400 miles, 7 hours, 1 stop and 0 meals.
The Behrens is back in Pittsburgh.
IT'S MINE!!!!!
I like Hank the Cowdog's take on pride:
"I never liked being humble. Humble is what cats are supposed to be."
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Nothing is Sound
[3 pages, 123 lines, 1,808 words, written between 12:47 and 2:14am Tuesday morning, December 27th 2005]
This afternoon while Grandpa was napping in his darkened room I laid down on a couch in the oncology section lounge at the hospital and played some old-school U2 on my new video iPod. Koss foam ear buds drove the sound deep into my ears, and I lay with my eyes shut and ears open, totally disengaged from the world around me. I came away marveling at the complexity of U2’s studio work. At many points in simple, familiar songs I identified four separate guitar voices, from barebones world-renown riffs to a fuzzed-up, crazy-strumming mush buried deep in my left ear. Rich reverbs took The Edge’s guitar and spread it like gold sunlight across the entire soundscape. The minutely detailed, hushingly subtle work was astounding.
Tonight I shut out ESPN Sportscenter with the same isolating earphones, laid back on the couch, covered my feet with a blanket and my face with an oven mitt (found randomly on the couch), and disappeared into Nothing is Sound by Switchfoot. This album became dear to me this fall, rocking my body at the Switchfoot concert, traveling with me to
I tried my best to avoid this, but the same thing happened with “Lonely Nation” as happened with “Meant to Live”: The stunningly powerful song is getting deadened by repeated listening. What once stirred me deep down and quickened my pulse now passed easily through my ears, and I had to grasp at it and make myself remember the dynamics and tones that made it so arresting before.
I laid on the couch, and my limbs gradually faded into oblivion. To all intents and purposes I was sound asleep, but my mind’s eyes were wide open, peering into the music, delving into the sounds, submersed in my ears. “Happy is a Yuppie Word” brought a warmth to my heart, like all the first 5 songs used to, and “Golden” struck me once again as just plain a beautiful song. “Daisy,” even though it really seemed bland for a long time, has seeded and bloomed inside me, and my heart was tracking along with it far more than “Stars” or “The Blues”—both songs that stirred me deeply before.
Aside from the varying responses to the songs, which depend hugely on my emotional state at the time of listening, I was faced once again with the despair and crying frustration of modern music. What hits my ears is so PERFECT, I honestly cannot think of it as ever being physically recorded. Twice I can recall hearing something and thinking “Ah, that sounds real”: once at the very end of a song when random sounds were fading out, and once when
I hear this, and I curse the wind, because in one respect I want to say I honestly have no idea HOW they get those sounds so entirely removed from their organic sources, but in another respect I DO know how, and it sneers at me because it’s millions of dollars of equipment and hundreds of man-years of experience, operating at a level of expertise and knowledge that is absolutely impossible for me to achieve. How does Jon Foreman’s voice sing directly into my head, no booming bass but not high and tinny, crisp as a fresh apple but not thin and hissing, compressed like a tight balloon but not squashed or lifeless, utterly balanced in every frequency? Perhaps they used a ten thousand dollar planet-standard Neumann large-diaphragm condenser mic, but perhaps the producer knew they were looking for a very crisp, midsy, present sound and so he picked some OTHER mic from his expansive cabinet, perusing the selection of multi-thousand dollar microphones and drawing on days and weeks and months spend poring into the subtle shades of each one’s characteristics. And from there those fluctuating voltages are run though who knows how many signal processers, each one the best in its class, passing it through undegraded, undistorted, shaped in some way, smoothed in some way, controlled, groomed, sculpted in ways I don’t even know to think about, until at the end, after a year or more of tracking, editing and mixing, it is laid with faultless precision on the pits and plains of my CD’s shiny surface.
I listen to sound like dogs smell things. Daisy can scamper around the sidewalk and tell you where that squirrel was walking an hour ago. I can scan through a song and most likely tell you how many inches wide each of the drummer’s cymbals are, and maybe even what kind of drum heads he’s using. I can point you to the two places in “Politicians,” somewhere between the verse and the chorus, where in the frenzied cacophony of the song
A couple cool notes: I don’t recall fully enough to say for sure, but there may well be NO strings in the entire album! Modern rock is obnoxiously full of strings, so I found this lack refreshing, and I respect Switchfoot all the more for getting their sounds from real guitars and straight-up synthesizers rather than defaulting to calling in a string quartet or a session cellist. The sound may be numbingly perfect like a smooth unbroken layer of butter drowning a piece of toast, but what constitutes that sound is a bewilderingly creative set of wonderfully tasteful guitar parts, free and careful vocals, complex and fitting bass, and skilled, syncopated, unrestingly varying drums. These guys are skilled. The songs on this album held their own with U2’s technical wizardry, and though I would like to see them back off from their Hallmark Card perfection to more of an emotionally raw hand-written note, Switchfoot still did this album with great taste and great care. Every song demonstrates this, but for starters, listen for the little back-beat, lightly distorted electric guitar chirping in the background of “The Blues,” from about halfway through on. For most of the song after it starts up I can barely imagine I hear it, but when it’s brought up at the transition into the second or third bridge, it becomes one of the most stirring and memorable parts of the album for me. I felt its presence several listens before I actually realized what it was. And when Jon goes up an octave the second time on that song? The little crack in his voice just hits me so deeply, it’s amazing.
There are musical riches to this album that are lasting, even though the excitement of many of its songs is fading. Interestingly, the last half of the album, which I honestly wished had been cut altogether when I first got the CD, is patiently unfolding into some personable and affecting music that hangs around in my mind like an old friend. Endurance is a sign of music that’s more than just the latest new sounds, and I’m still waiting to see how this album weathers the years. I hope it lasts, and I hope these songs continue to stir me like they have this summer and fall.
And I, I . . . I don’t know what to do about the recording stuff. I cry for the beauty of the sounds I cannot make, but I also shrink from the unreal blamelessness of those sounds. In a way they are the epitome of recording, where the media wholly disappears from the listener’s consciousness, but yet in that very acme they cease to be believable as real things played and sung by real people. Obviously I can do no other, but I hope that as I trudge along with sounds necessarily girded in their recording sources, I can embrace those characteristics and create music that communicates through its down-to-earthness.
It really saddens me to play my own songs after listening to a top-of-the-line album like Switchfoot’s, but I still do enjoy the music I’ve written, and if that’s good enough, people will still want to hear it. The importance and prominence of the recording process in modern music is another post for another day. For today, I’ll end by taking in my hands this whole recording business and lifting it up to God. You made my mind like this, You’ve brought me here, and You know exactly what You want me to do with it all. May I not buy any piece of equipment that I don’t need, and may I not lose sight of using music, music itself, to glorify You and make much of You. Without You, God, it’s an unending battle against time, money, and everybody who’s better than me. But before You, on my knees, it has purpose regardless of how good my reverbs are.
Thank you Lord for keeping me from the despair of living for myself.
--Clear Ambassador
(Which is a thin, single-ply Remo drum head that most likely sits on the bottom of half the drums you’ve ever heard recorded.)
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Totally wandering poem at 2am
The night has fallen thickly in the house;
Little ticks from clicking clocks;
A beagle snoring on the couch.
Christmas Eve you say it is?
The midnight hour has come and gone.
And so it is, for it must be;
But Christmas won't mean much to me.
Another night like so many gone before;
Another stately sit with feet grown cold upon the floor.
Another frozen stare at the glowing screen,
Writing and talking with friends that I don't see.
Hands like heavy weights upon the keys
Press my wrists that stick out from my sleeves.
Motion makes me feel how stiff I am,
So still I stay, and move the least I can.
Warmth is snoring from her blanket by my side -
Daisy keeps the still and chill out of the night.
Held within my hands, with breath and bone,
Her tiny life and shining eyes and furry folds of skin,
Curled in a wonderful cocoon,
Radiating heat and feeling life..
With Daisy here I know I'm not alone.
My head hangs listlessly, like my listless mind;
Close your eyes; leave the day behind..
Three Dr.Peppers have kept me sound and bright,
But surrender now to the power of the night.
Laptop's fanning never lets my ears
Open out and simply sit and hear.
And all around I know is busy sound,
For here in the heart of a stretching city is nothing but human working to be found.
Nothing but human working to be seen,
But for the sky where the airplanes haven't been.
Nothing but human working to be used -
Clean green grasses and buildings crisp and new.
Nothing but human working to keep us away
From the land that man had to fight in harder days.
Nothing but human working for miles around,
To keep my ears from never hearing a sound.
And miles and miles and stretches of ground away,
'Cross great green miles of trees and grass and hay,
Beneath great gaping stretches of silent sky,
On acres watched by the moon's sharp silver eye,
Where birds push on through unseen night,
Where tiny mammals forage out of sight,
And blades of grass bend with the unfelt wind,
Across the tracts of vast American land,
Far past the last steel work of modern man's hand,
Beneath black sky of night and blue of day,
A creek in a canyon toils along its way
Down a cleft of rock and dusty dirt of earth
Where the sounds of a planet's living can be heard.
West, in the deep long-lonesome forests of old,
West on the mountains of wind and thin-air cold;
West where a sagebrush lives and dies,
Never having been seen by human eyes;
West, where the mountain men lived by nail and tooth
In the undiluted gaze of nature's truth;
West, despite the sight of satellites keen,
Are places of beauty no man's ever seen.
West you can be where no one else is,
And stand on the earth the way God made it.
A life like that is not for me.
I love the comforts of community.
But somewhere lies a little part,
Deep within my social heart,
That wishes to stand in a ghastly blue night
And stare down vistas of lonely moon light;
To see the rocks and jagged horns
Of lands untouched since they were born.
Cold wind blowing under my skin,
No one knowing where I have been,
No one seeing what I have seen,
No one there to hear me scream
Or sit in silence and let the night
Soak through my flesh and fill my mind.
Let the vast all-swallowing sky
Stand above me, bigger than I.
Zoom the camera out from my seat
To a world that's so much bigger than me.
Let sink into and through my brain
The vastness and realness of earth untamed.
I wish there were two of me -- one to be me,
And one to live in that picture I see.
One to live for the comforts of home,
And one to live in the mountains alone.
One to chat and delight with my friends,
And one to flee the presence of men.
One to depend on the structures of ease,
And one to be gnarled like cliff-clinging trees.
One to be weak but happy, like me,
And one to stand on his own before the blast of the harsh grand land of untold wonders where no quarter is given, no corners are cut, no dangers are lessened, and your shoulders are broad, your skin is tough, your endurance is long, your patience is silent, and your mind holds wondrous experiences no one has seen or known.
One to fall down and worship God
And one to stand tall and be worshipped.
One I am
And one somehow stirs something in me.
One lives in the pokey hills of Pittsburgh
One flies out over the sea of lights in Salt Lake City valley, soars over the mountains in the thin air of night, wisps through foothills and mountains of deserted scrub and stones, peering into sharp-cut shadows of moonlight, abiding unto itself and feeling the living land under its flight.
One is about to go to bed
And one lives on in my mind--a weird and senseless phantasm of strange subjective feelings stirred by thoughts of the West, stories from Ken, and the strange allure of night.
--JPB
Little ticks from clicking clocks;
A beagle snoring on the couch.
Christmas Eve you say it is?
The midnight hour has come and gone.
And so it is, for it must be;
But Christmas won't mean much to me.
Another night like so many gone before;
Another stately sit with feet grown cold upon the floor.
Another frozen stare at the glowing screen,
Writing and talking with friends that I don't see.
Hands like heavy weights upon the keys
Press my wrists that stick out from my sleeves.
Motion makes me feel how stiff I am,
So still I stay, and move the least I can.
Warmth is snoring from her blanket by my side -
Daisy keeps the still and chill out of the night.
Held within my hands, with breath and bone,
Her tiny life and shining eyes and furry folds of skin,
Curled in a wonderful cocoon,
Radiating heat and feeling life..
With Daisy here I know I'm not alone.
My head hangs listlessly, like my listless mind;
Close your eyes; leave the day behind..
Three Dr.Peppers have kept me sound and bright,
But surrender now to the power of the night.
Laptop's fanning never lets my ears
Open out and simply sit and hear.
And all around I know is busy sound,
For here in the heart of a stretching city is nothing but human working to be found.
Nothing but human working to be seen,
But for the sky where the airplanes haven't been.
Nothing but human working to be used -
Clean green grasses and buildings crisp and new.
Nothing but human working to keep us away
From the land that man had to fight in harder days.
Nothing but human working for miles around,
To keep my ears from never hearing a sound.
And miles and miles and stretches of ground away,
'Cross great green miles of trees and grass and hay,
Beneath great gaping stretches of silent sky,
On acres watched by the moon's sharp silver eye,
Where birds push on through unseen night,
Where tiny mammals forage out of sight,
And blades of grass bend with the unfelt wind,
Across the tracts of vast American land,
Far past the last steel work of modern man's hand,
Beneath black sky of night and blue of day,
A creek in a canyon toils along its way
Down a cleft of rock and dusty dirt of earth
Where the sounds of a planet's living can be heard.
West, in the deep long-lonesome forests of old,
West on the mountains of wind and thin-air cold;
West where a sagebrush lives and dies,
Never having been seen by human eyes;
West, where the mountain men lived by nail and tooth
In the undiluted gaze of nature's truth;
West, despite the sight of satellites keen,
Are places of beauty no man's ever seen.
West you can be where no one else is,
And stand on the earth the way God made it.
A life like that is not for me.
I love the comforts of community.
But somewhere lies a little part,
Deep within my social heart,
That wishes to stand in a ghastly blue night
And stare down vistas of lonely moon light;
To see the rocks and jagged horns
Of lands untouched since they were born.
Cold wind blowing under my skin,
No one knowing where I have been,
No one seeing what I have seen,
No one there to hear me scream
Or sit in silence and let the night
Soak through my flesh and fill my mind.
Let the vast all-swallowing sky
Stand above me, bigger than I.
Zoom the camera out from my seat
To a world that's so much bigger than me.
Let sink into and through my brain
The vastness and realness of earth untamed.
I wish there were two of me -- one to be me,
And one to live in that picture I see.
One to live for the comforts of home,
And one to live in the mountains alone.
One to chat and delight with my friends,
And one to flee the presence of men.
One to depend on the structures of ease,
And one to be gnarled like cliff-clinging trees.
One to be weak but happy, like me,
And one to stand on his own before the blast of the harsh grand land of untold wonders where no quarter is given, no corners are cut, no dangers are lessened, and your shoulders are broad, your skin is tough, your endurance is long, your patience is silent, and your mind holds wondrous experiences no one has seen or known.
One to fall down and worship God
And one to stand tall and be worshipped.
One I am
And one somehow stirs something in me.
One lives in the pokey hills of Pittsburgh
One flies out over the sea of lights in Salt Lake City valley, soars over the mountains in the thin air of night, wisps through foothills and mountains of deserted scrub and stones, peering into sharp-cut shadows of moonlight, abiding unto itself and feeling the living land under its flight.
One is about to go to bed
And one lives on in my mind--a weird and senseless phantasm of strange subjective feelings stirred by thoughts of the West, stories from Ken, and the strange allure of night.
--JPB
Saturday, December 24, 2005
A Greasy Hamburger
Friday December 23rd, 2005
Aahhhhhh.
I sit in the blue chair in Grandma and Grandpa's living room as Grandma sleeps in Emelda (her chair), Dally is pressed up against the chair on the floor, and Daisy has buried herself in the big blanket on Grandpa's chair that exactly matches her color scheme. There's a little lit-up Christmas tree on the coffee table in front of me, and the glowing candles in the window and the nets of lights on the bushes out front state that it is, indeed, Christmas.
More than the lights, though, or the soul-stirring music of this time of year, the "feeling of the season" welled up in me as we sat around the table at Baker's Dozen--Mom, Dad, Ken, Daniel, Uncle Keith and I. Just having Ken and UK around brings an air to the conversation and activities that is endemic to Christmas. And even though Grandpa isn't here in the house...it just is Christmas now.
It was really good to finally get to see Grandpa. Mom, Dad, Ken and I went to the hospital after dinner, where Grandma had been since the afternoon (She and Mom have been trading shifts during the days). I was steeling myself for a ghastly sight, and was glad to see instead just Grandpa, lying on the bed. Small-looking under the covers compared to his robust, big-boned persona of the past, but still Grandpa. His fingers may have gotten scrawny, his skin may hang like bags off of his biceps, and his words may come with half-breathless effort, but those words still speak the keen wit and interest of Grandpa Ken. He asked several times about stuff Ken had done at Cape May and around New England, and kept up his smart comments, like "Boy, the quality of help around here!" when Mom dropped the oxygen tubes she was trying to help him get in place :-)
He's hooked up to about 8 different tubes and gadgets, he has a motorized reclining bed which he can adjust, and there's a table within reach with tissues, water and other such amenities on it. One of us is there with him pretty much all day, and he takes sleeping pills to get rest at night. The big concern at the moment is the level of saturation of oxygen in his blood. Due to the pneumonia racking out his alveoli, his capacity for absorbing oxygen is reduced, sometimes critically so. He's got to get that squared away before he can come home. Tonight he was running fairly steady at about 90% of normal saturation, which was good, ATC (All Things Considered).
