Bad News First

Sam, working as a reference librarian at the public library, gets off at 5:00. On a certain Thursday last May, she would have been gone a few minutes earlier if not for a certain woman with a persistent and time-consuming question. Both she and I are very grateful for this woman now.

When I got to the library, I mentioned to her that I would be in Houston that summer, and so not able to work at the library as I had thought I might. Sam mentioned that she was getting off in just a couple of minutes. On impulse, and without any particular plans in mind, I asked if she was busy that night. As it turns out, she was not, and I suggested we watch a movie together. She gave me directions to her house, and we agreed that I would come over a little later that night.

I went home and continued getting ready for my trip to Houston and Sam went home, cleaned up her house a bit, and washed a couple of weeks' worth of dishes that had accumulated in the sink. I brought with me the movie Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. On the way, I was trying to figure out if this was a date or if we were just friends watching a movie . . . or what.

I got to her door at about 7:00.

Last summer (2008), I had just finished the semester and I needed a summer job. I stopped by the public library one afternoon, as I frequently did, and mentioned this to the red-headed girl working at the reference desk. She mentioned that the library would be hiring a few people and thought I should apply. She also said that it would be great to have someone else close to her own age working there. I thought this didn't sound bad and picked up an application.

Shortly after I headed off to Houston for a couple of days to visit my sister's family. Since I have two nephews and two nieces just 150 miles away, I like to head west every once in a while to say hello. While I was there, Sue and Jack suggested that, as my summer job, I could stay out there and help watch the kids and the house, since both of them worked. Since I the two of them have done a great deal for me, I thought I should help them this way. However, I hadn't come out prepared to stay for the summer, so I headed back a few days later to pick up some more clothes, etc.

When I got back to Lake Charles, I realized that I wouldn't see this girl at the library for the rest of the summer. I didn't want her to think I just disappeared, so I thought I should stop by the library, say hello, and tell her what I was up to this summer.

I got to the library at about 5:00 that afternoon.

I finally made the lemon creme bruleé. The cooking is nearly identical to a standard, vanilla creme brulee, which I've done a couple of times before, and so I wasn't terribly worried about it.

Lemon Creme Bruleé

Lemon Creme Brulee

Ingredients
2 lemons
1 1/3 cups heavy whipping cream
1 cinnamon stick (broken in half)
4 large egg yolks
1/3 cup sugar, plus
1 tablespoon sugar
1 pinch salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 325°. From lemons, remove 6 strips peel (3" by 1" each)and squeeze 3 tablespoons juice.

2. In 1-quart saucepan, heat cream, cinnamon stick, and lemon peel over med.-high heat just until simmering. Remove saucepan from heat; cover and let stand 15 minutes. (Cream will develop a thin skin on top; whisk in when mixing into egg yolks.) Remove cinnamon stick and lemon peel; discard.

3. In large bowl, with whisk or fork, beat egg yolks, 1/3 cup sugar, and salt until blended. Whisk for one minute (you don't want it to be grainy from the sugar, it should be smooth.) Beat in warm cream mixture and lemon juice. Pour custard in six 3-oz. broiler safe ramekins or custard cups.

4. Place ramekins in 13" by 9" baking pan, carefully pour boiling water into baking pan to come halfway up sides of ramekins. Bake 35 to 40 minutes or just until set (mixture will still be slightly soft in center). Remove ramekins from baking pan; cover and refrigerate at least 2 hours or until well chilled.

5. Up to 4 hours before serving, preheat broiler. In small bowl, combine cinnamon and remaining 1 tablespoon sugar. Sprinkle tops of chilled custards with sugar mixture.

6. Place ramekins on cookie sheet. Place cookie sheet with ramekins in broiler at closest position to source of heat and broil 1 to 2 minutes until sugar melts and browns slightly. Serve immediately or refrigerate up to 4 hours. If not served within 4 hours, sugar topping will lose its crispness.

