1/6/04 2:10pm So I worked basically this entire week. Meh. My attitude towards work at this point is more or less ambivalent. It seems like a kind of necessary evil at this stage in the game. I think my big problem with it can be summed up by saying that the sun is on the same exact position down on the horizon during my trips to and from the office in the morning and the afternoon, which I personally think is very depressing. Damn winter. So anyway, Tom and Sarah had their last nights in Albany on like Monday or something, so the guys and I chilled around here, then they split for a movie and I went with Megh to see Sarah for a bit. After that, I pretty much did nothing all week. The only saving graces of Tuesday and Wednesday were lots of sleep (I think I actually went to bed at like 8:30 on Wednesday night) and conversations with Nikki. That got me through to Thursday, I think we hung out Thursday night too, oh, we went to the Fountain, and by we I mean me, Zonk, Billy, and H-Man. That was pretty cool. Friday was more or less the focal point of the week, though. I went into work for four hours, split at noon, hit up the DMV to renew my license, picked up Tony from the bus station, gave him a whirlwind driving tour of Albany, took him to Bombers, met up with the Z-man and my brother, and then we hit Jiminy. First of all, it was extremely, very very absolutely very cold yesterday. I think we hit a high of maybe three degrees above, and all I can say is that up on the mountain, it was easily, EASILY thirty degrees below, take or leave the windchill factor. Holy shit. So the good news was that not a lot of people were out on the mountain. The bad news was that Tony fell pretty hard on like his fifth run and was grounded at the bottom for a few hours, but he decided to drug himself with Tylenol enough to go for broke and run a couple more. Later on, he told me that it was definitely worth it. For my part, skiing was pretty good despite the temperatures, I got to see a bunch of old faces (they're all seniors now, man I'm old), took the last clam chowder before Zonk could get it, and added two notches to my belt: North Glade and Upper Fox. I was thoroughly pleased. Friday was also enhanced by my wearing of extremely very many colors. I started the day with black, yellow, blue, teal, and red argyle socks, red boxers, a purple t-shirt, black dress pants, a brown dress shirt, and a copper, gold, grey, and tan tie. For skiing, I switched to brown socks, navy Under Armour, same purple t-shirt, a brown/orange/tan flannel shirt, that hideous yellow and blue Sabres hat, and the brown plaid scarf. Colors. I was pretty psyched. After skiing, Nikki called at like just the right time when we were all sitting around waiting for Jon to come back from ski club (+3 to spirits), then the boys and I (and Jenny O') hit Gateway with a vengeance, and basically everyone of import was there, more or less. After Gateway, the standard late-night chilling session back in the house of Bard, and apparently Mario 3 ends right before the end of Giant World, that is, when Zonk and Kennedy say it ends. Fair enough. That wrapped up around three in the morning, went to sleep, got up, took Tony to the bus station, he's been whisked away now, and I am back at home, basically alone, it is very cold outside, but the sun is shining. So, I would have to say, Friday was solid. Solid and very cold.

1/4/04 6:26pm What can I even write here? This break has been like one long torrent of activity, and somehow I still complain about being bored. People are in my house basically all the time. Last week, for example, after three literally insane days in Central New York with family, my dad's side re-invaded our house (kicked out of my room for the night), I started work again at ARAMARK, then King Zonca's Army laid siege to the house the next night, the next day I came home from work to find like my mom's friends from downstate chilling together with Aunt Linda and Uncle John and their clan, I got kicked out of my room for the next two nights, one of them was New Year's, which I spent at RPI with Zonca. It was, through and through, a Billy Busacker Production. Mark and I sat around kind of awkwardly while everyone else drank, and after the ball dropped in Times Square we split, tried to go to Gateway, but it was mobbed. So we went our separate ways, I went home and collapsed. I wasted all of New Year's day, didn't go skiing, but my aunt was still over so we did some mad chilling, and Friday after work I left for Rochester and Jason's house. My WNY sojourn was incredibly suburban. Between Jason's place in an outer-rim Rochester satellite, Tony's mansion on Crystal Tree Lane (literally), and Nikki's in a more home-like (trees! sidewalks!) zone of Getzville, I was positively reeling. Additionally, Starbucks. Even so, I had a really good time. It was like seeing a teaser trailer for the best movie ever. I want more, damnit. For now, though, I am back in Albany, watching all of my people disappear back to their schools over the next week, working, and getting things locked and loaded to start the next semester. In short, I have been very overwhelmed and very underwhelmed during my time back, but I am happy. Cheers.

12/24/03 12:28pm Well, here I am in the middle of the "Holiday Season," and things are alright. Festivus was great except for a few unfortunate aspects. First, Meghan Towle had the flu, and couldn't make it. Second, Brendan Cataldo flipped out over some girl and exploded a bag of chips in my room, and they went literally everywhere you can think of. My room still smells like really bad, cheesy potato chips. Third, I made a way-out-of-line offhanded comment to Mark that got played up at the party, and feelings were hurt all around. I seriously need to be more careful -- even on Festivus. Hopefully, Mark will look through my comments and see me for the jackass that I truly am, and life will go on. The rest of the party was brilliant, though. The last count was thirty-seven people, including the Brothers Bard, and lots of people brought random food items -- a can of deviled ham from Billy, Jordan Almonds from Schuman, and chocolate chip pancakes from the Campbells. It was seriously a Festivus for the restivus, and (as a Festivus miracle) nothing was broken. The pole is still standing. So now it's the day before Christmas, it's pouring outside, and I'm feeling pretty apathetic towards the whole thing. Christmas is just not hitting me right this year, and that's kind of the way it is. The break has been, if anything, very restful. I've done a lot of skiing, a whole lot of sleeping, I've hung out with my friends a good amount, Tom led us on a misadventure in Woodstock, and the whole thing has been framed by my correspondence with my Buffalo friends, especially Nikki, who I miss a whole lot. This is a pretty important part of the year, I guess, because it gives me the opportunity to take a few steps back from everything that's going on in my life and just process things... put them into perspective. Even though Christmas itself is giving me a hard time, Festivus and New Year's are of pretty major importance in considering the victories and failures of the year and then coming to some kind of resolution about how things are going to continue from there. I definitely have a lot of things to consider as I move on into next year... thanks to everyone who has been a part of this thing so far, and I hope that things just keep getting better. Happy Holidays.

