5/5/03 10:22pm For these last few days of school, I'm being kind of a hermit... mostly staying in my apartment, getting the last bits of work that I need to do out of the way. I just polished off Dr. Banchich's pop essay, which was something of a nasty finish to a semester that was, by and large, devoid of any real academic "work." Tomorrow morning I have the first of my finals, and then I have to run a bunch of errands and start the packing process. And so, this semester is winding down, ending with a whimper, on a kind of bittersweet note. A lot of junk has gone down in the last couple of months... in all, I think I'm probably better for it, though. I'm beginning to understand a lot more about the way things run out here in Buffalo, so next semester I'll be able to ride the system's nuances out with a bit more experience under my belt. I will have my work cut out for me, too... it'll be interesting to see how it all pans out, that whole new adventure... I'm really excited about the future. I told Meghan the other day, "don't wish it away," and here I am, struggling to break free, to break clear into Thursday night, when I'm going to hit the pavement and blaze back to my home... but the days in which I can just cut my losses and run away are quickly disappearing. What am I going to do one day when I can't just run? What am I going to do when my life isn't structured in four-month sections where the end is always in sight and a new beginning always awaits me? I'm going to be screwed then, I think... I have to figure out how to adapt to this one. That's going to be the clincher, there... that's where I'm going to have to pull through.

5/4/03 8:12am So this is my last weekend in Buffalo, and I've definitely been going for broke, or something like it... we played a whole lot of Xenogears tonight (this morning, whatever), and I'm about to go to sleep... yeah. A lot of people have been asking me what my deal is, and I feel kind of guilty and accountable for all of the not-so-great things that have been happening this semester. It doesn't matter, though... I'll be out of here soon enough. It's rough that I have to resort to this kind of escapism or something, but what else can I do? I've screwed up way too much this time around, and the only thing I can do is come back in August, recommitted to the idea that I can actually do things right. I have to bury my problems along with this subpar semester. Anyway, things are looking good on all fronts for me right now, that is, I have only a few more things to do as far as school goes (and I've never really feared finals very much), nerd action is kicking into high gear with more of the Xenogears Project and an unprecedented return of Magic: The Gathering, Little Theatre junk is over and done for me for a LONG time, and man alive, I still have some cheese left in the fridge. So now it's time to sleep the day away, get up, and do it all again. I will be reunited with the way things ought to be... it's only a matter of time.

4/28/03 2:43pm "And life barrels on like a runaway train where the passengers change but don't change anything -- you get off, someone else can get on..." Time's wound was inflicted on me yesterday, but I have to stand as a bulwark, man... it's pointless to worry about it. I've got a life to live, you know? I have neither the time nor the drive for... gah, maybe they're right. Maybe I am incompetent, maybe I do lack motivation. I need to slice back to what I know... looking out the window at the wind, nerding it up until four in the morning on a school night, the project to determine what -God- is (in the digital sense), running out on a quest for Batavia with my comrades, not considering any consequences, not considering anyone really but myself and the people I -genuinely- care about, you know... that's where I need to get back to. This semester has been incredibly destructive. I don't even want to think about it... Pandora's box really has been opened for me recently, and now all I have is hope for the future, the next time I come back to this grand experiment in Buffalo. My year here as a -Wise Fool- sophomore is ending, and not a moment too soon. I seriously need to think about what I've done... I need to get back into the next game and keep my cards in where no one can see them. I definitely played way too open this time around, and I'm paying for it. Incidentally, them little Goetze's BULLS-EYES caramel creams are the unsung heroes of the candy community. Keep it honest, guys... I need to finish my work and go for broke in the only way I know how.

