Here are two little snippets that give an idea of where I'm at in the grand scheme of life right now, and what kind of thoughs are pinging through my brain. The first is from a note Grandpa Ken wrote me for our celebration of my graduation. I include it because these sentences struck me like a bell, tolling the weight of the coming days and weeks (e.g. tomorrow).
----------------------------
. . .
Your future now stands before
you. Choose your path wisely.
Love,
Grandpa Ken
----------------------------
The second is my articulate response to the question, "What's the difference between a boy and a man?"
----------------------------
Boys are in training to bear responsibility. Men bear it.
Boys ride home in the car. Men drive the car, maintain it, and they bought it three years ago with five thousand dollars of their own money.
Boys do chores for a few minutes each day. Men do chores 8 hours a day.
Boys are blown around with every feeling and happening. Men have seen more of how the world works, and they ride the waves.
Boys have devotions because Mom and Dad say they should.
Young men have devotions becaue their spiritual lives depend on it.
Men have devotions because their wife and kids' spiritual lives depend on it.
Boys do what they want with their time. Men have no time
----------------------------
A time like this usually comes only once in a human's lifetime, if he's even fortunate enough to have a choice of his path. If I didn't believe in the God of the Bible, and if I didn't have my family to live Him out in front of me, I would be nervous and anxious beyond words. As it is, I know I can't fail, because He stands with me and His purposes will never fail. To say that's my only hope is to hang a bridge of truth upon a hair-thin cliche.
Temperate-lengthed post! Duuuuude.
--Clear Ambassador
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
The Chosen Five
There were five.
Five among dozens.
Five who braved ferocious storms and ceaseless battering.
Five who got screwed by their lousy online schedules.
Five who had to take design and control at the same time.
I was one of five, and barring the hyperbole of dramatacism, it was indeed a very difficult semester I was faced with this fall. I faced it with Charlie, Drew, Jewel, and Willis. Charlie and I go way back - back to the Team Bloat days with Jenna and Joam in Transport and Kinetics. Drew has been a co-op at NOVA with me for my last 3 rotations. Jewel I knew of, but didn't really know, and Willis.. Dave Willis.. well, with a name like that he couldn't help but be the man :-)
There were 15 other people in control, but only us five for design and health & safety. We spent many many hours down in B72, the basement ChemE computer lab, hashing out progress reports or putting together laborious H&S reports. When everybody else was down there worrying about the monstrous impossible process control homework, we were worrying about that plus tomorrow's progress report on exergy plus the 38-page health & safety draft due Friday.
The groups were formed as soon as we walked into the classroom at 8am Monday morning in late August. Willis, Drew and Jewel were over at a computer desk on the right side of the room, and Charlie was sitting at the left front desk. Thus team Willis coalesced, and Charlie and I joined forces yet again. I consider myself fortunate to have had him as my partner. He works extrememly diligently, and I don't have to worry about being cool around him. I suppose from the outside we're both ChemE nerd dorks who pool our dorkiness and are very uncool. But from the inside we're like brothers--don't have to worry about what you say or do, just work, joke, blow off steam, and get done what needs to get done. Exactly my style :-) Team Willis always finished their work before us, and we were usually late - for classes and assignments. I kinda feel bad for that, but it's how it happened, and our professors were gracious. And in the end I think we turned in better work, or at least as good.
So, with that backdrop, let me usher you down to B72 early on a crisp and frosty Monday morning. We hop up the 4-foot ledge at the truck loading docks underneath big grey Benedum and walk in the door to the loading foyer. Pull through the double doors, pass the drinking fountain and bathrooms on the right, face left, and punch in the code at the door of the lab. It's really not a lab, it's a computer classroom. Two-story-high ceiling with innocuous vents and pipes running around, 15-foot screen in front of the extra-long blackboard on the wall at our left. The instructor's desk, rounded by it's brushed metal ledge, is tucked back in that corner. On the right are the desks - 9-foot long semicircles with two computers in each and chairs scattered around them. Most of the chairs have formed a herd in the back of the room, over by the printers, unused and out of the way. The desk right at our right is me and Charlie's--he sits by the wall and I sit by the aisle. Team Willis sits at the second desk on the other side of the room. But they're not here now. Charlie and I sit at our desk, typing, leaning back and sighing, and leaning in again to the screens and keyboards. The strange thing is, it doesn't seem like a classroom at all. Books and backpacks are littered around like a dorm room, and the whole room flickers and glows in the warm light of Christmas lights and a crackling fire. Julie Andrews sings with spirit undimmed by her bleak listeners, and the media player visualization flickers warm flame on the giant projector screen. Colored lights circumnavigate the blackboard, and a string of white lights is taped around the instructor's desk. Even though it's 4am and the new day is starting, you can't help but feel pretty cozy tucked down there in the basement, carpet under your feet, open computers, a classroom at your command, a locked door if you want to close it, and a clearly-defined task steadily chipping away under your efforts. It doesn't feel at all as though you've been sitting at that desk since 3:30 Sunday afternoon, that the Steelers have played and won, night has come and gone, and workers are waking and starting their days. You know that there are five more hours until the report is due, and you will need all of them to get close to finishing it, but you don't think about it enough to realize it. You just keep scanning the marked-up progress report on Pipes and making changes to the document on the screen. Every once in a while you or Charlie kick back and make some comment about how ridiculous some of the comments are, or bust out some South Park quote, but by this time you're pretty much in a zone, and there's not much talk except for questions about the report.
Taking the liberty of the omnipotent narrator, we now sweep past those five hours, rush up the 13-story staircase, round the corner past Parker's office, and pull up in front of the Chemical Engineering main office. Charlie and I weakly greet Dr. Enick and Dr. Parker, whom I salute and call "masters," since they have ruled our lives for the past 4 months. We hand Dr. Enick the light blue 1.5-inch three-ring binder, exchange a few words, and turn towards the elevators. The sun is already well risen over the convoluted hospital buildings of Oakland outside the 12th floor window next to us. 18 hours ago I drove down to campus from a brief nap after church, and now I roll back down those roads, for one of the last times. I'm not tired, just zoned out. My nose started dripping around 6am, and my throat has gotten scratchy, and my rear end is sore from sitting for so long, but I'm plenty alert. It's a pretty strange feeling, but not unpleasant. I'm actually glad I got to do such a crazy thing at the end of my college career, and I'm amazed that it actually was that much work, for that long, and we did it.
Two days later, after the dreaded process control final kicked our butts from 11am to 2pm, Charlie and I finished the last edits to the 92-page Chemical Engineering Plant Design final report, printed out the remaining pages, and under the recording eye of my cell phone camera signed the cover letter and plopped it in the holder outside Dr. Enicks office, thus ending our undergraduate careers.
OK, I think I'm done with the story. There's more I want to say, and it's too clusmy to put it in that kind of clothing. Yes, 14 design progress reports culminated in a crazy all-nighter down in B72 putting them all together into the final report draft. We got an A in the class. Team Willis turned their final report in one hour before we did :-)
There's one other picture I want to take you to, actually. When I think of this semester, that comfortable and friendly image of B72 is the primary one that comes to mind. I also strongly think of parking my car around Oakland - waiting for spots to open up on Atwood, finding a meterless 4-hour spot on Bellefield, and that sweet sweet feeling of slipping into a spot where you know you're set for the day. I sorta think of sitting up in the 12-floor classroom listening to Parker's performance lectures. But one of the stirling memories is down in the darkened basement room of Fuel & Fuddle, a popular Oakland bar and pizza place. Twenty-some chemical engineer students sit around tables and on benches, faces fixed on the screen at one end, listening intently to people talk about hot wort, mash tuns, yeast collection patterns and heat exchangers. After a month of excruciating work on the Process Control project, we have all made it here--our presentations are in Dr. Parker's briefcase and we're presenting our work to the class. What I want you to see is the attention to the presenters; the quality of the graphs and discussions; and the questions. Dr. Parker only had to ask a few the whole time. After the end of every 10-minute presentation hands shot up all around the room and points were raised, discussed and usually answered. Fuel & Fuddle employees slipped through occasionally, and a few patrons passed by on their way to the restrooms, and I wonder what they thought. Uber-weird, probably :-) But I was proud of us. After getting beaten around by two exams with F-grade averages, merciless homeworks and brutal lectures, we had risen to this project and kicked it squarely in the heine. Non-linear simulation using grad-student-level matlab code? Barebones project information and difficult research? Gruelling controller tuning to achieve stability? Harsh time limit on the presentations? Cold steely questions from the super-intelligent Parker? We ate 'em all for breakfast :-)
Parker himself agreed with me the following day about the quality of the projects and participation. It was by far the best project he had ever seen in his 8 (I think) years of teaching this class. And my team's paper was by far the best of the bunch. Those words settled a tremendous weight of failure, uncertainty and hope inside of me. I had worked myself to the bone the night before pulling our paper together and tightening up the analysis. We had killed ourselves Thanksgiving week to get the filter and pasteurizer models working, and now we had a bunch of closed-loop controller responses to interpret and discuss. We threw all kinds of disturbances at our system once we had it designed and simulated, to see if it could handle it. Our beer pasteurizer came out with flying colors, and I covered every single base with our assumptions, decisions, and reasons. At every point I unconsciously asked myself "What would Parker ask here?", and then proceeded to answer it. The paper was 38 pages, but it was perfect, and to have Parker realize and acknowledge that meant more to me than every A+ I earned in college (and I earned 15).
That project was the best-whipped-into-shape that I have been since Critical Writing last fall and Organic Chemistry the summer before that. And those three are the academic pinnacles of my college career. A close fourth is Thermo 2, where I lived in Chapter 11 of the book and plunged my brain again and again into fugacity and gibbs free energy and all the hateful abstract concepts of thermodynamics until I actually understood them and got an A+ in the course. Those were the four times I had something really hard to do and I squared it up, took it on, and came out successful. I came to realize at the end of this semester that that is one of the best things you can do in life, even though it's always hard, discouraging and hateful at some point along the way. Now that I'm graduated, I miss that kind of clear-cut challenge within the relatively safe confines of academia. I miss the prospect of hanging out with the students whom I've finally gotten to know and who've gotten to know me. I wish for more of the heedless expenditure of time on things that have no choice but to be done, yet are pretty much independent and fun as you do them. Real life seems a good bit harsher and less interesting, but I suppose it will turn out to be just as rewarding once I get into it.
So yeah - down there in Fuel & Fuddle, our class glowed with professionalism, quality and solid scientific behavior. It makes me very happy to think of us down there. After all the misery and failure in process control, we proved our capabilities there, and Parker saw it and acknowledged it gladly. I talked to Dr. Parker the next week about the course and some of the comments I had developed over the months. We ended up talking for almost 2 hours, and I got to share, completely, coherently and demonstratively, exactly the things that had bothered me about him and how he ran the course, and together we considered them and how they could be addressed. At the end he thanked me heartily and said he'd never been given such well-thought out and considerate feedback, removed from emotions and didactic in nature. That was likewise very rewarding, because the unsettledness of being in what appeared to be a mismanaged class was relieved, and I came out really believing that Parker is a solid guy.
Baugh, this post has become an untidy and obese growth of text. It doesn't even talk about final's week (and the harder week before that) chronologically. But, I think it carries most of the spirit of this last month and semester of classes, and that's what I really want to remember. I think of B72 affectionately, and I have great memories of working with Charlie and my other groups, and the fun times down in the lab with everbody focused on a common assignment. It has been probably the best sememster of college in that respect, even as it has been the most miserable at times and the most difficult by far. I'm glad to have ended out my academic life on a genuine note--a hard challenge well met. We'll see what the coming weeks hold, and I'll write later about this whole 5-day trip to Akron that I just got back from :-)
If anybody has read this far, I'm amazed at you and you deserve a smoothie. This post has taken full liberties of the "for future John" purpose of this blog. It's been a great time of life these past months, and perhaps I'll come up with a more succinct and vibrant way of describing it some other time.
--Clear Ambassador
Five among dozens.
Five who braved ferocious storms and ceaseless battering.
Five who got screwed by their lousy online schedules.
Five who had to take design and control at the same time.
I was one of five, and barring the hyperbole of dramatacism, it was indeed a very difficult semester I was faced with this fall. I faced it with Charlie, Drew, Jewel, and Willis. Charlie and I go way back - back to the Team Bloat days with Jenna and Joam in Transport and Kinetics. Drew has been a co-op at NOVA with me for my last 3 rotations. Jewel I knew of, but didn't really know, and Willis.. Dave Willis.. well, with a name like that he couldn't help but be the man :-)
There were 15 other people in control, but only us five for design and health & safety. We spent many many hours down in B72, the basement ChemE computer lab, hashing out progress reports or putting together laborious H&S reports. When everybody else was down there worrying about the monstrous impossible process control homework, we were worrying about that plus tomorrow's progress report on exergy plus the 38-page health & safety draft due Friday.
The groups were formed as soon as we walked into the classroom at 8am Monday morning in late August. Willis, Drew and Jewel were over at a computer desk on the right side of the room, and Charlie was sitting at the left front desk. Thus team Willis coalesced, and Charlie and I joined forces yet again. I consider myself fortunate to have had him as my partner. He works extrememly diligently, and I don't have to worry about being cool around him. I suppose from the outside we're both ChemE nerd dorks who pool our dorkiness and are very uncool. But from the inside we're like brothers--don't have to worry about what you say or do, just work, joke, blow off steam, and get done what needs to get done. Exactly my style :-) Team Willis always finished their work before us, and we were usually late - for classes and assignments. I kinda feel bad for that, but it's how it happened, and our professors were gracious. And in the end I think we turned in better work, or at least as good.
So, with that backdrop, let me usher you down to B72 early on a crisp and frosty Monday morning. We hop up the 4-foot ledge at the truck loading docks underneath big grey Benedum and walk in the door to the loading foyer. Pull through the double doors, pass the drinking fountain and bathrooms on the right, face left, and punch in the code at the door of the lab. It's really not a lab, it's a computer classroom. Two-story-high ceiling with innocuous vents and pipes running around, 15-foot screen in front of the extra-long blackboard on the wall at our left. The instructor's desk, rounded by it's brushed metal ledge, is tucked back in that corner. On the right are the desks - 9-foot long semicircles with two computers in each and chairs scattered around them. Most of the chairs have formed a herd in the back of the room, over by the printers, unused and out of the way. The desk right at our right is me and Charlie's--he sits by the wall and I sit by the aisle. Team Willis sits at the second desk on the other side of the room. But they're not here now. Charlie and I sit at our desk, typing, leaning back and sighing, and leaning in again to the screens and keyboards. The strange thing is, it doesn't seem like a classroom at all. Books and backpacks are littered around like a dorm room, and the whole room flickers and glows in the warm light of Christmas lights and a crackling fire. Julie Andrews sings with spirit undimmed by her bleak listeners, and the media player visualization flickers warm flame on the giant projector screen. Colored lights circumnavigate the blackboard, and a string of white lights is taped around the instructor's desk. Even though it's 4am and the new day is starting, you can't help but feel pretty cozy tucked down there in the basement, carpet under your feet, open computers, a classroom at your command, a locked door if you want to close it, and a clearly-defined task steadily chipping away under your efforts. It doesn't feel at all as though you've been sitting at that desk since 3:30 Sunday afternoon, that the Steelers have played and won, night has come and gone, and workers are waking and starting their days. You know that there are five more hours until the report is due, and you will need all of them to get close to finishing it, but you don't think about it enough to realize it. You just keep scanning the marked-up progress report on Pipes and making changes to the document on the screen. Every once in a while you or Charlie kick back and make some comment about how ridiculous some of the comments are, or bust out some South Park quote, but by this time you're pretty much in a zone, and there's not much talk except for questions about the report.
Taking the liberty of the omnipotent narrator, we now sweep past those five hours, rush up the 13-story staircase, round the corner past Parker's office, and pull up in front of the Chemical Engineering main office. Charlie and I weakly greet Dr. Enick and Dr. Parker, whom I salute and call "masters," since they have ruled our lives for the past 4 months. We hand Dr. Enick the light blue 1.5-inch three-ring binder, exchange a few words, and turn towards the elevators. The sun is already well risen over the convoluted hospital buildings of Oakland outside the 12th floor window next to us. 18 hours ago I drove down to campus from a brief nap after church, and now I roll back down those roads, for one of the last times. I'm not tired, just zoned out. My nose started dripping around 6am, and my throat has gotten scratchy, and my rear end is sore from sitting for so long, but I'm plenty alert. It's a pretty strange feeling, but not unpleasant. I'm actually glad I got to do such a crazy thing at the end of my college career, and I'm amazed that it actually was that much work, for that long, and we did it.
Two days later, after the dreaded process control final kicked our butts from 11am to 2pm, Charlie and I finished the last edits to the 92-page Chemical Engineering Plant Design final report, printed out the remaining pages, and under the recording eye of my cell phone camera signed the cover letter and plopped it in the holder outside Dr. Enicks office, thus ending our undergraduate careers.
OK, I think I'm done with the story. There's more I want to say, and it's too clusmy to put it in that kind of clothing. Yes, 14 design progress reports culminated in a crazy all-nighter down in B72 putting them all together into the final report draft. We got an A in the class. Team Willis turned their final report in one hour before we did :-)
There's one other picture I want to take you to, actually. When I think of this semester, that comfortable and friendly image of B72 is the primary one that comes to mind. I also strongly think of parking my car around Oakland - waiting for spots to open up on Atwood, finding a meterless 4-hour spot on Bellefield, and that sweet sweet feeling of slipping into a spot where you know you're set for the day. I sorta think of sitting up in the 12-floor classroom listening to Parker's performance lectures. But one of the stirling memories is down in the darkened basement room of Fuel & Fuddle, a popular Oakland bar and pizza place. Twenty-some chemical engineer students sit around tables and on benches, faces fixed on the screen at one end, listening intently to people talk about hot wort, mash tuns, yeast collection patterns and heat exchangers. After a month of excruciating work on the Process Control project, we have all made it here--our presentations are in Dr. Parker's briefcase and we're presenting our work to the class. What I want you to see is the attention to the presenters; the quality of the graphs and discussions; and the questions. Dr. Parker only had to ask a few the whole time. After the end of every 10-minute presentation hands shot up all around the room and points were raised, discussed and usually answered. Fuel & Fuddle employees slipped through occasionally, and a few patrons passed by on their way to the restrooms, and I wonder what they thought. Uber-weird, probably :-) But I was proud of us. After getting beaten around by two exams with F-grade averages, merciless homeworks and brutal lectures, we had risen to this project and kicked it squarely in the heine. Non-linear simulation using grad-student-level matlab code? Barebones project information and difficult research? Gruelling controller tuning to achieve stability? Harsh time limit on the presentations? Cold steely questions from the super-intelligent Parker? We ate 'em all for breakfast :-)
Parker himself agreed with me the following day about the quality of the projects and participation. It was by far the best project he had ever seen in his 8 (I think) years of teaching this class. And my team's paper was by far the best of the bunch. Those words settled a tremendous weight of failure, uncertainty and hope inside of me. I had worked myself to the bone the night before pulling our paper together and tightening up the analysis. We had killed ourselves Thanksgiving week to get the filter and pasteurizer models working, and now we had a bunch of closed-loop controller responses to interpret and discuss. We threw all kinds of disturbances at our system once we had it designed and simulated, to see if it could handle it. Our beer pasteurizer came out with flying colors, and I covered every single base with our assumptions, decisions, and reasons. At every point I unconsciously asked myself "What would Parker ask here?", and then proceeded to answer it. The paper was 38 pages, but it was perfect, and to have Parker realize and acknowledge that meant more to me than every A+ I earned in college (and I earned 15).
That project was the best-whipped-into-shape that I have been since Critical Writing last fall and Organic Chemistry the summer before that. And those three are the academic pinnacles of my college career. A close fourth is Thermo 2, where I lived in Chapter 11 of the book and plunged my brain again and again into fugacity and gibbs free energy and all the hateful abstract concepts of thermodynamics until I actually understood them and got an A+ in the course. Those were the four times I had something really hard to do and I squared it up, took it on, and came out successful. I came to realize at the end of this semester that that is one of the best things you can do in life, even though it's always hard, discouraging and hateful at some point along the way. Now that I'm graduated, I miss that kind of clear-cut challenge within the relatively safe confines of academia. I miss the prospect of hanging out with the students whom I've finally gotten to know and who've gotten to know me. I wish for more of the heedless expenditure of time on things that have no choice but to be done, yet are pretty much independent and fun as you do them. Real life seems a good bit harsher and less interesting, but I suppose it will turn out to be just as rewarding once I get into it.
So yeah - down there in Fuel & Fuddle, our class glowed with professionalism, quality and solid scientific behavior. It makes me very happy to think of us down there. After all the misery and failure in process control, we proved our capabilities there, and Parker saw it and acknowledged it gladly. I talked to Dr. Parker the next week about the course and some of the comments I had developed over the months. We ended up talking for almost 2 hours, and I got to share, completely, coherently and demonstratively, exactly the things that had bothered me about him and how he ran the course, and together we considered them and how they could be addressed. At the end he thanked me heartily and said he'd never been given such well-thought out and considerate feedback, removed from emotions and didactic in nature. That was likewise very rewarding, because the unsettledness of being in what appeared to be a mismanaged class was relieved, and I came out really believing that Parker is a solid guy.