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I'm pleased with the result overall. They taste great. On the other hand, these cremes don't have the texture I've gotten with previous batches, which were generally thicker, and more like custard. This recipe simply says "sugar" for the topping, but I used turbinado sugar (which most of us see as "sugar in the raw" at Starbucks.) And, of course, instead of a broiler I used a blowtorch, which is the proper way to finish the crust. Other recipes I've seen have suggested that brown sugar can be used interchangeably with turbinado, but I disagree; brown sugar just scorches, turbinado (raw sugar) will melt and form a crisp, breakable crust.

As I said, the texture was noticeably different this time. There are two possible reasons for this, and I don't know yet which is the case. First, it's possible that this is because of the recipe. The addition of lemon juice might significantly change the texture. Second, it's also possible that it's because I used egg yolks that had been frozen. I added sugar before I froze them, which several sources said should keep from gelling wrong, but since I've never done this before myself, I don't know if that fixed it.

In any case, it still tasted good and I'll probably make it again sometime. On the other hand, there are other creme recipes out there yet for me to try. Tonight I'm making chocolate mint cookies for a friend's barbeque tomorrow. I've made these before, and they are excellent: tasty, thick, and chewy.

Zaklog the Kitchen-Master signing off. Enjoy the food.

So as I've mentioned once or twice, I'm currently reading Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America as an audiobook. For anyone interested in what America is really about and how we got here, this is required reading. Tocqueville is an amazingly insightful (I'm )tempted to use the word prescient) writer who meticulously prepared his account of our young nation.

One thing I found it very interesting to learn in this book is that public education (and thus, the very concept of true public education) in America was founded with religious intent. The very idea that everyone, regardless of social status or wealth, should receive a certain basic level of education sprang from Christianity, and one of the strictest sects of Christianity at that. I'm not as confident of this, but I believe the European university system (thus extending to all Western higher education) began in the middle ages with the Catholic church. I know that the preservation of many classical Greek and Latin texts depended on Christian monasteries through the middle ages. In fact, when most of Europe was buried in ignorance in superstition, the church was one of the few areas where intellectual inquiry continued, however misguided we find many of their ideas today. Gregor Mendel, the founder of the science of genetics, was an Augustinian monk. The entire field of modern biology is in his debt. And he is hardly the only instance: Joseph Priestley, chemist and dissenting minister; John Bartram, father of American botany and Quaker; Blaise Pascal, mathematician and Christian apologist; René Descartes, philosopher and Christian apologist.

So, to those who equate religion with ignorance, I simply have to say, you don't know your history very well, do you?

My most recent cooking adventure is chicken tortilla soup, which Sam and I shared with her friends Jeff and Elaina. The actual cooking wasn't tough, but the prep time was a bit long. I was surprised just how filling this soup was. I don't think anyone needed more than the serving size suggested in the book, which was very good, because the recipe is for four servings. And for those of you who are counting calories, this recipe is about 100 calories per serving. It's spicy and chunky and . . . yum.

This recipe is taken from the Hungry Girl cookbook.

3 cups fat free chicken broth
4 ounces cooked lean skinless, boneless chicken breast, shredded
1 cup canned diced tomatoes, undrained
1/2 cup canned sweet corn kernels
1/2 cup chopped onions
1 tablespoon chopped jalapeño peppers
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 tablespoon fajita seasoning mix
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon chili powder
6 baked tortilla chips, crushed
optional toppings: cilantro, fat-free sour cream, low-fat shredded cheese

* In a medium pot sprayed with non-stick spray, onion, garlic, seasoning, and spices over medium heat until onions soften, 3 to 5 minutes.

* Add chicken broth and bring to a boil. Then reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes.

* Add the corn and diced tomatoes, and continue to cook for 5 minutes.

* Add chicken, jalapeño, and lime juice. Stir for 2 to 3 minutes to thoroughly blend flavors.

* Once ready to serve, top each serving with crushed chips and, if desired, cilantro, sour cream and/or cheese.

Good food.

Tomorrow I'm doing something just slightly less healthy than this, lemon creme brulée. This is at least partly because I need something to do with the egg yolks left after I made angel food cake a couple of weeks ago.

I've done creme brulée before, but I haven't done this flavoring. I've tried, actually, but I kind of forgot to add the lemon juice. Fortunately, against the written recipe, I had included a vanilla bean, so it still had a delicious flavor.

