Brian's quite remarkable blog of wonder.

My aunt died yesterday. I liked her a lot. She died unexpectedly from complications after a kidney transplant. So it goes.


Today I played in a string quartet at Chris's brother's wedding. I wonder if anyone noticed the misanthropic smirk I wore through the ceremony. I hate wedding music. I hate how Christian weddings and cell phone ringtones are now just about the general public's only exposure to classical music. I'm incredibly skeptical about weddings. Well. I guess what I'm really skeptical about is love in general. I always have been, but whenever I speak up about it, it tends to ruffle a lot of feathers. Too bad.

I've been feeling quite defeated lately. Not only that, I've been feeling less and less willing to make funny blog posts that pretend everything is totally all right. I'm also not willing to talk about incredibly personal stuff here, so this may be my last post for a while. Unless things get better. Do things ever get better?

It's funny that every time there is a potato or something that looks like it has a female face, people think it's the Virgin Mary. This piece of toast is purportedly one such Marian apparition, but to me it looks more like Katherine Hepburn.

Just thought I'd say.

Some motorist blacked out or something while driving down Prairie Du Chien Rd. today and drove across several front lawns, hitting mailboxes and fire hydrants, dodging trees, finally crashing into some unfortunate person's house. This was two doors down from where Jake lives, and he actually witnessed this happen; or at least saw his own mailbox exploding and heard the horrifying crunch of the vagabond Audi entering somebody's living room. Life, my friends, is more exciting than television.

I haven't had very many interesting things to say lately in this blog. I apologize. It is summer, and the days are long and uneventful. There's been a lot of bowling. A lot of good movies. A reasonable amount of good times. A lot of bus driving. A lot of bicycling. A lot of trying and failing to get a significant amount of work done on compositions and stuff. Also a lot of stressed out, sleepless nights; accompanied by a lot of cynical thoughts as regards the actual existence of love.

And, if my beancounting is correct, I'm going to be kind of broke here pretty soon, which is unfortunate. How can I get some money? Perhaps I will eBay a few items.

I just opened my Road Atlas to Missouri and a huge bug crawled out!!

I'm depressed.

I'm suffering from burnout. It's true that I've been a lot more productive recently than I typically am in the summer. But I think all that energy has started to catch up with me. I am actually too tired to eat. I haven't eaten since breakfast. I'm really hungry.

However, today I managed a redesign of my web site. It wasn't a whole lot of work, because it was a design I had toyed with back when I first created the site. All I did was dust off some old gifs, and re-write a few html thingies.

This weekend I went bowling, and, thanks to two strikes and two spares in the last three frames, I beat my high score and got a 114, which is ridiculously awesome for me. And on Sunday I went on a long bike ride to Hills and got extremely sunburned.

On Mondays I have a Backup shift at Cambus, which means I go in and sit in the office and do nothing for three hours. And if they need me to go drive a round of Pentacrest or something, I do it.

Well, now that it's after midnight, I probably should eat some lunch. Sorry, usually I aim for some kind of cohesive point when I write in this blog, but no such luck today. Oh well. I've enjoyed our little chat.

It's one of those really great summer nights when it's warm and humid and there's a thunderstorm off in the distance. I was just walking around the neighborhood watching the lightning and I'm in a reflective mood.

Here's the thing: it's 2005 (or 2004 as I typed the first time). I have many friends from high school who have now graduated from college. They now have lives and careers. Most of them have pretty much "moved on," as people are wont to do four or more years after high school. And me? My life is not that different than it was back then, the main thing being that I mostly support myself financially and have an apartment. I realized recently that I currently have almost no friends whom I didn't know in high school. I haven't really made any good friends in the past four years.

And that's fine, except that one by one, they "move on." They go away and have careers and lives. They stop e-mailing you. They don't call you; you call them. And if you're me, you get paranoid that they think of you as a relic; at best, an interesting fossil from days of yore. This isn't really their fault. There's a lot of pressure on everybody to "go places." And the problem I've found is that nearly all the people I've known who are "going places" have ended up finally going to those actual places.

