Monday, February 12, 2007
I try not to post non-original content here, but I can't help myself this time. I saw the movie Dark Star today and thought the ending was hilarious.
Video: Part 1 + Part 2
Text: Here
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Okay, I finally got around to typing up a little report of graduation and christmas. Since I have neither the time nor the desire to retype it all for this audience, I'm going to just copy-paste from the email I wrote it in. It was written to a friend who does not know really much of anything about my other friends and family, so if anyone needs clarification on any of the less specific references, just comment away.
Graduation was a terribly busy and messy time. Despite all of the
stress with finals, I took some time to straighten up my apartment a
bit since my mother and her friend would be staying with me. They
arrived the day of my last final, Sanskrit, and by the time they
arrived I still had a few more hours before the exam, but I felt that
those hours of studying would do me little good as I felt that
realistically I had stuffed into my head as much knowledge as would
fit given the time constraints, so I decided to show them around the
town a bit. They dropped me off on campus about 30 minutes before the
final so that I would have time to cram a bit in hopes that just a
little more would stick just long enough to get it onto the paper. I
ended up leaving probably 60% of the test blank, but conversations
with others and past experience with the professor's finals indicated
that this was about average.
The next day was graduation itself. My mother's friend had a doctor's
appointment in Peachtree City to make, but had wanted to at least see
me and the town a bit despite not being able to attend the ceremony,
but she dropped us off anyway so that we wouldn't have to deal with
parking. They tried to convince me to don the robe before even walking
in noting that everyone else had theirs on, but I had no intention of
doing so and did not. I walked in and tried to assess the situation
which turned out to be two otherwise unorganized lines, one for B.S.
and one for B.A. I could find no one in charge, so I began walking
down and scanning the line for people I knew, including one girl who
had lamented in class weeks earlier that my last name was so disparate
from her own, stating that she wanted to at least sit near someone she
knew. I allowed her to catch me up a little more on what was going on,
and upon hearing that it was not alphabetical afterall, I put the robe
on and hopped in line with her and another friend she had found. I had
to run back out and locate my mother so that she could hold the book
(Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk) I had brought in not knowing whether the
wait would be long. She ended up beginning the book herself and
finished reading it later that night.
One interesting anecdote is something that happened with my parents.
My mother found a seat and saved a seat for my father. My father,
meanwhile, had chosen his own seat completely on the other side of the
stage completely unaware that my mother had saved him a seat
elsewhere. I think that he would have preferred it that way even if he
had known.
The graduation ceremony itself was okay. The student chosen to speak
gave an interesting enough speech, but the main speaker I didn't care
so much for. That he was a politician shone through clearly as his
speech referenced often work he was doing in politics that had nothing
to do with us. In the middle of his speech, the girl I was sitting
with asked me if he was campaigning.
After the ceremony, we called my dad to meet up with him and took the
obligatory pictures. We had some trouble with the camera, but
hopefully at least some of them will have turned out. When I get a
chance, I'll try to enclose a printed copy of one or two of those in
addition to some China pictures which I've finally had time to start
to sort through. We then made our way to the parking lot whence began
the second parental anecdote. My mother had been informed prior to
even leaving the apartment that there was not enough room in my dad's
car for her to get a ride home from him. Background on that: my dad
completed flight training some months ago and has been working at a
flight school in Alabama and going home to Georgia on the weekends. He
is hoping to get a flying job soon and so has begun bringing all but
the basic living essentials back to Georgia and during this trip, the
trunk and backseat were packed with boxes. So, my mom started trying
to rearrange his things despite there clearly being no room. She tried
to argue that she could squeeze in somewhere if she made room which
was clearly impossible as both my father and I tried to tell her. In
addition, my father is rather law abiding when it comes to things like
seat belts and speed limits. My father only had a few hours which he
could stay for before he had to drive back to Eastman (4 hours away)
to do more work on the tiles of a house that he and his wife are
trying to sell. Given my limited time with my father who I don't see
too often, this growing delay was bothering me and I tried to make
that known, but to little effect. I gave her the apartment key,
directions to the bus stop, and information about what route to take
and where to get off. None of us had change, so I tried to tell her
where an ATM was, but she just harrumphed and said she would beg for
change, which I suppose she must have done.