Baugh, this post has become an untidy and obese growth of text. It doesn't even talk about final's week (and the harder week before that) chronologically. But, I think it carries most of the spirit of this last month and semester of classes, and that's what I really want to remember. I think of B72 affectionately, and I have great memories of working with Charlie and my other groups, and the fun times down in the lab with everbody focused on a common assignment. It has been probably the best sememster of college in that respect, even as it has been the most miserable at times and the most difficult by far. I'm glad to have ended out my academic life on a genuine note--a hard challenge well met. We'll see what the coming weeks hold, and I'll write later about this whole 5-day trip to Akron that I just got back from :-)
If anybody has read this far, I'm amazed at you and you deserve a smoothie. This post has taken full liberties of the "for future John" purpose of this blog. It's been a great time of life these past months, and perhaps I'll come up with a more succinct and vibrant way of describing it some other time.
--Clear Ambassador
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
**Six Stars**
[My apologies to anybody who got excited about a new blog post and sees that it's the same as my post on Facebook. Different pools of possible readers. The end is different, though!]
Six Stars
That's the title of a playlist in my iTunes, and I just listened through it all tonight. It's the handful of songs that, over time, have affected me every time I listen to them. They're the ones I hear and think, "Man, I wish I could give this more than 5 stars to mark down just how GOOD it is!"
Listening through these songs has been a transcendant experience. Starting with John Williams' "Hologram/Binary Sunset" and the french horn that makes me want to cry because I can never really be in the Star Wars world, I traveled through 20 songs, each of which left me silent with wonder. Some of which left my heart so tugged that I didn't know what to do but savor the bittersweetness.
As I sat there with my eyes closed, the comfortable couch and the warm room and house around me seemed oddly small. I thought of thanking Mom and Dad for providing this incredibly peaceful and pleasant building for me to live in here on this earth, compared to so much harshness and misery elsewhere. Occasionally the thought of God's infinity and my existence in heaven shot through me, and I finally made peace with my heart by figuring and accepting that in heaven all these heart pangs would be met, whether its the equivalent of standing on Tatooine watching the twin suns set, or just finding a "bottom" for the feelings stirred up by hearing songs from years ago, from times that will never be again.
I found indescribable peace, while listening through these songs, from knowing that I had created a song on that list. For whatever reason, I just can't stand hearing outstanding music and knowing that I can't make such stuff myself. Most of the time that's the case, and I'm left chafing, but tonight I knew that "What a Night" deserved to be on that list. And even as I marvelled at the perfect intricacies of David Altrogge's "Coming Home (1945: The GI's Song)" and wondered how much of Switchfoot's stunning beauty in "Might Have Ben Hur" was planned, I knew that a song like that had come from me.
I myself had written a song from the most inexplainable and deeply-rooted threads of my being, and it had come together in a recording that is better than I could ever have planned, and better than I could probably make again.
This is the unstable source of my peace, for it is not necessarily skill that gets you a "six star" song. We are subject to the cold winds of chance. A mistake on the first take, a deleted track, and transcendence can be lost. I feel good that the pieces came together for this song, and by the same token I chafe, because I cannot force more greatness to happen. It just has to come out when I least expect it.. when it's not on my mind.. . . when it doesn't come from me.
Such is the curse and the joy of a musician.
This all being said, do you have a "six star" song you'd like to share? I love telling other people about these songs that mean so much to me and having them appreciate them, so by the same token I'd love to hear what songs leave you "sitting back in wonder."
And if anyone is interested, here's What a Night.
In a way, it's the best thing I have to offer the world at the moment.
And here in my blog I'll write out what I decided to forgo in the Facebook note: The "introversion disclaimer." It states, basically, that I realize this has been an effectively Godless rumination--that these words make things seem grander or more important than they are from a higher perspective. It defends against correction readers might bring to the "cold winds of fate" statement, which is how it feels, not how it is with a sovereign God. Is says that I realize I was emotional as I wrote it.
I left it out because I get tired of qualifying every sensitive statement I make and feeling like I have to prove to anyone who might criticize me that I "see around my work." I left it out 'cause I get sick of the "curse of the analytical" sometimes--the neverending circumspection and self analysis that must bring everything down to cold, intentional purpose and correctness. But here in this journal, I'll leave the comfy couch of the bulk of this post and point myself, and anyone reading, to another of my songs here at the end. Once you've shared my joys and sorrows (if you actually did), finish up by listening to "You Ain't That Big of a Deal." It's the truth, like it or not :-|
Six Stars
That's the title of a playlist in my iTunes, and I just listened through it all tonight. It's the handful of songs that, over time, have affected me every time I listen to them. They're the ones I hear and think, "Man, I wish I could give this more than 5 stars to mark down just how GOOD it is!"
Listening through these songs has been a transcendant experience. Starting with John Williams' "Hologram/Binary Sunset" and the french horn that makes me want to cry because I can never really be in the Star Wars world, I traveled through 20 songs, each of which left me silent with wonder. Some of which left my heart so tugged that I didn't know what to do but savor the bittersweetness.
As I sat there with my eyes closed, the comfortable couch and the warm room and house around me seemed oddly small. I thought of thanking Mom and Dad for providing this incredibly peaceful and pleasant building for me to live in here on this earth, compared to so much harshness and misery elsewhere. Occasionally the thought of God's infinity and my existence in heaven shot through me, and I finally made peace with my heart by figuring and accepting that in heaven all these heart pangs would be met, whether its the equivalent of standing on Tatooine watching the twin suns set, or just finding a "bottom" for the feelings stirred up by hearing songs from years ago, from times that will never be again.
I found indescribable peace, while listening through these songs, from knowing that I had created a song on that list. For whatever reason, I just can't stand hearing outstanding music and knowing that I can't make such stuff myself. Most of the time that's the case, and I'm left chafing, but tonight I knew that "What a Night" deserved to be on that list. And even as I marvelled at the perfect intricacies of David Altrogge's "Coming Home (1945: The GI's Song)" and wondered how much of Switchfoot's stunning beauty in "Might Have Ben Hur" was planned, I knew that a song like that had come from me.
I myself had written a song from the most inexplainable and deeply-rooted threads of my being, and it had come together in a recording that is better than I could ever have planned, and better than I could probably make again.
This is the unstable source of my peace, for it is not necessarily skill that gets you a "six star" song. We are subject to the cold winds of chance. A mistake on the first take, a deleted track, and transcendence can be lost. I feel good that the pieces came together for this song, and by the same token I chafe, because I cannot force more greatness to happen. It just has to come out when I least expect it.. when it's not on my mind.. . . when it doesn't come from me.
Such is the curse and the joy of a musician.
This all being said, do you have a "six star" song you'd like to share? I love telling other people about these songs that mean so much to me and having them appreciate them, so by the same token I'd love to hear what songs leave you "sitting back in wonder."
And if anyone is interested, here's What a Night.
In a way, it's the best thing I have to offer the world at the moment.
And here in my blog I'll write out what I decided to forgo in the Facebook note: The "introversion disclaimer." It states, basically, that I realize this has been an effectively Godless rumination--that these words make things seem grander or more important than they are from a higher perspective. It defends against correction readers might bring to the "cold winds of fate" statement, which is how it feels, not how it is with a sovereign God. Is says that I realize I was emotional as I wrote it.
I left it out because I get tired of qualifying every sensitive statement I make and feeling like I have to prove to anyone who might criticize me that I "see around my work." I left it out 'cause I get sick of the "curse of the analytical" sometimes--the neverending circumspection and self analysis that must bring everything down to cold, intentional purpose and correctness. But here in this journal, I'll leave the comfy couch of the bulk of this post and point myself, and anyone reading, to another of my songs here at the end. Once you've shared my joys and sorrows (if you actually did), finish up by listening to "You Ain't That Big of a Deal." It's the truth, like it or not :-|
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Monday
I don't have time to do this, but this is the last week of this Pitt season of my life, and I don't want to forget it like I've forgotten the last week, nay month, of my home school season.
So... TODAY:
"Class" with Dr. Enick at Starbucks at 9. His treat, and we just conversed.
Process, high on caffeine and understanding discrete step response modeling.
Heath & Safety / Ethics - last class. Watched the 60 Minutes bit on the BP Texas City refinery explosion, did the evaluation.
Drove home 'cause I didn't have my lab report sections on the USB stick or emailed. Mom was leaving to take Daisy for her checkup as I arrived. Veggie soup.
Back to Pitt, waited and waited for a spot on Atwood, ended up down by Bellfield, but set for the rest of the day. COLD walk. 20's.
7 hours of Process Control homework. 5 continuous hours spent in one chair, getting up exactly 4 times to get my printed stuff 10 feet away. Brain so active I didn't eat, drink, or even listen to music part of the time. Writing code. Busting head. Got it working.
Nice break down in B72 sharing Phae's pomegranite and putting up Christmas lights.
Final 3 hours of process control, doing the Simplex algorithm for linear optimization with multiple constraints. Got my answers to agree with Matlab, hallelujah!
Fuel and Fuddle. 2 Jameson's and a flying buffalo provided some nice relaxation and needed nutrition. Read "God Is The Gospel," talked to Willis and Janie while they waited for a table. Christmas lights were the best idea I've had in the last 4 years.
Jenna gave me a snowflake with designs like hearts and biker club symbols. I played with the order of songs for my album.
Cold walk to car.
Listened to my own stuff on the way home.
Came up with and recorded a 1 minute acoustic song. Indirect fruit of listening to Vince Guaraldi 5 times today.
Titled it "Fuddle."
Here it is. To be listened to whilst looking at black and white photographs.
Good night.
Pitt is good, but somehow I have no thought of missing it when I'm done. I have no feelings about my graduation at all, strangely enough. Right now I'm just starting to feel Christmassy, and that's sublime.
--Clear Ambassador
So... TODAY:
"Class" with Dr. Enick at Starbucks at 9. His treat, and we just conversed.
Process, high on caffeine and understanding discrete step response modeling.
Heath & Safety / Ethics - last class. Watched the 60 Minutes bit on the BP Texas City refinery explosion, did the evaluation.
Drove home 'cause I didn't have my lab report sections on the USB stick or emailed. Mom was leaving to take Daisy for her checkup as I arrived. Veggie soup.
Back to Pitt, waited and waited for a spot on Atwood, ended up down by Bellfield, but set for the rest of the day. COLD walk. 20's.
7 hours of Process Control homework. 5 continuous hours spent in one chair, getting up exactly 4 times to get my printed stuff 10 feet away. Brain so active I didn't eat, drink, or even listen to music part of the time. Writing code. Busting head. Got it working.
Nice break down in B72 sharing Phae's pomegranite and putting up Christmas lights.
Final 3 hours of process control, doing the Simplex algorithm for linear optimization with multiple constraints. Got my answers to agree with Matlab, hallelujah!
Fuel and Fuddle. 2 Jameson's and a flying buffalo provided some nice relaxation and needed nutrition. Read "God Is The Gospel," talked to Willis and Janie while they waited for a table. Christmas lights were the best idea I've had in the last 4 years.
Jenna gave me a snowflake with designs like hearts and biker club symbols. I played with the order of songs for my album.
Cold walk to car.
Listened to my own stuff on the way home.
Came up with and recorded a 1 minute acoustic song. Indirect fruit of listening to Vince Guaraldi 5 times today.
Titled it "Fuddle."
Here it is. To be listened to whilst looking at black and white photographs.
Good night.
Pitt is good, but somehow I have no thought of missing it when I'm done. I have no feelings about my graduation at all, strangely enough. Right now I'm just starting to feel Christmassy, and that's sublime.
--Clear Ambassador
Saturday, December 02, 2006
AIM with Danmybro
[Sorry 'bout the double spaces. Too hard to get rid of.]
[I started by making a comment on his away message, to the effect that he was now the big man on campus since he was working out and consequently huge.]
odiousbane: noo, not me
odiousbane: it was a contest
slickitized: I pretty much figured so :-)
Auto response from odiousbane: Big Man on
Campus. Oh yeah.
odiousbane: yyyeah
odiousbane: this sweet guy one
odiousbane: Darrius Pugh
slickitized: wawawiwa!
odiousbane: he's awesome
odiousbane: he was in the Maryland Boys' Choir
odiousbane: and he was the best kid in it
slickitized: niice
odiousbane: wow, UK's rig is sweeeeet
slickitized: heheh
slickitized: fo' real man
odiousbane: wow
odiousbane: he's bringing it to our house
odiousbane: that's awesome
slickitized: yeah dude
odiousbane: we should take an overnight when he's
here, or something
slickitized: satellite TV!
slickitized: Mom was thinking that too
odiousbane: wow
slickitized: birding up in Erie or something
slickitized: I think you and I should sleep out there
odiousbane: yeah!
odiousbane: duuude
odiousbane: I hope he would let us
odiousbane: he may want to
slickitized: yeah, I'm not sure
odiousbane: pretty awesome
odiousbane: I wonder how many it can sleep
odiousbane: man, people aren't going to believe it :-)
slickitized: heheh
odiousbane: our crazy uncle has done it again
slickitized: foshizzle
odiousbane: what's up at home?
slickitized: well, M&D are looking at how to reorganize
the basement and put a futon in
slickitized: Daisy is mushed up against my laptop
odiousbane: ooh, nice
slickitized: Jonathan is disappeared upstairs
odiousbane: and you?
slickitized: and the music of Ecuador is farting away in
my ears
odiousbane: mmmmm
odiousbane: the stuff from Ken?
slickitized: yep
slickitized: this one song is hilarious
odiousbane: farty?
slickitized: yep
odiousbane: awesome
slickitized: gratuitious tuba and bass drum/cymbal action
:-)
odiousbane: ooh man
slickitized: it makes me laugh
odiousbane: does it make you feel like un gordo
ecuatoriano?
slickitized: Kinda like that german dude in the
"Magnificent Men and their Flying Machines" movie
odiousbane: haha
slickitized: si si
odiousbane: good movie
odiousbane: we should watch that over break too
slickitized: if we can find it, yeah
odiousbane: it's out there
odiousbane: somewhere out there....
odiousbane: haha
odiousbane: is page 6
slickitized: heheh
slickitized: YES!
slickitized: COOORTIS
odiousbane: what a turd
slickitized: developin'
slickitized: seventeh
slickitized: horsepower
odiousbane: good stuff
slickitized: quality film
slickitized: how's your Friday night progressing?
odiousbane: not bad
odiousbane: I went to lunch with Chris and Sean
odiousbane: dinner
odiousbane: and then I went to the Big Man on Campus
contest
odiousbane: it was really crazy
odiousbane: some of the things the guys did were
unbelievable
odiousbane: like hard to believe they actually did that at
GCC
odiousbane: it was really horrendous at a few points
slickitized: what kind of stuff?
odiousbane: one guy was dancing for a girl a chair
odiousbane: taking his shirt off and wiggling around
odiousbane: another guy....
odiousbane: who was rather portly
odiousbane: wore a hula outfit for the beachwear
segment
odiousbane: and he was hula dancing....
odiousbane: *shudder*
odiousbane: the same guy was making jokes about
people who stutter and foreigners
odiousbane: it was pretty awesome :-)
odiousbane: one guy had the worst talent ever
slickitized: heheh
odiousbane: he was singing along with "Girls" by the
Beastie Boys
odiousbane: you should listen to that song
slickitized: heheh
odiousbane: the thing is....
odiousbane: it wasn't even karaoke
odiousbane: all the vocals were in there
slickitized: heh
odiousbane: he only "sang" about half of it
slickitized: pshht
Auto response from odiousbane: Big Man on
Campus. Oh yeah.
odiousbane: like, the whole song but only half of it
odiousbane: it was really really bad
odiousbane: he got eliminated
slickitized: sweet
odiousbane: so, that's what I did tonight
slickitized: POWER OF THE PEOPLE!
slickitized: well, I had dinner at Wendy's with Mom and
Dad
odiousbane: nice!
slickitized: picked up my car from Hueys
odiousbane: what was it doing there?
slickitized: gave them $1200 of my money
odiousbane: oh snap
slickitized: getting inspection and new front struts
slickitized: and ordering 3 new wheels
odiousbane: dang
odiousbane: was that required?
slickitized: for the wellbeing of the car, yes
slickitized: I coulda got black wheels with chrome rings
slickitized: but that sounded cheesy
odiousbane: cool
slickitized: Dude, I'm gonna have NO money left
slickitized: February, another $1000 insurance
payment..
odiousbane: eek
slickitized: that's why I tell people to not get cars!
odiousbane: will you be solvent?
slickitized: not as I stand now, no
slickitized: I've gotta work my donkey off at NOVA as
soon as school is over
slickitized: till then, it's schoolwork like a hound of hell
odiousbane: oh boy :-)
slickitized: yep
slickitized: basically, I literally have 2x more than I have
comfortable time to do
slickitized: so, we'll see how it goes
odiousbane: when do finals start?
slickitized: Symphony is on Thursday, then Process the
following Wednesday, to close out my season of formal
education
odiousbane: wow
odiousbane: that's close!
odiousbane: good job
slickitized: it feels like it's 2 months away :-P
odiousbane: you can make it
slickitized: yep
slickitized: it's funny - times like this, the only way some
days arrive is because time doesn't stop. Otherwise I'd
never be ready for 'em
slickitized: iykwim
odiousbane: I guess so...
odiousbane: school has never been like that for me
odiousbane: not yet
slickitized: it seems to only be like that for very brief
periods
slickitized: a week here or there
slickitized: thankfully
odiousbane: alright
odiousbane: well, I'm going to go over to the Sac....
odiousbane: get a latte
odiousbane: watch It's a Wonderful Life
odiousbane: sound like a plan?
slickitized: sounds like I wish I was there :-)
odiousbane: same here bro
slickitized: dude, we've gotta find that alternate ending
on YouTube somewhere
slickitized: "Let's go get Mr. Pwotter!"
slickitized: YEAH!!!
slickitized: *whack whack*
slickitized: :-D
odiousbane: haha
odiousbane: what was that from?
odiousbane: SNL?
slickitized: Ken showed it to us
slickitized: I think so
odiousbane: wow, that was a long time ago
odiousbane: good stuff
slickitized: fo real
odiousbane: well I will see you later
odiousbane: college night baby
slickitized: yeah man
slickitized: peace
odiousbane: School of Rock is on
slickitized: oh hey - mind if I put this convo up on my
blog?
slickitized: niice
odiousbane: ...why?
slickitized: as a lazy yet rather effective way of
representing what's going on
slickitized: I just don't have time to write about all thIS
S"Tu;ff
odiousbane: alrighty
slickitized: (That was Daisy there)
odiousbane: haha
odiousbane: tell her to get some sleep
slickitized: she says she'll try
odiousbane: good deal
odiousbane: well, have a great night!
slickitized: U2
odiousbane: and pray that I get well, if you want :-)
slickitized: haha! I'm the first person to ever think of
that!!
slickitized: oooh yeah
slickitized: You're still sick? geez
slickitized: that's a downer
odiousbane: yeah...
slickitized: I'll prae
odiousbane: thanks
odiousbane: I thought I was better on Wednesday
odiousbane: since we had volleyball and soccer games
odiousbane: but then I felt like crud again
odiousbane: ah well
slickitized: rest up tonight
slickitized: think of Daisy
odiousbane: aighty
slickitized: peace
Auto response from odiousbane: Big Man on
Campus. Oh yeah.
odiousbane: stay warm
[I started by making a comment on his away message, to the effect that he was now the big man on campus since he was working out and consequently huge.]
odiousbane: noo, not me
odiousbane: it was a contest
slickitized: I pretty much figured so :-)
Auto response from odiousbane: Big Man on
Campus. Oh yeah.
odiousbane: yyyeah
odiousbane: this sweet guy one
odiousbane: Darrius Pugh
slickitized: wawawiwa!
odiousbane: he's awesome
odiousbane: he was in the Maryland Boys' Choir
odiousbane: and he was the best kid in it
slickitized: niice
odiousbane: wow, UK's rig is sweeeeet
slickitized: heheh
slickitized: fo' real man
odiousbane: wow
odiousbane: he's bringing it to our house
odiousbane: that's awesome
slickitized: yeah dude
odiousbane: we should take an overnight when he's
here, or something
slickitized: satellite TV!
slickitized: Mom was thinking that too
odiousbane: wow
slickitized: birding up in Erie or something
slickitized: I think you and I should sleep out there
odiousbane: yeah!
odiousbane: duuude
odiousbane: I hope he would let us
odiousbane: he may want to
slickitized: yeah, I'm not sure
odiousbane: pretty awesome
odiousbane: I wonder how many it can sleep
odiousbane: man, people aren't going to believe it :-)
slickitized: heheh
odiousbane: our crazy uncle has done it again
slickitized: foshizzle
odiousbane: what's up at home?
slickitized: well, M&D are looking at how to reorganize
the basement and put a futon in
slickitized: Daisy is mushed up against my laptop
odiousbane: ooh, nice
slickitized: Jonathan is disappeared upstairs
odiousbane: and you?
slickitized: and the music of Ecuador is farting away in
my ears
odiousbane: mmmmm
odiousbane: the stuff from Ken?
slickitized: yep
slickitized: this one song is hilarious
odiousbane: farty?
slickitized: yep
odiousbane: awesome
slickitized: gratuitious tuba and bass drum/cymbal action
:-)
odiousbane: ooh man
slickitized: it makes me laugh
odiousbane: does it make you feel like un gordo
ecuatoriano?
slickitized: Kinda like that german dude in the
"Magnificent Men and their Flying Machines" movie
odiousbane: haha
slickitized: si si
odiousbane: good movie
odiousbane: we should watch that over break too
slickitized: if we can find it, yeah
odiousbane: it's out there
odiousbane: somewhere out there....
odiousbane: haha
odiousbane: is page 6
slickitized: heheh
slickitized: YES!
slickitized: COOORTIS
odiousbane: what a turd
slickitized: developin'
slickitized: seventeh
slickitized: horsepower
odiousbane: good stuff
slickitized: quality film
slickitized: how's your Friday night progressing?
