So suddenly you realize that a while has passed and that the thousands, trillions of individuals tuned into your blog are on the verge of packing up their attentive baggage and heading to some other rambling waste of literary time.
But wait! I'm here, promise. Things are well, and as often the case I am occupied and content enough not to "need to write". Need or no need, it is time for an update.
1) School rules: As in- school is a blast this semester. I'm scheduled for two classes, Biomechanics and Advanced Dynamics, and the necessary diligence to the subject matter is already beyond last semester's classes. Dynamics is a whole lot of vector calculus with crazy inertial terms thrown in, and Biomechanics is (so far) a crash Anatomy and Physiology course with prosthetics thrown in. Both will require some concentration but I'm eager to do so.
2) Independent Study: I am approved and underway with my continuously variable / infinite gear ratio bicycle transmission design. It's in the early stages, so I won't show too many of my cards until I have something substantial to share. In the meantime I've some sassy ideas floating through my mind and at least one is bound to mature.
3) Housing: Yay! Moving back in with Greg Kelley! Apparently, despite bulimia's damnedest attempts to sabotage the relationship, he's willing to open his doors to me once again. Over the years, through all the poop, we have retained a mutual respect and admiration of each other, and the tried-and-true living environment is something I'm looking forward to. With the thought and impending date to move out, however, comes many emotions regarding Lauren and Drew and I. Tough issues or not, I've enjoyed living there and will really miss so many details.
Yeah yeah yeah, I will still be spending a lot of time at Lauren's, probably even passing the night there every now and then, but officially I will be located at Greg's and that brings changes. The challenge for Lauren and I now is to view my relocation as a healthy independent choice, not one that reflects or affects our time together. In short, I need a different living environment, and it is crucial that Lauren doesn't take that 100% personally. We both subscribe to the "too slow better than too fast" idea with relationships, and right now this move may scale things back but is not aimed at all toward our relationship. Ideally this will take the quantity of time and distill it down to the quality time. I will keep you posted.
Hmm... what else? I took out my first student loan this semester. My first tasted of debt... and so far the immediate alleviation of financial stress outweighs the eminent re-payment stress. For example, I just ponied up the cash for my own laptop. Yes, yes! Soon I'll have the means to work on-the-fly, facilitating my independent research, university work, and of course blogging my brains out. The computer is 'being modified' by HP as we speak, should be here in a few days. Sweet.
Leg is good, damn good. I was told that fractures rarely heal that fast... I guess there's a lot to be said for being healthy and balanced. Plus, much credit is due to my time in Texas: between the vacation location and the tenacity of my grandmother to keep me from walking too much I healed rapidly. I also attribute the healing to the two grams of Calcium I pop (and have popped for three years) before bed. The fracture capped itself off wonderfully: in the x-ray the fortified bone closely resembled one of the calcium pills I ingest. Good good.
So I'm back on the bike, back in the weight room (tenderly for now). The beauty, and I will end on this thought, is that I didn't lose much fitness or experience much weight fluctuation during my injury. That is truly indicative that bulimia's yo-yoing effect on health and body mass may be loosening its grip. What a load off.
Anyway, there you are for now. Like I mentioned I will soon have my own laptop, my own sqwack-box, so get ready! For now I am off to school, dig it.
1.18.2005
1.11.2005
Mid-Flight #2
Poop-coffee refill, excellent.
Interesting: the ground below, dry and drawn like the swirled head of a fresh-pulled cappacino, presents a network of white polka-dots interconnected at random by ribbons of yellow dirt. Each dot only accessed by a single road: picture dendrites speckled with round polyps at the ends. Beautiful from this angle, though at ground/eye level the story may be different.
Perhaps, at that ground level, the dirt rumbles anxiously wishing to regurgitate buried radioactive waste, or trembles in trepidation of incoming mortar shells from amateur navy pilots on training runs. The spots, curiously random yet surely intentional, must serve some purpose. Here in the desert so distant from human life I can't imagine the purpose is benign.
Wait, a water-source. Dozens (hundreds?) of metallic edifices cluster around the only river in sight, a sickly black vein scratched into the crust straight enough to appear man-made. The buildings so reflective and the water so murky it resembles balled-tinfoil grapes bound around a diseased, charred vine. Further down the vine, the blackness widens and spreads into a large, green-black kidney bean, also tinselled with grapes at its perimeter.
Then: nothing. This plane waits for no one, no thing. Dry expanses veiled by a dingy sheet of gray tacked securely from horizon to horizon. I am left to my immediate surroundings and the eight individuals within my four-foot radius.
