You were my lesson I had to learn,
I was your fortress you had to burn,
Pain is sign that something's wrong,
I hope to God it won't be long,
I want to go higher.
There's nothing left to hide,
there's no more places to hide.
There's no greater power than the power of goodbye.
~Madonna, Power of Goodbye, "Ray of Light" Well, I guess that sort of sums things up doesn't it.
That was the ending of the last e-mail that I got from Allen, which was Thursday evening. The rest of the e-mail was along those lines as far as things being over between us. Which is fine I guess.... In a way, I'm glad that he broke things off instead of me because now I get to share a bit of the pain and loss that he's feeling. If I had done it, I suspect that I would have felt relatively nothing, sort of like I have been for a little while now.....perhaps not....I shouldn't speculate on stuff like that since it's worthless to anyone, most especially me.
I don't think it's a bad over tho. There weren't any massive fights or traumatic experiences, nothing overly melodramatic or maladjusted. From my perspective it's still a very hard thing, and I have lots of uncertainties. I think about all the different things that made our relationship wonderful. There are too many to list. But in the end, things were just not going to get any better as far as distance and time go.
I think it basically comes down to my life priorities at the moment not being in line with an LDR. Right now, my priorities are defined by immediacy just by the hectic nature of my life. This means that my top priorities are school, Model UN, and hanging out with my roommates/friends. Everything else is very by the wayside.
I wish I had more to say, and a more poetic way of saying it. I guess I fail my artistic ability roll or something.....
Wednesday I had a little coming out talk with my friend Rhiannon. I had been meaning to come out to someone new for a number of days now, and Rhiannon was the first opportunity where I got my nerve up again....All the fear is internal for me really. I don't know why this sudden urge. Part of it had to do with wanting someone to talk to about relationship type stuff.
Unfortunately, because of my little coming out thing and some meetings that I already had to go to, I missed what was by all accounts an interesting DesiCam chat with RobbTD. I'm told that he got naked for the camera, which I'm sure was wonderful, but the real reason that I would have liked to be there for the chat is to see Robb interacting with other people. I have never had the opportunity to actually witness him interacting with anyone but myself, and that sortof piques my curiosity. I suppose it's the disadvantage of living on opposite sides of the country, I can't just randomly get together with people in Washington state.
I have been so busy with Model UN. I'm praying that things will slow down a bit for a few weeks. There's going to be a certain minimum amount of stuff no matter what. It's a given that I have three MUN meetings every week: the conference Advisory Council meeting Monday nights, the Exec. Board meeting Wednesday nights, and the general meeting Friday nights. After that it's a question of how long it takes me to complete all my appointed tasks (and a few thousand additional ones). It's generally a labor of love, though it can be frustrating at times.
Friday night I went with my roommate Andrew to hang out with some of his friends from home. We played some video games, drank a little, talked about all kinds of shit, etc. On the way home, I decided that I was going to have my second coming out experience of the week. It was lovely as usual....Andrew is a very liberal and open person, so I can have the kind of conversations with him that I only have with a few other people in the world.
Saturday night we had a birthday party for Calvin. We went over to his and Andy's place and had brownies and the like. After that, Andrew and I went down to the flats to meet one of his friends who was home for the weekend. We went to the Attic again, which I really enjoy. It's nice because it has a good selection of music and isn't overcrowded.
I was industrious this weekend and actually spent some time studying and doing homework. I didn't do as much as I would have liked, but I'm improving my work ethic just a bit. I expect that I'll continue to do more as classes pick up over the semester. I should probably sleep soon so I can study for my first exam of the semester tomorrow.
Oh, you may notice that I'm now doing something a bit different with my journal. Like everyone else, I like to link to other people's journals to give everyone a warm fuzzy and to share content. Unfortunately, this is complicated when someone moves their journal and I have to go back and change all the links to avoid broken ones. Thus, in a fit of inspiration I decided to solve my problem using the long awaited "People Page". Basically, the idea behind that was to have a short bit on each of the people I mention in my journal in a page, that way newbies can click to there and find out who people are right away instead of digging through months of entries every time. So, I'm linking all names to my People Page and links to journals will all be there collected in one spot. I still have to back-document this system through the rest of my journal, which will happen as time permits. I also want to somehow incorporate my People Page and my Picture Page to create a multimedia experience of Zup's life.
As a last note, I got a really cool e-mail from Rotti the journaler the other day. I have not looked at his journal in a long time, but he communicates regularly with Robb and Mickey I think. He was giving me some thoughts on relationships and whatnot.
Well folks, it's back to the grindstone with a vengeance for Zup. My life can be appropriately referred to as a living hell until the end of the day Monday. I have an exam on Monday, along with a lab report and a pre-lab report both being due. This is truly a crappy weekend. No fun activities for Zup. I am very clear at the moment on why I liked working better than school, and it had a lot to do with having time after hours to not do things you do during work. There is not too much distinction in school when one is trying to survive. Perhaps it's worse for Chemical Engineers, perhaps not, I don't really know.
So, of course, at this very moment I am writing a journal entry in order to procrastinate my work just a bit more. When you have to enter a mini-hell, there's nothing like decreasing the duration and increasing the intensity. It's sort of like doing shots of hell.
Actually, I was holding off on my journal in part to wait for a good theme to fall into my lap. All I had to do was wait on Robb's journal and something came to mind....leave it to him to get my creative juices flowing (and yes, he's not the only one, he just has better timing than most.) In his journal entry from earlier today, he was talking about taking the route of fame and sharing some of that with others, and whatnot. He got me to thinking about power and fame and other stuff like that. The most poignant statement he made was:
I should make a catch phrase along the lines of "I'm a slut so you don't have to be."
It's interesting to me that he chooses to take that route to fame and notoriety. I mean, there are so many people that go the same route. There are plenty who achieve that stuff by being in-your-face and controversial. I just don't happen to be one of them.
For me, it's a bit hard to understand the over-the-top mentality to achieving goals. My way has a lot to do with working behind the scenes, promoting compromise, and doing all the little stuff that no one notices. This isn't to say that I don't go out and polish my trophies and schmooze with the bigwigs. I think my difference is in emphasis. I place my emphasis on substance and detail rather than form and appearance. You need people who do that, otherwise you end up with a lot of things that are very pretty and happy on the surface but very hollow and lacking of substance underneath.
