8/15/03 2:03am The world is an amazing, amazing place. I could tell you about how clear the sky was tonight, and how I could actually see some of the stars over the field at St. Catherine's. I could tell you about how the top five positions in a six-way game of RISK were wholly determined by a Rock/Paper/Scissors round robin tournament. I could tell you about how Kennedy reached an epiphany about the afterlife, or how I wasted seven bucks on a slice of cheesecake and a strawberry smoothie, or how my Dad is stuck on Long Island because of a power outage that swept clear from Detroit and Toronto to New York and Baltimore. I don't think there's a whole lot that I can say, though, that will do the last couple days any kind of justice. Sometimes, you just need to sleep all morning, do whatever you want all day, and then hang out with your friends in the evening. That's a kickass system.

8/11/03 12:01am When you're colorblind, gourmet jelly beans are nothing more than a cruel, cruel joke. I had a handful of the little technicolor nightmares, and a few of them kept pulsating between dark purple, blue, brown, red, and green. I swear that mocha, grape, raspberry, and sometimes licorice jellybeans all look exactly the same. This is extremely frustrating. In other news, Mike and Jon are sweltering over in London, while Adrienne is in Maine. This makes my life about three shades easier, and at the same time, a little less interesting. I went to catch up with some people at the new smoke-free Gateway tonight, and it was pretty good, except... now, I don't smell like Gateway. As Sarah Dunn would say, "there are worse things. Like winning the lottery."

8/8/03 1:21am Tonight I could write about how I had an awesome, awesome time with Billy, Mark, Kennedy, and to a lesser (but nevertheless important) extent with Brendan and Harrison. I could write about how it was one of the best nights that I've had this summer, and for no particular reason whatsoever. I'm not going to, though, because I have other things on my mind. I'm starting to become acutely aware of an ugly dichotomy in the way I present myself to people... I'm good, sometimes bizarrely good to certain people, and I'm horribly, obscenely bad to others. I don't know why this is exactly, but it's really problematic, and I don't think that there's an easy solution. It may be that I just respond to what I'm presented with in the way that I think is most appropriate, but how can that justify the awful things that I say to certain people? How can you learn to love your enemies after they've become so accustomed to abuse from your end? I wish I had the strength of character necessary to treat everyone I know with the respect and kindness that they deserve, despite their shortcomings that I mercilessly bring to the fore. On a constant basis. Seriously, folks. I have to do something about this.

8/7/03 2:42am I guess that the moral for tonight is that if you tell a girl that she's too mean to you -- every time you see her -- for three years or so, she'll end up making you cookies.

8/6/03 12:26am Hit the Larkin this evening with Dave Kennedy to hear the band that Bill Przylucki is involved with, the Tri-City All-Stars. They're basically a rhythm section that plays jazz/funk jams that go on for a long, long time. I had quite a while to think about a ton of stuff while I was listening to the maniacal stylings of their keyboard player, and after about three hours, I left feeling pretty good about life. Therefore, I give the band a hearty thumbs up (for a second opinion, Kennedy gave them a five out of ten, and you can ask him about the scale of his rating system). I also drafted maybe my first ever .plan file today. Note that it's actually a .txt file, but hey... I'm on a tight budget. I probably actually have a lot more to do than that before I head off for school again, but I guess that'll give me a starting point. I think it rained a whole lot today, somewhere at least, which makes me want to vow to never watch television news again. The connection may not be readily apparent, so I'll elaborate. Today, it rained a whole lot... mostly, as I'm told by my grandmother, in Montgomery County. I guess the Thruway was flooded quite substantially. This did not make the evening news. Fortunately, I happened to come by the television long enough to see the big news of the day: some family in Rensselaer County saw a tree frog on their porch and thought it was some kind of freak albino frog, because, allegedly, it was white. They called like WNYT and probably at least eight other divine authorities... maybe some other TV news stations, the National Guard, some volunteer firefighters, and some poor scientist-looking guy who got on the news to say that there's nothing wrong with the water in Rensselaer County, and that the frog was just some species of frog other than the normal "green" variety. The frog didn't look like anything special to me... I guess the family thought they had another freak occurrence like the two-headed turtle they found not too long ago in Rensselaer County. Anyway, I think what I'm trying to say is that first, people are amazingly out of touch with nature. They see a greyish-green frog sitting on their greyish-green deck and they think the sky is falling. Second, television news is useless, and I mean that in the worst sense of the word. Third and finally... after listening to Bill's band play for three hours, I really wanted to look out the window on the second floor of the Larkin. I walked over, and looked out the window. There was a street down there, and some cars, and some construction implements, and some gravel. It's been a good day.