So for the last few years I've been straddling a line between "going places" and "staying rooted." It's a heartbreaking dilemma. And now, finally, while my old acquaintences get their bachelor's degrees, the trauma of my own indecisiveness is starting to sink in.

Going places. Nothing's more depressing than somebody who could potentially do great things, but just doesn't. Either by their own volition or by external forces, they just never accomplish anything. When I imagine myself ten years down the road still driving buses at the University of Iowa, I want to whimper and flail. Every day that goes past makes me feel more like a six-year-old at the municipal pool, wearing Water Wings, terrified of the deep end and eyeing the high dive with severe trepidation. Yet the times I've ventured to strange and unusual places outside of my town have been very invigorating and successful.

And yet, Staying rooted. I won't lie: I am actually quite content right now. I do have a pretty good base of semi-permanent friends in Iowa City, and I've had few problems with being bored. At least, few problems that can't be alleviated by frequent vacationing. And there's a lot to be said for being mellow and easygoing. This sounds like a lot of excuses, and to a certain extent it is. But a big part of the issue is also this: I don't really know if I'm capable of going places. This may be just my characteristic self-doubt, but let's remember that I did actually trying "going places." Immediately after high school I boldly left home and went to college in New Mexico. The result was that I did okay in my classes but was basically miserable and almost friendless. The fact is that I don't do well, I don't do well at all when I'm not in my element. And my element is a good one. I like my current life, which allows me to live in a great community and earn money providing a service for this community. I don't work too hard and I prowl the summer nights and watch distant thunderstorms, and run into friends on the street.


Looking at this now, one can see that it can be distilled as a conflict between the long-term and the short-term goals. Lately I think I've been more sympathetic to the long-term option, having registered for full-time classes in the fall, with the intention of getting a degree and maybe then "going places." Still, lord knows I have my doubts that it will work. And part of me wonders if there's some kind of compromise possible between the long-term and the short-term. I think there's a cultural mind-set that makes people obsessed with the concept of destination. Gotta find a place to settle! Gotta have kids and live happily ever after! Gotta move out to the suburbs and work until I either retire or get killed, along with dozens of other sleepy commuters, in a diasterous freeway accident! I don't care for that. I want to travel, and take fragrant paths of opportunity where and when they open up. Here's an oft-quoted piece of Tolkein wisdom: "Not all who wander are lost."

Well, I'm not sure what, if anything, I've just proved. It's now very late, and I'm going to bed.

For the zero-to-one of you who might have been worried, no, I did not contract a new strain of Avian Influenza and die, living long enough only for the virus to mutate to a form that can be transmitted between humans, thereby beginning a pandemic by which tens of millions will perish. That did not happen. I was just sort of tired and depressed and not feeling like updating my blog for a week or so. Don't worry, you can breathe - FOR NOW!

All panicmongering aside, I'll tell you what I did do. What I did do is get better. What I also did do is get my new computer working. You see, I bought a new computer in March; by which I mean I asked Jesse what to buy, then bought all the components from Newegg and had Jesse put it together. The problem was, the motherboard they sent me did not work. So I got a replacement board (a process that took over a month). That replacement board also didn't work. I got another one. A month later, the third board finally worked. So now it's June and my new computer is up and running.

This was causing me a lot of stress over the past few months. I didn't ever mention it here because 1) blogs are already somewhat lame and blogs in which people talk about computers, I find, are insufferable; and 2) I knew that nobody would believe me when I said that the second board didn't work (indeed, the manufacturer's support staff were justifiably incredulous). I kind of resent the implication that I know nothing about computers, even though... I really don't.

OK so. Here's the other big technology-related thing. I now have a cell phone. Which is hilarious. I mean, me. Of all people. So be sure to drunk-dial (319) 541-5516, but only after 9 PM and on weekends. So, only call me if you're drunk, and only call me at times when it's socially okay to be drunk. And don't try anything funny!