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Wow!! I missed like a month!
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28 September 2005
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Temperature
this morning when driving into school: 39 F Precipitation
Today: Rain mixed with snow .
Weather man tells me we're
in a Alaska, and I think I believe him...
My big hope is that as winter
weather sets in, the climate starts to exhibit some
of its infamous aridity, and the mud and wet molds
go away like they're supposed to. It'll be
a big bummer if we brought Indiana's muck with us.
Bummer to me, not to the makers
of Benadryl.
On a more serious note,
this week Meghan's had a couple of her occasional
but regerettably not infrequent headaches, and they
were preceded by some occular manifestations this
time. So we're thinking it might be time to
get her into a doctor for some migraine treatment.
We also think we need to get her over to an
eye doctor to make sure she's not putitng more strain
on her eyes with a couple-year-old prescription
and working with computer screens and paperwork
so much of the day.
I myself have taken to wearing
my glasses regularly again for reading. I
had stopped because the problems caused by the arterial
occlusion in my left eye made them pretty pointless
since that was my worst eye to see with anyway,
and the glasses can't help it anymore. But
the volume of reading I'm doing is leading to general
tiredness of the right eye, too, and my hope is
that the glasses will take the edge off that. Reading
is pretty exhausting for that left eye, though,
despite its poor utility in the task. I might
try covering it while I read so it doesn't waste
its effort trying to overcome the distortions --
but I also don't want it to atrophe and get even
worse. So I'm probably stuck with tiring it
out, at least for now.
Classes are kicking it into full gear. Got
my first mid term coming up (take home exam for
Structures) and presentations are starting to creep
in. Next Tuesday I have to distill Tylor's
omnibus Primitive Culture into a five-minute
summary for Structures, and the following Thursday
I'll be leading an AnthRel class on shamanism, priests,
and healers.
Now I'm actually a real student. :)
NickC---
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26 September 2005
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Today's Useful
Fact from Human Osteology #1: If you're going to
fall from heights, don't try to land on your feet;
your best bet is to land on your side and let your
arm take most of the compressive force.
Today's Useful
Fact from Human Osteology #2: While there are a
lot of things you can tell about a blow to the cranium
from a fracture pattern, you cannot the shape of
the object used, thanks to the nature of the bone
structure there and the way it fractures. .
Goodnes oh goodness, no more
alibis; I'm just horrible about updating this place.
I think I get intimidated because so many
days I don't honetsly have any time to get on here
and then I feel like I need to catch everyone up
on everything, and I think that's going to take
too much time. I'm a coward, I get it. :)
There are a variety of little
updates around the whole site today and through
this week, various quotes
and peronality test results, etc..., so make sure
you click around and have fun. These updates
have been too far and between to waste by only reading
my 'blog!
Meghan had to go to training
last week in Denver, CO, so that was kind of a drag
for a few days. She was "only' gone Wednesday
through Friday, but that's more than enough!! :-p
And, yeah, I know, other
married couples often have to spend more time apart
than that, and that's crummy, but it doesn't diminish
my own crummy experience with it! :-p
Actually, Meghan had a heck
of an adventure, too. Something happened with
the alarm on Wednesday morning, and she was supposed
to be taking off at 7am, but I never heard the alarm
or else turned it off in my sleep, so we were both
pretty freaked out when I woke up with a start and
realized it was 6:45am. Oh my!!! We
threw on clotches, grabbed her bags, and sped to
the airport, which is thankfully right on our side
of town. I dropped her off at about five 'till
7 and they were good enough to call ahead when she
was going through security and hold the plane for
her. Whew!
The excitement didn't end
there. Next day she tried to take a taxi to
the training, but the taxi driver got confused and
took her twenty minutes out of town before she realized
they were probably going the wrong way. They
made it, training went well, but then she
came down with a 24 hour bug, and didn't sleep good
at all. Next day, not feeling even slightly
good, she went to the airport after training to
fly home and found out her flight to Seattle (where
she would connect to Fairbanks) was cancelled. After
some scurrying around, they got her re-routed through
anchornage, and she still managed to get home by
about 1am, still not feeling very good, but very
much glad to be home.
Let's see... What else is going on... Our
fantasy football league started up this weekend.
There are a few thigns pendning on the Monday
night game still, but it looks like Meghan's gonna
clan Jason's clock and would have whooped any of
us this weekend. I should squeak by Dad, but
mainly because he was really stung by the bye week
and some bad advice from me. And Tiffany should
beat Sunbeam pretty comfortably.
Hmmm... Mainly it's more homework, lots
of reading and starting to gear up for projects,
and I'm preaching again this weekend.
I won't set the bar too high or else I'll get
intimidated and won't keep up with the 'blog like
I intend to.
Peace out!
NickC---
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15 September 2005
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Tennesee
Titans Turnovers: 3 Tennesee Titans Missed Field
Goals: 1 Tennesee Titans Total Scoring: 7.
Normally, I would print out
the documents because I read and comprehend off
paper much more readily than I do off a computer
screen. Unfortunatley, since these are PDF's,
they kill the printers in the grad room and bog
down even the printers in the library.
So I had this great idea: I'd
find a PDF-to-plain-text converter program. I
found many which were reasonably priced, demo'd
a couple on some PDF files I had laying around on
my tablet's hard drive, and was pretty satisfied.
So I went into school the next morning planning
to purchase one for $12.95 and then convert a bunch
of ERes class work and go to town. At the
last minute, I noticed a fine print dislaimer on
the software. "Note: this will only work
on PDF files with embedded fonts." I
had a sinking feeling what that meant, and demo'd
the conversion on an ERes file. Sure enough,
there were no embedded fonts.
Apparently, in order to speed
up the scanning and posting process to be able to
meet professors' last minute demands as best as
they can, the library staff scan the documents in
basically as images -- no fonts, no highlighting
allowed, no editing allowed, etc... So no
conversion progam will be able to touch them.
That means I'm back to working
off the screen and taking notes on separate paper
-- and that means I'm working slowly and inefficiently
for my brain.
Well, that's a mere sample
of the side issues which are going on. Nothing
really to do with professors' assigning ogre-like
tasks; more to do with being an old man going back
to school in a young man's world.
Interesting presentation
on Friday. olarship. More
on my classes as the week unfolds. I hope
to get the schedule thing worked out so that I can
update the 'blog and the rest of the website closer
to daily.
Oh, I posted a highly appropriate
new quote on the quotes page of the website. :)
Apart from classes, I did end up preaching again
this past Sunday. The associate pastor was scheduled
to preach now that he's back from the north slope,
but he had an irresistable invitation to go out
hunting this weekend (the open of moose season)
and asked if I could pinch hit again. I did
so gladly, and I think it went well.
Well, that's not a very in-depth entry again,
I know. Hopefully as I master this scheduling
issue, I'll be able to keep up better and get more
detailed entries.
NickC---
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10 September 2005
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Things I
learned on CSI: There are 206 bones in the human
body and if you can't tell if something is bone
or rock, you can lick it.
Things I learned
in Human Osteology: Tehre are 206 bones in the human
body and if you can't tell if something is bone
or rock, you've probably never seen or felt either
bone or rock.
