So it’s nearly 4 AM (at the start of writing!), and I know I do a bad job of getting sleep, but I’m finding it hard to care, following the evening I just had.

I noted, ever so briefly in the last entry, that we had a mouse problem. To bring everyone else up to speed: This little dude went to TOWN pillaging the food that Ethan and I left from the summer. He was a thorough little bastard, and did a number on the food, as well as pooping like… everywhere.

So we realized we couldn’t leave any crumbs, and had to put dishes away ASAP so he didn’t feast on / contaminate our leftovers. Yet still her persisted. Finding the little things that weren’t secured too well, eating crumbs we didn’t even know we’d left. All the while leaving generous portions of gifts for us to clean up: It was starting to drive me crazy.

Just earlier this week, we had a breakthrough though. Ian was eating his oats when he heard a noise from the pantry (bookcase-type-thing in the girl’s kitchen where we leave most of the food). Upon closer inspection, the mouse revealed himself! He dropped down and gave Ian a cursory glance before bolting behind the pantry, never to be seen again.

Later on, Ian related this story to the rest of the house, and he and I set to investigate further. Upon Ian’s discovery that there was a small hole in the wall behind the pantry, we moved the whole food-shelf-system to the middle of the room in order to patch the hole… with duct tape and a left-over chunk of a 2×4. Deducing that perhaps the peanut butter cup wrappers (early evidence of one of the mouse’s favorite treats in our food stocks) ended up in the girls bathroom (directlya adjacent to the kitchen) via a connection of holes, Ian and I set to investigate further.

There we discovered, beneath the cheap, crumbling base of the vanity, another entryway to the mouse’s network of byways through our house. This one was more difficult to patch, so we tabled it for later. We spend the remainder of the afternoon using Ian’s plexiglass-board and some expo markers to organize the information we had obtained and plan for future actions.

Later that evening, we got our second shot: Leah roused me from sleeping through my political science reading assignment to inform me that she thought she’d heard something in the pantry. I got up to investigate, and happened upon the mouse, perusing our foodstuffs, with my own eyes! I had Leah go get Ian. I needed backup. Charlie was not going to go down easy, I could tell.

[We call him "Charlie" after the American armed forces' nickname for Viet Cong soldiers. Also it's fun to say "Charlie's in the treelines," about anything of a generally adversarial nature.]

Ian came down to find me poised with a plastic bin to try and catch the mouse. He quickly grabbed a box to follow suit, but before either of us could really make a move, Charlie dropped down to the floor, and made a break for a corner. “Surely, we’ve got him,” I think, when no sooner does Charlie slip out under the back door and make his escape. Ian and I, though disappointed a little bit, promptly seal off this entrance/exit. At least we were making progress.

These actions gave us our only mouse-free day. For 24 hours, we were Charlie-free, and it was pretty beautiful. Ian and I made regular updates to the Board, representing all available information and our plans for future action. People just kind of shook their heads, as they typically do when Noble and myself are plotting something. By and large though, our campaign against the mouse was supported by our fellow housemates, given their vested interest in not eating mouse feces, a mistake I may have made earlier in the week… much to my chagrin.

Yesterday, and Charlie-encounter ended in his escape through yet another door, which was also promptly sealed off to prevent escape. Now we come to today. It began with yet another encounter between Ian and the mouse early in the morning. Clearly, we must have been getting to him, if he was forced to scrounge while there were people around. Charlie panicked as Ian began to corner him, confidant that all of the mouse’s exits had been cut off.

To no avail, he once more evaded detection. This evening, Ian and I had just gotten back late from doing some exploring with friends, and were literally getting ready to turn in for the night, when Leah came in with another mouse report. We investigated, Rob with us now as well, armed with the plastic bucket from earlier. We proceeded to all (mostly Rob and Ian) chase Charlie around the kitchen, watching in awe as he scaled easily to the top of our pantry/bookcase thing, only to escape AGAIN.

Ian convened an emergency strategy session, where we discussed constructing better perimeters to contain Charlie in any future encounter. As we began construction, we stepped out for just a moment, and the mouse made his move!!! While we were right there, taking advantage of our half-constructed fence, instantly probing its weak points, clever bastard that he is.

