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bunch of stuff
Apr. 29th, 2003 03:34 amIt's been a while since I've updated...
I realize that it's more that it /feels/ like a long time since I've updated, more than that it's actually been a long time. Hrmph. Well, I suppose that's a question of scale, really. Anyway, it does feel like it's been a long time, sort of one of those feelings of displacement where you can't remember what's been going on for the past few days. Things are blurred.
I feel ... undirected, for lack of a better word. Last week probably didn't help a lot. This is the last week of the school year. I'm leaving Tech. I'm leaving Tech. It's like an addiction. It can't be healthy at all... and I'm ecstatic about being rid of it for a while... but I'm going back to the real world. How am I going to deal? ... for months...
Home is the greatest place on the planet, filled up with the people and places and animals I love. Only ... I'll be gone... so weird. Is there a word for that feeling when you realize that, simultaneously, it feels like an event (even a relatively trivial one -- say a particular instance of sitting outside a hotel bar with one's father and his girlfriend, having a coffee, on a particular 20th birthday-weekend...) in the past was quite recent, vivid in your memory, fresh -- and that about a billion and three things happened in between then and now, and that events that you understand happened around the same time feel exactly as if there were, indeed, a billion and three events 'tween then and now? There's got to be one. That's what I'm feeling now. Among other things. That was a really freaking long time ago, August, moving into The 211...
Coupla semi-interesting anecdotes:
On Friday night, for some reason or another, I got myself out of bed to head over to the Wesley Center to play some ecumenical Broomball with a group of about 20 Lutherans and Methodists. I think the motivation for this had something to do with wanting to get to know Erika a bit better (she'd organized the broomball game) -- I met her at the Relay, and she's interesting, and was organizing the broomball... and she was in a really strange mood, trying to get all the cars of people headed out to the ice rink. Up until that point, she'd been sitting in the dark in the WesCen, off by herself whilst everybody else was watching a movie. I tried to help by taking charge and picking people out to ride in my car ("I choose...")... large groups of people trying to organize to go and do something are so strange. Eventually, we got out to the Ice Forum (on the way, Cyndi told me about being an architect and what that's like, which was interesting... and Walker and one other guy passed out in the car), where the broomball was going down.
If you're unfamiliar with Broomball... it's essentially icehockey with relaxed rules and no skates. You use a little inflated rubber ball (a bit bigger than a grapefruit), and at least in this case, we used broom-ish sticks with round handles and plastic heads on the end. I found myself taking up the goalie role at first, at which I suppose I was pretty successful -- nobody scored on me :) Eventually, I handed the job off and began running around on the ice. Ice is very, very slippery. I found out that my normal running style does not work particularly well on ice -- generally speaking, I bound, with really sharp cuts, when I turn. While this might work well for Ultimate or soccer... this is not the preferred movement style for broomball. I was pretty sore from falling (many, many times) until yesterday :) No major injuries.
After the Broomballing, we headed out (as a big unruly mob) to Steak 'n' Shake. We needed to grab some extra chairs to stick around a table, and there was a fellow sitting by himself, so I ask him something along the lines of "do you mind if I grab these chairs?". He looks confused, and I ask again, and he looks further confused. So I say, "I'm taking these chairs" and pick them up, because it looked like he was sitting alone. He says "You're talking to me? I didn't understand a word you said." Odd odd. Well, not that odd, considering...
... this weekend, I mostly just hung around and recovered. My brain was pretty well sprained from last week's furious coding. I watched a Cowboy Bebop movie. That's some darn fine anime.
Today... I took my S&N final. No more of the Most Interesting CS Class... done. It went pretty well :) That, and I've been grading...
I had a really fascinating conversation while hanging around grading with Jason and Aron this afternoon... Jimi had popped his head in, and we were talking about... well, all sorts of things, actually. It just seemed really representative of the feeling of separateness within the CoC, though. We all had that same feeling, that CS folks are just underlyingly different, that the rest of Tech and the rest of the world are... different, and apparently somewhat frightening. International Affairs people and classes came up, and I mentioned my experiences in Mexico and Spain, about feeling alienated whilst in a group of people who actually know how to party ... Jimi talked about taking INTA classes and how easy they are for him. It was suggested that doing an INTA dual major is a break from the really academically rigorous stuff... there's really both a fear-and-loathing and an elitism going on... almost a siege mentality. This is a common cultural thread...
*laughs* Also, I managed to get really close to offending Jimi... I was saying something about one CS professor... he's really clever, but it turns out that he's creationist, which I mentioned, not realizing that Jimi was as well... heh ... whoops. You really don't know what anybody believes, and there are so many people out there who think such completely different things from me... and for them, it's all true, even if I think it's absurd. It really makes me wonder how much of what I think, people are ridiculing or just quietly discarding as Patently False...
I spent a while this afternoon playing with FSU's automated phone system, trying to figure out what the deal is with my admissions. I called a bit before 5PM, and after a second or third transfer, they put me on hold and left the office.
... and I'm almost done. Almost done.