odiousbane: not bad
odiousbane: I went to lunch with Chris and Sean
odiousbane: dinner
odiousbane: and then I went to the Big Man on Campus
contest
odiousbane: it was really crazy
odiousbane: some of the things the guys did were
unbelievable
odiousbane: like hard to believe they actually did that at
GCC
odiousbane: it was really horrendous at a few points
slickitized: what kind of stuff?
odiousbane: one guy was dancing for a girl a chair
odiousbane: taking his shirt off and wiggling around
odiousbane: another guy....
odiousbane: who was rather portly
odiousbane: wore a hula outfit for the beachwear
segment
odiousbane: and he was hula dancing....
odiousbane: *shudder*
odiousbane: the same guy was making jokes about
people who stutter and foreigners
odiousbane: it was pretty awesome :-)
odiousbane: one guy had the worst talent ever
slickitized: heheh
odiousbane: he was singing along with "Girls" by the
Beastie Boys
odiousbane: you should listen to that song
slickitized: heheh
odiousbane: the thing is....
odiousbane: it wasn't even karaoke
odiousbane: all the vocals were in there
slickitized: heh
odiousbane: he only "sang" about half of it
slickitized: pshht
Auto response from odiousbane: Big Man on
Campus. Oh yeah.
odiousbane: like, the whole song but only half of it
odiousbane: it was really really bad
odiousbane: he got eliminated
slickitized: sweet
odiousbane: so, that's what I did tonight
slickitized: POWER OF THE PEOPLE!
slickitized: well, I had dinner at Wendy's with Mom and
Dad
odiousbane: nice!
slickitized: picked up my car from Hueys
odiousbane: what was it doing there?
slickitized: gave them $1200 of my money
odiousbane: oh snap
slickitized: getting inspection and new front struts
slickitized: and ordering 3 new wheels
odiousbane: dang
odiousbane: was that required?
slickitized: for the wellbeing of the car, yes
slickitized: I coulda got black wheels with chrome rings
slickitized: but that sounded cheesy
odiousbane: cool
slickitized: Dude, I'm gonna have NO money left
slickitized: February, another $1000 insurance
payment..
odiousbane: eek
slickitized: that's why I tell people to not get cars!
odiousbane: will you be solvent?
slickitized: not as I stand now, no
slickitized: I've gotta work my donkey off at NOVA as
soon as school is over
slickitized: till then, it's schoolwork like a hound of hell
odiousbane: oh boy :-)
slickitized: yep
slickitized: basically, I literally have 2x more than I have
comfortable time to do
slickitized: so, we'll see how it goes
odiousbane: when do finals start?
slickitized: Symphony is on Thursday, then Process the
following Wednesday, to close out my season of formal
education
odiousbane: wow
odiousbane: that's close!
odiousbane: good job
slickitized: it feels like it's 2 months away :-P
odiousbane: you can make it
slickitized: yep
slickitized: it's funny - times like this, the only way some
days arrive is because time doesn't stop. Otherwise I'd
never be ready for 'em
slickitized: iykwim
odiousbane: I guess so...
odiousbane: school has never been like that for me
odiousbane: not yet
slickitized: it seems to only be like that for very brief
periods
slickitized: a week here or there
slickitized: thankfully
odiousbane: alright
odiousbane: well, I'm going to go over to the Sac....
odiousbane: get a latte
odiousbane: watch It's a Wonderful Life
odiousbane: sound like a plan?
slickitized: sounds like I wish I was there :-)
odiousbane: same here bro
slickitized: dude, we've gotta find that alternate ending
on YouTube somewhere
slickitized: "Let's go get Mr. Pwotter!"
slickitized: YEAH!!!
slickitized: *whack whack*
slickitized: :-D
odiousbane: haha
odiousbane: what was that from?
odiousbane: SNL?
slickitized: Ken showed it to us
slickitized: I think so
odiousbane: wow, that was a long time ago
odiousbane: good stuff
slickitized: fo real
odiousbane: well I will see you later
odiousbane: college night baby
slickitized: yeah man
slickitized: peace
odiousbane: School of Rock is on
slickitized: oh hey - mind if I put this convo up on my
blog?
slickitized: niice
odiousbane: ...why?
slickitized: as a lazy yet rather effective way of
representing what's going on
slickitized: I just don't have time to write about all thIS
S"Tu;ff
odiousbane: alrighty
slickitized: (That was Daisy there)
odiousbane: haha
odiousbane: tell her to get some sleep
slickitized: she says she'll try
odiousbane: good deal
odiousbane: well, have a great night!
slickitized: U2
odiousbane: and pray that I get well, if you want :-)
slickitized: haha! I'm the first person to ever think of
that!!
slickitized: oooh yeah
slickitized: You're still sick? geez
slickitized: that's a downer
odiousbane: yeah...
slickitized: I'll prae
odiousbane: thanks
odiousbane: I thought I was better on Wednesday
odiousbane: since we had volleyball and soccer games
odiousbane: but then I felt like crud again
odiousbane: ah well
slickitized: rest up tonight
slickitized: think of Daisy
odiousbane: aighty
slickitized: peace
Auto response from odiousbane: Big Man on
Campus. Oh yeah.
odiousbane: stay warm
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Twosdeh
I thought I'd write a bit about this week so my next post isn't another behemoth. However, if you're like me, you'll look down, see a couple paragraphs, and be disappointed. I almost always like reading long blog posts, especially when they're about SOMEBODY, not some external issue. Which is why I allow such massive posts in my blog.. I guess you could call it doing unto others as you'd like done to yourself?
Today was strange. I keep being unwilling to accept that I have to get up early again tomorrow. What is normally my 9 o'clock sleep-in Tuesday was instead a get-up-at-6:40-go-to-work day. Two aspects of this were good, though: I woke up on the patio with Daisy radiating warmness down under the blankets, and in the time I would have been sleeping or working on a beer pasteurizer transfer function model I made $60 and got a bunch of new assignments from my boss Tom.
..It was in the 50's last night, which is why I slept outside. I didn't collapse in a drunken stupor or anything that :-P
Symphony was good, but I found out I missed one point on my midterm. :-P I listened to Beethoven's 5th all day in the car, and I pretty much love it right now as much as I loved Death Cab for Cutie earlier this year. Which is a LOT.
I had two cans of Dr.Pepper today, but they didn't make me happy. The second one was while working on the Process Control project down in B72. We've been assigned the filter and pasteurizer in a beer microbrewing process, and I banged my head against the problem for an hour or two with paltry results. A cheesy Aspen simulation, some basic assumptions and variable specifications, and a lot of gaping questions.
Then I turned to Process Control, wherein the rest of the afternoon evaporated. It was 8 o'clock by the time I printed off the last plot (showing the instability resultant from a difference between the process model and the control model used to create the proportional controller that stabilized the open-loop-unstable system). I enjoyed once again the fact that it was mild outside as I pushed out the door by the basement loading docks of Benedum, but in general I was in a strangely pissed mood. I HATE that word, but it's honestly how I felt, and I hated how I felt, so it conveys the point well. Don't really know why I was in that mood, but like usual, it passed soon, and now I sit on the couch with shorter hair, no beard, tired muscles, a mostly-eaten plate of food at my left hand, PFR playing at my right hand, and another blog post almost finished. Jonathan's out playing basketball, Mom and dad are long asleep, Daniel's off in Grove City, probably asleep 'cause he's a good boy, Ken is in New Jersey doing who knows what, Grandma and Grandpa are plugging along in Chicago, doing well last I heard, Grandma Sweetie's down in Texas carrying on like the astounding trooper she is, Uncle Keith is in crazy crowded Orlando with his Mustang, his (relatively) new girlfriend, his strange half-dying job and his sweet sweet gadgets, and...
Daisy is curled into a tight ball up against a fleece blanket in the crook of the huggle chair.
Here's the view to my right
,
And here I am!
Something I see a zillion times a day. Set to play from my laptop. Everly Brothers, which I'm randomly loving at the moment.
And here's Daisy again! Don't you wish you could just flop down in the blanket with her? Aye, that'd be the life, for a day or two at least.
Have a peaceful night!
--Clear Ambassador
Today was strange. I keep being unwilling to accept that I have to get up early again tomorrow. What is normally my 9 o'clock sleep-in Tuesday was instead a get-up-at-6:40-go-to-work day. Two aspects of this were good, though: I woke up on the patio with Daisy radiating warmness down under the blankets, and in the time I would have been sleeping or working on a beer pasteurizer transfer function model I made $60 and got a bunch of new assignments from my boss Tom.
..It was in the 50's last night, which is why I slept outside. I didn't collapse in a drunken stupor or anything that :-P
Symphony was good, but I found out I missed one point on my midterm. :-P I listened to Beethoven's 5th all day in the car, and I pretty much love it right now as much as I loved Death Cab for Cutie earlier this year. Which is a LOT.
I had two cans of Dr.Pepper today, but they didn't make me happy. The second one was while working on the Process Control project down in B72. We've been assigned the filter and pasteurizer in a beer microbrewing process, and I banged my head against the problem for an hour or two with paltry results. A cheesy Aspen simulation, some basic assumptions and variable specifications, and a lot of gaping questions.
Then I turned to Process Control, wherein the rest of the afternoon evaporated. It was 8 o'clock by the time I printed off the last plot (showing the instability resultant from a difference between the process model and the control model used to create the proportional controller that stabilized the open-loop-unstable system). I enjoyed once again the fact that it was mild outside as I pushed out the door by the basement loading docks of Benedum, but in general I was in a strangely pissed mood. I HATE that word, but it's honestly how I felt, and I hated how I felt, so it conveys the point well. Don't really know why I was in that mood, but like usual, it passed soon, and now I sit on the couch with shorter hair, no beard, tired muscles, a mostly-eaten plate of food at my left hand, PFR playing at my right hand, and another blog post almost finished. Jonathan's out playing basketball, Mom and dad are long asleep, Daniel's off in Grove City, probably asleep 'cause he's a good boy, Ken is in New Jersey doing who knows what, Grandma and Grandpa are plugging along in Chicago, doing well last I heard, Grandma Sweetie's down in Texas carrying on like the astounding trooper she is, Uncle Keith is in crazy crowded Orlando with his Mustang, his (relatively) new girlfriend, his strange half-dying job and his sweet sweet gadgets, and...
Daisy is curled into a tight ball up against a fleece blanket in the crook of the huggle chair.
Here's the view to my right
, 
And here I am!
Something I see a zillion times a day. Set to play from my laptop. Everly Brothers, which I'm randomly loving at the moment.
And here's Daisy again! Don't you wish you could just flop down in the blanket with her? Aye, that'd be the life, for a day or two at least.
Have a peaceful night!
--Clear Ambassador
Sunday, October 29, 2006
I remembered to put a title in this little box!
Well, this may be the last homework-free day for awhile (I really don't know), so I figured I'd write up some stuff.
This week was going to be crazy ridiculous. Dr. Enick had 3 progress reports due - Monday, Wednesday and Friday (normally there's one a week, and that's plenty) - so I called off work and Charlie and I battened down the hatches and worked on Sunday to prepare for the storm. And then we finished the Wednesday one, Enick moved the Friday one (finished now) to Monday, and... and.. I didn't know what to do with myself!
Lessee.. so what did I do this week? Hush, Johnny Cash, I can't think. I wish my feet weren't so cold! I can sit on the hearth and get my rear end sore and my back hot, or I can sit on the couch and be comfy, but either way my feet sit on the floor and get icy. Um...
Sunday I went down to Pitt after the Steeler's game at the Harvey's and Charface and I worked on the distillation columns progress report. I wrote about Monday and stuff. Tuesday...I don't remember. My Fall Fitness Challenge Log sheet says I did an hour-long tough workout at home, so I guess I did that. Oh yeah! I did crazy hard stuff on the Elliptical and got my heart rate up to about 180, which is faster than the heart rate monitor can measure, and I was breathing so hard my throat was torn up the next day and I thought I was getting sick. I know I did other stuff Tuesday.. gosh, I can't remember! The day is lost! Seriously. That's why I started this journal - so I wouldn't lose days, or worse, whole seasons and memories and mindsets, to "the faulty camera in your mind," to quote Death Cab for Cutie.
Wednesday was sweet 'cause I worked out for an hour and twenty minutes with no cardio. Which means it was all lifting, which means it was pretty much my longest workout ever. It felt so good to have plenty of time and just get to work whatever I felt like, come back for a second round, and thoroughly work everything. And I wasn't even too sore Thursday, which was quite encouraging. After working out me and Charlie hit the pipes report and I wrote down all the info from our styrene plant simulation to be able to write the detailed description at home.
I didn't write it that night, 'cause.. I think I just got home sorta late and wasted time or did something.. Nate couldn't get together with me and Jonathan, so we just hung around like usual I think.
Thursday was wonderful! My facebook status, posted at 9:04am, was "John is going back to sleep! NO LAB TODAY!!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh." I indeed sorta overslept, and before fully rousing and rushing to leave by 9:30 I decided to check courseweb on the off chance that I wasn't remembering correctly and it was team set II's lab, not team set I that day. I really thought it was set I, but there was enough of a grain of doubt to make me check.
Ohh, how glorious the feeling when I saw "Team Set II" on the 26th! I could sleep! I had nothing till history of the symphony at 1, and no homework for that class, and no huge load that demanded I rise and work at it! So I slept till 12:15 and barely made it to Pitt in time for HotS :-) That was nice, though I always hate it after I've slept in so late 'cause half of the day is just gone.
_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_
I have returned from my expedition to procure a coat from the basement hallway with which to mitigate the onsetting chill tempered weakly by my white "Life. God's Gift" T-shirt. I have returned bearing snacks: Gruesomely splitered chunks of bulk dark chocolate (and by bulk I mean big honkin' 1-inch-thick blocks that stubbornly resist cutting, breaking or in any way fragmenting), an 8oz. glass of whole milk, half a tube of Pizza-licious Pringles (3/$3 at Walgreens baby!), and violet-flavored candies. I still haven't turned music back on 'cause I'm thinking quite well right now and I think it would just distract me.
Class was good Thursday--typical. I am greatly enjoying the pittance of knowledge I'm gleaning from this class (relative to the breadth and depth of the genre, not the quality of instruction. Dr. Nisnevich is actually fantastic - I like to just "sit at her feet," so to speak, and listen to the knowlege she spits out off-hand as she talks about different composers. Her Russian accent is sweet too), and the XM Radio lets me apply it, since I know the composer and title of what I'm listening to. Hah, bet I threw you a little off guard there with that massive parenthetical section. Eeheehee I'm an evil text genius! Anyway, this chocolate is good and so is History of the Symphony, and after class I barely got symphony tickets in time and then I picked up the CSA farm basket, ate an apple from it, and got home kinda late in the afternoon.
The rest of that afternoon and awhile after dinner I wrote the detailed plant description, which actually went really well. Given my paragraphs and tables, you could fully recreate our plant simulation in Aspen. Yeeah meean, bully for us! Thursday night I worked out, even though I didn't feel like I had to 'cause Kayte was at least 2 days behind. But I did.
Friday I skipped though, 'cause I was gone from 7:50am to 1:30am. I had 5 hours of class plus 30 minutes of watching me and Charlie's Health & Safety presentation with Dr. Murphy (Pretty helpful. I wasn't prepared enough), then 45 minutes drive to work, 4 hours of work, and an hour to pick up Katie Caldwell, hit Sheetz for an energy drink (No Rockstar Juiced! BOOOOOO and waaaah) and find a parking garage near Heinz Hall. Yes folks, we were going to the symphony! Shannon was alllmost late, but barely got there in time, and we plopped into our seats wayyyy up in the gallery 30 seconds before the lights dimmed and Brahms filled the hall.
I followed along in the program with his three choral pieces, trying to pick out enough of the Mendelsohn Choir's German to track where we were and read off the English translation to the right. They were "heathenish" German poems about the ancient Greeks and gods and stuff, and knowing the words really made the music cool and fitting. Pretty miserable view of life though: The god's have it great, and everybody on earth is hopeless and pretty much screwed. The end. Pfft. Yay for Christianity, man. Yay for Jesus! as Steph would say :-)
After the intermission the lights dimmed again, we dutifully clapped for the conductor, and they launched into Beethoven's 5th - a moment I'd been looking forward to for weeks. It was amazing listening to the music with some knowledge (just enough to be dangerous :-) ). I truly enjoyed every second of the symphony, and even arrived at a few critiquing conclusions (like I thought the violins were too quiet in general, especially in the beginning)--a sign to me that I'm listening and processing at a viable level. I marveled many times at how perfectly Beethoven constructed the whole thing--every variation of the themes and motifs, every instrument, all the progressions and blossoming storylines of sound...
Bah, here I am falling into the same grandiose language to describe Beethoven that everybody else uses. Phooey that. It was great music. Just like Jars of Clay, Switchfoot and Relient K's latest albums: so good you can just sit back and marvel at where they take you and how they take you there.
I.. mm.. I was both happy because of the music, and quite happy because I was actually happy from the music; music which before meant little if anything to me. [I have my own convention for semicolons, so don't whine about it please :-P]
I was quite happy to applaud long and loud when it was finished, though I would have preferred the orchestra to take a few bows instead of the conductor walking out again and again and acting like he was all the schnitz and he'd done that all and we were all clapping for him. I don't think he was actually that proud, but that's sort of my reaction to the convention of focus on the conductor. Somebody (Shannon I think) said our orchestra is the 6th best in the world, according to somebody, and that made me pretty proud of our little city.
After the concert we got back to the car through the soaked and gleaming streets and headed to Oakland for some chillin' action. The coffee houses were closed, and all I could think of was Fuel & Fuddle, so we headed there, got some beverages, and hit up the half-price Flying Buffalo pizza after 11pm. Sooo goood! I obeyed Dad's care group exhortations and headed up some conversation about what God's doing in our lives and where we seem to be headed, and that was really nice. Shannon and Katie are great girls, and it was nice to have some time to talk and mull over life. Oh yeah! Before I thought of F&F we swung by Benedum and I gave Shannon and Katie a quickie tour of the ChemE classrooms. That was fun to show somebody else these central parts of my life right now, and maybe it'll help Katie as she evaluates the possibilities of engineering and Pitt. Good times.
OK so.. speeding up 'cause I've made another HUGE post for crying out loud, we come to Saturday. Slept till 11:15 'cause it was rainy so I couldn't mow the back like I was gonna. Did some minor yardwork for Mom, ate some brunch, arranged for Mike and Matt and Jonathan to come with me to visit Heather and Waynesburg, and then did that. Yay for finally getting to visit Hezz! It was a lot of fun goin' on a road trip with the brothers Q and the brother Hughes, and even though it was cold, rainy, soaking wet and lots of people were gone from campus, we had a pretty nice time. Heather's dorm and room are sweet - nice and homey feeling, which is unusual for dorms IME*. We flopped about there for awhile, walked around the hillside campus for awhile, and kinda killed some time sittin around like the vultures in Jungle Book. Eventually we hit up "The Lamb Garden" for dinner in *woooo* Downtown Waynesburgh!! :-P It's a funny tiny little town. But the General Tso's was good, and we had some nice talkin' amidst the raucous humor :-) After din din we hung around the lounge in some cool building and played pool and watched some MIB and generally lolled around by ourselves in a place that would normally be full of people, which is always fun and funky. We ended up rolling down the dark wet roads to Sheetz with 7 people crammed in my car--pretty much the thing to do in Wburgh :-) That wrapped up the evening, and Hezz, Brian and Doug walked back to campus while we headed off into the night watching Strong Bad emails on my iPod. A pretty unusual day. I might be back to Waynesburgh in awhile to play for a coffeehouse if Heather follows through with her idea, which would be SWEET SWEETNESS. Gaaah, that'd be perfect! Hopefully it'll work out.
Today, Sunday.. I played electric guitar at church and many people said afterward that it was great, and most said that it also helped them worship, which is always amazing and gratifying and hard to believe God would let me do something so fun and actually have it serve His people in a nontrivial way. Joel preached an excellent sermon on 2nd Peter 3, continuing our series on Heaven and eternity. Mr. Calano is done leading children's ministry now, which is amazing since he's been doing it for eight and a half years. That's really cool that he can be freed up to lead his care group, and also that Mr. Graham is leading children's ministry now. He'll do a great job :-) It's cool to see people stepping up in new ways in the church--Tim McCullough is taking the function support team, Rob's taking children's ministry, Joel's got a team (including me!) for the upcoming college ministry.. Good stuff.
Mom, Dad and I swung by Iva Mae's to give her some CD's and got to catch up on her post-op condition. She is doing quite well now, and literally seemed to radiate light from her face. She is such a woman of God, and so full of genuine, simple joy in Him! She's a foshizzle saint :-) And Lisa is definitely a sweet pea, as Iva called her :-)
Then it was to the picture framers, where I got a short, deep nap in the car. Then, at last, to Taco Bell! Cheesy Gordita Crunches, talk about eternity, and sunshine on our shoulders all made us happy. And the Mountain Dew made me high. Yes, it's a Baja Blast Mountain Dew hi-igh. I've seen it rainin' soda from the fountainnn... oh nevermind, I can't make this fit with John Denver.
Steeler's game at our house with Mike, Shannon, Steve, all 3 Hugheses, Nate Sarah and Katie. Terrible loss to the Raiders. Loss of hope, but still fun times with cool people. Now I'm tired of writing, I've made another monstrous post, and it's gettin' close to 1am. The Pringles are good, and I still haven't had a violet candy.
School starts back up, and the week moves on. They're goin' fast man, and graduation is I think only 6 weeks or so away. Yikes.
