tonight's diversion

I clicked over to nasa.gov after seeing "In the Shadow of the Moon" this weekend. They have some fun animations about the new lunar program.

It's been days since I saw the movie, but I'm still thinking about how cool space travel was. My earliest memories are of the bedroom I shared with my brother, back when we lived in our old house.

The wallpaper was Skylab and all of the other heroic NASA stuff. Science was cool back then. There is no spirit of wonder in the space program. It as though we just gave up.

These days, we ostracize people as geeks and nerds who dare to dream about space travel. I think there is a rational explanation for this. After the Challenger exploded, the world became too scared to even think about going into space.

But I think my fascination with science fiction arose because of those early images of skylab that I slept under every night. I've never stopped dreaming about space. It still sticks in my head that people actually made it to the moon before. NASA even has probes on Mars, and some have even left our solar system.

I think that society needs to focus on progress, even though it is costly and difficult. We can't just let ourselves become complacent and accept the limits. We have to learn how to reach beyond.

tonight's frustration

Well, I made some vast improvements to my personal web page with Comcast. Now, nothing comes up. I have a sneaking suspicion I chose to do this on the day that they are doing maintenance as part of their swanky new upgrade, so I probably just screwed my whole page.

I didn't get notification that the pages would be down today specifically, just an e-mail two or three weeks ago saying the upgrade would happen and pages would be down "sometime in the next month." I decided I would pester comcast, so I sent them a message asking why I was getting the 404 error.

Yeesh. I hope it's up and running for tomorrow. I really like the new layout. The links should be at the bottom of the blog if you feel like checking tomorrow.

Here's a sneak preview of my improved header. I did the notebook photo myself.

tonight's project

I'm working on changes to my website while "watching" a video for my philosophy class. I don't know how far I'll get, but we'll see. I better get the coffee ready for the morning.

today's fun site

This is absolutely hilarious.

Sorry, I can't post anything more than that right now. I need coffee.

last week's assignment

Last week, I covered the Indiana State School Music Association (ISSMA) Marching Band State Finals in Indianapolis. I had my pocket digital camera with me and I snapped this using the sport setting on the camera while I was driving. Somehow the sun rising on me gave me a good feeling.

yesterday's home

[author's note: sorry for not keeping up with the whole "paragraph per day" goal. I've been really tired.]

I was surrounded by butter cream colored walls and mounds of my sister's school supplies. There was truly nothing left of myself in my parents' house.

We moved here when I was nine, far out from the city, nine tenths of a mile north of Dupont Road, the country highway that wound its way through the sleepy hamlets of Cedarville and Leo. There was a small subdivision near us, and a country gas station that probably looked the same as it did in the 1930s.

Our home was on a sizeable spread of acreage with a shock of pine trees separating our main home area from the flood plain of the creek that had no name, but was major enough to be a direct tributary of the Saint Joseph River.

My parents had the house custom built. It was designed to resemble our old home in the Brookside Park subdivision, but this time with a front-facing attached garage, and larger, more spacious bedrooms and living areas.

The home had many improvements, such as a screened-in porch, and two decks that added plenty of outdoor living space. The biggest improvement was an in-ground swimming pool. I used to love swimming in it. I was typically the first person in the pool every year, no matter if the weather was 60 degrees outside, I was in the frigid water as soon as I got home from school.

But that was all years ago. Twenty one years had passed since we moved into the house. I had since moved out, moved back in, and moved out again. This time, I was in my bedroom looking for something, but I don't remember what it was. I was house sitting for my parents while they were on vacation in Tennessee. I barely swim there anymore.

"Butter cream walls," I thought to myself. "They do not go with the burnt sienna carpet." I never would have picked this color.

I live in the same city as my parents, but I'm deep within the limits of the city, in an historic neighborhood that has tall trees that triumph over early twentieth century houses. My own home is over a hundred years old.

I call it my home because to me, it really is. I've been living here for six years now, and though I've put thousands of dollars into it, it has kind of a hold over me, and I can't quite bring myself to leave it. The modest mortgage also helps. I can't rent a two-bedroom apartment for what I'm paying for the 1,400 square foot three-bedroom house.

I make the thirteen plus mile trip to my parents' house every week or two to catch up with the rest of the family and to check to see if it ever feels like home. It never does. I think it's because of the butter cream walls.

my career

Is it just me, or is the Daily Show like really lame lately? What's with all the reruns? I wish I worked for the daily show. I want to take constant vacations.

Next Week's Agenda

Next Tuesday night is the second time that I'm going to attend the eMentor eVent at IPFW. Cutesy spelling aside, I did learn a few things last year, so I'm going again this year. I'm kind of excited since I know what to expect.

my career

This internship is kicking my literal backside.

I am totally braindead from the weekend, but to be honest, I treated myself to some time with friends, family, and the first night of at least eight hours of sleep in roughly two weeks.

Indianapolis was great. I should sleep on floors more often I think. My knock off tempurpedic mattress is nice, but I think it must do me some kind of good to just be on a flat, hard surface.