4/27/03 2:43pm So the semester is winding down fast, and not a moment too soon. My family came out to see the show last night, which was awesome, but that's not really where the weekend began, is it? The weekend began, well, I don't know, this week was all kind of a blur of Little Theatre junk intermixed with a suppression of coursework and a healthy dose of very late-night Xenogears. On Friday, things kicked into high gear... I was fifth in line for the full-capacity Ralph Nader lecture, which was pretty awesome, and I sat front and center in the first row. The guy is pretty sick intelligent, and an entertaining speaker at the very least. Then the show went up for the second time, and I went to Pano's afterwards, dented the Lumina going like two miles per hour in the parking lot... argh? Yesterday was quick and easy, what with the last show, strike, dinner with my family, people over at my house, and wishing Jon a happy birthday... things wrapped up just before six this morning. There was a whole lot of nerd going on, too... M:TG, Street Fighter in a couple of flavors, a Transformers DVD, and I don't even know what else. The show is over now, though, and my commitments to Little Theatre are quickly being reduced to nothing, which is a relief. According to one Liz Gruber, I got my grant for next year, so there'll be a whole lot of Greek going on up in this piece. So for the next week and a half or so, it's just me, the Bucket Xenogears Project, and a handful of papers and finals before I ship myself back to Albany for a summer than can't possibly be worse than the last one. My fight here is finally coming to an end.

4/23/03 2:10am Sleep is for the sane, which is something that I'm not at the moment. I'm right in the middle of a week of nonstop thrills, including six-plus hours of quality Little Theatre time per evening, a pair of essays (one on epistemological realism and one on role models for the conversion of Saint Augustine, both of which are finished), an organic test (phenols, carbohydrates, and lipids, baby), and literally fabricating time (read: stealing time from sleep) for the Bucket Xenogears Project. I just got back the other night from my trip to the Delmarva Peninsula with my family, which yielded some seashells, seven pairs of argyle socks, and a reinforced notion in my head that there is, in fact, a -God-. So I'm looking okay right now, all things considered, No Exit opens in like less than forty-eight hours, I've got the bulk of my work done for this week, and my emotional everything is pretty stable. That aspect is critical, I've found... but it doesn't matter to me anymore. In two weeks, I will be heading back towards other battles, away from this swirling basin of treachery and joy, nerdiness and thespianism, salt and pepper. For now, though... I've got to finish this here four course meal. Speaking of which, I saw the wild ponies down south. The wild ponies, man... and you guys just thought I was crazy.

4/14/03 4:09pm It's gorgeous out again today, for like the third or fourth day in a row. A lot of junk has gone down in the past week, so here goes... uh, I registered for classes, and that was swell. Yesterday I spent maybe seven hours in the theatre building junk and getting things ready for No Exit, which is coming along nicely. Meanwhile in the bucket, we've been hanging loose and going on a bunch of different quests. This weekend, I distinctly recall the RAM guys heading out to buy Sparkling Green Apple W-Pop (with a hint of a pucker), so that was pretty cool, and then Jay and Pat and I acquired Xenogears, which we've been co-playing. The five of us bucketeers tried questing to Arby's on Saturday night, all decked out in sunglasses and silly hats, but Arby's was closed so we went through the Krispy Kreme drive-thru and got one doughnut instead. The weekend was also cool because Bill actually busted over on Thursday night (which we declared to be Friday night, thus creating two Fridays in a row), and we sat around and shot the shit and made my bedroom more conducive to chilling by turning off the fluorescent lights of the Man and firing up our GE lamps... we pointed them at the walls and ceiling, so it was all pretty Frank Lloyd Wright/arghRAD-ish, if you know what I mean, but I guess only God and Mokujin know for sure. I've also downed about five hundred marshmallow peeps in the past week. The day after tomorrow, I'm flying to New York where my family is kidnapping me and taking me down towards the Land of Cotton, which will be pretty awesome, a few nights up in that piece, and then I'll fly back to Buffalo for tech week and the opening of the big show, my directorial debut and whatnot. Meanwhile, I refuse to do coursework, ergo committing academic suicide, ergo I want to co-play some more Xenogears. In less than a week, I will once again be able to make idiomatic references to a certain cartoon. So here comes the end of the semester... and not a moment too soon!

4/7/03 3:30pm Springtime in Buffalo, and it's snowing pretty good out there... well, that's the way it goes. This week is shaping up to be pretty short and sweet, now that my semester has been summarily turned into a fourteen-credit vacation. No Exit is coming along rather decently, and as far as the rest of Little Theatre affairs go, everything looks as smooth as a chunk of pumice. In a week and a half I'll be back with my family, which I'm pretty psyched about. I ate fifteen marshmallow peeps yesterday, and for those of you that keep track of these things, that's three whole sleeves, or one package. Life barrels on like a runaway train...