The biggest factor keeping him in the hospital now is his severe weakness. His muscles have simply faded away as I he laid in that bed for two weeks, half dead to the world. He has got to get some of his body back now. He's got to eat, and he's got to move. So yesterday the doctor, in all seriousness, prescribed a greasy hamburger for him :-) The fat and protein are what his body desperately needs, and the grease will literally help it get through his parched mouth and throat better. I loved that! If at all possible, I will get him some Taco Bell too, before I leave. The zesty chicken bowl is nice and moist, with friendly chunks of tasty chicken and a nice mix of rice, refried beans, lettuce and dressing. We'll see :-)
Um, other brief points of interest: Ken drove from Massachusetts yesterday, arriving home around 8pm. When Dad related those plans to me, I was elated to realize that that meant Ken would be riding with Dad and me to Chicago! Such was indeed the case, and it was a great drive. In the afternoon Ken told us two stories of "nocturnal adventures" he had had in the deep woods of Colorado and New Mexico. Let's just say that it was as good a story as I've ever heard, except the liver of the adventures was sitting in the seat in front of me! What Ken has done and experienced in his 3 summers out West, though far from the unrealistic and naieve ideals of "communing with nature" entertained by many, still amaze and intrigue me in a deep way. He is a mountain man, he has brushed death pretty close, and he has an earthy and practical sense of forest and mountain, trail and tree, hiking and navigating, thinking hard, working hard, and surviving. He's crawled over great tracks of remote forests, seen things few people have ever seen, and gone through many many brutal, uncomfortable, genuinely unpleasant days and experiences. He's a mountain man with a GPS, and his body and mind are much closer to standing up to nature than mine.
We left at 10:15 and got here at 4:45 EST, clocking in a trip time of 7.5 hours--a record for me! I slept a bit on the drive, for the last half, and realized just how deep-down tired I am. I emixed the Chex Mix so I could enchex my mouth. Sorry for the meaningless private joke, but I want to remember it in the future :-) Dad and Ken did all the driving, which I was cool with because I'll be driving it all when I return to Pittsburgh on Wednesday. Boo :-/
As pondered upon in previous posts, the "emotionally anticipated visit to my ailing Grandfather during this dismembered holiday season" was met with happily pedestrian real life, and things are better now than they felt several days ago. Grandpa is still racked out in the hospital, lymphoma still fills his body, 8 rounds of chemo still leer at us from the uncertain future, but we're all here now, and there is joy to be had in the people gathered together, even when some are missing.
Praise God.
--Clear Ambassador
Aahhhhhh.
I sit in the blue chair in Grandma and Grandpa's living room as Grandma sleeps in Emelda (her chair), Dally is pressed up against the chair on the floor, and Daisy has buried herself in the big blanket on Grandpa's chair that exactly matches her color scheme. There's a little lit-up Christmas tree on the coffee table in front of me, and the glowing candles in the window and the nets of lights on the bushes out front state that it is, indeed, Christmas.
More than the lights, though, or the soul-stirring music of this time of year, the "feeling of the season" welled up in me as we sat around the table at Baker's Dozen--Mom, Dad, Ken, Daniel, Uncle Keith and I. Just having Ken and UK around brings an air to the conversation and activities that is endemic to Christmas. And even though Grandpa isn't here in the house...it just is Christmas now.
It was really good to finally get to see Grandpa. Mom, Dad, Ken and I went to the hospital after dinner, where Grandma had been since the afternoon (She and Mom have been trading shifts during the days). I was steeling myself for a ghastly sight, and was glad to see instead just Grandpa, lying on the bed. Small-looking under the covers compared to his robust, big-boned persona of the past, but still Grandpa. His fingers may have gotten scrawny, his skin may hang like bags off of his biceps, and his words may come with half-breathless effort, but those words still speak the keen wit and interest of Grandpa Ken. He asked several times about stuff Ken had done at Cape May and around New England, and kept up his smart comments, like "Boy, the quality of help around here!" when Mom dropped the oxygen tubes she was trying to help him get in place :-)
He's hooked up to about 8 different tubes and gadgets, he has a motorized reclining bed which he can adjust, and there's a table within reach with tissues, water and other such amenities on it. One of us is there with him pretty much all day, and he takes sleeping pills to get rest at night. The big concern at the moment is the level of saturation of oxygen in his blood. Due to the pneumonia racking out his alveoli, his capacity for absorbing oxygen is reduced, sometimes critically so. He's got to get that squared away before he can come home. Tonight he was running fairly steady at about 90% of normal saturation, which was good, ATC (All Things Considered).
The biggest factor keeping him in the hospital now is his severe weakness. His muscles have simply faded away as I he laid in that bed for two weeks, half dead to the world. He has got to get some of his body back now. He's got to eat, and he's got to move. So yesterday the doctor, in all seriousness, prescribed a greasy hamburger for him :-) The fat and protein are what his body desperately needs, and the grease will literally help it get through his parched mouth and throat better. I loved that! If at all possible, I will get him some Taco Bell too, before I leave. The zesty chicken bowl is nice and moist, with friendly chunks of tasty chicken and a nice mix of rice, refried beans, lettuce and dressing. We'll see :-)
Um, other brief points of interest: Ken drove from Massachusetts yesterday, arriving home around 8pm. When Dad related those plans to me, I was elated to realize that that meant Ken would be riding with Dad and me to Chicago! Such was indeed the case, and it was a great drive. In the afternoon Ken told us two stories of "nocturnal adventures" he had had in the deep woods of Colorado and New Mexico. Let's just say that it was as good a story as I've ever heard, except the liver of the adventures was sitting in the seat in front of me! What Ken has done and experienced in his 3 summers out West, though far from the unrealistic and naieve ideals of "communing with nature" entertained by many, still amaze and intrigue me in a deep way. He is a mountain man, he has brushed death pretty close, and he has an earthy and practical sense of forest and mountain, trail and tree, hiking and navigating, thinking hard, working hard, and surviving. He's crawled over great tracks of remote forests, seen things few people have ever seen, and gone through many many brutal, uncomfortable, genuinely unpleasant days and experiences. He's a mountain man with a GPS, and his body and mind are much closer to standing up to nature than mine.
We left at 10:15 and got here at 4:45 EST, clocking in a trip time of 7.5 hours--a record for me! I slept a bit on the drive, for the last half, and realized just how deep-down tired I am. I emixed the Chex Mix so I could enchex my mouth. Sorry for the meaningless private joke, but I want to remember it in the future :-) Dad and Ken did all the driving, which I was cool with because I'll be driving it all when I return to Pittsburgh on Wednesday. Boo :-/
As pondered upon in previous posts, the "emotionally anticipated visit to my ailing Grandfather during this dismembered holiday season" was met with happily pedestrian real life, and things are better now than they felt several days ago. Grandpa is still racked out in the hospital, lymphoma still fills his body, 8 rounds of chemo still leer at us from the uncertain future, but we're all here now, and there is joy to be had in the people gathered together, even when some are missing.
Praise God.
--Clear Ambassador
Friday, December 23, 2005
Here's to
Here's to the last days of 2005
And the cold white rays of the moon outside.
And here's to the days that're left before
The new year slips through a crack in the door.
Here's to heaters in houses and cars,
Here's to candy in big glass jars.
Here's to Mazdas slipping on snow,
Here's to the few short days in Chicago.
Here's to how we were before
2005 beat 2004.
And here's to the things that'll be in our lives
When 2006 meets 2005.
And the cold white rays of the moon outside.
And here's to the days that're left before
The new year slips through a crack in the door.
Here's to heaters in houses and cars,
Here's to candy in big glass jars.
Here's to Mazdas slipping on snow,
Here's to the few short days in Chicago.
Here's to how we were before
2005 beat 2004.
And here's to the things that'll be in our lives
When 2006 meets 2005.
--John Behrens (12-23-05)
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Never Again
Something is tugging at my heart right now. And I do mean tugging. Right there, at the bottom of my ribcage, right about where you'd do CPR (two fingers below, to be exact). It's tight and pulled-in feeling, seeming to pull straight through from my physical body to my deepest emotions. Grandpa Ken may well be dying.
Normally chemo patients have a rough time, especially a low point after their first dose, and work up from there, and continue on. Grandpa just continues to get worse. The doctors are saying it's very unusual. After his immune system was wiped out he contracted double pneumonia, which remains now after his white blood cell count has returned to normal. He has fluid in his feet and ankles, and there's more I couldn't quite make out from Dad's phone message about an oxygen tent and barely avoiding going to intensive care. He's got some fungus thing in his nose that has potential to drag on for a long time and really eat up his tissue. It keeps going on, basically.
I myself have been distantly allowing it to enter my pragmatic thoughts, and now Mom is having to think about it for the first time herself: Grandpa Ken may not make it.
But what twists me down there below my ribcage is that, whether he makes it through or not, life will never be the same. All of my existence Grandma and Grandpa have just BEEN there. You didn't think about it, they just drove down and were there for Christmas, or for a random visit, or there in their stately ranch house plunked in the straight-streeted tall-treed suburbs of midamerican Chicago, the paradise of my youth. They got tireder as the years went by, and Grandpa did less and less of the house repairs he used to fill his time with on their visits, but they were just THERE. You could enjoy them with no thought of "last time," no painful dealing with severely limiting health conditions, no gap of what used to be. They were just there.
Keith Foley, Julie Andrews, The Canadian Brass--all our favorite Christmas music--would fill the house. The top of the fridge was covered with Fannie May chocolates, Jay's and Oke-doke (snacks endemic to Chicago), and Wrigley or Dally's food, bowls and biscuits. There were people around and things going on, always. Whether a football game, home repairs, shopping excursions into the brittle white crunchy winter world, meals out, or birding trips, there was always something to hook onto for the ride. That indescribable colored glow of Christmas lights touched everything with a tangible Christmas air, and we padded around the house in socks, heedless of time or days, for it was Christmastime, somehow arrived again after an interminable year--that time of all times with food and music, free time and lurking presents, and those special special people who brought such a different and exciting air to everything that went on.
Most likely never again. Quite possibily not with all of those same special people. Certainly not carefree. Never again carefree in the same way. I know 15 years from now I'll be celebrating Christmas with Mom and Dad and Uncle Dan and Uncle Ken and my wife and kids, but there will still be that little hole, back in those warm deep memories, were Grandpa used to be, and Grandma, and maybe even Uncle Keith. Different things are not always worse, but they are not the same. That most elevated time of the year, which stirred indescribable joy and anticipation and specialness in my heart at the mere thought of it, will be different for the rest of my life.
I'm really trying not to wax sentimental with all the mushy language we've heard a million times. The holiday magic of my childhood memories will never be the same, blah blah. That's mush. This is something I'm feeling right now (yes, feeling. Remember that.), something I've known for years was coming, and something which is now real and bottomlessly unescapable. I've just realized a little bit more, as I've been unloading the dish washer while Julie Andrews sings from the stereo and Dad is upstairs in the darkish and cooling and unfilled house, the weight of what is happening. Friday Dad and I drive out to Chicago for Christmas. Uncle Keith and Ken will be there, too, so we'll all be together, but most likely Grandpa will still be in the hospital. Christmas day will be painfully strange, stretched between the hospital and home, tainted by Grandpa's condition. So we sit at home and open presents with Grandpa laying in a hospital bed? So we bring them over to the hospital and sit around a sterile room with Grandpa racked-out and hooked-up on a bed? It will not be the Christmas I have looked forward to every other year of my life.
I pretty much felt like squeezing out a tear or two as I looked at the Christmas tree in the living room just now. Dad got it earlier than normal this year as we anticipated everybody, lymphoma and all, coming here for the holiday. We didn't have time that day to put lights on it, and since then we've gotten used to it bare, and actually I kind of like it--green, natural, and different. I'll pull up to the house after 8 hours of driving next week, walk in the door, plunk down my suitcase in the deserted house, and that tree will be there. Christmas will be past, and it was never surrounded with the happy happenings expected. The cold mean task of Christmas decor tear-down will eventually claim it, after it sat in the lonely house, bare and unattended, while Grandpa toiled in the hospital and we toiled in our hearts over Christmas. That tree stands there and wrenches my heart (in the mood I'm in right now, as I think about it) over what is happening right now.
I could really go for a shot and a half of neat Jack right now. Or some AIM with Nate or Shannon or Rebekah. Or a nice phone call to Steve or Jess. Or heck, even a tape of Get Smart TV shows. What is it in talking to other people that makes it seem like the only thing that can assuage the tugging grief in my heart? I do not understand it. I do not understand that powerful powerful living warmth that contact with other people brings.
But I'm not talking to anyone on AIM right now. I just checked, and my inbox holds no new emails. One new blog comment provided a spark of light, but that's it. The Simpsons are over for the night, and I know that only empty crap is on TV. Suddenly my 9.24 gigabyte iTunes library that normally beckons like a treasure chest of musical gems seems as hollow and friendless as an empty hotel lobby. Times like this are when I see again that Johnny Cash is my favorite musician. If I was to put anything on, it would be him. I just wish, cry out, for something to sit down with and be happy. The Christmas music playing is perfect, but it too pangs me with what is lacking, and what will never be again.
This is what I came to again on Monday as I had a quiet time--I rarely, basically never, come to God to have longings like this met. And not in some stupid mental pondering of the somber wonder of God dying for man, but these real freaking feelings MET. Addressed. Dealt with in a way that actually is better than AIM or email or movies. Not merely forgotten or turned aside or numbed, but met-with full-on, and transcended to reach joy beyond them. It happened a few times after Youth Camp this year, and what a glorious taste that was. But still prayer and Bible reading seem in an entirely different league than talking with Autumn, who just signed on now, or watching a new episode of the Simpsons.
Folks, I have no choice but to give it a try. It's 11:40 now, curse the damned clock, so I shouldn't really take any more time from the sleep my body is already lacking. But I will retire and think on God, read a Psalm or two, and seek in God refuge and strength, comfort for the afflicted, and "a very present help in time of need." They say He's real, and Dad and Mom seem to find something real in reading and prayer, so I can but try, and see if, once again, the God of the universe will make Himself seem actually real to me. It is extremely tempting to purse my lips in self-pity, cynicism, and bitterness, but I've been through that for years, and I do not want to go back. He was real at Youth Camp, and if my spiritual life is actually to change, He must become meaningful consistently, to some degree. So I plunge ahead, for as I am a man and God is God, I do not want this to be the story of my life.
O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Your praise. For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. God, God sitting enthroned in Heaven this very moment, existant and reading these words, Your sacrifices are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart--these, O God, You will not despise.
--Broken Ambassador
[Note to my readers: The clock is damned. The trumpet of the Lord shall sound and time shall be no more. Perhaps I shouldn't curse it, for it is God's creation, but when mankind fell, time fell too, and its end is coming. I will be glad to see it go, the scourge of my days, though eternity still holds the fear of the endless unknown.]
Normally chemo patients have a rough time, especially a low point after their first dose, and work up from there, and continue on. Grandpa just continues to get worse. The doctors are saying it's very unusual. After his immune system was wiped out he contracted double pneumonia, which remains now after his white blood cell count has returned to normal. He has fluid in his feet and ankles, and there's more I couldn't quite make out from Dad's phone message about an oxygen tent and barely avoiding going to intensive care. He's got some fungus thing in his nose that has potential to drag on for a long time and really eat up his tissue. It keeps going on, basically.
I myself have been distantly allowing it to enter my pragmatic thoughts, and now Mom is having to think about it for the first time herself: Grandpa Ken may not make it.
But what twists me down there below my ribcage is that, whether he makes it through or not, life will never be the same. All of my existence Grandma and Grandpa have just BEEN there. You didn't think about it, they just drove down and were there for Christmas, or for a random visit, or there in their stately ranch house plunked in the straight-streeted tall-treed suburbs of midamerican Chicago, the paradise of my youth. They got tireder as the years went by, and Grandpa did less and less of the house repairs he used to fill his time with on their visits, but they were just THERE. You could enjoy them with no thought of "last time," no painful dealing with severely limiting health conditions, no gap of what used to be. They were just there.
Keith Foley, Julie Andrews, The Canadian Brass--all our favorite Christmas music--would fill the house. The top of the fridge was covered with Fannie May chocolates, Jay's and Oke-doke (snacks endemic to Chicago), and Wrigley or Dally's food, bowls and biscuits. There were people around and things going on, always. Whether a football game, home repairs, shopping excursions into the brittle white crunchy winter world, meals out, or birding trips, there was always something to hook onto for the ride. That indescribable colored glow of Christmas lights touched everything with a tangible Christmas air, and we padded around the house in socks, heedless of time or days, for it was Christmastime, somehow arrived again after an interminable year--that time of all times with food and music, free time and lurking presents, and those special special people who brought such a different and exciting air to everything that went on.
