Engineers make Horrible Jokes

The integration jokes are the worst--trust me--but this comes close. Consider the following excerpt from my Fluid Mechanics textbook, which is talking about pressure waves in compressible fluids:

"These pressure disturbances travel a considerable distance ahead of the airfoil before being attenuated by the viscosity of the fluid, and they 'warn' the upstream fluid that the airfoil is coming (the Paul Reveres of fluid flow!)."

I didn't even add the exclamation point. It's that bad already.

Pendulous

Nothin'. I just like the word.

Fallen in Love

I love libraries. They smell nice and they're very quiet. Who wouldn't want to spend a whole day of their Thanksgiving Break here? Where else can you find an 8 volume, 85 pound, red-leather-bound set of books on the History and Literature of France--in French? I can find books on Milton and the Literary Satan just a few dozen yards away from Aristotle's Politics and John Stuart Mill's On Liberty and Control. Walking down the aisles I can learn that Cowboy Poetry Matters. I can find out about the Practical Uses of Dyes in Biology. I don't know what Blonde is about, but I could find out. Isn't it fantastic? I am amazed at my own self-control as I sit, ready to leave, taking only 13 of these literary gems with me.

Glory of Exhaustion

"Exhaustion means that the vital forces are worn right out. Spiritual exhaustion never comes through sin but only through service, and whether or not you are exhausted will depend upon where you get your supplies. Jesus said to Peter--"Feed my sheep," but He gave him nothing to feed them with. The process of being made broken bread and poured out wine means that you have to be the nourishment for other souls until they learn to feed on God. They must drain you to the dregs. Be careful that you get your supply, or before long you will be utterly exhausted. Before other souls learn to draw on the life of the Lord Jesus direct, they have to draw on it through you; you have to be literally "sucked," until they learn to take their nourishment from God. We owe it to God to be our best for His lambs and His sheep as well as for Himself.

Has the way in which you have been serving God betrayed you into exhaustion? If so, then rally your affections. Where did you start the service from? From your own sympathy or from the basis of the Redemption of Jesus Christ? Continually go back to the foundation of your affections and recollect where the source of power is. You have no right to say--"O Lord, I am so exhausted." He saved and sanctified you in order to exhaust you. Be exhausted for God, but remember that your supply comes from Him. "All my fresh springs shall be in Thee." "

--Oswald Chambers

Just Plain Suffering...

Laurel is now laying on our puffy green couch with her leg elevated. She really wants to post pictures of her recent crafting expeditions but that will have to happen when she can stay awake for more than fifteen minutes. This week should provide ample time as she recovers. Her knee surgery went well, but she will have to be on cruches for the next six weeks. Right now she is going to drag herself outside to watch our brother's firework's show in the street. Pray for her.

Suffering for something Else

Too much science! Too much of my concrete lab! Too many photos of things too small to see! The rest of myself is crying out for some attention, manifested by my intense desire to do something crafty and make something beautiful. I want to make purses, and paint my room, and get new curtains, and choose a new accent color, and sew and stamp and paint--even though I can't really paint. I think I will.

Things that I look at a lot, which you probably Never wanted to see

These are my titanium/PVP nanowires. Aren't they be-a-utiful?



This is a different sample, at 20x instead of 100x.



Yet another sample--did I mention that I was up to 84? At ten photos per sample, I'm only about a quarter of the way through the photographing/contact angle analysis. But the monotony does lead to some interesting data.

A Child's Perspective

When we grow older, we often forget what our opinions were when we were younger. For instance, when I was a child, I strongly disliked "Pride and Prejudice" and any mention of it. I don't recall why. Now I can't really imagine not liking it. And so I found it very amusing to hear little Jocelyn Meyer explain why she thought "Pride and Prejudice" (at least the movie) to be quite boring. "All they ever do is eat!" she said. "They go out, blah, blah, blah, and then when they come back all they're doing is eating again." I suppose it's plausible.

The Ability to Sneak

I returned home from the Nuart Saturday afternoon to find that the stairs leading down into my basement no longer existed. There was a large hole, and some concrete, and that was all. Apparently, my brother was rebuilding them. I had known that it was going to happen, just not so soon. Anyway, the stairs did get rebuilt. And now, as long as one doesn't lean on the handrail, one can get into the basement while making no noise whatsoever. Sneaky.

New Layout Anyone?

I don't like it. Not really. But I was bored with tan.

Slightly Bent

The brain is a marvelous instrument. It is very adaptable, bending and twisting itself to accomodate new surroundings. While a handy trait in many circumstances, you can catch it messing you up a bit. So that when you see a picture of a wire 4 microns in diameter you say, "Wow! That's huge!" My brain has torqued itself until it thinks in nano-terms.

You thought the last ones were bad...

I've got a list of "great" words going. Top on the list currently are:

photolithographically
titanium tetraisopropoxide
electrohydrodynamics
birefringent
anisotropism
photomicrograph
kurtosis
electroosmotic

I'm also thinking about starting a great names list. It will certainly be headed up by a Mr. Ugbolue. Can you imagine? "Umm, Professor Ugbolue, I'm having trouble with my fluid mechanics..." Sounds a bit unwieldy to me. :)

My Life for the Summer

I am working in a Chemical Engineering lab. So far, I've done a lot of reading. Technical papers, mostly, with titles like:

“Titanium (IV) oxide nanofibers by combined sol-gel and electrospinning techniques: preliminary report on effects of preparation conditions and secondary metal dopant.”

“Systematic parameter study for ultra-fine fiber fabrication via electrospinning process.”

“Experimental investigation of the governing parameters in the electrospinning of polymer solutions.”

