The day after.

Currently our backyard looks like this, which in my opinion is quite pleasant-- but the way people were flailing around yesterday you'd think they were preparing for Armageddon. All of the bread and water in town is long gone, of course. One of Matt's coworkers went to the store yesterday and saw a woman buying fifteen (15) dozen eggs. Pardon me, ma'am: are you high? I'm willing to allow that she might have been throwing some sort of Snow Day Omelette Party, but I wouldn't put it past a random Georgian to freak out to that extent. It happens every goddamn time.

In any case it should be a quiet, peaceful weekend, and that's alright with me.

Today we're going to talk about failure.

In last week's Flagpole there was a notice about auditions being held for an independent film being shot in Athens next month, The Gallon Challenge. I've always secretly harbored a desire to try my hand at acting, and seeing as I'm in my last undergraduate semester, where attempts at acting seem requisite, it was an opportunity too good to pass up. The film is some mindless semiautobiographical story about college students; it wasn't like I was auditioning for Hamlet. The protagonist, Travis, is a geeky neurotic film student-- which is, it could be said, not much of a stretch for me. I had reservations because of my inexperience but couldn't keep from thinking, deep down, that this might be the chance for me to tap into previously unexplored stores of raw acting talent. Hence, I left work early on the magic night and went to the audition, held on the top floor of the Drama building.

I registered, signed an intimidating contract and sat in the freezing hall with a copy of the audition scenes, waiting for my number to be called. They were the same scenes posted on the website, which I'd been constantly rereading for two days. I felt prepared. After about 45 minutes it was my turn, and I went in to meet the director and three other guys sitting in. It still frustrates me to think about how relaxed and talkative I was before and after the camera were rolling. While they were rolling, I was a mess. I was stiff and awkward, I stumbled over all the lines. I reached pathetic, Ben Stilleresque levels of awkward buffoonery. When it was over I thanked everyone and wandered out in a daze.

I'm amazed sometimes by the contrast between how I expect something will go and how it actually works out. Usually in any given undertaking, I will get nervous, gradually raise my standards to absurdly high levels and then meet or almost meet them nevertheless via excessive and unhealthy levels of stress. But every once in a while it unfolds like this, and I fall completely flat on my face. I'm glad I went to the audition, and to some extent I'm glad I fucked it up, too. Sometimes I need these reminders that failing at something doesn't mean the end of the world.

This morning I brewed my own coffee for the first time and was a little too successful. I slept poorly (thanks, Fatty) and wanted something to keep me awake through my Hard Day, so I used the snazzy French Press and brewed said coffee. Unfortunately I was running low on time and made more than I needed, so I ended up drinking two large cups in the span of two minutes with nothing else but a glass of milk in my system. Sure enough, I never started yawning, but by the time my first class was over my hands were shaking too badly to type in the undergrad lounge and during my next class I could barely even write notes. Next time, obviously, I will eat something when I drink it and/or not make as much in the first place. Or maybe I'll just return to my innocent, Arcadian coffeeless life.

"We [Conrad and I] agreed that the effect of a novel must be the general effect that life makes on mankind.... We saw that life did not narrate, but made impressions on our brains. We in turn, if we wished to produce on you an effect of life, must not narrate but render ... impressions."
- Ford Madox Ford, Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance, 1924.

We read this in class today and you know, I think Ford has a point. To some degree this is making me rethink my concrete, journalistic stance on writing.

Now that I'm here and on the subject of academic exploration, though, we're far enough into the semester for me to have formed impressions of my classes. This semester breaks down cleanly into Easy Days (Mon-Wed-Fri) and Hard Days (Tues-Thurs). On Easy Days, which begin at the luxurious hour of half-past-one, I have Humanities Computing again with Dr. Ramsay, perhaps my favorite professor to date. We're learning how to program in Ruby and my experience in Java from last semester is proving incredibly useful. After that is Japan and the Samurai, a history class in which Erin, Jon, Joe and Julie are enrolled as well, meaning things never get too dull. On Hard Days, which start at 9:30, I have 20th Centry British Novel and a Shakespeare special topics course, both taught by overbearing professors who think too much of themselves and sap all enjoyment from the texts in return for only marginal insight. In any case, my goal is to get another 4.0 this semester in order to push my 3.72 GPA up past 3.75. That seems a nice, solid number with which to graduate.