Most likely never again. Quite possibily not with all of those same special people. Certainly not carefree. Never again carefree in the same way. I know 15 years from now I'll be celebrating Christmas with Mom and Dad and Uncle Dan and Uncle Ken and my wife and kids, but there will still be that little hole, back in those warm deep memories, were Grandpa used to be, and Grandma, and maybe even Uncle Keith. Different things are not always worse, but they are not the same. That most elevated time of the year, which stirred indescribable joy and anticipation and specialness in my heart at the mere thought of it, will be different for the rest of my life.
I'm really trying not to wax sentimental with all the mushy language we've heard a million times. The holiday magic of my childhood memories will never be the same, blah blah. That's mush. This is something I'm feeling right now (yes, feeling. Remember that.), something I've known for years was coming, and something which is now real and bottomlessly unescapable. I've just realized a little bit more, as I've been unloading the dish washer while Julie Andrews sings from the stereo and Dad is upstairs in the darkish and cooling and unfilled house, the weight of what is happening. Friday Dad and I drive out to Chicago for Christmas. Uncle Keith and Ken will be there, too, so we'll all be together, but most likely Grandpa will still be in the hospital. Christmas day will be painfully strange, stretched between the hospital and home, tainted by Grandpa's condition. So we sit at home and open presents with Grandpa laying in a hospital bed? So we bring them over to the hospital and sit around a sterile room with Grandpa racked-out and hooked-up on a bed? It will not be the Christmas I have looked forward to every other year of my life.
I pretty much felt like squeezing out a tear or two as I looked at the Christmas tree in the living room just now. Dad got it earlier than normal this year as we anticipated everybody, lymphoma and all, coming here for the holiday. We didn't have time that day to put lights on it, and since then we've gotten used to it bare, and actually I kind of like it--green, natural, and different. I'll pull up to the house after 8 hours of driving next week, walk in the door, plunk down my suitcase in the deserted house, and that tree will be there. Christmas will be past, and it was never surrounded with the happy happenings expected. The cold mean task of Christmas decor tear-down will eventually claim it, after it sat in the lonely house, bare and unattended, while Grandpa toiled in the hospital and we toiled in our hearts over Christmas. That tree stands there and wrenches my heart (in the mood I'm in right now, as I think about it) over what is happening right now.
I could really go for a shot and a half of neat Jack right now. Or some AIM with Nate or Shannon or Rebekah. Or a nice phone call to Steve or Jess. Or heck, even a tape of Get Smart TV shows. What is it in talking to other people that makes it seem like the only thing that can assuage the tugging grief in my heart? I do not understand it. I do not understand that powerful powerful living warmth that contact with other people brings.
But I'm not talking to anyone on AIM right now. I just checked, and my inbox holds no new emails. One new blog comment provided a spark of light, but that's it. The Simpsons are over for the night, and I know that only empty crap is on TV. Suddenly my 9.24 gigabyte iTunes library that normally beckons like a treasure chest of musical gems seems as hollow and friendless as an empty hotel lobby. Times like this are when I see again that Johnny Cash is my favorite musician. If I was to put anything on, it would be him. I just wish, cry out, for something to sit down with and be happy. The Christmas music playing is perfect, but it too pangs me with what is lacking, and what will never be again.
This is what I came to again on Monday as I had a quiet time--I rarely, basically never, come to God to have longings like this met. And not in some stupid mental pondering of the somber wonder of God dying for man, but these real freaking feelings MET. Addressed. Dealt with in a way that actually is better than AIM or email or movies. Not merely forgotten or turned aside or numbed, but met-with full-on, and transcended to reach joy beyond them. It happened a few times after Youth Camp this year, and what a glorious taste that was. But still prayer and Bible reading seem in an entirely different league than talking with Autumn, who just signed on now, or watching a new episode of the Simpsons.
Folks, I have no choice but to give it a try. It's 11:40 now, curse the damned clock, so I shouldn't really take any more time from the sleep my body is already lacking. But I will retire and think on God, read a Psalm or two, and seek in God refuge and strength, comfort for the afflicted, and "a very present help in time of need." They say He's real, and Dad and Mom seem to find something real in reading and prayer, so I can but try, and see if, once again, the God of the universe will make Himself seem actually real to me. It is extremely tempting to purse my lips in self-pity, cynicism, and bitterness, but I've been through that for years, and I do not want to go back. He was real at Youth Camp, and if my spiritual life is actually to change, He must become meaningful consistently, to some degree. So I plunge ahead, for as I am a man and God is God, I do not want this to be the story of my life.
O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Your praise. For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. God, God sitting enthroned in Heaven this very moment, existant and reading these words, Your sacrifices are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart--these, O God, You will not despise.
--Broken Ambassador
[Note to my readers: The clock is damned. The trumpet of the Lord shall sound and time shall be no more. Perhaps I shouldn't curse it, for it is God's creation, but when mankind fell, time fell too, and its end is coming. I will be glad to see it go, the scourge of my days, though eternity still holds the fear of the endless unknown.]
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Shower Prayer
This verse from Psalm 119, which Dad directed me to yesterday, exactly captures my situation right now:
Direct my steps by Your word,
And let no iniquity have dominion over me.
--Ps. 119:133
Everything I think of that is weighing on me is covered by this verse. I feel the weight of Dad's impression, which he shared with me last night, that this time is a crucial point in my life. Either I get my spiritual life on track, or it becomes a long-term struggle, grinding through the demanding years of job and family.
Lord, You do not want that to be my life, and I DO NOT want that to be what happens. God, I will do whatever it takes to pursue You. There is so much that is lacking now! And this is all I've ever known. My spiritual life is like a heavy struggle, never where it should be, and I cannot picture anything different. Lord, may it not remain so! God, please bring the diligence and discipline that I do not have! The consistent times of being in Your word, hearing Your leading on a daily basis and walking in it, addressing sins as You bring them to light, and abiding in You. Like Dad. God, I want to be like Dad. And let it only be Your timing that keeps that from happening now, and may it only be Your wisdom that keeps it from looking like Dad's life.
Direct my steps by Your word, and let no iniquity have dominion over me! You wrote the words, God; I'm just praying them.
Direct my steps by Your word,
And let no iniquity have dominion over me.
--Ps. 119:133
Everything I think of that is weighing on me is covered by this verse. I feel the weight of Dad's impression, which he shared with me last night, that this time is a crucial point in my life. Either I get my spiritual life on track, or it becomes a long-term struggle, grinding through the demanding years of job and family.
Lord, You do not want that to be my life, and I DO NOT want that to be what happens. God, I will do whatever it takes to pursue You. There is so much that is lacking now! And this is all I've ever known. My spiritual life is like a heavy struggle, never where it should be, and I cannot picture anything different. Lord, may it not remain so! God, please bring the diligence and discipline that I do not have! The consistent times of being in Your word, hearing Your leading on a daily basis and walking in it, addressing sins as You bring them to light, and abiding in You. Like Dad. God, I want to be like Dad. And let it only be Your timing that keeps that from happening now, and may it only be Your wisdom that keeps it from looking like Dad's life.
Direct my steps by Your word, and let no iniquity have dominion over me! You wrote the words, God; I'm just praying them.
So much to recap!
Oy. Well, let me start way back last week. As I'm sure you can guess from some of my previous hectic posts, my life has been dominated by one thing: CRITICAL WRITING. The final portfolio, which is to "present a critical picture of my semester in CW," was due Friday the 16th. I had thrown my heart into this class over the whole semester, and the weight was heavy to portray that adequately and demonstrate what I had learned in the writing of the piece. I plunked around on it over the weekend, getting nowhere. I did force myself to think about it, and make an outline of what I had learned in the course. Mom and Dad were gone for the weekend visiting Ken in Cape May where he works at a seawatch/hawkwatch, tracking migrating birds. Then on Monday I took Daniel to "Readers & Writers Club" Monday afternoon. I asked Mrs. Sames if I could hang around for a few minutes and share some of the things I'd learned in CW. She thought that sounded great, and I ended up talking for 45 minutes, really getting wound up about what I'd learned, and the things these growing writers would benefit from so much. I hit the restroom quick before heading home, and naturally, that being my source of all inspiration, I had a glorious flash of light. This picture--sitting on the couch, rocking back and forth, speaking to the circle of budding students in the warm wood room--would be the organizing theme of my final portfolio! How better to show how much I had internalized the course's material?? Because of my previous outlining, I had been able to share in a very organized manner, which would provide the perfect structure for the piece. Ooh man, I was SO pumped! FINALLY, the inspiration had come!
However, I had the Transport Phenomena final Tuesday to study for. So I did that the rest of the day Monday. When I was done, I figured I'd tick down a bit before bed and tap at the CW portfolio for a few minutes. Hours later, at 3am, my inspiration finally dried up. :-) What a night that was! I closed my laptop on 15 pages of fresh writing--the core for the rest of the week's work--happy beyond words to finally have SOMETHING started.
The final went well Tuesday. Not great, but decent. An 88 out of 100, securing a final tally of 91% for the course. Considering the many weeks of despairing confusion I endured in that class, I'm happy with that. After the test I limped around for an hour or so registering for intermediate physical chemistry for the spring. My knee was especially bad that day, so when I got home I pretty much just flopped down in the family room and watched "From Russia With Love." Didn't do a whole lot of work on the portfolio that day 'cause I was bushed.
Wednesday Mom and Daniel drove to Chicago since Grandpa had taken a turn for the worse after his first round of chemo. I went to see Dr. Michael Paul about my knee, and received a very unsatisfactory diagnosis. He said it was the tendon on the outside of the knee, that even though my entire knee would roar in pain, "That's just the way it feels," and that the "cure" was to massage it with ice for 20 minutes 3 times a day for 6 weeks. Hm. I was so irritated that my knee felt FINE that day, when on Tuesday it was in excruciating, debilitating pain. Stupid joint!
Wednesday evening I psyched myself up for the big push. I had to get it basically finished up so I would have Thursday to work with it, edit it, and craft it, as I was claiming to have learned to do. So I kept the light on, ate lots of food, and worked feverishly with the mounds of papers on the floor and the miles of little black words on the screen. I was up till 5am, and miraculously remained productive until the bitter end. Unusual for me this semester, as my late-night capabilities have been drying up. By the time I staggered into bed and flopped there with churning mind and restless limbs I had laid out 38 pages of writing, which my mind could not quite compass. Finally I slipped into a dead sleep, from which I rose myself at around 9:30.
Thursday I had to drive to NOVA Chemicals, my co-op job, to get a drug test in preparation for returning to work for the spring semester. So I showered, grabbed a shoddy breakfast and a can of cherry-vanilla Dr.Pepper, and headed out. I had been planning on going to the Quinlisks after the test since Rebekah and come PHC'ers were stopping by on their way back to Ohio. However, I found out as I was leaving that they had called of the visit due to the henious sleety-freezy-rainy-snowy slickerizing stuff falling from the glowering gray skies. Not a bad call :-P And is it turns out, that was their destiny...
For, unencumbered now with commitments, I decided to drift into the Midway (sweet bar & grill by NOVA) and partake of one of their fabled "cajun chicken salads with ranch and a Dr.Pepper" for an early lunch. Earlier that day I had printed out the current draft of the final portfolio so I could work on it while I waited for the drug test. So, sitting in the booth with NOTHING else to turn my mind upon, I read it over in print (which somehow enables much better proofreading and editing) and had a glorious, epiphinaical (??) writing experience for almost 3 hours. One salad and four Dr.Peppers later I waltzed out the door brimming with excitement--I had finished the piece, figured out how to end it, how to tie the last needed components into the structure, written pages of great material, and brought it to a state nearing finality. I can't really describe how wonderful that time was there, sitting in that awesome little restaurant, feeling the inspiration flow, jotting down with jittery, eager hand the words and sentences that locked in so well, expressing what I had been striving for in the past week.
It was wonderful, and I didn't mind the ice on the roads on the way home, I just cranked Petra and had one of those great music-listening experiences that come along every month or so. The big honkin' post about that album was the result of that drive.
What a time that was! Truly one of the high points of the semester, and probably the peak of this mountain that has been the CW final portfolio, which as a whole stands as one of the greatest, most difficult, and most rewarding of my college endeavors.
So, yeah, I came home and pretty much spent the rest of that afternoon writing that Petra post and resting my mind.
Then came the BIG push. The night to end all nights. The indescribable evening, night and morning of frenetic work, mind-numbing thinking, and a terrifyingly large body of material to summarize, work in detail with, finish up, and perfect.
Well, not perfect. I collapsed into bed that night kicking myself for generating THIRTY-NINE pages of writing. Thirty-nine! You idiot! It's supposed to be tight, succinct, focused. You've blabbered on and on, adding new stuff every time you go over a section, and geez o man, I couldn't even read through the whole thing at the end--I have no idea if it's repetitive, unorganized...I just don't know what's IN there! It's so huge, and I've totally screwed up this last and most important project, and I've got to get up in 3 hours and go take my Systems & Signals final! And then I drive to Akron and the weekend roars away. Dude, I'm just gonna die, and I'm laying here and I can't sleep and I need to sleep! Ugh. Double-ugh and good grief I'm turning this in tomorrow :-(
Mmm, Friday morning came with the honking of the alarm and the non-sleepy non-feelingness of lack-of-sleep and mental fuzziness. I finished packing for Akron, stopped at Get-Go for gas, and crawled through the rush-hour traffic into Pitt. I had been hoping to at least have 5 or 10 minutes to skim over the equations sheet for S&S, but alas, after the search for a parking spot I hobbled in to the room, sat down, Dr. Stetten gave the the test, and I just launched right in.
Mercifully, the test went as I had hoped--I had learned everything so well over the semester (due to Dr. Stetten's fantastic, revelatory, deep-thinking teaching) that I had no problem at all with the problems, and turned it in after a little more than an hour. With that brief exercise out of the way I rushed to the computer lab, popped in my memory stick, and began to read through the final portfolio. Thank You Lord, that hour turned out to be exactly what I needed. I was able to read through the whole thing, get a grasp of what was in it, catch stupid mistakes, and clarify a few important points. I reprinted it, and held it in my hand with new confidence that it was good, that the 39 pages were all there for a reason, and that I was ready to turn it in as the culmination of this class-of-classes.
So I stopped by to tell Shannon we'd be late in heading out, bought a different folder to put it in, and hobbled quickly and painfully to the Cathedral of Learning, to 626J, the cozy little office wherein sat Dr. Kafka, some of her students, a stack of similar (though thinner) portfolios, and a spread of sweet Godiva chocolates. I handed her my baby, talked for a bit, and finally bid Kafka adeiu. It had been an amazing semester, and I am pretty sure that 40 years from now I will still remember this class, and Dr. Kafka, and some of the things I learned and first put into practice over these months. I too hope this is not the last time we run into eachother.
*really really honkin' big long sigh*
So, my semester was over! I limped over to my car through the uneven ice on the sidewalks free from assignments, tests, homework, projects--all those things which weigh down the future during a semester of classes. Shannon was walking up too, and we got in Pepsi blue and headed out for a crazy weekend in Akron. I again marveled at the theraputic effects of driving a stick shift automobile. One of the favorite lines I've ever written, because it captures so perfectly my feeling at that time, and other times, is " I rolled through the countryside, like driving through a picturesque puzzle scene, and let the Mazda’s eager engine pull along my happy, aching heart." That's pretty much how I felt as I exited Pitt that day, except it was my mind and knee that were aching, and that happiness was anticipatory, not memorial.
So we drove through the grey, white and brown landscape, which made me miss the warm days of summer when I would blow through the green hills and plains with a bright blue sky above me and sunshine in my heart. This weekend was as sweet as any summer trip, though, and it was unique in that I got to be an integral part of one of the Hoffman's dance productions--something I've long anticipated.
Ahh, how to write about the weekend efficiently, yet not let fall important details, to slip out of my memory forever.
Um, the drive went quickly, it was cool to have somebody else along. We got to the H's and everybody was engaged in preparations for the rehearsal at 4. Steve left for his final, Mike arrived, Shannon jumped right in with helping, and I staggered around in a daze :-P Eventually everybody left to set stuff up and I had an hour at home to take a nap and come for the actual rehearsal. Then the door opened, and I heard women's voices that I didn't recognize... It turns out Mike had stopped by the Duke/Duchess gas station to invite Elisa to the dance show, but didn't have any invitations with him, so they stopped by the house to grab on. Her sister was with her as well, and we ended up hanging around and talking for about half an hour. Apparently my half-sleepy state furnished amusement for my impromptu guests, which I was happy enough to provide. Eventually I got myself together and shoveled Mike and everybody out to the door and on our ways.
That evening was the first full rehearsal of the show. It was in a big hall, pretty much like a gym, but without basketball hoops. I immediately became involved in the sound stuff, and ended up running sound with Criag, while Mike and Shannon ran the lights. The wood floors were filled with dancers--girls from 12 to 19--and some of their parents, and various folks from CoG who were helping out, and of course two stressed-out over-busy Hoffman parents :-) That first rehearsal was pretty rough, with lots of stops and lots of confusion about what the lights and sound were supposed to do. But we got through it, and afterwards had a meeting to go through the script and nail down what was needed. Craig, Stephen and I hung out in Craig's car afterward and listened to Craig's emo music for awhile before heading out and hitting the sack.