Obviously I haven't
mastered the schedule thing yet. Honestly, the workload
isn't that horrible. It's just that while
I'm trying to get the work done, I'm also trying
to figure out the best way to do the work. For
instance, UAF used a great system from DocuTek to
accomplish something I once recommended the TUFW
library try with Blackboard (but at the time we
had too many other things going on with the library
to pursue it) -- electronic reserve for required
course readings. Well, the only downside to
the way that the ERes system works at UAF is that
the documents are posted as PDF files (Acrobat Reader
files, in other words). In case you've never
heard my rant, PDF = bloat. There is rarely
a reason to post something in that format rather
than rich text or another file format which preserves
formatting but doesn't result in large files which
are slow to download, difficult to read and
unholy to print.
Normally, I would print out
the documents because I read and comprehend off
paper much more readily than I do off a computer
screen. Unfortunatley, since these are PDF's,
they kill the printers in the grad room and bog
down even the printers in the library.
So I had this great idea: I'd
find a PDF-to-plain-text converter program. I
found many which were reasonably priced, demo'd
a couple on some PDF files I had laying around on
my tablet's hard drive, and was pretty satisfied.
So I went into school the next morning planning
to purchase one for $12.95 and then convert a bunch
of ERes class work and go to town. At the
last minute, I noticed a fine print dislaimer on
the software. "Note: this will only work
on PDF files with embedded fonts." I
had a sinking feeling what that meant, and demo'd
the conversion on an ERes file. Sure enough,
there were no embedded fonts.
Apparently, in order to speed
up the scanning and posting process to be able to
meet professors' last minute demands as best as
they can, the library staff scan the documents in
basically as images -- no fonts, no highlighting
allowed, no editing allowed, etc... So no
conversion progam will be able to touch them.
That means I'm back to working
off the screen and taking notes on separate paper
-- and that means I'm working slowly and inefficiently
for my brain.
Well, that's a mere sample
of the side issues which are going on. Nothing
really to do with professors' assigning ogre-like
tasks; more to do with being an old man going back
to school in a young man's world.
Interesting presentation
on Friday. olarship. More
on my classes as the week unfolds. I hope
to get the schedule thing worked out so that I can
update the 'blog and the rest of the website closer
to daily.
Oh, I posted a highly appropriate
new quote on the quotes page of the website. :)
Apart from classes, I did end up preaching again
this past Sunday. The associate pastor was scheduled
to preach now that he's back from the north slope,
but he had an irresistable invitation to go out
hunting this weekend (the open of moose season)
and asked if I could pinch hit again. I did
so gladly, and I think it went well.
Well, that's not a very in-depth entry again,
I know. Hopefully as I master this scheduling
issue, I'll be able to keep up better and get more
detailed entries.
NickC---
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5 September 2005
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Days of Class,
Week One: 2 Days of Class, Week Two: 4 .
I'm doing pretty bad about
keeping the website here up-to-date. Still
trying to figure out how to manage the various tasks,
chores, and activities of life with our schedule
these days. My classes start at ~ 11:30 every
day and go past 17:00 at least three days a week.
Then there's TA work, tons of reading for
class, independent learning required for my overall
graduate program, working out, household chores,
and trying to have time to just relax with Meggie
once in a while. It's not overly much; just
a matter of figure out what timeslots to plug what
into.
There was an interesting
presentation on Friday afternoon in the anthropology
department. Normally I wouldn't peg a colloquium
on the topic of mushroom gathering in the Alaska
burn zone as something which would capture my attention,
but it relaly did. Apparently, morel mushrooms
only grow in the burnzone of forest fires, and since
last year was a record year for fires in Alaska,
this year was a bumper year for morels. I
won't go into any more details because I don't want
to scoop another student's research, but if you
ever get a chance to read up on the culture of "circuit
pickers" who travel the country picking, buying,
and seling mushrooms and other forest products,
you should. It's a complex, multifaceted sub-culture
well worth knowing more about.
I think there's a chance it might come acorss
from my 'blogs that I'm not happy here in Alaska,
maybe that I even wish we'd not come, and it's important
to me that you not get that idea. All uncertainties
about what to make of the town and its people, all
stresses about scheduling and how to get things
done, all frustrations with systems which seem almost
designed to be inoperable -- all these things are
things which will pass, things which I must work
through and try wrap my mind and emotions around.
But they are not things which create any real
depression or dissatisfaction in me. Too,
even if, after a year or two, we decide Alaska really
isn't for us, I would never regret coming out here.
I know that this was the right thing to do,
and I know that even if it ends up being only a
short stop-off point in the career of our lives,
it will be well worth it, and I would always regret
not taking advantage of this opportunity and always
be left wondering what it would be like to live
in Alaska.
In that spirit, I think it's important for me
to close this 'blog entry with something really
nice to say about Alaska. A lot of folks from
the midwest you hear talking about fall in Alaska
say that they don't really care for it. (And,
yes, it's fall here; the leaves are changing and
falling -- and we've had a couple of frosts. I
had to scrape the windshield once last week, too.)
Anyway, these midwestern folks quite reasonably
miss the rich reds and oranges and range of colors
you get back home. It's true, the birch trees
and all turn pretty much the same shade of yellow,
but I think autumn is quite beautiful here. On
a distant scale, the foot hills are given an exquisite
sense of depth to them by the mixture of yellow
deciduous trees and dark green conifers which retain
their full hue still. And up close, the white
trunks of the birches sear through the swath of
yellow, and the evergreen branches poke through
here and there to interrupt the field, while the
underbrush turns a fiery red. All very pretty;
I don't miss the leaves of Brown County at all.
NickC---
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30 August 2005
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Hours 'till
school year opens: ~ 41 hours Hours I've been
registered for classes: ~ 17 hours Hours I've
had a UAF login/e-mail: ~ 0.5 hours .
It's very nice to be registered
for classes. I met with my interim advisor
yesterday and got his approcal for the classes I
thought I probably needed to take, so I'm officially
on my way. I finally have an e-mail address, too,
as well as a desk / cubicle in the graduate TA room
in Eielson. And we've had a couple of TA meetings
with Dr. Shannon and the the other two TA's for
ANTH 100x. Things are finally starting to
happen. Maybe tomorrow I can even get a student
ID card!
What's next? A parking
decal????
This will be a pretty random
'blog today as I'm actually squeezing it in amidst
chores, but I wanted to get some kind of update
out there for everyone. The sermon went well
on Sunday. I wasn't too nervous and the people
we're too hostile, so all in all it was what I'd
hoped for... There's a change I might be preaching
again this upcoming Sunday. Pastor David is
still out of town and Pastor Pat was slated to preach
in his place, but he was asked to go out on a labor
day weekend (i.e. open of the moose season) hunting
trip with an old friend he hasn't seen in a while.
We'll see how it shakes out. Like everything
in Alaska, I'm sure it will shake out in it's own
sweet time, not necessarily when I'd like it to.
On Saturday we went out to try and find some
real Alaskan wildlife. We though the Large
Animal Research Station would be a good place to
do that, but turns out you have to pay for a tour
to get up even to the fences of the areas the large
animals are in, so that didn't happen. We'll
probably go back this weekend, more prepared for
that. Still, we got to see some nice scenery
on the drive...
OK, that's it for now. More later, perhaps.
I'll bug Meghan and Sunbeam to update theirs,
too. ;-)
BTW -- the descriptions of the classes I'm taking
are posted on the, "What we do," page.
NickC---
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26 August 2005
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Cost of Gas:
$2.51/gallon Cost of 1/2 gallon Milk: $1.99 --
$2.99 Cost of $0.79 nachos at Taco Bell: $0.99 .