8/5/03 12:16am Well, the Gravy Train just pulled back into Albany after I dunno how many days of beach-walking, pond-plundering, and other assorted Cape... things. When your vacation becomes routine, man, you've got some problems. Naturally, though, it wasn't bad. The return trip was particularly weird... it's humid as all hell outside, and a strange, low layer of clouds kind of drifted over us all the way from Orleans to Albany. I drove home from the interection of I-495 and the Mass Pike, and there must have been something funny in my Subway, man, because I was wigging out, all the way up and all the way down the Berkshires. In fact, I'm still wigging out right now. Tomorrow, hopefully, I'll recover from the magical mystery tour that was today, and then gear up for ultra nerd-styling for the next two weeks. While you're in town, check out this website for the Nantucket Sound, which I guess is in some kind of jeopardy, which sucks. I haven't checked it out yet myself, but I heard an ad for it on the radio, and it seems like a really important issue. I feel so... weird...

7/26/03 12:08am For some reason, I'm really, really looking forward to going out in the canoe this week. I've never really looked forward to canoeing specifically, but nowadays, it's all I've been able to think about. I took the stern paddle down from the rafters in the garage today, and it just felt good and natural in my hands... I can clearly picture the blade slicing silently through the surface of the pond, like a knife in the hands of a skilled surgeon. It's going to feel good. I've been waiting for this for a long time... the night before Cape Cod always makes me feel giddy, kind of like a kid who can't sleep on Christmas Eve. This is so much better, though... this isn't about giving or getting or family or anything like that. This is about me, afloat on a bent slab of aluminum in the middle of a pond, with nothing to worry about beyond sunburn. It's time for a vacation.

7/22/03 5:33pm It's humid with a capital HUMID outside, which is starting to make me extremely irritated. I have only three days left at my fantabulous internship downtown, which is kind of amazing. The summer is flying faster than a frisbee in rain. Speaking of which...

7/20/03 9:37pm I think the only appropriate word that I can use to describe this weekend is "solid." Actually, no, I lied. I can also use words like "phenomenal," "inspired," "fantastic," and "kickass." From the moment of my release from my corporate confines on Friday I knew things were going to be peachy keen, so I took the highway home instead of the usual city street route, felt the wind in my hair, cranked the oldies, and before I knew it, I was sitting in Row A of The Egg's Hart Theatre with Jon and Schuman, experiencing They Might Be Giants as I never before imagined possible. The Giants kicked things off with Orff's insidiously overused "O Fortuna" passage from the Carmina Burana, which was hilariously nerdy nonetheless (I thought of both Big Pat and HDS uberprofessor John Strugnell, who love the song to death). The group has some solid, phenomenal, inspired, fantastic, and kickass talent holding it up, featuring uncanny skill on everything from the accordion to the trumpet-synth guitar to the razor-sharp glockenspiel. They played all of the songs I wanted to hear, and made constant quips about The Egg, which, admittedly, is a kind of all-around bizarre venue. After the concert, I caught the tail-end of a Movie Club gathering, which was delightful. Saturday was gorgeous... it'll probably stand out as one of the best days of this summer, you know, when everything is said and done. I played ultimate frisbee in Washington Park with the Brothers Stauf, Billy, P-Cam, Allyson, Jon, and Bear, then I stopped home quick to ingest shrimp and salad, bounced back for bocce at St. Catherine's with the same crowd plus Callie and Tom, then ARIA returned with a vengeance: two boards on the same table (we put the leaf in)... at one point there were maybe thirteen people crowded around the action, excluding members of my immediate family that didn't play. From there, there was midnight bocce behind School 27, and a whole new world of organized gaming was summarily opened. Be very afraid. Today I went to see Debut's production of Zombie Prom, which was solid, phenomenal, inspired, fantastic, and kickass. Mike Bard was running the lights in some kind of old-school, highly dangerous booth that reminded me of maybe... the old-time backside of a bowling alley, you know, where the little kids would manually reset the pins with all of the machinery and stuff, and every week one of them would lose a finger (on average, I guess)... that kind of thing. It smelled like turpentine and WD-40, and the electrical equipment buzzed like a voltage-happy hornet's nest. Frightening. After dinner (just now, I guess), Jon and Bill and I met up with MadPeople629 at the park for some more ultimate action, which has left me extremely tired, but really satisfied. I actually feel like going to bed right now... the only bad thing about having a weekend like this is that there's no room to improve from here. I'll take is as it comes, though... thanks to everyone who brought a smile to my face and challenged me to run just a little bit faster.

