

Hey Christophe, when the whole family is together, is Malcolm in the Middle? (Guffaw).

Phew. So Ali and Beck chatted away in the front seat while Ben and I discussed NPR shows and socialist tendencies in Venezuela and the goodness that is Reece's Pieces. (Thankfully, we did not run into Reece; I hear he's a bully). We pulled up to the hospital, got some valet service and headed up to see the happy Fam. Thirty six hors of induced labor produced not just a lot of sarcastic comments but a pretty awesome little guy. It is now time for a slew of pictures...


I gotta go tutor so this is a big fat to be continued... but seriously, check out those pics. Thanks again to greg and meghan; those are undoctored shots straight from the camera. Beautiful!

G-Day Weekend

And it descends! The Beck has now completed all 1346728 requirements and is officially on her way to a DVM this Sunday. Wooha, you are indeed all in check. Congrats to the Beck (and the PGoat and the Almond Joy and all the other '07 Vetties, but most of them had already completed their stuff before this week so mostly congrats to the Beck).

Trouble in Nutville - I can't write too much because, 1, for all I know my posts are monitored by Nutland Security, and 2, I would hate to interfere with an ongoing investigation. But we had student elections this week, someone had the gall to inquire as to how the ballots were counted, and the tyranny of defensive positioning has gone into motion. Awesome! The absence of professionalism and the presence of a paranoid lack of communication will surely spur us to great heights. Oh, well, one week or so left. I will, of course, try not to let the door hit my butt on the way out.

That's about it on this rainy Friday - we are headed to visit Mal and fam this afternoon and the iFam comes to town this evening. Big things in the mix! Exciting! And... an apartment full of crap to toss / pack. Can't wait.

Serenity Now!!!

It's a first for the Ballad... a nickname has been lost, a wee human has been gained:

Fresh off the stunning The-Future-is-Now internet, that's a pic of Malcolm Courchesne, new edition to the Christophe/Sarah home. Congratulations guys!!! Pertinent stats:

Born: May 16, 2007
At 10:48 pm
7 lbs 3 oz
21.5 inches
.368 BA, 43 HR, 147 RBIs

Poor... Sarah?... We're having trouble in the moniker department, as her bump-mound is no more. Maybe we'll go with Almond Joy (since there's no Mounds there). ANd then we can call them Almond and Bundle of. That's pretty weak. But, hey, short notice. Anyways, Poor AJoy had a crazy long approx. 36 hour long labor. That's intense, and I'm guessing there was nary a sarcastic quip to be heard. But all is well! Congrats Sarah, and here's to getting back to pre-pregnancy hemoglobin levels.

Lots of impact on the Nyetverse, of course - one, we now get to hear Sarah's graduation speech on Sunday, which will surely start off "I just walked over from the hospital, and boy is my uterus tired." Two, I am no longer on stand next to the stage with a mop detail at said graduation - dios mio, that was close. Three, we now get to (hopefully?) add a count of three to the wedding attendance list, since hopefully a baby in tow will be an easier operation than a baby in belly. (We of course understand either way, but it would be awesome if the Saviour/Joy could now make it).

As a side note, this little dude is always going to be referred to as "Mal" by me. Not mal as in "bad," Mal as in AWESOME. Grrr....Argh!

Stupidity and Me

So, the adventures of yesterday included me trying to go for a relatively long run (7.3 miles) by running up to the start of Ali's route (about 1.5 miles from our casa), running the route to her house and then running home. So I missed a turn and ended up going about 110 degrees in the wrong direction, got lost, confused, stuck in a raging downpour thunderstorm, got bad directions from three separate people and ended up doing some rather stupid loops all around Millbury before finally giving up and running down to a CVS to use the phone. It turns out the poor Beck had been driving around looking for my Lost (Wed Nights at 10 pm, ABC) self when it started raining; she came down to the CVS and bought me a Powerade and some Reese's Pieces to help me revive. All told it was 9.75 miles and a whole lot of wetness.

In conclusion, I am a directionally-challenged idiot. On the plus side, I ran the entire time, about an hour and a half, with no stops other than the three times I asked people for what would turn out to be erroneous directions and a little bit of pausing to try to get my bearings. Which I never got, incidentally. I even tried to navigate by the sun for a bit. I'm awesome.