4/6/03 6:52am Shocker. Somewhere in the fold I saw two beta fishes, tripped the silent alarm on the roof of Griffin Hall, was sorted by Bill's winter hat, went insane running on ice that crunched underfoot, consumed stuffed grape leaves and some maple syrup, shocked my system thoroughly, did some kind of tangible harm somewhere, discovered some kind of force or something that I'd rather not be privy to, danced to Yatta! and sang off key, lied to a Public Safety officer, bought some marshmallow peeps, discovered Big Pat playing "Hark, the Herald Angel Sings," failed miserably, what began in earnest catapulted me straight through the ceiling, and it's all too familiar, but I can't get it back. I have to stay out of this sort of thing. I can't afford anything more... and that's just the way it is. As for me, I'm in no sort of real trouble at all, so don't worry about me. I'll be just fine. There are more important things in this fleeting life...

4/3/03 1:37am Uhm, first of all, happy April 2003. It's been a long time coming, but it's finally here. It will never come again. Enjoy it while it lasts, folks... the days in this month, just like the days in our lives, are numbered. Finite. That's all I have to say about that. Anyway, I'm right in the middle of a personal crisis of sorts, which is being exacerbated by Canisius' persecution of dualistic scholarship and alleviated through my dropping of the Biology major, and more importantly my withdrawl from Biochemistry. This will help my GPA, enable me to take lots of courses that I actually want to take, and make me generally happier as a person. When I'm happy as a person, people around me generally reap the benefits. I'm told, moreover, that I'm kind of a mean guy. Lots of people have been telling me this recently. It's probably true. The damndest thing is that I can't really help it, and I barely even realize it when I do it. So to all you people out there, I really do kind of feel some kind of remorse, mostly. I don't want to really hype up this dropping of the Bio major as the birth of a new Bard or anything, because it's really not going to be. We're chipping away at the boulder though, right? I'm on the way to becoming closer to the person that I really am. The hard science stuff was fun while it lasted. I'm probably going to pick up a Philosophy minor to fill in the void, take some upper level chemistry courses, and plunge into economics... it seems only fair. I may have lost the war with recominant DNA technology, but I'm going to win it on the spiritual, metaphysical, and synthetic end of things... just you wait and see. So I've been looking at all kinds of transfiguration allegory to fit my situation here, and I've come up with two cool examples: Cecil's transformation from a Dark Knight into a Paladin in FFIV, and Jesus' transfiguration in Matt 17:2. I'm really pretty excited about not having to take more labs or putter along in the company of the hard science nerds... I guess it just wasn't my block of cheese. That's what the undergrad life is for, though... seeing where your real academic strengths and weaknesses lie. Unfortunately, the strengths I like have little to no practical use. It doesn't matter, though... I'll be happy and such. So lots of people seem to be pretty normal recently, which is groovy. Byron is maniacally zoning and constructing away in Sim City, Pat is spreading his wings and leaving the apartment to do stuff, which is downright awesome, Derek actually went to Pano's with us, Jason has a 486 laptop that he's using as a notebook and clock, hey, it's all good. I think I have some kind of coursework to do or something, but that kind of stuff eludes me at the moment. Tomorrow I'm going to grab a withdrawl slip and march on over to the Kalbmeister to submit my resignation. I imagine it'll feel pretty good. So here's to self-discovery through academic means... I've burned the bridge to the hard sciences, and the road to -God- is paved with m-nitroaniline...

3/30/03 6:15am Another morning that I've seen without sleep before it. The sun is rising over Buffalo, but that's it for me this evening, or whatever you want to call it. Strike was long, and not much else. The show was awesome plus three. We went for broke. I'm there right now. That's right. I'm broke. Goodnight.

3/29/03 3:56pm So we all really officially went for broke last night, in so many ways... first there was the show, which was the best one we've had so far. Everyone went over the top, took it to the limit, and it was so worth it... it's all on tape, too. Matt Wayne threw in some lines, I threw in some emotion, Alex kicked it up three notches, and everyone else really gave it their all... incredible show. Then began one of the most successful nights the bucket has seen in quite awhile... sparkling apple W-Pop, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, the plünger game (featuring Big Pat going for broke and catching the plünger in his mouth), Billy Joel music, RISK, Chu-Chu Rocket, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Japanese socioeconomic gospel, Happy Gilmore, ordering pizza at some ungodly hour, Triclyde, incoherent rambling, Alex's refusal to recognize the Yucatan Pact, Graham's Litestep blunder, I don't even know what else... until daylight was visible and all fell quiet in the bucket around six in the morning. Tonight we've got our last show, which should be pretty darn good. You only get one life to live... go for broke. You won't regret a second of it.