Zaklog the Kitchen-Master signing off. Enjoy the food.

For any of you who have seen Stranger Than Fiction, I feel quite a bit like Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal's character). For those who haven't seen the movie, Pascal owns and runs a bakery. She originally went to law school, but ended up dropping out and becoming a baker instead. She said that whenever they were having study nights (which I'm sure are frequent in law school), she would make cookies and snacks. Everybody loved the food she made, so she started looking up more recipes and kept making food, and more people came to the study nights and more people loved her food and she kept on putting more effort into it . . . until she dropped out of law school because she was nearly failing. Now, I didn't drop out because I was nearly failing, but I did go to graduate school and find a unexpected interest in cooking, and more specifically making cookies.

This is how it goes, as part of the McNeese MFA program, we would frequently have visiting writers come in to read their work. Whenever they did, we would have a party for them, and all the grad students were supposed to bring food. For the first one I brought some cookies and everyone kept telling me how great they were. So the next time, I looked up a recipe for snickerdoodles and made them. Again, everyone said they were great, and W.D. Snodgrass took some of them with him.

So I started finding more recipes, and bought a cookie recipe book. (By the way, when people know you like to bake, you can pretty rapidly stop buying yourself cookbooks, because other people will buy them for you until you have more than you could possibly use.) I developed the odd problem that I simply loved to make cookies, the process, not merely the end product, and I would make cookies and then I would need to find people to eat them.

So now I'm finished with my MA, and I'm still baking. My most recent project was angel food cake. I was telling my sister about wanting to make that, and she said there were great mixes out there that aren't a lot of work. I didn't know how to adequately explain to her that I didn't want a cake; I wanted to make a cake. (I did, by the way, complete an angel food cake from scratch; it turned out great.)

A few of the interesting recipes I've tried so far, in no particular order: shoofly pie, triple berry pudding cake, citrus creme cookies, chocolate mint cookies, lemon meringue pie (which I tried twice: the first time it tasted great but didn't gel, the second time the consistency was fine, but it didn't taste nearly as good (although everyone else thought it was good)), spicy pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, lemon surprise pudding . . . I could go on.

I'm thinking about posting some of these recipes and describing the end product, if you're interested, definitely let me know. I don't intend to turn this into a cooking blog, but it might be fun to write about sometimes.

As a graduate student in English, I have two characteristics which were important to my getting to know Sam: I had little money and I loved to read. This meant I was an ideal candidate to visit the public library frequently. I didn't think much about it, but I did say hello to Sam whenever she was there, and we would sometimes talk a little bit, about her job or whatever.

As I said, I didn't think too much about it, but apparently a few other people did . . . once, after I left, one of Sam's co-workers asked Sam when I was going to ask her out. On another occasion, I ran into Sam and her mother while riding my bike around the local park. I said hello and we talked for a little bit. Theresa (Sam's mom) commented, "He's cute."

So I wasn't thinking anything about it, and I'm not sure what Sam's opinion was, but a few other people were thinking about it.

And the story will continue later.

7. The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald - I actually "read" this as an audiobook. I downloaded the audiobook from LibriVox, which I will describe further at the end of this post.

But to describe/review this book . . . George MacDonald wrote fairy stories, seasoned but not coated with Christianity. Considered by genre definitions, they are not, strictly speaking, allegories, but they contain much which can easily be read allegorically. They can also be read simply as entertaining adventures/fairy tales. In this one (and I find it interesting that this sort of thing most frequently pops up in fantasy written by Christians (at least, if you look back that far)) although there is a princess and she is in danger from the goblins, and there is a plucky young hero who opposes them, she does not wait passively for him to save her behind. In fact, at least once (and possibly twice, I don't recall right now) she saves his behind.

A fun story, if you enjoy fairy tales at all. For those who don't know, by the way, George MacDonald was a favorite author and major influence on both C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien (and is partially responsible for Lewis's return to Christianity.

8. The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett - Although it doesn't involve any of the recurring characters (except of course, Death) this book takes place on the Discworld. If you're not familiar with Terry Pratchett's writing, the Discworld is a British humor parody of the fantasy genre as a whole . . . well, it started out just as that; I don't think that summary does it justice any longer . . . anywho.

