George,

You are still a selfish, egomaniacal, money-grubbing dick.

But Episode III was awesome.

Best,
Jason A. Bock

I walked across the pedestrian mall between the side door of Dempsey and the library this morning to quickly return some overdue books.

I looked up at the overcast sky, solid white with clouds, but still blinding, and I noticed that all the leaves were on the trees.

I figure this must have happened at some point during my 2-week hiatus from most aspects of living, as I consumed myself with work for classes.

I had a minor epiphany as I looked at the trees, realizing that I marvel at the change of every season, every year, and I always note how the passage of time, while constant, seems to speed up in memory. N’ary a winter melts into spring, or a spring bloom into summer, or so on and so on, without me taking a moment to remark to myself how beautiful and refreshing each change is. I’ve seen the Earth cycle through so many times, but each new season feels like a rebirth, and in the same moment, I find comfort in the change and anxiety knowing it’s fleeting.

This summer, I think I’ll try to enjoy the (relatively) carefree weeks a little more. I should try to be inside less. I should go to the lake and do my writing outside. I should try to visit with people and build some good memories.

Hope to see you this summer; get out and into it while you can…

I’ve got a couple minutes here while I’m at the front desk here at work, so I thought I’d let you know what I’ve been doing the last couple weeks:

– research
– writing
– avoiding writing
– avoiding research
– class presentations
– studying for a final
– writing
– going to Mt. Morris to write (thanks, Behlings)
– sending movies back to Netflix almost as fast as I get them

So I’ve got a test tonight, and I have to do a little more studying for that when I get home, and thank goodness I have the upcoming weekend in which to get the balance of all my writing done.

It’s going to be pretty cool to have written a novella a week from now. Almost like I’m actually a writer.

I started to write this *on* the site itself, but recent post-disasters in which I pushed the back button by mistake made me rethink that scenario.

Today is the first of May, and that is indicative of at least three noteworthy things:

– Jen and Joe’s wedding on Friday was a great time–everything from the shooting range in the morning, to the ceremony in the afternoon to the party in the evening went just swimmingly. I impressed myself by being able to get home without incident after all the hoopla ended, despite the fact that I was alone and pretty much intoxicated.

– Grandma’s birthday is today, she turns 74. We had a little party for her on Saturday night, where the food and company were once again very good.

– On a more panicky sort of note, I have two weeks left in the semester, and still plenty of work to be done.

Currently, I’m still at Jen and Joe’s house, although they took a trip up to Uncle Bob & Auntie Chris’s cottage in Mt. Morris for the weekend. Mom wanted me to unload the dishwasher, so I suppose I ought to do that before I go. I might also try to get some of the aforementioned school work done while I’m here.

The Brewers are playing at home this afternoon, and I would kind of like to go to a game, too… but I suppose I have all summer for that.

I might have more matrimonial/weekend reflections after I have some breakie.

I had a large post all typed up here, it went on at some length about my malnutrition and lack of exercise, and pointed out that Christy (my little sister) would have some choice words for me on that topic.

After that, I went into great detail of today’s episode where I visited Dairy Queen and paid a charge of 2.60 with a 10 dollar bill and a dime, and in return received a five, two singles, a quarter, two dimes, and a nickel… what are people thinking about?

Unfortunately, I accidentally tapped the goddamn back arrow and erased the entire post with a simple keystroke.

And I’m not going to type it all over again.

In lieu of the entertainment you expected here, please see the following:

Everyone on the Internet is a Lunatic

Now I’m going to make a sandwich.

Forgot to comment on the Packers draft from the weekend.

I thought it was pretty exciting to draft a ‘blue chip’ sort of quarterback, realizing that such opportunities don’t often present themselves to a perennial playoff team.

At the same time, no matter how many boquets of roses def. coordinator Jim Bates attempts to jam up the Packers fans’ collective ass, I don’t think the team has a prayer of doing anything substantial next season.

Sure, Bob Slowik, last year’s coordinator was a tool, and if he could’ve committed to a ‘system’ that might’ve helped, but man: they’ve got a bunch of underachievers and role players on that unit, and between last August and this past March, it also lost its two best players (Mike McKenzie? and Darren Sharper, respectively).

Meanwhile, Minnesota has done nothing but make a series of fantastic moves to bolster the D in the offseason, and I think you’d be crazy to predict anything but a division crown for them at this point.

*sigh* g'damn packers...

It’s better to be out among the people on your day off, I guess. I should probably come here more often in general, just so as to appear less hermitic.

I decided I would come to the Union in the afternoon to do homework and some various Internet-ting. This affords me the opportunity to “people watch” as well, and since that is something I enjoy doing (so I’ve found) I think I should move to a more metropolitan area. I don’t think the kids like being seen around here. I don’t really think anyone does. People stay out home. They should go out. For my benefit, of course.

Jen and Joe’s wedding is this week, and the whole spring has pretty much been leading up to it, so the day’s arrival is something of a spectre of the semester’s looming conclusion. Even in terms when the workload is not particularly heavy or undesirable, I hate the end. Inevitably, I feel like I should’ve done something more, or I should’ve done something differently, or I’m forgetting to do something altogether. That may just be my (possibly) clinically-certifiable paranoia.