12/17/03 10:51pm A few things. First, a hundred years ago today the Wright Brothers did their thing down in North Carolina. Cheers. Second, I went skiing again on Monday, and it was alright but it was insanely windy at the top. Left Bank was open but the wind was brutal, so I only hit it twice. 360 saved the night for me. Anyway, it was fun. Yesterday evening was pretty cool. I went downtown with Mike and James, and we were just driving around, and we hear these noises from above. Mike is all like, "We got a lot of snow on our roof," but James insists that, no, it isn't snow. Well, it wasn't snow. It was fireworks. So we left the van in Academy Park, walked out in front of the Capitol and over to the Plaza where they were shooting off fireworks, for essentially no reason at all. Wow. The state government rocks. Who benefits? Albany. That's right, folks. Fireworks on a random Tuesday night in December. So that was nifty, and then Mike and James decided to spoil it by taking me to the mall, so I put on a frowny face and walked around with them for a long time, I ended up running into Anne Cataldo, which further soured my mood, and it was all one big ugly blur of sunglasses and pretzels and neon and people, and I hated it. Some time later, we left, and picked up Laura Montgomery from her UAlbany dorm. That girl is a laugh riot. Incredible. The four of us went to the Fountain, where the pizza was and still is fantabulous, and dished up the dirt on a bunch of different people. The whole night ended with a positive gain of happy, despite the whole mall thing, so hey, awesome. Today I went with my family to Utica for a funeral, meh, but I got back to an e-mail from Dr. Duling proclaiming my awesomeness during the RST Uberseminar, for which I worked a bit too much over the past few months. All of that work, apparently, was worth it. The Pharisees were very well-received. I guess I can rest now... life keeps on keeping on, the good and the bad, and I feel fine...

12/14/03 10:28pm Mehh, this snowstorm was just enough to scare everyone into not going out tonight, but not enough to make any kind of significant impact. I'm betting that the Albany City kids are gonna have school tomorrow. Fair is fair, right? Anyway, I totally wasted this weekend, and on top of that, I seem to have a pretty serious cold. Irritating. I did get to go skiing on Friday with Mike, Jon, my dad, Zonca, Jenny O', and Sam Cowles, which was pretty fantastic. I got a pair of skis for Christmas, which is rocking. Hrm, what else... oh, I went to church today. I figured I would throw God a curve and see how He'd take it. It was pretty interesting, though (I guess God thought that She would throw me a curve instead). Instead of that crazy God-tingly feeling that I used to get (but now get when listening to music or thinking about metaphysics or experiencing God in everyday life), I couldn't stop hearing all of the history and scholarly junk behind what I know about the scripture and everything else. I wanted to yell something like, "yeah it figures that you would bring the Shema in at a time like this" or "yeah how about Isaiah had no idea that his work was going to be ripped to start a whole new religion that kicked Yahweh to the 'Old' chapters, so stop using his Exile stuff and applying it to Jesus" and I would say that, on the whole, it probably lessened my enjoyment of the whole thing. I do not get my kicks out of seeing the curtain pulled back (cf. Gk. apo-kalypsis, I am such a nerd) and seeing all of the stuff that's behind... maybe I need to get more in touch with like, my faith or something. I think that, possibly, since I have my own kind of personal religious system, I just need to figure out how I can keep going to church and make it fit with what I think. I mean, it shouldn't be too hard. If I'm a pantheist, and I think that God is in everything and everyone, then duh, of course Jesus of Nazareth was fully divine and fully human. I don't know. Maybe I'm worrying a little too much about this. It's all good, right? Yeah, faith. That reminds me, I need to register for that college student Christian convention thing, which should be a throwback to the old Speech and Debate away tournament days. Yeah, throwback. So now I'm very bored, but it's alright. Why? Skiing, God giving me something to think about, and a few good people on the old AIM-box. That's kind of the way it's going to be, isn't it?

12/12/03 9:50am It seemed like I was just getting into the groove, and now they just take it all away from me... well, I guess that's the way it goes. The fall semester is over for me, and it ended on a pretty hopeful note, which did not at all enable me to want to leave Buffalo this time around. The semester pretty much ended in a crazy chill session in the Upper Spire on Wednesday night which went until somewhere near six in the morning. It featured everything from a Big Pat episode to old Spire favorites like Jason, Derek, Dan Lance Dan, and Bob to innocent bystanders like Nikki and Rose to not-so-innocent not-so-bystanders like Jess and Will. All in all, it was a highly enjoyable, highly amoral event that, along with an Amy's run earlier in the day, put a nice cap on the semester for me. There's no rest for the weary, though. After hitting the road with Big Pat yesterday I arrived in Albany to meet a new set of joys and challenges, so I guess there's nothing left for me to do but to get this party started. The semester is over, I'm feeling good about it, and the wind has pushed me home for awhile... it was tough to leave, but I'll be back. For now, I'm just as happy right where I am.

12/9/03 6:23am If you are pulling an all-nighter to explain the entire sweep of Israel's history from Solomon to Judas Maccabeus, and you would like to feel all hardcore about it, a good trick would be to not run into Alex Pestana in the Village community center at six in the morning. It just kind of puts a damper on your achievements. The good news is that my OT paper is officially finished, and in like two short hours I will have handed it in and I will return to my apartment to actually get some sleep. Then it's just a matter of polishing off the Pharisees, preparing a thirty minute presentation on them, doing it to it, and that'll be pretty much all she wrote. The last few days have been absolutely devoid of fun, with a few rare and wonderful exceptions: my defeat at the hands of apple pie a la mode with Nikki at Pano's on Saturday, a half hour of Magic with the Spiremen on Sunday night, and a lecture on the corporal works of mercy from the Catholic perspective on Monday night. Seriously, my life has been so devoid of fun for the last few days that I actually considered going to a lecture to count as a study break. This is insane, and it needs to stop. Hopefully, it will stop very, very soon.

12/6/03 12:01pm It looks like I can only concentrate on school work once every two days. This mental issue is not at all conducive to slam-tackling the Pharisees, so I'm irritated in that regard. The paper is coming along, though. In any event, none of that is really my point today. I've kind of been considering my situation here, and I'm really happy I came to Canisius. I know I bitch about it a lot, but I really like the people here, I've really had a good time this semester, and it seems like everything is going to be just fine. It's really just a matter of focusing on the things that are important to you, and letting everything else go... it's not worth worrying about it. This is my life, I'm having a good time, and if you happen to be on board this train with me, I hope that I can share a thing or two and, in turn, learn something from you. I seriously mean it. It's time to mind the lesson that I should have learned last year and break out of these delusions. The only things that are real are the things you go out and bring home for yourself. I have responsibilities here, and I'm happy to honor them. It's been such an incredible ride so far...