"Highly Visible Photocatalytic Activity of Fluorine and Nitrogen Co-doped Nanocrystalline Anatase Phase Titanium Oxide Converted From Ammonium Oxotrifluorotitanate."

"Remarks on the use of multilayer perceptrons for the analysis of chemical sensor array data."

Exciting, isn't it?

MRI

Before I went in for my MRI this morning, I did a little bit of research. It's actually pretty cool technology. But basically, you just lay in a big magnet for about half an hour, and try not to move. I had heard from others that it was a bit stifling, and could make you claustrophobic since you are put in a fairly narrow tube. Fortunately for me, since I was only having my knee imaged, I only had to get slid in halfway, and I was out of the tube from my shoulders up.

It's a very interesting sort of thing, to have nothing to do for thirty minutes other than keep absolutely still. They let you listen to some soothing waterfall/bird harp and oboe music, which actually helps, but other than that, there is nothing. Suddenly, every muscle twitch is magnified; you can feel yourself tense up. Relax. If you start worrying about movement too much, your breathing quickens. But don't fall asleep, or you could wake up with a jerk, and the whole point is that you're not supposed to move. The whole thing was made just a little more interesting because of the slight pain in my knee. The only way they can set it up is if your leg is completely straight, which for me right now isn't that comfortable. It felt kind of like forever, but I was actually in the hospital for less than an hour all told, including a couple of x-rays.

Results should be in by the middle of next week. Pray that they will be clear, and allow the doctors to form a good diagnosis, and that treatment will be effective.

I haven't played tag in years.

Theoretically, once you're tagged with this thing, you're supposed to list seven random facts about yourself, and then tag seven more people. I only bend to the rules so far: I will put up some random facts, but I will not tag other people (mostly because I don't know enough people in blog world that haven't already done it).

1. I take back the title. I love playing tag, and have most likely done it recently.

2. I find working Calculus problems to be an effective method of stress relief.

3. If you switch the letters in my name around, you get the word "allure."

4. I drive a stick shift car, and will never go back to an automatic. I can't explain it, but I'm addicted to the manual transmission. I hear it's a common affliction.

5. If someone were to give my life a color theme, they would most likely pick teal because I have so much teal stuff. I know, I know--the color of gangrene.

6. The only place I should never be allowed to enter with someone else's credit card is a used bookstore. I'm helpless.

7. I don't like whipped cream. According to some (*cough* Patsy), this disqualifies me from voicing any opinions about food whatsoever.

Happy Saturday to you all!

Finals Week = Boring

I'm not one to stress about tests anyway, but this week has been far beyond non-stressed. Monday morning I got up a couple of hours later than usual. That afternoon, I took a multiple choice test in Physics. Having no other occupation for the day, I made plans to go see a movie with a couple of friends. Tuesday I lazed around in the sun, visited the used bookstore, and chatted and drank coffee. I hung out at the Nuart for a while, and watched Seinfeld with Katie and Naomi. Today, Wednesday, I lazed around in the sun some more. I did a few brief moments of work to finish my short story revision, print it, staple it, and turn it in. I picked up my Chemistry paper. Then, expecting to spend the next hour and a half writing essays about Shakespeare, I headed for the Admin for my final. It took me five minutes. 25 matching questions later, I left the Admin and began to laze around in the sun some more. Which brings me to right now. Here I am at the Nuart again, with nothing to do. Tomorrow will bring me one last test, which I can fail soundly and still have an A in the class. Motivation to study = zero. So that's it. The dreaded Finals Week has found me lazing around, largely unoccupied. It has its charms, but when it comes down to it, it's just boring.

The Ironies of a North Idaho Church

Should you have passed by the log cabin on Howard Street between the hours of 9:30 and 9:50 this morning, you would have seen an interesting sight. First you would have noticed the 50 or so people milling about on the front lawn. We looked like churchgoing folk too, so why were we outside? The fact was, our one deacon had had the talent to lock his key to the church building inside it. And nobody else has one. Deacon Knecht will never live it down. Ever.

Had you stayed around to listen to the conversation, you would have heard several plans for getting in. One, we could break a window. But that's messy, and you have to pay for the damage. Two, we could get a ladder and get Matt Gaither in through the chimney. He wasn't so hot on the idea. Three, we could pick the lock. Or maybe we couldn't; several prominent church members attempted. And had you waited a bit longer, you would have seen a parishoner produce a tool box from his truck. Then you would have seen the pastor of All Souls Christian Church breaking into a building by removing the hinges from the front door. Yep, we took the door off, and then we unlocked it. (And then we put it back on, of course.)

A day to go down in Church history to be sure.

Encouragement

Sometimes I wonder if our teachers aren't encouraging us to procrastinate. I mean, all it takes is a simple question and someone with decent puppydog eyes, and there you go: two week extension on your paper. Voila! And those of us that thought we would have it done early two weeks ago decided that we could afford to put it off, until now, when we realized that we could no longer get it done early because we found we were very, very busy.

Green Tea, Part II

Note: if you have not read the beginning of this story, do not read part II. Read the previous post first. Additionally, if you didn't like the first part, don't bother reading this one.

CJ was listening to Jack Johnson on his iPod, and didn’t hear a word. He kept running, and running. Pretty soon he had gone three miles instead of his usual two, and then another. By the end of mile five he was running faster, and he was exhausted, and he felt marvelous. He practically leapt the college wall before slowing to a jog to cool down. Finally he went into his dorm and crashed onto a sofa in the common room.

“Will someone, for all love, bring me a glass of water?”

“Oh I’d love to,” said Richard Snofbury who was perpetually on hand.