Oy. What a night. Let's just say that you read about it in the papers every day, hear about it in the news, but when the Hoffman's neighbor showed up at our doorstep at 2am with her teeth busted in and blood covering her shirt, domestic violence became real to me. Thus followed an unreal 2 hours in which Mr. Hoffman called 911, a cop came, and Mr. H called her parents, at her direction, and got them to come over. Her overriding concern, through the alcohol and all, was that her kids were still in the house with him (her husband), and she just wanted them to be ok, and was terrified that he would hurt them. The police officer arrived mercifully fast, and found everything ok at the house. He arrested the guy, her parents arrived to stay with the kids, and then he came back to the Hoffmans. After assuring her that the kids were ok, he took an account from her, and Steve, Mike and I retired to the den, from which we listened silently, with wide eyes, to everything that transpired. She had indeed been punched by her husband, several times according to one of her scattered accounts. She and he had gone to the bar (obviously got drunk), got into an argument, he got home before she did, and when she opened the door, he hit her. Eventually we heard the door open again, and a yellow stretcher rolled into the patch of floor we could see from the den. The EMT checked her out and then someone else took a Reader's Digest (brief summary) of what happened, had her sign some forms, and finally the company wheeled her out the door. Upon which Mr. and Mrs. H came down the steps, as disbelieving as all of us, and we talked and prayed a bit before returning to bed.
A couple things from that experience. First off, the image of her, a pretty lady in her 30's probably, looking so horrific, with cartoonish gaps in her teeth, puffy red face, and that red red blood spattered on her shirt and pants. I can't get it out of my mind, or stop thinking about those teeth knocked out, or the ones pushed up into her jaw. Then comes the realization that her husband had done that to her. And the whole time I was thinking he was some kinda creep, but Mike and Steve said no, he's actually a really nice little guy..helped Steve put gravel on the driveway one day.. Just to see that, within the space of a few hours, he went from being a nice husband to smashing his wife's teeth in, and the only thing that happened between those two times was ALCOHOL. Just in case I was wondering, that stuff is not something to be trifled with. Geez. He had even hit her before, in the past, and not even remembered it. What a substance, that can make someone do what is so opposite their normal nature--what is so far from what they would do in their normal state of mind. *shudder*
So, yeah. Back to bed. Then up groggily but restedly at 11am and on with the day. We hung around the house a bit, Steve left for his basketball game, and eventually we headed over to the hall for the last quick rehearsal and the big shows!
We ran through most of it one last time, once everybody was assembled and ready to go. It went ok, and so we closed the curtain, put on some background music (my Christmas album, heh. Privelige of the sound guy!) and waited for 3:30 to come. It came, we made the rounds on the in-ear communicators to make sure lights, sound and Scott were all ready to go, then Mr. H came up to the sound booth, we cut the house lights and music, I punched channel four in, Mike brought the ellipsoids up, Mr. H walked out on stage, and the show began!
During the actual performances my mind was occupied primarily with adjusting the volume of the music/narration and pausing and starting the tracks at the beginning and end of each dance (mostly Craig's job). When not so occupied, I watched the dances from my side-stage vantage point. They look so effortless from the audience, but when you're up there you see their feet and ankles shaking and quaking under their weight, struggling to hold the perfect balance and keep the smooth movement. And when they all do their dainty little leaps? THUNK THU-THUNK! As I put it to Mrs. Hoffman, they're just a bunch of big honkin' girls on big honkin' feet stomping on the stage. :-D :-D (It got the expected reproachful reaction :-))
The craziest part of the show was when Craig left to be Simeon in one number, and two dances later I was in as one of the wise men. I had to start up track 7 ("The Waiting") and just leave, praying to God that Craig would make his way back to the booth after changing out of his costume in time to pause it at the end. He made it both shows, but just barely. Oog. My part as a wise guy was cool, and according to Rebekah I was the most noble and kingly of the three :-D It is still intriguing to think of who those men actually were, and how the heck they knew what this star meant, and where they came from, and what on earth was it like when they showed up at the door of the little house in Bethlehem?? Weird weird stuff. And I love how we've made "Wise Men" into a term, just like "Garbage Men" or "Mail Men." What do you do for a living? Oh, I'm a wise man. :-P They were men. And they were wise. It's just funny.
In-between the two shows we pretty much just chilled, which was quite nice. All the dancers and helpers were there, in a holding pattern 'till 7:30 rolled around. Craig and I made a trip to the nearby Acme and loaded up on snacks, which made the second show quite a blast. We were munchin' down cheezits and swiss cake rolls and lucky charms, and quaffing IBC rootbeers, toasting the girls as they danced before us, and trying to make them laugh :-) Also between shows I iced my knee, which was doing pretty bad, and got to help Jess weather the arrival of "El Creepo."
That second show was one of the funnest times I've ever had in Akron. Right up there with the contra dance night and, I dunno, all those other crazy things I've done there. Me and Craig just chilled and snacked, and he figured out that we could talk at almost normal volume and no one could hear us, 'cause we were back behind all the speakers. So yes, it was a rollicking good time!
And then we had the long strung-out half hanging-out half tearing-down time afterwards. Quite fun just wandering around, talking to the dance people, joking around with the little kids, doing some work, eating more food..
Finally we trickled out the door, loaded up Shannon's stuff from the Murphy's car, stole Jess's flowers (Philip, I love you!), and headed to the Hoffman's. More tired, absent-minded hanging out, and finally I headed out the door into the cold and on to the long dark drive home. Between Shannon being there to talk with and the witch doctor drugs Mrs. H zapped me up with, I stayed awake quite well on the drive. But for the thought of the soft couch and the warm beagle, which seriously made me feel much tireder when I thought of it. Ah well. I dropped Shannon off at 2:30, got home at 3, and got to bed at 3:30. Another whirlwind Akron weekend, and a wonderful and unique experience of getting to be a part of the dance show.
Currently, I'm winding up the day, anticipating getting up at 5:30am and going to my first day of work for the new co-op rotation, and wishing I had done some recording today. "Trav'ling Far Into the Night" is coming along beautifully, and just needs a finalized bass track and drums. Drums are the kicker--beastly hard to record, but oh so important to make the song sound good. The vocals went well, though, and I'm quite happy with the electric guitar straight out of the GT-6.
I work Wednesday and Thursday, then Dad and I drive to Chicago for Christmas. I return by myself Monday (boooooo) and continue working that week. Hopefully I'll get Thursday and Friday off, and maybe go up to Akron, or just sit at home and eat and record. We'll see. Grandpa's got pneumonia in both lungs and other problems from not sleeping much and being in the hospital. Ugh. It's really saddening to have this situation envelope our family, and to realize that last Christmas, in Utah, may well have been the last normal Christmas like the ones I've known all my life. Ever. We'll see. But regardless, in a few years Grandma and Grandpa will both be gone, and that feels much closer now, and it is just sad. Alas for the carefree days of good health and good times that once were. The good times will continue, as will life in all its good and bad, but they will all be changed.
So, yeah, I'm super tired and hungry from fasting all day, and it's just really sad when you don't eat food, and this post has taken me four solid hours to write and I didn't get any recording done today and I have to get up at 5:30 and Christmas is gonna be weird and sorta sad, and Akron is sweet and work starts again, all day every day, and mostly I just wish I could eat somethin'.
And I'm really glad this semester's over. What a lightening, and how sweet to end it on a good note, and to finish that portfolio well. Yay :-)
I wish I could finish this off better, but I'm brain-dead and needin' bed, so off I go. Peace.
--JPB
However, I had the Transport Phenomena final Tuesday to study for. So I did that the rest of the day Monday. When I was done, I figured I'd tick down a bit before bed and tap at the CW portfolio for a few minutes. Hours later, at 3am, my inspiration finally dried up. :-) What a night that was! I closed my laptop on 15 pages of fresh writing--the core for the rest of the week's work--happy beyond words to finally have SOMETHING started.
The final went well Tuesday. Not great, but decent. An 88 out of 100, securing a final tally of 91% for the course. Considering the many weeks of despairing confusion I endured in that class, I'm happy with that. After the test I limped around for an hour or so registering for intermediate physical chemistry for the spring. My knee was especially bad that day, so when I got home I pretty much just flopped down in the family room and watched "From Russia With Love." Didn't do a whole lot of work on the portfolio that day 'cause I was bushed.
Wednesday Mom and Daniel drove to Chicago since Grandpa had taken a turn for the worse after his first round of chemo. I went to see Dr. Michael Paul about my knee, and received a very unsatisfactory diagnosis. He said it was the tendon on the outside of the knee, that even though my entire knee would roar in pain, "That's just the way it feels," and that the "cure" was to massage it with ice for 20 minutes 3 times a day for 6 weeks. Hm. I was so irritated that my knee felt FINE that day, when on Tuesday it was in excruciating, debilitating pain. Stupid joint!
Wednesday evening I psyched myself up for the big push. I had to get it basically finished up so I would have Thursday to work with it, edit it, and craft it, as I was claiming to have learned to do. So I kept the light on, ate lots of food, and worked feverishly with the mounds of papers on the floor and the miles of little black words on the screen. I was up till 5am, and miraculously remained productive until the bitter end. Unusual for me this semester, as my late-night capabilities have been drying up. By the time I staggered into bed and flopped there with churning mind and restless limbs I had laid out 38 pages of writing, which my mind could not quite compass. Finally I slipped into a dead sleep, from which I rose myself at around 9:30.
Thursday I had to drive to NOVA Chemicals, my co-op job, to get a drug test in preparation for returning to work for the spring semester. So I showered, grabbed a shoddy breakfast and a can of cherry-vanilla Dr.Pepper, and headed out. I had been planning on going to the Quinlisks after the test since Rebekah and come PHC'ers were stopping by on their way back to Ohio. However, I found out as I was leaving that they had called of the visit due to the henious sleety-freezy-rainy-snowy slickerizing stuff falling from the glowering gray skies. Not a bad call :-P And is it turns out, that was their destiny...
For, unencumbered now with commitments, I decided to drift into the Midway (sweet bar & grill by NOVA) and partake of one of their fabled "cajun chicken salads with ranch and a Dr.Pepper" for an early lunch. Earlier that day I had printed out the current draft of the final portfolio so I could work on it while I waited for the drug test. So, sitting in the booth with NOTHING else to turn my mind upon, I read it over in print (which somehow enables much better proofreading and editing) and had a glorious, epiphinaical (??) writing experience for almost 3 hours. One salad and four Dr.Peppers later I waltzed out the door brimming with excitement--I had finished the piece, figured out how to end it, how to tie the last needed components into the structure, written pages of great material, and brought it to a state nearing finality. I can't really describe how wonderful that time was there, sitting in that awesome little restaurant, feeling the inspiration flow, jotting down with jittery, eager hand the words and sentences that locked in so well, expressing what I had been striving for in the past week.
It was wonderful, and I didn't mind the ice on the roads on the way home, I just cranked Petra and had one of those great music-listening experiences that come along every month or so. The big honkin' post about that album was the result of that drive.
What a time that was! Truly one of the high points of the semester, and probably the peak of this mountain that has been the CW final portfolio, which as a whole stands as one of the greatest, most difficult, and most rewarding of my college endeavors.
So, yeah, I came home and pretty much spent the rest of that afternoon writing that Petra post and resting my mind.
Then came the BIG push. The night to end all nights. The indescribable evening, night and morning of frenetic work, mind-numbing thinking, and a terrifyingly large body of material to summarize, work in detail with, finish up, and perfect.
Well, not perfect. I collapsed into bed that night kicking myself for generating THIRTY-NINE pages of writing. Thirty-nine! You idiot! It's supposed to be tight, succinct, focused. You've blabbered on and on, adding new stuff every time you go over a section, and geez o man, I couldn't even read through the whole thing at the end--I have no idea if it's repetitive, unorganized...I just don't know what's IN there! It's so huge, and I've totally screwed up this last and most important project, and I've got to get up in 3 hours and go take my Systems & Signals final! And then I drive to Akron and the weekend roars away. Dude, I'm just gonna die, and I'm laying here and I can't sleep and I need to sleep! Ugh. Double-ugh and good grief I'm turning this in tomorrow :-(
Mmm, Friday morning came with the honking of the alarm and the non-sleepy non-feelingness of lack-of-sleep and mental fuzziness. I finished packing for Akron, stopped at Get-Go for gas, and crawled through the rush-hour traffic into Pitt. I had been hoping to at least have 5 or 10 minutes to skim over the equations sheet for S&S, but alas, after the search for a parking spot I hobbled in to the room, sat down, Dr. Stetten gave the the test, and I just launched right in.
Mercifully, the test went as I had hoped--I had learned everything so well over the semester (due to Dr. Stetten's fantastic, revelatory, deep-thinking teaching) that I had no problem at all with the problems, and turned it in after a little more than an hour. With that brief exercise out of the way I rushed to the computer lab, popped in my memory stick, and began to read through the final portfolio. Thank You Lord, that hour turned out to be exactly what I needed. I was able to read through the whole thing, get a grasp of what was in it, catch stupid mistakes, and clarify a few important points. I reprinted it, and held it in my hand with new confidence that it was good, that the 39 pages were all there for a reason, and that I was ready to turn it in as the culmination of this class-of-classes.
So I stopped by to tell Shannon we'd be late in heading out, bought a different folder to put it in, and hobbled quickly and painfully to the Cathedral of Learning, to 626J, the cozy little office wherein sat Dr. Kafka, some of her students, a stack of similar (though thinner) portfolios, and a spread of sweet Godiva chocolates. I handed her my baby, talked for a bit, and finally bid Kafka adeiu. It had been an amazing semester, and I am pretty sure that 40 years from now I will still remember this class, and Dr. Kafka, and some of the things I learned and first put into practice over these months. I too hope this is not the last time we run into eachother.
*really really honkin' big long sigh*
So, my semester was over! I limped over to my car through the uneven ice on the sidewalks free from assignments, tests, homework, projects--all those things which weigh down the future during a semester of classes. Shannon was walking up too, and we got in Pepsi blue and headed out for a crazy weekend in Akron. I again marveled at the theraputic effects of driving a stick shift automobile. One of the favorite lines I've ever written, because it captures so perfectly my feeling at that time, and other times, is " I rolled through the countryside, like driving through a picturesque puzzle scene, and let the Mazda’s eager engine pull along my happy, aching heart." That's pretty much how I felt as I exited Pitt that day, except it was my mind and knee that were aching, and that happiness was anticipatory, not memorial.
So we drove through the grey, white and brown landscape, which made me miss the warm days of summer when I would blow through the green hills and plains with a bright blue sky above me and sunshine in my heart. This weekend was as sweet as any summer trip, though, and it was unique in that I got to be an integral part of one of the Hoffman's dance productions--something I've long anticipated.
Ahh, how to write about the weekend efficiently, yet not let fall important details, to slip out of my memory forever.
Um, the drive went quickly, it was cool to have somebody else along. We got to the H's and everybody was engaged in preparations for the rehearsal at 4. Steve left for his final, Mike arrived, Shannon jumped right in with helping, and I staggered around in a daze :-P Eventually everybody left to set stuff up and I had an hour at home to take a nap and come for the actual rehearsal. Then the door opened, and I heard women's voices that I didn't recognize... It turns out Mike had stopped by the Duke/Duchess gas station to invite Elisa to the dance show, but didn't have any invitations with him, so they stopped by the house to grab on. Her sister was with her as well, and we ended up hanging around and talking for about half an hour. Apparently my half-sleepy state furnished amusement for my impromptu guests, which I was happy enough to provide. Eventually I got myself together and shoveled Mike and everybody out to the door and on our ways.
That evening was the first full rehearsal of the show. It was in a big hall, pretty much like a gym, but without basketball hoops. I immediately became involved in the sound stuff, and ended up running sound with Criag, while Mike and Shannon ran the lights. The wood floors were filled with dancers--girls from 12 to 19--and some of their parents, and various folks from CoG who were helping out, and of course two stressed-out over-busy Hoffman parents :-) That first rehearsal was pretty rough, with lots of stops and lots of confusion about what the lights and sound were supposed to do. But we got through it, and afterwards had a meeting to go through the script and nail down what was needed. Craig, Stephen and I hung out in Craig's car afterward and listened to Craig's emo music for awhile before heading out and hitting the sack.