7/15/03 9:18pm I'm actually terrified of my own heartbeat. The feeling of blood coursing through my person is both foreign and strange. Seriously, I think I like it. I was psychologically laying the smack down on my buddy Billy during a bike ride somewhere above Academy and below Forest on New Scotland when he got all pissed off and reacted in the best way he could think of: challenging me to a race, then blasting ahead and almost out of sight. For those of you who may not know, I'm not very physically... anything (for example, I'm afraid of my own heartbeat because I hardly ever feel it), whereas Billy is essentially everything the average American male could hope to be in the prime of his life. I wondered about the kid's commitment to the race, though, so I turned down Ramsey and gunned it down to Hackett, and then I kind of went into some form of physical frenzy, the likes of which I haven't experienced in literally years. Anyway, I was behind St. Peter's when I looked behind me and saw Billy charging out onto Hackett from Main, then he kind of did some human lightning thing and before I knew it, we were both taking the curves in the Hackett apartments... he beat me home, sure, but when I got there, I actually felt my entire body... I was aware of my legs, and they actually felt... strong. It was incredibly messed up. I took down some water really quick, collapsed in the darkness of my living room, and it hit me like a ton of bricks: my heart was beating. My heart was pounding. There was blood in my system, and it was seriously actually moving. I was seriously, honestly terrified of my own heartbeat. I liked it. There might be something really wrong with the way I've been living my life.

7/12/03 1:20pm You can't really appreciate how un-Christlike you are until you're recruited to play Jesus in front of a bunch of Bible school kids. I knew that I'm a sarcastic, cutting kind of guy, but honestly... man. So I guess that if I really want to walk the path, I'm going to have to start being (at least a bit) more like Christ. I mean, it really can't hurt me. Anyway, I reached the pinnacle of my Capture the Flag career on Thursday when I walked across the line, chilled in the jail for a bit, moseyed over to the enemy flag, picked it up, and hightailed it back across the line to the neutral zone, thus ending the game. It really, honestly can't get better for me than that, so I might as well hang up my hat and quit while I'm ahead. This week went really fast, and I've only got ten (10) days left for work, which makes me pretty happy. I got a chance to go see "My Fair Lady" at Park Playhouse, and that was pretty good. Mike Bard was up in one of the spotlight towers, running his first gig as a professional techie... go Mike! Last night, I hit the fountain with France, Zonk, and Mark, and we were all a good twenty years below the mean age of the patrons. It was fun, though, because they had a live jazz group filled with old white guys who played the banjo, baritone horn, and clarinet in addition to the usual instruments (keyboard, trumpet, alto sax, you know). Their trombone player was actually quite good, and it's making me really want to play again. Recently I've been bouncing around random forums and IRC channels, kind of pulling together ideas for the four new web projects I'm working on. If all goes well, the two weeks after Cape Cod will be filled with ravenous design, coding, debugging, and lemonade drinking. This is easily the best summer I've had in years.

