Notes II

I got to work before 7:30 a.m. today.

I had paneer naan for breakfast (actually typed greatfast, and it was).

I'm glad LAH decided to start interacting with the web community again.

Cutting your finger with scissors is both painful and embarrassing. Embarrassing because I had to put my head down on the table in the communal work area while the pain crept up from my finger through my jaw and then because you would have thought that I would know how to safely operate scissors by now.

I napped all weekend. When I wasn't asleep, I was finishing the fourth Harry Potter book.

Oh, wait. Also this weekend I successfully fixed a flat on my bike.

Friday I got a letter from UVa, I thought it was my first rejection and had prepared myself for it. But no. It was just a letter reminding me to fill out my financial aid stuff as soon as possible.

Tomorrow, I have to drive around Seward county and count cows.

Notes

I got to work by 8:37 this morning, but I'm rounding it back to 8:30. In an effort to be more organized, I packed my lunch the night before; but I ate it at morning breaktime.

Since I had already eaten my lunch, I ran some errands at noon. One errand for work and three errands for me. I went to Kinko's to have some maps laminated and I had the power of saying that I would need the order "direct-billed" to the office. Oh, the power of a temp worker!

On the way to the bank I passed the husband of one of the architecture professors, he recognized me and smiled. At the Coffee House I recognized the guy who was in line in front of me at Kinko's, and I smiled.

At the art supply store, I discussed with the owner the possibility of decorating a christmas tree with devil ornaments. I'd like to think that we came up with some progressive ideas about incorporating christianity back into the holiday season. Now, I will have to walk home with canvases covered with a garbage bag.

Karma Cookies

I love the Architecture library, but am I wasting my karma points when I take back all 40? 30? of my grossly overdue library books and manage to get the total fine reduced from over 30 dollars to five? Actually the 30 was a surprise, I thought my fines were going to be well over 60 dollars, but should I be saving this stroke of good luck up for the shot-in-the-dark guy? Or, will he become yet another of my hi/bye friends?

I love my Lincoln Literacy Council student. I'm really not teaching him anything and it's more like I'm his student because we always end up talking about Chinese politics. Something I never had a chance to discuss with another Chinese man I've loved, but loved in a completely different way.

I also love Calexico. And I love archive.org but I especially love Calexico on archive.org.

"There will be singing and dancing in Jerusalem next year"

I got my applications done, for the most part. There's still a few odds and ends that I still need to send in, but that's to be expected, after all I do have ADD.

Yesterday afternoon, on my way to the bathroom I thought I heard the janitors in the elevator and I thought I heard them on my way back. Then, on my way out, there's a technician prying the doors open, turns out the janitors had gotten stuck. I'm glad they got things sorted out. I've tried speaking with one of the janitors and he knows as much English as I can remember of my high school Spanish. I can only imagine being stuck in an elevator in Mexico, trying to explain that the elevator was broken and I was stuck somewhere near the fifth floor and the cleaning supplies were starting to make me a little light-headed.

¡Me atrapan en un elevador! ME ATRAPAN EN UN ELEVADOR!

¡¿Dónde?! En el edificio del atrio!

En alguna parte entre los cuartos y quinto pisos.

Las fuentes de la limpieza me están haciendo ligero dirigido.

¿Cuándo usted me rescata, podría usted traer un limonade, por favor?

(thanks Google translator)


Today started out with this messenger conversation opener:

"Guess who's dead?"