Oy. What a night. Let's just say that you read about it in the papers every day, hear about it in the news, but when the Hoffman's neighbor showed up at our doorstep at 2am with her teeth busted in and blood covering her shirt, domestic violence became real to me. Thus followed an unreal 2 hours in which Mr. Hoffman called 911, a cop came, and Mr. H called her parents, at her direction, and got them to come over. Her overriding concern, through the alcohol and all, was that her kids were still in the house with him (her husband), and she just wanted them to be ok, and was terrified that he would hurt them. The police officer arrived mercifully fast, and found everything ok at the house. He arrested the guy, her parents arrived to stay with the kids, and then he came back to the Hoffmans. After assuring her that the kids were ok, he took an account from her, and Steve, Mike and I retired to the den, from which we listened silently, with wide eyes, to everything that transpired. She had indeed been punched by her husband, several times according to one of her scattered accounts. She and he had gone to the bar (obviously got drunk), got into an argument, he got home before she did, and when she opened the door, he hit her. Eventually we heard the door open again, and a yellow stretcher rolled into the patch of floor we could see from the den. The EMT checked her out and then someone else took a Reader's Digest (brief summary) of what happened, had her sign some forms, and finally the company wheeled her out the door. Upon which Mr. and Mrs. H came down the steps, as disbelieving as all of us, and we talked and prayed a bit before returning to bed.
A couple things from that experience. First off, the image of her, a pretty lady in her 30's probably, looking so horrific, with cartoonish gaps in her teeth, puffy red face, and that red red blood spattered on her shirt and pants. I can't get it out of my mind, or stop thinking about those teeth knocked out, or the ones pushed up into her jaw. Then comes the realization that her husband had done that to her. And the whole time I was thinking he was some kinda creep, but Mike and Steve said no, he's actually a really nice little guy..helped Steve put gravel on the driveway one day.. Just to see that, within the space of a few hours, he went from being a nice husband to smashing his wife's teeth in, and the only thing that happened between those two times was ALCOHOL. Just in case I was wondering, that stuff is not something to be trifled with. Geez. He had even hit her before, in the past, and not even remembered it. What a substance, that can make someone do what is so opposite their normal nature--what is so far from what they would do in their normal state of mind. *shudder*
So, yeah. Back to bed. Then up groggily but restedly at 11am and on with the day. We hung around the house a bit, Steve left for his basketball game, and eventually we headed over to the hall for the last quick rehearsal and the big shows!
We ran through most of it one last time, once everybody was assembled and ready to go. It went ok, and so we closed the curtain, put on some background music (my Christmas album, heh. Privelige of the sound guy!) and waited for 3:30 to come. It came, we made the rounds on the in-ear communicators to make sure lights, sound and Scott were all ready to go, then Mr. H came up to the sound booth, we cut the house lights and music, I punched channel four in, Mike brought the ellipsoids up, Mr. H walked out on stage, and the show began!
During the actual performances my mind was occupied primarily with adjusting the volume of the music/narration and pausing and starting the tracks at the beginning and end of each dance (mostly Craig's job). When not so occupied, I watched the dances from my side-stage vantage point. They look so effortless from the audience, but when you're up there you see their feet and ankles shaking and quaking under their weight, struggling to hold the perfect balance and keep the smooth movement. And when they all do their dainty little leaps? THUNK THU-THUNK! As I put it to Mrs. Hoffman, they're just a bunch of big honkin' girls on big honkin' feet stomping on the stage. :-D :-D (It got the expected reproachful reaction :-))
The craziest part of the show was when Craig left to be Simeon in one number, and two dances later I was in as one of the wise men. I had to start up track 7 ("The Waiting") and just leave, praying to God that Craig would make his way back to the booth after changing out of his costume in time to pause it at the end. He made it both shows, but just barely. Oog. My part as a wise guy was cool, and according to Rebekah I was the most noble and kingly of the three :-D It is still intriguing to think of who those men actually were, and how the heck they knew what this star meant, and where they came from, and what on earth was it like when they showed up at the door of the little house in Bethlehem?? Weird weird stuff. And I love how we've made "Wise Men" into a term, just like "Garbage Men" or "Mail Men." What do you do for a living? Oh, I'm a wise man. :-P They were men. And they were wise. It's just funny.
In-between the two shows we pretty much just chilled, which was quite nice. All the dancers and helpers were there, in a holding pattern 'till 7:30 rolled around. Craig and I made a trip to the nearby Acme and loaded up on snacks, which made the second show quite a blast. We were munchin' down cheezits and swiss cake rolls and lucky charms, and quaffing IBC rootbeers, toasting the girls as they danced before us, and trying to make them laugh :-) Also between shows I iced my knee, which was doing pretty bad, and got to help Jess weather the arrival of "El Creepo."
That second show was one of the funnest times I've ever had in Akron. Right up there with the contra dance night and, I dunno, all those other crazy things I've done there. Me and Craig just chilled and snacked, and he figured out that we could talk at almost normal volume and no one could hear us, 'cause we were back behind all the speakers. So yes, it was a rollicking good time!
And then we had the long strung-out half hanging-out half tearing-down time afterwards. Quite fun just wandering around, talking to the dance people, joking around with the little kids, doing some work, eating more food..
Finally we trickled out the door, loaded up Shannon's stuff from the Murphy's car, stole Jess's flowers (Philip, I love you!), and headed to the Hoffman's. More tired, absent-minded hanging out, and finally I headed out the door into the cold and on to the long dark drive home. Between Shannon being there to talk with and the witch doctor drugs Mrs. H zapped me up with, I stayed awake quite well on the drive. But for the thought of the soft couch and the warm beagle, which seriously made me feel much tireder when I thought of it. Ah well. I dropped Shannon off at 2:30, got home at 3, and got to bed at 3:30. Another whirlwind Akron weekend, and a wonderful and unique experience of getting to be a part of the dance show.
Currently, I'm winding up the day, anticipating getting up at 5:30am and going to my first day of work for the new co-op rotation, and wishing I had done some recording today. "Trav'ling Far Into the Night" is coming along beautifully, and just needs a finalized bass track and drums. Drums are the kicker--beastly hard to record, but oh so important to make the song sound good. The vocals went well, though, and I'm quite happy with the electric guitar straight out of the GT-6.
I work Wednesday and Thursday, then Dad and I drive to Chicago for Christmas. I return by myself Monday (boooooo) and continue working that week. Hopefully I'll get Thursday and Friday off, and maybe go up to Akron, or just sit at home and eat and record. We'll see. Grandpa's got pneumonia in both lungs and other problems from not sleeping much and being in the hospital. Ugh. It's really saddening to have this situation envelope our family, and to realize that last Christmas, in Utah, may well have been the last normal Christmas like the ones I've known all my life. Ever. We'll see. But regardless, in a few years Grandma and Grandpa will both be gone, and that feels much closer now, and it is just sad. Alas for the carefree days of good health and good times that once were. The good times will continue, as will life in all its good and bad, but they will all be changed.
So, yeah, I'm super tired and hungry from fasting all day, and it's just really sad when you don't eat food, and this post has taken me four solid hours to write and I didn't get any recording done today and I have to get up at 5:30 and Christmas is gonna be weird and sorta sad, and Akron is sweet and work starts again, all day every day, and mostly I just wish I could eat somethin'.
And I'm really glad this semester's over. What a lightening, and how sweet to end it on a good note, and to finish that portfolio well. Yay :-)
I wish I could finish this off better, but I'm brain-dead and needin' bed, so off I go. Peace.
--JPB
Monday, December 19, 2005
Questions...
So...yesterday I explained to Domenica why cranking the fan in your car when you start it up in cold weather doesn't help it warm up any faster. She always thought that she was blowing out the cold air quicker so the warm air could get in. The fact is, you won't get warm air until your engine heats up (unless you're in a Rolls or something with an auxilliary electric heater), and that only depends on how cold it is outside and how fast you run your engine. Turning up the fan at first only blows more frigid air into the cabin. So I told her to put the fan on low, turn it to defrost, and wait until either your thermostat gauge creeps above "C" or you stick your hand over the dashboard and feel warm air coming out. Then turn the fan up and kick it to your feet, or wherever your heart desires. This revolutionized her thinking, which got me thinking...
Do other people not think of stuff like this? To me it's patently obvious: cranking a fan blowing over a cold engine just blows more cold air! And there are other little things like this, too. When we got a new turning lane on 885, which we turn left off of to get to our house, the first time I used it I knew that it was only beneficial if I got into it before slowing down for the turn. If you slow down in the normal lane and then get into the turning lane, you're still obstructing traffic and increasing your risk, which is antithetical to the point of having a separate turning lane. Yet my family continues to do just that, every time they turn.
Do these "optimization thoughts" just not occur to other people? Do they occur vaguely, but nobody acts on them? Could folks think of them if they wanted, but just don't give it any consideration? If so, why do I give it consideration? My driving is basically a constant stream of optimization--lane, speed, braking, inside or outside lane on a turn, get out of the left lane 'cause he's turning, creep up slowly so the stopped cars can start to move again before I reach them... And I don't think I have to tell you that not many people do those things on the roads :-P
So, I guess I'm rather prideful about this, but I also do wonder if I am so different from most people, or if there are other things going on. Or, worst of all, if my reasoning in these cases is wrong. Then I'm really screwed up! But anyway, who knows. It is mildly irritating, though, when I run across needlessly unoptimized behavior. It's a similar feeling to when someone just can't seem to play something on an instrument that is very easy for me. Not easy because of practice...just simple, straightforward, and obvious.
Hm. I wonder what things I do that hit other people in this way. Oy. What are the stupid things I do unthinkingly that someone else sees and shakes their head at, walking away glad they're not dumb like that dude? Scary thought. But I *probably* have reasons for doing all those things, they're just not apparent. So do these other people have reasons for what they do? Domenica did, but her reasons were wrong. Daniel had no reason for not using the turning lane properly. Who knows. I guess I should be careful to not pridefully judge in my heart, and continue to investigate, as life brings an unending string of experiences parading before me.
Beddy-bye. Good-night.
--JPB
Do other people not think of stuff like this? To me it's patently obvious: cranking a fan blowing over a cold engine just blows more cold air! And there are other little things like this, too. When we got a new turning lane on 885, which we turn left off of to get to our house, the first time I used it I knew that it was only beneficial if I got into it before slowing down for the turn. If you slow down in the normal lane and then get into the turning lane, you're still obstructing traffic and increasing your risk, which is antithetical to the point of having a separate turning lane. Yet my family continues to do just that, every time they turn.
Do these "optimization thoughts" just not occur to other people? Do they occur vaguely, but nobody acts on them? Could folks think of them if they wanted, but just don't give it any consideration? If so, why do I give it consideration? My driving is basically a constant stream of optimization--lane, speed, braking, inside or outside lane on a turn, get out of the left lane 'cause he's turning, creep up slowly so the stopped cars can start to move again before I reach them... And I don't think I have to tell you that not many people do those things on the roads :-P
So, I guess I'm rather prideful about this, but I also do wonder if I am so different from most people, or if there are other things going on. Or, worst of all, if my reasoning in these cases is wrong. Then I'm really screwed up! But anyway, who knows. It is mildly irritating, though, when I run across needlessly unoptimized behavior. It's a similar feeling to when someone just can't seem to play something on an instrument that is very easy for me. Not easy because of practice...just simple, straightforward, and obvious.
Hm. I wonder what things I do that hit other people in this way. Oy. What are the stupid things I do unthinkingly that someone else sees and shakes their head at, walking away glad they're not dumb like that dude? Scary thought. But I *probably* have reasons for doing all those things, they're just not apparent. So do these other people have reasons for what they do? Domenica did, but her reasons were wrong. Daniel had no reason for not using the turning lane properly. Who knows. I guess I should be careful to not pridefully judge in my heart, and continue to investigate, as life brings an unending string of experiences parading before me.
Beddy-bye. Good-night.
--JPB
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Wastebook
Trip reports and life reports and feelings reports later. For now I wanna write what I thought of in the bathroom just now. That little room seems to be the source of all my writing inspiration for this blog. Foshizzle. It seems like I always come back to my laptop with an idea or thought or phrase, or some good words to use, or a cool way of writing up the weekend, or something. Strange. Anyway, I bring you....
The stereotypical facebook post:
****************************
[innocuous greeting], [over-chummy nickname to reinforce how tight you guys are]!!
[exaggerated reference to the length of the time elapsed since you were last with said person]
[hyperbolically metaphorical description of a shared experience]. [reference to some obscure thing which no one else knows about to make everybody feel like they're missing out]
[banal, over-familiar ending compliment]
****************************
For example:
What's krackin' ace-in-the-hole!!
Dude, it's been like a million years since we've hung out!!
Man, but what a floor-smashing time we had at Rolio's, eh? Linoleum and cinnamon...wink wink ;]
See ya champ!
****************************
So yeah--I really have trouble thinking of ANYTHING to say to people on Facebook that is not banal, pointless, and non-constructive. What is the point of those wall messages? It seems to be to make you feel like you're real tight with people, and to show that off to everyone who reads it. That's what I catch myself doing as I compose wall messages. Little can be said that is beneficial, or even just meaningful, to anyone other than yourself and your addressee. Hah, that has two d's, two s's, and two e's!
Here's to AIM, email, phone, and in-person communication!
--Clear Ambassador
P.S. Cabs--Sinatra's my fav philosopher now! lol :-P Thanks for the laugh.
See?? Isn't that irritating??? Like, what's he talking about?? Sinatra? Laugh? Philosophy? Geez.
Well, Rebekah wrote the following on my wall on Facebook:
As you croon with [One Voice] tonight, here's something funny:
“To Do Is To Be”
Nietzsche
“To Be Is To Do”
Kant
“Do Be Do Be Do”
Sinatra
And it did make me laugh :-) Out loud, too.
P.S. I still do enjoy facebook, both writing on walls and being written on. It's just tough to make it meaningful and keep it from being prideful.
The stereotypical facebook post:
****************************
[innocuous greeting], [over-chummy nickname to reinforce how tight you guys are]!!
[exaggerated reference to the length of the time elapsed since you were last with said person]
[hyperbolically metaphorical description of a shared experience]. [reference to some obscure thing which no one else knows about to make everybody feel like they're missing out]
[banal, over-familiar ending compliment]
****************************
For example:
What's krackin' ace-in-the-hole!!
Dude, it's been like a million years since we've hung out!!
Man, but what a floor-smashing time we had at Rolio's, eh? Linoleum and cinnamon...wink wink ;]
See ya champ!
****************************
So yeah--I really have trouble thinking of ANYTHING to say to people on Facebook that is not banal, pointless, and non-constructive. What is the point of those wall messages? It seems to be to make you feel like you're real tight with people, and to show that off to everyone who reads it. That's what I catch myself doing as I compose wall messages. Little can be said that is beneficial, or even just meaningful, to anyone other than yourself and your addressee. Hah, that has two d's, two s's, and two e's!
Here's to AIM, email, phone, and in-person communication!
--Clear Ambassador
P.S. Cabs--Sinatra's my fav philosopher now! lol :-P Thanks for the laugh.
See?? Isn't that irritating??? Like, what's he talking about?? Sinatra? Laugh? Philosophy? Geez.
Well, Rebekah wrote the following on my wall on Facebook:
As you croon with [One Voice] tonight, here's something funny:
“To Do Is To Be”
Nietzsche
“To Be Is To Do”
Kant
“Do Be Do Be Do”
Sinatra
And it did make me laugh :-) Out loud, too.
P.S. I still do enjoy facebook, both writing on walls and being written on. It's just tough to make it meaningful and keep it from being prideful.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Who needs a title?? GOSH
unitelastic: so whats up?
unitelastic: did you get that project done?
slickitized: I'm writing like a hound of hell
unitelastic: did you get that project done?
slickitized: I'm writing like a hound of hell
No Doubt
May I encourage you to buy the album No Doubt, by
What makes this so good? Each song works. Each song has great lyrics that match its music, and creatively uses the tools and tones of 90’s rock.
Track 1: “Enter In”
Is in serious contention for the “six stars” list in my iTunes. It is a powerfully rocking song, and the lyrics stir fresh wonder at salvation with words that are startlingly theological:
Now without a second look we forget what all it took
To be seen as innocent by His holy eyes
Never thinking foolishly there is something He won’t see
For our lack of righteousness there is no disguise.
[Melody starts low here and builds up and up to the last line, which breaks into the chorus…]
He won’t look the other way
Someone’s life will have to pay
Once for all it has been done
Taken out upon His Son
He remembers it no more
Now for us He is the Door
Opened up forevermore
[And I’ll let you find out for yourself what that great chorus is :-) ]
Track 2: “Think Twice”
Another great rocker, with sitar-like electric guitar work and a sweet pentatonic melodic cascade at the end of the chorus. The words are pretty much about moments of temptation—“Hey, did you ever think twice / When there’s still time you can go the other way…”
Track 3: “Heart of a Hero”
A bit campy, but still with a rolling, recognizable guitar hook along with sweet tom work. About how “It takes the heart of a hero / To stand for what’s right / […] / To lay down your life.” “Have the faith of a child / And the power of God / […] Will you stand for what’s right? / Would you lay down your life?” The music kinda evokes the severity and boldness of the martyrs. Nice wah pedal solo towards the end :-D
Track 4: “More Than a Thousand Words”
90’s mushy song about how, after seeing a painting of Christ on the cross, looking down in His agony, “Only words are never gonna say / What I feel for You today.” Can you say 8th-notes on the bass? :-) Nice acknowledgment of the limitations of our earthly worship, though, and the bridge is a appropriate reminder of heaven: “Simple words will never quite express / My gratitude to You / Until I cross the barrier / Mortal words will have to do.” The instrumental part at the end of this would be one of my top picks for influential solos in my electric guitar playing. Listening to it again made me realize I actually recorded an almost identical solo in my song “Will You Wait for Me!” :-P
Track 5: “No Doubt”
Another mushy-ish song musically. Mmm, bass and kick together—what a staple. Nice electric piano, too :-) The peaceful feel of the chorus goes well with the meaning:
No doubt it’ll be alright
With God it’ll all work together for good
No doubt in the end it will be understood […]
No doubt in the power of Jesus
And after all is done we find out
All we really need to have is no doubt
Track 6: “
We kick back into gear with frenetic electric guitar work and matching vocals. Pretty much about when everything else is gone, “No visible support – no one there you can lean on,” “You’re in the right place – trusting only Him / […] You’re in the right place – He will come through.” Nice electric guitar work. Music depicts the desperate situations the words talk about.