I took him on a shortened version of the tour that I gave to my mother
and her friend the day prior and then we went to lunch. Upon hearing
that he had never tried Indian food, I tried to convince him to do so,
but not in the mood for a risk, we opted for a chinese restaurant that
I like as well. We then went back to the apartment which he saw
briefly after which he had to leave. I then took my mother to a park
that I like here which also contains a small zoo of sorts and we had a
nice time, especially watching the bear and otters. The following day
I had to drive her to the airport and being so close to Peachtree
City, I spent the rest of the weekend there, but nothing particularly
eventful happened there.
So, fast-forward a few days. My mother's talk of convincing me to go
to Pennsylvania resumed and now that school was out of the way and
christmas was nearly upon us, I could no longer put off the
consideration and I agreed to go. The night before I was to leave, we
looked at the flight loads and none of them looked kindly at all. I
would have to get up at 3AM to get to the airport in time to try for
the "best" flight and even it looked bad. We considered other airlines
such as Delta which would have cost about $50 each way for a standby
ticket. Upon hearing this, I did some calculations and noted that it
would barely cost more than that to simply drive it instead of fly and
then I wouldn't have to wake up early or worry about flight loads on
the way up or back.
Despite having ridden that drive many times years ago, my sense of
distance was severely impaired. Had I been fully cognizant that the
projected 636mi/10h 17m distance/time actually is really long, I may
not have agreed so willingly to drive it. To compound my problems,
right after I loaded everything into the car, I managed to lock my
keys in the car. After a runaround trying to get an apartment key that
worked from the office to retrieve my spare car key from the
apartment, I discovered that the spare key is only the key to start
the car, not to open the doors (my uncle, who owned the car before,
had had lock problems and had only replaced some of them so it takes a
different key to open the door than to start the car). So, I used the
phone at the leasing office (mine was in the car) to phone my
insurance company to have them send someone to open the car. After
waiting some time in the leasing office, a police officer came in on
other business. When he finished that, the office workers explained my
situation and he was able to get it open with only a little damage to
the rubber padding on the door, so I canceled the man from the
insurance company who hadn't arrived yet anyway.
The drive up until about Charlotte, NC wasn't particularly bad, but I
hit rush hour traffic on the north side of Charlotte and it was dark
by the time I got through it. My little sister and I talked on the
phone on and off the rest of the way through the huge expanse of
Virginia and the short hops of West Virginia, Maryland, and the bit of
Pennsylvania I had to go through.
Our stay in Pennsylvania was nice for the most part. My grandfather
was nicer and a little bit less restrictive than he had been in
previous years which was a welcome change and my grandmother was nice
as always. My aunt, uncle, and cousins came up christmas day which
actually turned out to be rather awkward. It had been many, many years
since we had seen them and both they and we had changed significantly.
The only one I had any sort of real conversation with at all was my
uncle and even that was brief. I don't think there was even a single
word of dialogue between my cousin and I despite our having been
decent enough friends as kids on visits up there. They arrived just in
time for the meal which was followed by presents time followed by an
obligatory group photo after which they left.
I brought my little sisters back with me on the drive back to Georgia
and we got out a bit earlier so more of the drive was in the light. I
had previously felt that Virginia was long and boring, but upon seeing
it in the light, I amended my feeling to be that it is simply long,
but not boring. I still hold, however, the opinion that South Carolina
is both long and boring. After spending a night at my apartment so
that I could care for the animals and refresh their supplies, we went
to Peachtree City where I dropped them off with friends who they would
be staying with.
The only event of that stay that was supposed to be eventful was the
traditional new years party. The "party" turned out to be anything but
a party. When I arrived at the house, I walked in to find dead silence
and each person playing a separate video game. The only changes from
this routine all night was that eventually it broke down to 2-3 groups
of people congregated around each video game watching one person play
each, a 5 minute break from the games to watch the ball drop at
midnight on TV, and a short interlude to watch the neighbours set off
a few small fireworks.
Since then, my time has been spent working and trying to get things in
order. I've gone through most everything in my apartment including the
few stacks of papers I had lying around. I packed up several boxes of
things to take to Peachtree City for long-term storage and delivered
those a couple weekends ago. Now I'm slowly packing things and going
through the few remaining items in addition to trying to use up
expendable items so that I won't have to pack them.