7/6/03 10:35pm This weekend was nDo approved, with more interesting facets than an icosahedron. Jason came to stay for the duration, so that got things off to a running start. The Fourth of July was ever-so-slightly less oppressive than usual, so that was a welcome change. We hit the Fountain a couple of times, the Plaza thrice, and while it was frustratingly hot and humid outside, I managed to have a good time pretty consistently throughout the weekend. Playing Capture the Flag at the Plaza is an amazing thing... even though I can't run really fast, I still find ways to infiltrate enemy territory and sneak around, through the pillars of the Corning Tower, merge with the steel and marble... anyway, things are good. I can't believe that my summer's more than half over.

7/6/03 1:21am I just need to make a quick shout out to Mark Staufenberg who will probably hate my guts for the next eighteen months due to an unfortunate misunderstanding and an egregious oversight on my part... shit. I'm really sorry Mark. I owe you like a popsicle or something. Probably in ten years, you can sucker punch me in a pool, Mike Bard-style. I'm really, really sorry.

7/2/03 6:57pm I finally captured a screenshot of the dreaded Level 57 from Bubble Bobble, which makes my account of this harrowing... thing... all the more believable. Right now I'm psyched because Jason's coming into town tomorrow to stay for the three day weekend. Meanwhile, I'm on the brink of flipping out and learning how to use PostNuke or some other PHP-related web enhancer. PHP-related web enhancer... is it just me, or does that sound like some kind of drug?

6/27/03 8:19pm The stifling heat wave continues. Mike Bard graduates from high school this weekend, and at the moment I think he has five summer jobs. The scope of his labor-related fervor... who knew? Anyway, most of my days have been spent playing Population Tire on the old Compydore 64 and thinking about ways to stop pissing off the populace of Western New York. I just realized that people aren't going to just unconditionally like me wherever I go. This will probably be an obstacle to my success, but at least I've identified the problem. Anyway, I'm off to go watch The Hulk with some old nDo members... that Bruce Banner. You won't like him when he's Ang Lee.

6/23/03 7:56pm The main thing that I hate about summer is the heat. It's not a good thing. Summer more or less officially arrived today, marked by the formidable wall of sweltering air that smacked me in the face as I left the office this afternoon. In unrelated news, I finished off the fifth book in the Harry Potter series just now, and I have to say that it did exactly what it needed to do, and did it with the same amount of ridiculously high quality that we've come to expect from Britain's richest female. I'll probably write up some more detailed comments about the book in a few weeks, after all of the hard-core H-Po nerds have settled down about it. I was browsing around earlier today and I came across a site called The Patronus, the closest I could come to finding some form of intelligence on the series higher than "Harry Potter is a good guy and Dumbledore is a gooder guy." Unfortunately, The Patronus' clarity is eclipsed tenfold by both its webmaster's insistence on staying within a sickeningly wholesome Christian paradigm and her constant use of the first person in her writing. While this might be cool for certain projects, for example, one's personal online log (ahem), it's not so great for quality expository essays and the like, which I was really hoping to find. Either way, I'll close with another plug for the new Harry Potter book and the series in general. "The Order of the Phoenix" in particular is both politically charged and relevant to the state of civil liberties in our own country. That said, I think I'm gonna go eat me some ice cream.

6/19/03 10:59pm Welcome to 'Hubris Highway,' the latest iteration of my personal website. There's not a whole lot more that I have to say... you'll notice that I've got a lot more on here now than just this journal-type stuff, and I think this is a change for the better. Anyhow, today was Pond Day, and I made it to the pond for a whole two hours after work, then called it quits, went to Bomber's with Schuman, Jon, and the Staufenbergs, and then on to a major game of capture the flag in the Plaza. So Pond Day wasn't a complete loss after all... today is also the 50th anniversary of the Rosenberg execution, which is a particularly poignant bit of trivia because of the situation nowadays; instead of having communist witch hunts, we've got terrorist witch hunts. Well, I guess that's just the way things work. Either way, I hope you find this new project of mine a little more enjoyable than the last. Bard's Homepage had a good run, but now I'm sure that it's time to take the road to improvement... welcome to my Highway!