Ah, it's good to be re-connected
to the world... By the way, there may be some
material on the site, including the previous entry
in this 'blog, which is from late July but was written
off-line and never able to be up-loaded, so be sure
to look for that, as well.
So I suppose after a month
away from the internet and this 'blog, I'd be better
off starting with reflections and thought on Alaska
and life as I now know it rather than trying to
tell all about the trip. I think the rest
of the pit-house should help let the light in on
that, anyway.
I'll start with the obvious.
What's Fairbanks really like now that we're
here? Good question. It continues to
elude me after only a few weeks. The city itself,
the people who live here, the natural environment...
Everyone always talks about Alaska about being
big and overwhelming, so I sort of planned on being
blown away. Instead, I'm left grasping for
little threads to pull together and not coming up
with much.
I think partly it's an effect
of the degree of remoteness we're dealing with here.
I'm sure I expected Alaska to be more or less
a colder extension of the experience we had in Wyoming,
and Fairbanks to be a northern version of Laramie
or Cheyenne or something like that. There,
isolation seems to take on a sort of universalizing
character: the winds sweep through and the skies
go on forever, makign you physically feel a part
of a broader piece of the world; people are forced
by conditions to depend on one another. Here,
however, isolation is individualizing. There
is almost no wind and foothills loom all around,
leaving you feeling physically surrounded. And,
as a friend who shall remain anonymous described
it, meaning a warning and nothing offensive about
the city or the people he loves, "The whole
city sends out a signal, 'I don't need you.'"
Rather than create an atmosphere of dependence
and sociability, the Alaskan interior's isolation
creates more a feeling of self-relience almost to
the exclusion of others.
Compounding this, in the
lower west, your remoteness allows you escape into
the wilds. Here, the remoteness leads to such
a loss of and cost of services, that your wanderings
are more limited. So, unless you're going
out to your cabin in the bush, you pretty much stay
in town. There is an emphasis on outdoor life,
but it's harder to exerpience that life without
more resources at your disposal.
Too, Fairbanks feels like
a much bigger city than one might expect. While
lacking major business or inudstrial complexes,
it is still the center for all the villages
in the interior. This makes it a hub of travel
and activity at all hours of the day. (While
I've yet to see anything that comes close to a traffic
jam, I've also nevertheless less never gone a minute
without hearing vehicle noise.) Statistically,
the ~ 30k population figures for Fairbanks are also
quite mis-leading. Between the traffic from
the village, the high percentage of military and
college families (often not counted as population),
and the fact that a majority of residents live technically
outside of city limits, means that only the ~ 120k
population figures for the burrough begin to give
you an idea of the size of the town.
The size also leads to sometimes
furstrating situations in which you're dealing with
the impact of remoteness (higher expenses, slower
turn-around on delivery of service, less reliable
connectivity to the rest of the world), but without
the actual experience of remoteness you might expect
to go along with with it (fewer people, less car
noise, lower automobile emissions).
Lastly, it seems as if there's
a major identity problem here. People here
are desparate to distance themselves from images
of igloos, eskimos, snow, gold-mining, and all those
other stereo-types -- but haven't really found a
way to assert an identity apart from those things.
There's the cold, and there's moose hunting...
things like that... But there's not
much, "Hey, this is how you can tell I'm an
Alaskan." The folks are feircely proud
of being Alaskan, but don't seem to have a good,
comfortable communal identity in that.
It's important to stress
that none of this means that I don't like Fairbanks,
Alaska, or the people of this area. It only
means that I am still very much struggling to understand
this place, let alone how I feel about it.
Well, I should wrap up now so that I can
get the up-dated website loaded on the server and
e-mail folks to let them know we're back up and
running. Just a couple of really quick notes
on what's going on in my daily life. On Monday,
I meet with Dr. Shannon and one of the other TA's
for 100x to talk about what's going on with the
class. Hopefully soon I can meet with my advisor
and get registered for fall classes and get my student
ID card and all that, but he's just back from a
trip to Wales and Russia, so I don't know how quickly
he'll be swinging back into action. And, last
big note I can think of, this Sunday I've been tapped
by Pastor David to preach a sermon in church while
he and Pastor Pat are both out of town. (David's
at a conference and Pat's coming up on the end of
a work shift on the North Slope.)
More on all that later; I need to finish updating
the other pages and get uploading so I can go get
the dishes done before I pick Meghan up from work.
:)
Out!!
NickC---
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30 July 2005
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Home of the
NHL'ers or Help stop the spread of dutch elm
disease. Don't transport firewood..
Not sure where to even start
reflecting on this trip, but perhaps just a word
about this whole international travel in Canada
thing. I realize I'm a spoiled American, and
that travel here really isn't bad, but fellow spoiled
Americans should be warned: odds are, you're better
off driving most of your way across country in the
US rather than Canada, if you're heading to Alaska.
The Canadian highway system is decent, but
it's not an interstate system. The Number
16 (TransCanada Highway) passes through towns, so
it can be slow-going at times.
Gas is really expensive here
and can be difficult to find for someone used to
truck stops and travel centers at regular intervals
along a highway or gas stations at each end of a
highway passing through town. Pay at the pump
is a rarity in western Canada, and stations are
cramped, often with full service but pay-inside
arrangements.
Road signs are smaller than
Americans are used and less frequent, and often
only reflect one or two of the several names and/or
nubmers by which a road is designated. Warning signs
about exit lanes are also less frequent, so you
have to be pretty eagle-eyed.
Like I said, it's not bad,
but it's a lot more stressful for a frazzled American
travel accustomed to the Interstate System in the
states. God bless Eisenhower and his legacy!
Probably worth some reflection
on the places we've traveled. Indiana really
is prettier than we Hoosiers give it credit for.
It's fairly flat, but there's a lot of variety
in trees and bushes that give the state a very green
and alive, especially south of Fort Wayne or so.
I don't much care for the
scenery of Illinois. Especially south of Peoria
or so, it always looks messy to me or some reason,
and the skies almost always seem to be cloudy and
grey, even on a summer day which is sunny in Indiana
and north Illinois. I think it's probably
the influence of St. Louis dragging it down.
Wisconsin was really pretty
once we got to the Dells. Actually, I was
surprised by the hills north of the Dells. Very
cool mid-western wilderness and farm land. Would
be fun to go camping there, no doubt,
The parts of Minnesota we
drove through were frankly pretty boring. A
few areas had a touch of the wetlands and lakes
which make the eastern part of the state (which
we didn't drive through) so great by reputation.
But most of the St. Paul --> Fargo route was
pretty un-spectacular.
Speaking of Fargo, there
were some cool old farm buildings in North Dakota,
but the eastern part of the state, through which
we were driving,was not to my taste at all. It
seemed like it was really really flat, but still
in most places lacked the great horizon and high
sky which can redeem that sort of great plains monotony.
I'll grant that some of the fields were still
pretty, though.
Manitoba, once we'd gotten
about an hour past Winnipeg was amazingly beautiful.
I'm a sucker for wet lands, and they're all
over the place in the province. Not to mention,
some really fantastic hills and a few glimpses of
great horizon.
Saskatchewan in the east
was much the same as Manitoba, and I quite enjoyed
that, though the middle was more like North Dakota,
and I didn't so much enjoy that.
Alberta is a province which
still escapes me. It has a lot of rolling
hills, a lot of sweeping horizons... But
for some reason, my first impression when I think
back on it is, "Eh." Not sure why.