Part of my way of working has to do with transparency and straightforwardness. There are a lot of people and groups that aren't about those two things. They need to puff themselves up or create an image or posture for the sake of others. I'm not too much into that.....my methodology allows me not to be. It's one of those solid foundation things. I take care of the details....I know all of the tiny stuff whenever someone asks....I know the little things won't go wrong. When that's the way you are, you don't need to posture or spin things because in all cases you can either say "Yes, it's all good," or "Yes, that's an issue, but we're already working on it." There's no image, no uncertainty, no PR disasters waiting to happen....just the facts.
I'm a very WYSIWYG type of guy personally. I think most people who know me will attest to that. I'd say that about 95 percent of my journal is in line with that statement, as is most of my life in general.
Robb is pretty honest.....I've not known him to lie ever. But, he is a very good spin doctor, as he's said so many times himself. I'm not.....it's not in my nature. I have been trying to work on that just a bit tho.....selling oneself and one's ideas skillfully does have its uses. I hope I don't seem to be ragging on Robb and other persuasive charismatic personalities. What I'm really going for here is a little analysis and comparison. My ego just happens to think that us behind the scenes types are under-appreciated in this world.
My main focus in this entire tirade is actually my involvement in Model UN.....even though I never mention it once. I didn't even realize that until I was halfway through, but every sentence I wrote, I was thinking in the back of my head, "just like I do successfully for Model UN," or "just like other people do for MUN, leaving me to pick up the pieces." I'm sortof stressing and ranting a bit on all this stuff. It always bothers me that after I'm gone who's going to take care of the details? You can fool people once with image, but after they see through to the hidden problems you won't fool them again.
After over a year of watching almost no television regularly, I've finally redesignated a TV night for myself. For me it's happening to fall on Tuesday night. This was spawned by the fact that I watched "Will and Grace" for the first time 3 weeks ago when Rhiannon came over to visit. Hopefully it will become a regular TV night for us. For whatever reason, I fell in love with that show right away.
I've heard some complaints of it not really tackling anything about being gay....that Will is gay in name only. I can't really comment on the accuracy or appropriateness of it as a representative "gay" show any more than I could on The Cosby Show as a representative "black" show during the 80's (for which it got some flak I think). I don't even think it's even appropriate to do that....people are always looking for sit-coms to capture the essence of their own life experience, and roundly criticize them when they don't. The problem is that a sit-com (situation comedy) is exactly that: a show capturing the comedy that results from a certain situation. As such, it can hardly be universal to everyone's experience or even capture the essence of any one group of people. I wish people would just sit down and enjoy television for the entertainment value.
In any case, I've now eaten away some more time that I should be using to finish my lab reports and study. There's really nothing else to say, since school has been sucking up the rest of my life. I'm sure that I'll have something interesting towards the end of the coming week.
[This entry is actually being posted October 10, but was written on the 2nd. At the time I was a bit too frantic and emotional to judge whether what I had written was postable. I've detached enough now to read it and here it is in its unedited entirety.]
Hrm.....I had intended to make this a vaguely happy entry or something, but things have really bogged down in my life of late. I'm sortof in a depressive mood today, and I suspect with good reason. The stresses of life really seem to be catching up to me lately..... It's not even really stress, but actual bad stuff going on.
I can just feel my academic life start to slip out of control again. I told myself that I wasn't going to let it happen this year, but it just did starting last week. I ended up not getting my lab report finished on time. This is typical of me over my whole lifetime.....where I let things go just a bit too long and I come up a day late and a dollar short. In this case, I guess it's a day late and one letter grade lower... I did finish the pre-lab report for my lab group (thus not letting them down) and managed a 94% on my test that same day, but somehow that doesn't really validate screwing up other stuff.
Lateness is something that really frustrates me because it's just embarrassing. There's really no good excuse for it, but somehow it always shows up for me. It's a sign of lack of self-discipline and control. It seems to be my life most of the time, vaguely out of control.
One of my frustrations with all of this is that I so wish that I was closer to perfection. It's hard for me to exactly explain my train of thought here... It's all about acceptance I think. I think that people would like me more (and I'd probably like myself a lot more) if I was more perfect. And I guess part of it too has to do with being gay. I mean it seems to me that in society it's more ok to be gay if you're perfect.....people can overlook one thing. But what about me, who's for from perfect....I mean, if you have limited success and value to society, is anyone going to tolerate one additional flaw? Of course not.
I mean, I suppose it's how women must feel sometimes, that they have to work twice as hard for half the recognition. I mean, I don't have that as an innate problem, but I feel like that internally. Like I really need to be better than the rest in order to eventually be successful and out at the same time. And it seems like that to me in the personal realm as well, that if I want to find someone special and compete in a gay world, that I need to be that much more perfect than the next smart, sexy, talented guy. And I know it's just not going to happen....I'm never going to be the best or even close to the best.
Maybe that's why Model UN is so important to me. There I've been able to have the success that I haven't been able to achieve in my classes or in life in general. And right now it's frustrating because after all the work we've done in the past few years, we still have to fight tooth and nail for everything that we've already won. And with all my other life frustrations, I don't even have the time to do my Model UN stuff as well as I used to be able to.
So, Thursday night I started feeling crappy, and ended up dealing with crappy illness all Friday. I've had this horrid stiff neck for the past two days, which I'm not sure if it's related to my illness or just general bad fortune.
And the really sad thing about it all is that the rest of my academics are no better off than what I've talked about so far. I ended up skipping out of no less than 4 classes last week for all the various reasons. I had pointed out to me on Friday that I had a media analysis paper due for my international relations class on Monday, which I didn't even realize was due. I have yet to talk to the professor, and though I think I can work something out I can barely even rationalize in my mind how something like that could just happen for a whole week without me even knowing it. It really just shatters my entire illusion that I might even be on top of 50 percent of the things in my life. It just doesn't seem right that things should collapse on me so thoroughly in the span of one week.
And I'm just worried in general because other people in my ChemE class seem to be getting preselected for interviews while I haven't gotten one preselect to my knowledge. There's a lot of stuff that I have to do right now. I hate to sound all pompous and full of myself about my academics and whatnot, but when it comes down to it, I don't think that most people really understand what it's like to be majoring in Chemical Engineering at CWRU unless they've done something very similar. Maybe other people have it hard too, but in general I don't see people spending 60 hours in less than two weeks on data analysis for a lab report or whatever. I mean, it explains why my grades are mediocre in general, since I rarely spend the time I should on classes. My academic imperfections sometimes irk me more than anything.
I think that's part of the reason why my relationship with Allen wasn't working in the short term. This semester I have not even had time to have a full weekend free really. When you do schoolwork all week and then only have half a day on weekends to actually devote to fun stuff you can't maintain things. It's really crappy, but I feel like I'm bearing plenty of crap on my shoulders about stuff.....oh well.