3/29/03 4:38am Oh man. If you ever get a chance to go for broke, by all means, go for broke. It's funny because you get so many chances to do so every day of your life... Curious Savage is almost over and I finally understand what I've been needing to do all along. It's never too late to fix a mistake, I guess... well, unless the mistake happens to be killing mad people. You can't take that back. So remember the lesson we learned back in high school... just say no to killing mad people. I'm running on no sleep, Jerry.

3/24/03 9:41pm There was a skim milk white sky this morning, gleaming through the window before my second alarm even went off. I knew it was going to be an above-average day. Well... above-average day in most respects... the worst thing that happened to me today was coming to terms with the fact that I probably can't get higher than a 3.4 this semester. Most people would scoff and say "Bard, you're just a whiny bitch," but this is, for some reason, a really big deal to me. Having a C- or so in biochemistry will shoot my QPA to hell, and if my QPA goes to hell, I won't get into grad school, and if I don't get into grad school, I won't become a professor, and if I don't become a professor, it's quite obvious that no one will love me and I'll die sad and alone. In conclusion, I'm beginning to hate biochemistry. In the meantime, though, I've been having a particularly above-average day. Organic class was cancelled, which put a smile on my face, I vanquished Ruby Weapon, I received a kicking recommendation from Dr. Banchich for the CEEP research grant stuff, I got to level 3-3 in Lost Levels (the most sadistic Mario game known to man), and most everyone around me seems to be in reasonably high spirits despite the world's troubled whatever. Speaking of which, Michael Moore is an American hero, and his stunt at the Oscars was pretty fantastic. Things are looking up for this week, I guess, and naturally anything will be better than last week, which was pretty rough on all sides. You know that they say though, that old lie... "dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori."

3/23/03 2:56am Beating Emerald at two-thirty in the morning? Priceless.

3/19/03 12:29am Full moon out tonight, so that's always pretty awesome. Our show goes up in like less than two days, which is kind of cool, and I'm particularly indifferent towards this show anyway, but everyone knows that. Next semester's course offerings were posted online recently, and I want to take about eight classes next semester but it looks like the Church isn't going to let that happen. So I've been awake for less than twelve hours, and that's not good news because it's theoretically "bed time" for me right now, what with biochemistry surfing tomorrow at 8:30 in the morning... I don't even know. I have a whole lot of work to do that's not specifically academically related: forms to fill out to compete for an undergrad research spot next semester, Masonic scholarship junk, I have to find a job for this summer... and then there's the show of course, and No Exit rehearsals are starting this weekend. Meanwhile I'm completely blowing off organic lab requirements; I have yet to saponify my ester, and that's not going to be good for anybody. Well, actually, the only person that it will negatively affect is me. It doesn't matter anyway... for some reason I feel like I have bigger fish to fry than a one-credit, two-bit course in sand bath refluxing and suction filtration. So far, the old Lumina 3.1 has survived four nights in the parking ramp without getting ticketed. This beats the hell out of our performance at Boston College, and we're all that much more grateful for it. Speaking of repeat performances, we're about to bust into Iraq again for all the wrong reasons. I guess I don't get the idea that a comprehensive pre-emptive bombing strike and "liberation" of Baghdad is an act of self defense. Isn't there some kind of "just war" concept we should be looking to? Does anyone else want to stop living in fear despite our high-orange terror threat level? What is that, anyway? Magenta? Let's seek some kind of, oh, I don't know... reasonable end to all of this. End soapbox.