Gangsta Boy's special lady, properly clad to represent all of her Latina roots (and then some), steals away his headphones. For two eternal seconds the cabin swells with hard-core rap music. Little is discernible through the bass distortion besides 'bee-otch' and 'nigga', before she seals the speaker shells around her ears (hoop J-Lo style earrings dangling at the bottoms). Nigga and Bee-otch are soon emulated from G-Boy's mouth as he rips back the cones, replacing them on his skull to drown out his Latina's reprimands and the rest of the world with it.
The sheet rips and a green-brown slice of agricultural Swiss-cheese flashes through the 'clouds'. This soot-cotton looks too dirty to be normal clouds, and too thin to offer precipitation. I, like most children, harbored fantasies of running atop the clouds, speculating a texture akin to cotton and warm snow. But these... the most imaginative child would be unable to fantasize properties other than mud, beef stew, exhaust, for the air below.
Crap-coffee refill, stewardess? Surely the attendants are near... in the back, front, prepping Ritz and P-nut snacks and vigorously muddling black tar to dissolve oil, corn syrup solids, misc. chemicals to make the 'coffee' taste like sugary-butter instead of poly-vinyl-chloride.
Interesting: the ground below, dry and drawn like the swirled head of a fresh-pulled cappacino, presents a network of white polka-dots interconnected at random by ribbons of yellow dirt. Each dot only accessed by a single road: picture dendrites speckled with round polyps at the ends. Beautiful from this angle, though at ground/eye level the story may be different.
Perhaps, at that ground level, the dirt rumbles anxiously wishing to regurgitate buried radioactive waste, or trembles in trepidation of incoming mortar shells from amateur navy pilots on training runs. The spots, curiously random yet surely intentional, must serve some purpose. Here in the desert so distant from human life I can't imagine the purpose is benign.
Wait, a water-source. Dozens (hundreds?) of metallic edifices cluster around the only river in sight, a sickly black vein scratched into the crust straight enough to appear man-made. The buildings so reflective and the water so murky it resembles balled-tinfoil grapes bound around a diseased, charred vine. Further down the vine, the blackness widens and spreads into a large, green-black kidney bean, also tinselled with grapes at its perimeter.
Then: nothing. This plane waits for no one, no thing. Dry expanses veiled by a dingy sheet of gray tacked securely from horizon to horizon. I am left to my immediate surroundings and the eight individuals within my four-foot radius.
Gangsta Boy's special lady, properly clad to represent all of her Latina roots (and then some), steals away his headphones. For two eternal seconds the cabin swells with hard-core rap music. Little is discernible through the bass distortion besides 'bee-otch' and 'nigga', before she seals the speaker shells around her ears (hoop J-Lo style earrings dangling at the bottoms). Nigga and Bee-otch are soon emulated from G-Boy's mouth as he rips back the cones, replacing them on his skull to drown out his Latina's reprimands and the rest of the world with it.
The sheet rips and a green-brown slice of agricultural Swiss-cheese flashes through the 'clouds'. This soot-cotton looks too dirty to be normal clouds, and too thin to offer precipitation. I, like most children, harbored fantasies of running atop the clouds, speculating a texture akin to cotton and warm snow. But these... the most imaginative child would be unable to fantasize properties other than mud, beef stew, exhaust, for the air below.
Crap-coffee refill, stewardess? Surely the attendants are near... in the back, front, prepping Ritz and P-nut snacks and vigorously muddling black tar to dissolve oil, corn syrup solids, misc. chemicals to make the 'coffee' taste like sugary-butter instead of poly-vinyl-chloride.
Raw Imagery - Mid-flight #1
To my left: Gangsta boy, Adidas-clad w/ massive headphones, blue-green prison ink half-concealed by a long-sleeve undershirt, gothic lettering on the nape of his neck oddly resembles a bar-code from this angle and distance.
To my immediate left: Four ounces of instant coffee with granular sugar and cream (still visible afloat) pinning down a mapkin (cartographic wipe) and stained with the turbulence-induced overflow.
Below: El Paso, Lubbock, Odessa perhaps? Ants... grids of roadways and reservoirs that spark memories of abused toy trucks in a dirty childhood. I do not know my altitude; 4500 meters maybe, high enough that forests emulate mold growth on the wheat-roll crusted earth. The terrain shifts dryer and dryer as we speed over Texas, into New Mexico: outcroppings of ferritic rock appear like leprous blotches of eczema, replacing any and all vegetation.