12/2/03 11:42pm This week, Pizazz Week, is going pretty well, all things considered. I still don't have any pages written for my papers per se, but I've done a bootload of research and blocking for the really important one, which is on anti-Pharisaic polemic in Matthew, more or less. The sand keeps running out of the hourglass on that one, but for some reason, I feel a little better about it every time I sit down to it, so it's going to be alright. As for Israel and Job, well, they can wait until probably Thursday or so. I got slapped with another paper assignment today, but this replaces a final exam next week, so that's cool by me. In related news, I don't have a Homeric final, so that's making me happy. My mood so far this week has been steadily improving over and against the gloom and panic that dominated Sunday night. Last night, for example, was all Capra-esque in a good way, what with a phone call from Billy in Boston, an episode of stumbling out into the snow, a kickass chilling session at Upper Deck with Graham and Nikki, and coming home to a Spire full of nerds playing nerd games. Today, despite waking up like twenty minutes late for my first class, was instantaneously salvaged by a visit with Professor Banchich (an ancient atlas, Joseph and Aseneth, talking about my friends, assorted random banter), a hot shower, and a two-soup lunch. My work ethic plunged this afternoon, but I still feel pretty good about things. There's time enough for me to slam out thirty-five pages of papers before next week, Studio X is coming up very fast (must learn my lines), I'm planning on a whole bunch of assorted weekend excursions out of Buffalo next semester, and yeah, by this time in two short weeks I will be skiing, sleeping, or eating pastries. I may be under the gun, but I am by no means afraid. I can see the light at the end of it, man. It's on its merry way.

11/30/03 5:03pm Well, that break was neither refreshing nor... particularly good. I mean, all of the necessary ingredients were more or less present. I got to see my family, I played poker with my brothers and cousin, my friends were all there and everything, but mehhhh... I just had work hanging over my head, and for some reason I couldn't shake the feeling that I was stealing time from the end of this semester. This is kind of troubling, because I usually don't have any problems putting work out of my head. Grrr. I didn't spend nearly enough time with the people that I actually -wanted- to spend time with during the two short days I was actually in Albany, so that was no good. Hopefully, everything will be set right when I go back in two weeks... this break was just a tease more than anything else, and it hurt. The reality of it is that I'm stuck here with a lot of work to do before I can earn my way back home. Fortunately, I have good people here too. It's not so bad. Five hours alone in the car, however, is very bad. That's probably what I'm mad at the most right now. I drove in complete silence from Albany to Utica. That was hilarious. I did not turn on the radio. Hahahah. Hah. So now I'm back here, jetlagged from life and not at all re-energized for the final lap, like I should be. This is no good. This is no good at all.

11/23/03 11:08pm So this is like the home stretch of the semester, and I can see, for better or worse, every remaining hour in front of me. Wow, this is not going to be easy. For some reason though, it all feels good. I feel like I'm vaguely in control of what's going on, so that's enough. I like what I see. Anyway, yeah, the show is over, so I have some time to work with, kind of. My religious studies uberpaper is hanging over me pretty monstrously. It's due a week from Wednesday, and I barely even have a topic yet. My other courses are going to be pretty light for the remainder, though, so it should afford me a window in which to actually pull this sucker off. I'm not worried by any stretch of the imagination quite yet. So that's kind of where I am... I can see the end, I know the work that still has to be done, and I am very much looking forward to spending time with my family and friends in other parts of the state this week. It feels like my story only moves when I travel... I need to get out of this Spire more often.

11/23/03 5:49am Playing a variant of hide-and-go seek in Lyons Hall until after five in the morning... priceless. The show is over, and I'm going to miss those damn people. Seriously.

11/21/03 12:28am Wow, what a good day. Good things... I am thankful for: hot sauce in a honey bear, the Categorical Imperative, Tony Tyrpak, the end of the Iliad (book one of twenty-four), a mailbox for FUSION, a message from the Sarah Dunn that I miss, Amy's and Pano's in one day, getting to know new and nifty people, getting psyched at intermission for an awesome second act, pomegranates, Yahweh, a successful ongoing boycott of my own sneakers, the LT clubroom, the boys of the Lower Spire, the boys of the Upper Spire, and everyone in between. I am so damn fortunate that it really just gets to me sometimes. I mean, seriously. It doesn't really matter what happens to me for the rest of this semester, because really, I'm happy now. Nothing can undo a really good day.

11/15/03 1:46pm The show has been going really, really well. I have to say that I'm more or less in love with the cast. Doing this show, seriously, has made theatre fun again for me. That's awesome. So a couple of cool things have happened recently. I discovered a Trekkie in a very unexpected quarter of the cast, which was hot. I had another being-and-time rant during a late-night Pano's episode with Pat and Graham, which was splendid. I've decided to declare war on evangelical Christianity. I don't know how I'm going to fight them yet, or even if they're worth fighting, but seriously, they have really begun to infuriate me. My parents, it seems, are coming up from Albany this afternoon to see the show, which is unwarranted but nevertheless fantastic. My sister, I guess, is in love with the show, so it looks like they've rationalized a ten hour round-trip. That's cool. Equally (or more) cool are the following people: Tony, with whom I am tight like a tiger -- medicinal bowling all the way; Nikki, who has served as a sounding board for my rants and has kept me generally grounded in sanity throughout the production; Greg, for making sure that one of us always misses a vocal cue backstage during "Sad Tale"; L-G, for taking it like a man; everyone that told me to get better when I was sick last weekend; and the awesome people from back home that I've talked to recently: Megh, Zonk, Sarah, Billy, Tom, Craig, Mark, Jon, Adrienne... damnit, I miss you guys. So today is a Saturday afternoon on which I am particularly thankful for being part of such a great thing, and having so many great people that I can call my friends. That's really all there is to it.

11/11/03 11:31pm It's never a good idea, you know, when you're talking about role models, to explicitly point out to people the person that you want them to emulate. This can never lead to anything productive. If anything, it will have two immediate effects. First, it will turn the people that you're preaching to off to the person that you are edifying. In short, it may lead to resentment. Resentment of a skilled person is not a good thing. Resentment of skilled persons leads to counterproductivity. The second immediate effect comes into play if the person that you're edifying happens to be standing right there. When you make an example of them, you build up their ego. If this person is skilled, they probably already know that they're skilled. They don't need to hear it again. I have a theory that when you tell someone that they are a good role model, they instantly become a less effective role model than they were before you said anything to them. Wow. So, that settles that. I've been really happy with the production that we're doing right now. I've had a whole lot of fun. For some reason, however, I just hit a rock wall of irritation today, for no apparent reason. I guess I just happened to hit my breaking point here. It's kind of discouraging, because I've been really really happy about the show and everything. So now I'm just pissed off for a ton of little reasons, and that's no good. I'm usually pretty laid back about things. I guess, comparatively, that I'm still pretty laid back, because there are a lot of people in the show that are seriously flipping out. This kind of happens every time, though. This is kind of why I do it. Do I do it to feel this frustration? Do I need this kind of feeling in my life? The answer, I'm guessing, is yes. Yeah. So this is kind of the way things are... sorry to anyone that I cut down tonight. For once, I may not have meant it. I hope that I wake up tomorrow, and every day thereafter, ready to bust out, go for broke, and do what I've been sent here to do. I owe you guys that much, at least.
I'm not done. It has come to my attention that I may be delusional. I may not know what the hell is going on anymore. I may be building certain people up in my mind with no real grounds for doing so, and I may be bringing other people down for no apparent reason. I just get these ideas in my head... I feel like a teenager, or something. No, no, I guess I don't. I'm probably just overreacting. Maybe it's actually a normal thing to be attracted to someone and see things in them that really aren't there. Maybe I'm not the only one that's guilty of that. And even if I was... is it even such a horrible thing? Do we not disregard various shortcomings in ourselves? In the ones we love? Seriously, folks. Even so, perhaps it's time that I stopped dreaming. Perhaps it's time that I came down and saw things the way they actually are. Perhaps it's time for me to come and fight through and be as real and as good as I can be. Yeah. I think I need to figure this stuff out.