Track 7: “Two Are Better Than One”
Catchy chorus and a great introduction. Good bass work, for all you bass players out there. Based on the proverbs about two being better than one, iron sharpens iron, etc. Call it “accountability,” to use Christianese :-) “When I start to cross the line / You just seem to read my mind / And then you bust me.” Really cool flowing kinda feel to the song, lotsa open strumming, cool harmonies.
Track 8: “Sincerely Yours”
Don’t get hung up on its use of this clichéd phrase. Listen to their words:
This prodigal is standing here
Now with all my senses clear
For all You gave to me
I spent it foolishly
You’ve been waiting patiently
[Chorus]
Here is all I have to give
I offer up this life I live
I am sincerely Yours
Now in all sincerity
I give You all of me (Jesus)
I am sincerely Yours
And you bass players I was talking about earlier? Find out how much properly-placed low notes can accomplish! The bass totally makes the song’s musical hook, which constitutes the intro and choruses.
Track 9: “Think On These Things”
This track stood out the very first time I listened to this album. It starts out unpretentiously with a Caedmon’s call-sounding drums and electric guitar groove and anticipatory verse. Then all of a sudden the held-back dynamics loosen and out pops this melody that just flits up the scales:
Whatever things are pure and true,
(I want to)
Think on these things
Whatever things are filled with virtue
Think on these things.
When my mind begins to stray
I want to think the other way
Think on these things
Some of the most enjoyable pairing of music with nearly direct scripture I can think of. Nice bridge that builds tension while quoting 3 exact lines from Philippians. Breaks into a soaring little solo at the end. Uplifting song all around, which so fits its words!
Track 10: “For All You’re Worth”
*cough*
Ah, just skip this one. I guess there will never be an album with all perfect tracks. No, it’s not true that “He died for all you’re worth.” Yes He loves me, yes I have value in His sight, somehow, amazingly…but He died to glorify Himself, which is the only goal worthy of the brutal death of the Son of God. So, yeah. Skip this track.
Track 11: “We Hold Our Hearts Out to You”
Song about, basically, the unity Christians find by sharing God’s grace and salvation. Potently 90’s-sounding song :-) Not quite as great as the rest of the album, but not a bad song like track 10. More sitar work, more kick-and-bass unity, more straining, chorused-up 80’s/90’s harmony. Pretty cool that they’re singing about the church, though! The chorus makes a nice picture of the people of a church gathered: “So together we hold all our hearts out to You / […] Heal and forgive us, make us all just like new.”
If this album ended at track 9 it would be perfect. As it is, those 9 songs are well worth your five bucks. This is one of the few albums I can think of that exemplify what I believe “Christian music” should look like. (The others are Nothing is Sound by Switchfoot, In the Company of Angels by Caedmon’s Call, Underdog and Hit Parade by Audio Adrenaline, I Wanna Be Like You by FFH, Who We Are Instead by Jars of Clay, and The Anatomy of Tongue in Cheek by RelientK.)
Hippy Happy Hoppy Thursday
The overhead light is still on in my room.
That means things are really serious.
I didn't even keep the overhead light on for my transport studying. Or for biochem. Those merited only the lamp on my desk to keep the papers and keys illuminated, and to keep my body from going into sleepy mode.
But tonight, all stops are out. The final portfolio for Critical Writing is due on Friday, and now that is only a day away. I had a huge burst of creativity and energy Monday night in which I hunched on the hearth by the fire till 3am, pouring out 15 pages of much-needed and much-sought-for material. It has now been nearly four hours since my watch told me it was no long "WE" but "TH." I popped over to Get-Go at 11:00 for snacks--Zours and cheddar ranch Fritos--and I've refilled my Krispey Kreme coffee mug with water twice.
Somehow I almost hate this yellow light filling my room. Perhaps because nothing but darkness stares in through the two windows. Perhaps because it leaves no shadow, no comfy corner, just yellow everywhere. But it's a good thing. It has kept my peripheral vision from convincing my mind that it's time to shut down for the night. It has kept me aware of the piles and stacks and spreads of papers surrounding me on the floor. The notebook and my assignment 13 folder down on the right. My own submissions down on the left, and next to them the in-class samples that we critiqued. On the desk are more of my own works, which I just put there to remind me that I'm supposed to work in DETAIL with this stuff. Examples for everything. Don't get too into a "big picture" mindset, as Dr. Kafka described it in her comments on my assignment 13. That was a startlingly accurate diagnosis. I am a big picture guy, and always have been. But to tie that big picture in to what I actually DID...that is the key.
Oh, I worry so deeply that, when it's all done I will have missed so many points where I needed examples. Points where I didn't connect my reasoning clearly enough for my reader. Points where I make a declaration out of nowhere. Points where I wander through the sentences like a kid lost in a big museum, crawling along with words, bloating my paper, destroying the tight, zinging focus I love so dearly.
Oh well. I have tomorrow, and that's it. And most of tomorrow I'll be gone, getting a drug test for work and hanging out with Rebekah and company as they stop by on their way home for the holiday. For Christmas.
It'll be a late night Thursday, and a very early morning Friday. And from the moment that alarm goes off I will be going full-speed. That night I will sleep in Akron. Lord, help my throat to heal for the One Voice concerts Sunday!
And still I am awake, and the yellow light burns on from the wide white ceiling. My body is getting heavier and heavier, if I will let it, but my eyes are open, and my mind continues to function. We'll see what else I can get out of myself before it's time to call it quits.
This post has been written linearly. Sentence by sentence I constructed it, phrase by phrase as they came to me. U2 throbs from the speakers flanking me. I've listened through SO much music tonight! So don't expect the tight focus I talk about. This post is a mental blood-letting. Perhaps now I can get one last section out before shutting down.
Here's to writing, and here's wishing so badly that I had one more week to hit this thing afresh. There is no substitute for time in writing.
OK, it officially feels like Thursday. Wednesday has passed. It is not Wednesday night any more, it is Thursday morning. I will sleep for awhile, and continue this day. But tomorrow is Friday. Scary.
--Clear Ambassador
That means things are really serious.
I didn't even keep the overhead light on for my transport studying. Or for biochem. Those merited only the lamp on my desk to keep the papers and keys illuminated, and to keep my body from going into sleepy mode.
But tonight, all stops are out. The final portfolio for Critical Writing is due on Friday, and now that is only a day away. I had a huge burst of creativity and energy Monday night in which I hunched on the hearth by the fire till 3am, pouring out 15 pages of much-needed and much-sought-for material. It has now been nearly four hours since my watch told me it was no long "WE" but "TH." I popped over to Get-Go at 11:00 for snacks--Zours and cheddar ranch Fritos--and I've refilled my Krispey Kreme coffee mug with water twice.
Somehow I almost hate this yellow light filling my room. Perhaps because nothing but darkness stares in through the two windows. Perhaps because it leaves no shadow, no comfy corner, just yellow everywhere. But it's a good thing. It has kept my peripheral vision from convincing my mind that it's time to shut down for the night. It has kept me aware of the piles and stacks and spreads of papers surrounding me on the floor. The notebook and my assignment 13 folder down on the right. My own submissions down on the left, and next to them the in-class samples that we critiqued. On the desk are more of my own works, which I just put there to remind me that I'm supposed to work in DETAIL with this stuff. Examples for everything. Don't get too into a "big picture" mindset, as Dr. Kafka described it in her comments on my assignment 13. That was a startlingly accurate diagnosis. I am a big picture guy, and always have been. But to tie that big picture in to what I actually DID...that is the key.
Oh, I worry so deeply that, when it's all done I will have missed so many points where I needed examples. Points where I didn't connect my reasoning clearly enough for my reader. Points where I make a declaration out of nowhere. Points where I wander through the sentences like a kid lost in a big museum, crawling along with words, bloating my paper, destroying the tight, zinging focus I love so dearly.
Oh well. I have tomorrow, and that's it. And most of tomorrow I'll be gone, getting a drug test for work and hanging out with Rebekah and company as they stop by on their way home for the holiday. For Christmas.
It'll be a late night Thursday, and a very early morning Friday. And from the moment that alarm goes off I will be going full-speed. That night I will sleep in Akron. Lord, help my throat to heal for the One Voice concerts Sunday!
And still I am awake, and the yellow light burns on from the wide white ceiling. My body is getting heavier and heavier, if I will let it, but my eyes are open, and my mind continues to function. We'll see what else I can get out of myself before it's time to call it quits.
This post has been written linearly. Sentence by sentence I constructed it, phrase by phrase as they came to me. U2 throbs from the speakers flanking me. I've listened through SO much music tonight! So don't expect the tight focus I talk about. This post is a mental blood-letting. Perhaps now I can get one last section out before shutting down.
Here's to writing, and here's wishing so badly that I had one more week to hit this thing afresh. There is no substitute for time in writing.
OK, it officially feels like Thursday. Wednesday has passed. It is not Wednesday night any more, it is Thursday morning. I will sleep for awhile, and continue this day. But tomorrow is Friday. Scary.
--Clear Ambassador
Monday, December 12, 2005
Mindstring Thoughtflow
Monday December 12th, 2005
Here's a string of thoughts that occured yesterday while I was trying to work on my Critical Writing final portfolio (this is how distractable I was!). I jotted it down after it went through my mind because for some reason I realized it had happened, and similar strings happen often, and I wondered if other people think like this a lot, and I wonder if in the future I will continue to do so, or if I'll read this and remember what I used to be like "back then."
. . .
Staring absentmindedly at the vase of flowers on the table next to the laptop.
There are green flowers.
Unusual.
Someone must've been considering it as it was being made, and decided it needed green.
Remember Japanese flower arranging--a super-high art in Japan.
And similar highly-developed skills like that.
There was a "try your hand at it" for flower arranging in a Pitt Arts program awhile ago.
Such a high art in Japan.
The "great masters" at work.
Subtle, deep.
What if some student at the program made a great arrangement, by utterly unencumbered comon sense and good luck?
I picture affectionados and experts gazing in wonder.
It wouldn't have been made with that subtly and care and intention.
Unfair?
Possible?
Thinking about high arts in general -- appreciating them requires so much.
Do those criteria reflect common sense beauty at a deeper, more developed level?
A judge painstakingly picks the winning arrangement...
Would a normal Joe look at it and say it was the best? Would it stick out to him?
Should that BE the case with true judgment of true art?
I've thought before about someone from a totally non-Western background, totally untouched by any of our art, going through the Louvre. Given some time to look and think, would they pick out the Mona Lisa as the best painting? Would it be picked by a majority of such aliens?
So I sat there and chewed over whether high arts should be able to be appreciated by normal people, whether the art deemed excellent should appear excellent to a non-affecionado, and whether the great works of art would stand on their own if we weren't told all our lives that they were great.
All from noticing green flowers :-)
And if anybody has comments on this issue about art and such, I'd be quite interested to hear them. I really don't know myself. Part of me wants to think that any reasonable person should be able to recognize great art fairly readily, but part of me thinks that the very things that make such art great preclude its rapid or uneducated recognition as extraordinary.
--Behrens
[Mindstring Thoughtflow would make a sweet progressive rock band name!!]
Here's a string of thoughts that occured yesterday while I was trying to work on my Critical Writing final portfolio (this is how distractable I was!). I jotted it down after it went through my mind because for some reason I realized it had happened, and similar strings happen often, and I wondered if other people think like this a lot, and I wonder if in the future I will continue to do so, or if I'll read this and remember what I used to be like "back then."
. . .
Staring absentmindedly at the vase of flowers on the table next to the laptop.
There are green flowers.
Unusual.
Someone must've been considering it as it was being made, and decided it needed green.
Remember Japanese flower arranging--a super-high art in Japan.
And similar highly-developed skills like that.
There was a "try your hand at it" for flower arranging in a Pitt Arts program awhile ago.
Such a high art in Japan.
The "great masters" at work.
Subtle, deep.
What if some student at the program made a great arrangement, by utterly unencumbered comon sense and good luck?
I picture affectionados and experts gazing in wonder.
It wouldn't have been made with that subtly and care and intention.
Unfair?
Possible?
Thinking about high arts in general -- appreciating them requires so much.
Do those criteria reflect common sense beauty at a deeper, more developed level?
A judge painstakingly picks the winning arrangement...
Would a normal Joe look at it and say it was the best? Would it stick out to him?
Should that BE the case with true judgment of true art?
I've thought before about someone from a totally non-Western background, totally untouched by any of our art, going through the Louvre. Given some time to look and think, would they pick out the Mona Lisa as the best painting? Would it be picked by a majority of such aliens?
So I sat there and chewed over whether high arts should be able to be appreciated by normal people, whether the art deemed excellent should appear excellent to a non-affecionado, and whether the great works of art would stand on their own if we weren't told all our lives that they were great.
All from noticing green flowers :-)
And if anybody has comments on this issue about art and such, I'd be quite interested to hear them. I really don't know myself. Part of me wants to think that any reasonable person should be able to recognize great art fairly readily, but part of me thinks that the very things that make such art great preclude its rapid or uneducated recognition as extraordinary.
--Behrens
[Mindstring Thoughtflow would make a sweet progressive rock band name!!]
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Big Milk
Pittsburgh, PA December 11, 2005
An environmental activist group in California recently released research linking cows to global warming. Andrew Feola, head researcher for the project, stated "You put your hand on a cow and it's warm, right? Well, all those cows--they've got to be warming the Earth up." The study indicated that cows continue to procreate, indicating the propagation and perhaps even escalation of this worldwide threat.
"President Bush's big milk policies have created an out-of-control demand for milk," stated Lisa Furrows, research coordinator and New York Times writer. "We've found possible evidence linking Bush's campaign funds to the 'Got Milk' ad empire. Which, frankly, doesn't surprise us. Everyone knows Bush rode the big milk money on his campaign of lies to steal the presidencey from Al Gore six years ago."
The study concluded that milk is an extreme environmental hazard, and that if left unchecked, could lead to cataclysmic flooding within 10 years, or 7 by some estimates. "Obviously, Bush hasn't addressed this issue in any of his plans," noted Feola. "It's time to put a stop to the big milk money funding Bush's incompetency and destroying the Earth that bore us from her fertile soil. How can the government run schools that serve millions of kids every day something that will wipe us all out before they reach college? It's time for change, and people need to hear that."
When asked if they drank milk, Feola had no comments, and Furrows said "Of course not! Unless I'm looking for some quick protein in the morning. I've got to get my calcium, too, you know."
The study's findings are yet to be reviewed by scientists, or anyone with a non-liberal arts degree.
An environmental activist group in California recently released research linking cows to global warming. Andrew Feola, head researcher for the project, stated "You put your hand on a cow and it's warm, right? Well, all those cows--they've got to be warming the Earth up." The study indicated that cows continue to procreate, indicating the propagation and perhaps even escalation of this worldwide threat.
"President Bush's big milk policies have created an out-of-control demand for milk," stated Lisa Furrows, research coordinator and New York Times writer. "We've found possible evidence linking Bush's campaign funds to the 'Got Milk' ad empire. Which, frankly, doesn't surprise us. Everyone knows Bush rode the big milk money on his campaign of lies to steal the presidencey from Al Gore six years ago."
The study concluded that milk is an extreme environmental hazard, and that if left unchecked, could lead to cataclysmic flooding within 10 years, or 7 by some estimates. "Obviously, Bush hasn't addressed this issue in any of his plans," noted Feola. "It's time to put a stop to the big milk money funding Bush's incompetency and destroying the Earth that bore us from her fertile soil. How can the government run schools that serve millions of kids every day something that will wipe us all out before they reach college? It's time for change, and people need to hear that."
When asked if they drank milk, Feola had no comments, and Furrows said "Of course not! Unless I'm looking for some quick protein in the morning. I've got to get my calcium, too, you know."
The study's findings are yet to be reviewed by scientists, or anyone with a non-liberal arts degree.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
The new dope
I just did purple acid, man.