I really don't have anything else to say. I probably don't have time to say it anyways.
Well, it's been a while. There's not much else I have to say for myself. The Model UN conference that we host here at CWRU ended around 3:00 Sunday, finishing something that had basically been in planning for a year (since the last conference). All told, we had over 100 delegates from 13 schools competing at the conference. We had a lot of people put in a lot of preparation time and efforts for this event. I personally did more than many, but that's my lot in life. I've been doing overtime on our conference for 4 years now, since I was in charge of the first one. I didn't stress anywhere near what I have in the past, but I was kept occupied at all times. I'm still the most knowledgeable person across the board as far as details are concerned, and since I got this thing on track the first time, I feel like it's my personal project to ensure that it becomes a great thing......I have a very personal stake in it.
The weekend was kind of rough for me though because the committee I was chairing had a lot of problems. As Saturday wore on, the debate got progressively more frustrating. By the time the evening session ended, the delegates had just about given up and I was so tired and flustered that I was having problems making some fairly simple rules calls. It was probably the most frustrating committee I've been involved in during my 8 years doing Model UN. The worst thing to me was that I felt most of the committee was woefully unprepared for the conference and the topics we had on the agenda. I literally could have jumped in at any point and done a better job of representing any one of the countries on the committee. Unfortunately, I'm looking at all this from the perspective of someone with 8 years experience, instead of how a rookie delegate might view it. It's easy for me to have huge expectations with hindsight. But in any case, the delegates managed to pull out of the downward spiral during the Sunday morning session, and turn in one of the best sessions of debate I have ever seen. So, despite the middle, I left a relatively happy person, especially considering the overall improvement in the conference in other areas.
Of course, the problem is, there is really no beginning or end to it all. Next week we will start meetings planning the next conference. The load is a thousand times lighter for a while, but there is still plenty of work to do.
We need to find a new conference venue after 4 years, because basically the law school administration here likes neither undergraduates, nor outsiders, nor our group using their building. They did everything possible to make things difficult for us this year while still keeping their painted on smiles showing. As it is, we expect to be growing beyond their building capacity in the near future anyway. We will be putting together our spiffy glossy CNMUN V brochure in time to pass it out at the Harvard conference in February, so before we send it to print, we need to know all of the basic info for the conference. This will require us to fill a lot of our staffing positions and make a lot of executive decisions.
In vaguely related circumstances, a new guy joined Model UN last week. I knew him vaguely from freshman physics and then from him being the president of the GLBA last year. I guess that he had some type of revelation a couple months ago and realized that he wanted to work for the UN someday, and maybe he should join Model UN to find out about it. So, *obviously* I'm somewhat interested in him personally. He's a fairly attractive guy and according to friends who know him better than I, he's very nice, but I don't even know if he might be seeing someone. I'm not going to get ahead of myself on this either. I just know that if there is an opportunity for even a very casual dating relationship with someone who's interested in Model UN, I have to look into it. I don't want to seem like I'm desperate or obsessive and weird him out either, because realistically I'm no less busy now than I was when classes started at the end of August. I'll keep you all posted if anything new happens.
Besides Model UN, a lot has gone on, of course, both in my social life and with school. I'm always keeping busy, and usually stressed out as often as not. I'm going to try to get some recaps of my life finished that were in the works when they were timely, but never got finished. Particularly, I owe everyone a description of what happened during my hiatus from mid-August to mid-September, and also from the past month when I haven't written. I know that I keep promising these things, and I rarely follow through, but I'm trying with my limited time resources. Now that everyone knows I'm still alive, I have an interview and two classes to prepare for. Drop me a line too....I'm still here even when I don't have new journal entries.
Eh, as you can see, I am trying to keep up with the writing now that my stress level has returned to a dull roar. In this entry I am finally revisiting the two time periods this fall when I was away from journal writing for an extended time period. Through the power of italics, you will now be able to jump back into the past with me. Isn't technology nifty?!
My hit count seems to have fallen off quite a bit this month. This was to be expected of course, since I hadn't written in a while, but I'm back in the saddle again. Actually, I think part of it is due to the fact that Robb removed his link to my site for me exceeding the one-month rule. I get the feeling that a lot of people jump here from his link. I talked to him tonight tho, and I think he'll be re-adding the link soon. In any case, I hope that all of you are glad to have me back writing again.
And with that, we'll now make the jump into the temporal continuum and travel back about 11 weeks to early September. This is the first long entry that I never quite got to the point of posting. It covers my life from about mid-August up to the date it was written.
6 September 1999
Happy Labor Day to all of you....well, to all the Americans anyways.....I don't think Labor Day is celebrated anywhere else. In any case, I took some time off from my labors for most of today to just enjoy myself. I chatted with a few people on ICQ today, and went shopping for the party we're having next weekend here at the house. I intend to finish this journal entry, clean my room up a bit, and do laundry tonight.
Getting into the chronological stuff......let's transport ourselves back in time to Friday, August 6, 1999. (You should be grabbing anything you'll need for a few hours at this point....this is going to be a long one.) I was on my way to Cincinnati to visit relatives along with my mom and my brother. We had a lovely trip, although very short compared to our week-long summer trips of years past. We did go clothing shopping, which was significant for me. I purchased two golf-type shirts for future dress casual sorts of occasions. More importantly, I got myself two new pairs of denim shorts, which I had severe need of, and two very cool club-worthy t-shirts. The shirts are well shaped and with appropriately short sleeves to show of my biceps when I lift my arms over my head. *I* think I look good in them anyways. The best part is that everything was on incredibly good sale prices.....who can ask for anything more?!
Of course, I had lots of fun with my family and all that......nothing too exciting to talk about there as it was a short weekend trip. I did get all kinds of skepticism about the trip I'm planning for next summer. At the time I was pretty peeved because it seemed they were just trying to dissuade me from going. I'm feeling better about it now though because they did bring up a lot of things I hadn't thought too much about before. With something of this magnitude I really need to think things out and plan carefully. Random off the cuff roadtrips are wonderful for some people, but the way I want to do this I need to plan a certain amount so I can afford to be a bit random during the actual trip.