This is the story of a cat and a group of rats who through a magical accident became intelligent. Along with the help of a young boy who likes to play music, they work together to run a "rat piper" scam in various towns they travel through. At least, that's how things stand until they reach Bad Blintz. Here they find something truly terrible that transforms all of them. (They also meet a girl named Malicia Grim, a grand-daughter of the Grim sisters, writers of some disturbingly gory fairy tales (much like most fairy tales were before Disney got ahold of them) but I don't know if I want to describe characters in depth right now.)

If read attentively, this is a surprisingly deep book. It's an adventure story with talking animals, yes; but it's also a story about how community and morality are formed, what it means to be a leader, and why widdling on someone's grave isn't necessarily a bad thing. While I certainly think this book is worthy of awards, I'm amazed that it got a Carnegie Medal for children's books. Pratchett is almost always funny, but this is also a dark and occasionally disturbing book. . . . All that to say, highly recommended.

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Books I didn't finish:
The Gone Away World by Nick Harkaway - As I said, recommended by Sam solely on the basis of a recommendation by a famous librarian lady whose name I'm not sure of right now (but I know she has an action figure. (No, I'm not kidding.)) All I can really say is that I just never got into it. I read about 20 pages, and that was enough. I can't say it's bad as in poorly done, but just not to my taste.

The Book of Snobs by William Makepeace Thackeray - An odd book of social satire on the various snobs of 19th century British society, including snobs clerical, academic, literary, Irish snobs, club snobs, country snobs. It's kind of an odd experience, because I found this really funny sometimes, but it's a very intellectual humor, because I obviously don't have real experience with the society he's satirizing.

Unfortunately, I lost this book one afternoon while shopping at Wal-Mart when I was nearly done. . . . Ah well.

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Books I'm currently reading:
Poisons: From Hemlock to Botox and the Killer Bean of Calabar by Peter Maginnis - I'm reading this as research for a writing project I'm working on. It's both a history and popular science work about poisons of all kinds and various uses people have put them to over the centuries, including medical, cosmetic, and as a food additive. (No, that last part wasn't a mistake: A form of lead was frequently added to various foods as a sweetener.)

This book has a lot of interesting information, but it occasionally seems over-written. The author is sometimes intrusively clever, or goes off on unrelated tangents. One thing I will say, I'm aware the agency is not perfect, but reading this has made me immensely grateful for the Food and Drug Administration.

Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville - Another LibriVox audiobook. Tocqueville was an amazingly insightful historian/social scientist of the nineteenth century. Most of what I knew about him before starting this book is that Tocqueville, writing in 1840, predicted that the world would before long be dominated by two major powers: America and Russia. To those lacking a sense of history, this prediction may not seem remarkable, but at the time, people must have looked thought him insane. Both countries were considered insignificant backwaters.

The writing (and translation, to give due credit) is wonderful. Tocqueville takes a very sweeping view of history, almost Marxist in seeing a natural and inevitable progression of all cultures towards equality (not in his economic views as far as I know.) Anywho, very interesting.

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And now to clarify something I mentioned some time ago: LibriVox is a group of people creating free audiobooks of various works in the public domain. Any or all of the LibriVox catalog can be downloaded entirely for free. The really interesting part is this: This work is done entirely by volunteers, and anyone with a microphone and some basic sound editing software is free to join in and record. Being the kind of person who loves to be in the spotlight whenever possible, I immediately jumped in and started recording. For those of you who are interested, my own contributions can be heard here. If you decide to record something yourself, let me know. I'd like to hear it.

Once there was a lonely grad student living in a city over a thousand miles from home. Since this grad student did not have wireless internet at home (and his laptop kind of sucked anyways), he would frequent the local public library.

At this library worked a wise and beautiful red-haired reference librarian. One day, upon finding an amusing quotation concerning librarians, the lonely grad student shared this bit of wit with the red-haired librarian. She found it tremendously amusing also, and remembered the grad student after he had left.

And now children, I have to say goodnight. We will continue this story another time.