It was, I believe at this moment, that we declared war. I went back to the planning bored, sketched my idea for a trap, and began gathering materials:

-1 bucket.
-1 pair scissors taped shut
-2 audio cables, tied together
-1 plate of leftover cake icing

By using the scissors to prop up the bucket open-end-down, and tying the cords to the scissors, I could slide the cake plate underneath the perched bucket. When Charlie came to feast on the sweet, sweet icing, I would pull the scissors out from a distance, dropping the bucket over him, and trapping him hopefully. Ian and Rob set out to strengthen the perimeter so that when the chase was on once more, he would have nowhere else to run.

And so… we turned off the lights and waited in the silent darkness for Charlie make his move once more. Except we were playing for keeps this time. Someone was going home the winner of this test of wills, and Ian and I were hellbent on it being us. Charlie quietly creeps out to get some icing from the cake plate. I hesitate; pulling the string too soon could alert him and give him time to escape, particularly if he stuck to the periphery of the plate like he was doing. Soon a sound spooked him though, and my chance was gone.

Ian decided to move in to get the lights back on, so we could see him, now confident that he had nowhere to run. But run he did, to one of the last places he could hide: in a small nook under a single cabinet, from which there was no escape, we had him cornered, but inaccessible. Quickly, we created a NEW perimeter, a component of which was the bucket from earlier on its side with the cake plate sitting in it. We hoped this would give him no other option but to be lured into it, upon which we would promptly stand it on its end, trapping Charlie at the bottom.

We even placed a small mirror by the entry to Charlie’s last refuge. At the correct angle, and with a little help from the flashlight, we could literally see him when we poked his little head out to confirm we were still on the hunt. Fool that he was though, he was not patient enough. Our trap-perimeter complete, we turned out the lights, manned our posts, and tried to remain silent. Ian would use the faint light of the flashlight to maintain a clear view on Charlie’s position, while I would keep a hand on the bin, ready to flip it upright.

Many times Charlie ventured out, only to be instantly alerted to our presence by tiny little noises. In my confusion, I misread Ian’s signal once, and flipped the bucket up without Charlie in it, breaking the line for a moment, scrambling to replace it and maintain the perimeter. After several tries, Ian and I got our communication narrowed down to a single hand signal, and maintained complete silence. We both strained against our fatigue (it is 2 AM at this point) to maintain focus. I am crouched uncomfortably, wanting to keep my distance in case Charlie overcomes our barricade, but still needing to be ready at a moments notice.

My legs ache, and I’m getting tired. It’s had to keep still for so long, and at this point I’m starting to feel bad for not calling Laura. I’d tried to explain to her the direness of the mouse situation, but I think perhaps she gets a little sick of indulging my little… eccentricities, such as this one. This thought nags on my mind for a mome-

Suddenly a small shuffle-

-Ian’s thumb jabs earnestly, but still with restraint, into the air-

-I recognize the signal, pull hard on the bucket handle, flipping it upright.
As I do this, I can see through the dim light a small brown lump slide down the edge to the now-cake-filled bottom. I throw a box on top to seal the open end of the bucket, and the celebration begins.

Ian makes a very inappropriate sexual gesture while I triumphantly shout for Charlie to “suck… ON… MY… NUTS!!!!.” It was rude and amazing in the best way. High-fives and words of congratulations were exchanged. I have seldom seen Ian and myself more self-satisfied at the outcome of one of our crazy plans. I couldn’t believe we’d done it, after all that, Charlie was now our prisoner.

Which sucks for him, I suppose, but for god’s sake, he’s literally been shitting all over our food. It’s kinda hard to feel bad for him. I still did cringe a little as I heard him frantically trying to scale the slick plastic walls of his new prison, however. Maybe he’ll get something out of it? Maybe he will be the mouse-people’s John McCain. He’ll get out of this one day and go home and run for the Senate and grow all super old and have this badass war story to tell.

The plan is, at present, to release him in Thousand Hills State Park tomorrow.

I’m really tired now, so edits to this will follow along with relavant photos to the spectacle that has been this crazy, crazy Charlie hunt.

[Really, how many of my posts start this way: "Sorry I suck at posting, etc."]

So yeah. Once more I dropped the ball on the old blog. Summer semester picked up, and turned out to be a lot more busy in July than I had expected. Once I got home, my life lacked anything even remotely akin to a normal schedule, which always spells certain doom for the blog.

July 15th marked the second birthday of Schrödinger’s Blog, which is pretty exciting! I was taking a quick peak over at the archives, and I think we’re already way ahead of the Brak Blog in terms of the rate at which I’m updating (despite little droughts like this past one). June was a great month for us in terms of content, and I hope now that I’m back at school I can keep that going.