No running today for recovery - otherwise, it's more dredging through increasingly pointless school days, packing, a potential wedding haircut getting and a dinner with Theresa and not-Steve Steve. The days they just fly by...

Blinded (me with) To? Science?!?!

So had a fun and totally cliched experience today. One of my students, let's call him Joe Ostrich, came in with a note from his mother. Seems that now that we have spent the past two and a half weeks covering the HIV /AIDS history / epidemic / crisis and comparing it to other infectious diseases, AND we have covered the specific case of malaria in particular AND we have discussed international relief efforts, NOW Joe Ostrich is declaring his religious conflict with the subject matter. I am sure this completely co-(infix-effing)-incidentally occurs on the same day as a quiz on infectious diseases and their causes. Wild. Seems that Joe is a Christian Scientist - his note says as much - and his mom understands that we have been covering AIDS / disease in class. It is against his beliefs to study the causes of diseases, as well as their treatments.

Ah, ignorance, a surefire defense against any of life's harsh conditions. That's sweet. Only it's not entirely correct. Seems Christian Scientists have a long history of obeying secular medical conventions (i.e., they have historically not argued with immunizing their children in order to meet state requirements) . AND there is nothing in the tenets of Christian Science that strictly forbids even use of modern medicine - true, they often feel that the material path interferes with the spiritual and often opt for spiritual healing over the material, but it is entirely common for CS's to practice material medicine when the need becomes evident. Say what you will about the level of stick-to-it-ive-ness that this implies, but that is not what I am trying to emphasize - the fact is that use of material medicine is indeed justified within the tradition.

All of which dodges the point that no one is forcing Joe to treat himself with modern medicine, nor are we really even talking that much about modern medicine at all - this is really just a discussion of different aspects and characteristics of various infectious diseases, who they affect and how they affect them. You can argue that this defines diseases as a physical entity and not a manifest spiritual one, as is mandated by the CS belief system, and therefore "goes against beliefs." But is studying this information something that goes against beliefs? Is this information, how can I put this, so compelling that your 18 year old son can't stick to his guns and maintain his worldview? He needs a note from mom? Really? I find this entire attitude of not wanting to study the mechanical causes of diseases preposterous. It's one thing to say that you choose to believe a different explanation and act accordingly, but it's another to choose to remain ignorant of the model that the entire rest of the modern world happens to be using. How can you ever engage in any kind of realistic debate if you don't understand what an antibody is?

I admittedly find the belief system reckless and stupid (and endangering to others - if the student is so adamant about not practicing Western medicine, he very well may not be vaccinated, in which case he's posing a threat to me just by being in my vicinity) (and yes, I know that so long as I am vaccinated I *should* be okay, but the fact is that he is that much more likely to be carrying miscellaneous diseases because of his aberrant immunization status; I am being exposed to whatever the hell he has unnecessarily). But it is not the belief system that I am finding fault with here - I find fault with its application (ignorance as a worldview) in this instance and I find the timing dubious beyond belief. The idea that he did anticipate that a course entitled Science and Social Issues might, just might contain some information about disease processes is absurd. The fact that he waited for a quiz before introducing his weakly held and protection-needing faith is mighty convenient. So, in the future Joe Ostrich - fine, remain ignorant, but please be ignorant somewhere other than my classroom. Thanks for wasting my time AND making it so I have to write extra curriculum on account of your afraid-to-be-enlightened head.

(In other news, I have a student who has missed 23 classes whose parents would like me to arrange a meeting to discuss his options to make up for his absences. Options? How about time travel and attend the classes instead of skipping at every minor sniffle?!?!?!)

Some Pics and Pans

Some awwwwwwshucks pics from the past couple of days...


And a couple of reviews from the past few, too:

This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Letvin: 40

This was a thoroughly frustrating book that fell far short of my expectations. The cover boasted praise from the likes of Oliver Sacks ("endlessly fascinating"), David Byrne and the conductor of the Boston Pops. And I can't let this go; the Boston Pops guy wrote the funniest one line review EVER. Here it is, in its glorious entirety:

"This is a fascinating subject, compellingly treated."