6/17/03 10:24pm I could write about a whole bunch of stuff tonight, and I just might. My life is becoming all-natural and just that much better, like the old-school kind of peanut butter that you have to stir because all of the peanut stuff settles out of the oil. Tonight, I played ultimate frisbee in Washington Park with eleven fine individuals. I have grass stains on my shirt and jeans, and I feel great about it. Last night, I went for a good bike ride with Billy. Sunday was the Lobster Fest... come to think of it, the last three days in a row have been absolutely gorgeous... high pressure, barely a cloud in the sky, low 70's... picture perfect. And the sky was red tonight... red sky at night; them sailors is all right. So on Sunday I ate my lobsters and wandered around the park with Craig, who punted a cinnamon roll thing from Panera. Saturday night was phenomenal... I went to the Alternative Prom with Jenny, Schuman, Billy, Mike and Jon, and a whole other bunch of people, and it was just a really good time. I looked around and I saw freedom... I saw hope, and I know it sounds kind of built up, but I really did see everything that's right with my country. I actually saw freedom, and it looked back at me. Plus, they had really good, really big cookies. Friday night I went to James' house for his birthday party, where I got to catch up with a whole bunch of people and whatnot, and his mom made her layer dip stuff, which may be the only thing she knows how to cook, but hey... do one thing, and do it well. It was fabulous. So there you have it... an excellent weekend and the beginning of an excellent week. This brings me to my next point of business... this marks my last update of my Homepage. I've been working on my new personal web project, (paving the way, you could even say) and it's due to be up on Pond Day, which is June 19th. That falls on a Thursday this year, and it's in two short days... so check back here late on Pond Day (I'm only going to make it to the pond after work actually) and the highway will be opened...

6/12/03 11:51pm Tonight we cruised around without chairs, without seatbelts, and without shame... but we had pita bread on our side. We couldn't really open any of the pita bread, but it was there just the same. It was cheering us on. Anyhow, after grabbing some rainbow sherbet and chanting the word 'disco' over and over again to piss off my sister, Bill, Kennedy, Mark, and I went on a quest to find Paul Townsend. Tom, Zonk, and Callie were in on things at the beginning, but they dropped out pretty fast. First, we went over to Paul's mom's house, and after some minutes of waiting there, his stepfather came out in his bathrobe, greeted us warmly, and presented us with Paul's number at his dad's house. We had no idea where his dad's house was. Some quick 'net searching and random cruising later, we arrived at an apartment complex in North Bethlehem, stalked around in the fluorescent lights, and finally located the place where Paul lives. He wasn't there. Anyway, today I also found out that Goetze's little bullseye candies (the unsung heroes of the candy community) contain trans fatty acids, that is, partially hydrogenated toxic material. I was infuriated, but I at them anyway. You can't win every battle.

6/08/03 10:44pm As far as I know, I never have been and never will be a movie star. That is to say, I will never be in a movie, and therefore I will never be in the same cast as anyone, let alone an apparently groovy chick. Ergo, I will never share an escalator ride with said chick, and I will never chase her up an iron spiral staircase and lose her in the crowded tavern at the top. Her last words to me were, "We're at war." That's basically when I woke up. I haven't had a dream about someone I didn't know for a long, long time. Anyway, in the real world, I just came back from a quick trip to Delaware to attend my cousin's graduation. It was a fun little adventure -- I ate well, saw some hyperextended family that I rarely see and yet don't dislike, and sang at the top of my lungs for five hours on the way back up with two out of my three siblings. The third was mortified beyond belief. Anyway, we had a good time. On Friday night, a whole random bunch of us went to Gateway, then France and I chased Tom and Bill and Lily around the city until Tom pulled two random moves in a row and we essentially lost the game. It was a nice challenge, though. The work week is revving up again, now, so it'll be a return to normalcy: RISK, more work on my new web project, and my intended speed-through of Harry Potter books three and four, which are the more politically complicated of the series to date. I have to brush up, after all, because the fifth book will be released in less than two weeks. Summer progresses like a long, somewhat slow freight train of awesome.