Who needs marijuana when you have Mountain Dew Pitch Black II? The can is barely emptied, and already lucidity is flooding my mind like a refreshing breeze in a stale room. Hendrix takes on new meaning as he wails through the speaker towers at my sides, and the Discrete Time Fourier Transforms on the page in front of me seem obvious. Yeah man, in the frequency domain, I'm a voodoo chile too . . . .
As I've mentioned before in my modblog, caffeine is a strange thing, and when one uses it only occasionaly, its effect is quite pronounced. In some ways I think it odd that caffeine is so carelessly legal, when from the accounts I've heard of pot use, its effects seem not dissimilar to that of the legally eschewed leaf. Probably because if anybody tried to touch the coffee pot, American business productivity would plummet. The legislators would be too draggy to raise their hands to pass the bill :-P
And speaking of coffee, friends don't let friends do pots. As in drinking whole pots of it. That much caffeine is way bad for you, man. *shudder*
Peace out
--Extra Clear Ambassador
Who needs marijuana when you have Mountain Dew Pitch Black II? The can is barely emptied, and already lucidity is flooding my mind like a refreshing breeze in a stale room. Hendrix takes on new meaning as he wails through the speaker towers at my sides, and the Discrete Time Fourier Transforms on the page in front of me seem obvious. Yeah man, in the frequency domain, I'm a voodoo chile too . . . .
As I've mentioned before in my modblog, caffeine is a strange thing, and when one uses it only occasionaly, its effect is quite pronounced. In some ways I think it odd that caffeine is so carelessly legal, when from the accounts I've heard of pot use, its effects seem not dissimilar to that of the legally eschewed leaf. Probably because if anybody tried to touch the coffee pot, American business productivity would plummet. The legislators would be too draggy to raise their hands to pass the bill :-P
And speaking of coffee, friends don't let friends do pots. As in drinking whole pots of it. That much caffeine is way bad for you, man. *shudder*
Peace out
--Extra Clear Ambassador
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
How many munchies could a munching studier munch, if a munching studier freely munched munchies?
I'm training myself to wait longer between Jelly Bellies. I can enjoy savoring the ligering taste almost as much as filling my mouth with the next flavor that comes to mind.
Anyone else know what I mean by the study munchies? As in, consuming a 10-serving bag of chips in an hour without even noticing (if I let myself)? I find that food is a key part in making an evening's study both palatable, enjoyable, and non-drowsy. But as with all God's gifts, one must use it judiciously and moderately.
A short post! Oh my cow!
--Clear Ambassador
P.S. I have a cold, and it is progressively overtaking my body as the clock winds on. Time to shut down my work on assignment 13 and call it a night. Tomorrow's gonna be . . . . . . full
Anyone else know what I mean by the study munchies? As in, consuming a 10-serving bag of chips in an hour without even noticing (if I let myself)? I find that food is a key part in making an evening's study both palatable, enjoyable, and non-drowsy. But as with all God's gifts, one must use it judiciously and moderately.
A short post! Oh my cow!
--Clear Ambassador
P.S. I have a cold, and it is progressively overtaking my body as the clock winds on. Time to shut down my work on assignment 13 and call it a night. Tomorrow's gonna be . . . . . . full
Give 'em what they ask for
Mood: Ice cold feet . . body fading with the passing minutes. Mind dully focussed on the writing, gaze narrowing on the luminous screen, back aching, foot habitually twitching. Fingers heavy on the keyboard, rear end heavy on the chair. I feel very little of my body, and my thinking has narrowed to only this post and the Van Halen song which occupies the ceaseless spot of backgrond music running in my head. Top Gun theme. The solo at the very end where he cuts it all loose. 3 measures of that solo. Repeating over and over and over.
Well, I just finished my first piece of writing that truly meets the criteria of that staple of mediocre college work, that denzien of a thousand procrastinations, the "bs paper." 7 pages about "polyglutamic proteins in neural degenerative diseases" in about 4 hours, the night before it's due. 1.5 spaced, lotsa big figures...
This is the first time I've ever really intentionally, foreknowingly done a shoddy job on an assignment, and it's sticking in my craw. But what saddens me is not that I wrote a blow-off paper, but that that's all that the class required.
Dr. Koepsel has been probably the worst professor I've had at Pitt so far. Not because he's mean or impossible to understand, but because he doesn't teach. He rattles off dry words about dry slides on the screen. He rattles off random, unrelated problems from the back of the chapter in the book for us to do as "homework." He grades our homework and papers with a check mark.
That's not teaching!
I doubt my paper will even be read. I would expect him to scan it over, check the page count, and look for one or more non-internet sources in the bibliography. Then the check mark, and my paper is done. To put the mental muscle of my Critical Writing skills into this paper would be laughable and foolish. Yes I am falling cataclysmically short of the principles I have spent a semester learning in that class, but their application would have been wasted.
And I take a step back, and I look at myself with the fresh homeschooled eyes of my 17-year-old self. I would scorn what I did tonight as that most-despised of intellectual iniquities: doing an assignment not to learn anything but just to get the grade. And so I did. There are things I could have learned in doing this paper that I didn't learn. But I never wanted to take biochemistry in the first place (Pitt requires it of me), and I'm not particularly interested in it, and the specific topic of this paper will almost certainly never be applicable in my life, and the teacher has bred in his class a stagnant academic atmosphere where nobody--not even he himself--cares about the material. Perhaps ideally I would still read, research, think hard, plan out, write, and craft a solid 5-10 page paper, but given that I am sick, and a presentation, transport homework, biochem final, systems and signals homework and critical writing paper are all due before Friday, that kind of time expenditure would be foolish. So my academic principles butt up against real life, and real life wins.
Writing a 'bs paper' was the wisest and most prudent decision I could make.
It's different than you might expect, but I am indeed getting a college education. For it is into real life that I will soon set sail.
Well, I just finished my first piece of writing that truly meets the criteria of that staple of mediocre college work, that denzien of a thousand procrastinations, the "bs paper." 7 pages about "polyglutamic proteins in neural degenerative diseases" in about 4 hours, the night before it's due. 1.5 spaced, lotsa big figures...
This is the first time I've ever really intentionally, foreknowingly done a shoddy job on an assignment, and it's sticking in my craw. But what saddens me is not that I wrote a blow-off paper, but that that's all that the class required.
Dr. Koepsel has been probably the worst professor I've had at Pitt so far. Not because he's mean or impossible to understand, but because he doesn't teach. He rattles off dry words about dry slides on the screen. He rattles off random, unrelated problems from the back of the chapter in the book for us to do as "homework." He grades our homework and papers with a check mark.
That's not teaching!
I doubt my paper will even be read. I would expect him to scan it over, check the page count, and look for one or more non-internet sources in the bibliography. Then the check mark, and my paper is done. To put the mental muscle of my Critical Writing skills into this paper would be laughable and foolish. Yes I am falling cataclysmically short of the principles I have spent a semester learning in that class, but their application would have been wasted.
And I take a step back, and I look at myself with the fresh homeschooled eyes of my 17-year-old self. I would scorn what I did tonight as that most-despised of intellectual iniquities: doing an assignment not to learn anything but just to get the grade. And so I did. There are things I could have learned in doing this paper that I didn't learn. But I never wanted to take biochemistry in the first place (Pitt requires it of me), and I'm not particularly interested in it, and the specific topic of this paper will almost certainly never be applicable in my life, and the teacher has bred in his class a stagnant academic atmosphere where nobody--not even he himself--cares about the material. Perhaps ideally I would still read, research, think hard, plan out, write, and craft a solid 5-10 page paper, but given that I am sick, and a presentation, transport homework, biochem final, systems and signals homework and critical writing paper are all due before Friday, that kind of time expenditure would be foolish. So my academic principles butt up against real life, and real life wins.
Writing a 'bs paper' was the wisest and most prudent decision I could make.
It's different than you might expect, but I am indeed getting a college education. For it is into real life that I will soon set sail.
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Willis rocks the house...and my neck
It is 1:20am Sunday morning, and I write concerning the Willis concert of Friday night.
For those who don't know, Willis is a band comprised of some young folks from our sister church in Indiana, PA. The band members are all very funny, oddball, and likeable guys, ergo their band bears the same characteristics. And their music does a great job of being rockin' and fun while also glorifying God in the lyrics, and the important MATCHING of lyrics with music.
We Pittsburghers had heard about the concert months ago, and Sarah in particular spearheaded the planning of our little caravan of 12 to Lord of Life Church on Wayne road on this cold Friday evening in December. We took 2 vans, and in Mike's was himself, me, Daniel, Jonathan, Heather and Anna. We all stopped for dinner on the way (sating the vociferious cries of certain female passangers...) at Dairy Queen / Subway. DQ burger was great.
We arrived a little after 7 - perfect timing. Greg King's band opened up, playing for about an hour. They did a solid job, Barry Liddel, as always, tore up the electric guitar (he's a professional guitarist), and the sound quality overall was good. The concert was in the sanctuary, with most of the chairs cleared away and the stage all cluttered with sweet gear--lights, tons and TONS of speakers and amps, and lots of guitars. Those tend to be wherever Barry is :-P Stephen and Phil tried to get the crowd into it, and we jumped around a bit, but everybody was saving their energy for Willis.
During the break between sets I got to hang around, catch up with some friends, and have some surprisingly good cookies.
Then Phil started clapping, and we all forsook our conversations and moved up front and starting clapping along...and the band came in with a crash and the show began!
It was a lot of jumping and dancing and getting very sweaty and watching the crazy costumes and antics of the band and biting my lip as pain shot through my left knee. The room was dark and the stage was bright. The sound was competent: neither bad enough to distract from the music nor good enough to make you stop and say "wow!" The musicianship was good: not mediocre, but not stunning. They knew it all very well, which left them and us free to enjoy the music and have a lot of fun with it.
After the last song ended, and we all roared for one more song, and they played one, and then really ended, we all hung around, talked to friends, bought merchandise, looked at the gear, and other stuff for an hour or so. I got to catch up with David Altrogge a bit, and we set a tentative weekend in January for me to come up and hang out. A much-belated scheduling.
Finally the vans departed and we got some food at Eat 'n' Park. Good hangin-out times. http://www.flickr.com/photos/picsomike for some pictures :-)
It was sweet when Mr. Altrogge came up on stage for a cover of "Takin' Care of Business" - the fulfulment of all his classic rocker dreams :-P
It was fun to try to come up with cool dance moves, and to watch Johnny and Stephen and people who knew what they were doing. It was NOT so cool when David called for a circle to form and had different people dance in the center of it, starting with yours truly. Ah well. It's testing my application of the "hold yourself lightly" mantra. And though I sorely felt my lack of dancing experience...what the heck. I guess this is showing an area where I do care what people think of me! Sweet. Now to crucify this fear of man! There's a pic of me on Mike's photo page that I hate, too. The first pic anybody's ever posted of me that I really would like to delete. Schedule another execution boys - this fear of man's going DOWN!
It was good to reconnect with some of the Indiana folks.
It was fun to ride in the car with Pittsburgh folks, sing our throats out, and earn "The Reproachful Look" from Anna :-D Mike did a good job of driving and staying awake. I learned a bit more about what teenage girls are like. I stayed up till 3:30am archiving all my posts from my old modblog account, which just came back online. My throat ached. My knee hurt amazingly bad. As the night grew later my ankles and calves grew sorer and achier. Now nearly every step hurts mildly, and at times my knee gets so bad I truly can't walk on it. I hope my throat holds out for the One Voice concert tomorrow!
I'm currently thinking about how to deal with alcohol in my newfound 21-ness, the need to have a time (or times) of dedicated prayer and fasting about the future, the untruthfulness of my fear of eternity, the scourge of my crappy knee and overall weak and damage-prone body, the extreme coldness of my feet, and the possible drying up of my writing streak. It is now 2:20am and I am ready to hit the sack.
In a paper I peer reviewed someone had put in "monogamous" for "monotonous." Still makes me smile, every time I think about it :-P
--Clear Ambassador
For those who don't know, Willis is a band comprised of some young folks from our sister church in Indiana, PA. The band members are all very funny, oddball, and likeable guys, ergo their band bears the same characteristics. And their music does a great job of being rockin' and fun while also glorifying God in the lyrics, and the important MATCHING of lyrics with music.
We Pittsburghers had heard about the concert months ago, and Sarah in particular spearheaded the planning of our little caravan of 12 to Lord of Life Church on Wayne road on this cold Friday evening in December. We took 2 vans, and in Mike's was himself, me, Daniel, Jonathan, Heather and Anna. We all stopped for dinner on the way (sating the vociferious cries of certain female passangers...) at Dairy Queen / Subway. DQ burger was great.
We arrived a little after 7 - perfect timing. Greg King's band opened up, playing for about an hour. They did a solid job, Barry Liddel, as always, tore up the electric guitar (he's a professional guitarist), and the sound quality overall was good. The concert was in the sanctuary, with most of the chairs cleared away and the stage all cluttered with sweet gear--lights, tons and TONS of speakers and amps, and lots of guitars. Those tend to be wherever Barry is :-P Stephen and Phil tried to get the crowd into it, and we jumped around a bit, but everybody was saving their energy for Willis.
During the break between sets I got to hang around, catch up with some friends, and have some surprisingly good cookies.
Then Phil started clapping, and we all forsook our conversations and moved up front and starting clapping along...and the band came in with a crash and the show began!
It was a lot of jumping and dancing and getting very sweaty and watching the crazy costumes and antics of the band and biting my lip as pain shot through my left knee. The room was dark and the stage was bright. The sound was competent: neither bad enough to distract from the music nor good enough to make you stop and say "wow!" The musicianship was good: not mediocre, but not stunning. They knew it all very well, which left them and us free to enjoy the music and have a lot of fun with it.
After the last song ended, and we all roared for one more song, and they played one, and then really ended, we all hung around, talked to friends, bought merchandise, looked at the gear, and other stuff for an hour or so. I got to catch up with David Altrogge a bit, and we set a tentative weekend in January for me to come up and hang out. A much-belated scheduling.
Finally the vans departed and we got some food at Eat 'n' Park. Good hangin-out times. http://www.flickr.com/photos/picsomike for some pictures :-)
It was sweet when Mr. Altrogge came up on stage for a cover of "Takin' Care of Business" - the fulfulment of all his classic rocker dreams :-P
It was fun to try to come up with cool dance moves, and to watch Johnny and Stephen and people who knew what they were doing. It was NOT so cool when David called for a circle to form and had different people dance in the center of it, starting with yours truly. Ah well. It's testing my application of the "hold yourself lightly" mantra. And though I sorely felt my lack of dancing experience...what the heck. I guess this is showing an area where I do care what people think of me! Sweet. Now to crucify this fear of man! There's a pic of me on Mike's photo page that I hate, too. The first pic anybody's ever posted of me that I really would like to delete. Schedule another execution boys - this fear of man's going DOWN!
It was good to reconnect with some of the Indiana folks.
It was fun to ride in the car with Pittsburgh folks, sing our throats out, and earn "The Reproachful Look" from Anna :-D Mike did a good job of driving and staying awake. I learned a bit more about what teenage girls are like. I stayed up till 3:30am archiving all my posts from my old modblog account, which just came back online. My throat ached. My knee hurt amazingly bad. As the night grew later my ankles and calves grew sorer and achier. Now nearly every step hurts mildly, and at times my knee gets so bad I truly can't walk on it. I hope my throat holds out for the One Voice concert tomorrow!
I'm currently thinking about how to deal with alcohol in my newfound 21-ness, the need to have a time (or times) of dedicated prayer and fasting about the future, the untruthfulness of my fear of eternity, the scourge of my crappy knee and overall weak and damage-prone body, the extreme coldness of my feet, and the possible drying up of my writing streak. It is now 2:20am and I am ready to hit the sack.
In a paper I peer reviewed someone had put in "monogamous" for "monotonous." Still makes me smile, every time I think about it :-P
--Clear Ambassador
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
11:20pm and the house is dark...
20 minutes past my target bedtime. *sigh*
I washed my hands, and started loading up my toothbrush. Hearing Bing Crosby's resonating baritone on "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" coming from Daniel's room had got me thinking about what I had mentioned at dinner: I am planning on recording one Christmas song in honor of the season, to post on the web and share with folks. My mind was at work.
I want to do something acapella. Not enough time or inspiration for instruments.
I sorta already did O Holy Night, and it's arrangement wouldn't be too fresh.
Let All Mortal Flesh is a way cool song - very much fitting my current thoughts.
It could start out with a solitary voice, and have voices join with each line, building to full 4-part harmony! Nice.
[numerious recording and mixing thoughts here]
I wish I had a really good reverb unit to make the lone voices more dramatic. What I have now would sound like a distant singer in a giant metal tank :-(
It should be stark. A bunch of barbershop-type stuff would distract from the blistering words of the song.
No, I want to do it complex. It would be a shame to have the one song I record be real simple.
*mental flash of light*
I am HERE to glorify God, through my music. Simpler would serve this song better. How contrary to my musical convictions is the thought I just had! Show off my arrangement and recording skills at the expense of the meaning of the song?? My place is to make recordings that people don't necessarily notice--that convey the song, and the song's message, to people's minds, hearts and souls. I am to stand beside the microphone and let the truth pass through, not dance around in front of it.