So concludes twenty-one days visit with those I love, and so begins visits with those I also love, allbeit friends vs. family. The trip overall was, well, amazing but three weeks is a lot of time to be away from home living out of a duffel bag. This is a good time to reflect, and my mood is such that I am noticing beauty in everything around me.
To my immediate left: Four ounces of instant coffee with granular sugar and cream (still visible afloat) pinning down a mapkin (cartographic wipe) and stained with the turbulence-induced overflow.
Below: El Paso, Lubbock, Odessa perhaps? Ants... grids of roadways and reservoirs that spark memories of abused toy trucks in a dirty childhood. I do not know my altitude; 4500 meters maybe, high enough that forests emulate mold growth on the wheat-roll crusted earth. The terrain shifts dryer and dryer as we speed over Texas, into New Mexico: outcroppings of ferritic rock appear like leprous blotches of eczema, replacing any and all vegetation.
So concludes twenty-one days visit with those I love, and so begins visits with those I also love, allbeit friends vs. family. The trip overall was, well, amazing but three weeks is a lot of time to be away from home living out of a duffel bag. This is a good time to reflect, and my mood is such that I am noticing beauty in everything around me.
1.04.2005
Nylonbaum
And so the days continue to pass, I pretending not to but secretly stealing glances at the calendar, the clock, the minute and secondhands. I return to Boise in 72 hours, give or take, and though feeling somewhat guilty I know my return occurs just in time.
I often encounter this feeling with/against family members. Back in the 2002-2003 holiday season, while trying frantically to repair my VW to head for warmer southern climates, I spent an entire month living with my mother and Bob. For a couple weeks, maybe fifteen days, I absorbed the hospitality and felt like a guest in their home. Sure, I had a bed and a room and even my own pair of slippers by the door, but the house was not mine. Soon I felt that I was a burden, that some unspoken tension existed between Bob and I and that I was cramping his style and consuming his resources.
The shift always occurs, but is this shift my mental hang-up or a change in the host's attitude? One of the main nettles here in Texas is my lifestyle versus theirs; but am I worrying more than necessary about my habits and characteristics? The fact that I eat differently, sleep differently, exercise... I fear they feel me disapproving of their differences. I do not, do I? Consequently I begin to feel like a quirky pest, a guest that has overstayed the welcome and unknowingly comes across as pompously oblivious to their feelings.
Now imagine, if you will, this emotional preoccupation thrown in with a raging eating disorder. Thank God that is out of the way. I literally was consuming Bob's resources, and the perpetual scramble to cover my tracks and hide my vice further exacerbated the guilt. This is the first duration in years I have spent with family/friends and been fully up-front and healthy, thus I am surprised that my feeling of impedance, of molestance, is still an issue.
Though we find little diversions each day to 'mix up the routine', my daily schedule consists of: a poopy six hours of sleep, breakfast/coffee, 1.0 hour ride on the indoor recumbent, breakfast, read, lunch, read, nap, read, solitaire, blog, dinner, 1.5 hour ride on the indoor recumbent, read. Repeat. The aforementioned diversion usually slips in somewhere between the afternoon read-read session.
Yesterday, por ejemplo, we made it out on the boat. 67 casts later I managed to hook a 3-inch lunker that wrapped itself around a nylon rope buoy. We barely got him off in time, and I almost had to explain tears to my grandfather over a baby cold-blooded pisces. To continue this nylon train of thought, that afternoon we stripped the house of all Christmas decorations. It's been years since I've participated in decorating the tenanbaum, so de-decorating (corating, then?) the artificial nylon-baum was in the same ballpark. There's always something melancholic yet refreshing gained from stripping the house of its holiday essence.
Tonight at dinner, whilst scraping the fried breading off of my flounder, my grandfather took the opportunity to express his disagreement with my diet. I explained that my loathing of fried foods was both mental and palatal: I know their nutritional (de)value and also think they taste bad. Although it did not seem heated, he soon left the table and retreated to his 'den', feigning interest in the news or some OLN duck-hunting show. That, I suppose, is my motivation for writing tonight. My motivation for voicing my feelings. Am I inadvertently holding those around me to a standard, do my actions create guilt in those I love? Do I seem judgmental? Time to go home.