That is right up there with the "Potato Chips" cheer in terms of universally applicable statements that require no thought and/or reading of actual said work.
Perhaps I will pick up that technique. Doubtful. Anyways, here's the problem with the book - after whirling through a bare minimum of music theory and then touching on some of bare facts of music perception - which areas of the brain are connected to which, how the cerebellum (rhythm-setter of muscle movements) is integrally tied into rhythm perception of music, how the frequencies of music are related to one another and to the brain and how we are constantly matching heard music up against an emotional/memory based expectation framework that we have learned - he then goes off into la la land. A ton of the book was wasted on his own name-dropping tendencies (and these are, for the most part, names of which you have never heard) and personal resume recounting, including his own "fascinating" work which demonstrated that people can generally remember the pitch of songs, not just the relation between notes. Wow. He spent a large amount of time on a ridiculously oversimplified concept of complexity appreciation in music, and then left the neuro-realm entirely to wax poetic about how real music is the ability to convey emotion. He rescued the book (somewhat) with a small end-section on music-as-evolutionary phenomenon, but he pulled the same hack job that I've mentioned in a couple of other pop-academ works lately - he started talking about genes and evolution with an authority he does not have, and consequently made mistakes that while subtle, are glaring if you just read a Dawkins book. Which I had.

I am not sure whether it's just that the cog-sci work that's been done to this point is just not that interesting to me - it so far sounds like we have road-maps of where things connect and how sound is perceived, but once you have to actually talk about the impact that music has, outside of saying "it's connected to the amygdala" it seems that they are limited to falling into the same crap about "the artist's emotional content" and "it all depends upon the listener's memories and preferences." All of this falls under categories of things I already understand - I fully expected a text on neurobiology and music to include some kind of physical account for phenomena such as the universal displeasure at dissonance, but all I got was a cross cultural study that stated that there is a universal displeasure at dissonance. Yahoo. Seriously. A disappointment.

Little Children: 50

We watched this flick with Ali & Ben on Friday night - the book on which it is based is one of Ali's favorites, and the film received a few oscar nominations (best supporting actor for creepy-as-hell Jackie Earle Haley and actress for Kate Winslett) plus a lot of buzz so it seemed like it should be a good deal. But it was WAY over the top - Haley's "actor" moments were super-contrived poolside scenes that came off as a strange cross between Jaws and Caddyshack, a faux-Kane homage that involved some shattering of little China dolls and a gruesome (though admittedly not as much as it could have been) case of self-surgery on a swingset. Winslett spent five seconds in some kind of strange anthropologist observing the native Desperate Housewives
role and then went on to explode in every non-subtle way, from cheering for touchdowns to keeping pictures in poetry books to a more painful than anything interpretation of Madame Bovary at a book club meeting. (I mean, really, book club meeting as self-exposition of character? With Madame Bovary? You needed that to show that she was exercising her promiscuity as a means of self-empowerment? Really? They may as well have featured Martin Sheen reading Heart of Darkness in Apocalypse Now. Yes, THAT would have been more obvious). From the ridiculous voice-over narration to the uber-necessary lost-child screaming scene to the sprinkled, forced cases of quirk, this flick had way more than its share of gratuity. This is not to say that my heart didn't beat uncomfortably in Haley's scenes (but really, it was more the look than anything that put him over the top) or that I didn't jump into the story - I just found it to be an overblown exercise without enough substance to warrant whatever modern suburbia effect it was going for.

Post of Emergent Nature

So, the past few days I have been compiling a list of songs for wedding reception dance party purposes. The plan is to put a playlist on the iPod (and some backup iPods, we being of the not stupid variety) and just let 'er rip. In other words, you can't make requests THEN, you should make them NOW. So, here's your notice:

MAKE YOUR REQUESTS NOW! Either comment them here or e-mail them to me. There will be no day of spinning of iPod wheels in order to seek out your favorites! You have been warned.

(Note - there is also going to be some dinner-time jazz, so if you have anything particular you would like to hear - and no, dad, we're not playing any post 1967 Miles Davis - let me know).