The weekend after "family weekend" was a fun but hectic one. I went to a picnic for the Kent State Model UN Staff. I've helped them in the past, along with going to their conferences as a delegate about half a dozen times, so I know a lot of people there pretty well. I did a lot of general schmoozing with people and sustaining good relations. I stayed a bit longer than I hoped to, because that night I was travelling down to Columbus to visit Allen. That Friday was his birthday, so it was a good thing for me to visit. I left around 7:30 and stopped both at my parents and by the apartment to grab some stuff. By the time I got down to Columbus it was nearly midnight (if I remember correctly....things are a bit fuzzy), so I picked up Allen and we went over to his new place. We went to bed (and wouldn't you like to know what we did there...minds out of the gutter people!) We woke up and eventually went to eat at Don Pablo's.....yummy Mexican food! We grabbed some boxes from Allen's old place and stopped for ice cream. After that I had to leave....it was short, unfortunately, and I think rather rushed.
The next week was my last one at work. Things were very crazy for me because I was trying to finish up some of my work and also help the new co-ops learn the ropes of the Owens Corning project standards so they could pick up right where I left off. I stayed on a week longer than most everyone else because I needed the money.....the week before that, the engineering managers took all of us out to lunch at Shooters in the Flats. I hadn't been there since I went with Fr. Greg, our last associate pastor at my church at home before he was reassigned. The food was good, but I had forgotten how expensive it was. On my last day at work they had an end of the summer picnic, so I got some more fun time not at my own expense. We had fried chicken and Quizno's subs (which were really good) and a bunch of other stuff.
With work over, I only had the weekend before classes started August 23. Saturday I went out with my roomie Andrew and a few of his friends from home to the Attic, a new club in the Flats. It was moderately crowded, which was actually nice since you could move and breathe. I liked the music....and a most amusing, fucked up thing happened. In the middle of the evening this girl comes up to me and asks me if I'm wearing a G-string. I was so surprised by the whole episode that I couldn't quite summon up any wittiness, so I just said no. I'm sortof confused as to why someone would ask that.....maybe I was just deceptively lacking in underwear lines..... For whatever reason it only added to my good spirits.....women don't come up to butt-ugly people and ask them if they're wearing g-strings. In any case, Andrew and I ended up dancing a few songs with her and her friend before we headed out for the night. That was without a doubt the most fun I've had going out to a club. I really felt like I was connecting with people, which I think is all too rare a happening. When I go dancing I need to connect to have fun.....it's just a nuance of understanding that you're here, I'm here, and we're going to enjoy each other's presence in this communal mass instead of ignoring each other. I hate it when I'm in a room of people yet I'm utterly alone.....it's much worse than being alone in an empty room because when you're by yourself at least there's a good reason to feel alone.
The first week of classes went well enough. I have five classes this semester, which wouldn't be much except one of them is the Chemical Engineering Senior Lab. From all accounts it is one of the suckiest and most horrible class experiences I will ever have. I hope that I can survive it with my sanity intact. My other ChemE class is our design class. It's all about the factors that go into designing an efficient plant and how all that relates to the economics. Other than that I have a simple and incredibly boring statistics class, along with a more boring materials science class, and a wonderful class called Introduction to International Relations. I'm so thankful for my political science courses, and I only wish my other classes took less time so I could spend more time on that.
So, there's been so much else that has been going on......lots of seeing people again for the first time in months. I've seen a few more movies recently. We rented "Night at the Roxbury" last night. It was a stupid movie, but very enjoyable and funny nonetheless. I'm actually surprised I enjoyed it. Last Friday night we went to see The Matrix on campus. I can completely juxtapose The Matrix against Blair Witch. Where Blair Witch bored me to tears, The Matrix had me completely absorbed......and this was in spite of all the things that could have ruined it. Honestly, Keanu Reeves seemed utterly stupid and there were plenty of dumb things about the plot, and Ajey, this guy we know, was drunk off his ass and shouting funny things at the movie throughout, but even noticing all that stuff I was still completely absorbed. It was like a detached part of my mind was plucking all the distractions from the air and shoving them in a box. With a decent actor and a better plot that movie could have been unbelievably good.
The rest of last weekend was full too.....Friday night my car refused to start. I had to have it towed to a repair shop. It turns out that the starter motor was toast, so I shelled out almost $200 more on that......my car repair bill is just about to the $1000 point on the year..... Saturday afternoon Rhiannon had a party and we brought some food and whatnot. I had to leave in the middle because I was going with my parents to see the Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom Music Center. John Williams was guest conducting, and the orchestra played a bunch of his movie music.....Schindler's List, Star Wars, ET, Indiana Jones, etc.... It was thrilling to see, but way crowded. After the concert I went back to the party for a couple more hours. Sunday was devoted to church type stuff. After Mass we had a new students event with Italian dinner and some fun activities.
Way back during the time that this entry chronicles (between my I went out and got myself 64 additional MB of RAM, so now I am cruising much faster than with my old measly 16 MB. I'm still limited by my processor, but lots of things have benefited. Better yet, my three roommates and I went out and got a hub and 10BaseT cable and connected all our computers in a little LAN. Since I have the fastest modem we are going to use my computer as a gateway to connect ourselves to the internet. It's truly thrilling. To borrow a figure of speech, our geek erections have just grown by about a foot.......LOL......sorry for the bad imagery.
Now, let's go "Back to the Future" to the middle of October. This was a point, just a bit over a month ago, when my stress was getting all nifty (NOT) again. Engage engines....maximum warp.
16 October 1999
Okie, this is going to be a somewhat jumpy entry, but I have a lot to cover and not much time to cover it in, since I need to sleep sooner than later. First off, I am in fact not bad off right now. My last entry really freaked a lot of people out I guess. It was really just a venting entry. I think that if you look back in my journal, I have one of those every month or two. I didn't mean to inspire such vibrant reactions, but oh well.
Things have been improving all this week really. I got through a lot of my stress items last week, which freed me up to enjoy myself a bit more this week. Last Saturday I went to Cedar Point with Andrew and Rhiannon to ride roller coasters all day. It was cool and somewhat rainy, but really nice compared to some times I've been there. I was, of course, looking at what cute guys I could see there. I think my friends were vaguely disturbed by my horniness...LOL.
All during the week I was doing some schoolwork, some Model UN, and some relaxing. I put in a good amount of time towards my gathering of eighties MP3s. I am now up to 305, which was really impressive. I'm looking to get 400-500 by the time I'm done, and burn them onto CDs. It's so nice to have the campus network to gather this stuff on.....I'd never get close to the point I'm at without it.
Model UN is going well enough, even though we're behind on a lot of things, and I have a lot to do. We had a couple more schools register for our conference, which brings us close to the point we were hoping for. Also, next weekend is our first competition, so we are busy preparing for that.