Especially with my new devotion to personal projects that I actually like (see: radio show, blog, notstudentsenate), hopefully the blog will keep this upward trend going after my little vacation. Within the next few times I post, one will be the Update Post for 2.5, as that’s more than half done at this point!

That was the site-business. Now on to house-business: There’s only one item on the agenda here, and it’s spiders and how much I detest the little buggers. Between Ethan and I, we had to have killed maybe 20-25 of them. Does anyone know how big spider hordes are? It’s obviously more than 25, becuase upon my return to the house, we were once more infested.

Speaking of being infested… we also developed two bee hives in the back yard, as well as a mouse problem in our foodstuffs. I’m gone for like… three weeks, and this whole place goes to pieces. I swear. But things are really looking good. The house is currently 80% full, with only Leah not living here just yet, and things are going pretty well. We need to do some organizing, and we have about three times the requisite amount of cutlery a normal house would need… but it’s all good.

The last little bit of summer consisted mostly of my family vacation to Maine. Really, most of the trip was us hanging out and seeing National Park-type stuff. It was fun to be there (also the weather was 10x better than Kirksville, and 100x better than KC), but not exactly worth delineating every little detail. One item that was so absurd that I practically live-blogged it was the little trouble we had at the end of the trip at the airport(s).

We arrive in the Portland airport in order to head home, and instantly it becomes glaringly apparent that something is not quite right. There is a small line forming at our airline’s desk. Shortly after queuing up, we find that the plane is delayed to such an extend that we will undoubtedly miss our connections in Detroit, and then obviously also the one in Minneapolis. My father springs into action, well-traveled man that he is, and instantly is trying to rout us through another airline, change the connection; a whole battery of solutions apparently were attempted.

All the while a Lifetime Original Movie played out in the little sitting area right by us, where the small asian girl was in quite a state over the departure of her overtly indie man-friend. When he finally left, and she with him, there was quite literally a wasteland of used tissues left over for the rest of us to… notice. Reluctantly, I cleared some of them away, just enough so we had a place to sit while my father worked in vain to fix our airplane situation. It was eventually confirmed that, despite his best efforts, the best we could do was complete the first leg to Detroit and bunk there for the evening.

So we’re off to Detroit… but when our plane finally arrives it incurs a second mechanical failure, one which is quite time-consuming to repair. During THIS, I sat next to a young man who smelled like he had neglected to bathe anywhere in the past week or so. The plane was eventually fixed though, and we were on our way…

A first for me, we experienced some turbulence en route. I’ve had bumpy flights before, but this was honest-to-god, “Hey kids, I turned the seatbelt light back on becuase this shit just got real,”-turbulence. It was actually a little exciting, truth be told. Sure, we could have died, but my faith that my life is destined for far to boring things to end in a fiery crash assuaged any fears that I may have had. Mix in a crazy flight attendant with all this, and you’ve got all the makings of a good plane ride.

Even when the ride was over though, it wasn’t really over. Since we were so late, there were no open terminals for us to park at. Granted, the wait for a terminal was only around five to ten minutes, but this extended into something resembling a few hours as I begin to immediately regret my decision to drink an entire Pepsi during the flight. Oops.

The harrowing trip to Detroit was worth it though. That airport is a work of art. Between the speed-tram-monorail-thing that zips you between the two biggest wings the airport and a fountain that does something of a “show” by timing the pulses of water that it shoots, you’ve got enough entertainment to pass away an evening. The fountain was a little like the fountain in front of Union Station, if that rings any bells for the Kansas City people, but indoors. It occupied my time for a good half our, fruitlessly searching for repetition of the pattern. My interest in the fountain finally began to wane though, and it was then that I fell in love with the Denver Detroit (I made this mistake like a zillion times, BTW) airport: they had a Chili’s. A CHILI’S. IN THE AIRPORT. HOLD THE PHONE. I’M MOVING HERE. (here =/= Detroit, here = the Detroit Airport)

Too bad it was CLOSED since we got in so late. Opportunity missed, but still bonus points for having such a high-quality restaurant so close. The best part though, was the means by which you travel between the “upper” and “lower” portions of the airport (it’s divided into an H, with the trains that take you up and down the big arms, and a tunnel that bridges the two bigger arms together). See, normally you’d think: “Underground tunnel, OK. Lots of tile, sterile-feeling halogen lighting, maybe a handful of security cameras.” And normally you’d be right. But not in Detroit.