On a side note - making this list has been more difficult than you might imagine. There's a couple of crazy dynamics to balance - slow and fast songs, big band v. sixties v. eighties v. modern, happy-nice song v. songs with questionable lyrics (I ain't sayin' she a gold digger), plus the usual battle of deciding what kind of appropriately funyn songs I could play or not play. For example, my choice of Steven Stills's "Love the One You're With" for our first dance has been much-maligned. I don't get it! I'm also supposed to have a song before our first dance to introduce us (and more importantly, Beck) - see, I think a song like BOC's "Godzilla" would be awesome for such purposes, but other people might differ. it's a pervasive problem - on the serious side, is it okay to play Smokey's "Tears of a Clown" - I mean, sweet song, but it has all kinds of "I'm smiling now, but I'm really miserable" overtones which, in the face of a smiling groom and bride, could have bad connotations. Will the more traditional among us be offended by the multiple key changes of Dexy's Midnight Runners' "Come on Eileen?" These problems border on overwhelming.

So this is where you come in. Recommend some songs! I'll spoil the surprise and announce Beck's and my first fox-trotting spectacular dance song right now:

Iron Butterfly - In-a-Gadda-da-Vita

We Are Far Too Young and Clever...

Another early Sunday AM filled with the clicks of typing, subdued in an effort to avoid the waking (wrath) of beck and the waking (walking) of dogs. We'll see how this goes...

(And a day late HAPPY BDAY shoutout to best brother man Aaron, who turns a terrifying 26, AND to the PGOAT, who turns asdfasdugvrfuag). Come on shake your bodies, babies, do the Conga. I know you can't control yourself any longa.

First, the aforementioned promised pictures.... um, none of which came out. I was fooling around with catching shots from the back of the dark club, which apparently doesn't work. Or at least I needed a fast shutter / wide aperture combo that I was not smart enough to set my camera to last night. Regardless, here's how the Panda turned out...


Which is clearly craptastic photography on my part. I hope I make up for it by posting the following video, which is a (relatively) new song - at least it isn't on either of their albums I have - called Desperate Dub that they played at Harper's Ferry. This performance comes from 2007.01.17 (dated like a true PhishPhan) in Rochester:

Sweet. In fact, just play that and let it be your blog-reading soundtrack. Alright then. Seriously serious, the GPGDS have upped the ante. Big things. I am pumped to hear them the night before the EVENT.

Alright, just to lie and catch everything back up diary-style, Wednesday the Beck and I went in for more dancing coaching and a little bit of swing instruction. Things are getting there. Wednesday I also went running, about 4.75 miles, and dig this, I also did another 4.75 on Thursday, 6 on Friday and another 4.3 with the birthdayGOAT on Saturday. Rockin'! We are getting ahead of ourselves a tad, but I just wanted to throw out that the exercise effort has been ramped up the past two weeks - I have run and/or played Ultimate on 9 of the last 11 days and been trying to shrink my tux-fitting body. I've tipped the scales a hair under 200 the last two times out which is still fairly meh but okay, all things considered.

Anyhoo, tutored Thursday and came home for a TV evening, pretending that things are still Must See (they're not). Friday, the Beck and I trekked down to Natick and dropped me off for some schoolin' as she went to pick up her wedding dress in Foxboro. I had a whopping 9 of 17 show up on time, so we abandoned the planned plan and went with a video on the "New Medicine," i.e. hypnosis, stress management and the like. The kids, the ones who were there, liked it. Yay. I tutored later (Russian History - which I know exactly nothing about - but I helped the kid organize his notes and such) and then got ready to be picked up by the Beck at 11 like we had planned. And waited. And waited. Ah - a near wedding dress emergency (thankfully resolved) caused the whole day to be thrown off by a few hours, so Beck showed up at about 1:20 or so. She had a lunchdate at the Naked Fish with the PGOAT and the Explosion-Pending Mound, so we blitzed back to Westborough and I headed home.

Only I forgot to leave the Beck a few dollars so she could buy ice cream. Have I mentioned that Beck is certifiably crack-level addicted to Cotton Candy Ice Cream from Swirls & Scoops? Well, she is, interventions be damned. I think she has roughly a fifteen day streak going. She contemplated going *twice* yesterday. Egads. So I figured I would kill two birds - i ran up to S&S, dollars in my socks, and did not find Ali & beck, so I ran to CVS and got some water, then ran back to S&S, waited fifteen minutes, and they still didn't show. So I then ran home. Six miles all told, and it turns out that the Vet ladies went up to school to take care of some graduation details in lieu of ice cream (Don't worry, I took beck to get her fix later that evening). Burritos for dinner and later we headed over to Gringoat's for good times and a movie to be reviewed later...