Andrew and Rhiannon and I are continuing to spend a lot of time together....I'm enjoying it. Thursday night we went shopping for cool club clothing. Andrew and I came out of it with some tight silky body-hugging shirts. I'm quite proud of mine.....it makes me look quite good I think. This weekend is Fall Break. In the morning, the three of us are driving down to the Ohio Renaissance Festival south of Columbus. We're going to spend the day there, where hopefully I will find a nice yet inexpensive pair of leather boots to wear with my other medieval costumery. There's nothing worse than a medieval outfit with tennis shoes. I'm also expecting to see Allen down there, as he is in the dance guild at the festival. I hope we get to spend some quality time while I'm there, as this is the first time I'll have seen him since we stopped seeing each other. After that I think we'll be having a night out on the town in the clubs with a couple of Andrew's friends who go to school down there. Sunday I'll be going home for my dad's birthday. After that, the rest of the vacation will be filled with Model UN preparation and school work.
Hmm, other than that, there's not too much going on in life....next week will be very much busier again, especially with me leaving for the Model UN conference Thursday evening. I've been following world news as always. I was particularly annoyed by the Senate voting down the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. That sends a really nice message to other nations, I'm sure. Republicans make me bitter.....then again, so do Democrats.
So, that was the state of things a little over a month ago. To fill in the gaps, the weekend went well. I didn't find any boots I was looking for at the festival, but I did have a lot of fun and got to see Allen for a good while. It was nice to be able to hang out again for the first time in months. Andrew, Rhiannon, and myself, along with Andrew's friends, had a marvelous time going out in Columbus. We went to The Yucatan, up on Busch Boulevard and partied until Andrew's friend Brett got into a little tussle with some asshole who decided to throw his drink on him. At that point we decided that we'd had enough of the club.
The Model UN conference later that week went better than we could have expected. It was at the Ashtabula Branch of Kent State University, so the general social opportunities were pretty bleak, as people who know of Ashtabula, Ohio can attest to. We in Model UN, however, make our own fun, so it was all good. A few people stayed at my house because it's only about 20 minutes away, and everyone else stayed with a friend of the club. She owns this huge house, and has wine from her vineyard and sandwiches ready for us when we come back from the conference in the evening. She is truly a blessing for us because she is so hospitable, and she saves us on the hotel rooms that we would need to get otherwise. Despite having over half of out team as rookies, we managed to win 11 individual awards at the conference and regain the first place team award that we lost last year by one point. It was our most impressive showing at the conference to date, so our confidence for the year is really much improved.
Another thing that happened during that October time period, is that I started working out in earnest. I know I've said it was going to happen a million times before, but this time it finally did. Basically, my roommate Andrew needed a new workout partner when Calvin left for his job in Michigan, so over Fall break, we went to the gym. Our other two roommates Dan and Nardo also started lifting then too (this is motivation at work!) As it stands, we've had a difficult time trying to match up schedules for everyone, so we paired off in twos for the rest of the semester, but hopefully things will work out better in the spring.
In any case, the net effect of all this is that I have been lifting three times a week, for the most part, for over a month now. It's been painful at times, but I think the pain will be worth it. I have not seen much difference visually yet, which is to be expected, but I'm starting to see an increase in strength. This is very nice, since I feel like I'm lifting some of the lightest weights in the whole gym at this point. I've got a good attitude about things, which is really keeping me going too. Watch out world! By the time I make my trip out west next May I should hopefully be all buff and ready to turn some heads...<evol grin>
Well, on another note, I think I'm going to try to convince my parents to forego other Christmas presents this year and help me financially to get a new computer. As it stands, this entry is actually being written for the second time, after MS Word crashed killing the first couple paragraphs. The problems stem from all kinds of general 5-year-old-computer type issues. Basically, things culminated when I was working on Powerpoint slides for my senior lab oral presentation on Friday, and things crashed, making me have to reschedule my presentation and skip all my classes that day to redo work. I might have been able to avoid all that, except for the fact that my MS office software continued to crash repeatedly when I tried to do simple things like add tables and graphs to documents.
So, this might be my excuse to finally get myself a laptop that I've wanted for some time. The best thing is that with this timing, I could bring the laptop with me to the Harvard MUN conference, thus giving myself a distinct advantage over some of the competition. The real question is how this will fit into my overall money situation of surviving the next semester and getting a new car in April, and then making my trip around the country. I'll touch on the job thing more very shortly, but basically, until I have something lined up and in stone, I won't be able to guarantee the computer, the car, or the trip. All of these things depend on the fact that I will need work, having depleted my worldly savings to do them.
So, on the job front, I had a really cool interview with Lubrizol, a locally based company that is the world's leading producer of performance oil and fuel additives. I wasn't very sure about it going into the interview, but the interviewer really impressed me and got me excited about the position. She showed me a new additive they are getting ready to market that will help diesel fuel burn cleaner. It's really exciting for me because it is classical Chemical Engineering work, but with a very innovative and forward thinking approach that I appreciate. I can honestly say that this was the first interview I've had where I felt like the job could be a long term career and not just a stepping stone to something else. I may be setting myself up for disappointment if I get the magic rejection letter next week, but I'm really hoping that my enthusiasm during the interview showed through. I'm looking for any extra prayers and good Karma people can throw at me on this one.
Rather than babble on about more stuff and risk not getting this posted, I'm going to stop myself right here and give everyone a shitload of stuff to read about. I hope you all enjoyed our extended trip to the past, and I'm sure that you'll all be hearing from me sooner than later.
Wow....protests in Seattle. This WTO meeting has caused quite a stir hasn't it? Curfews and whatnot. I haven't talked to anyone out that way, but I hope you guys are staying safe. Actually, come to think of it, Mickey and Arti, who are out that direction, are two of the more socially conscious people I've met in the online journal realm. I'm going to have to check the journals now for any thoughts on that front.
I'm not an economics expert, but in general, free trade has always seemed like a good concept to me. I admit that the job consequences can look bad, but the larger benefits seem to stand out. Maybe it's easy for me to say that since I'm young and flexible with my future as compared to someone who is settled down with a family. I don't know.
I guess that, being the optimistic-realist that I am, I look towards the future with expectations of success. I look at life and see all the things that we can do better and improve at. There are so many people that fear the future and fear change. So many people want to keep the status quo for no other reason than that it's a known quantity. I can sympathize, because I like a feeling of security just as much as anyone else, but for better or worse, life is change. The secret to being successful is to anticipate that change as much as possible and try to work with change for your own benefit and the common good. No matter how hard you try to stop change, you can only hold back the water so long, and it's far more beneficial to try to make the water work for you. My goal is to keep looking to the future with hope and confidence rather than fear.