CJ downed the entire bottle of water that Richard Snofbury brought him and walked down to his room where he laid down and took an unplanned little nap. When he woke up it was very dark. He blinked a few times rapidly; his contacts were dry. He squinted warily at his surroundings. He was not in his bedroom, and if he was not entirely mistaken, he was on the third floor of Henderson Library.

The lights were off, and the floor was silent, deathly so. Light came through a few high windows, but it was the cold, faint light of the moon and it illuminated little.

What am I doing here? he thought. Do I sleepwalk now? And why is it so cold? And—what is that?

What was it? It is hard to say. It was a chill feeling, a frightening feeling, but not a dangerous one. It was an object close to him, but not a thing, and not a person. It was not logical. Then it stepped forth from a darker shadow into a lighter one.

Wait. Stop. CJ’s breath came in double speed; he cocked his head to one side and he stared, stared long and hard, and he strained his ears to catch the sound of a footfall, and he heard none.

The apparition walked up the long hallway once, twice, and CJ still had no motivation to move or speak. He sat still in his chair, like a big pink stalk of celery. The ghost turned and made its third walk down the library. He stopped about twenty feet from the table where CJ sat and held out one hand. To CJ’s dazed mind, it looked like the hand of Virgil, offering to lead him down through the depths of Inferno and up through Purgatory. But he couldn’t accept the invitation; he couldn’t seem to move at all actually. And whatever it was that was going on, he knew he was too frightened to do anything about it anyway. It was above all very tiring, and all he could think of doing was sleeping. But before he relapsed into unconsciousness, CJ noticed that the ghost was wearing a tie pin the shape of a crescent moon, and it shone in the darkness. That’s interesting, he thought.

At roughly six-thirty the next morning, CJ woke up in his own bed with a headache like an angry water buffalo. This condition was not helped by the fact that he immediately began to try to think very hard. He was perplexed. How did he get back into his dorm? In his pajamas no less! Surely his roommate would know if he had been up in the middle of the night.

“Joe! Joe wake up!” CJ shook his friend’s shoulder hard. A groggy face appeared from beneath the covers. “Did you hear anything last night? Like did you hear me get up and leave or anything?”

“Huuh? Dude, you were here all night. I heard you snoring, and it kept me up, and as if that weren’t bad enough, now you’re waking me up again. Thank you so much.” Joe turned his face toward the wall and went back to sleep.

Here all night? How could that be? And CJ didn’t snore, or at least he didn’t think he did. No one had ever told him he did. Was it even possible that he had dreamed the whole nighttime episode? He wasn’t under any particular stress, wasn’t prone to hallucinations. What could it have been, though, if not that? Could it have been real? Why not? And then again, why?

CJ’s headache was not being improved by the incessant wrinkling of his forehead. Exhausted more than he felt he should have been, he swallowed four Ibuprofen and flopped back down on his bed and slept through his first two classes.

When he woke up once again his headache was better, but his mind was still puzzling over the questions. What really happened? CJ dressed slowly and walked out into the brilliant noonday sunshine. Things were much harder to hide in the light than in the eerie seven percent light of the moon; things were much clearer at noon than midnight. His mind entirely wrapped up in his perplexity, he did not see Maryanne approaching from behind. It startled him entirely to hear, in aged and sepulchral tones, words which he felt should not have been addressed to him.

“Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv’st,And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends.No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,Unless it be while some tormenting dreamAffrights thee with a hell of ugly devils.Thou elvish-marked, abortive, rooting hog.”

Maryanne finished with an increase in volume and a glare of fierce intensity directed at CJ’s bewildered face.

“What?” he asked.

“Am I very convincing?” asked Maryanne in her usual voice. “Someone silly decided to make me play Queen Margaret in this semester’s Shakespeare production, and I’m not sure I can do it. Please tell me if I was any good.”

“No, no. You’re very good. All too good, in fact.” CJ was still a bit shaken from the initial shock of being addressed with such a curse.

“Oh good. Hey, are you okay? You look a little funny.”

“No I’m fine. Just a little preoccupied, that’s all.” He smiled a bit and walked away towards Henderson Library. He climbed the two flights of stairs to get him to the third floor, and he paused as he looked over the room. There it was—the exact chair he had been sitting in the night before. It was as innocent-looking a chair as any other, but that had nothing to do with the dread CJ felt as he looked at it. His mind was still perturbed. What on earth had happened? In frustration he pulled a Calc textbook off the shelf and began working problems.

Joe walked by, “What on earth are you doing?”

“I’m doing Calculus problems. I find it relaxing.”

“You’re insane.”

“Sure, whatever,” muttered CJ. Politeness is a lovely thing, but there are times when a person’s frame of mind will not allow it.

Joe left and quiet returned to CJ’s corner of the library. Quiet? Not really.

Someone around the corner was typing on an exceptionally loud keyboard. It sounded like a two-finger typist, who made frequent mistakes. Honestly, why couldn’t people just take the time to learn correctly? The student shelving books two rows down ought to have stayed home. Either that or the dust on the books was too much for him. Each sneeze seemed to increase in volume and intensity. As CJ tried to settle back into his chair, the air conditioner turned on with a low hum. He tried to block out the sound, but a woman in high heels walking across the polished wood floor effectively drowned it out for him. How far was she going to walk? Oh sure, just turn around and come all the way back. The elevator sounded a quick ding and another girl in heels stepped out. Two are better than one? Not likely. A boy dropped a book on his toes and cursed it soundly. A tallish man started to use the photocopier, while the secretary on the floor began systematically opening and closing every single drawer in her desk and file cabinets. An imaginary object brushing against CJ’s ankles made him start almost out of his seat, and just as he was about to reassume his pretense of contemplation, a group of twelve high school students entered the library, chattering like demons.