11/9/03 7:13pm Today is a good day I think for ripping my throat out! For some reason, this weekend has made me feel very much like an adult. For some reason, I associate being an adult with doing lame things like the drive-through line at the bank and going out to Wegmans to buy honey for a sore throat. So on Friday I summarily poisoned myself -- I ordered a bean and cheese burrito at Mighty Taco and got halfway through the thing while making a deposit in the drive-through line at the bank when I realized that it was, in fact, a beef and cheese burrito. I felt like hell for the rest of the day. That sucked, too, because I had to run about twenty-five GC's of some alkene isomers for a bunch of sophomores that afternoon. Meh. Rehearsal has been really fun. It's been taking up a lot of my time, too. Well, it's been really fun until today, when I effectively lost my voice. I ducked out of the vocal rehearsal to buy myself some hot chocolate and some honey, then I made myself some tea, explored the sixth dungeon in Link, and that was all well and good. Then I went back to rehearsal, where everyone was acting very strangely. I didn't really know what was up, but I kept taking honey from the honey bear that I bought, and I couldn't sing, which made me very angry. So today was about seven hours of frustration due to lack of voice, and now I have to plow through the next part of 1st Corinthians before letting myself go to bed. So that's kind of where I'm at right now. My throat hurts like a mother (although, thanks to Mike and Jon for the Earl Grey that they picked up in Scotland -- it's helping), but otherwise, I'm feeling really good about a lot of things right now. So take that.

11/7/03 2:26am The good news is that my medical ethics term paper is out of my life. Seriously. The bad news is that I hate my medical ethics professor. That's a story for another time, though. What's important is that FUSION rocks my socks, and it's everything I ever wanted it to be, except it's not an official club yet. I can wait. Rehearsal has been making me happy (except for tonight, you know, because I was irritated because I had to do my term paper, which is now finished). That's really good. I seriously feel like my life has instantly improved now that this paper is finished. Wow. Writing right-wing tripe on biomoral problems sucks. It sucks a whole lot. I'm sorry that I did it. Natural law has been bastardized. It's really too bad, because it's a neat idea. It's too bad that people had to go and screw it up. I mean, honestly. Who wants to keep people from having kids if they want them? Don't they realize that we are biologically hard-wired to want kids? Don't they see that when we're denied the opportunity to have kids, for whatever the reason may be, we have deep-seated psychological needs that must be filled? I feel so strongly about this that I'm appealing to psychology. Seriously. In any case, it makes me all the more irritated that I have to spit back what my professor wants to hear. I love how I hated every word of my paper because it was some unholy hybrid between what I wanted to say and what my professor wanted me to say. I love how I'm going to get like a B or something on it, which will really seriously irritate me. Unacceptable. I should have withdrawn from this one while I still had the chance. Wow. Rant over. I guess what I'd really like to say is that I had to do a paper, I hated doing it, and now that I'm done with it, no matter what the deal with it happens to be, I am so much happier now that it is done. I am so, so, so happy. That's really all I wanted to say.

11/5/03 12:32am A day without orange juice is a day without sunshine. Seriously. I woke up today knowing that I was out of orange juice. This did not please me at all. I took a shower knowing that I did not have orange juice. I got dressed knowing that I did not have orange juice. I walked to class without having any orange juice first. Class was agony. I read Alt Press. That was agony. Lunch was agony. I took a nap, which made things kind of alright. Wyrobek called me while I was shaving, which was hilarious, you know, because I had the phone in one hand and shaving cream all over the other. The good news there is that I will be teaching a bunch of Catholic high school kids a thing or two about the Hebrew Scriptures next semester. Then class... was agony. Rehearsal was moderately okay. Things really started looking up after rehearsal, when I got Nick 28 P-Wings in Mario 3, beat Little Pat in Magic, and acquired/devoured a pomegranate. That little pomegranate saved my life today, I think. So life is alright, thanks to the pomegranate and some really cool people that I live and work with. There are some damn cool people in the Spire. There are some damn cool people in the cast of Island. There are some damn cool people around here, and it makes me happy. Wow. Pomegranate.

11/2/03 3:21am November. I'm seriously getting too old for this sort of thing. Well, tonight was pretty hot. Good times in the theatre led directly into good times inside and outside of the Spire: bowling (featuring my favorite character combination, "S8/"), Pano's, and metaphysics mostly. Tonight I was also summarily reminded about how interconnected we all are, you know, just as people. Every step we take affects everyone else. Every little thing we do, man... so that's just the way it is. Wow. Life.

10/29/03 12:38am Well, I'm definitely on autopilot this week, which I guess is okay for now. Nothing really earth-shattering or spectacular is going on. I am, however, working some cool new people into my life, and I actually really enjoyed play rehearsal tonight. Waltzing, man. Waltzing. Who knew? Also in the mix are the preliminary FUSION meetings, which should start next week I think. This week, thankfully, is kind of a valley between tougher work weeks, so I'm enjoying it while it lasts. This is definitely the calm before the term paper storm, which is approaching faster than I'd like to admit. However, after those papers are finished, man... that's seriously it for the semester. I'm only looking at like two or three finals, as far as I know, the show will end before Thanksgiving, and I mean, seriously... this semester will be history before I even make it into any kind of groove. It's kind of sad, actually. Well, no, not really. I will not be upset to see this one go. Let's bring some other people into this, shall we? Derek and I have been leaving each other threatening post-it notes, such as my "somewhere over the rainbow, everyone will die" and his "beware, the panda rise up against us this 'morrow." So that's all pretty ominous. I guess Tony, with whom I am tight like a tiger, is going through a rough patch lately, so I'm kinda worried about him. Little Pat is developing into a typhoon of emaciated awesomeness, and he's doing most of the making fun of Bill around here, which gives me much less to do. I think Nick is addicted to Super Mario 3 now, which is fine by me. Dan is going through a metaphysical phase, which is hot. I love those, man. I mean, seriously... consciousness. Who even thinks about that? How about no one... so I guess things are actually pretty cool right now. We're just doing what we do best here in the Spire... Happy Birthday, Megh. I miss you.

