|
| "I am a Man of few words... Any Questions?"
Sometimes I wish that statement applied to me. Would make things simpler. But I am far from a man of few words. I find myself extremely verbose with an eclectic and unnecessarily sesquipedalian vocabulary. Granted, I did not know that sesquipedalian was a word until a minute ago when I looked up long in a thesaurus. Such unnecessary verbosity is obscene, isn't it? Why did I wish I was a man of few words again?
| | |
| Katja Has arrived.
Last weekend, Went to Cornell University on Friday, and then I went to Lehigh University on Monday, with the SAT's and some other junk crammed in the middle there. It was tons of fun though. I really liked Lehigh, and I feel like I'd really enjoy it there. It has a beautiful, wooded campus, where the buildings are all tucked in between the trees. Situated on a hillside, one can get an excellent view of the valley in the area in the uppermost dining halls, as well as in the freshman dorms. Has a great engineering program, and I think I'll do well there, even if I change majors.
Cornell was a different story. It takes four hours to drive there one way, and when you get there, you have to check in with the friendly people at the visitors booths. It was chilly, around 30 degrees, and lovely otherwise. Went on a quick campus tour, then lunch, then strolled over to the engineering facilities tour. Cornell does have a lot of great research opportunities and beautiful buildings. It came across as very competitive though. Too competitive. I never heard much about student life there, which was not a good indicator. Not a fat person on campus though. Everyone has to walk about 20 minutes to their first class every day, because it is so spread out. The only real problems I had with cornell was the competitive atmosphere, and the climate, being in upstate NY, it is significantly colder. One of the engineering guides noted that "When it gets up to 40 degrees in the spring, you will often see people sunning themselves in the plaza." So yeah, it's cold.
My week went by in a blaze, having missed monday, and then tuesday was clubs, wednesday was senior social, and thursday was activity period. Katja (my german exchange student) arrived on friday. We were expecting them to arrive between 4:30 and 5. Then it became 5:45, then 6. And we waited around until about 6:30 before they actually arrived. But it was worth it. She got home, barely finished eating supper and was tired enough for bed. I don't blame her, she had a 22 hour day.
So today, both Katja and I went with Joe's family and Eva up to northern lebanon county to go hiking. It was a beautiful day though, the leaves were turning beautiful shades of red, yellow, and some were green yet. After our hike, I went home, and Katja went with Joe and family. When I got home, I whipped out my shotty and went hunting with my father. Squirrel was the game of choice. Took 8 shots total, slightly wounding 2, killing the third, and missing the 4th. So I got one squirrel. But I got a nice two hour walk in with my father. That doesn't happen very often these days.
That's my week in a bag. Heres my week out of a bag:
Just kidding. Lata all.
| | |
| Mein Leben geht mir gut. Es ist immer schön. Aber, viele leute finden mich ärgerlich. Das macht scheußlich, aber ich verändere mich, so andere leute finden mich besser. Es ist verdammt schwer, ich weiß nicht wie ich kann es machen. Aber ich will es sein, ich mache es sein.
| | |
| I am having a really difficult time lately. It seems that I've been putting everything off, and now it's all stacking up for these next 4 weeks. This week will be busy, since I have something Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and most likely Friday, along with two papers to write for this early week. Next week I have an application essay due, more papers to write... It goes on. All I know for sure now are my weekend of busyness is october 13-16, with Katja coming on the 20th.
Along with that, I seem to be figuring out how many people find me irritating, but few of them willing to be brutal enough to tell me why. Not that I'm looking for a shut down, but constructive criticism wouldn't hurt. I'm going to attempt to make a list of some things I do right and some things I do wrong, so any additions are welcome. I expect the wrong list will be the longer of the two. Help me fix it, and help me fix myself. Nuts and bolts welcome.
Things I do right: Breathe, sleep,
Bad things about me: Arrogant, open mouth, try too hard, slack off too much, annoying, condescending, ambiguous,
Let me know if some things are wrong, like, if I don't actually do them, or if they're right, or they're on the wrong list.
| | |
| Skip is a friend of my family, and he wrote this himself. I think it's really amazing. Words we should live by.
BORROWED TIME
by Skip Mendler
When I was a kid, let me tell ya, I
loved my comic books. LEGION OF
SUPER-HEROES and JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA
were my favorites, as I recall,
since each of them featured a whole team of
superheroes - so I figured I
was getting a lot more bang (or rather, BANG! -
as well as KABLAMMM! and
KABLOOIE!) for my twelve - or thirteen - cents.
(There, that bit of data
will tell you just when I was a kid.)