3/15/03 12:21am Recently I've hit the realization that I'm way too selfish. Dan Lance Dan reminded me not too long ago that I'm a horrible human being, and it might be true... there are lines though, right? At what point do you have to put your foot down and refuse to let people take advantage of you? At what point is it no longer your responsibility to foot the bill? I don't know... maybe I'm perfectly reasonable. Some people seem to want to go out of their way to remind me how much I need to work on... anyway, if I really do owe you an apology, rest assured that it's on the way. I guess that's the first bit of business I needed to take care of. The second thing of the moment is that I feel like I'm at some kind of weird crossroads at the moment... I think I've seen too many people I know in rapid succession. This past week was Spring Break, and it was all pretty groovy and short... very whirlwind-type. After lunch last Friday with some Canisius types, I hit the road with Jay, saw his little plot on Lake Ontario with rolling glaciers and junk, and spent the night in his cell in Rochester-oriented suburbia. That night we went into Rochester to see Emily... her house was absolutely awesome, with refinished woodwork and staircases and crazy ceiling textury... oh man, it was so cool. This brought me to report one of my hypocritical axioms to Jason: "You can have all kinds of cool stuff, as long as you live within city limits." And so we went back on the road on Saturday, literally five seconds after getting to my house in Albany, "my crew" busted in and we took Jason on an Albany tour, complete with the wooden labyrinth and the State Museum. Sunday we departed for Connecticut, sliced through New Haven, and met up with Meghan... UConn was pretty fun and rural, and after a parking ticket and a trip to Wal-Mart we were on our way to my aunt's house in Maine. Zonk and Jay and I slammed through random towns in Massachusetts, hit up the Traveler and Book Restaurant in Union, CT (come for the free book, stay for the food), observed a scandalous statue of a man and a turtle in downtown Worcester, got burned on I-495 by Dennis Hopper, and experienced The Widening as only the great state of Maine can present it. A Lego castle was built, Poland Spring aquifer showers were taken, and we slammed from New Gloucester to downtown Boston by way of the Kennebunk beach. Boston with Billy was a blast, including the seeing of many fish, eating at Durgin Park, and getting the Lumina towed by some Newton yokel thugs hired out by Boston College. I helped my brother build the set for "Songs for a New World" which opened tonight and closes tomorrow, I went skiing last night, I saw Meghan again tonight along with Craig, Tom, James, and various other assorted members of some kind of timeline that I'm only vaguely a part of, anyway tomorrow it's back straight through to Buffalo, picking up Bill Flannery and Byron on the way, but honestly I'm really kind of overwhelmed with the sheer amount of things that are happening in my life right now. There are way too many people involved with me and my life... I'm not a celebrity, I'm far from important, and I'm not even that interesting... we're all kind of predictable, after all... and yet I want more, I want to meet more people, I want to see whatever there is to see out there... so that's all I have to do, I just want to thank everyone that I've spent any amount of time with over the last week or so... this break has been amazing, but I don't even know if I can remember it as a break... it's been one long chain of seeing people that are important to me. It's some kind of travesty that I can't take time to tell everyone individually what it means to me. I'm reasonably sure that I don't deserve any of this. Back to Buffalo, then... I've got junk to conquer.

3/4/03 12:26am So I sliced my right ring finger open today on a tomato soup can. It's particularly pathetic because it was one of those newfangled soup cans with the tab that you just pull up on... without need of a can-opening apparatus. So anyway it was bleeding there for a good long while before I decided that running water would not be sufficient... I then "applied pressure" and all became right with the world. Kind of. Anyway now I have this band-aid on my finger and I feel ridiculous. Speaking of ridiculousness, I have tests in all five of my courses this week... Religion and the Challenge of Science midterm tomorrow, Greek test, Christian History midterm, and Organic test Wednesday, a happy essay for the former religious studies course due Thursday, and a Biochemistry test on Friday that will quite literally make or break my GPA this semester. This week I've taken to likening my experience in biochemistry to boogie boarding; every class leaves me with the same feeling that you get when you've been wiped out by a wave and you're lying there motionless on the rocks with the surf draining the life out of you, just lying there motionless. This Friday, I'm going to have to do some serious surfing... but before that, I have other circles of Hell to wade through. Speaking of Hell, No Exit has been cast and our first read-through was tonight. I'm really excited for this cast, and I think that we're going to pull together what will be an awesome show come the end of April. I've been scheming and dreaming with Jason and Zonca about Spring Break, which starts this weekend. It looks like a major road trip is in order... I hate cars, but I love road trips. It's the damndest thing... So we're moving forwards, running the gauntlet, and keeping our sticks on the ice. That's the only way through...