And now Saturday, the whole point of this entire post. First, beautiful weather - mid sixties, no humidity to speak of, sunny and just altogether gorgeous. next, my tutoring was canceled, so I slept in for the first time in WEEEEEEEEKS until 10:30. Awesome. At about 12:45, Beck and I headed down to East Bunnysville (Read: far away) to attend a graduation party thrown by the parents of one of Beck's classmates, Nellie. Emmy, Dave, Cindy, Jason, Steve, aka a lot of the old crew - Beck's friends from the pre-clinical years - were there, as were Christophe and his near pressure-capacity wife Sarah. The Mound, it turns out, is giving the graduation speech for the Vet class of '07, which makes for all kinds of hilarious water-breaking scenarios. Anyhoo, beck and I did manage to show up to this party 2 hours late and be among the first to leave, so we are either big jerks or exceedingly stylish. Afte some beers and hot dogs and a conversation that generally centered around the "people are morons/evil" theme, we agreed to meet back at the S&S for yet another dose of cotton candy flavored heroin.

(At this point, Beck got us lost. We argued about whether it is prudent to print out a map and directions for your destination instead of just writing the directions there. In conclusion, I am right).

We decided to call the GrinGOAT en route as it was Ali's birthday (again, happy DOB anniversary to both her Goatness and to the Aaronster). And by mere coincidence - THEY WERE ALREADY THERE! Which, as Sarah quickly pointed out, isn't really all that amazing when you go every day. Whatever. Laura, Beck, Ali, Ben, Sarah, Christophe, and Nyet made for a formidable 7-wheeled ice cream devouring machine, and we even managed to not scar any small children while sitting at the stand for half an hour. Yay us, and yay for impromptu birthday parties.

We followed up the beer and hotdogs and ice cream afternoon with a run along Ali's favorite route. Ben is still having foot pain so he opted out to work on Ali's PDA (the handheld device, not her proclivity to kiss ben in crowded rooms) and Ben, I feel your foot pain, that stuff sucks big time. But the remaining triumverate made the 4.3 mile trek with food bouncing in our innards and felt the better for it. Yowsers! I sprinted the last .2 miles or so and celebrated at Ben and Ali's by drinking a supersaturated electrolyte bath of gatoradey goodness. I continue to phosphoresce today.

Beck and I drove home to allow Ali to go on their birth-date and we headed down to the basement to dance. Thankfully, this was not a terrible One Tree Hill episode, so no psychos were involved. We just turned on the portable iPod player and practiced out foxtrotting. We are awesome. Cleaned up, ate dinner at the newly fancy (and argh-pricey) Grafton Inn. I had some top notch Chowder and a steak, Beck had mussels and a salad. The good life. Capped off the evening by watching a couple of episodes of Mr. Show, which to me is incredible but to Beck is merely mildly amusing. One was the episode about Imminent Death Syndrome, and since Beck did not find this hilarious this pretty much confirms that she does not know what is what. Sigh...

That was a fantastic Saturday. So we have two weeks (give or take a couple of days) left in New England and a lot of packing to do, but yesterday was done right.

Razzle Frazzle McArfuggle

And no, those words do not mean anything.

Just got home from another in a long line of increasingly annoying tutoring sessions. Nothing bad in the sessions in and of themselves, just the long line aspect to them. Argh. If I have to explain how to multiply fractions one more time...

Let's see, looks like there's a crappy half-arsed Lost review in the last post so that means I owe you the account of Thursday and on. Oh, BUT WAIT! I neglected to mention that we watched One Tree Hill as well that sad Wednesday night, and there is a new candidate for "Show that will make you desire to stab yourself through the temple with an ice-pick." I think it was supposed to be some sort of '80s horror-flick homage, but it ended up being poorly acted over-the-top crapasm. SWEET!

So the following day was a long day of class / tutoring, going from about 7:30-9 at night. LUCKILY friends Beck Ben & Ali had gotten the proverbial ice cream bug and were kind enough to buy me a mint oreo flurry. I joined them at their house for some evening chilling - good times per always.

Friday was another nothing (other than some long distance running), though the Beck and I capped it off by going to our dance studio for the Friday Night Fling. Or something. They have a little shindig dealie where you pay $5 (our first was free!) and you get to drink sodas and eat snacks and dance, dance, dance. Kinda like an ice cream social with dancing instead of ice cream. They played a rotating set of waltzes, mambas, cha-chas, tangos, swing music and old standard = fox trots. We could only dance to every 5th or 6th song accordingly. We eventually went into the back room and practiced our fox trot to everything regardless of beat / tempo, which made us extra dorky but was fun.