I was sitting in the apartment yesterday thinking about doing homework and so being distracted by all the things that are wrong with my living space. I am rapidly running out of room on my shelves for DVDs, so I concluded that the best way to free up more room would be to rid myself of VHS tapes once and for all.

To that end, I signed up for Netflix, and within minutes had added all the movies I have on VHS to my “rental queue.” After that, I added more and realized that this might end up being another dangerous addiction.

I totally forgot to get a hotel room for the wedding. Shit.

I was really, really, really tired when I got home from work today. Think it was a combo of low sleep the previous night and plenty of deep thought @ work during the day.

Then I had some coffee about an hour ago. Oi.

Speaking of sleep, I heard an ad on TMJ this morning for some sleep wellness clinic or something saying that adults should be getting like, 8.5 hours a night? Who the hell has time for that? Or need, seriously? 8.5? That’s like, half a day.

One of my favorite things to complain about with regard to computers and the Internet is stuff that you get for free from the charity of others. That sentence does not make much sense. In this particular case, I’m talking about ‘themes’ for Firefox.

There need to be more themes that are better. I want someone to port over a decent copy of the ‘orbit yellow’ theme for Mozilla. Of course, I have no right to request anything, since there is no way I could contribute something myself. I just consume, CONSUME, CONSUME! Like any good American.

Brewers are down, this is gonna be like their 15th straight loss after starting out a solid 6-3. At least we get to listen to Uecker. Gotta love the Ueck. Jim read my email on the air the first week of the season. It was a dumb email, though, I was just like, ‘Hey, they need to bring back the glove logo — it rules!’ Really, I’m just sick of these college kids walking around being ‘cool’ with all their ‘retro’ stuff. Retro. Stuff that was just… y’know, when I was a kid, now it’s ‘retro.’ What is that bullshit?

I finally finished reading this book earlier in the week, and I really think you should give it a try if you’re down with literacy. Jen, if you still read the blog time to time, lemme recommend this one for your ‘book club.’

8-3 now. Damn. I’m going to listen to a CD, and it is going to be this one.

I was looking through some old IM logs earlier this evening, and I was suprised to find that there were conversations with people that I didn’t even know, and things that I said I would never have remembered. This whole ‘writing things down’ operation is screwy that way.

10 PM. I’m out.

This week for my internet class with Charlie Hill, we read a bunch of stuff about two primary topics (the relation of which is still a mystery to me): internet ‘addiction’ and the global phenomenon (and by ‘global’ we mean ‘United States’) of blogging.

I was only marginally disappointed to find out that, according to the best minds on the rhetoric of the internet that Charlie could dig up, I am blogging incorrectly/irresponsibly.

Apparently, I require an agenda, a strong political opinion, a high level of expertise on a given subject, a propensity to re-post already-published news articles, a membership in an online ‘community’ (gaming or otherwise), a campaign manager, a band, a talk show, a new hit movie, or a childhood acting career.

I have none of these things.

But, as has been documented in this space, what I do have is my very own server and the honest and true disposition that led to people blogging in the first place: a high-level desire to read my own words/listen to the sound of my voice.

I also have a video camera, and I know Charlie Sykes sure as hell doesn’t.

I woke up this morning with my alarm @ 6:30 AM, and I wanted to document the things that I did on this day that I need to get a lot of writing done.

6:30:
Wake to ‘Wisconsin’s Morning News’ on WTMJ.
7:30:
Alarm clicks off after an hour, I turn radio back on, still in bed.
7:50:
Get out of bed.
8:25:
Sykes starts on TMJ, decide to stop reading the paper on the web and make breakfast.
8:28:
Choose waffles, but realize I’ll have to scrub the iron since I haven’t made waffles since the burning fiasco
8:39:
Ready to plug in waffle iron, begin preparing batter.
8:46:
Waffle 1 hits the iron
8:48:
Make coffee, pour glass of orange juice
9:15:
Done with breakfast, load dishwasher, set timer for 15 minutes to allow remaining waffles to cool before putting them in the refrigerator
9:30:
Stop reading the paper again, put waffles away
9:33:
Decide to take a shower
9:48:
Realize that before the internet distracted me, I was going to take a shower
9:55:
Towel off, get dressed
10:02:
Sync PDA
10:08:
Think about turning off Sykes
10:09:
Think about how I’ll have to move the car in 20 minutes
10:10:
Another cup of coffee
10:32:
bottom-of-the-hour news reminds me I have to go move the car
10:34:
Begin looking on the web for an alarm for the computer so I’ll remember to move the car in 90 minutes
11:06:
Turn off radio after the top-of-the-hour news
11:07:
Decide to listen to a ‘CD’ while I work, choose Beta Band’s “Three EPs”
11:08:
Put a link on soloshootsfirst to a Beta Band mp3 on my site
11:11:
Talk to the governor
11:21:
Not getting a lot of writing done yet
11:22:
Decide to “warm-up” by making a list of what I’ve done so far this morning
11:35:
Complete list, post to blog
11:36:
Think about making a video for the site