Aah, there's that word again! I'm going to go watch a movie or something.

Some pre-weekend pet-blogging. Pharaoh takes a nap | Pharaoh likes his brush | Pharaoh in the sun 1 | Pharaoh in the sun 2 | Baxter being Baxter.

We're now one week into the new semester and I have some problems. Namely, during the worse-than-normal chaos of early-semester schedule adjustment I discovered that I'm accidentally on the cusp of graduation. Suffice to say, this greatly complicates my plan to become a professional undergrad student. I'll have to elaborate on this some other time, as I'm still not entirely sure what to think.

In the last week my course line-up shifted through three distinct epochs before settling on the following: Special Topics in Shakespeare - Families in Shakespeare; 19th Century British Novel; Humanities Computing I; and Japan and the Samurai. The latter two will be a lot of fun; the former two, not so much.

I have nothing else worth noting, so here is a picture of Pharaoh, who, regardless of a photograph's lighting conditions, always seems to absorb all available brightness and become an eerie, amorphous three-dimensional stain with gold crescents for eyes. He really is the perfect cat.

Part Three of Three, or: Fun with Civil Service!

I recevied a letter during break notifying me that at 8:30 on Monday the 3rd, I had to report to the courthouse for jury duty. Somewhat excited by the prospect of free money and a free parking space downtown, I wormed my way into the line of cars filing into the parking deck. We received special juror parking passes and everything! Already, this was very exciting. The courtroom was filled with about 260 people, and it took almost two hours simply for all of us to be checked in, given our $25 checks and Civil Jurors Handbooks made from a folded sheet of blue Xerox paper, and seated in order of juror number. Because I was number 54, I was in the second row. Once everyone was finally in place, the judge arrived and welcomed everyone. "This is a very rare day," he said, "because normally we have several cases going in three different courts, and if you weren't picked today you'd be back the next two days for other cases. But because of the holidays and all we only have one case in one court, so if you aren't in this jury you don't have to come back." There was a ripple of excitement among the jurors. $25 and a quick, clean getaway seemed imminent for all of us. The lawyers for both parties soon arrived and the judge explained the case:

On May 31st, 2001, J.P. rented a moving van from Budget to move across Athens. When he was finished he visited a drive-through ATM, but the top of the moving truck bumped into the overhang of the ATM kiosk. He stopped the truck, got out, inspected it and the kiosk and saw no damage, continued his transaction on foot and then went home. He called the manager of the bank that afternoon and told him what happened. The manager told J.P. that the ATM looked fine from his office window and people were using it like normal, but he would check it out himself and call back later that day if anything was off. A week later, the manager called J.P. to say that the kiosk and ATM machine both needed to be replaced for $21,000. And this is where conflicts arose.

The judge and lawyers then proceeded to whittle down the 260 jurors. People who had any kind of relationship to the specific bank or insurance companies involved eagerly came forward to explain their disqualification and were allowed to leave. That freed about about 40% of the group. As the questioning went on, the judge saved time by allowing entire blocks of jurors in the back rows to go. How unfair! Among everyone around me, there was a definite sense of entitlement to free money without effort-- that we had earned the money simply for our blessing the courts with our attendance. I oscillated between this and some nobly childish desire to take part in the legal system and devote my day-- nay, my week if needed-- to seeing that justice was served in this matter. Around lunchtime, when it was down to 48 people and I was still there, I got over this impulse and began the appropriate grumbling. The judge freed us until 1 o'clock with another check for $7 to cover food.

You know, I'm not trying to make this write-up as tedious as the experience itself was; that's just sort of happening on its own. My overelaborate and wordy style is blameless, of course, but I'll still try to speed this up.

Okay! So, we got back from lunch for several more rounds of questioning-- mainly, we were asked about our professions or majors in school. The lawyers than began to compile their lists. Like everyone around me, I was confident I would not be called. At the very least I had the priveledge of being the 12th name. Everyone else was dismissed, and after we were officially given our charge, we took a 15-minute recess. The jurors room was small and stuffy with a long table, a dry-erase board, mini-fridge stuffed with Coke products (sans Vanilla Coke, of course) and a coffee maker from the '70s at earliest. We spent the time sitting around and chatting; some of the other jurors were students, but most were just the random assortment of citizens one would imagine. Everyone seemed very nice and even friendly. When the lawyers were ready we were called back in and the trial began.