The tunnel was incredibly long, and the arched ceiling was filled with countless colored lighting elements that changed their pattern and shade depending on what tone the dramatic soundtrack music was playing in the background!!!! It was entirely excessive, and probably hated by most airport patrons, but as I road that powered-sidewalk (think Jetsons-esque ‘flat escalator’) thing through this orgiastic amount of light and sound, I couldn’t help but laugh with joy that someone, somewhere, had thought of such an awesome idea, and another person had thought so kindly of it as to contribute untold sums of money to make it a reality.

Eventually we arrive at our airline’s help desk, where we expected them to give us arrangements for a hotel and maybe some food, since their mechanical problem was the reason we were stuck in Detroit in the first place (as we missed all our connections by a number of hours). My parents stood in line while Erin and I stood guard over the luggage. Except we didn’t actually stand, we sat down. As I’m sitting there, typing notes that would eventually become this lengthy synopsis, a small child seats herself beside me.

Fine.
She shakes the poorly-secured row of seats slightly.
Fine.
She starts swinging her legs.
Fine.
She starts manically bouncing.

NOT Fine.

“Stop doing that,” I say. She continues. “Really. You’ve GOT to stop that right now.” She ignores me again. I tightly squeeze my cellphone, worrying that it will snap in my white-knuckled fist. Fortunately, just a few moments before I was pushed to a full-on rage-out, her parent sat down with her, and she had to stop.

Finally we receive a hotel voucher, and one for food too. When we hopped on a bus to the Day’s Inn, the driver even let me sit up front! My father got Titaniced (see: “There’s not enough room in this lifeboat, you’ll have to try another.”) onto another bus, which of course caused my mom to get a little worried. Our driver informs us at around halfway there, “Hey, guys. No rooms at Days Inn. We go to Quality.” Nobody seems to notice. Or care. They were all blissfully ignorant.

We arrive at Days Inn. True to the driver’s word, it is full. We literally run across the street to the Quality Inn, managing to snag a room. It is now 12:00, and we leave for the airport again at 5 AM. We could have gotten a whole five hours of sleep, but…

I was hungry, and so was Erin, so we ordered food. Food arrives at 1:15. I manage to spend two food vouchers (26 USD $) on a pizza, garlic bread, and chicken wings. Plus an accidental Mountain Dew. Yuck. The Fugitive is on (one of my family’s all-time favorite films). Erin’s ability to quote that film is both amazing and terrifying. [She is a golden god.] “What about bullshit, Sam?”, my favorite line, was noticeably absent from the TBS Superstation edit of the movie.

Finally, stuffed and ill, at 2 AM, we turn in, knowing we will need to awaken in 4:30. It is a poor excuse for a full night of sleep, despite awesome pillows. We awaken the next morning, and drag ourselves, like zombies, out to the shuttle. It is piloted by the same dude from last night (which then makes one wonder if he slept at all…). He seems to recognize me, maybe because I gave him a dollar or because he let me sit up front. That was cool.

We arrive at the airport. On the bus ride, we hear that some people are en route for a 7:30 flight. Meaning they got the airport about 3 hours before the flight. Why? They’re elderly, and have nothing better to do is my guess. One such old-timer is apparently an idiot. In the giant revolving door to enter the airport he is too eager to reach the other side, and he stands too close to the revolving bit. The door stops as a type of safety feature. Someone in the back pipes up, “You’re standing too close to it.” It moves again. Once more, the old man moves as if to make love to it (so close does he want to be to this door!). Once again it stops.

The cycle repeats itself, about four times total. My entire family, making it through on the pre-old-man-cycle of the door, wonders what has happened to me, a poor prisoner of the old man’s love affair (or perhaps simply woeful technological ignorance of the device’s true function) with the door. Around Go number three, I start to get irritated. The old man’s hurry is making this whole process take double what it should.

I shake my fist at the ceiling as if to say to my parents, “I will kill this old man in a duel if that’s what it comes to.” Finally, the revolving door cracks open a little bit. Thinking he can exit, the man jumps at the gap. The door stops, but it is wide enough for him to escape. He is in some hurry.

I finally exit that tiny, tiny hell, and shout angrily after the old man, at quite an inappropriate volume, particularly given the earliness of the hour, “KAAAAAAAAHHHHNNN!!!!!” It is the most epic moment of this entire fiasco.