Have a good week all yous peoples out dere! Big up yo'self, future self.
Scratch that bit about the violet candy. Mmmmm . . . .
--Clear Ambassador
*In My Experience
This week was going to be crazy ridiculous. Dr. Enick had 3 progress reports due - Monday, Wednesday and Friday (normally there's one a week, and that's plenty) - so I called off work and Charlie and I battened down the hatches and worked on Sunday to prepare for the storm. And then we finished the Wednesday one, Enick moved the Friday one (finished now) to Monday, and... and.. I didn't know what to do with myself!
Lessee.. so what did I do this week? Hush, Johnny Cash, I can't think. I wish my feet weren't so cold! I can sit on the hearth and get my rear end sore and my back hot, or I can sit on the couch and be comfy, but either way my feet sit on the floor and get icy. Um...
Sunday I went down to Pitt after the Steeler's game at the Harvey's and Charface and I worked on the distillation columns progress report. I wrote about Monday and stuff. Tuesday...I don't remember. My Fall Fitness Challenge Log sheet says I did an hour-long tough workout at home, so I guess I did that. Oh yeah! I did crazy hard stuff on the Elliptical and got my heart rate up to about 180, which is faster than the heart rate monitor can measure, and I was breathing so hard my throat was torn up the next day and I thought I was getting sick. I know I did other stuff Tuesday.. gosh, I can't remember! The day is lost! Seriously. That's why I started this journal - so I wouldn't lose days, or worse, whole seasons and memories and mindsets, to "the faulty camera in your mind," to quote Death Cab for Cutie.
Wednesday was sweet 'cause I worked out for an hour and twenty minutes with no cardio. Which means it was all lifting, which means it was pretty much my longest workout ever. It felt so good to have plenty of time and just get to work whatever I felt like, come back for a second round, and thoroughly work everything. And I wasn't even too sore Thursday, which was quite encouraging. After working out me and Charlie hit the pipes report and I wrote down all the info from our styrene plant simulation to be able to write the detailed description at home.
I didn't write it that night, 'cause.. I think I just got home sorta late and wasted time or did something.. Nate couldn't get together with me and Jonathan, so we just hung around like usual I think.
Thursday was wonderful! My facebook status, posted at 9:04am, was "John is going back to sleep! NO LAB TODAY!!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh." I indeed sorta overslept, and before fully rousing and rushing to leave by 9:30 I decided to check courseweb on the off chance that I wasn't remembering correctly and it was team set II's lab, not team set I that day. I really thought it was set I, but there was enough of a grain of doubt to make me check.
Ohh, how glorious the feeling when I saw "Team Set II" on the 26th! I could sleep! I had nothing till history of the symphony at 1, and no homework for that class, and no huge load that demanded I rise and work at it! So I slept till 12:15 and barely made it to Pitt in time for HotS :-) That was nice, though I always hate it after I've slept in so late 'cause half of the day is just gone.
_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_
I have returned from my expedition to procure a coat from the basement hallway with which to mitigate the onsetting chill tempered weakly by my white "Life. God's Gift" T-shirt. I have returned bearing snacks: Gruesomely splitered chunks of bulk dark chocolate (and by bulk I mean big honkin' 1-inch-thick blocks that stubbornly resist cutting, breaking or in any way fragmenting), an 8oz. glass of whole milk, half a tube of Pizza-licious Pringles (3/$3 at Walgreens baby!), and violet-flavored candies. I still haven't turned music back on 'cause I'm thinking quite well right now and I think it would just distract me.
Class was good Thursday--typical. I am greatly enjoying the pittance of knowledge I'm gleaning from this class (relative to the breadth and depth of the genre, not the quality of instruction. Dr. Nisnevich is actually fantastic - I like to just "sit at her feet," so to speak, and listen to the knowlege she spits out off-hand as she talks about different composers. Her Russian accent is sweet too), and the XM Radio lets me apply it, since I know the composer and title of what I'm listening to. Hah, bet I threw you a little off guard there with that massive parenthetical section. Eeheehee I'm an evil text genius! Anyway, this chocolate is good and so is History of the Symphony, and after class I barely got symphony tickets in time and then I picked up the CSA farm basket, ate an apple from it, and got home kinda late in the afternoon.
The rest of that afternoon and awhile after dinner I wrote the detailed plant description, which actually went really well. Given my paragraphs and tables, you could fully recreate our plant simulation in Aspen. Yeeah meean, bully for us! Thursday night I worked out, even though I didn't feel like I had to 'cause Kayte was at least 2 days behind. But I did.
Friday I skipped though, 'cause I was gone from 7:50am to 1:30am. I had 5 hours of class plus 30 minutes of watching me and Charlie's Health & Safety presentation with Dr. Murphy (Pretty helpful. I wasn't prepared enough), then 45 minutes drive to work, 4 hours of work, and an hour to pick up Katie Caldwell, hit Sheetz for an energy drink (No Rockstar Juiced! BOOOOOO and waaaah) and find a parking garage near Heinz Hall. Yes folks, we were going to the symphony! Shannon was alllmost late, but barely got there in time, and we plopped into our seats wayyyy up in the gallery 30 seconds before the lights dimmed and Brahms filled the hall.
I followed along in the program with his three choral pieces, trying to pick out enough of the Mendelsohn Choir's German to track where we were and read off the English translation to the right. They were "heathenish" German poems about the ancient Greeks and gods and stuff, and knowing the words really made the music cool and fitting. Pretty miserable view of life though: The god's have it great, and everybody on earth is hopeless and pretty much screwed. The end. Pfft. Yay for Christianity, man. Yay for Jesus! as Steph would say :-)
After the intermission the lights dimmed again, we dutifully clapped for the conductor, and they launched into Beethoven's 5th - a moment I'd been looking forward to for weeks. It was amazing listening to the music with some knowledge (just enough to be dangerous :-) ). I truly enjoyed every second of the symphony, and even arrived at a few critiquing conclusions (like I thought the violins were too quiet in general, especially in the beginning)--a sign to me that I'm listening and processing at a viable level. I marveled many times at how perfectly Beethoven constructed the whole thing--every variation of the themes and motifs, every instrument, all the progressions and blossoming storylines of sound...
Bah, here I am falling into the same grandiose language to describe Beethoven that everybody else uses. Phooey that. It was great music. Just like Jars of Clay, Switchfoot and Relient K's latest albums: so good you can just sit back and marvel at where they take you and how they take you there.
I.. mm.. I was both happy because of the music, and quite happy because I was actually happy from the music; music which before meant little if anything to me. [I have my own convention for semicolons, so don't whine about it please :-P]
I was quite happy to applaud long and loud when it was finished, though I would have preferred the orchestra to take a few bows instead of the conductor walking out again and again and acting like he was all the schnitz and he'd done that all and we were all clapping for him. I don't think he was actually that proud, but that's sort of my reaction to the convention of focus on the conductor. Somebody (Shannon I think) said our orchestra is the 6th best in the world, according to somebody, and that made me pretty proud of our little city.
After the concert we got back to the car through the soaked and gleaming streets and headed to Oakland for some chillin' action. The coffee houses were closed, and all I could think of was Fuel & Fuddle, so we headed there, got some beverages, and hit up the half-price Flying Buffalo pizza after 11pm. Sooo goood! I obeyed Dad's care group exhortations and headed up some conversation about what God's doing in our lives and where we seem to be headed, and that was really nice. Shannon and Katie are great girls, and it was nice to have some time to talk and mull over life. Oh yeah! Before I thought of F&F we swung by Benedum and I gave Shannon and Katie a quickie tour of the ChemE classrooms. That was fun to show somebody else these central parts of my life right now, and maybe it'll help Katie as she evaluates the possibilities of engineering and Pitt. Good times.
OK so.. speeding up 'cause I've made another HUGE post for crying out loud, we come to Saturday. Slept till 11:15 'cause it was rainy so I couldn't mow the back like I was gonna. Did some minor yardwork for Mom, ate some brunch, arranged for Mike and Matt and Jonathan to come with me to visit Heather and Waynesburg, and then did that. Yay for finally getting to visit Hezz! It was a lot of fun goin' on a road trip with the brothers Q and the brother Hughes, and even though it was cold, rainy, soaking wet and lots of people were gone from campus, we had a pretty nice time. Heather's dorm and room are sweet - nice and homey feeling, which is unusual for dorms IME*. We flopped about there for awhile, walked around the hillside campus for awhile, and kinda killed some time sittin around like the vultures in Jungle Book. Eventually we hit up "The Lamb Garden" for dinner in *woooo* Downtown Waynesburgh!! :-P It's a funny tiny little town. But the General Tso's was good, and we had some nice talkin' amidst the raucous humor :-) After din din we hung around the lounge in some cool building and played pool and watched some MIB and generally lolled around by ourselves in a place that would normally be full of people, which is always fun and funky. We ended up rolling down the dark wet roads to Sheetz with 7 people crammed in my car--pretty much the thing to do in Wburgh :-) That wrapped up the evening, and Hezz, Brian and Doug walked back to campus while we headed off into the night watching Strong Bad emails on my iPod. A pretty unusual day. I might be back to Waynesburgh in awhile to play for a coffeehouse if Heather follows through with her idea, which would be SWEET SWEETNESS. Gaaah, that'd be perfect! Hopefully it'll work out.
Today, Sunday.. I played electric guitar at church and many people said afterward that it was great, and most said that it also helped them worship, which is always amazing and gratifying and hard to believe God would let me do something so fun and actually have it serve His people in a nontrivial way. Joel preached an excellent sermon on 2nd Peter 3, continuing our series on Heaven and eternity. Mr. Calano is done leading children's ministry now, which is amazing since he's been doing it for eight and a half years. That's really cool that he can be freed up to lead his care group, and also that Mr. Graham is leading children's ministry now. He'll do a great job :-) It's cool to see people stepping up in new ways in the church--Tim McCullough is taking the function support team, Rob's taking children's ministry, Joel's got a team (including me!) for the upcoming college ministry.. Good stuff.
Mom, Dad and I swung by Iva Mae's to give her some CD's and got to catch up on her post-op condition. She is doing quite well now, and literally seemed to radiate light from her face. She is such a woman of God, and so full of genuine, simple joy in Him! She's a foshizzle saint :-) And Lisa is definitely a sweet pea, as Iva called her :-)
Then it was to the picture framers, where I got a short, deep nap in the car. Then, at last, to Taco Bell! Cheesy Gordita Crunches, talk about eternity, and sunshine on our shoulders all made us happy. And the Mountain Dew made me high. Yes, it's a Baja Blast Mountain Dew hi-igh. I've seen it rainin' soda from the fountainnn... oh nevermind, I can't make this fit with John Denver.
Steeler's game at our house with Mike, Shannon, Steve, all 3 Hugheses, Nate Sarah and Katie. Terrible loss to the Raiders. Loss of hope, but still fun times with cool people. Now I'm tired of writing, I've made another monstrous post, and it's gettin' close to 1am. The Pringles are good, and I still haven't had a violet candy.
School starts back up, and the week moves on. They're goin' fast man, and graduation is I think only 6 weeks or so away. Yikes.
Have a good week all yous peoples out dere! Big up yo'self, future self.
Scratch that bit about the violet candy. Mmmmm . . . .
--Clear Ambassador
*In My Experience
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Addendum
As usually happens with learning problems, things cleared up the morning after. We just finished Process Control for the day, and I clearly understand what he was talking about yesterday. There's one last question in my mind, but I think I could figure it out if I wanted to think hard enough, and it's not necessary for implementation, just for thorough baseline understanding (something I'm a big fan of).
Now to sleep, eat, repark, symphonize, exercise, homeize, and finish-progress-reportize.
--Clear Ambassador
Now to sleep, eat, repark, symphonize, exercise, homeize, and finish-progress-reportize.
--Clear Ambassador
A Day
Today was a day.
At first I was going to type "Today was a great day," based on the last half. But then I remembered missing the alarm, missing the bus, sleeping through a class, and the frustration of not being able to comprehend the control setup for a system with delay. But I certainly wouldn't write "Today was a pretty lousy day," 'cause I read some of the Bible (!!!), slept for almost 2 hours after eating a delicious sandwich, worked out for more than an hour, and spent 5 hours of wonderfully balanced homework and fun stuff up in the computer lab doing tomorrow's process control assignment with Charlie and Joam. Does anybody else realize how wonderful relationships are when you're working on something with other people? It's like you can just interact, joke, hang out together, and not be concerned with any of it 'cause you have to do it 'cause you're working. The focus isn't the "relationship," it's what you're doing. Charlie and I have been having a blast this semester doing process control, safety and design together. But if he just came over to the house to hang out, we probably wouldn't have much to do, and it would be kind of strange. Last semester with Jenna as my homework partner was great, too. Sports are like that too: they're great for getting to know people and building some familiarity without sitting around talking - every word having no purpose but conversation, every action having no escape but to indicate something about yourself, the other people, or what you think of them.
More generally, being forced to do work can be quite nice. It removes self-reflexivity. You have to think about less. You have no choice! The more free time, and the more free your time, the more culpability you shoulder as to your use of it. This may not be coherent to others, but it's one of those I feel rather strongly and have been enjoying a lot at an elemental, "I wouldn't do this voluntarily" level this semester.
Oh, and today was good day too because I hit up Fuel & Fuddle after the computer lab at 11:30 and got a Magic Head and a Flying Buffalo, both of which were exquisite. It's hard to believe how good their pizza crusts are.
In other news, I'm gaining weight.. but my waistline is shrinking. I'm staying over 145, but I keep wishing I had one more hole in my default belt (thrift store, baby!), which used to fit perfectly. So I guess that means I'm gaining muscle weight, which is sweet. I noticed an improvement in my karate kick height, too, which means my hours of hamstring stretches are paying off. Today I walked up the stairs from the basement to the 12th floor of Benedum twice (282 steps, 2 at a time) and it wasn't that big of a deal (whereas typically I'm sucking air in like a positive displacement vacuum pump by the 10th floor and my quads feel like stiff, burning steaks). I'm putting 2 45's on each side of the bench press machine, and I can do three sets of pullups without weight assist. All of which is to say, it looks like there's some progress on the exercise front. Which is thrilling to see, 'cause exercising is basically like throwing a bottle out on the ocean -- you do what you do, but you have no direct control over what actually happens. It's an amazing thing to see your body actually responding and getting more able to do things. Muscle growth is the coolest, because it's adding to your very frame - the limbs you carry about everywhere and see in every mirror. I could never *will* my body to make more muscles or lift more weight, but it has come about to that effect on its own, due to the conditions I have imposed through working out.
As I was riding the elevator down from the computer lab I was thinking about this general (yes, we're making a bit of a jump here :-) ) topic: I just love it, way deep down, when I find myself arriving at a conclusion that I read or heard about elsewhere before or when I find myself experiencing something I heard about and couldn't really imagine at that time. Like when I get to know a piece of music enough to reach criticisms in my own opinion that I read about somewhere. Or like when I found myself wishing I had a multiband compressor to de-ess vocals in my recordings after reading about de-essing dozens of times in my compressor research. Suddenly it was right in front of me, not because I read about it but because I needed it. This semester is like that. Whenever somebody talks about being "Oh man, soo busy!" I just don't know how to picture that. When seniors talked about living down in the computer lab for design, I just couldn't imagine it. But here I am. I drove down to Pitt Sunday after the Steelers game at the Harvey's and spent a couple hours down in B72 with Charlie working on distillation columns (and Walker Texas Ranger clips on YouTube :-) ). I spent 5 hours in the computer lab tonight, and I spent something like 7 hours down in B72 a couple weeks ago. It's happening just like they said, but not 'cause it's what's supposed to happen, but because it has to happen. Not because it's what seniors do, but because it takes that long. And as long as I'm sitting here in a sea of deep black with the screen filling my view and the fire flickering to the left, I might as well get REALLY abstract and deep (And also make some declarations and generalizations beyond my solid knowledge yet held firmly by my mind and thus representative of my thinking, flawed though it may be):
I really really like it when things come about naturally. That's part of what frustrates me about modern America, and much of the modern world. Why do we have a State of the Union Address? It's not 'cause we need the President to tell us what's happening. Everybody knows way too much already. It's just an old tradition that we do 'cause the Constitution says we're supposed to do it. When we're forced to function at a level different from that dictated by basic principles such as survival and, shall we say, "primal" desires/needs, I just find it frustrating. Which is one of the reasons I'm getting fascinated by football.
Step back and look at it, people. The entire nation of America, from the time its children are old enough to understand words, is grooming them for football. From pee wee football on through all the years of childhood, the thousands of schools across the country are a giant farm training almost every guy how to throw and catch, and gradually lifting up those who are good at it, till in high school and college thousands of kids spend most of their life for football--lifting, practicing, playing, and watching. And all for what? For a few teams scattered around the nation and among them a handful of stars that get most of the glory. Nobody is telling us to do this. It isn't something like a Fourth of July parade that's sorta just done for form and not many people come to and you almost feel sorry for the veterans and avid community people out there on the street. It's a vibrant, "primal" system that literally engulfs our entire nation. Traffic was drastically light Tuesday morning after the Steelers' Monday Night Football appearance this season. See how cool that is? The nation is acting as one, not 'cause somebody's tyring to convince us to all get together on this football thing, but because we all love it and it has the vibrancy of a successful, popular thing. (We are sheep, after all). The football stadiums of America, with the cars gathering and parking for miles around, the pulsing roar of the crowd, the blimp floating overhead, the dozens of TV cameras hovering around, the coaches and trainers and docters and beer sellers and painted fans and uniformed players are no different from the Coliseum and gladiators of old. It's just that now things are clean and we watch it on TV, and it's all run by ad money and team owners instead of Caesar and soldiers.
I didn't really intend to write about all of this, but it's one of those things that occupies my thoughts fairly often and that makes me sit and wish for a different life in a different time sometimes, and those are the kind of things I want to record and remember, so I can see how I change and recall how I was and thought during these years.
Today was a good day. Regardless of the rough morning (I was truly unhappy for a few minutes in process control class as I was falling asleep despite my frantic efforts to follow Parker's lecture and desperately trying to understand what the HECK he was doing and how it all fit together), when I walked out of Fuel & Fuddle at 1:21am I felt on top of the world. I had slept far far longer than planned in the afternoon, but I had used that rest to work out long and well and get the process homework all done before coming home (where distractions make work very hard). I stepped out of the door and into the cold breeze coming down Oakland Avenue, and just loved it. My cold tolerance has gone quite strangely high this year; I'm almost trying to keep summer going on by not getting out the huge clumsy leather jacket of years past. I let it blow into me and relished the crispness. There were snowflakes falling thinly in the light of signs and streetlights, melting on the windshield. A few people walked along the sidewalks. I had read the Bible and worked out, and the time in the computer lab sat in my mind as such an eminently pleasant time--sipping perfect Dr.Pepper from the can, munching some snacks, dealing with Charlie's quasi depression and intensity over the homework (in his always good-natured Charlie way), helping him and Joam with the homework, doing snippets of Facebook and AIM inbetween making real progress on the problems, finding them doable but not trivial (unlike health & safety), and looking with satisfaction at the as-expected plots turned out by my complex Simulink process simulations. Jenna was working at F&F and we got to catch up a bit when she wasn't busy waiting tables. I had been gone since 9 that morning - 16 and a half hours. One of those things I used to hear about and not even be able to imagine doing. It was fall, headed towards winter and the warmth and richness Christmas, and the cold felt good. It was a good day. It's a wonderful life :-)
Thank you Lord! I should and could be happy in an unpleasant and difficult life, but You've given me rarely-disturbed bliss. I don't expect it to go on for the rest of my life like this, so I'm very grateful for every day that continues so pleasantly, and I pray that when true trials come, grace will come with them and I'll take it.
And here, relative to this entire post, is the thought and prayer of last night, as I paced the famly room and laid sleepless on my bed battling the thought of eternity:
Another insipid masquerade
Another deceptively pleasant day
All of the trophies on my shelf
I'm tired of looking at myself.. and all of these boring things
So open my eyes
Open my eyes..
Blow my mind
I want to see God..
(I want to see God)
I want to see miracles today
I want to see change I can't explain
There's got to be more to life than health
More than just looking at myself.. and all of these boring things
So open my eyes
Get the balloons and ticker tape
I'm having another self-parade
Look at all the floats I've made
Is this all my life can say?
..open my eyes
..blow mind
..I want to see God
--Clear Ambassador
At first I was going to type "Today was a great day," based on the last half. But then I remembered missing the alarm, missing the bus, sleeping through a class, and the frustration of not being able to comprehend the control setup for a system with delay. But I certainly wouldn't write "Today was a pretty lousy day," 'cause I read some of the Bible (!!!), slept for almost 2 hours after eating a delicious sandwich, worked out for more than an hour, and spent 5 hours of wonderfully balanced homework and fun stuff up in the computer lab doing tomorrow's process control assignment with Charlie and Joam. Does anybody else realize how wonderful relationships are when you're working on something with other people? It's like you can just interact, joke, hang out together, and not be concerned with any of it 'cause you have to do it 'cause you're working. The focus isn't the "relationship," it's what you're doing. Charlie and I have been having a blast this semester doing process control, safety and design together. But if he just came over to the house to hang out, we probably wouldn't have much to do, and it would be kind of strange. Last semester with Jenna as my homework partner was great, too. Sports are like that too: they're great for getting to know people and building some familiarity without sitting around talking - every word having no purpose but conversation, every action having no escape but to indicate something about yourself, the other people, or what you think of them.
More generally, being forced to do work can be quite nice. It removes self-reflexivity. You have to think about less. You have no choice! The more free time, and the more free your time, the more culpability you shoulder as to your use of it. This may not be coherent to others, but it's one of those I feel rather strongly and have been enjoying a lot at an elemental, "I wouldn't do this voluntarily" level this semester.