Romantic Comedy

Though my life has its comic strains, it is not a romantic comedy. Maybe I'm in a funk, I did see Brokeback Mountain and some weird porn-based (the main character was a porn star trying to get out of the business...the subject wasn't so much porn) movie Scott gave me this weekend. The sum total feeling from seeing these two movies within two days of each other is complete distrust of hetero relationships and dispair over homo ones. So either you're going to be cheated on if you're a girl with a guy, or if you're a guy who loves another guy, you're never going to be able to be with him and love him like you want. Real-life proves this wrong, but I choose to base my feelings and emotions on the movies I see, rather then the lives going on around me. When my imagination is added to the mix, I can't imagine every again compromising for another person. No matter how hard I try, my imagination can't bend around the idea that I might be in a significant, committed relationship ever again. However, this is what I do have:

There was a guy at the Mill reading a book of Sylvia Plath's journals. He went outside and when he came back in the white woman with the black baby was saying to the baby, "Use your indoor voice, not your emergency voice." The guy and I made eye contact while I was laughing quietly over the possibilty of me using my emergency voice indoors. Now I see this guy all the time around downtown and everytime I see him I want to say (in my emergency voice) "Indoor voice. INDOOR VOICE!"

Ballot Box

How much does it cost to have your transcripts mailed from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's records department, not only mailed, but rush-mailed to your prospective graduate schools? Nothing. Just a frantic early morning phone call to Cindy and she'll take "your sweet voice as payment enough."

So, Cindy in the records office, I'm voting for you to be most amazing person of the year. I know it's only a week and a half into this new year, but you have single-handedly changed the downhill course my life could have taken. For this, I am in love with you.

Channeling My Inner Watershed

On the way back from the state's Envirothon, Leah and I took these pictures of an old water channel. It's somewhere in the sandhills. I think it's beautiful and am modifying one of my architecture projects to incorporate it.

Three Statements

I spent the last five days writing and rewriting many variations of my statement of purpose for graduate school. All I've learned, from this writing, is that my purpose is to just be there with the specifics working themselves out over several semesters. Isn't it enough that I've chosen a discipline, do I have to write eloquently on why I made the choice? If all my statements can be boiled down into one reason why, it's pretty much that I want to read a lot, and when I'm not reading, all I want to do is cut and paste. Architecture does prepare you well for real life, or first grade. Because of architecture school, I carry with me a complex working knowledge of adhesives and what they will and will not bind. More importantly, I know how to react when a glue called Zap-A-Gap gets into the gap between your eyelids. You will not go blind, as that will be your first panicked thought. And if you act quickly enough, your lashes won't suffer too much damage, even though the first warning on the label is to "keep out of eyes." From this highly complex set of skills I'll move on to landscapes, and I'm curious to see what's waiting for me learn there. It is the misfortune of having to act professional, that I can't submit this as my statement of intent. I've covered all my bases, moving from why I want to study landscapes to what I learned as an undergraduate.

The problem with the Statement of Intent is that you have to have some pretty clear and specific notions of what you want to study while in school. My problem is that I eliminated the specifics from my academic life pretty early on, and am left wanting to study everything and I'm trying to fit everything into landscape architecture. I want to study everything and wrap it all up with landscapes. I'm stuck trying to make statements that seem like I know what I want to do. I want to study history and theory, as well as, drawing from time to time, and on occasion, dig in the dirt. I'm getting my professional degree so I can pay off my student loans after I spend six hundred years getting my PhD. All so I can teach design classes, which brings us back to the cutting and pasting.

Another looming problem is that I have to submit a portfolio of my design work. This wouldn't be too bad, page-layout is a no-brainer, but unfortunately because of several years of sub-par academic performance, I am lacking in material to put in said portfolio. And now, with a week and a half left before the whole package is due, I have to, quick, finish all the projects I never did in school. I really like my ideas. There's going to be an interrogation room and a waterless water park in the portfolio, if time allows. I haven't reduced my misery to estimating how many mouse clicks I can make in a minute and then calculating how long it should take me to finish the projects, with the point being to prove that there is not enough time, but I'm almost there. Seems impossible, and that's getting me down.

Coffee Break

One of my favorite views in Lincoln:

Dinner

I'm not invited over to Karen's very much because I have a tendency to rile the dogs up. She has two coon hounds now and the evening ending up with one staying in the kennel because he kept attacking his brother. The brother is my favorite, kind of a bull-in-the-china-shop but with a cute personality.

Here, Hank has been sitting on my lap and I'm pushing him off.