4. The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman- This book is by a Christian marriage counsellor about how each of us expresses and understands love. Chapman says there are five basic ways we do this, and if people don't "speak love" to us in our own language, we're not going to feel loved. This, he believes, is at the center of many problems in marriages today. If we can come to understand and speak our spouse's love language, we'll find it much easier to get along.

(If my language sounds a bit skeptical, it's because when it comes to things like informal psychology, I'm reluctant to jump on board unconditionally. I don't necessarily disbelieve it, but we'll see.)

The 5 languages are 1. Words of affirmation 2. Acts of service 3. Quality time 4. Gifts 5. Physical touch. I won't go into detail about each of these, but I will say to his credit, Dr. Chapman provides examples of how each of these works from his own counselling experience.

(Oh, I read this because Sam asked me to. Interestingly, she has not finished it herself. I'm not going to hold this over her too much though; she's taking summer classes whereas I'm done with school (for the moment.))

5. Introducing Semiotics by Paul Cobley and Litza Jansz - One of the "Introducing . . ." series, a set of illustration-heavy books intended to give an intelligent layman a grasp of the basic concepts of various fields.

In this case, the book is a study of semiotics, the theory of how various signs mean, how meaning is constructed and what these signs ultimately refer to. Depending on which theorist you are listening to, a sign could be anything from a literal traffic sign to a word to a popular song to a cultural ritual to a symptom of an illness. The book describes the theories of various important figures such as Saussure, Lacan, Derrida, Pierce. I found this book surprisingly involving. I actually stopped reading the fantasy novel I had been in the middle of the finish this one.

6. Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko - The second in a series of Russian novels about magic-wielding Others who live among us. The Others are divided up into Light and Dark ones, valuing morality and personal freedom respectively. In this world, the two sides are in constant conflict, but basically restrained by an age-old treaty between them. The Light has the Night Watch to make sure that the Dark Ones abide by the treaty; similarly, the Dark has the Day Watch to monitor the actions of the Light.

Perhaps because of their origin in Russia, these novels feel very different than most other fantasy fiction I've read. They spend much more time on the thought and feelings of the small players. There's the constant sense that all of these people are pieces in a much larger game that they don't entirely comprehend. Also, nothing turns out as expected. The novels seem to be building to a grand conclusion and then, just at the end, swerve off of that. It doesn't feel like a Shyamalan "twist" or a cheap trick; it's genuinely earned. If you are even slightly interested in fantasy writing, these are worth looking into.

The movies made from these, by the way, are pretty good too. A disclaimer there, though: The Night Watch and Day Watch movie actually represent the first two sections of the first novel. The first movie is pretty faithful to the plot of the book, but the second one seriously diverges.

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Current reading:
The Gone Away World by Nick Harkaway - This was suggested by Sam, who in heard about Nancy Pearl. I honestly can't say much about it at all because I'm only ten pages in and I deliberately have not read any of the jacket copy, etc. It's interesting so far . . . deliberately creating a slang somewhat like Firefly to give a sense of very different world. . . . We'll see.

I'm also listening to The Princess and the Goblin by George Macdonald on audiobook. I got that from Librivox by the way, an interesting project about which I'll say more later. And I'm reading Ender's Game aloud for Sam because she likes listening to me read. (This, I have to admit, is among the more flattering requests I've had in my life.)

Since it's been so long since I've updated this, a few things have changed. The most important (and most surprising) is that I'm now married. This is from someone who had very nearly despaired of this. It might be fair to say I never really had a girlfriend before Samantha (henceforth referred to as Sam, but just to be clear that this is a female).

For those of you (if any) who are curious about this, I will go into our story in a later post, but just thought I should mention that. For some reason, I feel averse to long posts right now, so this is it for now.

of reviving my LJ. Someone has been bugging me for some time to do so, so since I am finished with school, I thought I'd give it a try.