Oh, and today was good day too because I hit up Fuel & Fuddle after the computer lab at 11:30 and got a Magic Head and a Flying Buffalo, both of which were exquisite. It's hard to believe how good their pizza crusts are.
In other news, I'm gaining weight.. but my waistline is shrinking. I'm staying over 145, but I keep wishing I had one more hole in my default belt (thrift store, baby!), which used to fit perfectly. So I guess that means I'm gaining muscle weight, which is sweet. I noticed an improvement in my karate kick height, too, which means my hours of hamstring stretches are paying off. Today I walked up the stairs from the basement to the 12th floor of Benedum twice (282 steps, 2 at a time) and it wasn't that big of a deal (whereas typically I'm sucking air in like a positive displacement vacuum pump by the 10th floor and my quads feel like stiff, burning steaks). I'm putting 2 45's on each side of the bench press machine, and I can do three sets of pullups without weight assist. All of which is to say, it looks like there's some progress on the exercise front. Which is thrilling to see, 'cause exercising is basically like throwing a bottle out on the ocean -- you do what you do, but you have no direct control over what actually happens. It's an amazing thing to see your body actually responding and getting more able to do things. Muscle growth is the coolest, because it's adding to your very frame - the limbs you carry about everywhere and see in every mirror. I could never *will* my body to make more muscles or lift more weight, but it has come about to that effect on its own, due to the conditions I have imposed through working out.
As I was riding the elevator down from the computer lab I was thinking about this general (yes, we're making a bit of a jump here :-) ) topic: I just love it, way deep down, when I find myself arriving at a conclusion that I read or heard about elsewhere before or when I find myself experiencing something I heard about and couldn't really imagine at that time. Like when I get to know a piece of music enough to reach criticisms in my own opinion that I read about somewhere. Or like when I found myself wishing I had a multiband compressor to de-ess vocals in my recordings after reading about de-essing dozens of times in my compressor research. Suddenly it was right in front of me, not because I read about it but because I needed it. This semester is like that. Whenever somebody talks about being "Oh man, soo busy!" I just don't know how to picture that. When seniors talked about living down in the computer lab for design, I just couldn't imagine it. But here I am. I drove down to Pitt Sunday after the Steelers game at the Harvey's and spent a couple hours down in B72 with Charlie working on distillation columns (and Walker Texas Ranger clips on YouTube :-) ). I spent 5 hours in the computer lab tonight, and I spent something like 7 hours down in B72 a couple weeks ago. It's happening just like they said, but not 'cause it's what's supposed to happen, but because it has to happen. Not because it's what seniors do, but because it takes that long. And as long as I'm sitting here in a sea of deep black with the screen filling my view and the fire flickering to the left, I might as well get REALLY abstract and deep (And also make some declarations and generalizations beyond my solid knowledge yet held firmly by my mind and thus representative of my thinking, flawed though it may be):
I really really like it when things come about naturally. That's part of what frustrates me about modern America, and much of the modern world. Why do we have a State of the Union Address? It's not 'cause we need the President to tell us what's happening. Everybody knows way too much already. It's just an old tradition that we do 'cause the Constitution says we're supposed to do it. When we're forced to function at a level different from that dictated by basic principles such as survival and, shall we say, "primal" desires/needs, I just find it frustrating. Which is one of the reasons I'm getting fascinated by football.
Step back and look at it, people. The entire nation of America, from the time its children are old enough to understand words, is grooming them for football. From pee wee football on through all the years of childhood, the thousands of schools across the country are a giant farm training almost every guy how to throw and catch, and gradually lifting up those who are good at it, till in high school and college thousands of kids spend most of their life for football--lifting, practicing, playing, and watching. And all for what? For a few teams scattered around the nation and among them a handful of stars that get most of the glory. Nobody is telling us to do this. It isn't something like a Fourth of July parade that's sorta just done for form and not many people come to and you almost feel sorry for the veterans and avid community people out there on the street. It's a vibrant, "primal" system that literally engulfs our entire nation. Traffic was drastically light Tuesday morning after the Steelers' Monday Night Football appearance this season. See how cool that is? The nation is acting as one, not 'cause somebody's tyring to convince us to all get together on this football thing, but because we all love it and it has the vibrancy of a successful, popular thing. (We are sheep, after all). The football stadiums of America, with the cars gathering and parking for miles around, the pulsing roar of the crowd, the blimp floating overhead, the dozens of TV cameras hovering around, the coaches and trainers and docters and beer sellers and painted fans and uniformed players are no different from the Coliseum and gladiators of old. It's just that now things are clean and we watch it on TV, and it's all run by ad money and team owners instead of Caesar and soldiers.
I didn't really intend to write about all of this, but it's one of those things that occupies my thoughts fairly often and that makes me sit and wish for a different life in a different time sometimes, and those are the kind of things I want to record and remember, so I can see how I change and recall how I was and thought during these years.
Today was a good day. Regardless of the rough morning (I was truly unhappy for a few minutes in process control class as I was falling asleep despite my frantic efforts to follow Parker's lecture and desperately trying to understand what the HECK he was doing and how it all fit together), when I walked out of Fuel & Fuddle at 1:21am I felt on top of the world. I had slept far far longer than planned in the afternoon, but I had used that rest to work out long and well and get the process homework all done before coming home (where distractions make work very hard). I stepped out of the door and into the cold breeze coming down Oakland Avenue, and just loved it. My cold tolerance has gone quite strangely high this year; I'm almost trying to keep summer going on by not getting out the huge clumsy leather jacket of years past. I let it blow into me and relished the crispness. There were snowflakes falling thinly in the light of signs and streetlights, melting on the windshield. A few people walked along the sidewalks. I had read the Bible and worked out, and the time in the computer lab sat in my mind as such an eminently pleasant time--sipping perfect Dr.Pepper from the can, munching some snacks, dealing with Charlie's quasi depression and intensity over the homework (in his always good-natured Charlie way), helping him and Joam with the homework, doing snippets of Facebook and AIM inbetween making real progress on the problems, finding them doable but not trivial (unlike health & safety), and looking with satisfaction at the as-expected plots turned out by my complex Simulink process simulations. Jenna was working at F&F and we got to catch up a bit when she wasn't busy waiting tables. I had been gone since 9 that morning - 16 and a half hours. One of those things I used to hear about and not even be able to imagine doing. It was fall, headed towards winter and the warmth and richness Christmas, and the cold felt good. It was a good day. It's a wonderful life :-)
Thank you Lord! I should and could be happy in an unpleasant and difficult life, but You've given me rarely-disturbed bliss. I don't expect it to go on for the rest of my life like this, so I'm very grateful for every day that continues so pleasantly, and I pray that when true trials come, grace will come with them and I'll take it.
And here, relative to this entire post, is the thought and prayer of last night, as I paced the famly room and laid sleepless on my bed battling the thought of eternity:
Another insipid masquerade
Another deceptively pleasant day
All of the trophies on my shelf
I'm tired of looking at myself.. and all of these boring things
So open my eyes
Open my eyes..
Blow my mind
I want to see God..
(I want to see God)
I want to see miracles today
I want to see change I can't explain
There's got to be more to life than health
More than just looking at myself.. and all of these boring things
So open my eyes
Get the balloons and ticker tape
I'm having another self-parade
Look at all the floats I've made
Is this all my life can say?
..open my eyes
..blow mind
..I want to see God
--Clear Ambassador
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Well, if it's better to show rather than tell in your writing, then I suppose I've done some awesome writing this past month to demonstrate the busy-ness of this semester :-) But it hasn't been true business that has kept me from writing. Most nights lose an hour at least to Facebook, and many times when I've had the opportunity to write here I've shied away from the overwhelming task of tackling all that is unwritten. It's hard thinking, too, and that hasn't been the most attractive thing.
SO. This semester. What's it like? How should I remember it when all that fills my attention now is gone from my memory but a few defining points (probably from the last week of the semester)?
I'm driving a lot. Pretty much 9 out of 10 days. And rarely paying for parking. But twice paying tickets, which cost far more than meters, yet somehow feel different than shelling out three bucks a day in shiny silver coins. There are four legit places that I know of that have no meters, two of which also have no time limit (the reason for one of my tickets). Every day I dance the dance with the law, weighing risk against convenience and time, and occasionally landing a sweet spot like a busted meter or a Mazda-long space just tucked in behind a sign.
I sleep a lot. Not a day goes by when I don't find at least 15 minutes to doze somewhere. There's something about facing an entire 18-hour day with no prospect of releasing the pining tiredness that drags at my eyelids and weighs on my chest that just isn't tenable. Sometimes I pay for it by getting delayed or not being able to work out at the Pete. Sometimes I step back and think how odd it is that I'm sleeping all the time during the days and wonder if it's a really bad thing to give in to my tiredness and not push through it and get used to being able to function while drowsy. But even 15 minutes of release can make a world of difference, so on I go. The quiet reading room in the engineering library is the best spot, though at times the floor of the basement computer lab has served :-) That place is seriously my second home. Well third, after the Hoffmans. yay!
I am working out, though sometimes it's crammed in odd places. I'm making the Pete about half the time, but my home workouts are usually pretty solid. I'm stretching every single time, and today I did some kicks and it appears that there is some progress in flexibility, which has been irritatingly lacking so far. My left hamstring is stupid - it seems to just get torn or something, not stretched. Which brings up the point that my legs on the whole are lousy - my knees never quite chill out and become normal, and my hips feel weird sometimes. Quite irritating from a lifetime perspective. Overall I haven't seen a ton of improvement or growth from working out so far, but I'm just starting to pass the 6-week point, beyond which Ryan says new muscle tissue starts to form. I'm kicking it up a notch, too--going for more weight and fewer reps, trying not to be easy on myself. Every time I work out I feel great, which is nice. The Pete is sweet. Or swete, as the case may be :-)
I feel like saying "classes are hard." But everybody says that, and I want to get it a little more meaningfully. Ummm, the work I have to do for classes is throwing me around like a bucking bronco. Last week I just barely held on. Process control can be difficult to understand sometimes, and the homework can take confoundingly long. The average on the first exam we just had was 49.5, which really got Dr.Parker concerned. I got a 75.5, so I was pretty happy. Plant Design is...unlike any class I've had before. In a way it's very open and easy--no "homework" per se, and Dr. Enick tells us basically every little thing we have to do. But practically it's getting extremely hard. Not usually by difficulty of work but by volume and persnicketyness. "Homework" consists of progress reports--roughly one a week--that each cover a step or two in the design of a styrene plant (that is our ChemE senior design project). Heat exchanger networks, Aspen simulations, reactor sizing, plots, tables, discussions, descriptions...each report is a mini-monumental task, and Charlie and I spend lots of hours (like, 6 or 7 straight, 2 or 3 here and there) to get them done. Often the directions are unclear or the enabling information was blustered by us in class and nobody remembers. Then it really gets hard, and the minutes, quarters, halves and hours slip away and you're looking at the clock and it's saying 9:07 and you still haven't worked out or eaten dinner. Such I heard about design ("Ohh man, you live in the labs!"), and now I look and see that so I am indeed experiencing. Um..process safety, compared to the big two, is negligible. Except the honkin' lecture summary report thing that took hours upon hours upon hours of time and is just regurgitating all his lecture notes ad nauseum for only slightly more points than the homework which takes 15 minutes before class in the 10th floor lab. Arg. Yet another poorly-thought-out class. Another reason I'd like to be a professor. But boo grad school. yech.
It's 2:35am, and tomorrow I need to get up at 8:30 and get down to Pitt to listen to a bunch of music and write out essays for the history of the symphony midterm. So I'll can it. I'm dried-sweaty from a short but fierce workout downstairs, I'm un-hungry 'cause I had a roast beef-pear sandwich (Go protein! Go into my little muscles!), and of course, I am not tired in the least. I'm bright-minded, open-eyed, and ready to hit the world. This bio rhythm never ceases to confound me. Even with plenty of sleep (like, 9 hours), if it's before noon, and often in midafternoon, if I'm not doing something actively with mind or body, down I go. Then, after about 8 or 9, I'm up and ready to go. Grr. Stupid body! Or maybe it's all my fault and if I would just do things right I'd be tired at the right times. Whatever.
I've gone to Akron for a concert at the Orange Street, Steph came to town and we visited Grove City, Mom and Dad were gone this weekend and I recorded in the basement, Daniel's on fall break so he's home right now, and I'm in general fairly disconnected from God, church, friends and normalcy. But I pray often and honestly, and I'm not ultimately deserting or ignoring (I don't think) the truth of the Gospel, who God is, and who I am. I don't think. I think reading the Bible more might show that my thinking has changed more than I realized from God's mindset.
Enough for now. I hope to write more this week to catch up a bit. We'll see. Oh yes. Next week we have THREE progress reports due. Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Plus process homework. Go ahead and shoot me why don't you? Geez.
--Clear Ambassador
SO. This semester. What's it like? How should I remember it when all that fills my attention now is gone from my memory but a few defining points (probably from the last week of the semester)?
I'm driving a lot. Pretty much 9 out of 10 days. And rarely paying for parking. But twice paying tickets, which cost far more than meters, yet somehow feel different than shelling out three bucks a day in shiny silver coins. There are four legit places that I know of that have no meters, two of which also have no time limit (the reason for one of my tickets). Every day I dance the dance with the law, weighing risk against convenience and time, and occasionally landing a sweet spot like a busted meter or a Mazda-long space just tucked in behind a sign.
I sleep a lot. Not a day goes by when I don't find at least 15 minutes to doze somewhere. There's something about facing an entire 18-hour day with no prospect of releasing the pining tiredness that drags at my eyelids and weighs on my chest that just isn't tenable. Sometimes I pay for it by getting delayed or not being able to work out at the Pete. Sometimes I step back and think how odd it is that I'm sleeping all the time during the days and wonder if it's a really bad thing to give in to my tiredness and not push through it and get used to being able to function while drowsy. But even 15 minutes of release can make a world of difference, so on I go. The quiet reading room in the engineering library is the best spot, though at times the floor of the basement computer lab has served :-) That place is seriously my second home. Well third, after the Hoffmans. yay!
I am working out, though sometimes it's crammed in odd places. I'm making the Pete about half the time, but my home workouts are usually pretty solid. I'm stretching every single time, and today I did some kicks and it appears that there is some progress in flexibility, which has been irritatingly lacking so far. My left hamstring is stupid - it seems to just get torn or something, not stretched. Which brings up the point that my legs on the whole are lousy - my knees never quite chill out and become normal, and my hips feel weird sometimes. Quite irritating from a lifetime perspective. Overall I haven't seen a ton of improvement or growth from working out so far, but I'm just starting to pass the 6-week point, beyond which Ryan says new muscle tissue starts to form. I'm kicking it up a notch, too--going for more weight and fewer reps, trying not to be easy on myself. Every time I work out I feel great, which is nice. The Pete is sweet. Or swete, as the case may be :-)
I feel like saying "classes are hard." But everybody says that, and I want to get it a little more meaningfully. Ummm, the work I have to do for classes is throwing me around like a bucking bronco. Last week I just barely held on. Process control can be difficult to understand sometimes, and the homework can take confoundingly long. The average on the first exam we just had was 49.5, which really got Dr.Parker concerned. I got a 75.5, so I was pretty happy. Plant Design is...unlike any class I've had before. In a way it's very open and easy--no "homework" per se, and Dr. Enick tells us basically every little thing we have to do. But practically it's getting extremely hard. Not usually by difficulty of work but by volume and persnicketyness. "Homework" consists of progress reports--roughly one a week--that each cover a step or two in the design of a styrene plant (that is our ChemE senior design project). Heat exchanger networks, Aspen simulations, reactor sizing, plots, tables, discussions, descriptions...each report is a mini-monumental task, and Charlie and I spend lots of hours (like, 6 or 7 straight, 2 or 3 here and there) to get them done. Often the directions are unclear or the enabling information was blustered by us in class and nobody remembers. Then it really gets hard, and the minutes, quarters, halves and hours slip away and you're looking at the clock and it's saying 9:07 and you still haven't worked out or eaten dinner. Such I heard about design ("Ohh man, you live in the labs!"), and now I look and see that so I am indeed experiencing. Um..process safety, compared to the big two, is negligible. Except the honkin' lecture summary report thing that took hours upon hours upon hours of time and is just regurgitating all his lecture notes ad nauseum for only slightly more points than the homework which takes 15 minutes before class in the 10th floor lab. Arg. Yet another poorly-thought-out class. Another reason I'd like to be a professor. But boo grad school. yech.
It's 2:35am, and tomorrow I need to get up at 8:30 and get down to Pitt to listen to a bunch of music and write out essays for the history of the symphony midterm. So I'll can it. I'm dried-sweaty from a short but fierce workout downstairs, I'm un-hungry 'cause I had a roast beef-pear sandwich (Go protein! Go into my little muscles!), and of course, I am not tired in the least. I'm bright-minded, open-eyed, and ready to hit the world. This bio rhythm never ceases to confound me. Even with plenty of sleep (like, 9 hours), if it's before noon, and often in midafternoon, if I'm not doing something actively with mind or body, down I go. Then, after about 8 or 9, I'm up and ready to go. Grr. Stupid body! Or maybe it's all my fault and if I would just do things right I'd be tired at the right times. Whatever.
I've gone to Akron for a concert at the Orange Street, Steph came to town and we visited Grove City, Mom and Dad were gone this weekend and I recorded in the basement, Daniel's on fall break so he's home right now, and I'm in general fairly disconnected from God, church, friends and normalcy. But I pray often and honestly, and I'm not ultimately deserting or ignoring (I don't think) the truth of the Gospel, who God is, and who I am. I don't think. I think reading the Bible more might show that my thinking has changed more than I realized from God's mindset.
Enough for now. I hope to write more this week to catch up a bit. We'll see. Oh yes. Next week we have THREE progress reports due. Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Plus process homework. Go ahead and shoot me why don't you? Geez.
--Clear Ambassador
Friday, September 29, 2006
Crazy Week and Life
No, I haven't updated the chicago entry yet. Not enough time. But I'm taking a few minutes here at the end of the day to write up this intense week as I'm in the middle of it.
It's been a strange combination of terror and happiness. I entered it high on the wave of the Chicago trip, and descended into the trough of terror Sunday night/Monday morning as I realized all I had to do: Process Control homework Wednesday AND Friday (I thought there would be none this week), Health & Safety lecture summaries due Friday, Lab progress report due Thursday, Health & Safety homework Friday, and, I was later to find out, History of Symphony homework due Thursday.
But then I left Pitt, drove to NOVA for 3 hours of work, and drove from there to Akron for a glorious overnight of Pure Boss practice! That was one of the reasons I was so pressured this week--all day Monday was gone. Despite that, the time in Akron was deliciously sweet. It started when Brian came running out of the Chimas house with his guitar over his shoulder screaming and waving his arms, psyched for practice. It was like the good old days--we ripped off some great Pure Boss standards, and then we worked up two brand new songs! Then we doodled around tearing down a bit (most of it I left 'cause we'd be back Friday), smoking a lot of cloves, and drinking Steve's pure sugar cane Dr.Pepper he brought back from Texas. I figured out how to blow rough smoke rings, and that was pretty exciting. Don't worry, I don't inhale (perish the thought *shudder*). After Brian had to head to bed Steve and I took down the dance flooring at the church, filled up our gas tanks on wonderful $2.09 Ohio gas, and watched Shrek II in the Hoffman's den. I got up the next morning and left at about 8:00 for Pittsburgh.
I started my caffeine-by-necessity on Tuesday, picking up a latte at Starbucks before hitting recitation. I'd been fighting sleep the whole drive down (which is one of the most grindingly miserable states I know of being in), and couldn't afford to miss the lecture in a drowsy haze. The latte actually tasted fantastic. Strip away all the sugary stuff, and Starbucks coffee definitely kicks butt.
Tuesday I also took my daily nap, which has become another necessity since I don't have time to sleep much when I'm finishing all my assignments the night before they're due. When I'm working out, as I have been, my body just gets torn down if I don't get enough sleep. I can feel a clear difference after an hour of sleep in the afternoon--before then I just can't imagine working out being very productive.
Every day this week I pretty much got up and got to class on time or late, made it through classes, slept, worked out if I had time, and either went home to work on the next day's homework or went to work. Every night I finished what was due in the morning, worked out if I needed to, and went to bed around 1 or 2 or something. A crazy, crazy week that I look back on in wonder, 'cause it's just so ridiculous and out of control, and once again I feel like I'm barely hanging on as the wild bull of life throws me around.
Ultimately, I'm feeling pretty crappy about life these days. A job position came up at NOVA that's exactly what I would have wanted two years ago, but I have no desire to pursue it, and my resume is in a three-year-old shamble. I don't want to go to grad school, which would be the next logical step to becoming a college professor, and I don't think I'm good enough or have any connections or training to work at a studio or something, which is the one thing I'd really really like to actually DO. Jonathan is all pumped for getting a job and starting his professional career, and I watch him interview and job hunt and feel like I'm a lazy little kid sitting in a puddle of mud pouting 'cause he doesn't want to take any of the great opportunities presented to him. Like Jonathan said, I just need to pray, and God will provide whatever it is I need.
And that's what I keep coming down to as I filter through all the layers of my failure, laziness and lack: I need what only God can give. I need SOMETHING to change inside me, 'cause from where I stand now I am categorically unprepared to enter normal adult life in America. I'm tired of trying to figure out what that something is, 'cause there's so many ways my life could go, but the bottom line is I need to PRAY.