Maybe it'll come to me.
British Columbia. Wow.
We've only driven in BC for about six hours
or so, but it's been pretty amazing. The rockies
and their so-called foothills are just beyond compare
for mind-blowign scenery. And where else can
you be driving on a highway and see not only hawks,
ravens, and deer, but moose and a bobcat, too? The
rockies are wonderful to drive in, and BC is crammed
full of 'em.
The trip has been so crazy it would be hard to
say it's been fun. All the ordinary stresses
of moving and leaving friends and family have been
compounded by the frustrations of trying to learn
how to travel in Canada, silly as that sounds. Still,
we've had our good moments. (Like sitting
outside eating corn dogs at the Chief Buffalo truck
stop in Minnesota, pulling over to take some pictures
in Alberta, things like that.) And our adventures.
(Like the thunderstorm which literally drove
us into a parking lot in Edmonton to wipe down our
windshield with napkins, and our total inability
to find Highway 43 this morning.) And I think
when we look back on it, we may regret the rushed
pace we've kept up, but we'll still think fondly
of it. That's usually what happens with nostalgia
over frustrating trips.
Thank God.
NickC---
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27 July 2005
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Well, I'm not going to dwell
on U-haul day. It was pretty tense, but we
got most of what we needed done done, and we got
to pack most of what we were hoping we could, plus
some more. Sure, it it about 92 out with 95%
humidity. Sure, Meghan and I respond to this sort
of stress in totally opposite ways. But with
God's grace and my parents help, we got packed
yesterday and this morning. Whew.
Only two real glitches today,
apart from stresses over last-minute packing. First,
the Blazer wouldn't start. The battery was
totally and utterly drained. And, of course, it
was pouring rain for both the last minute packing
and the Blazer's not starting. Dad jumped
the battery with his truck, and it was good to go.
We think maybe the U-haul electrical stuff
shorted it out somehow, so I unhooked all that tonight
before retiring.
The other glitches was that
the route which my Dad and I concocted to save time
to avoid Chicago ended up adding like 150 miles
or so to the trip. Doesn't seem like much
but when it changs 12 hours into 14 hours of driving,
it feels like it. Oh well, live and learn..
Last thought for tonight: dont' stay in the Motel
6 in St. Cloud. It's nasty. I don't
usually even mind smoking rooms, but this entire
building reeks of stale, nasty cigarettes. And
the ceiling above the shower has tiles which are
black with mold and mildew. And the carpet
has mildew stains. And the first floor rooms
in this building, except for Room 1, start with
3xx.
NickC---
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25 July 2005
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Days 'till
we pick up the U-haul: Uh, one.
So when I said the 28th in
the last 'blog, I meant the 26th. I was looking
at the wooden calendar on the wall by the outside
door in the living room and didn't realize that
the slider tiles hadn't been re-arranged for July
yet. Oops. So, U-haul day is tomorrow
and pull-out on Wednesday morning, bright and early.
Pretty insane around here.
I should have been updating
my 'blog long before now, but ever day has pretty
much been the same. We didn't even end up
getting out to the fair, unfortunately. We
still have a few things we want to do before we
leave and that sort of thing, but we've been pretty
wrapped up in the pursuit of housing. It's been
a pretty miserable time, but there are few lights
at the end of the tunnel right now... We're
working on two possibilities, one which would be
with university housing and would not allow us to
bring Sunbeam with us. The other, with an
apartment complex where David and Marci know
the management; that one would let us bring our
kitten and might entail our helping out around the
complex some.
We should know more about
that by the end of the day.
Today, Meghan's dad and grandparents are coming
to visit. In fact they'll be here any minute,
so I'll sign off for now and try to write more later.
NickC---
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25 July 2005, pt. 2
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We worked out a basic itinerary
plan and I posted on the, "Move," page
in the, "Adventure: Us" section of the
Pithouse website, along with Google map links for
each of the main travel points in our trip plan..
The days will be long, but
audio book swill help it pass the time, I hope.
Audio books and bathroom breaks.
Looks like we'll probably not be going with the
university housing. We did get approved finally,
and I really appreciate Belinda's work on our behalf.
But it looks like the apartments that David
and Marci are referring us to will let us take Sunbeam
with us pretty inexpensively. Since we appear
to have that choice, we're going with the option
that lets us have our kitten. :)
Meghan called Aunt Kim for advice on travelling
with Sunbeam. Aunt Kim was very encouraging
about it, having met Sunbeam once before and being
an excellent vet with a great heart for pets and
pet owners alike. She recommends that we let
the cat have a bathroom break at least every eight
hours or so and that we do it by letting her use
the litterpan inside the car. That's great,
because I wasn't comfortable with the idea of putting
her in a harness to use the pan outside and risking
her running away 1800 miles from either home. She
said not to worry about sedatives, but that if she
seems to get a car sick after a well we can give
her a portion of a small dose of dramamine
non-drowsy.
Not sure how much they'll sock us with lodging
plus pet costs once we get into the Yukon and all
that, but we'll deal with that once we get closer.
I have the first two nights' hotel reservations,
and right now I'm planning on doing it in small
steps like that so we have the flexibility to adjust
the itinterary if we want to go shorter on some
particular day.
NickC---
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17 July 2005
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What's the
point of a rainforest level of humidity without
the rainforest?
Now we're trying to get everything
taken care of before we head out. I'm tentatively
thinking that the 28th will be our pull-out day,
or at least our stuffing the u-haul day, but there
are still some odds and ends to work out, and we
theoretically don't need to be there absolutely
until the 7th, assuming we don't want to roll into
Fairbanks at 7:30 am on the 8th, in time for me
to drop Meghan off at work and then take our stuff
to wherever we're going to end up living..
Among preparations, there's
the final sorting and re-packing or boxes, making
sure we have a solid set of "must go"
boxes as well as "maybe" boxes and so
forth. Meghan and my mom have been working
on that, and been doing some good miracles with
a few of our more hastily thrown together boxes
from the previous move. Hopefully we can make
sure we have everything we need plus room for our
broken-down assemblable furniture, the futon from
Meghan's old house, and our bikes. We should
be able to have suitaces, guitars, computers, etc...
in the Blazer ("Mr. Green Truck"), and
our clothing vacuum bags and some other protected,
flexible stuff in the rooftop carrier.
We're also working on making
sure Meghan has all the professional wardrobe and
accuterments she needs to feel comfortably and confidently
prepared for her new job. Clothes shopping
is neither of our favorite activity. Shopping
for a PDA is not so bad. ;-)
And, importantly, we're
trying to take care outstading maintenance details
on Mr. Green Truck. Next up, some noise in
the rearend that's hopefully just something pretty
straight-forward like a shock absorber.
Today I also got to some
yardwork, trying to help Mom and Dad get the trees
and stuff into shape while I can still do that.
Cut a ton of branches off the Willlow Tree
to clear most of them off the roof o the garage
and get rid of the worst overhang growth from where
winter ice storms distorted the way the branches
hang and buds could grow. And then I went
through tried to cut back most of the worst overlap
in the southern row of trees. Hopefully they
still provide a good hedge but now look like distinct
trees once again. I need to do a little more
wrap up there and hit the front yard like the good
kind of tornado tomorrow or Tuesday evening.
Plus the fair just started
today so we need to get out and checkout the livestock
houses!