I had a fun, if uneventful, Thanksgiving holiday. I took about one and a half days home with the family. We had wonderful homemade food and some of the relatives were in town....I think there were 16 of us in all this year. After dining at my grandparents I headed home to my parents' house to vegetate. There was a new episode of Will and Grace on so I convinced them to not flip channels. I really wish I hadn't tho....the entire episode ended up being a Jack coming out to his mother thing, and I was just totally uncomfortable the entire time. I know my parents were not comfortable either, but not just because of that, but the entire modern sit-com thing. They just don't understand the humor in most shows these days, which is why they watch Nick at Nite all the time (not that oldies are bad, I like them too). Modern themes have nothing to do with their life.
So, the semester is winding down this week. I have a quiz and a final lab report presentation amongst my assorted classes, and then all that's left is finals. I'm feeling fairly confident still about my grade situation this semester. Some classes seem lower than expected and other seem higher, but overall I think I'm staying close to my goal. I'm expecting to get mostly B's, with hopefully an A or two and no C's. The basic goal is to stay above a 3.0 for the semester, which would help my GPA a lot right now. It's a sad state of affairs that I can say that, but I think it's more important that I'm dealing with classes better now and improving from where I was before.
And on the topic of improving, I'm still keeping up with my workout schedule after over a month. I've missed a couple times for various reasons, but the important thing is that I'm getting in the habit, where I miss it when I don't go to the gym. I'm sorry to note that there's no distinct visible changes yet, but that was expected. I'll give it a couple more months before I expect to start seeing a big difference. Right now I'm just getting to the point where I'll try upping my weights on some exercises by 5 pounds next week if the rest of this week goes well.
Hmm, and besides all the other thrilling things in my life, the holiday season is upon us. On Saturday I went with Rhiannon to buy Christmas decorations. She got a lot, but I just bought a nice fake tree so far. I wanted to consult with my roommates before I bought a bunch of decorations they didn't like. One of my favorite things to do is go to the mall. I often will barely buy anything, but I just like to be out amongst the crowds reveling in the excitement and energy and looking at what is on the shelves this year.
I'm truly getting in a holiday mood right now....snow fell today, and the feeling is just in the air. I have this wondrous sortof mood vision that comes to mind at this time of year. I'm sure it's something out of a movie. In it, snow is falling lightly and I'm just walking along with friends in the downtown of a big city on our way to go shopping all bundled up in gloves and hats and scarves. We admire the lights and decorations all around us, while in the background someone is singing Christmas carols.
To enhance the mood I think I need to buy a new Christmas music CD. Does anyone have any suggestions? I saw the N'Sync and 98 Degrees CDs in the stores, but I'm not sure if I'll like them or not. I'm looking for something with a few nice harmonies. If it happens to be sung by some hot young guys, all the better. Please let me know if you have any suggestions, as I want to buy myself some music soon.
I'm also starting to plan for New Year's festivities. I'll probably go buy some extra batteries and store away a bit of extra food and water for Y2K just in case someone out there is incompetent (incompetents in this world....I doubt that....<g>) As far as the holiday tho, Y2K has been my savior because my dad wants to be home to start up the generator for the greenhouses in case the electricity goes out, so I get to party with my friends rather than my family this year (which has continued to get duller as the years go by). So, we are having a big New Years party at my place, but with a limited attendance. I'm trying to come up with good food and beverage plans at the moment. I want to balance homemade delicacies with the ease of party trays or whatnot. In any case, I'm pretty excited by the prospects.
Well, that's my life right at the moment. If you were to say that it sounds pretty good you'd be absolutely right. This isn't to say that I don't have my stresses. I still have some school stuff to keep up with, and plenty of stressful Model UN stuff. I'm also still trying to figure out how to meet up with a wonderful male friend to spend some time with and share some of my life with...my hopes for Paul (the new MUN guy) have gone nowhere because I never see him enough to even have a conversation. In any case, he lives in Lakewood (that bastion of gayness) which may not bode well for him having a single status at the moment. I'm not going to worry about it too much however.
The priest at church on Sunday talked about Advent (the four weeks before Christmas) as a season of waiting and anticipation. He discussed how Advent is not just a time of passive waiting, but of actively preparing for Christmas. He actually made an apt comparison to the waiting of pregnancy....what you are waiting for is already there, yet the process is not yet complete. I'm trying to take this to heart in my life right now. There are a lot of things I'm waiting for, from a relationship to the end of classes, so I need to remain patient, yet keep preparing and working towards all of these different things. I feel like this is a good attitude for me to latch onto in my life.
On a somewhat related vein, I was reading what Robb wrote today about his up in the air relationship status and the "wait and see" attitude that he's adopting. I can sympathize with what he's going through right now because of all the uncertainty that's involved in letting things work themselves out. I can't really advise too much because if I did, I would have told him to give up on the Chadley thing a couple times ago. I guess idea I would put forth is to hold off on new relationships for a bit. What you need now is good friends, not relationships. I have no doubt that if any of the potential relationships reads my journal they're not pleased to see that, but if collective experience is any indicator, rebound relationships are seldom long for this world. Take things slowly. Don't be passive, but don't rush into things impatiently either. A healthy dose of anticipation for the future is what is needed right now.
Ok, I think that's enough commentary from me this evening. Need to get things posted so someone can read this (all the times I've reread it don't count).
I've really gotten into the Christmas spirit this year. I think it has some to do with being away from home for the holidays really for the first time. I'll be home later this week for Christmas, but I'm not moving back there for the month like I have in the past. At the beginning of the month I went out and bought an artificial tree and decorated it with my ornaments from home. Since then I've been baking cookies and going shopping constantly. I made about five different types of cookies, and we had a big party a week ago where we broke out the cookie cutters and made gingerbread and sugar cookies. I also got myself the 98 Degrees Christmas CD. At first I was a bit disappointed, as I am with most Christmas CDs because they are never quite like I want, but it has really grown on me.
Rhiannon and my roommates and I had a gift exchange last night. We all got lots of nifty stuff from each other. I got a Backstreet Boys CD and calendar among other things. Honestly I'm not as into them as everyone around here seems to think, but they make some fun music, and make nice eye-candy. Really, I just like to sing "I Want it That Way" with Andrew and Rhiannon because it's a nifty song that annoys everyone else around here....<vbeg>
Later today I am going down to Columbus to visit Allen for the day. No expectations here, I'm just looking forward to having a nice visit and hanging out. We're probably going mall walking and then to dinner. He's also giving me a birthday present that had been late coming in the mail. Things were sortof over between us before it arrived, but such is life I guess. I'm excited to visit though. Allen is still such a good friend. We shared a special relationship while we were together, and I don't think I would ever want to take that back.