“Gaaagghh!” he uttered somewhat more loudly than he had intended. Sighing angrily, he slammed his books together and walked out of the door. As it shut behind him, there was a brief silence in the room, and then a boy laughed. Some people.

CJ chose to go outside to think things over. He was like Superman—he drew his power from the sun. Maybe it would infuse some sense into him and he could do something about his problem. One, he could figure out what happened, or Two, he could forget about the whole thing and stop worrying.

Perhaps it was wishful thinking to hope for an answer from the sun, for Nature teaches us very little beyond our own finitude. And that wasn’t very helpful for CJ. His brain seemed frozen and he only mechanically greeted his friends and acquaintances as they passed him. Jennie, Mark, Joe, Frederick, George, Lisa, Richard Snofbury—wait, was that Richard Snofbury? It looked like him, but at the same time, it really didn’t. He wasn’t wearing glasses; he wasn’t stuttering; he wasn’t blinking, or sniffing, or sweating, or looking bovine in the least. And his hair was done in a much more attractive fashion than before. What had happened to him? He even looked taller. And to top off the transformation, he was wearing a crisp white shirt and a red silk tie.

“How is your day going?” asked Richard Snofbury smoothly.

“Swell, thanks,” replied CJ dubiously. He narrowed his eyes at this new person, and thought that there was something he ought to have remembered. And then he saw a silver tie pin in the shape of a crescent moon fixing Richard Snofbury’s tie to his shirt, and it became clear. Not the details, but the big picture. “It was you—last night, that was you!”

“Very clever of you to have noticed,” said Richard Snofbury, with a bit of sarcastic inflection. The look on his face was at that moment not a terribly attractive one, as it contained a good deal of condescension and pride. But it was the fellow’s one moment of glory, so I suppose we must not grudge him his bit of unholy triumph.

CJ was still piecing the bits together. “The water you gave me…that was part of it,” he paused, “but how did you keep Joe from realizing I was gone? He said he heard me snoring all night!”

“George slept in your bed for most of the time, actually,” he smirked.

CJ shuddered. He would be washing his sheets that night. “Wow. And that’s it, I guess.” He was still a bit dazed from this interesting series of revelations that he didn’t know quite what to think. And then all of a sudden he did. He knew exactly what to think, and without any warning, he exploded into howls of laughter. He laughed and chuckled and giggled like a schoolgirl and wheezed until the tears leaked out of his eyes and he had to lean on a rail for support. Richard Snofbury, while no longer wearing his glasses or cow-like expression, was yet perplexed. This was not the reaction he had anticipated, and he was slightly disappointed. It is very difficult to gloat over a hysterical enemy who cannot speak for laughing.

Finally CJ recovered himself, and gasped out between chuckles, “That’s the best joke anyone’s ever played on me.” He patted Richard on the shoulder. “Congratulations!” And as he continued laughing, a smile started creeping over Richard’s face. It was pretty funny after all. And it proved that CJ was the best kind of prankster, because he could take it as well as give it out. Through their laughter that afternoon a fast friendship was formed, and a fearsome duo that would terrorize St. Osmund’s unsuspecting for the next two years.

Green Tea

As promised, here is my story, Part I. Don't ask me about the title--Kevin named it.

St. Osmund’s College was most attractive entered from the West. A broad walk lined with oak trees led up to the imposing front of gray stone. This building housed the offices of the professors, and the sundry managerial people that keep universities running. On passing through this building one entered a large paved courtyard. In the center, engraved in the gray stone, was the name of the college and the symbol of the moon with these words: “Ex luna, scientia et sapientia.” Dormitories were to the left, and the buildings of the separate colleges stretched out to the right and center. The whole, including some spreading lawns, was surrounded by a wall of noble height and breadth which joined the building most prominent on the west side. What the purpose was of such a fortification no one was sure. Nobody but old women and new students ever bothered to walk along it to find an actual gate, but rather climbed it like any sensible, athletic person should. Some popular crossing spots had begun to take on the appearance of ladders set into the stone, so often were they used. Chester Oliver named the northwest corner spot the Pranksters’ Passage, conveniently situated as it was between the students’ quarters and the teachers’ offices.

The College was generally upon the top of a wide, flat hill, with the town of Lenton surrounding it on three sides and a wide-ish forest on the fourth. A solitary spot, almost like to its own city, was the College; but whether an oasis of sanity or madness I cannot say.

Chester Oliver was a sophomore, and he went by CJ. “J” wasn’t in his name anywhere, but he hated the name Chester, and CO just sounded dumb, or worse, like he was named after carbon monoxide. As a wise older student, CJ felt it was his duty to explain to all new students the workings of the school. And since he was popular and good-looking, most people tolerated him, and some liked him, and some hated him.

There had always been a rumor that a ghost walked the halls of Henderson Library. CJ believed it. He went out of his way to insure that everyone else did too. On the first Tuesday of term he sidled up to Richard Snofbury, a freshman with an unattractive comb-over.

“So did you hear about the library?”

Richard Snofbury shoved his thick-rimmed glasses up on his nose and stared at the arm CJ had draped over his shoulders. “I suppose it will have books in it,” he said.

What a dull fellow, thought CJ. He smiled chummily, “There are rumors about that library.”

“What sort of rumors?”

“The very best sort,” said CJ. He leaned closer to Richard Snofbury and whispered in his ear, “They say that when it gets late, they turn off all the lights on the third floor. It gets real quiet—so quiet that you can hear the floorboards creaking if so much as a mouse walks on them. But even so, you never hear Him coming.” A dramatic roll of the eyes and a mock shudder served to turn Richard Snofbury’s look of dumb suspense into a look of even dumber horror. A cloud passing in front of the sun at that moment completed the effect.