Let me just wrap up by saying that it's strange
how you go all summer waiting for some idea of the
time-frame you're under, some clue to the pace of
your next step in life -- and then when you finally
get the clue you've been waiting for, the timeframe
is, well, now.
Whew, I'm tired. :)
NickC---
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13 July 2005
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Originally
posted on Tripod, moments after the last one
Meghan got the job!!! :-D
WOOHOO!!!!
I knew she could do it -- she's the best!!! :-D
NickC---
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13 July 2005
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Originally
posted on Tripod
This whole life change is starting to get pretty real, even if there
isn't a *whole* lot more clarity. What's left of this week and then
next week and we'll be done with our work at Taylor, so that adds a lot
of reality itself. Plus Meghan had a phone interview for a job at UAF
this afternoon and she thought it went well, and she should hear about
it this week hopefully. I was looking at the graduate classes for
registration the past couple of days, too, and saw a few that would be
really cool (Anthropology of Religion, Human Osteology, and
Sustainability), but there are some scheduling conflicts and I'm not
sure yet how detailed a plan Dr. Smith has for me. She gets back from
the field in August, so I'll be able to iron it out then. Nevertheless,
looking at the classes made the whole going back to school thing pretty
real.
(Incidentally, on an anthropological note, if you've ever been to
the express lane at the grocery store, you know darn well that the
ability to count is not common enough among humans to qualify as an
aspect of what distinguishes us from the animals around us.)
It's been interesting the past few days as Meghan and I have gotten
back into bike riding around town and also looking at photography
projects to realize how invested I feel in the history of Alexandria.
Kinda strange, but as I glance back at things, names like Nineveh Berry
still have some significance to me. I'm pretty obsessed right now with
piecing together a thorough history of the development of the town,
especially fleshing out this aerial photo of Alex from 1936. Too, there
are some interesting stories that I'd love to read more about from the
town's founding in ~ 1836. Like, for instance, there were stories about
a ghost which made regular nightly walks along a path so reliably that
the town put its first wooden jail right in that path to help control
prisoners. And then there's the cemetery where they were going to
eventually build a church, but had the plans changed when an orphan
girl was kidnapped from that cemetery and the whole place was pretty
much abandoned.
It's weird to think that, as little history as we live amongst in
most parts of North America compared to, say, Europe or Asia, I'll be
moving to a place with an even shorter settled history. I mean, the
un-settled history is just as cool -- more cool in many ways. But the
settled history creates buildings, roads, cemeteries, and other
physical manifestations of history in my every day life, and that's
something I've always taken for granted. The west is wilder but younger
(so to speak), and that's yet another aspect of this move which will
take some adjusting. NickC---
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6 July 2005
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Regular gas:
Alex -- $2.29; FW -- $2.47
I suppose in
some ways where Ieft off yesterday might seem pretty
self-obvious. "Oh, so you're saying,
Nick, that we relate to something better when we
know more about it. Really? Amazing!"
Not quite where
I was going, though.
I don't know how well my analogies
always translate to the way other people think anyway,
but here's the central question. I could easily
learn more about many of the people who died in
London than I know about Jason's friends. Yet
learning that material wouldn't have the same "realism-ing"
effect. Why is that?
To me, the analogy works like
this. The news is data, like basic algebra
with variables. Learning more about the people
involved is like putting in numbers. Suddenly
it corresponds to life, and the significance can
be felt and understand. But knowing someone
who knows the people suddenly makes it a story problem,
something that can be incorporated into my life.
After all, I can directly identify with Jason's
friends. Meghan and are among them, and are
friends with others of his friends. So the
tragid death of Jason's friends is something I understand
in a very personal way. But, like with story
problems, something I have a harder time working
out and analyzing.
Well, enough philosophizing
for the moment. Today I got to do some demo
with Dad. There's an on-going project to redo
parts of their bathroom, and I've been pitching
in some to help where I can while we've been here.
Today we were getitng things started for the
replacement of the old medicine cabinet with a newer,
larger one. Hammers, a reciprocating saw,
and several pounds of dust and debris. Woohoo!
Incidentally, Dad finished
the effort this afternoon while Meghan and I were
gone. New medicine cabinet is in and looks
nice!
This afternoon we went up to FW to help Tiffany
and Eli help Jason and Bethany move a load into
their apartment and then go out to to dinner with
the whole gang. Spent the first couple hours
battling headaches and asthma from a gas leak in
Jason and Bethany's oven. Jason and I pretty
much identified the problem pretty much right off
at about 14:00 and by about 15:50, the maintenance
guy had also figured out that there was a leak in
the feed for the oven so gas wasn't even getting
to the pilot light down there. The appliance
guy only works M -- F, so Jason just had him shut
the gas off to the oven for now. Ah, the adventures
of moving in...
NickC---
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6 July 2005
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Number of
dead in London bombing current tally: 49
There were several
things I had planned on 'blogging about yesterday
-- the reporters in the CIA undercover agent disclosure
case, for instance. And there are other things
I would normally have written about today -- we
just saw the Fantastic Four movie.
But today I
find myself haunted by the fact that our good friend
Jason learned at lunch that he lost two friends
in the London bombing.
The world is no smaller
than it ever was; I really dislike that particular
metaphor. But we are certainly in greater
and more frequent contact and closer relationships
with people around the world. For some reason
it fills me with a special horror to realize that
Jason, here in Fort Wayne, IN, lost two friends
in a terrorist attack a quarter-world away. Not
soldiers, not travelers, not anyone you normally
worry about as they are apart from you. Just
locals. Folks who live their lives over there
just like he lives his here; folks about whom Jason
probably never gave a second thought about their
safety. Think about this, too: Jason himself knew
a full 4% of the fatalities in this attack, and
he's never set foot overseas.
I suppose as a history major
such things shouldn't surprise me. And as
a technology worker (for a little while longer),
the impact of the internet, communications, and
travel shouldn't have a particularly novel terror
or sadness for me. Nevertheless, they do,
and while it's not shaking me or depressing me,
exactly, they are preoccupying my mind a bit.
Ever the wannabe philosopher, my mind is also
busy trying to make sense of this impact on me.
Why is it that this situation bothers me in
such a personal way? And in general, why is
it that the tragedy in London should somehow be
more real to me, just because someone I know knew
two of the victims?
I really hope this doesn't sound cold, so bear
with me if it starts to. I suspect it's sort
of like algebra. Algebra is in many ways easier
to work out and analyze when left in variables and
formulas. Yet few of us *relate to* (become
mediate with?) "x + y." Throw in
some numbers, some actual data and we can relate
to it more, "1 + 2." Change it to
a story problem and it may be more difficult to
work out, but it become something that either draws
on internal memories or else at least helps us relate
to it in a personally conceivable way, "1 apple
+ 2 more apples."
There's a lot of that here. Now that I
have more personal data for the London tragedy,
it's harder for me to analyze, but I can't help
but relate to it more truly.
NickC---
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6 July 2005
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Miles to
go before I sleep: ~ 0.00852272727
Got this CNN
article from Meghan in my e-mail today.
Pretty silly stuff, really, when you look
at the logic they're using. The headline says
that pediatricians say that abstinence isn't sufficient.
What they actually go on to say is that teaching
abstinence itself isn't enough, because teens can
still end up pregnant once they start having sex.