I often encounter this feeling with/against family members. Back in the 2002-2003 holiday season, while trying frantically to repair my VW to head for warmer southern climates, I spent an entire month living with my mother and Bob. For a couple weeks, maybe fifteen days, I absorbed the hospitality and felt like a guest in their home. Sure, I had a bed and a room and even my own pair of slippers by the door, but the house was not mine. Soon I felt that I was a burden, that some unspoken tension existed between Bob and I and that I was cramping his style and consuming his resources.
The shift always occurs, but is this shift my mental hang-up or a change in the host's attitude? One of the main nettles here in Texas is my lifestyle versus theirs; but am I worrying more than necessary about my habits and characteristics? The fact that I eat differently, sleep differently, exercise... I fear they feel me disapproving of their differences. I do not, do I? Consequently I begin to feel like a quirky pest, a guest that has overstayed the welcome and unknowingly comes across as pompously oblivious to their feelings.
Now imagine, if you will, this emotional preoccupation thrown in with a raging eating disorder. Thank God that is out of the way. I literally was consuming Bob's resources, and the perpetual scramble to cover my tracks and hide my vice further exacerbated the guilt. This is the first duration in years I have spent with family/friends and been fully up-front and healthy, thus I am surprised that my feeling of impedance, of molestance, is still an issue.
Though we find little diversions each day to 'mix up the routine', my daily schedule consists of: a poopy six hours of sleep, breakfast/coffee, 1.0 hour ride on the indoor recumbent, breakfast, read, lunch, read, nap, read, solitaire, blog, dinner, 1.5 hour ride on the indoor recumbent, read. Repeat. The aforementioned diversion usually slips in somewhere between the afternoon read-read session.
Yesterday, por ejemplo, we made it out on the boat. 67 casts later I managed to hook a 3-inch lunker that wrapped itself around a nylon rope buoy. We barely got him off in time, and I almost had to explain tears to my grandfather over a baby cold-blooded pisces. To continue this nylon train of thought, that afternoon we stripped the house of all Christmas decorations. It's been years since I've participated in decorating the tenanbaum, so de-decorating (corating, then?) the artificial nylon-baum was in the same ballpark. There's always something melancholic yet refreshing gained from stripping the house of its holiday essence.
Tonight at dinner, whilst scraping the fried breading off of my flounder, my grandfather took the opportunity to express his disagreement with my diet. I explained that my loathing of fried foods was both mental and palatal: I know their nutritional (de)value and also think they taste bad. Although it did not seem heated, he soon left the table and retreated to his 'den', feigning interest in the news or some OLN duck-hunting show. That, I suppose, is my motivation for writing tonight. My motivation for voicing my feelings. Am I inadvertently holding those around me to a standard, do my actions create guilt in those I love? Do I seem judgmental? Time to go home.
1.03.2005
persona
I am… on vacation:
Tivo commander, GameBoy conqueror,
Hot beverage junky, Internet floozy,
Napmaster, novella peruser.
I am… grateful:
Gratis travel, fancy new shoes,
Borrowed time, southern-soul-submersion.
Knitting world inductee, amateur rummy athlete,
Appreciated cared for acclaimed respected admired
I am… satiated, ready:
Less humidity, broad culture,
Frosted windows, familiar grub,
(Damn) good espresso, open arms.
Local calls friends accessibility disclosure western mindset
I am a cornucopia of contradictory emotions.
I am content but concerned,
Confident but apprehensive,
Proud but awkward, embarrassed,
Resolved but vacillating.
I am secure yet wishing for change,
Assured of independence yet sensitive of paternal origin,
I am pensive but diverted.
I am a Hemmingway wannabe, a terrible lyricist, a klepto of literary material.
I am rambling
I am bored, done.
I am off like a prom dress.
Tivo commander, GameBoy conqueror,
Hot beverage junky, Internet floozy,
Napmaster, novella peruser.
I am… grateful:
Gratis travel, fancy new shoes,
Borrowed time, southern-soul-submersion.
Knitting world inductee, amateur rummy athlete,
Appreciated cared for acclaimed respected admired
I am… satiated, ready:
Less humidity, broad culture,
Frosted windows, familiar grub,
(Damn) good espresso, open arms.
Local calls friends accessibility disclosure western mindset
I am a cornucopia of contradictory emotions.
I am content but concerned,
Confident but apprehensive,
Proud but awkward, embarrassed,
Resolved but vacillating.
I am secure yet wishing for change,
Assured of independence yet sensitive of paternal origin,
I am pensive but diverted.
I am a Hemmingway wannabe, a terrible lyricist, a klepto of literary material.
I am rambling
I am bored, done.
I am off like a prom dress.
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