We then got to ride the little express train, which was fun. While we waited for the plane, the couple across from me in the boarding area had matching light-pink Nintendo DSs. I wonder if they play each other online in “Brain Age” or “Separation Anxiety”. Probably not, though…

BECAUSE YOU’VE GOT TO [expletive deleted] PAY FOR THE [expletive deleted] INTERNET, HERE IN THIS [expletive deleted] HOLE. That’s a crime, I swear. To open up your laptop, flip on the wireless, and have every page you load display the same disgustingly cheery message requesting eight dollars for access to the internet… Bah. I don’t think I want to live in a country where airport wi-fi is not free. For heaven’s sake, we’re all stuck in the airport, the least you could do is give us something to do. And if we can make it work at KCI, nobody else really has an excuse, becuase let’s face it: Kansas City is, in many senses, the bare minimum in terms of things required to be a major metropolitan area.

As I sat there, waiting to get on the last plane to KC, I could feel that Mountain Dew from the hours previous in the early morning starting to give me trouble due to its overtly sugary, bubbly nastiness. I decided to purge it with a few bottles of water.

Suffice to say, this proved to be a poor pre-flight strategy.

All-in-all, I’m glad I’m back. Airports are trying, and I’m kinda sick of them for now.

EDIT: Ian informed me that this entry had some grammar errors after he read it. I neglected to proof it since I was tired when I first finished it. My bad kids. I proofed it, and hopefully I found everything.

So yeah. I took a month off. SUE ME!

No, for real. I was home for three weeks. The first week was pretty crazy becuase Erin was graduating and I’d just gotten back and stuff. The third week was equally as nuts because I was getting ready to move back to Kirksville into the house, and I decided that’d be a good week to work too. (I really have no good excuse for the middle week…)

Contrary to what seemed to be my apparent demise at the close of Humans vs. Zombies, I managed to survive the semester. Just barely. Things got pretty rough. I referred to this as my semester of “lasts”, as I would be escaping German, Math, and Chemistry after I’d completed these final courses. They weren’t going down without a fight though. At present, I’ve still yet to check my grades. Given how battered I was at the end of the semester, I don’t really want to see them just yet.

In other news, I turned twenty! I did.
Instead of taking the time to wonder aloud as to how crazy the past five years have been, and wonder how crazy the next five will be, I’m going to recount a lighter aspect of birthdays: GIFTS.

One gift, actually, stood out from the rest in its grandeur. Yamato is a Japanese toy company that makes products from the Macross anime series. Undoubtedly, most of you haven’t heard of that do to a big licensing quagmire related to its release and syndication in the United States as something called “Robotech”. None of that’s really important though.

What is important is that it’s the best toy I’ve ever had.
Imagine a transformer, but then make it perfect.
I present to you the YF-19 Variable Fighter!

The first few are pictures of the ‘fighter’ mode, which is a typical plane. The last one is the robot form, called ‘battroid’.

I even bought some add-ons for it (more armor, rocket booster), but I currently lack pictures of those, so maybe later. Case in point, my toy-addiction has evolved to a new level. I was looking into perhaps purchasing him a friend, but the First National Bank for Tom’s Childish Obsessions/Hobbies is a little strapped at the moment, so this is a while off.

In other news directly after my birthday, Erin graduated from high school! Goodness! Go her, being all competent and whatnot. She even gave the super-important speech at the ceremony and did the best job I’ve ever seen one of those done! And this is the third year in a row I’ve been there. So that was really cool. She also had a giant party at the house, the day I got home from school, which was a little surreal.

But there was Jackstack Barbeque, so I got over it pretty quick.

The whole thing was just another item in the long (and growing ever longer) list of things that make me feel old. It’s already been two entire years since I sulked across that stage to get my empty diploma holder. They mailed the actual diploma to me later… though now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen it myself. Huh. Hope I didn’t lose it…

On a final note, before heading back up to Kirksville to move into the house (which will be another entry unto itself, with some forthcoming photographic tributes to its state of disrepair), Ethan, Kathryn, Lizz and I all saw Death Cab for Cutie in concert at City Market!

The concert was really good. The venue, City Market, always leaves something to be desired… Given that it’s you and a zillion other people crammed into this out-door space at the end of May when it’s just starting to get up to that characteristically mid-western “hotter than hell” range. Ick. But I got a shirt, and despite a few close calls and head-kicks, we all maintained consciousness throughout the show. [For more details and the set-list, check out the Kansas City Star's blog post about the concert.]

Here at the bottom I guess I should mention, for posterity’s sake, that the past few days have been pretty hard for me. I’m going through some radical changes in my social life. Things that stayed the same for so long are now suddenly different. I suppose, in spite of everything, that I’m handling it OK.