Now, I could go through the exact same process of despair again because I haven't been praying or having devotions or anything consistently for months and months and I see no desire for that in myself, and thus I feel like not only do I lack what is needed for life, but I lack what is needed to get what I lack.
However, though that train of thought appears logical to me, I've learned enough in the spiritual desert of the past years to just believe that Jesus meant what He said when he told His disciples "These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full." Ultimately--and there's no away to avoid stinking Christianese here--I think this place of desperation I'm feeling right now is right where God wants me: face to face with my weakness, and no way out except Him. It feels wrong, because it is, but I think God basically has to drag us through sin to make us actually learn truth.
I guess the fight my mind puts up against that view of things is that over the past years fundamentally nothing seems to have changed in me, while life seems to be appropriately falling apart around me as I fail to rise up to meet it. Other than the mental truths of the Bible and the people around me, I've got no reason to think that any changing grace will ever be given to me. Those are pretty dang good reasons, you say, and yes they are, but when life is falling apart around you, it tends to make a far more compelling argument for its view of things :-) So, onward I go, scraping the bottom of the barrel of my capabilities and waiting for God's grace to come up under me and help.
Is anybody out there sick of me writing about this same crap in this blog? It's like no matter how many times and ways I feel it and write it out, I never get it out clearly--there keep being more ways to look at it, and the more I write about it the more it crumbles upon itself and evades expression. I'll try one more brief shot, and then leave it.
Given all I said above, looking at that last sentence, the analogy comes to mind that God's grace is like flying. You can't fly yourself, obviously--it's silly to think you could--, but neither should you sit in the airport and wait for the plane to come pick you up.
It seems like any hopeful statement of God's free grace and our total weakness comes with the caveat that you have to "put yourself in the way of God's grace." Well folks, I don't have whatever gumption it takes to put myself in those ways. I can try for a few days, but the fact is, I'm sitting here in dirty clothes on the floor of the airport, unshaven, jobless, with about 83 cents left in my pocket, hoping something can come pick me up 'cause however much I try to "rise up," I don't have what it takes to make it out to that big comfy plane waiting on the tarmac.
So I ask again: Am I a lazy fool, or am I being realistic and this is where God has to take me?
I myself answer that I'm a lazy fool, and I beat myself up for that.
I my-"The Bible is True"-self answer that God hasn't forsaken me and ultimately joy is there for the having, no matter where I am or where I've been.
So, I listened through the Gospel of John on the way to work today.
Speaking of listening, tonight I went through some interesting music. I'll close out this blog by taking it back to the details of life. I started with the Beatles, then I hit Chemical Brothers, which I've been enjoying more and more with every listen. Mmm, it's so good! Tasty. After that I was in the mood for something similar so I listened through "Kaleidoscope Superior" by Earthsuit--an album I listened through a ton about a year ago but haven't played much since then. Then, going for the same sort of feel, I put on "Pungent Effulgent" by Ozric Tentacles--something I haven't listened to much at all ever. In keeping with my ever-increasing capacity for musical appreciation, I enjoyed the album to a pretty real degree. Lastly, I scanned through my playlists after Ozric finished up and decided on Muse, which appears to be settling in as a really good album ("Black Holes and Revelations") and was very enjoyable. It makes me think of Daniel in Grove City, 'cause we played some bass and guitar to that album when I was up there a couple weeks ago.
Now I go upstairs and, good grief, pack for Akron! Tomorrow I get up at 7:00am, somehow make it through 5 hours of classes, either work out or sleep for an hour (hopefully work out, unless I'm feeling terrible, 'cause the Peterson is so sweet), and drive to Akron for a quick practice and a Pure Boss concert at the Orange Street. *Sigh*. That's why I'm such a bad student, and so bad at living life: there's too much else going on.
But I'm happy, and I think that comes because I'm saved, and ultimately I believe in Jesus.
Thank you, Lord! I reckon' that's a lot more than I should take for granted.
Cool.
--Crazy Ambassador
It's been a strange combination of terror and happiness. I entered it high on the wave of the Chicago trip, and descended into the trough of terror Sunday night/Monday morning as I realized all I had to do: Process Control homework Wednesday AND Friday (I thought there would be none this week), Health & Safety lecture summaries due Friday, Lab progress report due Thursday, Health & Safety homework Friday, and, I was later to find out, History of Symphony homework due Thursday.
But then I left Pitt, drove to NOVA for 3 hours of work, and drove from there to Akron for a glorious overnight of Pure Boss practice! That was one of the reasons I was so pressured this week--all day Monday was gone. Despite that, the time in Akron was deliciously sweet. It started when Brian came running out of the Chimas house with his guitar over his shoulder screaming and waving his arms, psyched for practice. It was like the good old days--we ripped off some great Pure Boss standards, and then we worked up two brand new songs! Then we doodled around tearing down a bit (most of it I left 'cause we'd be back Friday), smoking a lot of cloves, and drinking Steve's pure sugar cane Dr.Pepper he brought back from Texas. I figured out how to blow rough smoke rings, and that was pretty exciting. Don't worry, I don't inhale (perish the thought *shudder*). After Brian had to head to bed Steve and I took down the dance flooring at the church, filled up our gas tanks on wonderful $2.09 Ohio gas, and watched Shrek II in the Hoffman's den. I got up the next morning and left at about 8:00 for Pittsburgh.
I started my caffeine-by-necessity on Tuesday, picking up a latte at Starbucks before hitting recitation. I'd been fighting sleep the whole drive down (which is one of the most grindingly miserable states I know of being in), and couldn't afford to miss the lecture in a drowsy haze. The latte actually tasted fantastic. Strip away all the sugary stuff, and Starbucks coffee definitely kicks butt.
Tuesday I also took my daily nap, which has become another necessity since I don't have time to sleep much when I'm finishing all my assignments the night before they're due. When I'm working out, as I have been, my body just gets torn down if I don't get enough sleep. I can feel a clear difference after an hour of sleep in the afternoon--before then I just can't imagine working out being very productive.
Every day this week I pretty much got up and got to class on time or late, made it through classes, slept, worked out if I had time, and either went home to work on the next day's homework or went to work. Every night I finished what was due in the morning, worked out if I needed to, and went to bed around 1 or 2 or something. A crazy, crazy week that I look back on in wonder, 'cause it's just so ridiculous and out of control, and once again I feel like I'm barely hanging on as the wild bull of life throws me around.
Ultimately, I'm feeling pretty crappy about life these days. A job position came up at NOVA that's exactly what I would have wanted two years ago, but I have no desire to pursue it, and my resume is in a three-year-old shamble. I don't want to go to grad school, which would be the next logical step to becoming a college professor, and I don't think I'm good enough or have any connections or training to work at a studio or something, which is the one thing I'd really really like to actually DO. Jonathan is all pumped for getting a job and starting his professional career, and I watch him interview and job hunt and feel like I'm a lazy little kid sitting in a puddle of mud pouting 'cause he doesn't want to take any of the great opportunities presented to him. Like Jonathan said, I just need to pray, and God will provide whatever it is I need.
And that's what I keep coming down to as I filter through all the layers of my failure, laziness and lack: I need what only God can give. I need SOMETHING to change inside me, 'cause from where I stand now I am categorically unprepared to enter normal adult life in America. I'm tired of trying to figure out what that something is, 'cause there's so many ways my life could go, but the bottom line is I need to PRAY.
Now, I could go through the exact same process of despair again because I haven't been praying or having devotions or anything consistently for months and months and I see no desire for that in myself, and thus I feel like not only do I lack what is needed for life, but I lack what is needed to get what I lack.
However, though that train of thought appears logical to me, I've learned enough in the spiritual desert of the past years to just believe that Jesus meant what He said when he told His disciples "These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full." Ultimately--and there's no away to avoid stinking Christianese here--I think this place of desperation I'm feeling right now is right where God wants me: face to face with my weakness, and no way out except Him. It feels wrong, because it is, but I think God basically has to drag us through sin to make us actually learn truth.
I guess the fight my mind puts up against that view of things is that over the past years fundamentally nothing seems to have changed in me, while life seems to be appropriately falling apart around me as I fail to rise up to meet it. Other than the mental truths of the Bible and the people around me, I've got no reason to think that any changing grace will ever be given to me. Those are pretty dang good reasons, you say, and yes they are, but when life is falling apart around you, it tends to make a far more compelling argument for its view of things :-) So, onward I go, scraping the bottom of the barrel of my capabilities and waiting for God's grace to come up under me and help.
Is anybody out there sick of me writing about this same crap in this blog? It's like no matter how many times and ways I feel it and write it out, I never get it out clearly--there keep being more ways to look at it, and the more I write about it the more it crumbles upon itself and evades expression. I'll try one more brief shot, and then leave it.
Given all I said above, looking at that last sentence, the analogy comes to mind that God's grace is like flying. You can't fly yourself, obviously--it's silly to think you could--, but neither should you sit in the airport and wait for the plane to come pick you up.
It seems like any hopeful statement of God's free grace and our total weakness comes with the caveat that you have to "put yourself in the way of God's grace." Well folks, I don't have whatever gumption it takes to put myself in those ways. I can try for a few days, but the fact is, I'm sitting here in dirty clothes on the floor of the airport, unshaven, jobless, with about 83 cents left in my pocket, hoping something can come pick me up 'cause however much I try to "rise up," I don't have what it takes to make it out to that big comfy plane waiting on the tarmac.
So I ask again: Am I a lazy fool, or am I being realistic and this is where God has to take me?
I myself answer that I'm a lazy fool, and I beat myself up for that.
I my-"The Bible is True"-self answer that God hasn't forsaken me and ultimately joy is there for the having, no matter where I am or where I've been.
So, I listened through the Gospel of John on the way to work today.
Speaking of listening, tonight I went through some interesting music. I'll close out this blog by taking it back to the details of life. I started with the Beatles, then I hit Chemical Brothers, which I've been enjoying more and more with every listen. Mmm, it's so good! Tasty. After that I was in the mood for something similar so I listened through "Kaleidoscope Superior" by Earthsuit--an album I listened through a ton about a year ago but haven't played much since then. Then, going for the same sort of feel, I put on "Pungent Effulgent" by Ozric Tentacles--something I haven't listened to much at all ever. In keeping with my ever-increasing capacity for musical appreciation, I enjoyed the album to a pretty real degree. Lastly, I scanned through my playlists after Ozric finished up and decided on Muse, which appears to be settling in as a really good album ("Black Holes and Revelations") and was very enjoyable. It makes me think of Daniel in Grove City, 'cause we played some bass and guitar to that album when I was up there a couple weeks ago.
Now I go upstairs and, good grief, pack for Akron! Tomorrow I get up at 7:00am, somehow make it through 5 hours of classes, either work out or sleep for an hour (hopefully work out, unless I'm feeling terrible, 'cause the Peterson is so sweet), and drive to Akron for a quick practice and a Pure Boss concert at the Orange Street. *Sigh*. That's why I'm such a bad student, and so bad at living life: there's too much else going on.
But I'm happy, and I think that comes because I'm saved, and ultimately I believe in Jesus.
Thank you, Lord! I reckon' that's a lot more than I should take for granted.
Cool.
--Crazy Ambassador
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
C H I C A G O
I hate to presume upon anybody interested enough to visit here, but it's 1:40am, I'm running on a disasterous sleep deficit, and I have a cataclysmic amount of school work to be done before Friday. I wrote full journals each night in Chicago, the entirety of which is below. If you want to know what the trip was like, read on and may you find it engaging, and may you vicariously experience and enjoy some of the wonder and fun of that time. I will look this over and hopefully tighten it up later this week, but for now here's the most direct, complete and representative account of the glorious weekend in Chicago...
Oh oh oh!! I have a bunch of cell phone pictures too, which I took partially with the goal of including them in this blog. I'll do all I can to get them in here soon, and that should be SWEET.
9/21/06
So, today started out at home, sleeping in comfortably till 9:30, eating the heartiest breakfast in recent Johnian history (courtesy of the amazing Mrs. Behrens), and driving the van over to mow Complete Fitness at 10:30. What is normally a long mow became interminable, and at last, out of gas and out of trimmer line, and way out of time, I had to leave with edges still untrimmed, and basically no time to pack. But shower and pack I did, in a diligent frenzy. Katie and Sarah arrived as I was finishing, and we headed out in the Mazda not too long after our DDT* of 1:30. To the airport we drove, listening to Jars’ new album with the sweet sweet subwoofer. The flight and all went hitchlessly, except for one WOEFUL incident. Man! It’s yes, funny, but also it was really a downer. Probably a downer and a half. I had purchased a Dr.Pepper while waiting at the gate, and it had reached that perfect state of coldness and just the right amount of carbonation. It was not quite half finished, and I was enjoying it immensely. Then the dude at the end of the jetway said they wouldn’t let me take it on the plane, even though I’d bought it AFTER SECURITY inside the terminal!! So I had to give him that perfect, perfect Dr.Pepper and walk away with this literal hole in my mind and stomach where it should have been. Man, I kid you not, it was rough. But, they had Dr.P on the flight (bless you Southwest Airlines!!), so that about 85% made up for it. Arg.
So, we got to Chicago after a very short flight, got our bags, and headed for the CTA, or “El”—the train/subway system which would take us to the grand and glorious “Ohio House” hotel, our cheapest-of-the-cheap residence for the next 3 nights. The ride was good, and felt very city-like and American, as we clacked through Chicago’s odd juxtaposition of residential and industrial buildings. The big factories and warehouses and train yards and mysterious back lots and rusty equipment have always intrigued me, and riding the train was a good way to see a lot of that.
We had a bit of a walk once we got off at Grand Street, and after working out hard the day before and mowing and trimming Complete, my arms were in quite a tizzy. But I made it, and the Ohio House turned out to be a very competent, and even pleasant, cheap hotel. After getting settled in our respective rooms, Sarah, Katie and I walked about for awhile, marveling at the number of expensive restaurants around. We stopped at an Eckerd and I got some breakfasty food, and a little later we swung into a White Hen pantry, where I found WINTERGREEN SUGAR-FREE ALTOIDS!! Pretty much one of the best mints I could possibly come across. Man, the joys of a mint collection! And they’re really good, too—not so strong they burn craters in your tongue like the peppermint ones. Happy happy!
Nate Dogg Cold Six Packs To Go called to let us know he was close to the hotel (he had to get a later flight ‘cause of a meeting he was at in Philly), so we hoofed it back, got him settled in the room, and headed out to forage for dinner. We foraged our way to the ORIGINAL Unos Pizzeria, where we waited for a good while and ended up ploughing through copiously-cheesed deep-dish Chicago pizza, talking, laughing, and banging knees across the very narrow booth. It was a cool place, and the pizza was good, though my richness tolerance was soon being pushed. The Code Red Mt. Dew was great, though, and left me high (and probably really irritating) for the rest of the night.
Which we spent walking down to the lake and then wandering around SSCCCHwanky areas of downtown. SSCCCHwanky here representing Sarah’s gratuitiously-Pittsburghian pronunciation of “swanky.” The lake was cool and we walked through this awesome little park with a panoramic view of the lit-up city from a square of perfect green grass with the lake to our backs and the wind blowing at us. Then as we walked down a street inland, I took us up this stairway, thinking it would be a cool little patio thing to walk on for a bit before going back down to the ground. But it turned out that THAT was the level that the city was on! I could hardly believe it, and we spent a lot of time walking around exploring it, but a whole ton of the city around the lakefront and river is actually two levels. The lower one seems to be mostly roads and parking garages, and then the upper level, very much of which is just concrete on steel pillars, is where everybody walks and shops and drives on 8-lane roads stretching for miles. I just couldn’t believe how amazing that was (and probably tired everyone with my attempts to grapple with it)—that this whole world was elevated, that there was all this mysterious stuff beneath us, and that it had all been constructed, at who knows what cost. It’s hard to describe, but something about that removal from the pedestrian and predictable constraints of normal ground-based areas was very very intriguing, and ineffably tantalizing. I love cities for that reason, and this night, as we wandered around the levels and random nooks, fountains, benches and walkways, provided ample material for wonderment and joy. Oh, and it was AMAZING. At one point we were walking along, approaching this big crowd of people outside some restaurant. This car was parked in a little driveway sorta thing, and as we walked around it I saw the little “B” indicating that it was a Bentley…probably a two hundred thousand dollar car. Two spots down on the curb was a Ferrari, and behind that was a Porsche sport ute. We walked through the crowd, which consisted of very fine-looking folks and security people. The restaurant looked packed and very SCCHHWanky, and I marveled that we had just walked through the kind of high-brow uber-sophisticated life that you read about in magazines or see in movies. Later on we saw a tiny, wide, low Ferrari convertible glide past, circle around, and park outside a small Italian restaurant, yet another moment of the rich rich rich life happening before our eyes. I found that really cool, and I can’t quite explain why, but I loved it. It was basically an amazing time walking around, and it was almost hard because I couldn’t take it all in, and I couldn’t express or figure out why it was so titillating. But it was sweet.
At last we made it back to the hotel, and my knees were yelling pain profanities at me, so I was very glad to hit the room and get off my feet. Now I’ve finished this journal, Nate Dogg Cold Six Packs To Go is trying to sleep, and I’m jacked on Mountain Dew and Jelly Bellies and ready to watch some Strong Bad emails and Simpsons.
Woohoo!
We’re in Chicago!
*Desired Departure Time
9/22/06
Katie’s highlight was pretty much “hangin’ out with yinz guys and walking around,” which pretty much describes our day. Nate’s and Sarah’s was the walk along the lakefront in the morning, on the way to the zoo. It wasn’t a beach, it wasn’t a dock, it was just…a waterfront. A breakwater, sortof. With the big gray-blue lake on the right and the city stretching out and up to the right. Chicago has tons of apartment buildings, vs. Pittsburgh which has basically none, and that gives the downtown a different and interesting look. My highlight was knocking on the docent office door and having Grandma Kari open it! But a few minutes later I changed it to watching the gibbons swinging outside the small primates house, with long strong arms and legs, constant rolling falls and swings lacing them around the ropes and branches and cage bars. Man, it was mesmerizing (and really made me want to be a monkey). Finally, I figured that the Molé sandwich at Cosi’s for dinner was quite possibly my true highlight of the day. I just sat there in amazement trying to take in how good this food was inside my mouth. That place was way cool—very slick (“shwanky”), but not expensive, and very pleasant to be in. Egyptian rat slap while we waited for our food was sweet, too.
Sooo….what details should I fill in? I dunno. I got up at 8:33 after 3.5 snoozes, showered, and met up with the rest of the crew to hit the day. We hit Lincoln Park Zoo first, getting to walk around for awhile with Grandma and Aunt Princess, which was quite pleasantly unusual, thrown in the middle of our trip. We also walked through the conservatory, which was packed with interesting greenery (though not as cool or big as Phipps. Hah!). It was a long walk up to the LPZ area, so we were all down with idea of taking the El back to the hotel area (“The loop”). Riding the El is cool—the trains are pretty old and SO loud! You can hardly believe the roar and clatter as it crescendos in the subway tunnels. I always feel like I’m in Spiderman or something when we’re on them :-) Once back in our “home base” area we toodled around for a lunch place, and I steered us to this cool old semi-ratty Food Network-type place where we got delicious and HUGE Philly steak-type sandwiches. It was a great Chicagoey place, and was another high point of the day for me.
We decided to hit Chinatown for the second half of the day, Sarah and Katie eagerly anticipating it after the craziness of New York City’s Chinatown. It turned out to be pretty different—out from the main city, pretty open, and basically just like normal shops and services just smaller, closer together, and oriental. It was still fun, though, and I landed some sweet candy, almost bought a cool and different-looking button up shirt, and….got an avocado smoothie. Yes. Avocado, soy milk, ice, and something probably like cane syrup. I had no idea what to expect, dude, but I watched him make it, so I knew there was indeed avocado (frozen, I think) in it. It was light green, creamy and icy, and ended up tasting creamy and nutty like almonds. Every once an awhile my brain would connect that flavor with avocado, but in general it tasted like something totally different. It entertained me all the way back to downtown, and I’m very glad I got it. I’ll have to try making one at home :-)
At this point in the day we were all footsore and Nate wanted to go sit down somewhere. So we went to a big Border’s bookstore where we stayed for a couple hours while it got dark and rained out in the wide streets and concrete sidewalks. Chicago in my mind right now is basically big streets full of trigger-happy honkers who push red lights like nobody’s business, big cool-looking buildings towering over you, nice sidewalks (with the occasional potent whiff of the Chicago Sewer System), and a staggering plethora of shwanky places of business. Patrons of such businesses fill the sidewalks and drive fittingly swanky cars, and live in the unimaginably expensive (and sweet) apartments filling the city. There are just tons and tons of businesses, from little hole-in-the-wall places like our lunch spots to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and even swankier places with BMW 7-series coupes (yes, coupe!!) parked outside. It’s very cool, and I wish my knees and hips didn’t complain so much as I walked around. But whatever.
After party peanuts and candy corn (they taste like a Baby Ruth together!) in Border’s we finally got ourselves up and out and walking sorta toward an Irish pub, or anything that appeared warm and welcoming. Cosi’s (pronounced cozy’s) fit the bill, and we had an eminently enjoyable dinner there. After eating and sitting around lazily for a long time we walked down to the river and enjoyed a way cool nook with a Vietnam War memorial fountain—one of my favorite spots in Chi-town so far. Then to the hotel for some fierce rounds of Egyptian rat slap in Nate’s and my room, some sitting around vacant-eyed, and some talking about plans for tomorrow. Now Nate has hit the sack, I did the best 30 minutes of exercising I could in the hotel room without weights (and without killing my already pitiful leg joints), and now I’ve finished this journal (yay!) and I’m listening to Audio Adrenaline. Time to scrub off my poor teeth and hit the floor for some shut-eye.