As the case had been brought against J.P., the prosecution got to lead everything, which included giving the first opening and closing statements and calling the first witnesses. The prosecution had to prove beyond doubt that J.P. was negligible in the events that occured and responsible for the damages caused. He called witnesses for the truck rental and bank but several of them seemed to lack important knowledge about the events, and the evidence he introduced didn't show essential things, like that any serious damage was caused to necessitate over $21,000 in replacements. We couldn't understand, though, why the bank was willing to pay an extra $3,000 to replace the entire ATM (Diebolt-made!) and kiosk instead of repairing them, yet had not chosen to post any sort of low clearance warning or protection. Installing a metal L-bar that blocks people from hitting the kiosk would have been only $700; half a gallon of red paint is even cheaper, I suspect. The defense's questioning of one of the bank reps revealed that this was the only ATM out of the 30 branches in the region that had no protections or warnings whatsoever, which made the bank seem a little, how you say... negligent. But when the prosecution questioned J.P. himself and asked if he had had concerns that the truck was too tall for the overhang, he admitted that he had. So why, then, had he willingly risked damage to the kiosk instead of simply parking the truck and using the ATM on foot? None of us could understand this, either. It was a little after 4 o'clock when both lawyers made their very eloquent closing statements, each beginning with a promise of brevity and still taking about fifteen minutes. We were given another charge to guide our deliberation and dismissed back to the jurors' room. We were required to elect a foreperson to guide the deliberation, but when no one offered, not even the middle-aged schoolteacher, I surprised us all by volunteering. I told everyone to go around the table saying, briefly, what verdict they would recommend and their reasons for it. When people prattled on for too long or spoke over someone else, I got us back on track. Very, very fortunately, almost everyone had come to the same verdict on their own: that the bank and defendant were equally negligible, which meant the bank could not get any money from the defendant. The others wanted to find entirely for the defendant, but with some explanation agreed to the verdict of equal negligibility since the end result was the same. Oddly enough, the written verdict did not even go into specifics-- either we awarded the bank X number of dollars, or we found for the defendant.

I filled in and signed the verdict and we were shown back into the courtroom, where I had to stand and read it for the court records(!). And that was all. The case was closed and the jurors were dismissed, some stopping briefly to shake the hands of the lawyers and J.P., who was sweaty but happy. None of us really said goodbye, but we did wave to one another as we drove out of the parking deck. Even the judge seemed very thankful that we'd finished settled the case in one day.

That was rediculously and unforgivably long, wasn't it? In any case, this concludes my fragmented holiday update. Seeing as the new semester begins in a couple hours, I'd say I finished in good time.

Update Part Two of a foreseen Three:

Instead of meeting up with our families, Matt and I stayed in and spent the holidays together this year. We went out to a nice dinner, saw a movie and simply relaxed and avoided all of the typical holiday stress. It was an excellent way to celebrate with the people we love most-- each other. I got him the Enya box set that came out several years ago, and he and his mother chipped in to get me a GameCube! I am still stunned by it. Along with it he bought Animal Crossing for me (to which I have already donated far too many hours of my life with no end in sight), and Star Wars: Rogue Squadron and Harvest Moon for himself. Since then, hungering for more games and seeing no reason to have two PS2s in the house, I sold my PS2 and yesterday bought Xenosaga, Onimusha, Katamari Damacy and Viewtiful Joe. I'll be stocked up on good games for a while now.

That was a tangent; I apologize. On New Year's eve, I went downtown with Jen, Beth, Rachel, three friends who graduated and moved away last spring. We had dinner at the pleasantly-deserted Taco Stand, stopped by the very crowded Manhattan and then settled in Hot Corner to wait for midnight. The newly-finished second wing was somehow empty, so we ordered tea, settled on the couches and played Scrabble until after 3am, stopping briefly to enjoy a perfect view of the midnight fireworks through the window behind us. It was my first time playing but I won 2 of the three games; a nice way to start a new year.