Sounds like it's not the abstinence that's
the problem... After all, they're getting
pregnant from sex, not from abstinence, no? The
implication (or outright statement sometimes) is
that it's inevitable that teens will start having
sex, and it's in that mindset that most abstinence
teaching also takes place. The idea of abstinence
is not, "saving yourself until you feel ready,"
or "waiting until your'e really in love."
What teenager smitten in hot, furious puppy
love doesn't feel like they've found, "the
one." And then what's left to save?
Abstinence is not having sex. Abstinence
is a flawless profelactic and a perfect protection
against STD's. Abstinence until a committed
marriage with someone else who has practiced the
same restraint is a highly effecitve lifestyle for
minimizing and controlling these risks. Teens
not having sex is a pretty great way for them to
not have babies or get sexual diseases.
[If I might interject a
reflection on a less significant topic... yyWhile
KRS-One and BDP may have forever answered the question
of where rap rules the roost (Bronx and Brooklyn)
in silencing MC Shan, Marley Marl and the rest of
the Queens crew, there still remains the quetsion
of why rappers from Phillie like Kool Moe Dee and
the Fresh Prince always sounded like they had worse
white guy rhythm than atual white rappers like the
Beastie Boys. Yikes!]
Hot and stuffy in the house... Something
to be said for the idea of spending all summer camping
and all your time out in the open air. Aaaahhhh.....
BTW, I haven't forgotten about uploading pictures,
but I'm pretty out of it with allergies tonight
so it may not happen until tomorrow.
NickC---
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7 July 2005
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Julie says... "It's prophylactic,
not profelactic. Spelling aside, you're absolutely
right."
Nick responds... "Oops.
I knew I should have spell-checked before
I uploaded the updates to the 'blog. Actually,
it's a little known fact that typing errors and
sloppy spelling are a sign of brilliance. The brain
works too fast for the finger to keep up. Still,
neatness counts, and sloppy typing is very much
un-neat."
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7 July 2005
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Julie says... "What about getting tongue-tied? Is that a sign of brilliance? My brain is faster than my mouth."
Nick responds... "Considering
the proximities involved, I would think it would
be far more difficult for the brain to outpace the
mouth. After all, the fingers have to look
a farther distance in order to see what they're
going to do, then turn back around to face the right
direciton to do it. All far more complicated.
The mouth, on the other hand (er.... well,
you know what I mean......) has barely to look out
of the corner of its eye (uh... yeah...) to
get the idea, enabling it to respond much more quickly.
So for the brain to race beyond what the mouth can
keep up with would require a much more tremendous
effort from the brian. So, huzzah, Julie!
Your brilliance has exceeded my own. Sounds
like your brain is ready for the Tour de France."
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5 July 2005
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No. of dead
junebugs in the window sill: ~ 55
Big holiday
weekend kept me away from the computer for the most
part. Between daytime excursions and letting
Meggie play Dungeon Seige on Paleotablet as part
of her own vacation fun times in the evening, updating
the 'blog wasn't likely to happen, but all in a
very worthy cause. Before I update you on
the latest from our world, be sure to go over to
the links page and check out the pages there. My
dad has spent a ton of time tinkering with his and
he as a 'blog of his own now, so look into it! Also,
be sure to click around the Pithouse website because
we've updated a lot of pages recently and will be
updating photos very soon (like tonight or tomorrow,
hopefully).
[Quick update during lunch,
just to explain my absence, so there won't be much
reflective in this particular 'blog...]
On Friday night, we went out to Wal-Mart and
picked up a couple of cameras. We made use
of some gift cards and some gift cards and some
cashflow and took the plunge, since hopefully our
photography will someday soon become part of our
livelihood and it's already a major part of our
lifestyle. I picked up a Canon Eos Rebel K2
(a nice 35mm SLR, my first with autofocus) and Meghan
got an HP 4.1 mp digital camera. Those purchases
shaped the rest of our holiday weekend, as
we spent several hours on Saturday out at Mounds
State Park trying them out, drove down on Sunday
afternoon to Brookville Lake, and took a couple
hours' drive through the country environs of Madison
County on Monday early afternoon. All that
capped off by the 4th of July show at the Anderson
Speedway (figure 8's, schoolbus figure 8's, a rollover
ramp, and the great fireworks show in Indiana).
OK, time to get back to work!
NickC---
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29 June 2005
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Regular
Gas: $2.169
Past few evenings were
full of various activities, including dinner last
night with Meghan's mom and her brother Colin, some
kind of something on Monday, and running to the
credit union on Sunday night. But never fear,
I did notice amidst all that the supreme court closed
session with a multitude of decisions, and how better
to end lunch than to reflect on some of those decisions?
[No, we didn't watch the
president's presentation last night; we were
driving back from Fort Wayne; and, no, we didn't
listen to it on NPR either. I'll be honest;
I know as a politically interested person I should
listen to these sort of things, but the glut of
news coverage these days and advance information
slash analysis ensures that someone who reads and
listens to a sufficient amount of news pretty much
know what politicos are going to say before they
step up to the microphone, and that makes it hard
to get excited about press conferences and addresses.]
So, yeah, the Supreme Court closed as it
usually does; kind of like people always win gin
games in the motion pictures: card, card, card,
card, three cards, "Gin." Game Over!
Here are some of what they hit:
- They affirmed the court's right to hold
the reporters in the CIA leak in contempt in
order to compel their identification of their
anonymous sources. On the one hand, I'm
not sure that revealing the identity of someone
who treasonously leaked the secret id of an
undercover agent really does all that much to
hurt the profession of journalism. I mean,
really, is it a big loss to the free press if
they can't get future opportunities to be complicit
in the destruction of the American intelligence
network and imperiling of an innocent woman's
life? Just the same, on the other hand, I'm
not terribly comfortable with the idea of holding
the press in jail to compel testimony. Too,
shouldn't crack federal investigators be able
to figure this out on their own?
- The justices also rules on two, "Ten
Commandment," cases. In one, they
ruled a TC monument as acceptable because it
was part of a broad display of historical influences
on the development of law. In another,
they ruled a posting of the TC as an establishment
of religion, and therefore unacceptable. I
have libertarian impulses all over the map on
this one. After all, I don't think a posting
in a court room really equates to an act of
congress respecting an establishment of religion,
so I think federalism suggests that this is
out of the jurisdiction of the national government.
Yet nevertheless, what *is* the point
of these TC cases? It's not secular forces
who want them posted; it's religious groups.
Do these groups really want them posted
as historical curiosities? No, they want
them posted as acknowledgement of what they
argue is the basis of our law and our society
in God's law and word. That is certainly
religious intent, and raises the question of
what that sort of activity has to do with the
civil court system. And let's face it
-- how many of the commandments have found their
way into American law? It's not even illegal
to commit adultery, let alone to covet or to
worship graven images. Moreover, whose Christian
faith is either bolstered by seeing the Ten
Commandments when they walk into their local
courthouse, or vice versa?
- File sharing... The court issued a
unanimous decision in regards to the latest
case of copyright infringement using peer-to-peer
file sharing software. The ruling, weaker
than has been described in a lot of press coverage,
did not actually speak to the guilt or innocence
of the P2P software makers, only said that,
yes, it was a legitimate legal matter and worthy
of a trial to consider the possible wrongdoing
of those who make software and market it by
encouraging its use in violations of copyright.
Well, I must get back to work now. In
the meantime, remember to look out for Zombie
Dogs!