Saturday... late start to the tutoring game, so I got back around 3:30 in time to catch Wang's bid at a perfect game (spoiled in the 8th) and an exciting derby. Beck Ben Ali Nyet (B-Ban) then headed downtown for ice cream and a Giant Panda Guerrilla Dub Squad show at Harper's Ferry. AWESOME! We met up with Greg and a post-Boards tired Meghan and saw Jamie before the gig for the aforementioned ice cream. The band was fantastic (pictures / video? to be posted later); they've upped their abilities even more than the last time we saw them. Hot hot hot. B & A even enjoyed the show and emphasized that they weren't just saying that because they were obligated to. Aw shucks. Our late night ride home was spent trying to nail the rhythm / meaning of...

Sending a message of love to my people back home that I'm missing you more / Missing you more, missing you more

Onto Sunday Sunday, a day on which I woke up next to a middle-aged lady. Sad. Thirty years ago today Sgt. Pepper taught the Searls to birth the Beck. We started the day with an early brunch (9:30 counts as early in Beckland) with Gringoat and stuffed ourselves silly with extra waffles, whip cream, French Toast, real maple syrup, you name it. Awesome meal at the South St. Diner. The Beck and I came home and Beck promptly passed out on the couch. Awwwwwwww... I went and played a BUDA-licious game of Ultimate that was so dumb it doesn't even warrant mentioning, and rushed home to take Beck out for pre-dinner ice cream and a truckload of Sushi at Bauhinia. We spent the evening reflecting on how awesome beck is; she wished many a person a "happy my birthday." Good times... for the present ledger, I got Beck a wicky underarmor shirt for our coming hiking adventures is Sunny AZ (pronounced "sunny azz") and the new compilation of Get Fuzzy comics, which if you aren't aware is a pantheon comic on the level of Calvin & Hobbes and Far Side.

And then into this week... blah. The Beck has it off, and I have it on, and the urge to teach is dying, dying... dead. On the plus side, everyone is passing the class as of this second, but give it another two and I'm sure that will change. Unsurprisingly the second semester seniors have hit May and have ceased to care - plus Ali can attest to the level of brilliance we are dealing with (see dramatic readings of essays, which aired another episode on the way to downtown Boston this week). So school is pretty much a bust - but ftr, the last three days have included proctoring the French AP exam, getting observed in SASI and having my students be JERKS, watching a documentary on malaria, giving lectures on malaria and sickle cell, and taking Corin's physics class candlepin bowling. Many-a-high-pitched-Korean-shriek did echo throughout the bowling hall.

On the home front I have been causing the Beck all kinds of headaches and trying to generally get my clothes in order. We also managed to go to a full hour dance session last ngiht where we learned some of the finalities of our fox-trotting repertoire and started to learn a bit of sing sing sing (with a swing). I've been trying to eat less / exercise more in an effort to look schwanky in tux for the upcoming EVENT (though I am sure my efforts will be undone by the upcoming bevy of gluttony that will surely accompany beck's graduation extravaganza - oh food, why must you taste so good?). And we caught the ep of Lost last night where Locke decided to enter idiotsville and let himself get shot. Pretty cool ep otherwise, but damn, what's up with the stupidity-when-necessary writing?

Alright, sorry for the diary-style entries of late. I will get back to something exciting in the next post, I (lie) swear.