This is a fun trip. Lots of walking, and it’s not like non-stop bowl you over incredible fun, but there are many moments of experiencing the “cityness” of this giant city, and that is a shy and magnificent concept that is very intriguing to explore and touch. I pray my legs hold out OK tomorrow, and that Katie’s sinuses clear up, and that it doesn’t rain, and that we are led to great things to do and see. Who would have thought 6 years ago that I’d be independent in downtown Chicago with the awesome Calano girls and some college guy?! [I didn’t know Nate 6 years ago] Crazy the things that happen in life :-)
9/23/06
I realized at one point tonight that we haven’t done anything this entire trip besides eating, sleeping and riding that costs money. That makes for a pretty sweet trip, in a different sort of way. One could look at us sitting in bookstores, walking around streets and wandering through little parks and say we’re having a pretty lame time, but it’s been extremely low-stress, and as I was walking back to the hotel this afternoon seeing, hearing, feeling and smelling the city around me I enjoyed the sense of this metropolis that has soaked into me over the past days. The ground shook and my ears cringed as a lumbering El train rolled through overhead, I twisted to make room for two passing guys wearing “De Paul” hoodies, another Baskin Robbins/Dunkin’ Doughnuts peered at me across the corner around a support pillar, and a dirty, wet, rusty brown and red alley swung by between buildings vaulting over my head as I walked down the sidewalk under the ancient rusting tracks of the brown line. Chicago surrounded me, and I felt like I was in a movie.
Tonight we went to Navy Pier—voted the best attraction in all of Chicago, glittering with amusement park rides, variegated restaurants, the crystal garden and shwanky events—and we spent all our time there sitting at the end of the pier taking pictures and looking at the city spread before us while the storm clouds rolled out to the east leaving broken white and glowing yellow behind the city as the sun, hidden for the day, made its way down to the earth. Suited shwankies, Hollistered preppies and camerad tourists walked down the length of the pier, the lights of the city sparkled and glinted more piercingly in the graying light, and the water kept its ceaseless lapping and rippling—a quivering mirror at the feet of the gathered stalks and blocks of buildings. The Chicago skyline is very majestic looking, and I keep thinking of a powerful person laying on the land, resting his elbows on the shore of the lake, reclining on the land but ready to jerk his head up and go into action. I delighted myself for a long time taking long exposure shots of the city as the sky settled into its pinkish glow and the water glimmered a rich blue. I haven’t yet thought out why taking pictures is so thrilling, but it made that time out in front of the city many times better for me, particularly because I got to use Nate’s pro camera and use up to 15-second exposures. It was a great time, and the pictures capture the lights and glows stunningly.
We did a lot more walking today, and my hips kept grinding away like they were bone on bone. Stupid legs. Nate’s feet were sore too. We headed south in the morning, down to Grant Park, the Buckingham Fountain, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography—something Nate was interested in seeing. The tops of the tall buildings faded into the high grey clouds and the wind blew, but it wasn’t chilling, and the grey wasn’t depressing. The museum didn’t open till noon so we killed 40 minutes around the Buckingham Fountain and a nearby rose garden. We took some quality pictures around there, and saw a flock of tourists on those freaky two-wheeled personal transport thingeys that came out a couple years ago. They looked…quite funny :-) The trees around the park had borne fruit, and a cherry battle ensued, lasting until the crosswalk that took us away from the vegetation. The tall buildings loomed far off to our right, and I especially enjoyed looking at the one under construction, with the crane perched atop it crossing the sky, the spikey unfinished floors at the top, and the taken-for-granted slickness of the finished lower portions.
The Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP) was a nice place to be for awhile—inside, interesting, and intended for what we were doing in it. There were a couple interesting collections, and a couple that frustrated me with their utter normalcy, and over all it was a fine place, and I enjoyed getting to sit on the benches for awhile.
Coming out of the museum we headed for lunch, steered to “The Tamarind” by the girl at the museum. “The Tamarind” is “an eclectic Asian restaurant,” and it lived up to its name. And, it was swanky :-) The lunch specials were $9, which we considered a good deal compared to the $31 entrees. I got Vietnamese squid lemongrass, Katie got Japanese pancakes, Sarah got vegetable sushi (oh, the travesty!), and Nate got this awesome red curry shrimp with coconut sauce. From my first bite of tender field greens with perfect miso dressing I knew that this was a good place, and the rest of the meal proved to be delicious and of the highest quality. I really enjoyed everything, and by the end of what had appeared to be a boring plate of brown sauce, zucchini, tomatoes and unendingly chewable squid, I had grown quite attached to the perfect flavors and textures. You got your nine bucks worth, but I’m also quite happy at Mr. Johnny’s grill with a monstrous beef sandwich and a Mountain Dew. Mostly, I’m just quite happy :-)
We lounged at our window table for a long time waiting the rain out, which had finally descended in a Pittsburgh-like shower. It was a relaxing place to sit in, and I enjoyed the finery of it, knowing that everything was good quality, even down to the sleek faucets in the men’s room. When the rain let up we walked to what Google Earth listed as a giant music store where we could try out guitars and all kinds of cool stuff. It turned out to be a Barnes and Noble (had been for 2 years), so we split up—Nate heading back to the hotel for a nap, Sarah and Katie doing some shopping, and me free in Chicago with money, time, a map, and a desire to experience where I was. So…I read Calvin and Hobbes, bought some WHITE CHEDDAR Oke Doke (omg!), stopped at a Walgreens and got a Cherry-vanilla Dr.Pepper, and walked down, unwittingly, to the Sears Tower. It was sort of strange carrying this 99 cent bag of popcorn and bottle of pop with no bag or anything, not really sure where I was headed or what I wanted to do, but I rolled with it, and much enjoyed the views of the titanic Sears Tower as I approached it. It was great to sit on a bench by a fountain across from it, lay back, and just soak in its massiveness. Then I walked back to the hotel on a street that had an El line running above it, which I wrote about above. That walk was really sweet—one of the things that sticks in my head from the day.
After some down time at the hotel we headed out again, into the pelting rain, seeking Navy Pier and eventually dinner. The pier was sweet, though we did little of the normal activities there besides buying some candied almonds and a bracelet, and we ended up toughing it out dinnerless till we got back around the hotel area. Which, I realized, is pretty much the coolest place in downtown Chicago. Whereas the other posh hotels are bland highrise buildings amongst bland highrise buildings, The Ohio House sits across from a “Mega Donalds” (2-story McDonalds with a whole loungey thingey upstairs and gelatos and espresso drinks and cool crazy glass walls), several mid to upper range restaurants, and the sweet place where we ate dinner. It looked like just another restaurant from outside (reSHTaurant, as Sarah would say), but inside it was like a courtyard or something, with a second floor mezzanine and four or five food places. Man, it was like being outside, except you were inside! I really enjoyed dinner there, and I got another Italian beef sandwich (a Chicago standard), which was eminently enjoyable, if not as bursting-with-flavor as yesterday’s. I loved the feel ofthat place—around the crazy McDonalds and other lower buildings that gave you a sense of space, college students in and out, and that cool feeling of an interior made to be like outdoors.
That would have been a pretty nice way to cap off the day, but after Katie finished her fish sandwich we crossed over to the McD’s and lounged up there for several hours, eating ice-cream, sitting in deep comfort in deep comfortable chairs, and playing cards. It was the perfect place to be that night, and I just soaked in the pleasure of being there, in such a cool-looking building…that was a McDONALDS, for crying out loud, and was in CHICAGO! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Plus, I beat Katie in rat slap (after the epic game of “Up the creek down the creek”) by slapping a pair of jacks at the bitter end. Oh the glory!
So, I feel very blessed by God as I ruminate on the day’s experiences and let the writing settle them into my memory and percolate their pleasures deep down inside. I feel like I’ve gotten to see this city, which is an elusive thing, and the four of us have been able to abide together, enjoy our company, and chill.
Pleasant dreams! The city lives around me in the mysterious intrigue of night, and I lay on the floor happy, comfortable, fuzzily tired, and knowing there’s more to come tomorrow.
9/24/06
Sunday; last day in Chicago. I’m writing this journal on Tuesday because I didn’t/couldn’t take the time to write it Sunday or Monday nights. I don’t have time to write it now, but I am. It’s a good time to summarize the day and then step back and look at the trip and see what it was all about.
Sunday was a great day. As Nate said later, the trip seemed to build up and get better and better as it went on. The clouds finally broke, and though the temperature was a bit chilly, the blue skies were well worth it. I had my last apple juice-pop tart-Kashi bar breakfast and met up with everybody at 9:30. Millennium Park was the morning’s destination, having been highly and repeatedly recommended to us. I wasn’t expecting much—I mean, a pavilion, some shiny “bean” thing…big deal. But parks are nice to walk around in, you get a sweet view of the city from the lake shore, and we were carrying along a Frisbee :-) As it turns out, Millennium Park was one of the best parts of the whole weekend. We cut over east to the lake front and walked down the bike/walking trail there past a forest of boats and a jungle of highways till we reached the park. We walked through some closed garden thingeys and got to the pavilion, whereupon I proceeded to be in awe, and run out for a long pass. It was basically a huge grass field with a stage at one end and giant poles crisscrossing it like a sparse ceiling, from which speakers hung on cables. It was unexpectedly awesome—such a big expanse of verdant grass, with the majestic city behind it and these sweeping, soaring lines of grey pipe swooping high overhead, making you feel like you were inside, but not at all separated from the outside. We tossed around the disc for probably half an hour, and that whole time I just soaked in the amazingness of my surroundings. I didn’t want to leave, but it turns out there was more to come, with the much-touted “BEAN.”
The bean is pretty much that—a huge (~20 ft. long) jelly-bean-shaped shiny chrome blob set in the middle of a big patio area under the gaze of the city, with the gardens and landscape of Millennium Park in the foreground. In this world you never something that big and that perfectly shiny, so it immediately grabbed my attention as we walked towards it. We spent another 30 minutes or so basically walking around and under it, marveling, gaping at and laughing at the reflections we saw. On the concave exterior it’s like a real-life moving version of those “bubble” camera shots, with the city bulging and sweeping in a panorama wider than you could see with your eyes. Underneath the bean was a very very clever depression that led to a kaleidoscope of repeated reflections that left you squinting and trying to guess where you were in what you were seeing. We took a bunch of pictures leaning against it, looking at ourselves in it, and—in my case—jumping up against it. Probably you’ll just have to go there to understand how cool it was. Pretty much one of the most entrancing, delightful and wildly unusual things I’ve ever seen in my life.
The last things we saw at MP were these crazy video fountain things and some cool displays about cutting edge gardens around the world. I was surprised and very happy that people had come up with such truly stunning and magnificent things in this day and age—magnificent in their very design, not because of some gadget. Kind of seemed like a modern day pyramid or something—something grand and cool to look at, that sticks out in the world. I was happy for my species :-)
Around noon we had to head back to the hotel to check out. Another walk through the Chicago streets with my grinding leg joints and the typical chatter of comments on what was around us and various references to running jokes. It’s funny—looking back it feels like all our times walking around and touring stuff were comedy acts or something…most things we said ended up in a joke or a funny comment of some kind, especially on my part. In that respect it was a very unusual time, ‘cause usually I go about my days by myself or with family, where it’s more down to earth communication. I kinda wonder if I got really annoying like I was always fishing for laughs, always keeping a running commentary on the world as it passed before us. But I was aware of that danger as we went along, and tried not to blabber or joke around beyond what was natural to do and what seemed actually funny. Probably there was some of both, but hopefully I was enjoyable company, and I hope I wasn’t an annoyance to Sarah, Nate and Katie. I do know that there were a lot of funny jokes that came up, like Sarah shtrolling down the shtreet looking for a reshtaurant, and just in general being wrong in everything she said and did (versus me, of course), and me getting excited about cranes and second levels and Walgreens, and Katie struggling with her suitcases (ahh, Woody!), and Nate…just being Nate :-P I surprised myself with an ability to pick up a running joke on the fly and tie it into a string of conversation unexpectedly. I hope the other guys enjoyed those as much as I did. They laughed a lot, so I think there's a good chance. It's funny - we didn’t ever specifically talk about *spiritual stuff* like quiet times or something, but I don’t think we were shunning God from our conversation. I look back and see us pretty much reveling in the pure joy of God’s bounty and blessing and goodness in a really cool and extraordinary place. Like happy children running around the bins and shelves in God’s candy store (something everybody probably would have laughed at if I would have said it walking down the streets sometime). There is a depth and purity and peace of joy that we are able to experience as fellow Christians that I think blows away most of the happiness in a life without God, and that I’m very grateful for. This was a time of that, in a big ol’ heaping American-sized portion :-)
Back to the hotel. We checked out and left all our stuff except Nate’s work laptop in lobby by the front desk, which was in its own sweet little building outside the hotel. Then we set off again, free till six for our last explorations of Chi-town. I forget where exactly we were headed…I think roughly to the Sears Tower, but we were looking for a good lunch place, and ended up at Miller’s Pub and Restaurant, which furnished the third highlight of the day. For, you see, till now we hadn’t heard a single Chicago accent, and deep down that left a little empty hole in our city experience…a hole that was filled as soon as our waitress walked up and welcomed us. She was a good ol’ Chicago lady and she took good care of us, helping us out as we looked through the huge and appetizing menu (which ended up making things harder ‘cause there we just MORE things that sounded good that we wanted to get!), makin’ us some good salads, and workin’ things out with her boys in the kitchen :-) So we sat in our booth, ate big heaping portions of great American food, and watched Da Bearssss play on TV…a consummate Chicago experience. I even got Goose Island Honker’s Ale, a good local brew. That was a really nice time, and I’m so glad God led us to that restaurant. It was the perfect spot.
After lunch we spent some time in the blocks around the Sears Tower. Nate and I didn’t end up going up the tower, seeing as there was a 45-minute line and it cost $12, but I nevertheless got SEARS TOWER MINTS!!!! at the gift shop, and we had ample time to soak in its powerful immensity. Nate and I got some Starbucks which was delicious, Sarah and Katie took some phone calls, and I took hundreds of pictures with Nate’s camera. Heheh. He probably regretted it, but Nate Dawg Cold Six-Packs To Go asked me if I’d carry his camera for the day and I greedily assented. I could take pictures all day, especially with a pro-quality camera like Nate’s. Every angle looking down a street, every spot of glowing sunlight, every dizzying vista of towering buildings, every view and every angle had the potential to look awesome on screen. Having that camera was seriously one of the highlights of that day for me, since through it I got to vigorously experience and preserve the day and all the wondrous stuff around me. Nate’s gonna burn me a DVD of the pics, and I can’t wait to shuffle through them and find the outstanding ones, the ones that capture what we saw and how beautiful it was. Yay cameras!
That’s pretty much what we did for the afternoon – hung around the Sears tower and walked back to the hotel. The blue skies and sunshine uplifted the whole day, and I think all of us got on the outbound El feeling fully satisfied with our experience of the city. Nate agreed with me as we talked on the plane flight (in between throwing things at Sarah across the aisle): there was nothing we could think of that we wished we’d done, or that was left incomplete or missing. Another few days would have been fun, but not that much more so, and we were starting to get pretty tired (everybody but me). Even the El ride out to Midway and the time in the airport eating dinner were very pleasant (The El ride was actually stunning—we got to watch the sun set over the city, stretching before us in the glowing light like a scene from Star Wars). I remember sitting at the table eating Chinese and joking around, feeling a totally peaceful post-caffeine comfortable laid-backness, feeling Chicago around me and leaning back comfortably into the couch of the three personalities in front of me.
And that’s pretty much the trip there. We flew back, hefted our bags out to our cars in extended parking, and bid each other farewell under the night sky. I drove back home and pounded Switchfoot through the subwoofer, something I’d been looking forward to for the past 3 days. I left the window open all the way, abiding in the rush of cool air, not wanting to shut myself in to the car and end the trip. I didn’t feel sad as I shifted down the familiar streets, back in Pittsburgh again, I just sat back and let the subs pound the music into my body, basking in the fresh memories of a trip without blemish, thinking in the new mindset that now contained memories unlike any before. I think of this trip and I just think of me, Nate, Sarah and Katie lounging in the big comfy chairs up in the shwanky cool McDonald’s, looking out the glass walls at the streets and buildings and people, in the middle of the huge city as it lived on in the night, and we were part of that life.
It was a good trip :-) Unique in my experience. Old friends in a totally different setting. Mild and rich, like the latte I had this afternoon. Thank you God for such a kind kind blessing on your little children!
--Clear Ambassador
Oh oh oh!! I have a bunch of cell phone pictures too, which I took partially with the goal of including them in this blog. I'll do all I can to get them in here soon, and that should be SWEET.
9/21/06
So, today started out at home, sleeping in comfortably till 9:30, eating the heartiest breakfast in recent Johnian history (courtesy of the amazing Mrs. Behrens), and driving the van over to mow Complete Fitness at 10:30. What is normally a long mow became interminable, and at last, out of gas and out of trimmer line, and way out of time, I had to leave with edges still untrimmed, and basically no time to pack. But shower and pack I did, in a diligent frenzy. Katie and Sarah arrived as I was finishing, and we headed out in the Mazda not too long after our DDT* of 1:30. To the airport we drove, listening to Jars’ new album with the sweet sweet subwoofer. The flight and all went hitchlessly, except for one WOEFUL incident. Man! It’s yes, funny, but also it was really a downer. Probably a downer and a half. I had purchased a Dr.Pepper while waiting at the gate, and it had reached that perfect state of coldness and just the right amount of carbonation. It was not quite half finished, and I was enjoying it immensely. Then the dude at the end of the jetway said they wouldn’t let me take it on the plane, even though I’d bought it AFTER SECURITY inside the terminal!! So I had to give him that perfect, perfect Dr.Pepper and walk away with this literal hole in my mind and stomach where it should have been. Man, I kid you not, it was rough. But, they had Dr.P on the flight (bless you Southwest Airlines!!), so that about 85% made up for it. Arg.
So, we got to Chicago after a very short flight, got our bags, and headed for the CTA, or “El”—the train/subway system which would take us to the grand and glorious “Ohio House” hotel, our cheapest-of-the-cheap residence for the next 3 nights. The ride was good, and felt very city-like and American, as we clacked through Chicago’s odd juxtaposition of residential and industrial buildings. The big factories and warehouses and train yards and mysterious back lots and rusty equipment have always intrigued me, and riding the train was a good way to see a lot of that.
We had a bit of a walk once we got off at Grand Street, and after working out hard the day before and mowing and trimming Complete, my arms were in quite a tizzy. But I made it, and the Ohio House turned out to be a very competent, and even pleasant, cheap hotel. After getting settled in our respective rooms, Sarah, Katie and I walked about for awhile, marveling at the number of expensive restaurants around. We stopped at an Eckerd and I got some breakfasty food, and a little later we swung into a White Hen pantry, where I found WINTERGREEN SUGAR-FREE ALTOIDS!! Pretty much one of the best mints I could possibly come across. Man, the joys of a mint collection! And they’re really good, too—not so strong they burn craters in your tongue like the peppermint ones. Happy happy!
Nate Dogg Cold Six Packs To Go called to let us know he was close to the hotel (he had to get a later flight ‘cause of a meeting he was at in Philly), so we hoofed it back, got him settled in the room, and headed out to forage for dinner. We foraged our way to the ORIGINAL Unos Pizzeria, where we waited for a good while and ended up ploughing through copiously-cheesed deep-dish Chicago pizza, talking, laughing, and banging knees across the very narrow booth. It was a cool place, and the pizza was good, though my richness tolerance was soon being pushed. The Code Red Mt. Dew was great, though, and left me high (and probably really irritating) for the rest of the night.
Which we spent walking down to the lake and then wandering around SSCCCHwanky areas of downtown. SSCCCHwanky here representing Sarah’s gratuitiously-Pittsburghian pronunciation of “swanky.” The lake was cool and we walked through this awesome little park with a panoramic view of the lit-up city from a square of perfect green grass with the lake to our backs and the wind blowing at us. Then as we walked down a street inland, I took us up this stairway, thinking it would be a cool little patio thing to walk on for a bit before going back down to the ground. But it turned out that THAT was the level that the city was on! I could hardly believe it, and we spent a lot of time walking around exploring it, but a whole ton of the city around the lakefront and river is actually two levels. The lower one seems to be mostly roads and parking garages, and then the upper level, very much of which is just concrete on steel pillars, is where everybody walks and shops and drives on 8-lane roads stretching for miles. I just couldn’t believe how amazing that was (and probably tired everyone with my attempts to grapple with it)—that this whole world was elevated, that there was all this mysterious stuff beneath us, and that it had all been constructed, at who knows what cost. It’s hard to describe, but something about that removal from the pedestrian and predictable constraints of normal ground-based areas was very very intriguing, and ineffably tantalizing. I love cities for that reason, and this night, as we wandered around the levels and random nooks, fountains, benches and walkways, provided ample material for wonderment and joy. Oh, and it was AMAZING. At one point we were walking along, approaching this big crowd of people outside some restaurant. This car was parked in a little driveway sorta thing, and as we walked around it I saw the little “B” indicating that it was a Bentley…probably a two hundred thousand dollar car. Two spots down on the curb was a Ferrari, and behind that was a Porsche sport ute. We walked through the crowd, which consisted of very fine-looking folks and security people. The restaurant looked packed and very SCCHHWanky, and I marveled that we had just walked through the kind of high-brow uber-sophisticated life that you read about in magazines or see in movies. Later on we saw a tiny, wide, low Ferrari convertible glide past, circle around, and park outside a small Italian restaurant, yet another moment of the rich rich rich life happening before our eyes. I found that really cool, and I can’t quite explain why, but I loved it. It was basically an amazing time walking around, and it was almost hard because I couldn’t take it all in, and I couldn’t express or figure out why it was so titillating. But it was sweet.
