Dreams

So I overslept this morning. I open my eyes and it feels like it's been much longer than I set my alarm for and sure enough, it's 11 and not 8. I immediately concluded that my alarm clock had never gone off (for the 4th and crucial time that morning) and proceeded to go give it grumpy looks.

THEN I remembered a VERY long and irritating dream I'd had earlier, in which I had been trapped in a hotel where there was a loud soundsystem that was only playing a radio station fund drive. I had spent what felt like hours trying to find the switch that would turn it off...

I guess my poor old radio alarm must have given up at some point while I tried to shut it off in my dreams. I had to laugh, there.

As for the rest of life, the semester is grinding to an end like a millstone with me stuck inside. I dream of finishing my book this summer...

Steps

Today I took my life in my own hands--at least, it felt that way--summer's over and I drove down to Kalamazoo to get started in on moving into my own personal very first apartment at Western Michigan University.

Mostly that boiled down to spending about 3 hours with a tilex-soaked sponge and a little extra with a vacuum. It really wasn't too dirty. The previous tenant, apparently a young muslim woman, left behind the following:

2 Romance novels;
1 handwritten letter to an unnamed boy, discussing the reasons he should marry her to keep his honor before Allah;
1 pair of scissors;
1 boxed pregnancy test, open (I didn't see if it was used);
1 donation tract for an Islamic Society of some sort;
and
1 Western Union reciept for a money transfer of roughly $475,000, in spanish.

So that was kinda weird. It's hard not try to put these things together in some logical way--the money receipt especially has me hoping some angry people don't show up looking for something--but I have bigger fish to fry, such as getting furnature down to school, and this game of Bioshock that just finished installing. Bye for now!

hi?

Hey to whomever reads this one, how's things?

I'm doing okay...all right, better than okay, but hey, I'm apparently two and a bit weeks out from jumping back into school, and it'll be a big, uncomfy change and all. It looks like I'll be moving into my own apartment down at school, and for my assistantship, I'll be teaching Comp class to freshman...sounds like we're getting a week's worth of crash courses to help us get started but then we're off and into the classroom. This is kind of scary; I mean, I bet I can do it, but I never even took this sort of coursework at LeTourneau, so aside from reaching back (way back) to my highschool days, English educational material is, well, a tad bit unfamiliar to me yet.

So far this summer, looking back, I did a lot of wakeboarding, a lot of work, but only some writing...the novel redrafting is coming along, but more slowly than I wish it were; what's come out so far, though, I'm very pleased with. 20k down, 80-100k to go? I'm hoping to finish it by November, more or less. A goal. I also saw a man die this summer; the son of one of our neighbors, an epileptic, about 30 years old, who had a siezure in 7 feet of water near the end of our dock. I helped get his body onto the dock, and some other people did CPR until the paramedics arrived, but even though he'd been under for just about a minute, it was already too late. Sobering and saddening; my friend, who was on the scene before I was, is still having nightmares. I've been all right, though it was sort of hard to sit through a mandatory CPR class at work the other day. All I could think was it didn't work, it didn't work, although the autopsy showed that the man had had a heart attack sometime during the process, so all in all it was never looking good for him. Anyway.

And for those who asked, like Freezy, I have no idea what is up with my site. I need to switch hosting. It goes down; soon as I complain it comes back up, but never before. And my chatbox seems to have died, and the company that supported it seems to have a broken site. Arg.

Summar

First week of work's done. Getting up early (5:30) isn't so bad, despite the fact that days before I started I was still sleeping in until 10 or 11 every day. I feel pretty much as tired no matter when I wake up, unless I keep setting my alarm ahead 15 minutes at a time for an hour or two, in which case I will feel much worse.

Basically for work (which is at a golf course, the 9th rated one in the US--they had the PGA there in 1927 and decided not to do it again because the crowds messed everything up) I get to mow greens in the early morning and chase down random grounds keeping the rest of the time. Pretty standard stuff I guess. The other people on the crew have all been there at least a few years, so I've gotten some standard new-guy treatment, but it's all right. 8 hours a day, out at 3, not so bad.

The area up here in northern Michigan is pretty slow in May; it'll pick up in another 3 weeks, but for now, it's pretty quiet and coooold in the morning. I've already helped build another pond in the front yard with Grandma and the puppy. The puppy, Peggy, is a little hyper dachsund who runs around a lot and is really into chasing people's feet. If you're barefoot she nips your toes, and if you pet her she nips at your fingers. If you tie your shoes she goes haywire...

Besides all that I'm trying to get geared up for more writing. I started a short story that I had a good idea for but am still poking around at finishing it. Hoping to use that for a warmup before diving back into redrafting my other book. And at some point I need to start thinking of how to do a little preperation for teaching in the fall. I don't know that much about it yet.

Whoa man

We celebrated my brother Will's birthday today. I guess he must be 19 now...man, I feel like I wasn't 19 that long ago. I picked him out a nice longboard to ride around at campus and wherever.

It's finally getting pretty hot here in Grand Rapids. I saw 81 degrees on the little weather center we have on the wall...and it was so miserable a few days ago. Two weeks ago I skipped a class because the snow was so bad it wasn't worth trying to drive.