Now I'm off to bed, for less than eight hours, of course, and I'm bittersweet about it because I have to give back the newspaper's laptop tomorrow. It's incredibly nice not to be tied to my hulking desktop machine. The laptop experience is so oddly liberating. I think it actually made me write a better story because I didn't have to drive to the paper and all that stuff. I think I'm going to try to check out used laptops and maybe get one after the tax refund season. I'd prefer a Mac, but for writing, which is what I use the computer for most, I would take a PC.

The newspaper's IBM ThinkPad is a very solid-feeling machine. It's heavy, yet light enough that I don't feel overwhelmed. It's amazing how far laptops have come since my dad brought the first one home 15 years ago. They are so small.

Anyway, I've got to get going. At least I know that I must be wicked because I get no rest.

yesterday's assignment

yesterday I covered the ISSMA (Indiana State School Music Association) 2007 State Marching band championship.

I am exhausted. I will write more later.

tonight's movie

Death Proof finally came in Netflix. After being notified of "Long Wait" then "Short Wait" in the queue, it finally came.

In my opinion, this is the superior of the Grindhouse features. I don't know why I like this movie so much, but I really do. It's a whopping 113 minutes with the "missing reels" that were cut from the theatrical release.

The movie could be described as very Freudian. A man using his car to kill women, so on and so forth, but the twist is that the latest group of women he stalks fights back. I don't want to give away too much. Suffice it to say that it's a much bigger head trip than Planet Terror because it's much more plausible. There are no machine gun legs or zombies, so it is much more up my alley.

My one complaint is that I miss both movies together in the theater. I was sincerely hoping for another look at the Werewolf Women of the SS trailer.

today's grammar

I'm in a writer kind of mood today. I actually worked on all three stories I've got in the queue at the newspaper tonight. I found another job site to which I am posting my résumé, journalismjobs.com

I am not pimping them, just myself, really. I am taking a chance on Google AdSense, simply because I might actually get enough people where I'd get a $5 check every six years.

Anyway, I've added Katie, Katie, and Andy's blogs to the links below. You should check them out. (So long as you aren't Katie, Katie, or Andy. That would just be creepy.)

So it's the end of Day 2 for this blog. I'd like your input, is the possessive + noun too pretentious? I kind of like it, mainly for its specificity.

(Oooh, "specificity" that word makes me tingly. I love phonics. Remember "sounding it out"? Isn't it cool how words actually get spelled correctly when you remember phonics? Just don't get me started on asinine words like "women" (wymin) and "thoroughfare." You do not want to get me on the pro phonics train.)

Anyway, let me know about your thoughts. I have to do the dishes.

yesterday's representative and tomorrow's mayor

US Rep Mark Souder (R-Indiana) has officially withdrawn his endorsement of Matt Kelty. Three cheers for good ole Souder. He has a scathing indictment (pun intended) of the Kelty campaign. Check it out on the News-Sentinel's page.

Yesterday's news

So this weekend was the party. It was fun to drink and not have to worry about driving home.

Dave babbles and speaks in ethnic slurs when he drinks. I think he's regressing into Eric Cartman. Dave and Chad are loud snorers. Poor Katie.

Hoaglin's is definitely the trendiest breakfast I've ever had, but the meal was good. It was pleasant on Mass Ave, overcast, but mild. The servers are impossibly thin. One look at the crowd around me and everyone is a hipster. I'm in my loose Old Navy Khakis that got ripped at the party from an errant nail on a chair, accompanied with my two favorite souvenirs from San Francisco -- my purple "PRIDE" tshirt with the pink star and the unbelievably warm and comfy charcoal hoodie emblazoned with "San Francisco" over it. Everything I'm wearing probably cost less than our waiter's jeans.

On the sidewalk outside the café, there are more hipsters who are even thinner. It's getting so creepy. These people must be foreign. I've never seen such thin people in the midwest. They're practically see-through. The dogs that they walk, springer spaniels, a puggle, a cavalier king charles, each undoubtedly weighs more than its owner. I take comfort in the fact that these thin hipsters who weigh less than a podunk phonebook didn't just have the best eggs benedict of their lives.

tonight's bedtime

The Tivo had another suggestion for Frasier. Of course, I had to watch it. I love Frasier, simply because I can feel entertained without being demeaned. So I wasted even more precious time when I could have been reading my library book, or working on my notes from tonight's interview at the newspaper. Chad's been in bed nearly three hours, but I'm still awake. I can't go to sleep. I am too exhausted.

I should check my e-mail for the third time today. Nothing new. More crap from Monster and 1-800 Flowers.com. SSDD. Cool new vid from Dave B from SNL's weekend update. Funny.

Then I check Towleroad. There's a great video of Jake Gyllenhaal on a UK talk show promoting Rendition. I kind of want to see it, but I remember how disappointed I was with that stupid gulf war movie, Jarhead. He hasn't made a decent movie since Donnie Darko. Now I'm sounding too emo for my own good.

Let's open a blogger account and see what happens.

tomorrow's coffee

This is my first post. I got to thinking that I should move to a blog because it seems to be a bit easier than livejournal. We'll see how this goes.