On New Year's Day, heralded by two months of planning, we had a huge reunion party/Return of the King: Extended Edition screening at the house. To commemorate the event I made glasses for everyone inscribed with their names in a LOTResque font, and people seemed to enjoy them. We had food delivered from Golden Sun and then watched the film-- all four hours and ten minutes of it. I'm not a huge LOTR buff and am surprisingly ambivalent about the films, so the new version didn't seem much more remarkable to me. The group commentary had a few shining moments, though, like "Throw another son on the barby" and the "It's Raining Heads" song. The reunion itself lasted for several days, during which Jen and Beth stayed with us. It was awesome getting to see them again, and we had fun up until 3:45am or so the morning before they were planning to leave. The sound of a huge crash outside awoke everyone in the house but me, and fifteen minutes later (a curious delay) there was a knock on the door. A young guy who lives down the street said he had fallen asleep driving home and hit the car parked outside the house. That was Beth's car. We searched for a flashlight to no avail and then moseyed outside to see the damage and call the police. I took some pictures before the policeman arrived to write the report. Both cars were immobilized, and judging from the damage and how far Beth's right rear tire slid in the dirt after impact, he must have been going at a good speed. The paperwork was done and the cars were towed, and at 5 we all went back to bed. Fortunately, insurance allowed Beth a rental car so they were able to get home without too much trouble on the following day. It was great getting to see them for a little bit longer, though I feel bad that we didn't really have much to do, and it must have gotten pretty boring for them. Next time I have guests I'm going to be better with my planning.

It feels strange to itemize Christmas loot, but I have to mention that in addition to some excellent food Jen gave me the first Invader Zim DVD and Rachel gave me the Sonic Mega Collection on PS2, both of which I love. Despite the fact that I began buying supplies to make everyone's Christmas presents before Thanksgiving, they are all still unfinished and unsent. They will absolutely be done soon. It seemed like such a fast, simple idea at the time...

For a few days now I've been mulling over how to write coherently about the past couple weeks, but as time continues ticking by without an update, I think I'll settle for my usual journalistic diarrhea. Don your slicker.

Back in early December my friend Sara Kate announced that she was moving into a new place and had to give up her two cats, Syria and Siberia. Since I've wanted to have a cat for ages, I talked to Matt about it and agreed to take them in. We swapped blankets to begin getting our animals accostumed to each other's scents in preparation for introducing two cats into a house of two dogs and I got more and more excited as the month went on. Two days before we were supposed to adopt Syria and Siberia, however, Matt went to work in the morning to discover that a friendly stray cat lingering around his office for the past several months had been injured. He caught her and brought her home, and we set her up in my office with a bed and some food. I spent the afternoon looking after her and when Matt got off work that afternoon we took her to the vet down the street. There, the vet gave her a thorough checkup, cleaned the wound and discovered that she was actually an eight year old, declawed, neutered male. Armed with antibiotics, we took him home, settled on the name Pharaoh, and continued looking after him. When the day came to take Syria and Siberia, I stationed them in Matt's office hoping everyone would settle down, but they didn't: the dogs, already upset at having a cat in the house, grew even rowdier when two more arrived, and while Syria and Siberia seemed interested in playing with Pharaoh when I introduced them, he acted hostile toward them and the dogs. It was becoming clear that I needed to find another home for Syria and Siberia, which made me feel awful consdering how Sara Kate had been relying on me and how eager I'd been to adopt them. Fortunately, things worked out well: my father and step-mother had been wanting another pet since their dog Pearl died several months ago, and they asked to adopt them when I told them what was going on. Once I finished my finals, I made a less-than-fun drive up to Asheville to give them the babies. They seemed to take to the house quickly, and now my parents and the cats are quite happy together. Syria and Siberia have a huge home to roam around with tons of windows looking out into the woods, and Dad says they like to spend the evenings sleeping in my parents' laps. I'm still sad I couldn't keep them, but I'm glad they have a great home now, and since then Matt and I have both fallen in love with Pharaoh, who at the moment is purring in my lap and patting my chin with his paw.

So ends Part One. Plenty more on the way.