10/24/03 11:22am So the show is going well, and I'm having a good time being in Little Theatre again. Yeah, there is some lameness going on, but by and large, there really aren't any major problems this semester. The first major wave of my coursework is out of the way -- I love how both waves of coursework during the semester coincide nicely with the two Little Theatre shows. You'd think, you know, someone was planning these things a certain way. I got a package from my aunt yesterday, and that pretty much made my day. What else... oh, Dan Lance Dan referred me to a very funny site called Toothpaste for Dinner. It's pretty rocking. Also, I saw a pretty awful movie last night, that was set in the hypothetical Hollywood-ified college world, you know, where everyone looks great and alcohol, pot, and cocaine are always within reach. And the sex... oh, the sex. So I was bored out of my mind while, naturally, the movie was conditioning everyone in the room to see the world a certain way. Wow, imposition of values. Seriously. As far as I know, though, nobody got hurt. So here comes the weekend, again. I'll probably be hanging around and not getting any work done, again. Meh.

10/22/03 12:41am Somehow, today turned out to be a good day. Seriously, I was worried. First of all, I worried that I wasn't even going to wake up this morning. Last night, more or less, was probably the worst night of the semester so far. A nice amount of work that would have gotten me to bed around 1:30 ended up taking me until sometime around 3:00, mostly because of a freak campus-wide printer crisis. My printer is out of black ink, and I could have sworn that I had an extra cartridge somewhere. Obviously, that ink has been carried off by some gnomes or something. Derek's printer was working all fine and dandy when I printed up my interlinear Greek template for the section of the Iliad I had to do last night, but it was gracious enough to run out of ink when I needed to print up a draft of the eight-pager I had to do for my Old Testament midterm, which I finished around 12:30 or 1. I was like, "no big deal, I can just go over to the community center." Wrong. All three of the computers were taken. For some reason, Flannery was up and so I entreated him to print up a draft copy of my paper. That was fine, until I needed to actually print it up. The damn people were still in the community center. Chaos ensued. I went all the way across campus to the freshman dorms only to find that their printer was out of toner. Seriously. On my way back, that Jimmy Stewart drunk-and-dejected-on-Christmas-Eve feeling brewing inside me, I happened across the Little Theatre clubroom, which was peculiarly inhabited for 2:30 in the morning. Truesdail and B-Waff were playing DDR, while Maggie was on the phone with Lisa. Maggie was like "just print it up here," but there was no paper and I wasn't about to break club policy for a copy of my damn paper, so I stumbled back across campus, seriously feeling sick to my stomach. I may have had a fever last night. B-Waff said I felt clammy. Anyhow, by the time I got back, the community center was empty, so I printed up a copy of my damn paper (and pulled down an English translation of the Iliad passage off of Perseus), dashed back to my apartment, started ranting incoherently towards Derek, and fell asleep around 3:00-and-some-change, most of my translation done, and eight pages of OT essay finished, neat, and happy. After about four hours of sleep, the sun started coming up, and somehow, I was basically out of bed and I hit the ground running. On the way to my 8:30 Old Testament class, which I made it to on time, I noticed a row of four gingko trees. I've walked the route out to the Health Science about five zillion times, but I don't think that I had ever noticed them... maybe I had been aware of them, but there they were. That was a sign for me, I guess. Anyway, I got to class and the professor announced that the eight-pagers didn't need to be turned in for another week, because he wouldn't be able to get to them this week anyhow. I laughed on the inside. In the Homeric class, I slammed Iliad I:290-333 with a vengeance. I don't even know how I did it, but I did it. After lunch, I solved a bunch of puzzles in FFX and got the Anima summon, all by myself. I also got a document notarized by a real-life notary public. Getting stuff notarized is definitely cool. I checked my AIM messages, and was delighted to find out that I had not, contrary to my own worst fears, missed Meghan Towle's birthday. I also got a considerate e-mail message from one of my professors. Wow. What a good day. Seriously. Today was supposed to suck. How did it not suck? I really have no idea.

10/19/03 12:12pm It's too bad that the expression "life is good" is clichT nowadays, you know, at least in this country, because wow. Seriously, folks, I felt pretty alive this weekend. I attribute that wonderful feeling mostly to the opening of the latest Little Theatre show; Blithe Spirit has kind of thrown a much-needed curve ball at me, and it's provided enough change to get me seriously moving and thinking about things. After the show on Friday night, I went on my first visit to the local mini-golf place that has a DDR machine -- I guess that Graham and Tony basically lived there for most of the summer. Graham is an animal. I'll probably never be nearly that good, but I am improving pretty well. I guess the point of this was that DDR got the blood pumping, which doesn't happen very often. I think somewhere between DDR and Pano's we went to Jess' place, where a whole bunch of Little Theatre people were hanging out. I remember diving for the floor, telling Liz Gruber that "factionalism is bad," and just generally raving like a lunatic for about half an hour. Those people must think I'm crazy or something... it was a truly exceptional set of circumstances. Call it a defense mechanism, if you feel so psychologically inclined. I personally do not. Rehearsals for Once on this Island have been threatening to take over my life, but so far nothing too horrible has happened (most of the rehearsals have been shorter than scheduled or they just plain haven't needed me, which I do not mind in the least). This week is going to be pretty heavy, academically speaking, so I'm more or less being tested over the next few days... I can take it, though. I've got existence in a salt shaker on my side, so bring it. I'll be waiting right here.

10/14/03 4:59pm The weather got continuously worse as today progressed, but it hasn't been enough to deter my fighting spirit. Somewhere between here and the end of time, I'll be able to make a place for all of you...

10/13/03 4:52pm This weekend has probably been exactly what the doctor ordered. I think the only way to really remember how wonderful Albany is in October is to come back and experience it again... I went apple picking out at Indian Ladder with my family yesterday before the Bills got their asses handed to them, and the outside world was awesome and beautiful and strange. It's different without Sally around... it's like the life force of the house has moved up a few feet, so the first thing I noticed when I got home was that it felt like the building was up on stilts. Weird stuff. This time back I got a very interesting "so this is the future..." kind of vibe. Maybe this isn't the future at all, though. Maybe this is really what it's supposed to be... an incredible period of transition. We're all still rooted here though, right? What happens when we start going off in every direction and we don't come back? I hope that I can keep the important people close by. Everything is developing so quickly now... it's really awesome. It's like the only thing I'm not looking forward to right now is the trip back to Buffalo. Yeah, this is just what I needed. Sometimes all you really need is to step outside of the battlefield, get a good bird's eye view, then barrel back in and start smacking heads together. I wonder how I lost perspective so early this time around...