Skala Prioritas

Ternyata memang semua rencana ada konsekuensinya. Dan ketika pertama kali mengambil keputusan untuk mengambil sesuatu sebagai tugas, tanggung jawabnya mestinya diemban juga kan? Dan begitulah yang saya alami sekarang ini. Kok bisa yah saya sesibuk ini? Wakakakaka, sampe kmaren sempet drop juga karena kbanyakan aktivitas tapi kesehatannya tidak pernah diperhatikan.
Well, saya juga heran. Buat Indah, maaf yah. Niatnya buat tolongin buat C.V ama surat lamaran plus crita-crita mengenai radio tempat saya pertama kali siaran belum bisa terlaksana. Maybe someday lah, tapi mungkin bukan dalam waktu dekat ini.
Secara ni semester emang kerjanya semua berdarah-darah (inilah term favorit semua temanku buat menjelaskan semester 6 ini), karena memang begitulah kenyataannya. Setelah tampil LIVE di Communication TV (yang disiarkan langsung dari Lab Audio Visual), tugas M Tv (Mahasiswa Televisi) dan Se’Re Tv (Satu Tv) sudah berlalu sampai disini. Saya sebagai kru Se’Re Tv merasa puas! (buat cerita lengkap dan foto-fotonya tunggu hasil rampokan dari Jeng Dwi duluw). Tapi itu ternyata hanya sebagai salah satu “tugas” saja dalam mata kuliah Produksi Siaran ini. Dan untuk finalnya nanti,, begh!
Seluruh peserta mata kuliah dipecah lagi menjadi 4 kelompok yang nantinya akan menjadi Production House sendiri. Mereka yang akan merencanakan akan membuat program Tv seperti apa tanpa ada bantuan dari Bang Sonni lagi. Saya kemudian tergabung lagi di kelompok 4, bersama Gaga, Erna, Achie, Echi, Witri, Were plus Rocky. Dan karena memang di kelompok ini lebih banyakan anak jurnalnya, jadilah kami akan membuat satu program berita (lagi), tapi kali ini lebih kepada format Jelang Siang Warna-Warni yang ada di Trans Tv. Nama programmnya Pelangi Makassar, yang tayang siang hari dimana isinya akan menampilkan sisi-sisi menarik dari kota Makassar dan berita feature yang ringan dinikmati di siang hari. Dan jadilah sekarang kita mengambil berita lagi. Beritanya sudah ditentukan ada 4, mengenai perayaan hari buruh kemarin, hari pendidikan nasional di makassar, nasi pecel di jl. Latimojong, plus keadaan Pantai Losari di minggu pagi. Khusus berita terakhir saya menjadi penanggung jawabnya, jadi minggu mesti take gambar bareng Achie. Capeeeeeeeek,, deh. Tapi mau diapain lagi? Toh semuanya emang proses belajar lagi. Saya juga berkewajiban buat membuat tune dan bumper dari program Pelangi Makassar ini. Someone help me please, using this Ulead and Adobe After Effect! Dan karena saya juga yang mengusulkan supaya tayangan iklan sebaiknya disatukan di dalam cd beritanya, maka Bang Sonni mengharuskan kami mencari iklan sendiri. Mampus, mesti main download lagi deh. Syukurlah di sini saya bisa menemukan beberapa iklan yang bisa di donlot gratis, toh bukan untuk kepentingan komersil kan. Plus iklan dari software donlotan, kelar deh satu tanggung jawab lagi. Jadi tinggal tunggu berita hari minggu, di capture, voice over, dan latihan lagi.
Sekedar informasi juga, kelompok 1 tuh membuat acara sejenis Cinema-Cinema (Cuma rasanya saya lupa apa nama program mereka), yang membahas semua tentang film, box office dan soundtrack. Trus kelompok 2, semacam Jejak Petualang. Mereka akan mengangkat satu daerah yang akan dijelaskan apa saja yang ada disana, pemandangan menari, ritual, atau kebudayaan setempat (dan hari minggu ini mereka sekelompok akan pergi ke Gunung Tompobulu Pangkep buat take gambar, mauuuuuuuu ikut). Sedangkan kelompok 3, secara ihsanDnunu ada disana, maka mereka akan membuat infotaiment yang mengupas masalah musik dan gossip seleb (dan Pamz kayaknya sudah berminat buat diwawancarai). Jadi semangat teman-teman!!!
Selain itu, untuk mata kuliah Media Audio Visual, Rani dan Titin sudah mengemban tugas mereka untuk take gambar, jadi sekarang menjadi tugas saya berikutnya di bidang editing supaya layak diputar pas final nanti. Dan untuk Media Format Kecil, Tau’ ko deh!
Kemarin saya mendapat satu tanggung jawab lagi. Setelah mandat dari direktur dari RumahKamu. Kami melakukan rapat evaluasi lagi. Yah, sejenak kegilaan bisa sedikit keluar lah dan ternyata, akhir dari rapat itu adalah saya ditunjuk untuk berlaku selaku Sekretaris dari Youth Camp 2008. well, mudah-mudahan saya bisa mengembannya nanti. Karena sesuatu dan lain hal, Youth Camp 2007 yang lalu saya tidak bisa ikut.
Saya juga masih menunggu kelanjutan Heroes, setelah diepisode ke 18 dengan akhir yang sangat melly sekali yaitu gantung. Duh,, wahai Tim Kring tolong jangan biarkan kami menunggu terlalu lama, kamu ingin melihat Claire, Peter, Nathan, dan yang lainnya lagi. Ada gak yang suka sama serial ini? Tobz abis, bisa ngalahin X-Men.
Saya juga masih membaca komik. Meskipun kerjaan menumpuk, teteup stress gak boleh dibawa berlebih. Dan jalan keluar terhebat yah, Kariage Kun, Bt’X, Nodame Cantabile, Shaman King, dimanakah bisa saya dapatkan nomor 28 & 29 nya? Hikz!!!
Dan begitulah nantinya, skala prioritas tampaknya masih akan terus berlaku. Dimana semua kewajiban yang mendesak dan harus diselesaikan segera memang harus menjadi perhatian dulu. Maaf buat Rara, dan semua Sonix-ers yang mungkin beberapa acaranya tidak bisa saya hadiri. Selamat datang bulan mei, bulan yang akan penuh struggle! But fight!