My life seems to be on one of those upswings right at the moment. It's really sort of nice. I apologize as always for the month that has passed since last writing. Between finals and all the pre-Christmas stuff the past couple weeks I've been busy living life. The other thing is that I was trying to write a thoughtful entry focusing on some of my other journal friends, and that always takes me far too long as I revise a dozen times trying to get it to say just the right thing. In any case, here I am now.
I checked my semester grades the other day, and after some really rough final exams I was pleasantly surprised to find two A's and three B's waiting for me. As I may have mentioned before, that was the best I've done since the first semester of my freshman year. All of my work in the past few months paid off, I guess. We'll have to see how motivated I can get myself in my last semester, but I expect that I can do at least that well to finish off my time here.
I guess you can say that I have had a down experience. I was really hoping for a job with Lubrizol from my interview last month, but I got the rejection letter last week, so the job search still continues. I guess I had prepared myself for the worst, so it didn't hurt as bad as I thought it might. I'm a bit bitter about the reasons that I think I might have gotten ruled out, but that doesn't matter much now. I expect that I will have to look around extensively in the spring...perhaps all the people who interviewed with Lubrizol will dis them for someplace else and they'll be forced to call me back. Then again, maybe I don't want to work for them anyways.
Wow....I am in music heaven right at the moment. There seems to be a harmonic convergence around my being....LOL Last week I got my free CDs for joining BMG music club through Rhiannon. I got a variety of older and recent stuff. New would be Tal Bachman and Matchbox 20. Older stuff includes greatest hits from Fleetwood Mac and the Bangles, a C+C Music Factory CD, and Pet Shop Boys Discography (which comes highly recommended by RobbTD). I have also pretty much finished with my 80's MP3 collection. I've gotten all I could find from 1980 to 1991 burnt onto CD. Between all that, I should be set for a good while.
To make things even better I got to see one of my favorite bands, Shades of Grey, play on the 11th. It's been a couple months since I saw them last, so this was important to me. To make it even more important, they announced earlier that this will be their last show for a while, as they take time off to write and explore their music further. I had such a fun time, and it was such a deep spiritual experience for me. I love them because you can completely feel the energy flowing. I have no doubt that a lot of you would just love them. They are very environmentally and socially conscious. To top things off, they played an old Jazz tune "A Room Without Windows" that they have not done in a couple years, which happens to be one of my favorites....it had been so long that they forgot the words at first, so I actually helped them along initially, when they asked the audience if anyone remembered them. It was so exciting for me, being a big fan of theirs for the past 3 or 4 years.
The working out has continued to go well also. I've been keeping up with it three times a week most of the time, and I'm showing some progress in what I can lift. Last Wednesday I actually put the 45 pound plates on the bar for a couple reps on the flat bench. Give it a few months, and I might actually be able to bench my own body weight....that will be exciting. Monday was a bit rough because my wrist was sore for some reason, but I took it easy and worked through it. Today I was feeling much better.
As for the future, I'm headed home for Christmas and then down to visit the relatives in Cincinnati for four or five days. After that I'm back here to prep for our big New Year's party. It's quite exciting actually, we've got a whole dinner and evening planned, and we invited 10 or 20 people over for it.
In the meantime I also need to fit in a bunch of preparation for Model UN. I have a position paper to research and write for the Harvard Conference. I also need to make all of our travel and hotel arrangements. Then by January 5th I need to have a chair letter written for the Commission on Sustainable Development, which I'm chairing at the Kent State High School MUN Conference.
I suppose I should be thinking up some good New Year's Resolutions. I've never been one to believe that the passing of a random moment in the solar cycle of the planet has much to do with making radical life changes, but I guess that I can give it one more shot. We'll have to see if I use the end of the year as my time for a "year-in-review" sort of entry or if I'm going to wait for my one-year journal anniversary in February.
In any case, I should get on the road to miss traffic and see Allen soon. I hope that all of you have a Merry Christmas if I don't get a chance to talk to you before then!
Well, as a matter of fact, not only did the world survive flipping the thousands digit, but I've not witnessed any Y2K insanity as of yet....how convenient....
I've decided to save my year in review analysis until January 17 so as not to use the arbitrary calendar date January 1. For those of us without eidetic memory, January 17 is the date on which I made my first journal entry, one year ago. I figure that this is a good way to chart the changes that have come while I've been reporting my life to the world.
So, in the meantime I will continue to report on my life as if no great and strange milestone had been passed....which is not really far from the truth.
My visit with Allen pre-Christmas was really fun. We went to dinner and shopping at City Center mall in downtown Columbus. We went to Games People Play and got each other some RPG stuff. Allen wanted a new Vampire sourcebook, which I bought him, and he got me the GURPS Ultra-Tech 2 book. After that we went back to his place and sat around watching TV. His new "involvement" Steve stopped in for a while too. I don't know quite how to characterize their relationship....I guess very interested is a good operative word. I met Steve the first time when I went to visit Allen at the Ohio Renaissance Festival...that meeting left me with a decidedly unfavorable impression. My impression was greatly improved this time, and I told Allen as much. Time will tell what happens, hopefully only good things.
After passing out for the night at Allen's and waking up, I drove him and his roomie to work and headed back north to Cleveland. I spent most of the day cleaning my room to find the stuff I'd need to take home for the holidays and then I finished my travelling for the day. I had an interesting drive home through a wonderful snowstorm that gave us what would be a wonderful white Christmas. I spent some time with my home friends that evening since I had not seen most of them since the summer then went home and passed out.
Christmas Eve day was mostly spent getting ready for the Christmas Eve festivities. Every year my dad's side of the family comes up for Christmas at my grandparents' house, and we host Christmas Eve dinner at my parents' house. I spent most of the day helping my mom clean and cook and not lose her mind too much. As usual, half of the relatives took to my grandfather's garage for most of the afternoon to drink and bullshit, and as usual they came over pretty snookered already. There are few experiences more fun than being able to get drunk with one's relatives. Dinner was wonderful and everyone had a good time. Much good natured ripping on each other ensued for most of the evening, and most everyone went to bed stuffed and pickled.....LOL.
Christmas was quite wonderful....the snow put me in the proper mood and frame of mind for festivities. We had a lot of good food and general merriment as is expected in my family. The day after Christmas we went down to visit my mom's side of the family in Cincinnati til before New Year's. We ate even more good food, and spent the rest of the week there until New Year's eve day, when we travelled back north.