NickC---
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25 June 2005
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Can you imagine? Take
the best of Columbo, Cagney & Lacey, and My
Two Dads, mix them together, and you have the greatest
entertainment possible...
Last night, Meghan and I were
thrown a going away party at Chris and Jenny McCormick's
house. It was awesome! Their house was
beautiful as always, Josh and Grace well-behaved
and adorable, and the food Jenny cooked was out-of-this-world
fantastic. The ping pong was good, too, even
though I didn't do so well. At least I did
a good job helping put the net up. ;-) And,
I suppose, for not having touched a ping pong paddle
in four years and considering my recent vision problems
in the left eye, I carried myself reasonably well.
Lots of great people were in
attendance at the shin-dig -- my parents, Seth,
Amber, and their grey ("blue") great Dane
puppy, "Green-boy" Connor; the McCormicks,
obviously; Jason, Bethany, Tiffany, Eli, and Amanda;
plus Rob and Vickie Linehan. The cream of
the remaining crop, I tell ya, considering
we already had the party with Meghan's side a couple
weeks ago.
Highlights (apart from the
food) had to include my Dad, Seth, and me messing
around on banjo, acoustic bass, and six-string guitar
respectively. We didn't get through a whole
lot of songs, but we had a blast trying. The
spirit of Willie Nelson was strong in the McCormick
basement for a while; and Eli and me playing pingpong
while the rest of the crew played a circle game
of catch with a twelve lb medicine ball.
It was just cool to have so
many of our good friends together and just having
fun together one last time, since we're down to
probably 3 -- 6 weeks left in Indiana, a lot of
those busy ones.
No matter how satisfying it
is to move my life back in the direction of anthropology
or how exciting it is to be moving to Alaska, it's
also sad to be leaving so many great people behind.
Some people it feels like we've only just
started to get to know, and it's hard to believe
we're already moving on. It's a lot easier
in these days of the Internet, I know, but it's
still a lot to consider...
[Quick update on the half-court
front. We pretty much solidified on a ten point
game at this point, and we switch courts once someone
hits five points. Also, my dad was watching
for a little while and mentioned that the game is
very much like one he and Uncle Ralph used to play
in their basement with bowling pins and a ball.
Cool! The lowlight of the evening's
sport was when in a second game I went up high for
a ball Meggie had popped up and I spiked it right
down into her face. It was a hard shot that
knocked her glasses into her eye. She's okay,
but a little bruised up. :-( ]
One last, brief thought. I was talking
to Jenny at the party last night and as I described
the move and how I felt about it, I described it
as, "unreal." I think the reason
I mentioned was probably pretty accurate to: I'm
preparing to move some place I've never been, unlike
anyplace I've ever been. It's hard for there
to be much reality to that. I'm looking forward
to it, but it's going to feel so different once
we get there, and I have no idea how different...
NickC---
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23 June 2005
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Getting ready to hand the
tablet back over to Meghan...
More half-court tonight (read
the previous 'blog, below, for the scoop on what
that is), followed by some tai chi. Good backyard
workout for about an hour. Lots of fun, lots
of exercise. I picked up a couple of kickballs
today so we could improve our equipment and play
it the old-school way.
[Brief side-bar interjection.
Have you read about this?
It's a supreme court ruling in which O'Connor,
Rhenquist, Scalia, and Thomas all dissented. While
it's silly that the local TV news (WISH-TV, Channel
8 out of Indy) headlined it as, "Hear why it's
now easier for the government to take your land,"
I must admit that I'm incredibly uncomfortable with
this ruling which now expands eminent domain to
allow state governments to seize property not for
their own immediate use but to hand over to private
corporations or foundations who are apparently advancing
the state's interests. Not only is the immediate
issue disheartening, but that sure muddies the waters.
And to think people were calling the
Alexandria city government Commies when they started
tagging people's houses to make them clean up trash
accumulating in the front yard...].
Back to important matters: half-court. Because
we were playing with a kickball, and playing for
our second night, we refined some rules and ideas
about gameplay. Seth and I probably covered
some of this the first time around, but we didn't
exactly document it. Now I'm recording all
this for posterity!
Foot-blocks. It's
okay to dribble with the feet, block the ball with
the feet, and possible even advance the ball with
the feet to get some momentum going, but it's not
at all okay to kick the ball the across the half-court
line with the feet. The ball is to be propelled
in game play by the bat alone.
Goal-tending. In order
to keep scoring lively and gameplay fast, the players
cannot crowd the goal. When lining up
"in position," they should be no closer
to the goal than halfway from the half-court line.
Stop-ball. It's a
stop-ball when the ball is standing still because
it's been blocked, spun, or has come to a stop against
an obstacle.
Serve-ball. It's a
serve-ball when the ball is standing still because
of a score or because it's mired out of bounds.
A serve-ball can be picked up and moved into
the field of play by hand, though it cnanot be served
from the hand or from a toss from the hand.
In-position. Players
must assume stances "in-position" at either
a stop-ball or a serve-ball.
Spun. A ball is spun when
a strike from a bat gets a little more grip and
so counters the active spin on the ball and puts
a reverse spin, causing it spin in place and effectively
lose all its momentum.
Another possible rule? Another thing
rolling around in my mind is the possibility on
a limit to full strikes. What I would think
is appropriate might be to allow unlimited dribbling,
but only three full strikes (counting a pop-shot
as a single strike).
NickC---
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23 June 2005
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Finishing up lunch in the
Galleria....
Last night I got to introduce
Meghan to quite possible the most intense backyard
sport ever: halfcourt. Invented, as far as
I know, by Seth and me sometime ~ 1990, it's kinda
like the best of rap music: it bites off all the
best of what's already out there and interpolates
some of its own clever twists.
Ok, when I say, "invented
by Seth and me," that probably means I bullied
the poor guy into doing it and we changed
the rules as we went to reduce bruising, bloodshed,
and balls lost over the fence.
Anyway, it starts off sorta like field hockey,
but with whiffle ball bats and kickballs rather
than hockey sticks and field balls, because we tended
to play our games with what we had on hand and could
adapt. (I'll have to tell you about playing
tires sometime. That was an enduring classic!)
We named a couple of spaces as goals, and
went to it. But then we realized that whacking
away at kickballs with whiffle ball bats as we chased
each other around, we were probably gonna end up
hitting each other more than anything, so we defined
a line, halfway through the yard as uncrossable.
A bat could cross it, but not a person. We
quickly discovered that this increased the speed
and intensity of the game, because there were more
long shots, and so more diving for the ball, more
crazy attempts to hit a ball in midair, and all
the good stuff that makes backyard sports something
beautiful to participate in.
Last night, Meghan and I didn't have any kickballs,
so we used whiffleballs. Not as fast, because
the grass slows them down more, and not as much
air play, but still fun.
As it stands, here are the rules for halfcourt
in the Corduan backyard. Adapt to your own
circumstances. :)
Equipment: Two yellow whiffleball bats.
One kickball.
Playing field: The backyard, played lengthwise. One
goal is defined primarily by where the raspberry
bush used to be. The other goal is basically
in line with the cement block of the back porch.
The court is divided into half by an invisible
line which runs from the willow tree to the rosebud.
Playing equipment may cross the line,
but players may not.
Play: The ball is served in one of two
ways. It may either be stroked from a still
position on the ground, or it may be popped into
the air by a sharp rap from above and then propelled
forward in an airborne fashion. The
ball is retrurned and counter-returned until one
player scores by hitting the ball into a goal. The
ball is then served again. Play continues
until exhaustion ensues or dark overwhelms.