On the matter of classes, I'm almost done with my two for this semester; a 10 page term paper to put together by Tuesday for Lit and a bunch of polish on my online content for Tech English Teaching. It's been an interesting semester for me, I guess; Tech was a great class, with a lot of stuff I could do well and a great Prof too. It reminded me of the honors classes from LETU--a one-off class with a lot of experimenting on the part of the Prof and a fair amount of "what do you want to learn, and how do you want to learn it?" Renaissance Lit has been fairly straight-forward...less out of class than I was figuring on, although this paper will haunt me if I don't work on it a lot harder before it's due. I enjoyed getting more exposure to a lot of historical literature; I mean, I've always loved to read, but not so much classical material.

I should be looking at getting registered for the Fall term soon here. I don't have an assistantship yet, and I probably won't wind up with one this go-through, but there are definitely some great benefits to doing one (tuition paid, $7000 in your pocket). I told them I didn't want one when I applied, but I've since been told that I should think about one if an opening came up. It's an intimidating thought; sounds like you teach 6 credit hours of Comp 101, and I suppose that's not bad, but it's still getting up and teaching. I guess the really intimidating thing to me is just what next year means to my lifestyle. I don't think I'll have time for much playing around, especially not if I do get an assistantship. I've had a lot of free time this semester and have not had the motivation to do pretty much anything. It's been rediculous.

Anyways, hopefully this summer will put me into some semblance of shape; I'll be working full time grounds crew at the country club at the cottage. The most important part is that it's going to be the early shift. I need to go to bed on time, get up early, and get outside, every day.

Back to work, yar!

Again dreams

I had a dream this morning that's still sticking with me, still bothering me...

I was making my way through a broken city; it seemed to have recently hosted some conflict or disaster, I think, but there wasn't any fighting now, nor really any people. I was in the company of a small mechanical teddy-bear of sorts--like the one from that AI movie, I suppose?--as I went. I don't remember what we talked about. At some point the bear developed some kind of problem; it was like a cough that sounded like "Rue!" and he was talking to me about how something was wrong with him, but I wasn't really paying attention. Even though I sound like I was very careless with regards to the bear I think I was supposed to be very fond of him in the dream's context; other things were just more important.

We stopped in a filthy abandoned apartment and the bear suddenly sort of seized up and turned off after saying its batteries were running out. Now I did get worried about him, because I believe he was supposed to charge his own batteries by eating (not entirely sure what his diet was supposed to be, seemed to be small toys). I immediately tried to fix him, first by examining him all over, then resetting him with one of the switches I found under a plate on him, but after he turned back on he was wrong somehow, like his personality had been lost or corrupted.

At this point I don't remember exactly what happened but I left the bear behind and kept going; I don't know if I meant to come back. I had some kind of cell phone and I called the bear, but I got some sort of unfamiliar technician on the line who explained he was "another part" of the bear's circuitry/AI/whatever. I tried to explain what had happened to the bear and the voice eventually said, "There, I've made a few adjustments. He should be fine."

I never got a chance to go back for the bear, because I woke up and couldn't find the dream again when I fell back asleep. But I feel terrible for leaving him behind. Maybe I'm too sentimental.

Steering

Hey, all.

It's been a good deal of time since I updated this blog. Enough about that.

I've applied to Western Michigan University's Masters program for a degree in Creative Writing. It starts in the fall. I don't know if I'm in yet; in the mean time I'm taking a pair of courses on the WMU main campus, which is about two trips and $25 of gas away per week.

Grad-level english classes are challenging my mind in new ways, but they're pretty interesting and I'm enjoying the exposure to a lot of new ideas. I'm pursuing this mostly because I'm hoping A) to become a better writer and B) to finish out my book's revisions as soon as I can...

On the book, I'm working on doing a full re-write, revising as I go, the same way I did to the books I wrote in high school. It takes a long time sometimes; sometimes I'm working a paragraph at a time, a paragraph a day. It's been difficult to work consistantly. Mostly because it's winter...

Yes, the seasonal depression continues to lurk. I don't want to blame any lack of diligence exclusively on that, but I know it makes it harder to get motivated, harder to not just "coast." I want to create things. I hate not having some kind of output.

Steering

Hey, all.

It's been a good deal of time since I updated this blog. Enough about that.

I've applied to Western Michigan University's Masters program for a degree in Creative Writing. It starts in the fall. I don't know if I'm in yet; in the mean time I'm taking a pair of courses on the WMU main campus, which is about two trips and $25 of gas away per week.

Grad-level english classes are challenging my mind in new ways, but they're pretty interesting and I'm enjoying the exposure to a lot of new ideas. I'm pursuing this mostly because I'm hoping A) to become a better writer and B) to finish out my book's revisions as soon as I can...

On the book, I'm working on doing a full re-write, revising as I go, the same way I did to the books I wrote in high school. It takes a long time sometimes; sometimes I'm working a paragraph at a time, a paragraph a day. It's been difficult to work consistantly. Mostly because it's winter...

Yes, the seasonal depression continues to lurk. I don't want to blame any lack of diligence exclusively on that, but I know it makes it harder to get motivated, harder to not just "coast." I want to create things. I hate not having some kind of output.