6/03/03 10:17pm "Things are okay with me these days, got a good job, got a good office..." And so they are good, and I, as usual, can't complain at all. This weekend I won in Risk more often than not, I rode the Comet (the best darn wooden rollercoaster ever) twenty-three times in the rain with Mike Bard on Sunday... where can I even start, though? This past weekend was mostly characterized by the Risk game followed by the Gateway trip followed by plundering, which seems to be fast becoming a new favorite pastime of my friends and I. Bill and the Staufenbrothers and me and France, Zonk, and Kennedy plundered around downtown late Friday night. Billy did a flip off of the Hudson River Way onto the grass in the Corning Preserve, we yoinked a cone and put it on Tom's van, frolicked in the plaza... a good time was had by all. Yesterday I spontaneously decided to take a bike ride, so Mark and I hit the streets of Albany... I think I did a total of seven miles in all, which isn't a bad start for the summer. After the bike ride, Sarah Dunn kidnapped me, and there was cheesecake and a conversation about classics involved, so naturally it was right up my alley. By and large, though, I've been laying low. Most of my time is being taken up by my job and my random plundering of the Internet, which has kind of inspired me to design a website or two... I dunno, it'll be interesting to see where things go. Anyway, everything is pretty good here, and I'm liking this world a fair amount, despite everything about it that could stand to change. I'll keep on trucking, though...

5/28/03 4:56pm It's raining. Today is one of those days, though, where everything seems to be in a strange harmony... at first glance, it looks wrong, but underneath it all, it's wonderful. For example, I was on my way home, looking up at the sky and the buildings downtown, and I noticed that the sky was really really dark in one part, but below it the buildings were reflecting the light sky behind me. It looked so cool... and rain started coming down while I was still on Hackett Boulevard, but it's not a bad sort of rain. It's not bad at all... a clock tower chimes somewhere, I let the dog in out of the rain, the lighting is all still upside down, even inside my house, but I grab a handful of cookies anyway. Last night, I got this weird sense of purpose that has been recurring on and off throughout my life, maybe, but I'm actually starting to figure it out... I guess the word of the minute is -Vanguard-. It's weird, though, because I can do so much damage to people all over the place, and yet I feel this crazy need to guide and protect certain people. The words of Rusty echo up and down my path: "Having sworn fealty, must I live my life in servitude?" This is messed up. I have no real qualms about being a supporting character in life's great show, but couldn't they have found a less narcissistic chap? Even Rusty found a way out in the end... it looks like this plotline still has more developing to do. I'll keep doing what I do best, then... eating calzones, listening to disco, reading the Hebrew scriptures, and playing Mario upside-down. I'm content.

5/24/03 2:06am Weird night. Lots of random coincidental stuff happened, and I'm basically awestruck. Lots of people would tell me, "Bard, you're just a fool for believing," or for seeing something that's not there, or for giving significance to random minor phenomena... but I really think that tonight was just a cool nexus of happenings, and I'm grateful for it. The evening started out with an argument between me and Billy over sales taxes and friendship. I'm really, really seriously trying to stop buying stuff in the area outside of Albany, and that includes not patronizing Crossgates, our local axis of inauthenticity. Bill and the crew wanted me to go see 'Bruce Almighty' at the mall, whereas I would have vastly, vastly preferred to go to a (cheaper) theatre in Albany. Long story short, Bill called me self-righteous and my actions meaningless, I (naturally) disagreed but opted to go with my friends and save the idealism for a sunnier day... probably tomorrow. So I yoinked Mark from his Hollywood home and we booked it back to Berncliffe, listened to some mad disco music, which apparently made my little sister cry inexplicably, but it was alright, because we got to do the Dinosaur. Mark, Kennedy, and I hightailed it to Crossgates, where we met up with Bill, Zonk, Tom, two of Tom's comrades from Clarkson, and a swarm of inauthentic girls that caused me to clench my fists with rage. Anyhow, the movie was really good in its own way... it set up what it wanted to do, and it did it really well, with just enough quick references and goodness to make me pretty happy. After that, the weirdness started coming thickly and quickly: Zonk was all like, "yo, I'm parked way out" and we were like, "yo, we're parked way out too," and it turned out that Zonk and I parked next to each other in the biggest parking lot that Guilderland has to offer. It was especially hilarious because our cars were the only cars left, so they were just kind of sitting there in ironic glee. I turned the key in the ignition and the radio went on, and the first words I heard were "I'm a believer," courtesy of the Monkees... I was on the way to Kennedy's place and Mark and I were talking about the song "In the year 2525," and it came on like... within seven seconds. Mark and I summarily freaked out, and I drove home in utter amusement and... awe. And so, the three day weekend begins.