2/23/03 12:23pm What an excellent weekend... Studio X was absolutely slamming, lots of people came out to see it, and much of it was high-quality entertainment. It was followed up directly by a twenty-three Little Theatre member pilgrimage to Pano's and then a jaunt over to Truesdail's to watch the whole show on tape. All of that ended somewhere after two in the morning... I went back to my apartment and packed for the College Bowl tournament in Syracuse, went to bed, and got up less than two hours later. I'm not sure if I actually slept, but either way I showered, had some orange juice (A Day Without Orange Juice is a Day Without Sunshine) and made it to the Student Center and the van at 4:55am. After that, I made some snide comments and fell asleep as soon as we hit the Thruway, waking up in time to see the Lockheed Martin complex in Syracuse. Somehow three hours of sleep was enough to carry me through thirteen intense twenty-minute rounds of some of the toughest trivia questions I've ever been faced with. Canisius came away with an 8-5 record in a three-way tie for fourth place that we came up short on in terms of points scored (the top four teams moved on to Sunday's finals, whereas we in fifth place, short by about three questions, did not). We did have some notable victories though, namely against Niagara, Siena, St. Bonaventure, Binghamton, and a couple others. I had a whole lot of fun anyhow, and I got to flex my nerdy muscle and whatever else. I've never heard the word 'Tajikistan' uttered more times in a single day. So to recap... the weekend was made good by: a bear suit, a song about purchasing a vowel, a Pano's pilgrimage, no sleep, Tajikistan, beating Niagara, and good food. Now I have to turn my attention back to the tasks at hand... building a set and preparing for the Curious Savage, running auditions for No Exit this week, and keeping in line with all of that school... work. "What we do in life echoes in eternity..."

2/20/03 10:15pm FTP access to Asteroid Blues is acting kind of sketchily nowadays, thusly this is actually a two-update... update. Anyway, it was a nice day today (that is to say, above freezing) so I went on a walking excursion with Jason. We cut across the snowy fields of Delaware Park, checked out all of the upscale housing on Nottingham Terrace, hit Pano's, and sallied back to campus. It was probably a four mile trek in total, and I got to see the sky... I get excited about that sort of thing nowadays. Speaking of excitement, I picked up a CEEP application so that I can get some money to work with my Greek professor next year, I got an essay back from my History professor that had a rock-solid A on it, and Studio X is tomorrow night, and it should be pretty darn good. On the not so good side of things, my work ethic is spiraling in the downward direction and I'm so lazy that I haven't shaven in nine days. Things are fine, though, really they are. Devoting myself to my own ends just feels so strange sometimes... it's like I'm not out for anyone but myself right now. I need more than this. "Having sworn fealty..." Seifer and Rusty had it made. You know what I'm saying? "Bard, what are you the vanguard of?" Uhhh... yeah, about that...

2/18/03 8:12pm So the weekend was pretty swell, and for some reason, tripping to Albany and back in a relatively short time didn't feel weird at all... maybe I'm finally used to my dual-type life. Anyway... I hit Gateway with Zonk, Meghan, and my brother Jon, I went skiing with my brothers and cousins, I took Mike Sass to Bombers and gave him an eight-minute driving tour of Albany, and I slept a good long while. In all, it was a fine vacation that wasn't even marginally tattered by the goddamn Amtrak delays today. Oh yeah, and I brought my brother's toothbrush back to Buffalo instead of my own. Now that takes something special... anyway, it's back to doing all of that stuff that I do, with Studio X and the College Bowl in Syracuse coming up this weekend, No Exit auditions on the horizon, and the regular old pressures to the tune of trying not to fail biochemistry in the Kalb freezer. Ready, go.

2/12/03 6:43pm Congratulations. It's Concrete Donkey Day. Allow me to explain. Concrete Donkey day marks the anniversary of the first (and last) sighting of the Concrete Donkey by the nerd denizens of Frisch 2 in the year 2002 who would later go on to form the bucket/basin and found/explore a number of schools/conventions of thought, both metaphysical and practical, including but not limited to physiphilosophophy, slinky mechanics, the ubiquitous amphitranscendental gummy, G=arbiter, Japanese market trends, and Albertan invincibility theory. The Concrete Donkey sighting was attributed to the convergence of a few key forces, most notably the apex of the lunar cycle (and consequently, Chinese New Year) and Lincoln's Birthday. On this now-hallowed day, the nerds rejoice in the crossroads of fantastic nerdy forces old and new. So today, as a result of Concrete Donkey Day, my copy of the Septuagint arrived despite the apparent conspiracy between Amazon.com and UPS Ground to delay its delivery indefinitely. The book, which as of last night still had not shipped yet, was magically shipped two days ago, cosmic rearrangement courtesy of the Concrete Donkey. In related news, Jason's mouse went haywire last night, the organic test went off without so much as a hitch (acknowledging the fact that it hasn't yet been graded), and the cinnamon buns at lunch were really warm. As a result of all of these goings-on, I'm going to curl up with my Greek ex Hebrew translation of the Old Testament (and Apocryphal Writings) until the time for the Little Theatre e-board meeting rolls around. And Meghan... break a leg!