At last we made it back to the hotel, and my knees were yelling pain profanities at me, so I was very glad to hit the room and get off my feet. Now I’ve finished this journal, Nate Dogg Cold Six Packs To Go is trying to sleep, and I’m jacked on Mountain Dew and Jelly Bellies and ready to watch some Strong Bad emails and Simpsons.
Woohoo!
We’re in Chicago!
*Desired Departure Time
9/22/06
Katie’s highlight was pretty much “hangin’ out with yinz guys and walking around,” which pretty much describes our day. Nate’s and Sarah’s was the walk along the lakefront in the morning, on the way to the zoo. It wasn’t a beach, it wasn’t a dock, it was just…a waterfront. A breakwater, sortof. With the big gray-blue lake on the right and the city stretching out and up to the right. Chicago has tons of apartment buildings, vs. Pittsburgh which has basically none, and that gives the downtown a different and interesting look. My highlight was knocking on the docent office door and having Grandma Kari open it! But a few minutes later I changed it to watching the gibbons swinging outside the small primates house, with long strong arms and legs, constant rolling falls and swings lacing them around the ropes and branches and cage bars. Man, it was mesmerizing (and really made me want to be a monkey). Finally, I figured that the Molé sandwich at Cosi’s for dinner was quite possibly my true highlight of the day. I just sat there in amazement trying to take in how good this food was inside my mouth. That place was way cool—very slick (“shwanky”), but not expensive, and very pleasant to be in. Egyptian rat slap while we waited for our food was sweet, too.
Sooo….what details should I fill in? I dunno. I got up at 8:33 after 3.5 snoozes, showered, and met up with the rest of the crew to hit the day. We hit Lincoln Park Zoo first, getting to walk around for awhile with Grandma and Aunt Princess, which was quite pleasantly unusual, thrown in the middle of our trip. We also walked through the conservatory, which was packed with interesting greenery (though not as cool or big as Phipps. Hah!). It was a long walk up to the LPZ area, so we were all down with idea of taking the El back to the hotel area (“The loop”). Riding the El is cool—the trains are pretty old and SO loud! You can hardly believe the roar and clatter as it crescendos in the subway tunnels. I always feel like I’m in Spiderman or something when we’re on them :-) Once back in our “home base” area we toodled around for a lunch place, and I steered us to this cool old semi-ratty Food Network-type place where we got delicious and HUGE Philly steak-type sandwiches. It was a great Chicagoey place, and was another high point of the day for me.
We decided to hit Chinatown for the second half of the day, Sarah and Katie eagerly anticipating it after the craziness of New York City’s Chinatown. It turned out to be pretty different—out from the main city, pretty open, and basically just like normal shops and services just smaller, closer together, and oriental. It was still fun, though, and I landed some sweet candy, almost bought a cool and different-looking button up shirt, and….got an avocado smoothie. Yes. Avocado, soy milk, ice, and something probably like cane syrup. I had no idea what to expect, dude, but I watched him make it, so I knew there was indeed avocado (frozen, I think) in it. It was light green, creamy and icy, and ended up tasting creamy and nutty like almonds. Every once an awhile my brain would connect that flavor with avocado, but in general it tasted like something totally different. It entertained me all the way back to downtown, and I’m very glad I got it. I’ll have to try making one at home :-)
At this point in the day we were all footsore and Nate wanted to go sit down somewhere. So we went to a big Border’s bookstore where we stayed for a couple hours while it got dark and rained out in the wide streets and concrete sidewalks. Chicago in my mind right now is basically big streets full of trigger-happy honkers who push red lights like nobody’s business, big cool-looking buildings towering over you, nice sidewalks (with the occasional potent whiff of the Chicago Sewer System), and a staggering plethora of shwanky places of business. Patrons of such businesses fill the sidewalks and drive fittingly swanky cars, and live in the unimaginably expensive (and sweet) apartments filling the city. There are just tons and tons of businesses, from little hole-in-the-wall places like our lunch spots to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and even swankier places with BMW 7-series coupes (yes, coupe!!) parked outside. It’s very cool, and I wish my knees and hips didn’t complain so much as I walked around. But whatever.
After party peanuts and candy corn (they taste like a Baby Ruth together!) in Border’s we finally got ourselves up and out and walking sorta toward an Irish pub, or anything that appeared warm and welcoming. Cosi’s (pronounced cozy’s) fit the bill, and we had an eminently enjoyable dinner there. After eating and sitting around lazily for a long time we walked down to the river and enjoyed a way cool nook with a Vietnam War memorial fountain—one of my favorite spots in Chi-town so far. Then to the hotel for some fierce rounds of Egyptian rat slap in Nate’s and my room, some sitting around vacant-eyed, and some talking about plans for tomorrow. Now Nate has hit the sack, I did the best 30 minutes of exercising I could in the hotel room without weights (and without killing my already pitiful leg joints), and now I’ve finished this journal (yay!) and I’m listening to Audio Adrenaline. Time to scrub off my poor teeth and hit the floor for some shut-eye.
This is a fun trip. Lots of walking, and it’s not like non-stop bowl you over incredible fun, but there are many moments of experiencing the “cityness” of this giant city, and that is a shy and magnificent concept that is very intriguing to explore and touch. I pray my legs hold out OK tomorrow, and that Katie’s sinuses clear up, and that it doesn’t rain, and that we are led to great things to do and see. Who would have thought 6 years ago that I’d be independent in downtown Chicago with the awesome Calano girls and some college guy?! [I didn’t know Nate 6 years ago] Crazy the things that happen in life :-)
9/23/06
I realized at one point tonight that we haven’t done anything this entire trip besides eating, sleeping and riding that costs money. That makes for a pretty sweet trip, in a different sort of way. One could look at us sitting in bookstores, walking around streets and wandering through little parks and say we’re having a pretty lame time, but it’s been extremely low-stress, and as I was walking back to the hotel this afternoon seeing, hearing, feeling and smelling the city around me I enjoyed the sense of this metropolis that has soaked into me over the past days. The ground shook and my ears cringed as a lumbering El train rolled through overhead, I twisted to make room for two passing guys wearing “De Paul” hoodies, another Baskin Robbins/Dunkin’ Doughnuts peered at me across the corner around a support pillar, and a dirty, wet, rusty brown and red alley swung by between buildings vaulting over my head as I walked down the sidewalk under the ancient rusting tracks of the brown line. Chicago surrounded me, and I felt like I was in a movie.
Tonight we went to Navy Pier—voted the best attraction in all of Chicago, glittering with amusement park rides, variegated restaurants, the crystal garden and shwanky events—and we spent all our time there sitting at the end of the pier taking pictures and looking at the city spread before us while the storm clouds rolled out to the east leaving broken white and glowing yellow behind the city as the sun, hidden for the day, made its way down to the earth. Suited shwankies, Hollistered preppies and camerad tourists walked down the length of the pier, the lights of the city sparkled and glinted more piercingly in the graying light, and the water kept its ceaseless lapping and rippling—a quivering mirror at the feet of the gathered stalks and blocks of buildings. The Chicago skyline is very majestic looking, and I keep thinking of a powerful person laying on the land, resting his elbows on the shore of the lake, reclining on the land but ready to jerk his head up and go into action. I delighted myself for a long time taking long exposure shots of the city as the sky settled into its pinkish glow and the water glimmered a rich blue. I haven’t yet thought out why taking pictures is so thrilling, but it made that time out in front of the city many times better for me, particularly because I got to use Nate’s pro camera and use up to 15-second exposures. It was a great time, and the pictures capture the lights and glows stunningly.
We did a lot more walking today, and my hips kept grinding away like they were bone on bone. Stupid legs. Nate’s feet were sore too. We headed south in the morning, down to Grant Park, the Buckingham Fountain, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography—something Nate was interested in seeing. The tops of the tall buildings faded into the high grey clouds and the wind blew, but it wasn’t chilling, and the grey wasn’t depressing. The museum didn’t open till noon so we killed 40 minutes around the Buckingham Fountain and a nearby rose garden. We took some quality pictures around there, and saw a flock of tourists on those freaky two-wheeled personal transport thingeys that came out a couple years ago. They looked…quite funny :-) The trees around the park had borne fruit, and a cherry battle ensued, lasting until the crosswalk that took us away from the vegetation. The tall buildings loomed far off to our right, and I especially enjoyed looking at the one under construction, with the crane perched atop it crossing the sky, the spikey unfinished floors at the top, and the taken-for-granted slickness of the finished lower portions.
The Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP) was a nice place to be for awhile—inside, interesting, and intended for what we were doing in it. There were a couple interesting collections, and a couple that frustrated me with their utter normalcy, and over all it was a fine place, and I enjoyed getting to sit on the benches for awhile.
Coming out of the museum we headed for lunch, steered to “The Tamarind” by the girl at the museum. “The Tamarind” is “an eclectic Asian restaurant,” and it lived up to its name. And, it was swanky :-) The lunch specials were $9, which we considered a good deal compared to the $31 entrees. I got Vietnamese squid lemongrass, Katie got Japanese pancakes, Sarah got vegetable sushi (oh, the travesty!), and Nate got this awesome red curry shrimp with coconut sauce. From my first bite of tender field greens with perfect miso dressing I knew that this was a good place, and the rest of the meal proved to be delicious and of the highest quality. I really enjoyed everything, and by the end of what had appeared to be a boring plate of brown sauce, zucchini, tomatoes and unendingly chewable squid, I had grown quite attached to the perfect flavors and textures. You got your nine bucks worth, but I’m also quite happy at Mr. Johnny’s grill with a monstrous beef sandwich and a Mountain Dew. Mostly, I’m just quite happy :-)
We lounged at our window table for a long time waiting the rain out, which had finally descended in a Pittsburgh-like shower. It was a relaxing place to sit in, and I enjoyed the finery of it, knowing that everything was good quality, even down to the sleek faucets in the men’s room. When the rain let up we walked to what Google Earth listed as a giant music store where we could try out guitars and all kinds of cool stuff. It turned out to be a Barnes and Noble (had been for 2 years), so we split up—Nate heading back to the hotel for a nap, Sarah and Katie doing some shopping, and me free in Chicago with money, time, a map, and a desire to experience where I was. So…I read Calvin and Hobbes, bought some WHITE CHEDDAR Oke Doke (omg!), stopped at a Walgreens and got a Cherry-vanilla Dr.Pepper, and walked down, unwittingly, to the Sears Tower. It was sort of strange carrying this 99 cent bag of popcorn and bottle of pop with no bag or anything, not really sure where I was headed or what I wanted to do, but I rolled with it, and much enjoyed the views of the titanic Sears Tower as I approached it. It was great to sit on a bench by a fountain across from it, lay back, and just soak in its massiveness. Then I walked back to the hotel on a street that had an El line running above it, which I wrote about above. That walk was really sweet—one of the things that sticks in my head from the day.
After some down time at the hotel we headed out again, into the pelting rain, seeking Navy Pier and eventually dinner. The pier was sweet, though we did little of the normal activities there besides buying some candied almonds and a bracelet, and we ended up toughing it out dinnerless till we got back around the hotel area. Which, I realized, is pretty much the coolest place in downtown Chicago. Whereas the other posh hotels are bland highrise buildings amongst bland highrise buildings, The Ohio House sits across from a “Mega Donalds” (2-story McDonalds with a whole loungey thingey upstairs and gelatos and espresso drinks and cool crazy glass walls), several mid to upper range restaurants, and the sweet place where we ate dinner. It looked like just another restaurant from outside (reSHTaurant, as Sarah would say), but inside it was like a courtyard or something, with a second floor mezzanine and four or five food places. Man, it was like being outside, except you were inside! I really enjoyed dinner there, and I got another Italian beef sandwich (a Chicago standard), which was eminently enjoyable, if not as bursting-with-flavor as yesterday’s. I loved the feel ofthat place—around the crazy McDonalds and other lower buildings that gave you a sense of space, college students in and out, and that cool feeling of an interior made to be like outdoors.
That would have been a pretty nice way to cap off the day, but after Katie finished her fish sandwich we crossed over to the McD’s and lounged up there for several hours, eating ice-cream, sitting in deep comfort in deep comfortable chairs, and playing cards. It was the perfect place to be that night, and I just soaked in the pleasure of being there, in such a cool-looking building…that was a McDONALDS, for crying out loud, and was in CHICAGO! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Plus, I beat Katie in rat slap (after the epic game of “Up the creek down the creek”) by slapping a pair of jacks at the bitter end. Oh the glory!
So, I feel very blessed by God as I ruminate on the day’s experiences and let the writing settle them into my memory and percolate their pleasures deep down inside. I feel like I’ve gotten to see this city, which is an elusive thing, and the four of us have been able to abide together, enjoy our company, and chill.
Pleasant dreams! The city lives around me in the mysterious intrigue of night, and I lay on the floor happy, comfortable, fuzzily tired, and knowing there’s more to come tomorrow.
9/24/06
Sunday; last day in Chicago. I’m writing this journal on Tuesday because I didn’t/couldn’t take the time to write it Sunday or Monday nights. I don’t have time to write it now, but I am. It’s a good time to summarize the day and then step back and look at the trip and see what it was all about.
Sunday was a great day. As Nate said later, the trip seemed to build up and get better and better as it went on. The clouds finally broke, and though the temperature was a bit chilly, the blue skies were well worth it. I had my last apple juice-pop tart-Kashi bar breakfast and met up with everybody at 9:30. Millennium Park was the morning’s destination, having been highly and repeatedly recommended to us. I wasn’t expecting much—I mean, a pavilion, some shiny “bean” thing…big deal. But parks are nice to walk around in, you get a sweet view of the city from the lake shore, and we were carrying along a Frisbee :-) As it turns out, Millennium Park was one of the best parts of the whole weekend. We cut over east to the lake front and walked down the bike/walking trail there past a forest of boats and a jungle of highways till we reached the park. We walked through some closed garden thingeys and got to the pavilion, whereupon I proceeded to be in awe, and run out for a long pass. It was basically a huge grass field with a stage at one end and giant poles crisscrossing it like a sparse ceiling, from which speakers hung on cables. It was unexpectedly awesome—such a big expanse of verdant grass, with the majestic city behind it and these sweeping, soaring lines of grey pipe swooping high overhead, making you feel like you were inside, but not at all separated from the outside. We tossed around the disc for probably half an hour, and that whole time I just soaked in the amazingness of my surroundings. I didn’t want to leave, but it turns out there was more to come, with the much-touted “BEAN.”
The bean is pretty much that—a huge (~20 ft. long) jelly-bean-shaped shiny chrome blob set in the middle of a big patio area under the gaze of the city, with the gardens and landscape of Millennium Park in the foreground. In this world you never something that big and that perfectly shiny, so it immediately grabbed my attention as we walked towards it. We spent another 30 minutes or so basically walking around and under it, marveling, gaping at and laughing at the reflections we saw. On the concave exterior it’s like a real-life moving version of those “bubble” camera shots, with the city bulging and sweeping in a panorama wider than you could see with your eyes. Underneath the bean was a very very clever depression that led to a kaleidoscope of repeated reflections that left you squinting and trying to guess where you were in what you were seeing. We took a bunch of pictures leaning against it, looking at ourselves in it, and—in my case—jumping up against it. Probably you’ll just have to go there to understand how cool it was. Pretty much one of the most entrancing, delightful and wildly unusual things I’ve ever seen in my life.
The last things we saw at MP were these crazy video fountain things and some cool displays about cutting edge gardens around the world. I was surprised and very happy that people had come up with such truly stunning and magnificent things in this day and age—magnificent in their very design, not because of some gadget. Kind of seemed like a modern day pyramid or something—something grand and cool to look at, that sticks out in the world. I was happy for my species :-)
Around noon we had to head back to the hotel to check out. Another walk through the Chicago streets with my grinding leg joints and the typical chatter of comments on what was around us and various references to running jokes. It’s funny—looking back it feels like all our times walking around and touring stuff were comedy acts or something…most things we said ended up in a joke or a funny comment of some kind, especially on my part. In that respect it was a very unusual time, ‘cause usually I go about my days by myself or with family, where it’s more down to earth communication. I kinda wonder if I got really annoying like I was always fishing for laughs, always keeping a running commentary on the world as it passed before us. But I was aware of that danger as we went along, and tried not to blabber or joke around beyond what was natural to do and what seemed actually funny. Probably there was some of both, but hopefully I was enjoyable company, and I hope I wasn’t an annoyance to Sarah, Nate and Katie. I do know that there were a lot of funny jokes that came up, like Sarah shtrolling down the shtreet looking for a reshtaurant, and just in general being wrong in everything she said and did (versus me, of course), and me getting excited about cranes and second levels and Walgreens, and Katie struggling with her suitcases (ahh, Woody!), and Nate…just being Nate :-P I surprised myself with an ability to pick up a running joke on the fly and tie it into a string of conversation unexpectedly. I hope the other guys enjoyed those as much as I did. They laughed a lot, so I think there's a good chance. It's funny - we didn’t ever specifically talk about *spiritual stuff* like quiet times or something, but I don’t think we were shunning God from our conversation. I look back and see us pretty much reveling in the pure joy of God’s bounty and blessing and goodness in a really cool and extraordinary place. Like happy children running around the bins and shelves in God’s candy store (something everybody probably would have laughed at if I would have said it walking down the streets sometime). There is a depth and purity and peace of joy that we are able to experience as fellow Christians that I think blows away most of the happiness in a life without God, and that I’m very grateful for. This was a time of that, in a big ol’ heaping American-sized portion :-)
Back to the hotel. We checked out and left all our stuff except Nate’s work laptop in lobby by the front desk, which was in its own sweet little building outside the hotel. Then we set off again, free till six for our last explorations of Chi-town. I forget where exactly we were headed…I think roughly to the Sears Tower, but we were looking for a good lunch place, and ended up at Miller’s Pub and Restaurant, which furnished the third highlight of the day. For, you see, till now we hadn’t heard a single Chicago accent, and deep down that left a little empty hole in our city experience…a hole that was filled as soon as our waitress walked up and welcomed us. She was a good ol’ Chicago lady and she took good care of us, helping us out as we looked through the huge and appetizing menu (which ended up making things harder ‘cause there we just MORE things that sounded good that we wanted to get!), makin’ us some good salads, and workin’ things out with her boys in the kitchen :-) So we sat in our booth, ate big heaping portions of great American food, and watched Da Bearssss play on TV…a consummate Chicago experience. I even got Goose Island Honker’s Ale, a good local brew. That was a really nice time, and I’m so glad God led us to that restaurant. It was the perfect spot.
After lunch we spent some time in the blocks around the Sears Tower. Nate and I didn’t end up going up the tower, seeing as there was a 45-minute line and it cost $12, but I nevertheless got SEARS TOWER MINTS!!!! at the gift shop, and we had ample time to soak in its powerful immensity. Nate and I got some Starbucks which was delicious, Sarah and Katie took some phone calls, and I took hundreds of pictures with Nate’s camera. Heheh. He probably regretted it, but Nate Dawg Cold Six-Packs To Go asked me if I’d carry his camera for the day and I greedily assented. I could take pictures all day, especially with a pro-quality camera like Nate’s. Every angle looking down a street, every spot of glowing sunlight, every dizzying vista of towering buildings, every view and every angle had the potential to look awesome on screen. Having that camera was seriously one of the highlights of that day for me, since through it I got to vigorously experience and preserve the day and all the wondrous stuff around me. Nate’s gonna burn me a DVD of the pics, and I can’t wait to shuffle through them and find the outstanding ones, the ones that capture what we saw and how beautiful it was. Yay cameras!
That’s pretty much what we did for the afternoon – hung around the Sears tower and walked back to the hotel. The blue skies and sunshine uplifted the whole day, and I think all of us got on the outbound El feeling fully satisfied with our experience of the city. Nate agreed with me as we talked on the plane flight (in between throwing things at Sarah across the aisle): there was nothing we could think of that we wished we’d done, or that was left incomplete or missing. Another few days would have been fun, but not that much more so, and we were starting to get pretty tired (everybody but me). Even the El ride out to Midway and the time in the airport eating dinner were very pleasant (The El ride was actually stunning—we got to watch the sun set over the city, stretching before us in the glowing light like a scene from Star Wars). I remember sitting at the table eating Chinese and joking around, feeling a totally peaceful post-caffeine comfortable laid-backness, feeling Chicago around me and leaning back comfortably into the couch of the three personalities in front of me.
And that’s pretty much the trip there. We flew back, hefted our bags out to our cars in extended parking, and bid each other farewell under the night sky. I drove back home and pounded Switchfoot through the subwoofer, something I’d been looking forward to for the past 3 days. I left the window open all the way, abiding in the rush of cool air, not wanting to shut myself in to the car and end the trip. I didn’t feel sad as I shifted down the familiar streets, back in Pittsburgh again, I just sat back and let the subs pound the music into my body, basking in the fresh memories of a trip without blemish, thinking in the new mindset that now contained memories unlike any before. I think of this trip and I just think of me, Nate, Sarah and Katie lounging in the big comfy chairs up in the shwanky cool McDonald’s, looking out the glass walls at the streets and buildings and people, in the middle of the huge city as it lived on in the night, and we were part of that life.
It was a good trip :-) Unique in my experience. Old friends in a totally different setting. Mild and rich, like the latte I had this afternoon. Thank you God for such a kind kind blessing on your little children!
--Clear Ambassador
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