I am just in awe, truthfully, that I’m even capable of feeling so much pain.
That’s really the only surprise of the whole ordeal…

Lest I get even more DeviantArt than I already have, I think I’ll stop there. I’ve sortof made it a policy to not discuss my intimate personal life on the Blog, and this is no cause to change that. Suffice to say that today’s song says pretty much all you’d need to know to get the general idea of what a mess my life’s been the past few days (and will presumably be to degrading extents in the foreseeable future)…

Hope everyone’s lives have been going well. Mine’s been OK.

I actually had a pretty cool Leap Day. I always wanted to make sure and do something special on Leap Day, because it only comes around every four years… I feel like I should make the most of it. This year, I was inducted into Sigma Pi Sigma, the physics honor society. Since I’ll probably be a member of that for some time to come, I thought it was slick that my “induction date” was 2.29.2008. Leap Day Mission: Accomplished.

Sunday night Ian and I were up really, really late doing physics work. After he went to bed, I kept at it, and then had some Chemistry to tackle. I was up until 5 AM, which was a first even for me. Luckily, since I’ve been back home, I’m recharging on sleep, which has been terrific.

In other news, I’m getting really frustrated with my coursework. I know the semester is only halfway over, but this has just not been a very engaging one for me. Chemistry is tedious and frustrating, I’m tired of German, Math, as always, is a really brutal struggle, and both physics classes I’m in are really, really abstract. So in addition to being spent… I’m finding it really hard to even think about going back, much less trying to get work done over break.

But that is, in fact, what I’m about to go attempt to do, so wish me luck.

Heute Auf Deutsch:

“Wenn ich ‘USA’ höre, denke ich an Wolkenkratzer und Gettos, an den Grand Canyon und die Rocky mountains und natürlich an Iowa.”
[Translation: "When I hear 'USA', I think of skyscrapers and ghettos, the Grand Canyon and the Rocky Mountains, and Iowa, naturally."]

And how about those primaries?
How about I’m getting really sick of them.

I’d still rather have Hillary win, but I don’t think she can pull it out at this point. I’m getting sick of dreading every single caucus because we know Obama will win them, and I’m also getting tired of holding my breath through every single primary. It’s just old at this point. I’m resigned to ol’ Barrack winning, and I just want to focus on the general election now.

There’s no real good way to differentiate between the two, which makes all this drama over which is better incredibly silly. They’re both terrific, and one of them seems to have a bit more traction, so why fight it?

I dunno. I also have no clue as to why I’ve been sucking it really badly at StarCraft lately. No idea.

My house is being replumbed. It’s loud.

On a final note, my webservice got bumped up to a WAY nicer package for free! We now have what I believe is 350 GB of space… which is 3.5 times larger than my entire harddisk. So! I no longer have any reservations about posting excessive amounts of music and video.

We also may be hosting Paula’s website soon, which will be fun as well!

I like how this went from an entry about nothing to an entry about EVERYTHING.
(Sorry for my lack of coherence, I’m typing this at like… 11 AM, and I’m normally not up that early. At least not in the past few days.)

P.S.: I heard today’s song in a TV commercial the other day. It was kinda surreal.

Just a little update as to what’s going on in general.

My family sent me The O.C. on DVD for Valentine’s Day.
Which was way, way out of the blue, and really surprised me. Just wasn’t expecting it.

But as I re-watch it again, I can’t help myself! I love that show. It’s such an excess of hokey drama-mongering and I know that, and by all rights I shouldn’t even like it. You would be hard pressed to find something more contrived, honestly.

But it makes me laugh and smile and get all sad inside, and you can’t deny yourself something that does that for you. So few things in life really allow you to emote, and as embarrassing of an interest as this may be, I guess I’m just willing to stick it out.

So that was my silly little revelation for the week (and also the source of this weeks song; it’s stuck in my head all the time, and I want others to suffer as I have suffered).

In other news, I want to extend a HUGE congratulations to Paula! She’s the best! Out of about 600 candidates for what I’m sure was a very competitive internship, she came in second. It’s sad that she couldn’t win and get first, but I’m still super proud of Paula! [Please at least check out her video submission]

While you’re YouTubing, check out this little gem:

I really think that’s about it for right now.
Just a little of what’s going on.

It snows a few times a week here in Kirksville, and I miss the sun.
Though I have successfully conditioned myself to not need a coat, which is pretty cool.