2/7/03 8:40pm "Imagine, you had an experience..." Wow oh wow. Let's start this off by simply stating that I was inside Loyola Hall today. That's a feat in itself... the building is the home of many a Buffalonian Jesuit, and not many people are let into the place. Women weren't allowed in at all until very recently. Everyone has heard rumors of it being "mad nice" in there. My friends... the rumors are true.
Let me give you the whole story. As with all great days in my life at Canisius College, I went to the tower today, this time with the intent of introducing myself to the permanent chair of the Religious Studies department. So I'm up there and I'm like... yo, I'm Bard, I'm a religious studies major, and then he's all like... that's great, there's a department dinner tonight, you should come, other majors will be there. So I'm all like... sweet, free food. Then he tells me it's in Loyola and I'm all like... wow, my life is complete (bear in mind that one of my ultimate goals for my existence at Canisius College has always been to step foot inside Loyola Hall). So I go there at like 5:10 after mailing out some letters, and I open the door. Inside the door is just... a room. It's not a grand entryway at all... just an entry room with a lowish type ceiling. The woodwork, at least what I saw of it, and the moulding was all pretty intricate. So then I make my way with the department chair and one of my professors from last semester and his wife into the next room, a sitting room, with crazy nice chairs and the television where it should be... in a cabinet with the doors closed. So anyway the entire department shows up, and it turns out I'm the only student there. Dinner was absolutely awesome... and then there was dessert, during which the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences brought my tea. Dude, the dean served me tea.
So I'm in some kind of shock from excessive professorial awesomeness right now, recounting tonight's events... these people are all real people, with interesting things to say, and they laugh at a good joke when they hear one... and oh man, the cake was sweeter than heck. It had a raspberry on every slice. Wow.
In other news, I want more Greek. I intend to take two (2) independent study-type courses next semester, one in classical Greek (Homer-type) and one with more of the Biblical koine junk that I've been doing for these two semesters. I'm really psyched about it, and I'm going to be buying myself a Septuagint possibly within the next week because I'm so absolutely into this stuff. The biochem test today was murder... then there was a delightful test on conditionals in Greek, and some lunch and clubroom action, a second lunch with Emily and Carrie and Kay and Jess, and then began my awesome ascent into the tower... oh, and I wrote letters to my extended family today. It was so cool... I actually wrote handwritten letters on looseleaf and mailed them. In sum, it's been an awesome day, and an amazing week of recovery and progress. Here's to what comes next.

2/4/03 10:33am Things seem to be smoothing out here pretty well, just in time for the academic portion of our show to heat up a bit. We've got the biochemistry test on Friday, which seems innocent enough, but in actuality, I've heard that it can take a man's soul in three seconds and play racquetball with it over a bed of hot coals. So things in that sense are headed type Dante, but everything is relatively quiet in the Bucket. Big Pat is back and slamming (he ate like six hotdogs in one sitting yesterday), Byron is busy hacking through the old 8-bit Zelda and figuring out ways to screw me over in Risk every single time we sit down to the table, and I'm... well, I'm doing what I'm good at and wondering pretty fiercely about Litle Pat. The kid has got to give himself a break... anyway, Curious Savage rehearsals are going to heat up pretty soon. Maybe I can skip out the weekend after next and actually go home... I could really use a trip home, actually... or at least some time away from all of this craziness. The worst is definitely over, though. Now it's time to step back and figure out how exactly to get into the routine of this new set of challenges... so here we go, right? Wherever the wind may take us.