Scoring: Basic scoring is one point for
each goal scored.
Alternative Rules: Certain boundaries
may be determined to be out of bounds (for instance,
the willow tree to the north, the house to the east,
the hostas to the south, and the picnic table to
the west). If this is done, serving may take
place after any out-of-bounds strike. Scoring
could also be adjusted to increase the intensity
of the game by scoring 2 points for a goal and 1
point for getting the ball out-of-bounds, forcing
both players to chase after the ball on every hit.
NickC---
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Respond
to Blog!
17 June 2005
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Heard an interesting story
on NPR's, "Day to Day," over lunch this
afternoon. Mike Pesca did a
timely and insightful piece on Megan's
law. As an increasingly assured Libertarian,
I've always been aware of the concerns about this
law as an infringement of privacy. As someone
who believes in redemption, I've also appreciated
that laws like this in some ways rob a person of
his or her right to assert a new reformed lifestyle
and to reap the rewards of that hard-earned, refreshed
moral standing. But as someone who also believes
in the necessity of living with the outcome of choices,
I've also known that these are the risks a person
takes when they commit a sexual (or other) offense,
and that's all there is to it. You could even
argue that there's something salutary in suffering
through the humiliations and frustrations post-redemption.
But Pesca's piece brings
up another aspect of the law I'd never really considered.
Once a parent gets the information, what does
it serve them? Do they warn their kids
about the perpetrator and introduce them to the
idea of an immediate evil among them? Do they
act differently to protect their children? Do
they go about life normally, armed with the knowledge
but not acting on it? Beyond even the personal
scope of the intimate, internal struggle each parent
equipped with that information must suffer, what
is even the range of uses of the information?
As I was contemplating this, I reflected on something
I'd jotted down in a philosophy journal I was keeping
during a graduate course a couple years ago. It
was in the context of some Hegelian reflections
on sharing secrets, specifically a turn I took on
the topic of sharing another person's secrets.
"I was reflecting this
evening on the question of secrets again, and I wondered, What of
secrets which are not self-speech. What comes of telling another
man's secrets? I cannot say him. I can speak of him, for that is
objective, but I can only say myself, for that is subjective.
Even so -- if self speech
has the power of negation, is it of self-negation or other-negation?
When I authenticate myself through an act of will, it might be said
dialectically that I and my intention are cancelled and subsumed into
the "new," more authenticated self. It is natural that the
type of negation correspond to the object of the act. Since the
subject is the content of the speech, then it must be the self which
is (contradictorily) negated.
If the sharing of secrets
or self-saying is self-negation, then my utterance of another man's
secret is not an attempt at mere negation but an attempt to assert
myself into the role of initiating his self-negation, the most
intensely subjective control a man has.
Upon reflection, this
cannot be, for when I say myself I am the content but not the object.
If it is the object which is negated in the movement, then it is the
listener who is destroyed. When I share another man's secret then, I
am (a) robbing him of an opportunity to assert / authenticate
himself; and (b) infringing on his subjectivity by killing in his
name. Therefore if no ethics bound on self-authentication, sharing
another man's secret would be a three-fold act of assertion.
Half-baked and quarter-understood philosophical
ideas and jargon aside, the basic idea as it relates
to this Megan's Law topic is this: is the real result
of Megan's Law the preparation of parents and protection
of children, or is it actually the further punishment
of the offender by sharing his or her secrets and
thereby asserting ourselves over the offender and
robbing the offender of some measure of humanity.
Now, I'm not sure I'm saying that's bad. Whether
I believe strongly in the rights of the accused
or not, I'm no light touch when it comes to punishment
of the convicted. As a parent I would likely
take a great deal of satisfaction in asserting my
authority of some creep or pervert in my neighborhood.
But perhaps it's time for a little honest study
of Megan's Law to make sure we know why we're doing
what we're doing -- and to make sure it's the best
and most effective way of doing that.
NickC---
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Respond
to Blog!
9 June 2005
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It's indisputable that
urbanization, population growth and modern technology
have robbed us of most experiences of true remoteness.
Certainly, few Americans experience in their
everyday lives anything which approximates the sensational
isolation in which most of their forbearers commenced
life in the town or area they now call home. It
is difficult for any of us to appreciate either
the romance of the land which called white folk
to spread ever further across the land, and which
compelled so many of those who preceded white folk
either into mobile lifestyles or into ways of life
which included frequent wanderings and forays in
the country.
Yet, to think that any experience
of that remoteness is out of the grasp of modern
Americans would be hasty. I suffer from no
Jack London syndrome wherein I find the only true
way to live is in the violent clash of man and nature
facing off for life. Nor do I in any great
way fall prey to the wilful ignorance or downright
villainous simplification of life which comprise
the ignominious romance of the so-called, "Noble
Savage." But just the same, even in my
own limited travels I have experienced both the
wonder and peacefulness of natural solitude and
the gut-wrenching awareness of myself as potential
victim of nature with few human-crafted resources
to call upon or surround myself with.
I've often experienced small portions of this
in fairly accessible situations. I grew up
near Mounds State Park in Anderson, IN and was able
to get a taste for solitude standing around the
mounds on quiet days with few other park visitors.
I experienced a greater portion of it on my first
truly solo camping track at the Backbone in Iowa,
where the state park was nearly empty and I had
no companions to help me figure out what the creatures
were who snuffled around my tent at night. Meghan
and I experienced another step when we camped at
Horseshoe Lake near Collinsville, Illinois for our
honeymoon. Though it's very close to east
St. Louis, the campground at the lake is on an isolated
peninsula, practically an island, and one night
were caught there in our tent in the midst
of a horrendous after-hours thunderstorm with no
others nearby and no ranger on duty in the state
park.
Last summer, though, we took a trip out west,
and in Wyoming we experienced a great deal of this
solitude. I'm sure I will return to the subject
in later 'blogs so I won't dwell on specific adventures,
but there we did truly experience both extremes:
awe as we sat in a place where we saw and heard
no people, only Creation at its quietest and most
magnificent; and fear as we contemplated our utter
aloneness at times and our inability to rely on
anyone else or anything other their our supplies
ad our own ingenuity, should something unfortunate
happen.
I was reminded of all this today as we drove
up to Meghan's grandparents' cottage near Au Sable
and the Big Twin Lakes in northern Michigan. You
get off I-75, head through Frederic, and then there's
nothing. Occasionally, a dark house, sometime
a passing car. But, generally, the sort of
place where you know that a car emergency would
mean a lot of walking and a lot of looking out for
coyotes. The sort of place where it doesn't
take much imagination to conjure up bandits in the
woods or bears stepping out into the road. And
you drive 25 minutes deeper into that, and end up
here, in a nice split level cottage with no hope
of wireless Internet and neighbors that you cannot
hear or see because of the woods which envelope
you.
And then you're struck. Struck by the beauty
of the serene northern pine forest. Struck
by the attraction of the nature and lured by its
promise of calm, patient inspiration. Struck
by the inability to talk to friends on IM or a cellphone.
Struck by the need to rely on yourself so
much if anything were to wrong. Struck by
the magnificence of the pines and threat of the thunderstorm.
And then you know that there are still glimpses,
available to anyone who looks, of that sometimes
bucolic and sometimes hostile natural world and
natural way of life.
NickC---
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