1. It by Stephen King (~1100 pages) - The most interesting thing about this book is that the evil is not simply the monster the heroes are fighting, but the entire city it has corrupted. The story alternates between the heroes' confrontation with this nameless shape-shifting monster as children and their return as adults to combat its reappearance. King explores the mind of each of his seven protagonists in depth, as well as a brief dip into the mind of the monster. The last 200 pages of this book feel rushed, though, with several ideas inadequately explored and a few plot threads dropped without explanation. It also includes a truly warped scene featuring the seven heroes as 12 year olds. I won't go into further detail about that except to say that it is . . . disgusting and unnecessary.

Overall an interesting book, definitely worth reading if you liked the television mini-series.

2. 99 Coffins by David Wellington (295 pages) - A sequel to 13 Bullets, which I have unfortunately not read. A Civil War archeologist finds a cavern full of vampire coffins under the Gettysburg battlefield. When one of the monsters is awakened, Laura Caxton, who is still tortured by her memories of having fought a few vampires two years ago, must track that vampire down and destroy him before an army of the undead overwhelms the city.

The book alternates between the modern day fight against the vampires and "historical" documents describing how and why these monsters came to be there. I wouldn't classify this as a must-read vampire book, but Wellington's version of the creatures is interesting. The ending reminds me a little bit of 30 Days of Night and smells suspiciously of someone setting up for a sequel, but overall it's not a bad story.

3. Run for the Stars by Harlan Ellison (Audiobook) - On a world almost depopulated by an alien attack, Benno Talent, a junkie, is selected by the escaping humans to be the last man left on the planet. More importantly, he is selected to be the (unwilling) carrier of a sun-bomb, an enormously destructive device holding the alien fleet hostage. The novella tells of Talent's desperate attempts to escape the fate implanted in his belly, of his fight against both the aliens searching for him and the doom placed upon him by his fellow humans. Not the most insightful Ellison story I've read, but amusing nonetheless.

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Currently reading Day Watch, a Russian urban fantasy novel of a long-standing war between Light and Dark magicians living among the rest of us and The Five Love Languages, a sort of counseling book about understanding how each of us gives and receives love and how we can speak love to others (specifically our mates) in a way they will understand.

Note: This post was written earlier this summer. The computer crashed while I was in the middle of posting it and I assumed it had been lost. I was posting something else this afternoon and found (to my pleasant surprise) that LJ saves incompete entries. So this is my mood at the beginning of this summer.

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So my first year of graduate school is now over. I have to admit, I got off to a rough start, but I think I got everything together in the end. Here's to next year. *raises glass*

So what's up this summer? I already have a summer job. (Praise God for that one.) I'm waiting tables at a Mexican restaurant here. To be honest, the place seems a little disorganized, but maybe that's just because I'm still learning. Other than summer employment, I'm planning to visit Houston a few more times, see my sister & her family. I hope to also run out for a few days to Pensecola, FL to hang out with Jason Hazzard. (Yet another friend of mine recently married, geez.) If all goes well, I should also be doing a distance learning course with Wizard Academy. I'll have to e-mail Jeff Sexton about that one.

I'll be keeping up with all kinds of fun reading, of course. My "project book" for this summer is The Count of Monte Cristo, weighing in at about twelve-hundred pages.

Updates will be forthcoming about other fantastically exciting events in my life.

I'll warn you before you read this: As the subject line says, this is a rant. This is me venting frustrations and anger that I've carried at one level or another for some time. Having given warning, let the rant begin:

You know what I'm slowly coming to realize is the worst thing about being single? Not only does just about everyone else around you have a mate (which just about everyone else does) and you don't. That's bad enough, isn't it? No, evidently it's not.

To make a simplistic analogy: When I was in middle school, and was repeatedly picked last for the various sports activities, at least I didn't have to put up with well-meaning idiots telling me how lucky I was to be picked last, and what a wonderful thing it really was, if I really thought about it. That's pretty annoying too. That's not much fun. But wait! There's more.

Because this is the worst part, this is the addition of insult to injury: Whenever one (or God help you!) two of your friends get married, and you stay single, their life starts moving apart from yours. It doesn't matter if they live next door; they leave you behind. They become part of a world that you really can't understand. It's not their fault. There's nothing that can be done about it. If you are (as I am) truly single, this starts when your friend gets a girlfriend. It's not a big difference, but it's there. The gap grows wider when they get married. When they have kids, though, your friend is essentially gone. You can talk to that person sometimes, but they're not the same person any longer.