“H-him?”

“The Ghost. He paces the length of the library three times, and if he sees anyone near, well, I wouldn’t want to be there.” CJ stood up straight and removed his arm from Richard Snofbury’s shoulders. “It’s okay though, because he only walks during the full moon. Any other time you’ll be fine.”

“Full m-moon is tomorrow.” And CJ walked away jauntily leaving pale, cow-like Richard Snofbury with a head full of the hauntings of Henderson Library.

There was more to the library myth, of course, than what CJ knew. Myths don’t grow from nothing. They start somewhere, and rarely end up in the same place. In this case, it started with a group of twelve people that swore to having seen an apparition twelve successive full moons. None of them knew the others well until their stories came to light. But that was so long ago that no one remembered their names anymore, or anything else they said. St. Osmund’s was a very old college.

The forest on the college’s east side hadn’t been there long enough for any myths to be born about it, but that didn’t really matter to CJ. Fact and fiction were essentially the same to him, and he would believe one as soon as the other. People that knew him well knew this, and if they liked him, like Maryanne did, they ignored the trifling reality that fact and fiction are quite different animals.

On the first Wednesday of term, CJ and Maryanne were walking from the dorms to their separate classes—CJ to English Lit. and Maryanne to her third semester of Calculus.

“I heard that they’re cutting down part of the forest this year to build a new dorm. I don’t know why, but I’m kind of sad. I like the forest just the way it is.”

“You do know what they say about that forest, right?” CJ raised his eyebrows.

“No, not really,” said Maryanne. “Is it about haunting by any chance?” Maryanne was one of the only people who consistently laughed at CJ’s stories and all of his seriousness. Well, she laughed at just about everything, but the point is that they got on together fabulously.

“It actually isn’t, so there. It happens to be a funny story, if you don’t mind a little death. But if you don’t want to hear it—” CJ trailed off in a mock pout.

“Of course I want to hear it. I’m always ready for a funny story about people dying,” she said, eyes attentive and mouth blankly straight.
CJ narrowed his eyes, but decided to go on anyway. “There’s a story that there used to be a bear that lived in that forest. And he was a pretty nice bear if you stayed away from him. Not really of the teddy variety, but decent enough for a bear. But once, a student decided to go find him. The bear was so angry at being bothered that he attacked the kid. And they say that the bear was so old that he didn’t have any teeth left, and so he gummed him to death.”

“He was drowned in bear saliva, you might say,” joked Maryanne.

“Or turned into a squeaky toy for the grandkids.”

“Now that’s awful,” she laughed. “Where do you come up with these things?”

“Oh, here and there,” said CJ airily.

“Whatever, I’ve got better things to do.” She took off running across the courtyard and threw a smiling “See you later!” over her shoulder at him before she disappeared.

CJ continued walking down toward his classroom. He didn’t exactly want to go to English Lit. He’d rather be going to Calculus, but he’d already taken it. Reading was a fine thing to him; he enjoyed it, loved it even. But he couldn’t stand being lectured to about it. Give him Chesterton or Dickens and a quiet room and he would be satisfied for hours, but ask him to analyze what he had read and you might as well ask him to run a marathon. Even people that don’t sweat over a couple of miles dread the very idea of a marathon. But there was nothing for it. CJ stepped out of the sunshine into the cool gray stone building that said “English” next to the symbol of the moon.

Later that afternoon, CJ, Maryanne and Jennie were in the library.

“I can’t believe that they gave us homework on the second day of class. It’s exceedingly lame, especially when the weather is so nice, to have to sit here and integrate ridiculously complicated functions. And they said the first week was all review, huh,” muttered Maryanne.

A few minutes later, it was Jennie that exploded, “I can’t figure it out!! How on earth do they expect you to integrate that?”

CJ glanced up from Hemmingway for a moment and said, “Try trig substitution; it’s probably an inverse function.”

“You didn’t even look at the problem.”

“But am I right?” He paused as she looked up the inverse trig integrals.

“Well, yes, but—that’s really not fair,” she said, and glared for a moment before completing the problem. It is a frustrating situation when a friend, no matter how dear, displays his intellectual superiority with no effort at all.

Richard Snofbury sat down at the table with the three friends. CJ had absolutely no use for him. He was exactly like his older brother, a boy who CJ had tricked the last year into putting cockroaches into Professor Harding’s office while Professor Harding was still in the building. George Snofbury had been caught climbing over the Pranksters’ Passage with an empty jar, and had been rather severely punished. CJ had been a bit sorry after he saw how badly poor George was punished, but a prank was a prank and of course it would have consequences. It wasn’t as if George were lastingly hurt or anything, and it had been awfully funny to see him holding his jar of cockroaches at arms’ length because he was so frightened of them himself. And Richard Snofbury was so like George that it didn’t seem worth his while to CJ to even bother playing a practical joke on him. Maybe something small, like short-sheeting his bed, but nothing interesting, because CJ knew exactly how Richard Snofbury would react. A perplexed look would slowly creep into his dumb, cow-like eyes, and after a few half-hearted attempts to find out the perpetrator of the crime, he would give it up, and go back to studying biology. It just wasn’t worth the trouble.

“So what’re you guys doing?” sniffed Richard Snofbury, blinking awkwardly.

When CJ made no reply, no acknowledgement really, Maryanne replied, “Calculus problems for me and Jennie, and they’re going awfully. What about you?”

