Sometimes it’s best just to spill the contents of one’s mind, I think. And this post is an example of such spillage.
I woke up to a beautiful snowstorm, the kind with the heavy, wet snow that sticks to everything and makes all the tree branches sag until they touch the ground. The flakes were big and it was coming down at maybe an inch an hour. I think in total we had about seven or eight inches. Thank God for the snowblower! And thank God for Troy-Bilt. Gotta love American-made products. They’re so tough; that thing is still kickin’ after, like, ten years. And it has heated handles. Clearing the snow off the driveway is a joy. That is, until the plow comes around for the fifth time and throws a pile of snow at the end of the driveway, and you have to dig it out after the snowblower’s been put away. Gross.
I sold three more books on Half.com this week. After shipping and the commissions they take out of the sales, I seem to be averaging around a 50% resale value on most of my books. Which isn’t great, but it’s also a lot better than what Broad Street would give me. Though I think the U.S. Postal Service may have lost one of my shipments. It was supposed to go to Lima, Ohio, and I shipped it out on January 5, but so far the Delivery Confirmation thing tells me it hasn’t done anything since being accepted in North Abington, MA. Uh oh.
Because the roads were so nasty my dad didn’t go to work today, so instead I’m working with him tomorrow and Wednesday, and hopefully Thursday, too. I’ll be ripping out a fireplace and may get to use the hammer drill. How cool is that? Destroying stuff is so fun, like the time we smashed one of those old claw-foot tubs into giant, really heavy, sharp chunks. The only problem is, working with my dad is not all fun. Or rather, it is, except that I have to get up at five o’clock and then I inevitably come home and fall asleep, tired and sore. But it’s money!
Our traditional Thursday Nite™ is happening this, well, Thursday night. Since the party didn’t happen last Saturday and Chris has exams until Wednesday night, we’ve decided to hold a traditional Thursday Nite™ get-together down in Rhode Island again. The plan is that it’ll be just like Drew’s birthday party, minus the birthday. Woo! One more party at home before I go back down to school.
And speaking of going back to school, it’s looking like it’ll be Friday evening, Saturday, or maybe even Sunday now. Amazon won’t have delivered the book I need by the end of the week, so I can’t read Impending Crisis for AMST201 like I’m supposed to. So I guess there’s nothing vital that I need to get down there early for.
Oh, but Macworld! It started today. And Steve Jobs’ keynote is tomorrow. Word on the street is that we’re going to see the MacBook Air, an ultralight portable that’s ridiculously, unbelievably thin and revolutionary. I can’t wait to see what other goodies he introduces. Now, if only I had some money to buy a new computer in the next year or two!
The DCR actually got back to me, and in one business day—how about that! Someone at DCR forwarded my email to the supervisor for Wompatuck (another state park), who is also in charge of Ames Nowell (after the big budget cuts of the early 2000s, a separate park ranger for Ames Nowell was eliminated from the budget). I like that local government can be responsive… if only all government were like that!
I was going through more old stuff on my computer today, and found a quote from Professor Pfister in an email he sent AMST majors back in May of 2007:
Like so many of you, I find the ambition and creativity and risk-taking involved in American Studies thrilling not only as knowledge production but as a way of thinking more critically and self-critically and seeing more creatively. American Studies is something critical that one “does” in one’s life, not just in the classroom.
I like that. I need to work on the “seeing more creatively” part, though. Which is weird, because up until high school I think that used to be my stronger ability. Hmm…
I was going to talk about Wesleying, but I think my thoughts are best kept to myself for now.
I may get a haircut this week. My dad has been taking subtle shots at my hair for weeks now, and it is getting uncomfortably long. The tangles, the extra time needed to wash it, the fact that it froze in the snow today, and the annoyance of never being able to keep it out of my eyes is weighing on my mind. I think I might take an inch or two or three off. I know that’s a compromise with my plan to shave it all off, but I figure I can always do that over the summer, when it would also serve to keep me cooler. We’ll see.
Ah, and summer. But first comes the semester known as Spring 2008. I’m excited. If I can keep up this going to bed and waking up at “normal” hours thing, I plan on running and/or going to the gym every morning, taking a shower, maybe even eating breakfast, and then going to class at 10:30 or eleven. I plan to start eating some fruit everyday, read everything that’s assigned for class, and get all A’s, no more A-minuses. Find a serious girlfriend. Bike around the Middletown area a lot. And a myriad of other self-improvement tasks that I’ve been meaning to fulfill for years, but have never fully achieved. It’s that good ol’ Justinian drive for perfection, except that if I can keep up normal hours, it just might be possible to succeed where before I have failed.
Perfection, here I come!
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