Sawyer's Sawyer (Gee, who knew?)

Ah, Lost. Fairly cool episode yesternight, but come on. Whocouldn't see that little coinkydink coming? I did like the intersection of "we're in hell" with the "they found us dead" lines, and that little "Don't tell kate yet" teaser was just some made for TV madness. I digress...

Into a picture of young IF:


Aw shucks to the max. Notice the hand clinched in table-pounding form - seems these truths were once foretold.

Back in the present, not a ton going on - test this week in SASI, so we played a survival game yesterday and reviewed today. Took the car in and got it tuned up for its cross-country trek. Yawn. Some more tutoring this afternoon and evening, then we'll turn the whole puppy over and start afresh tomorrow. Sunrise... sunset. Since the beginning, it hasn't changed yet...

I'll do something exceedingly exciting at some point to warrant some awesome posting. Until then, hrsdfnbsadigvle.

Watch me get down, watch me get down

Welcome to MAY!!! April was the cruelest month, posting frequency-wise, but I assure you that the Corporate Conglomeration that is Nyet Jones Industries will make efforts to improve the situation. Your reading is important to us, and it will be answered in the order it was received.

Laaaaaaassst Nite - Beck and I went dancing and got subtly better. Jordan (our dance instructor) commented rather over the toply about Beck's skirt, which admittedly was fabu, and he bonded with me over sports past. Tres bien. We added the box step to our routine and I only broke six of Beck's toes. Excellent! The repertoire thus far: basic step, promednade, promenade with turn, turn, and box step. Is that really it? Good God Y'all. Call it the Wrigley Trot.

We hit up The Flying Rhino after dancing for some yumminess. Very good cheesesteak! I am definitely starting to get the good ol' Rolling Stones "This Could Be the Last Time" vibe to everything, though, especially since we are under a month left in the proceedings. Expect many posts about the sad reality of moving in the days to come.

I talked to her excellency Elizabeth "Not the Poet" yesterday. She has finished her big exams and just has finals left... and is otherwise suffering her own special version of senioritis. We laughed about the fact that a couple of my troublesome students in the all senior ridiculoid that is my SASI class are the same kids who were freshmen in her ridiculoid of an Algebra I class. And the circles, they go round and round... painted ponies... etc. Good to hear the Zil's voice, and we have made a pact that we will not decide what we will do this coming year until the other one has decided, which means we have successfully invented an inertia-impasse-stalemate state that serves us well. Symbi-laziness, if you will. Liz claims that it's okay because I now have a sugar momma. Sweet. Ha. Unfortunately, the bitter reality of student loans for both of puts a crimp in my living off the fat of the land plans. It's enough to make you want to put ads on your blog.

Long day ahead - class, tutoring, etc. - but I thought I should officially note that you can add the appropriate T minus (number) to your calendar days. Nyet as bachelor is a dying meme, one that will fail to propagate in the none-too-soon future. Damn - I guess that's why I found you don't play around with the Funky Cold Medina.