I did well in the gift department, acquiring various things that I needed. My parents got me a sortof trenchcoat for wearing over my suit, which I really needed so I don't look like a dork when I go to interviews in the winter. Aside from that I got a dress shirt, three ties, many pairs of dress socks, a new hairdryer, the Joy of Cooking cookbook, a Goo Goo Dolls CD, the Best of George Michael, and a 300 MHz processor for my computer from my brother (assuming it will work in mine).
So, after the Cincinnati trip, I got back in time to prep for the big New Year's Eve party we've been planning. We were expecting 22 people total, so there was plenty to do. We made it potluck to ease our burden a bit, but we in fact ended up with way too much food, and even more alcohol than we planned for. I was not too stressed about the party surprisingly enough, but I did keep busy enough that I didn't get to really sit down and watch the TV or chat with anyone for too long. Everyone had a great time though, and no one got sick, thank goodness. Cleanup was still a chore, but we managed. Now that I have my new cookbook, I will have to try more dinner parties, though a bit smaller I think.
So I've been pretty much hanging out this week. I got new glasses with smaller frames. I'm not sure that I like them, if only because I can't glance to the sides as far without going past the lenses and going blurry. I suppose I'll have to get used to them. On the 3rd we went to my roommate Andrew's rec center at home to lift because the campus facilities were closed. We got to do the hot tub, steam room, and sauna while we were there, which was a bit of a treat.
I'm going to be leaving shortly for a trip to Washington DC with Johan and Jeneanne until the 11th. I'm staying with Jeneanne's family and also with John from Model UN. I will probably not get this posted until after the trip because I have a bunch of paperwork to deal with for the Harvard MUN conference which will be occupying a bunch of my time even on this vacation. I intend to relax and have fun at least part of the trip tho.
I've just returned from a wondrous weekend in DC, and I have lots of little joys to spout on about. I had to deal with preparing Model UN position papers and other paperwork to send to Harvard, which threatened to hang over the weekend like a dark cloud. I managed to avoid dwelling on that and letting it stress me out except during the two occasions I was actually working on that stuff in earnest. Resigned to the idea that what will be, will be, I did not succumb to stress and did not become cranky about anything.
The weekend started out with a fairly uneventful drive to Jeneanne's parents' in Virginia on Friday. We just relaxed while I was there, playing cards, watching movies, building puzzles, and helping them mulch the flowerbeds. John stayed over Saturday night and took me to his church Sunday morning. I got to sing with their music group there, which was entirely delightful. His church is very multicultural, so we did both some African American music and some Spanish.
Sunday afternoon we went to the National Art Gallery and perused the exhibits. I hadn't gone to see art in a long while, so it was a delightful experience. There was so much we didn't get to see, but that leaves something for a future trip. After the Gallery, we headed back north and went to the most wonderful Italian restaurant. It was a bit expensive, but the atmosphere was perfect, the food was excellent, and the portions were large. I had the thought to meet up with our fellow journaler Brian Gluckman (Driven by Design), so I sent off an e-mail to him.
John had an appointment Monday morning, so I headed into the city with him after that. John had to work for the afternoon, so I got to explore the city on my own. I met up with Brian for lunch near where he works. This was a fairly significant banner moment as it marks the first time that I've ever met another online journaler in person. I have to tell you now that the picture that he had posted online an age ago does not do him justice. He's a very good-looking guy, and as interesting in person as his writing indicates. We talked about all kinds of stuff, from relationships to computers to work and school to journalers to DC itself. Both he and my friend John seem to think that I should consider finding a job in DC and moving there for the opportunities available in the city. I have to admit that if nothing comes up in the Cleveland or Columbus areas I'm starting to consider that possibility.
Before we parted, Brian suggested that I check out the Phillips Gallery in his neck of the woods, Dupont Circle. I took his advice and hopped the Metro to there. Right here, I have to admit that the Metro in DC is a wonderful thing. I can finally see where public transportation makes sense in comparison to the expense and hassle of driving around a city. If only Cleveland had decent public transportation....
When I got to Dupont Circle, I had little trouble finding the Phillips Gallery, but unfortunately, it is closed on Mondays, so I changed my plans and decided to just wander and explore the city a bit. The Church of Scientology had a big nifty building there, which, coincidentally I'm sure, had a big triangle on the sign fnord. A very nice, and fairly cute, guy tried to convince me to come in for a tour and to watch a short informational video. I had to decline, as I wanted to explore various other things in the city before my day ended.
I spent a bunch of time in this gay/lesbian/etc store called Lambda Rising. It had mostly books and magazines, but also miscellaneous stuff. I savored the time to just peruse the books, as I've never actually been to a store that's entirely devoted to gay type stuff before. I ended up picking up an issue of The Advocate, which had an interesting interview with Matt Damon, and a book called Gays, Lesbians, and Family Values. I've gotten through a bit over a third of the book, and I have to admit that I'm very pleased with it. It's the kind of book that I've been looking for in that it reaffirms some of my own feelings and also casts some new light on things for me.
After the store, I checked the metro map and decided to walk my way down to the World Bank building in search on enlightenment for Model UN. I wandered about Dupont Circle a bit more, managing to repeat my path about a dozen times second guessing my sense of direction. Eventually I sorted myself out and headed south. It wasn't too bad a walk to the World Bank. I had a most wonderful time in their bookstore. If I could have afforded it, I would have bought hundreds of dollars in books, but I held myself to one book on biotechnology and a discounted book on water management. I also got a student discount which I was not expecting.
By this time, 5:00 had rolled around so I started to work my way along Pennsylvania Ave. urgently towards where John works. I passed the White House and eventually found a metro stop where I called John and arranged to meet him at his stop for the trip back to his apartment. I packed up and John drove me back to Jeneanne's to spend the rest of my time finishing up Model UN stuff. The trip to Cleveland was uneventful today, giving me some time to read my new book and to just chat.
Tomorrow I'm getting back to the weight room again and preparing to start a new game of GURPS, which I will be running. I'm pretty excited since this will be the first time that I've run this game, having only run Dungeons and Dragons previously. Other than that, it's just general stuff going on until classes start next Tuesday. I have to remember to register for my classes, as I got my online PIN number last week.
Anyway, the countdown to "Zup: Year in Review" is now down to 6 days. I have already started outlining some of the stuff I'm going to talk about, so you can expect me to be on time this once. There are some things not to miss, and my first anniversary is one of them. Hopefully I will see you all in less than a week!
Last updated 11 January 2000.
Comments? Mail to thezup@oocities.com
|