10/7/03 2:26pm "Controlling everything inside, I'm feeling weak I don't feel right, telling me I have to change, telling me to act my age..." Yeah. I'm stronger than this. I will not be held down. I am going to beat Sloth off with a stick, give Lust the cold shoulder, kick Envy to the curb, and embrace my Pride and Wrath as weapons of Bardly destruction. I'm not taking a nap today. I'm not giving in to all of these pressures (most of them internal), and I'm sure as hell not going to stop for anyone who isn't worth my time. I am going to fight this fight. I'm going to fire up this academic cannon and never look back... Buffalo, you're going down. Albany, I'll be with you shortly.

10/5/03 6:49pm Two thumbs up for this weekend. Things were kicked off here with a pretty shocking moral scenario. I was at work on Friday, you know, running the gas chromatograph for a bunch of sophomores, having a grand old time ("this thing should play music! you know, you could be looking at the spike and be like 'oh man that's acetone' and the Stones would be doing their thing at the same time"), when it came to my attention that one of my students actually took his distillation product (according to my own GC work, it was 100% ethanol) out of the lab, went home, mixed in some Kool-Aid, and went to town with it. Wow. Foolhardy at best, lethal at worst. So I just sat there and was all like, "wow, I didn't just hear that." That breaks so many rules, man... but what was I going to do? Was I going to jeopardize this kid's college education? No. This particular act will go unpunished. That's all there is to it. Did I do the right thing? Was there a right thing to be done? Should I have stepped up and told him that what he did was way wrong? Maybe I failed one of life's tests on Friday. Well, that's the way it goes. Anyway, I hastily left work and flew off to Rochester on our grand I-90. I met up with my cousin Michelle, who took me to dinner at the RIT dining hall, then I found Keith from my old Q2WF days, and after all was said and done I wound up at Dave France's joint in the upper classman housing sector, better known as The Vandelay Club. A few things about RIT and the Dave France experience: first of all, RIT is a spiritually empty brick-and-glass architectural holocaust. I'm glad it was getting dark when I got there, because damn. What a place. Second of all, everyone that Dave France lives with seems to be very similar to Dave France: intelligent, Seinfeld-quoting, sports-loving, and inexorably linked to gambling in all of its ghastly forms. Example: in a diner that felt very much like a Metro 20 clone, France and his friend Singer spent half the time figuring out odds and assessing criteria for betting on the age of the girls that were in the next booth. Seriously, half the time. That was awesome. I got back to Buffalo on Saturday, so I went to see Lost in Translation with Liss, and that movie, I have to say, was freaking awesome. Bill Murray was spectacular. It's the kind of movie that kind of makes you not want to have kids. I was pretty profoundly affected. Last night I think I acheived all of my goals for the day by about 9:00. Today was Sunday, and at least the sun was out. I showed Jenny O'Connell and her mom around campus, talked to Billy on the phone, and that's been pretty much it. I seriously cannot wait to get back to Albany on Friday. I miss everyone, and Albany autumn, a whole lot. This weekend was so refreshing, though... it's that cold October wind, man. It's gotta be...

10/2/03 11:43am Am I that far gone? Am I that completely delusional? Maybe all I need is to back down off the Starcraft. Is that really the answer to my problems, though? No, I think that all I need is to put in more effort. I need to be more diligent. I need to commit myself to doing this right, because I really only get one shot.

9/30/03 3:18pm Kiss your September goodbye, folks. So today has been pretty insane. I woke up this morning and pleaded with myself to allow me to skip my Old Testament class, but I just wouldn't have it. So I went. It was like a battle, sitting there trying to keep my eyes open... I sit in the front row. The class is an hour and fifteen minutes. It was nightmarish. Then, things took a turn for the worse. I walked outside to go to my next class, which was across campus. I had gone no more than fifty yards or so from the building when the sky opened up and I essentially got caught in a hailstorm for four blocks. I took my sweet time... it was just that kind of morning. I got into the library (where my next class was) and realized that in my infinite awesomeness this morning, I grabbed the wrong notebook, so I didn't have notes for about forty lines of the Iliad. Fantastic. I was soaking wet, pretty tired, had no notes to use, and to top it off I was plodding through one of Achilles' whiny speeches. When it was over, I ate a quick lunch and ran back to my apartment, where I basically collapsed for two hours or so. During those two hours, I think that things began progressing in a "Winnie the Pooh" type scenario: it was really, really windy. I mean, the wind was seriously howling. I fell asleep, had an incredibly screwed up dream that I can barely remember even now (but it bordered on nightmarish... daymarish?), and when I woke up it was pouring. So now I'm kind of biding my time here before I venture back out to go to my next class, which I would surely skip if it were not for the fact that it's only once a week. Plus, it's still September, so I can't skip. Seriously, folks. Bad to worse.

9/28/03 2:21pm This weekend was pretty alright. I went to see Matchstick Men, the new Ridley Scott movie, and that was pretty nifty. Friday night, there was nothing that I really wanted to do, so I ended up going to Wegman's at like two in the morning with Jason and Pat to get the ingredients necessary to more or less make a pizza from scratch. It was an interesting experiment, and the result was a pizza-like product that wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. That made me happy. Yesterday I played a bit of FFX, called my cousin in Rochester, and ended up going bowling, which was pretty good. I actually bowled a 136 in the second game, which basically degenerated into a competition between Byron and I that was only finally resolved in the third part of the tenth frame. Byron bowled something like a 128. It was a pretty epic battle. Overall, I'd say this weekend was a success if only because we left the Spire for a bit. I've kind of been getting like cabin fever or something here, just doing the same kind of stuff every day. I imagine this will change pretty soon though, because I'm probably getting cast in some capacity in the musical, so October is going to be pretty full-throttle, or if you prefer, full-tilt boogie. It's okay, though. It seems like nowadays I'm just looking for a fight...

9/25/03 12:56pm Wow. The sun is out today. There's a really strong wind blowing in, and it's one of those early fall days... the kind of day that is just absolutely downright refreshing. No frills, nothing special, just lots of photons and lots of barometric pressure differentials. I'm a huge fan of the wind. Today just feels special, like it's the first day of the future or something. I'm seriously up for whatever it is the winds are going to send my way...

9/23/03 12:14am I should be bushwacking through the Iliad right now. I should be sleeping. I should be getting ready for auditions tomorrow. I should be paying attention to lots of stuff here in Buffalo... but I need this time to find strength, for myself and for my family. I want to spend this time thinking about all of the joy that you brought us. I know enough to use this time to reflect on the importance of helping out other beings, the importance of living together, the importance of sharing our quality of life with one another. You will be missed, and your contribution to the strength of our family will never be forgotten. I'm sure it's true that all dogs go to heaven...

