nobody's fault / nobody's fault but my own

I'm unhappy that these once-weekly updates are becoming habit but it's not like I'm sitting around on my bony ass with all the time in the world to update like I was last semester. The last ten days consisted of my running around panicking about something or other. Luckily most of that's over now and not even worth the effort needed to iterate it.

Charlie came to visit last weekend, though, and we had a great time. Or rather, I had a great time. I imagine he must have been bored as hell, because despite all my best efforts to keep cool I still spent most of the weekend freaking out over my Geology midterm on Monday and the municipal hearing for my ticket (which sucked). Charlie got a pretty crappy deal from the whole thing and that upsets me more than anything else-- I don't like being a bad host and sucking a guest into that kind of silliness. Regardless, once Charlie got home he said he wanted some time to himself because we want different things from each other, so we parted on good terms and now we aren't going to talk for a while. This has been hard, because I'm assuming he will inevitably see how much happier he is without my bothering him daily about idiotic things, as I am wont to do with friends.

Two of the other supervisors at work are looking for other jobs and the other two are graduating, so by the end of this semester I'll change from being the newest to the senior supervisor. I don't give a shit one way or the other, but getting a raise out of it would be nice, and being able to help pick everyone's replacements will have its advantages too.

Matt and I had a great weekend together even though I had to work yesterday afternoon and will be working tonight, despite it being the Super Bowl. Even if we don't do anything or get much done when we're together, it always feels good. We also rescued a tattered brown leather reclining chair covered in duct tape from out by the dumpsters and installed it in my living room. I think it adds character and Roommate's thoughts will not be sought.

In a shocking turn of events, I need to go study before work.

just keep it together / we're singing a new song now

The past week consisted of School and Work. I've been realizing that the Comparative Political Analysis class I was so thrilled about is gonna be a much bigger challenge than I thought. I'm one of only a handful of people in the class who aren't political science majors-- meaning that almost everyone but me has a shared knowledge of micro- and macroeconomics and whatever else to draw from during discussions. Suddenly I've gone from being a very talkative person in open discussions to The Silent Guy Who Doesn't Know Anything. A lot of it is just plain over my head. Fortunately, I've befriended a polysci major named Sarah who has offered to fill me in on the stuff I'm really hazy on. With luck I'll soon be able to avoid sounding like a complete dumbfuck whenever I open my mouth.

This weekend is going to be crazy. Charlie's coming in tomorrow for an interview with the grad student people on Monday. I'm really excited, but Monday is my court date for that speeding ticket that I can't afford as well as the day of my Geology midterm, for which I have yet to do much studying. I have the good and the bad, the yin and the yang. The sweet and the... sour.

Oh yeah, speaking of money, holiday spending combined with the lack of paychecks gave my bank account the People's Elbow and then threw it out of the ring, where it crashed through a table and three chairs, broke through the floor and drowned in the sewer amid the echoes of its own pitiful screams. I'm absolutely broke-- more broke than I've ever been since starting college. It kind of sucks now, but it'll really suck at the start of the month when all the bills roll around. I'm almost a senior, though, so I guess I'm long overdue for starting a credit card debt.

And how about those primaries, huh? 40% of the voters said they didn't vote for their favorite candidate, but the one they thought "most likely to beat Bush." That's a smart 40%. My heart is with Dean but my voting finger's with Clark. Just thinking about him in a debate against Bush makes me feel all warm and squishy. The Georgia primary is on March 2nd and my ass will be there to vote.

Some pictures of the neighborhood cats:

The sweetest cat I have ever known

Somebody is coming to visit
Somebody is very pretty
Loooove
Ooh, wassat

you'll never get to heaven if you're scared of getting high

Finally, an update. Jon, Joe, Sara Kate, Battou and I headed to the Mall of Georgia on Wednesday for one last hurrah and then the new semester started on Thursday. I entered it with the smoothness and grace of a sack of bricks, but I've gotten things sorted out now. It took all four days of Drop/Add to chisel out a feasible schedule. Three-fourths of it changed from the original choices, but now that everything's settled I'm very excited about my classes: Medieval Lit, Folklore Narrative, Art of the Italian Renaissance and Comparative Political Analysis. The latter is shaping up to be the sort of debate/discussion class I've always dreamed of being in-- at some point in the class we're even going to have student-run debates. Debates! That are student-run! Rock on. I'm not going to be able to slack off anywhere near as terribly this semester as I did last, but now that I've earned a 4.0 I really want to repeat it. So here's a quick note to the Aaron Of A Couple Months From Now who will inevitably be losing interest and the desire to maintain the diligence of his studies:
DON'T FUCK IT UP.

We have a Big Important Meeting (BIM) at work tomorrow night to figure out our gameplan. There are a couple areas, like intra-supervisor communication and the entire payroll department, that need some serious changes. I'll also be able to turn in my work schedule for the semester and might simply end up working the shift. I need to start getting paychecks again pronto.