1/31/03 2:31am "For clarification, the Atkins' Diet will cause production of ketones, and will lead to ketosis. The Atkins' Diet is unlikely to cause DKA [diabetic ketoacidosis], but stopping insulin therapy (which was suggested by the original writer) certainly can! Patients with type 1 diabetes should not discontinue their insulin therapy, and certainly not stop insulin because they are on a highly-promoted diet." Thanks, Derek... it seems that I should be too young to be looking into this stuff and applying it to events in my own life. Big Pat was admitted to Sister's this evening. Little Pat is at Mercy (but no one is allowed to know). I miss my friends at home (Meghan Towle and Mike Zonca probably most of all). I got in a completely unnecessary fight with Carrie, I have to smarten up on the more bitchy properties of benzene for tomorrow, I have to participate respectably in a group discussion on the Acts of Paul and Thecla, I don't really feel so great myself, and I think that play rehearsals begin tomorrow evening. Fuck, I was going to do laundry tonight. No, I was going to do it this morning, but I woke up at noon and force-fed myself Crispix over some mock Proton NMR spectra. I'm too young for this shit... two of my roomates are hospitalized tonight. I have to be up in five hours for four classes, doing laundry, running to the bank, and being some shade of civil to the people around me that really don't need to know the stuff that I'm going through. Derek's birthday ended a couple hours ago, hey, Happy Birthday Derek. We went to Pano's. That kind of helped my mental state, sort of. It would have, really. I can't even begin to imagine... yeah, this is some kind of test. You can lay it on as thick as you want, but do it to me... don't do it to my friends. Pat and Pat don't deserve this. The Bucket doesn't need this. "The clock never stops never stops never waits..." So here I am. I'm going to pull through this, but this isn't even my fight. My fight continues through every minute of every day of this week that should never have happened... look out, then. I can't do anything but give it my all.

1/27/03 9:12pm Mike Sass is Albany-bound tomorrow... thanks for everything, sir. Your contributions to this place will never be forgotten. Speaking of contributions, more stable resonance structures contribute more to the overall hybrid molecule. I learned this today, and I also learned that putting off work will like... catch up with you. I made up that monster of an organic lab today, so now everything's right with the world... or is it? I really feel like something is missing from my life, and I really haven't been my usual Bardly self since I got back to Buffalo a couple of weeks ago. I'm sure it's been compounded by a number of other circumstances, which I will now list. First, Little Pat's health has been less than... yeah, he was in the hospital for a week. That really got to me a lot more than I led on. He hasn't been here at all this semester, and that's left a pretty enormous hole around here in the Bucket... so yeah, a great deal of my energy goes out to him. The fact that I strengthened so many of my relationships in Albany over the break has not helped things at all, because I miss everyone a lot more now than I have in the past. Then there's a general sense of foreboding or something about this semester, I don't know, but something is up, and it's not helping. Meanwhile, I have to carry out the normal processes of my life, most notably work and play. Well, it'll all be fine in the end. My days in Buffalo, after all, are numbered. Everyone knows that much. What will I make of them while I'm here, though? That's up to me. My priorities are in the right places... but why do I feel like I'm missing something? I haven't felt this way in a long time...

1/24/03 4:10pm So by the time I finish writing this, I will have completed the first two decades of my life. All things considered, it's been pretty rough, but over the past couple of years I think I've begun to see how it pays off to just be yourself. This journey is only beginning... what else can I really say? I have so many things to do and learn, relationships to strengthen, and a future to see. I mean, there are cookies to eat! I'm going to have to learn Hebrew eventually. There are games to play, fortunes to tell, there's work to be done. This is where the real fun begins, doesn't it? Oh, I updated the Bard section of the page too, so you might as well check that out. Mark is also in the midst of relaunching his own page, so you should check that out as well. It's a particularly nice winter day here in Buffalo, and I just plowed through like half a box of Aloha Chips. Thus begins my third decade... I hope you stay on board.

1/15/03 12:03am I have this really... not so great feeling that I'm not living up to my full potential right now. I feel bizarrely empty, like I'm just sitting around waiting for the rest of my life to begin... but I'm here, back at school, aren't I? What's wrong here? Why can't I deal with this like I've dealt with every other challenge? I guess I could only go downhill from the time I just had in Albany, but this seems to be a little too much. Why am I suddenly less than happy? Come on, wind... throw yourself back into my sails quick. This Bard has adventures to go on and battles to win.

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