Shame on me, and how suble and iniquitious is my sin!
Then I capped the toothpaste tube and started brushing.
I washed my hands, and started loading up my toothbrush. Hearing Bing Crosby's resonating baritone on "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" coming from Daniel's room had got me thinking about what I had mentioned at dinner: I am planning on recording one Christmas song in honor of the season, to post on the web and share with folks. My mind was at work.
I want to do something acapella. Not enough time or inspiration for instruments.
I sorta already did O Holy Night, and it's arrangement wouldn't be too fresh.
Let All Mortal Flesh is a way cool song - very much fitting my current thoughts.
It could start out with a solitary voice, and have voices join with each line, building to full 4-part harmony! Nice.
[numerious recording and mixing thoughts here]
I wish I had a really good reverb unit to make the lone voices more dramatic. What I have now would sound like a distant singer in a giant metal tank :-(
It should be stark. A bunch of barbershop-type stuff would distract from the blistering words of the song.
No, I want to do it complex. It would be a shame to have the one song I record be real simple.
*mental flash of light*
I am HERE to glorify God, through my music. Simpler would serve this song better. How contrary to my musical convictions is the thought I just had! Show off my arrangement and recording skills at the expense of the meaning of the song?? My place is to make recordings that people don't necessarily notice--that convey the song, and the song's message, to people's minds, hearts and souls. I am to stand beside the microphone and let the truth pass through, not dance around in front of it.
Shame on me, and how suble and iniquitious is my sin!
Then I capped the toothpaste tube and started brushing.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Bathroom Prayer
I speak to you from the glorious "other side!"
My transport test is over. I studied for a few hours yesterday afternoon, and after wrapping up shell/integral balances (as best I could), I was finished. No more to study, and my cheat sheets were covered with every equation I could possibly need or understand. So I watched the Steelers lose painfully, munched exquisite Oke-Doke popcorn imported from Chicago, and caught up on some AIM and critical writing. A profitable and liesurely evening capped off with bed at 1am.
I awoke this morning fairly well, not dead drained tired like I was Monday morning. It was a serious letdown when the lady at Einstein's forgot to turn on the espresso machine, depriving me of my anticipated cappuccino, but my crestfallen look must have touched her, 'cause she gave me a free large coffee, which was *almost* as good. My fingers are stiff and twitchy from said beverage now, as I type this up in the 10th floor computer lab.
On the strength of that large coffee I soaked in an intense biochem class, constantly a few seconds or thoughts away from utterly losing the relentless stream of information pouring out of Dr. Koepsel's mouth. For about 30 painful seconds I did lose him, and it took some serious mental effort to not panic and to force his words to stay in my brain 'till I could again start piecing them together and understanding them. Kinda like
With my brain warmed up and my body jacked up, I entered 1221 Benedum, the fabled Frank Mosier Learning Center, 12 floors above the rain-drenched cloud-soaked landscape of concrete Oakland. We waited, we chatted, we arranged pencils and calculators, and gave each other encouraging smiles. Or despairing ones, depending on your capacity for handling stress. At last Dr. McCarthy walked in, bearing our fate in a stack of papers in his arms. He flopped one down on the desk in front of me, and Transport Phenomena Exam II had begun.
I could only do 1 of the first 3 problems. Then I knocked out the next one like an anemic engineer in a kung fu tournament. The last problem was 67% ok, and that nasty third was faked somewhat well :-) Then I took a bathroom break and gave out a quick, honest prayer in the echoing walls and tiled floor, for understanding and remembrance. I knew the answers were down in my brain...unsteady mass transport from the center of a sphere was like the face of an old friend you know, but can't remember their name.
That little prayer was answered. I came back, stepped back, thought, started writing, and lo and behold, the tricksey, neat little answer came out! I wrapped it up, figured out the second of the two problem problems, and was done with the test in an hour! Then I checked it over, fixed some bad errors, clarified some stuff, and turned it in with 30 minutes to spare.
Thank you Lord for answering the prayer of an under-studied over-stressed chemical engineer!
And thanks for the coffee, too - I know You worked through that just as powerfully as anything else :-)
--John "it's over" Behrens
My transport test is over. I studied for a few hours yesterday afternoon, and after wrapping up shell/integral balances (as best I could), I was finished. No more to study, and my cheat sheets were covered with every equation I could possibly need or understand. So I watched the Steelers lose painfully, munched exquisite Oke-Doke popcorn imported from Chicago, and caught up on some AIM and critical writing. A profitable and liesurely evening capped off with bed at 1am.
I awoke this morning fairly well, not dead drained tired like I was Monday morning. It was a serious letdown when the lady at Einstein's forgot to turn on the espresso machine, depriving me of my anticipated cappuccino, but my crestfallen look must have touched her, 'cause she gave me a free large coffee, which was *almost* as good. My fingers are stiff and twitchy from said beverage now, as I type this up in the 10th floor computer lab.
On the strength of that large coffee I soaked in an intense biochem class, constantly a few seconds or thoughts away from utterly losing the relentless stream of information pouring out of Dr. Koepsel's mouth. For about 30 painful seconds I did lose him, and it took some serious mental effort to not panic and to force his words to stay in my brain 'till I could again start piecing them together and understanding them. Kinda like
With my brain warmed up and my body jacked up, I entered 1221 Benedum, the fabled Frank Mosier Learning Center, 12 floors above the rain-drenched cloud-soaked landscape of concrete Oakland. We waited, we chatted, we arranged pencils and calculators, and gave each other encouraging smiles. Or despairing ones, depending on your capacity for handling stress. At last Dr. McCarthy walked in, bearing our fate in a stack of papers in his arms. He flopped one down on the desk in front of me, and Transport Phenomena Exam II had begun.
I could only do 1 of the first 3 problems. Then I knocked out the next one like an anemic engineer in a kung fu tournament. The last problem was 67% ok, and that nasty third was faked somewhat well :-) Then I took a bathroom break and gave out a quick, honest prayer in the echoing walls and tiled floor, for understanding and remembrance. I knew the answers were down in my brain...unsteady mass transport from the center of a sphere was like the face of an old friend you know, but can't remember their name.
That little prayer was answered. I came back, stepped back, thought, started writing, and lo and behold, the tricksey, neat little answer came out! I wrapped it up, figured out the second of the two problem problems, and was done with the test in an hour! Then I checked it over, fixed some bad errors, clarified some stuff, and turned it in with 30 minutes to spare.
Thank you Lord for answering the prayer of an under-studied over-stressed chemical engineer!
And thanks for the coffee, too - I know You worked through that just as powerfully as anything else :-)
--John "it's over" Behrens
Sunday, November 27, 2005
Short but Sweet
Sunday, November 27th, 2005
Good evening folks! Well, Dad, Mom, Daniel and John and DAISY have all arrived safe and sound back in da 'Burgh, together again after 3 weeks & 3 days apart. It appears that this strangest of Novembers is nearly past, and with it the abnormalities it brought. Dad and Mom had a rather pleasant week in Florida, once Uncle Keith was released from the hospital (as happy to be out of there as a dog from the bathtub). They made sure to call every few days and let us know how warm it was down there :-P Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were down to 20 or so in Chicago - the coldest days of this season so far. Pittsburgh got a lot of snow, or so I hear.
Daniel and I had a great couple days with Grandma and Grandpa. They were few, and went fast, but much sweetness was packed into them. I didn't get much schoolwork done, and I didn't get a lot of catch-up sleep, but I did drink and enjoy copious amounts of Cherry-Vanilla Dr.Pepper, do lots of putzy stuff on the internet (facebook and flickr), watch a bunch of mindless sports and movies, and spend some great time with G&G. Grandpa and I sat down on Friday for an hour or two and he drew out for me the processes from the chemical plant he worked at. It was like Chemical Engineering 101: flash tanks, distillation columns, pumps, evaporators, heat exchangers....way cool stuff. It was particularly interesting to hear about the improvements he devised for the process - something I may well be doing myself in a few years.
On Friday morning I got to put my spring chicken-ness to work helping the Mom of a friend of G&G's move. Daniel and I went to Taco Bell for lunch with Grandpa on Wednesday, and determined that when he loses his hair from the chemo, he'll have Grandma sew dreadlocks into his Cubs hat :-) Either that, or he can stay bald and go for the German Colonel look. Grandpa starts his chemotherapy on Friday, and he'll have 8 sessions, 3 weeks apart. He'll lose his hair, and suffer whatever particular side effects his body generates, but in general he shouldn't be real nauseous, and after those treatments the lymphoma should be at least dormant, and at best (60% chance or so), cured. We'll be praying, and as they and we are so aware, God's grace will be there, new and strong every morning as the day brings its own challenges. Even when you're almost 80, God continues to grow you in brand new ways! Grandma and Grandpa's faith and joy through this all are a shining witness of Jesus Christ's real and transforming love and grace, and I am very proud to call them my Grandparents. What a heritage they have given to us!
Daniel and I had a HRA drive back from Chicago on Saturday. We left at 8am on the dot, and I drove for the first 4.5 hours. We played through a modern/alt rock playlist on Daniel's ipod that whole time, which was quite enjoyable. Then we had lunch and Daniel drove the rest of the way, and we listened to the BBC dramatization of "Dracula." Quite interesting, though the whole vampire concept is so hackneyed it was more funny than scary. We pulled up to the driveway with the climactic last 10 minutes still left to go! Still haven't finished it. Ah well :-( The drive was good, and it was strange to think of the dozens of times Mom drove the three of us back and forth...and now the two of us were making the drive on our own - maturing young adults. . . weird thoughts.
Mom's reunion with Daisy was joyful. Every few minutes Mom would look down and exclaim anew, "Oh, you are SO cute!" :-)
Today I played drums for worship at church, with Mr. Taylor playing acoustic bass and Mrs. Taylor playing violin - quite a sweet setup. I love the church's set! Best toms and hi-hat I've ever played. After church I grabbed a quick delicious steak quesadilla at the food court and headed to Grace Episcopal Church for the first One Voice concert of the 2005 advent season.
I've been rather discouraged with OV this semester since I haven't been able to learn the songs very solidly, and I've begrudged the time commitment. Nevertheless, the concert, at 2pm, went superbly. God's Spirit was with us, and many in the audience were really touched (not to mention everybody singing!). We enjoyed a fantastic spread of cookies and deserts in the basement, and then headed to Lisa's family's house for chillin' and dinner before leaving for the 7pm show.
I rode with Domenica and Lisa up to the second concert, which was an hour away up north. It was a nice church - nice sanctuary - and 140 people showed up! It was great to sing for such a large (and age-diverse) crowd, though it felt a little shakier than the first one. My legs were truly shot after that second hour-and-a-half of standing and holding my notebook. After another good spread of cookies we headed back home, stopping to grab a pizza at a random pizza place on the way. It was great to get to chill with Dom and Priceless and catch up with what's goin' on. Domenica is my official older sister, and it's always fun to hang with her and Lisa, the dynamic duo :-) Domenica should be moving back here from DC in February - none too soon in our opinion.
I drove home from Lisa's house, where I had left my car in the afternoon, arriving at 10:40, 14.5 hours after leaving this morning. Now it's 11:52, and I've accomplished my goal of catching up with stuff before midnight! I have made the quality decision to SCREW the homework due Monday, since I'm at about 98.5% in that class right now. This week has the appearances of a mild hell as I anticipate it in the future. In 4 days it will all be past and I will be the same, but right now I truly don't know how I will study for the beastin' test Tuesday, do Thursday's S&S homework, finish the CW discussion response with Sarah and write from scratch my CW assignment 10. Lord, help me! That's my prayer, and a good one it is, too.
Good-night.
Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
And with fear and trembling stand.
Ponder nothing earthly minded,
For with blessings in His hand,
Christ our God to Earth descending
Comes our homage to demand.
May it be so.
--Clear Ambassador
Good evening folks! Well, Dad, Mom, Daniel and John and DAISY have all arrived safe and sound back in da 'Burgh, together again after 3 weeks & 3 days apart. It appears that this strangest of Novembers is nearly past, and with it the abnormalities it brought. Dad and Mom had a rather pleasant week in Florida, once Uncle Keith was released from the hospital (as happy to be out of there as a dog from the bathtub). They made sure to call every few days and let us know how warm it was down there :-P Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were down to 20 or so in Chicago - the coldest days of this season so far. Pittsburgh got a lot of snow, or so I hear.
Daniel and I had a great couple days with Grandma and Grandpa. They were few, and went fast, but much sweetness was packed into them. I didn't get much schoolwork done, and I didn't get a lot of catch-up sleep, but I did drink and enjoy copious amounts of Cherry-Vanilla Dr.Pepper, do lots of putzy stuff on the internet (facebook and flickr), watch a bunch of mindless sports and movies, and spend some great time with G&G. Grandpa and I sat down on Friday for an hour or two and he drew out for me the processes from the chemical plant he worked at. It was like Chemical Engineering 101: flash tanks, distillation columns, pumps, evaporators, heat exchangers....way cool stuff. It was particularly interesting to hear about the improvements he devised for the process - something I may well be doing myself in a few years.
On Friday morning I got to put my spring chicken-ness to work helping the Mom of a friend of G&G's move. Daniel and I went to Taco Bell for lunch with Grandpa on Wednesday, and determined that when he loses his hair from the chemo, he'll have Grandma sew dreadlocks into his Cubs hat :-) Either that, or he can stay bald and go for the German Colonel look. Grandpa starts his chemotherapy on Friday, and he'll have 8 sessions, 3 weeks apart. He'll lose his hair, and suffer whatever particular side effects his body generates, but in general he shouldn't be real nauseous, and after those treatments the lymphoma should be at least dormant, and at best (60% chance or so), cured. We'll be praying, and as they and we are so aware, God's grace will be there, new and strong every morning as the day brings its own challenges. Even when you're almost 80, God continues to grow you in brand new ways! Grandma and Grandpa's faith and joy through this all are a shining witness of Jesus Christ's real and transforming love and grace, and I am very proud to call them my Grandparents. What a heritage they have given to us!
Daniel and I had a HRA drive back from Chicago on Saturday. We left at 8am on the dot, and I drove for the first 4.5 hours. We played through a modern/alt rock playlist on Daniel's ipod that whole time, which was quite enjoyable. Then we had lunch and Daniel drove the rest of the way, and we listened to the BBC dramatization of "Dracula." Quite interesting, though the whole vampire concept is so hackneyed it was more funny than scary. We pulled up to the driveway with the climactic last 10 minutes still left to go! Still haven't finished it. Ah well :-( The drive was good, and it was strange to think of the dozens of times Mom drove the three of us back and forth...and now the two of us were making the drive on our own - maturing young adults. . . weird thoughts.
Mom's reunion with Daisy was joyful. Every few minutes Mom would look down and exclaim anew, "Oh, you are SO cute!" :-)
Today I played drums for worship at church, with Mr. Taylor playing acoustic bass and Mrs. Taylor playing violin - quite a sweet setup. I love the church's set! Best toms and hi-hat I've ever played. After church I grabbed a quick delicious steak quesadilla at the food court and headed to Grace Episcopal Church for the first One Voice concert of the 2005 advent season.
I've been rather discouraged with OV this semester since I haven't been able to learn the songs very solidly, and I've begrudged the time commitment. Nevertheless, the concert, at 2pm, went superbly. God's Spirit was with us, and many in the audience were really touched (not to mention everybody singing!). We enjoyed a fantastic spread of cookies and deserts in the basement, and then headed to Lisa's family's house for chillin' and dinner before leaving for the 7pm show.
I rode with Domenica and Lisa up to the second concert, which was an hour away up north. It was a nice church - nice sanctuary - and 140 people showed up! It was great to sing for such a large (and age-diverse) crowd, though it felt a little shakier than the first one. My legs were truly shot after that second hour-and-a-half of standing and holding my notebook. After another good spread of cookies we headed back home, stopping to grab a pizza at a random pizza place on the way. It was great to get to chill with Dom and Priceless and catch up with what's goin' on. Domenica is my official older sister, and it's always fun to hang with her and Lisa, the dynamic duo :-) Domenica should be moving back here from DC in February - none too soon in our opinion.
I drove home from Lisa's house, where I had left my car in the afternoon, arriving at 10:40, 14.5 hours after leaving this morning. Now it's 11:52, and I've accomplished my goal of catching up with stuff before midnight! I have made the quality decision to SCREW the homework due Monday, since I'm at about 98.5% in that class right now. This week has the appearances of a mild hell as I anticipate it in the future. In 4 days it will all be past and I will be the same, but right now I truly don't know how I will study for the beastin' test Tuesday, do Thursday's S&S homework, finish the CW discussion response with Sarah and write from scratch my CW assignment 10. Lord, help me! That's my prayer, and a good one it is, too.
Good-night.
Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
And with fear and trembling stand.
Ponder nothing earthly minded,
For with blessings in His hand,
Christ our God to Earth descending
Comes our homage to demand.
May it be so.
--Clear Ambassador
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