Matt and I rented Return of the King on PS2 over the weekend. That shit is like heroin. On Sunday we blew seven or eight hours straight playing it and didn't even notice, although afterwards we both had migraines from the booming surround sound and could barely focus our eyes from not blinking all day (the drive home was a blast). Then I went over last night and we did it again for three hours. I won't even mind if we have to rent it a second time to beat it, like we had to with Prince of Persia, which was similarly engrossing. Next up is Max Payne II.

Lots of needs. Still need a few textbooks (gonna hit $200), need to pay some bills, need some time and quiet to write, need to redo the site, need a paycheck. Neeeeeeeeed a paycheck.

one day, one night, one morning

I have four of ten lessons done for the Geography course-- not bad for less than a week's work. I can submit two per week, meaning the earliest I can finish is mid-February, two weeks before the deadline. But this is assuming I'll have this much time to work on it when the new semester starts this Thursday, and that's unlikely. However it ends, it's gonna be close. I've also found a peculiar challenge in the fact that the textbook literally puts me to sleep. Several times now I've read a few pages and then suddenly woken up several hours later with a cramp in my neck. What the shit? On the bright side, I'm going to be wonderfully well-rested come Thursday.

When Shelia was here we got onto the topic of art supplies and I discovered, much to my amazement, that despite being alcohol-based and never rotated, my Prismacolors have somehow survived being buried away in my desk for three years. The next day when we went to the used book store I found and bought a Handbook of Anatomy for Art Students with a slew of wonderful reference photos. I really want to get back into art and now I have no excuses. Maybe that can be my new year's resolution.

let your head go, baby shake it free

Now, onto the present. I have two months to finish my ten-lesson online Geology cource. I started it yesterday. I am honestly not sure that I'll be able to finish it in time, much less get a decent grade, but I'll give it a shot. Also, everyone is sick right now. My sister was sick when I visited; Bec was sick when I visited; Shelia was sick when she visited; Matt is very sick right now.... Yet I'm not sick. Has this ever happened before?

The holidays were a nonstop chain of excursions and now that I'm finally home and have the time to write about them, my memory's fuzzy. On Christmas day I hightailed it to Atlanta, where my mother was visiting my sister and brother-in-law. The four of us had dinner together and Mom surprised no one by having a few drinks and letting the nasty comments fly. I felt so bad for my sister having to take it all and smooth everything over. This is actually the first time my mom and brother-in-law have been together in several years, since the time they had a massive falling-out in the car (while Jess and I were in the backseat no less). We spent the rest of Christmas day relaxing and the next morning drove Mom to the airport. By the time Jess and I got home, Dad and my stepmom had arrived from Asheville.

We braved the chaos of the mall to have a gigantic lunch at The Cheesecake Factory. I'd never eaten there before and it was amazing, especially since I didn't have to worry about the insane prices. The next day we mainly watched movies, including the new Woody Allen flick (I fell alseep) and Confidence (not bad). In the evening I drove back to Athens, but I missed the exit for 316 and ended up driving all the way to Commerce. I stopped to take a shit and then headed back to Athens. The normally 50-minute trip ended up being close to 2 hours. I spent the night at Matt's and on Saturday morning came home to get some fresh clothes, pausing briefly to get a $150 speeding ticket. Then it was off to Asheville for three days to stay with Bec and Monica!

It happened that two of their other friends came to visit the same time I did, so the house of four roommates had three guests in addition to their pets-- Vicious, a very talkative, very sassy kitten and Mocha, Monica's 10-year-old Pekanese with no bladder control and only one eye. Suffice to say, the house was quite full! There was always something going on in every room and someone was always coming or going. I distinctly remember wandering around the house at 2am and noticing that every light was on in every room. It was quite a change from my own place, where it's just me and Roommate and we both do our thing and keep to ourselves. If my place is a retirement home, staying at Bec and Monica's was like vacationing in Vegas. I've never had that kind of living situation before and it was fun to experience it for a while, though I did have to duck away a couple times just to get some alone time. The highlights included playing a ruthless match of Pictionary until 1 in the morning; giving Karaoke Revolution a shot and discovering just how utterly and hilariously tone-deaf I am; and a stumbling-around-drunk Stephen gashing his forehead open at 3am another morning.

On Tuesday I scored an appointment at the cancer clinic to have my tests run, which reminds me that I need to call and find out the results at some point. It was a rather anticlimatic way to end the trip, getting poked and prodded and then having to make the three-hour drive home. A few hours after I got in, Shelia came in from Atlanta to spend the night! She even brought me some delicious home cookin but she didn't take back her friends' tupperware and I feel really bad about it. On Wednesday we puttered around for most of the morning, went to the Jackson Street Bookstore and had lunch at Five Star. Not a bad way to introduce someone to Athens, although I'm still worried that I was a lousy host and her trip here was boring. I managed to subject her to half an hour of Glitter before she had to head back to Atlanta for New Years. Since Matt was sick we played it low and got dinner and saw The Last Samurai. It blew us both away. I'll admit that it has some serious problems, but I'm still pretty sure that it's my favorite movie of 2003 (tied with X2). (Tonight we finally saw Cold Mountain, which was just as sweepingly dramatic and tragic but not quite as beautiful or emotionally exhausting.)

That is a much-pared-down version of the entire holiday. It was a rockin' trip, but I'm very glad that it's over.