Another
of my favorite comics didn't have to do with superheroes as such
at all. THE
CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN were these four mortal guys,
daredevils and
adventurers who had each faced death and survived. And so
they decided,
since they were all living on "borrowed time" anyway, to
devote whatever time
they had left to helping humanity - which in their
case usually meant
defeating mad scientists and alien monsters. (Later in
their careers, they
got costumes featuring an hourglass logo, symbolizing
the "borrowed time"
idea. I thought the new costumes were especially
cool.)
Fast
forward. Go past the day I came home to find that Mom had cleaned my
room
and all the comic books and MAD Magazines were gone. Go past the day
I found
a paperback SF novel in my dad's van, and abandoned the pictures
for the
words. Go past marches on Washington, a presidential resignation,
a war
abandoned as hopeless... Go past that decade of waiting for the
sirens to
announce that the game of chicken was over and the missiles were
on their
way.
Fast forward, past that brief moment - oh God, so brief - when we
thought
that the song of history might finally go into a major key, away from
all
the dissonance and discord of the previous forty-five years of cold
war...
only to see it take up a new theme, a new world order, that gave
precious
little improvement over the old one. Go past the first oil war, go
past
the rejection of its architects, go past those illusionary days when
it
seemed that world peace might just be a few petty tyrants' disposal
away.
Go past opportunities squandered, an election that maybe wasn't...
slow
down as things get out of hand, and slam on the brakes in the fall
of
2001.
The dust from the September 11 attacks had not yet settled,
and the echoes
had not quieted, when the anthrax letters started appearing.
Everywhere,
it seemed, new vulnerabilities were becoming glaringly obvious -
the food
supply, the transportation system, the chemical
industry.
That's when that old phrase from a whizbang comic book came
crashing back
into my consciousness - "borrowed time."
And this, I
realized with a shock, was what "now" was. This was what we
were living
through, what we were living in: borrowed time. After 9/11,
after the
anthrax scare, it became clear that death, in the form of
terrorist attack,
could show up unexpectedly anytime, anywhere, for any
one, could have showed
up already except for circumstance. And each and
every day from now on was -
extra. A gift... or a loan. Borrowed. Time.
And yes, of course that
has in fact always been true, and we have always
known it was true, somewhere
in the backs of our minds - but this new
clarity would not allow itself to be
quietly suppressed in the ways we've
always suppressed the knowledge of our
mortality. Before, we could try to
do things - exercise, eat right, pray,
vote for this party or that - that
we thought would help protect us, or do
other things that would at least
distract us. But the randomness of terror,
and its pervasiveness, meant
that this was no longer the case.
That
could just as well have been you, it says to us. Your defenses,
whatever they
are, are meaningless. I will come calling, and I will come
calling when I
want.
You wake up. You're on a rollercoaster. It's not too bad, you can
take
the dips, curves, sudden drops, long ascents, sometimes it's actually
fun,
occasionally you get a wonderful view - but then you notice
something.
There's a brick wall at the end.
It's hard to see, you
only catch glimpses as you whip around this sharp
corner or that. But
there's a brick wall, and all the cars ahead of you
go into it, and then you
don't see them anymore. The brick wall remains,
intact, but the cars are
gone. You don't know how much track there is
between you and the wall, but
there's no question, that's where you're
going.
Then you see that not
everyone notices - or at least, they don't show
whether they're noticing.
They talk to their neighbors, they do whatever,
they enjoy the moment they're
in, they raise their arms and scream with
delight, or they hold on,
whiteknuckled, eyes closed.
So you have choices.
Here's what I
learned one day at an amusement park in New Hampshire,
halfway through my
first real rollercoaster ride: the problem is that you
aren't driving.
That's the source of the fright, that fact that you
aren't in control. If
you were driving, the sudden changes of
acceleration and direction would be
nothing, you do that to yourself all
the time. So what do you do? There is
one thing you can do - you can
pretend to drive, fool yourself for a bit.
You lean into the turns, you
tell yourself, "Now I'm going to make this thing
barrel down that hill,
now I want to make this sharp left turn, now I want to
fly over the top of
this next rise..."
You can tell yourself, "I want
to reach that wall. Whatever is on the
other side, I want to reach it." And
when you reach it, if you have time
to see it coming, you lift up your arms
and go through without fear.
And in the time you have between here and
there, in this borrowed time,
what is there to do but make your fellow
passengers more comfortable...
share that granola bar in your pocket... offer
a word of encouragement to
someone with white knuckles... try to help settle
the lovers' spat in the
next seat... or call someone on your cell phone, and
tell them that you
love them, and you're having a great time, and the view is
fantastic.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright
(c) 2006 Skip Mendler.
All rights reserved. Reposting
permitted.
/ / skip
Skip Mendler
IF BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING
info: www.skipmendler.com LET'S
KEEP HIM ENTERTAINED | | |
|