“Umm, not much. I wish I could help you, but I’ve never been very good at math myself, and even though I took some Calculus in high school I don’t think I could help anyway, because you’re probably way ahead of what we did then. I really prefer biology to math because all you have to do is memorize things and there’s not so much work to do to figure out answers and stuff. I had a really good biology teacher in high school and I think he did a lot of good for me, but my math teacher was boring.”

As boring as you are, perhaps, though CJ. I wonder if he ever says anything interesting, even by accident. He stood up abruptly. “Well, it’s been fun, guys, but I’ve got to run, literally.” He snapped his book shut and jogged to his dorm where he changed clothes and started off running into town. A couple of miles a day kept him in pretty good shape, and he did it because he hated the thought that some day he could become a couch potato whose only physical activity was flipping channels on the TV.

Old Mrs. Lewis was sitting at the corner café with Mrs. Roberts, and they saw CJ running by, like he did every day.

“That boy sure does look nice when he runs,” said Mrs. Lewis in her old motherly voice. “Somehow, watching him run makes me think of being young and healthy and strong again, and I’m almost ready to jump up and join him.”

“It’s all well and good, but I hear some mighty queer stories about him coming from the college, so I do,” said Mrs. Roberts.

“Oh, he may be a little odd, and I don’t deny it. But all the same, he’s a nice kid,” smiled Mrs. Lewis.

Update

Today, I can walk. It's an old kind of stale saying, but it's true: you never realize how valuable something is until it's taken away. And my goodness, walking is so NICE!! We'll see about volleyball. Right now I'm in cautious mode, because while playing would be wonderful (I'm jealous every time I see the people out on the sand courts), I value walking too much to risk it on a short pleasure.

I also have a short story due on Monday. It's going to be awful. And I know that because at this moment I have a grand total of about 4 pages out of 20 done. Incidentally, I also have no plot. Because it's going to be so awful, I thought I would subject my few but faithful readers to its awfulness a couple of pages at a time over the next week. Stay tuned...

Of all the idiotic things to do...

This semester has largely been spent by me in great rejoicing that I get to play volleyball a couple of times every week. I joined an intramural 4v4 team, play with them on Mondays, and then goof off with a bunch of other friends on Fridays and Saturdays. It's fabulous. Or should I say, it was fabulous. Yesterday I managed to have enough talent to injure myself. A jump landed wrong on another fellow's foot, a rolled ankle, a wrenched knee that's so swollen now that I can't bend or straighten my leg. And that's it. No walking for me. The guys I was playing with wouldn't even let me drive myself home. Now I have to sit, and be taken care of, which is simply irksome. I've got some lovely crutches, so at least I'm semi-mobile, but I can't carry anything, like a cup of coffee, or a book. And the worst part? No volleyball... for a period of time as yet undetermined.

A visit to Student Health Services tomorrow will hopefully result in a doctor's note for a temporary disability parking permit. Somehow crutching for a half mile to get to class isn't a very appealing proposition.

Quote for Today

"To pretend not to believe anything is just a lie, and to pretend to believe something without thinking it's true is contradictory."

Before and After

I spent most of my Spring Break redecorating my family room downstairs. For some time it has been cluttered with junk and useless furniture that got piled with more junk and it was, in short, not a very pleasant place to be. I didn't manage to get a really good "before" picture, since much was taken care of before I thought about it. So take the following pic, and add for me, mentally if you will, a ping pong table, blue, against the left wall, covered in folded laundry and assorted junk, a desktop computer and monitor (and miscellaneous computer paraphernalia) on the desk in the back corner, four monitors gracing the sofa and chairs, books stacked any which way on the tall shelves, and paper stacked a foot high on the near table. Only then will you get a true idea of what I started with.

Here's another one of the general clutter. Notice the wrapping paper with no home, the CD player that doesn't work, and the boxes of records.

So first of all, I decided to paint. White walls are all well and good for hospitals, but I was tired of the lack of color. I bought a grayish blue paint, which looks very much bluer on the walls than it did in the can, but it's ok. This pic is only after coat one; coat two covered its imperfections nicely. Notice also the new light fixtures in this picture. Verily, I believe they provide twice as much light as the previous ones.

During this whole process, Colleen's room became the stacking site for, well, pretty much

everything. --Don't worry, it's all better now...

We built a shelf specifically for folding laundry upon. Here it is, stained, but not yet varnished. Ahh, through this I suffered. The stain had to be removed from our hands with oil, and the finish smell made us decide to sleep with the windows open and the fans on. This shelf really represents a great deal of work. Mom measured it out originally; Kyle cut the boards; Kevin helped Papa and I glue and clamp it; Mom and I sanded and stained it; Papa and I varnished it. It is cool.

After observing that the old baseboard molding was small and ugly, we decided to replace it, and paint it a darker shade of the wall color. I am a bit sentimentally attached to the stuff. Isn't it lovely?

So, then, here it is, as well done as my time and limited financial resources can make it. The back left corner has been dubbed by the Mother the "library corner." It's a shame I can't just turn the entire room into a library, but it must serve other purposes.

The Craft Table, complete with shelving and convenient corner lamp.

The view towards the Laundry Corner, along with view of sofa area. The exercise equipment, not pictured here, sits to the right, just out of this frame.

Exactly...

...in a devastating sort of way.

"The impossibility of the task made pursuing it that much more tempting."

--Shamelessly borrowed from another blog.

“The whole modern world is at war with reason; and the tower already reels.”

That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought. It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a skeptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, “Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?” The young skeptic says, “I have a right to think for myself.” But the old skeptic, the complete skeptic, says, “I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all.”