You think I'm wrong? Picture this then: You happen to be present when your friend (and his wife (who may or may not be your friend)) gets together with their married friends. Of course, they'll start talking about their kids. You sit there quietly and nod every once in a while. "Really . . . uh huh . . . Wow, that's great."

So there you are . . . doubly alone. You're alone because you don't have a mate, and you're also alone because your friends, who do, are gradually no longer your friends. And ultimately, as time goes by, and you're still single, and fewer and fewer others are, you become more and more alone.

And as far as I can see, this is what I have to look forward to---five or six decades of this before I finally get to check out. Oh yes, how wonderfully lucky I am to be picked last.

I just found out yesterday night about a decision by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board that could kill Pandora.com and almost every other form of internet radio. If implemented, this would create massive increases in their royalty payments.

Internet radio (and Pandora.com particularly) is a fantastic outlet for the up and coming artists. It's also a great tool for music fans to find music they like.

This decision would not affect traditional broadcast media which is (guess what?!?) powerfully dominated by major record labels. That's right: It's big money and the Man vs. the little guy. I hope you choose the right side.

Make your voice heard at SaveNetRadio.org.

So, I'm finally starting to believe I'm going to be able to pull this whole graduate school thing off. From my first week of classes I was terribly convinced that I was going to screw this whole thing up in the very first semester.

I am, I guess, a bit behind on grading some of my students' journals, but other than that, I think I'm doing alright now. Of course, I'm going to Wizard Academy this weekend. That's time I'd usually use to grade papers, but I think I can get this all done.

This weekend is going to be fun. This will be my second time out there. I kind of wonder whether Williams will remember me. I probably shouldn't stake too much on that possibility, but it could be. It can't be all the time someone points out to him something he didn't know about one of his own books.

I'll be perfectly honest, about half of the reason I'm writing this post is to give me an excuse to listen to Pandora for a few minutes. I think that's the only thing I seriously miss about having an internet connection at home. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure I would be wasting significantly more time goofing off on-line if I had that, so maybe it's better this way.

So yeah, I'm here in LC, LA, doing alright.

Gotta go now. Someone else needs on the computer.

Yes, I haven't updated in some time.

A) Been very much occupied with moving.

B) Don't have a net connection at my new place.

C) Had a hell of a time finding free wireless internet around here. (And drinks where I am are so expensive it might be cheaper to sign up for T Mobile. Before you ask, no the campus does not have a wireless network yet. As I understand, that was in planning before Hurricane Rita hit and, like many other things, has been put on hiatus since then. Let's hope that happens soon.)

So the short version, I start teaching tomorrow. (Developmental English . . . oh joy.) I start classes as a student on Tuesday. I have an apartment that is almost entirely empty. I would really like some furniture there. I fear my teaching duties may soon require me to make this a friends-only journal. Having my students swing by and read some of the stuff here might not be a terrific idea.

Oh, and I will be attending the Wizard Academy Reunion on October 21st. Yup, I get to go back to Wizard Academy. One of these days I will find a way to pay for the Magical Worlds course. I don't know how I'm going to swing that on a graduate assistant's pay, but I'll figure out something. Perhaps I can get the school to pay for it somehow . . . we'll see.

Sorry for the breifness and the long absence, but I just don't have much choice right now.

I just got done watching A River Runs Through It with Travis. His choice. The ending left me feeling kinda weird.

But I didn't hop on here to write about the movie. This is quite likely the last time I'll see Mr. Myers before I go to Lake Charles. I honestly haven't the faintest when I'll be back up PA way next, so . . . this is a bit sad. . . . I'm not used to being the one leaving.

I've made major moves twice as an adult. The second time was rather sudden and brought on by unusual circumstances. I didn't have time to get emotional about it and start missing people before I was even gone.

I'm about to start something entirely new in my life. I'll be about three hours away from the closest person I know. I guess I'm hitting this development point a bit late by contemporary standards. It's a terrific opportunity, but I guess you never gain something without, at the same time, losing something else.

Yeah, I guess there are certain things I'll miss about Chambersburg.