... but then when I am done, what happens?
I realize that it's more that it /feels/ like a long time since I've updated, more than that it's actually been a long time. Hrmph. Well, I suppose that's a question of scale, really. Anyway, it does feel like it's been a long time, sort of one of those feelings of displacement where you can't remember what's been going on for the past few days. Things are blurred.
I feel ... undirected, for lack of a better word. Last week probably didn't help a lot. This is the last week of the school year. I'm leaving Tech. I'm leaving Tech. It's like an addiction. It can't be healthy at all... and I'm ecstatic about being rid of it for a while... but I'm going back to the real world. How am I going to deal? ... for months...
Home is the greatest place on the planet, filled up with the people and places and animals I love. Only ... I'll be gone... so weird. Is there a word for that feeling when you realize that, simultaneously, it feels like an event (even a relatively trivial one -- say a particular instance of sitting outside a hotel bar with one's father and his girlfriend, having a coffee, on a particular 20th birthday-weekend...) in the past was quite recent, vivid in your memory, fresh -- and that about a billion and three things happened in between then and now, and that events that you understand happened around the same time feel exactly as if there were, indeed, a billion and three events 'tween then and now? There's got to be one. That's what I'm feeling now. Among other things. That was a really freaking long time ago, August, moving into The 211...
Coupla semi-interesting anecdotes:
On Friday night, for some reason or another, I got myself out of bed to head over to the Wesley Center to play some ecumenical Broomball with a group of about 20 Lutherans and Methodists. I think the motivation for this had something to do with wanting to get to know Erika a bit better (she'd organized the broomball game) -- I met her at the Relay, and she's interesting, and was organizing the broomball... and she was in a really strange mood, trying to get all the cars of people headed out to the ice rink. Up until that point, she'd been sitting in the dark in the WesCen, off by herself whilst everybody else was watching a movie. I tried to help by taking charge and picking people out to ride in my car ("I choose...")... large groups of people trying to organize to go and do something are so strange. Eventually, we got out to the Ice Forum (on the way, Cyndi told me about being an architect and what that's like, which was interesting... and Walker and one other guy passed out in the car), where the broomball was going down.
If you're unfamiliar with Broomball... it's essentially icehockey with relaxed rules and no skates. You use a little inflated rubber ball (a bit bigger than a grapefruit), and at least in this case, we used broom-ish sticks with round handles and plastic heads on the end. I found myself taking up the goalie role at first, at which I suppose I was pretty successful -- nobody scored on me :) Eventually, I handed the job off and began running around on the ice. Ice is very, very slippery. I found out that my normal running style does not work particularly well on ice -- generally speaking, I bound, with really sharp cuts, when I turn. While this might work well for Ultimate or soccer... this is not the preferred movement style for broomball. I was pretty sore from falling (many, many times) until yesterday :) No major injuries.
After the Broomballing, we headed out (as a big unruly mob) to Steak 'n' Shake. We needed to grab some extra chairs to stick around a table, and there was a fellow sitting by himself, so I ask him something along the lines of "do you mind if I grab these chairs?". He looks confused, and I ask again, and he looks further confused. So I say, "I'm taking these chairs" and pick them up, because it looked like he was sitting alone. He says "You're talking to me? I didn't understand a word you said." Odd odd. Well, not that odd, considering...
... this weekend, I mostly just hung around and recovered. My brain was pretty well sprained from last week's furious coding. I watched a Cowboy Bebop movie. That's some darn fine anime.
Today... I took my S&N final. No more of the Most Interesting CS Class... done. It went pretty well :) That, and I've been grading...
I had a really fascinating conversation while hanging around grading with Jason and Aron this afternoon... Jimi had popped his head in, and we were talking about... well, all sorts of things, actually. It just seemed really representative of the feeling of separateness within the CoC, though. We all had that same feeling, that CS folks are just underlyingly different, that the rest of Tech and the rest of the world are... different, and apparently somewhat frightening. International Affairs people and classes came up, and I mentioned my experiences in Mexico and Spain, about feeling alienated whilst in a group of people who actually know how to party ... Jimi talked about taking INTA classes and how easy they are for him. It was suggested that doing an INTA dual major is a break from the really academically rigorous stuff... there's really both a fear-and-loathing and an elitism going on... almost a siege mentality. This is a common cultural thread...
*laughs* Also, I managed to get really close to offending Jimi... I was saying something about one CS professor... he's really clever, but it turns out that he's creationist, which I mentioned, not realizing that Jimi was as well... heh ... whoops. You really don't know what anybody believes, and there are so many people out there who think such completely different things from me... and for them, it's all true, even if I think it's absurd. It really makes me wonder how much of what I think, people are ridiculing or just quietly discarding as Patently False...
I spent a while this afternoon playing with FSU's automated phone system, trying to figure out what the deal is with my admissions. I called a bit before 5PM, and after a second or third transfer, they put me on hold and left the office.
... and I'm almost done. Almost done.
... but then when I am done, what happens?