There is a thought which stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped. That is the ultimate evil against which all religious authority was aimed. It only appears at the end of decadent ages like our own: and already Mr. H.G. Wells has raised its ruinous banner; he has written a delicate piece of skepticism called “Doubts of the Instrument.” In this he questions the brain itself, and endeavors to remove all reality from all his won assertions, past, present, and to come. But it was against this remote ruin that all the military systems in religion were originally ranked and rule. The creeds and the crusades, the hierarchies and the horrible persecutions were not organized, as is ignorantly said, for the suppression of reason. They were organized for the difficult defense of reason. Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first. The authority of priests to absolve, the authority of popes to define the authority, even of inquisitors to terrify: these were all only dark defenses erected round one central authority, more undemonstrable, more supernatural than all—the authority of man to think. We know now that this is so; we have no excuse for not knowing it. For we can hear skepticism crashing through the old ring of authorities and at the same moment we can see reason swaying upon her throne. In so far as religion is gone, reason is going. For they are both of the same primary and authoritative kind. They are both methods of proof which cannot themselves be proved. And in the act of destroying the idea of Divine authority we have largely destroyed the idea of that human authority by which we do a long-division sum. With a long and sustained tug we have attempted to pull the mitre off pontifical man; and his head has come off with it.

--G.K. Chesterton, "Orthodoxy"

'Twas on the brain, so to speak.

I Despiseth, Therefore I Rant

So all these people are up in arms about the new VandalMail Live system. I guess it doesn't support IMAP, or POP or something like that. I don't care about those. What do I care about? The fact that I can't transfer my inbox from my old account to my new one; the fact that there are advertisements on the side of my email page; the fact that my email account is trying to act like Facebook and Blogspot and Flickr all at the same time--when I just need to get some email!; the fact that I can't reorganize the stuff on my page the way I like it; the fact that I've spent over an hour on the ITS help website trying to solve some of these problems, and can't!! For instance, my old inbox messages show up in my VandalMail Live Desktop thing, but not in my new email Inbox. Why is that? What is this Desktop thing anyway? Why can't I get rid of all the useless icons cluttering up my email page? It reminds me of all the commercials advertising combination medicines for runny noses, sore throats, headaches, and coughs. It's like VandalMail is trying to 'cure' me of all of these symptoms that I don't have! I just need some water, that's all, not Benadryl, not Ibuprofen--and please save the Viagra for someone else!

Perhaps I am just a sentimental person attached to the cleanliness and orderliness of my old VandalMail page. I am just rejecting change. Maybe I'm stuck in the past; maybe this new thing is going to be better. Hmm. Nope. This is confusing and unnecessary. A school email should be just that--a scholarly sort of thing, not a facebook-wannabe, hotmail-ish, trashy sort of thing that takes hours to set up.

There's my rant. I dislike the sort of change that causes many problems and solves none. As I said, I despiseth it much. Now I'm done.

A Boring Scene

Extra points for whoever can tell me which author I was theoretically imitating...

The road from St. Catherine’s church back to Stanley was bordered by short, scrawny, stunted trees and little else. Due to the fact that both Stanley and the St. Catherine’s congregation were entirely made up of elderly people, a commute on a Sunday afternoon was not only scenically boring, but also very long. There was one point where you could see a fantastic landscape if you happened to drive by at sunset. But usually, it isn’t sunset.
“Calm down, honey,” said the woman in the passenger’s seat of the car. Her voice was soft and feminine; very soothing, like lotion on a sunburn, unless the sunburn is really bad.
“Just shut up and let me drive. I hate it when you try and tell me—Hey! Come on, the speed limit isn’t 25!” He struck the steering wheel with an aged but still strong hand. “I can’t stand driving this road every week when it takes twice as long as it should!”
“Why don’t you just try to enjoy the drive?”
“Enjoy that?” and he gestured at the landscape—some brownish grass and an eternal flatness. “People go on and on about how they love driving and they take road trips just to see the scenery. And they write poems about the flowers and the sky and the sunshine. Well all I can say is that they’ve never been to Stanley.” And he jammed his foot onto the gas pedal.
“Oh be careful! This isn’t a passing lane!”
“Don’t care. I’m not going to stand this another second!” He swerved the car out across the double yellow lines and accelerated past four other vehicles. A smile came to his face for the first time as he rolled down the windows. “Now this is what I’m talking about!” Faster and faster as he exulted in the speed that he’d never grown out of loving.
His wife resigned herself to their excessive speed and, eyes closed, her lips moved in a silent prayer. She didn’t see the black state police car coming towards them until she heard the siren. Then she saw the flashing lights and the policeman bearing down on them.
“You have to pull over.”
“Fine.” He jerked the car over to the shoulder and stopped abruptly. The cop stopped behind them and approached the car.
“Do you know how fast you were going?”
“What do you think?”
“You were making about 85. That’s 35 miles per hour over the posted limit. I’m going to need to see your license and registration.”
“Fine. Nancy, pull the stuff out of the glove box.”
“Frank Merdon?” checked the policeman as he examined the license.
“Yeah, that’s my name.”
“Birthday is—well look at that, it’s today. Happy Birthday to you,” and the policeman smiled as he said it.
“What do you care?” Frank snapped back. He stuck out his chin and crossed his arms.
“I’ll just be a minute,” said the policeman pleasantly as he walked back toward his car. Frank humphed and sunk further into his seat glowering.
Nancy looked over at her husband. She remembered the days when he wasn’t like this. In fact, he had once wanted to be a policeman. His record was perfect, he was athletic and strong and passionate about law enforcement. So, so long ago. She remembered when they were first together—they were so young!—and Frank used to wake up in the middle of the night laughing and he would tell her about his dreams for the future, a future he never had. She wished that for one moment he would remember what it was like to feel that way. To feel a respect for men and a profession like that. The kind of respect that she felt now for the policeman who was so calmly dealing with her husband’s rudeness and who was still making an attempt at friendliness instead of returning anger for anger. A soft sigh escaped her lips. Who could bring back youth when it was gone? What is more crushing to an alive and vigorous man than a long life as a one-eyed garage-door salesman?