9/21/03 12:27pm This was kind of a slow weekend, but it picked up considerable speed somewhere near the end of yesterday, which rocked. I can't even remember what happened on Friday, but whatever it was must have pissed me off. Oh yeah! Friday started out alright. The sophomores were doing a microrecrystallization of phthalic acid, and they all finished by 5:00 so I ran off to Loyola Hall for an awesome beyond awesome dinner with the religious studies department faculty and some of my fellow majors. That gathering went on for like two and a half hours, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. The problems started coming when I got back to the Spire. Not a creature was stirring, although I guess it turns out that Alex was upstairs. Why I didn't go up there, I don't know. I got out of the dinner like five or ten minutes after the Kaliedoscope show opened, so that's where everyone was. I sat around and looked at the ceiling. I don't know why I didn't go upstairs. Either way, I was sitting around and then Mike and Kirsten came over... I kind of had this plan that we could like crash the second act of the show, but for some reason they only added to my sitting around and I told them a good long story about all things Spire. Then they were like "come to this movie" and I said "never heard of it" and then I looked it up on IMDb and then I was all like "you kids have fun" because I wasn't about to pay money to see a movie of questionable gummy. So they went off to have fun. Well, I continued to sit around and do literally nothing until the show was about to end. I went over to intercept my comrades, and basically everyone I know in Buffalo came streaming out of the theatre. I wasn't really happy about that, but I suppose that I have no one to blame but myself. So Bill went off somewhere and a bunch of people went downtown and I went home and summarily wasted the rest of the night. To give you an idea of how bad things really were for me, Big Pat won as Zerg. I think we went to Pano's that night too, but by then it was too little, too late. I went to bed exhausted and irritated. Yesterday was a whole lot better, though. I woke up in the mid-afternoon (huzzah!) and was like... "wow guys, it's a really nice day out," so we went to throw the frisbee around in Delaware Park. That was very therapeutic and nice, but I think it's safe to say that we won't be starting up a Canisius ultimate team any time soon. After that, we chilled in the Spire, went over to bother Byron for a couple hours, and went to the chicken wing festival and wing-eating contest. Which Pat won, at last. Even though we completely fixed it. Again. I actually felt remorse for some of the other people there, especially the one we call the Romulan, who deserved a seat at the contest, because he won last year. Anyway, Pat won, we were happy, we busted back to the spire, played a lot of Starcraft and Munchkin, and it was really wonderful because we had a couple of new people and we were all in pretty good spirits. I was happy, anyway. So there you go. This weekend was alright.

9/18/03 8:12am Bad omen... I just spilled a glass of orange juice all over the kitchen table.

9/16/03 12:55pm "In a karaoke supernova, yeah..." It's like the most intense weekend of 2003 just kicked me to the granite curb of Monday morning, and here I am on a Tuesday afternoon, still catching my breath after far too much Greek, enough DDR to get me sweating bullets, and a veritable torrent of emotion that I can't even describe. I'll do this person by person. Flannery is, in fact, a human being. I found that out this weekend, and I was shocked. Meghan Towle is quickly reaching the status of epic hero in my eyes -- this brings me to a good motif for the beginning of the week which I call the "theme of absolute delusion on the part of Bard." I need to stop deifying my friends. Graham I feel sorry for because he's caught in the middle of all of the apparent Little Theatre scandals, but it should be known by everyone that I'm definitely behind the E-board this time around. There is no more division in the club. Get over it, people. My good friend Derek seems to be maybe the best and most reasonable roommate a Bard could ever have, excluding my own brothers. After singing loudly in the shower yesterday, I opened the bathroom door to find a sign suspended in front of my face that read "Mahna Mahna." If that's not completely righteous, I'm not sure that I want to know what is. Jason is my pillar of Reason, and Pat is my pillar of Gummy. Little Pat has been hilarious and friendly recently, which is wonderful. Tom calls me from Potsdam about once every two weeks to tell me random things. I can accept that. I miss having Byron over here. Oh, yeah... there's this girl that I used to TA for in gen-chem lab who saw me in Studio X and has relentlessly tried to determine the mechanism of my existence ever since. I can accept that too. Dan, Tony, and Truesdail remind me constantly to not take things too seriously. I don't know if I really have a problem in that department, but I guess the point of all this is that a guy can't exist without his people. I needs my people. No matter how ridiculous things get, I have Spiremen and some others to fall back on. I just wish I had more time to do all of the things that I want to do... I need to stop sitting around. I need to honestly dedicate myself to going for broke this semester. That's the only thing I seem to be missing... "won't you let me won't you let me explode -- in a karaoke supernova, yeah..."

9/14/03 11:36am This weekend was insidiously close to being perfect. Big Pat and I decided, though, that the goodness life is a lot like the full moon -- it's always there, but circumstances don't let you see it as often as you might want to. Trust me though, guys... it's there. Where can I even begin? This was easily the most high-powered and emotional weekend that I've had in months, and the weird thing was that I knew it from the start. First, there was Flannery's exile on his own birthday. That situation really, really pissed me off. I saw a side of Flann that I am seriously fearful of, and I respect him a whole lot more now -- note, however, that my heightened respect for him is not at all related to my heightened fear. The reality is that no one has anything to fear from Flannery unless they take steps to keep him from doing what he loves and spending time with the people that he loves. Anyway, Flann's birthday was fantastically marked by a Studio X production. I can only describe the show as "solid," but other people have their own adjectives, like "very good," "awesome," and "personality." The subject matter of the show wasn't really important. The important thing was that we were there, we were doing what we love to do, and other people came to see and appreciate that. After Studio X, about a metric ton of people filed over to the Spire to watch/play some DDR, celebrate Flann's birthday, and watch the show recording. There was an impressive mix of people there, and after the movie ended, it was decided by Jason and I that a walk to Pano's was seriously in order. It only takes about half an hour to walk to Pano's, but some people cringed at the thought. Alex seemed too lazy, perhaps, and Flann too tired. Dissent in the form of "why can't we just drive?" was coming from the crowd. About six minutes and two inspirational speeches later, twenty of us were walking to Pano's. It was fantastic. I was really, really happy. Yesterday I got up and drove to Utica for Grandma Elsa's 90th birthday. She only got three candles. What a gyp... if I make it to ninety, man, you better damn well believe that there are going to be ninety candles on that cake. Unless, seventy years from now, we have some kind of "space cake" that generates its own candles. At that point I won't really care. I got to see Mike and Jon for the first time since they left for Scotland over a month ago, and that was wonderful. I got to see my sister and my parents, my aunts and uncles, cousins, and a whole bunch of people I didn't know. There was German potato salad. It was good. I took my dog for a walk in the suburbs, under all kinds of clouds. Then I drove home. It's been almost great. My "manifest-personality" this semester is quickly taking shape. This is going to be one hell of a ride.