So I'm sitting in my kitchen at near midnight eating ramen noodles and listening to the first iTunes track I downloaded ("Everyone Who Casts a Shadow" by Wolfsheim. Muchas muchas gracias, Pandora.com). My bedroom is now almost entirely empty. All I've got left are two large peices of furniture I need help moving. Oh yeah, and the little weird mattress I've been sleeping on (and likely will for the next few months.) My books are all packed up except for those I'm reading. I must say that's one of the weirdest things to me. I am almost disturbingly attached to those books.

I picked up my photos today from my Mike Sanni, my friend who was printing and matting them. This is the first time I've seen them set up like this and, I must say, I was stunned how nice they looked. I suppose that's a bit egotistical, but it's to Mike's credit as much as mine.

I was at the Frappe House tonight talking to a few friends. I showed them a few of my photos, both ones that will be on display and a few that won't. I fear I'll have to locate a pin somewhere in my moving mess. Everyone was talking about how my pictures were so good I fear my ego started inflating a bit too large.

So Monday I'll be out of this house, have my photos on display, and I plan to purchase my first cell phone. That's a good bit going on for just one day. The next few weeks will be those kind of days repeated over and over again.

One month from now I'll be back in school---both learning and teaching. I have no idea how I'll take to that, having been out of school for half a decade.

Two months from now, I'll be 1,000 years old (in trinary, of course. I'll leave you math geeks to figure out what that works to in decimal.)

Oh, as a shameless plug, to those of you in Chambersburg and its environs, please come out and see my photos at the Frappe House. They'll be on display (and for sale) for the month of August.

Eesh! So long since I've posted and so much to post about. I suppose I'll start with the immediate. Tonight at work there was a cute little 2-year-old girl at my one table. After I filled her sippy cup and brought it out to her, she decided to say thank you. That was very polite of her, so I said, "You're welcome." The only reason I'm writing about this though, is because she kept saying thank you over and over again for ten minutes. It wasn't constant, but just about every time I came around she said it at least two or three times.

I kept saying "You're welcome" so I suppose I was encouraging her. It was so hilarious, though. This, by the way, confirms my theory that most of the things we find cute in other people's kids would drive us nuts in our own. This must be the first time I've seen parents trying to get their child to stop saying thank you.

I was literally laughing so long about this that my abs were getting sore. I think it was wearing me out, too. I wasn't laughing hard. (I couldn't while I had to be working.) But I was laughing quietly to myself all the rest of the night.

Okay . . . on to more serious stuff.

One week from today I'll be out of this house and up at my parents' for a week. I'm staying with them the first week of August to avoid paying a partial month's rent. Two weeks from Thursday I'll be leaving for Lousiana and in one month, I'll be in class and teaching one myself. That's a lot of change about to happen.

I go through periods of having no emotion whatsoever about this and periods of being extremely nervous. I guess you just can't sustain an emotion that long, no matter what's causing it. Most of the time when people have been asking me if I'm excited (and everyone is) all I can say is that I don't know why I'm not.

A friend of mine at work tonight was talking about getting together a going-away party for me. The primary purpose of this party (from her point of view) would be to see me get drunk. And yes, it does happen. Just very rarely. It doesn't really bother me as long as I keep it once in a great while. (I can think of twice this year I've had more than one drink together.) It's kind of funny that this came up tonight, because just last night I was kicking around the idea of getting drunk with my friend Travis. For better or for worse, though, that won't happen. He's got a very sensitive body chemistry and if he drinks much at all, he'd be regretting it for days afterwards. I guess you could call it an extended hangover.

That, by the way, was one of my conditions talking to Christie tonight. I might be willing to do this, but I wouldn't get puking-my-guts-out, waking-up-praying-for-death kind of drunk. We'll see what happens I suppose.

Oh, another interesting thing coming up: Next Tuesday my photo exhibit goes up at The Frappe House here in Chambersburg. That will be kind of fun. I'm still writing my little "About the Artist" card. I haven't quite figured out what I'll do for that.

Wow. I'm getting ready to say good-bye to Chambersburg . . . possibly for good. We'll see where God takes me.