5/22/03 11:59pm So I got a dose of weird karma today, and I'm thankful for it. Things started out normally, what with the commute downtown and the first couple hours of work and all... standard junk. Lunch was pretty awesome. I wandered out into the kind of Pearl Street mini-community... there are a ton of little places hidden away in lots of odd places down there, and each one is more intriguing than the one before it. Lots of the streets down there are very narrow and paved with cobblestone... I turned onto Maiden Lane from Pearl, and I felt like I was in the Old World or something... I've never even been to the Old World, but I figured that's what it must feel like. I grabbed a turkey BLT and some cookies and headed across I-787 on the Hudson River Way bridge to eat on the riverfront. It was cloudy and somewhere around sixty degrees... therefore, it was a perfect day for me to sit outside. After work, I was doing my usual afternoon commute back home via Hacket Boulevard, kind of driving without really thinking and listening to the oldies like always, and out of the blue, emergency siren-type things go on behind me, so I pull over to let whatever it is pass by. I look behind me, and it turns out the cop is pulling over, too. Behind me. Thus began my first conversation with a police officer in regards to my (allegedly) breaking the law. The officer was pretty nice, and I was in a thoughtful, amused kind of mood (I only started to get pissed off after I got home later), and as it turned out, I (allegedly) ran the red light at Main and Hackett. I was in no position to argue, but as far as I remember, I don't really remember anything. I obviously wasn't paying specific attention, but I don't drive through red lights, even unintentionally. I maintain that the light was yellow, because naturally, I wouldn't go through a red light during rush hour. That's just stupid. Anyway, the cop encouraged me to plead 'not guilty,' and so I'm pleading 'not guilty.' I'm sure it'll all work out, I'll get a point or three on my license, cough up a day's work's worth of money, and it'll all be well and good. The cop pulled away, and I turned on the car, only to be smacked in the face by the words of Qoheleth/the Byrds... to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. I smiled and probably said the word 'irony' out loud to myself, finished the drive home, and that's basically all she wrote. In other news, Dave Kennedy rocked the Risk universe tonight by an extraordinary measure of defiance: reducing both of us to no more than one guy per territory before I even had my first turn, and then refusing to attack anyone for the rest of the game. He had built up a good twenty armies or so before Dave France got around to killing him (for no card bonus, it was pretty insane), and everyone was shocked and irritated. I thought it was a neat experiment, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the league's season. Interested folks should check out the homepage of the Albany Risk [Irkutsk] Association for more groovy details. Getting a ticket for (allegedly) blowing off a red light has actually lifted my spirits, and thusly everything is right with the world again... onward!

5/21/03 10:56pm Guff... these past two days or so I've been slowing it down a bit. It rained today, which was refreshing. I stopped into Pizzeria 54 for lunch (last week, they told me to come again, so I did) and had a calzone... their marinara sauce is to die for, and the thought of it got me through the last few hours of work. My job is amazingly sane. Actually, my entire life is sane right now... sane and under control. It's getting on my nerves... one good thing about being at school was having the ability to break all of the rules right there in front of me (cf. "Let's go to Batavia on the way home from Wegmans" or "Tonight is Friday, so tomorrow we can kill mad people"). I don't really have that anymore. Right now, all I really have is structure, and every day is becoming exactly like the next... the only variables are the weather and who wins the evening's Risk game. So this kind of lull in the action was to be expected, I guess... I mean, everything was going great last week, and what goes up must come down. This is far from a crisis, though... just a slow patch in an otherwise quicksilver existence. Maybe this weekend I'll go out and say hello to nature or something.