9/8/03 4:16pm Yesterday evening I told Lori that about once a week (on the average), I get the feeling that life is truly awesome. I meant it. This weekend was incredible. Friday night I started playing Dance Dance Revolution, which I both love and hate at the same time. I also sang karaoke in Palisano, and ended up winning like 840 free long-distance minutes. That was hot. I think the night was rounded out by my playing Soul Calibur upside down (I hate that damn game) and going to bed while mumbling something about leadership training on Saturday. I couldn't get those damn DDR arrows out of my head, so sleep was sort of difficult. Saturday was positively awesome. I had to go to this leadership training thing for Student Activities, and it was at this YMCA camp somewhere on Lake Ontario, which was looking very blue. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, so I got this whole surge of pastoral feeling while playing team-building games and other stuff like that. I think the important thing was that on Saturday, I came to the realization that there are a lot more good people around than I thought there were. Lately, I've been kind of angry towards... everything and everyone, but somehow, on Saturday, it just occurred to me that maybe I shouldn't be such a bitch about stuff, and that all girls everywhere don't need to die just because they exist. This was a pretty important epiphany, I'd say. Also on Saturday, we nerded it up some more, hit Pano's, then Sunday came around, and that wasn't as bad as Sundays usually are, except the Patriots got their asses handed to them. I guess that's just the way it has to be sometimes. I retaliated against the world by playing Zerg in Starcraft and completely wrecking everyone. That felt pretty good. Dan, Derek, and I went questing for bowls and cups for the upstairs apartment, but we remembered that lots of stores aren't open on Sunday night. Unfortunately, we drove a pretty good distance before doing the remembering. Now I'm plunged back into the week... it's like diving into a pool of Greek characters and punctuation, getting attacked by twin alligators of ethics while swimming up to the relative safety of... I don't even know where this metaphor is going. I guess my point is that there ain't no getting off of this train we're on. This train we're on don't make no stops.

9/4/03 4:19pm After lunch today, I quickly realized that I had no commitments until like three in the afternoon, so I dedicated two wonderful hours to what can only be described as a "siesta of awesome." I woke up this morning with the first line of The Iliad repeating itself (in perfect Homeric hexameter) over and over again in my mind... in Greek. If you've never experienced a voice in your head (in another language) talking about the wrath of Achilles, then, well... I guess that's your problem. Speaking of problems, Studio X is fast approaching, and I have no idea what I'm doing for it yet. I had some ideas, but other people seem to be doing similar stuff, or I don't know what else, but the point is that I'm out of ideas for this thing, even though every other semester I've had a good trick or two up my sleeve. I'm sort of frustrated, but I'm still reasonably confident that I'll figure out what I need to do... sometime before the submission deadline, which is tomorrow. My classes and stuff are going pretty awesomely. I busted out the Septuagint in my Old Testament course today, which was considerably satisfying. In short, I would have to say that life is pretty alright nowadays: early afternoon napping, more Greek than I know how to handle, and nerds everywhere performing nerdy acts. To cap this off, I'd like to declare that Blanka V-ism is poetry in motion, but Blanka X-ism is just plain savage. Think about it.

9/1/03 11:17pm I seem to have recovered from any kind of apathy or ill will that was going down earlier today, largely through a few key events: first, the FF7 race is over, and I won, but just barely. It was phenomenal. Second, I actually got some reading done for my classes -- I mapped out the definite article as it appears in Homeric Greek, and I was really frightened by what I saw, but it was still very cool. This is an uphill battle that I'd really like to fight. Third, I listened to some driving Japanese rock followed by some mellow stuff, and the combination paid off. Amen to that. This has been a really great long weekend, and I'm happy with the way things are in the Spire right now. It's like the ten of us (give or take) are standing on the brink of some fantastic adventure... I really can't wait to see what this semester will bring. Yeah, some lame stuff has happened already. Yeah, there are some problems that need to be ironed out. Yeah, nothing will ever be perfect. I have a good feeling, though, that we're going to come pretty damn close. It's seriously time to go for broke, enjoy the brotherhood, and never look back.

9/1/03 12:13pm "Meh" seems to be the word of the hour here in the Spire, which is very quickly becoming the greatest and most interesting place on the planet. The FF7 race is winding down, but man, it's close this time... after almost fourteen hours of gameplay, Jason is only lagging behind me by eight minutes. This has been one of my less-good runs... by this time last race, I had already finished. There's only about forty-five minutes left though, so I'll deal. Maybe one of the happiest and nerdiest moments of my entire life came when Jason, Alex, Pat, and I simultaneously killed off Aeris on four different television screens, all lined up next to each other. Man, that was cool. This long weekend has been really good for the nerds... we hit the Anchor Bar last night to usher in the new season, Tony finally paid his rent for a day, everyone seems to be experimenting with first-person shooters due to a cute little game from Croatia, and everything else seems to be fine and dandy. One thing I actually have to do today is figure out what the heck I need to get done for this week... the burden of having to deal with six courses and two jobs is actually beginning to rear its ugly head. I'm pretty sure I'll be okay, though, as long as I can manage to map out where I'm going and balance game time in with actual work. That, of course, has always been the challenge, and I think that this semester will be the most challenging in that regard. In non-related news, I'm very quickly becoming a misogynist, in response to the apparent infestation of freshman girls at Canisius College. Will wonders never cease...

8/25/03 3:11pm Today I collided with college life again, and it felt alright. Fr. Fiore gave me some books to devour, I talked to about half of the Religious Studies department, turned down Dr. Duling for lunch in favor of Little Theatre (a decision that I pretty much regret), did something else that I don't remember, and now I'm back in my apartment. The nerd movement is seriously swinging up with a vengeance, and the "way things are gonna be" for the semester seems to be taking shape. True to Bard form, I think I'm attracted to someone that I don't even know, ergo I'm completely delusional right now. If someone would hit me in the face with a Brick o' Reality, it'd be appreciated. In other news, a belated happy birthday to Sarah Dunn, because yesterday just kind of went by too fast. I really need to get organized, or this is going to be very painful.

8/21/03 11:42am If I have to drop a medical ethics course this semester due to a big misunderstanding about overload tuition fee waivers, I will be supremely irritated. Hopefully, the office-type woman at Student Accounts had no idea what she was talking about when she said that I was ineligible for such a waiver. Seriously, the layer of red tape that hangs ominously over academia is starting to give me the jibblies. I'm back in Buffalo now, and my first day back was filled with quality Western New York activities such as consuming a gyro at Pano's, buying dishwasher detergent at Wegman's, listening to soulless jazz and eating apple pie at SPoT, and there was even a quick trip to Niagara Falls in there for good measure. This morning, I went out and visited my two bosses, and I saw some plants in the quad that, as Jason had put it, had "big honkin' leaves." Thusly, mine third year began.