Clothes: $60; Pictures: Priceless

This is possibly my favorite post ever. Patsy lost a bet. This is the result.

Thrice in the Last Week

I must look trustworthy. Maybe I have an aura about me that says, "Don't worry; I won't steal your stuff. Really." Maybe it's my calming presence or the fact that I don't have tattoos and my hair is reasonably kempt. For whatever reason, it just keeps happening to me. Someone in the Commons sitting relatively close to me will get up and say, "Hey, can you watch my stuff for a sec?" The implication is that these people don't want to have their laptops and backpacks stolen. But sometimes I just feel like screaming at the foolishness. For all they know, I COULD BE A THIEF!!! I don't scream. I just say, "Sure." And then I sit and insure that no one steals the laptop or backpack or jacket that they have so blithely left in my care.

Speaking of Hemmingway...

One would expect an Engineering and Physics building to be well engineered. It seems logical, intuitive. Perhaps the electricians just forgot to come to work on this one. I walked into the first floor bathroom in EP today and noticed that yes, it was clean, and that is a very good thing and not to be taken lightly. But according to Hemmingway (here's where he comes in), a place, be it bar or bathroom, is only pleasant if it is "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place." I didn't like the story; it was about drunk people about whom any reader cares not a whit. But one thing I demand in concordance with the author: light. The switch was flipped on in the bathroom but darkness hung heavy in every corner.

We Wash our Sidewalks

She'd been there when I walked by two and a half hours before, washing off of the cement walk all the sand carefully laid down for walker protection last week. She's made some progress, but as I walk down the stairs toward her I hear the sound of sand gumming itself up in my shoe tread, and I know she's fighting a losing battle. We are out of doors, after all. The water she's been spraying is now running down the lower sidewalks, making little tunnels in the sand and mud caked up on the other walkways. And since that sand isn't going anywhere, more students like me will track it over more sidewalks all over campus, and I begin to wonder why we ever bothered to do this in the first place.

No teacher, no substitute

Why, then, did we all come to class this morning at 9:30? And what kind of teacher doesn't get a substitute to come in when he's in Florida? Dale. He left us a movie to watch in CORE today, and it played while the virtuous read the English subtitles of an entirely Spanish-speaking movie. But secreted in the back row, several students finished their homework for Chemistry. The pockets of rebellion spread as they sent notes across the classroom begging for help from other Chemistry students. After all, Dale never said we had to pay attention, just that we had to be there. And we were.

A Girl in a Yellow Rain Slicker in a Park

It is still raining, which doesn’t surprise anyone. It has been raining for the past three days, and the mud is superb, divine even. Just right to be played in by six-year-olds in outfits that ought not ever be out of doors. There is the girl kneeling in the sandbox just down the hill. The yellow rain jacket is fine for the weather; it is her white dress and shiny mary janes that aren’t quite the thing. It doesn’t matter to her. She’s having fun, regardless of the fact that the lacy fringes of her skirt may never get clean, and that her shoes have long since ceased to serve their purpose. The same descent into utter and glorious dirtiness has befallen her little poodle, which used to be white and isn’t anymore. They are digging a hole in the sand together. The hole is collecting water in it, and the little bark chips float on the surface. The other children on the playground are all little boys, and they are playing a game of tag. One of them splashes in the little girl’s puddle, and it looks like fun, so she jumps in it too. Everything is soggy except for her grin. She’s missing her two front teeth and she can wiggle her tongue between them. It’s a wonderful accomplishment.

When I don't Post

There is usually a reason for things. After recent accusations that I am boring because I don't post, I tried several times this morning to write something. After that I tried writing anything. Then I wrote nothing; I concluded that I if no posting equals a boring person then that's me, because I have nothing to say. But who wants to be boring? So I think I will play the system a little bit. My critic never said that what I write has to be interesting. It just has to exist.

I think my class assignments are going to make great posts.

When People Post

I read blogs. I actually do read quite a few, especially when I am sitting alone in the Castle Carpet Cleaning office, numbing my brain with inactivity. And I have begun to theorize about why people post when they post.

First of all, I know that many people post when they actually have something to talk about. When things are 'on the brain' so to speak. I also know that many people write when they Think they have something to say. In the words of Tom Banks (possibly misquoted, but definitely close), blogging turns us all into "philosophers...or at least petty aphorists." People definitely like to talk. And what about those other souls that know they have nothing to say? Well, they write anyway. Why?

I think it has to do with something I noticed about my childhood journal. I have always been fond of writing, but as a child I never stuck with anything for very long. My list of unfinished stories is practically endless. And so when I started journaling in the fourth grade, I also didn't keep up with it very much. But from the occasional entries, you would have thought that I was an unhappy, very bored, very tiresome, very prone to losing things sort of child. Reason being that I only wrote when I had absolutely nothing else to do. Usually I had lost my book. Comparing this to my blogging habits, I realized that they are very much the same. My last post was about being braindead. I was about to write another post about being braindead (from sitting in CCC all morning and listening to carpet jokes-*shudder*). I think I tend to write when I am bored or braindead. From a careful consideration of many other bloggers and their posts, I am inclined to think that I am not alone. No, not alone at all.