5/18/03 10:56pm Wow. I've been back in Albany a little more than a week now, and I'm back with a vengeance... worked forty hours for the Man via Aramark (playing the old facilities resource management game), did some more backstage tech for Ragtime (maybe the best AHS drama production ever), saw so many familiar faces again... I'm so happy right now. The other night, Mike had a 1:00 curfew because my parents were angry with him (his damn girlfriend keeps him out late nowadays), so Jon and Mark and Craig and I busted back to Berncliffe a bit early, sat down in the dark, put on some Yanni real low, and proceeded to wait for Mike to come home. It was all quiet and creepy-like when Mike came in twenty-five minutes late, and then Craig flipped on his Indiglo watch and said all stern-type, "you're late." Mike was thoroughly frightened, and we all thought it was pretty amusing. This week also marked the return of three blasts from the past: Paul Townsend made contact with Billy for the first time in a good long while, John O'Neil made an appearance on his bicycle and caught up with Bill and I for a bit, and someone with the screenname 'Surfbard' signed online for the first time in about four years, only it wasn't me. Apparently this new 'Surfbard' is stationed in Hawaii and has no idea about the history of the screenname he selected for himself. It's just as well, though... the guy can have it. I don't need it anymore, and I guess AOL figured they could recycle names that nobody's used in four years. It's fine. The Greek Fest was this weekend, and loukomathes were enjoyed by all, along with various other delectable ethnic offerings. I was, as a result, pretty satisfied. Today, I got my first (and probably last) chance to go up on the catwalk in the AHS auditorium. It was pretty amazing up there... I looked down at the audience during one of the most intense points of the show, I looked around at all of the lights and marvelled at the greatness of it all... I'm so damn fortunate, it drives me crazy. So that's the state of things, I suppose... I'm back in my hometown and loving it. The Albany Risk [Irkutsk] Association (ARIA) just fired back up this evening, setting the stage for things to come... I love the way things are starting here. I'm just gonna hop onto Time's back and ride it like a temporal cowboy...

5/12/03 11:51pm So spring is here in full force, the cherry blossoms are falling down all around me, and there's that soft spring rain... I went for a walk during lunch today, during that one-hour escape from the clutches of the -Man-, and I saw people crowding the cobblestone streets and my reflection in the puddles on every great marble tile at the Plaza... yeah. Ragtime opened this past weekend at Albany High, and they did a pretty awesome job with it... I got the chance to serve in the tech crew on Sunday, too. I saw so many good people again, took two trips to Gateway (the second trip after Schuman's little revolution and the assassination attempt on Mike Bard's leg from across Washington Avenue), Zonk's been around like every night so far; I plowed through every level of Mario Bros. with him (finishing off 8-4 with 1-crown guys). Yesterday, Mike and Jon and I went to Price Chopper, and we were all wearing black from teching Ragtime, so we freaked mad people out... I secured that job with Aramark, so I officially work for the man now, but it's money, and I can sell out for eleven short weeks to amass some funding to continue on my nerdish activities... it's all justified. The players are all trickling back into the city: Billy this evening, Mark last night, Meghan the day after tomorrow, Allyson was back for the weekend and will be back for good after Saturday... Mr. Plans and Mr. Boring remain omnipresent, and I'm right where I should be. The clouds are parting, at long last...

5/8/03 11:35pm I can't even explain how one can realize how much they've missed the constant sound of I-87 until they hear it again out their bathroom window... I torched the State of New York today in the old 3.1, stopped in for dinner with my grandparents, picked my little sister up from Friendly's, you know, standard stuff... and now I have to get to sleep to see if I can land myself a job tomorrow morning. For now, though, I'm finally at peace...