this could be me...

(Picture from Photosport.com)

...or it could just as easily not be. That's my problem - indecisiveness. After inquiring into the rugby team at my school, I found that it was a club sport complete with entry fees and national level competition and therefore not in my time commitment for this semester. So now I'm pondering joining a soccer intramural. It could be fun, but so could having a lot of extra time for homework, or just swimming and rock climbing at the rec.

In other news, I'm beginning to realise that studying is going to take up a lot more time than I previously thought. It's going to be hard to resist jumping on Blogger or one of my forums when I have a 50-page Macroeconomics assignment. At least this afternoon wasn't too dreary. I finally ventured out into the nearby area, and found a park and two farmers' markets. I got three of the largest lemon cookies I have ever seen...luckily I have two roommates to help me dispose of those.

Well, it's been a long day despite the unseasonably cool temperatures and fruitful exploration - sleep sounds very inviting. Tomorrow is another day...

on the menu: snakes and cupcakes

After two days of rain, it was actually a chilly walk to class this morning. I missed my alarm and was forced to grab *gag* another granola bar for breakfast. (As I'm discovering, it seems the three main food groups for students not eating in the dining hall are fruit, canned soup, and granola bars.) Fortunately I made it to class on time, because our anthropology professor showed us a video of the building of his house in a remote Papau New Guinea village, as well as of the spiders and snakes that the people there prepare as delicacies. Yum.

Last night I went to the weekly film put on by Amnesty International and some local campus organizations. This week's feature was Born into Brothels, a documentary about kids born to prostitutes in Calcutta's Red Light district. It was startling and sad, but uplifting and surprisingly humorous as well.

Oh, I should let you know that the picture of the cupcake in this post is not entirely meaningless. It seems that people are turning to comfort foods like cupcakes in "these scary times". While yes, maybe we should be thinking of ways to help people in places like Turkey, Lebanon, and St. Petersburg, it's comforting to know that we live in a country where it's possible to have food we don't even need. Maybe we should find a way to airlift a million cupcakes overseas. It's hard to be angry at someone who's giving you a cupcake. ;)

lonely (dwarf) planet

Poor Pluto.

Apparently, to be considered a greater part of the solar system you have to do more than just orbit the sun and be round. This article from CNN describes Pluto's disqualification as an official planet. I just think it's funny that scientists get to vote on whether or not an object is a planet or not. To me, Pluto was a cool extension of the solar system - an "exception" planet, just to remind us that maybe we don't know everything about what constitutes the solar system. But I digress.

On the subject of wanting to know everything, there's an interesting project that will begin in 15 days called Dropping Knowledge. The idea is that everyone send in the question they think it is most important that the world know the answer to. Then, some of the "most brilliant minds" in the world will select the top 100 questions, and host a session on September 9th where they attempt to answer these inquiries. Answering speakers will be videotaped and broadcast over the internet to the rest of the world.

While this may seem a little off-the-wall, I'll be interested to see just what they come up with. The results should give us some idea of what society thinks of the most pressing issues today. So send in your burning questions! Should be interesting to see how they stack up against Orthodox theology, eh?

dandelion wine

"Every year," said Grandfather. "They run amuck; I let them. Pride of lions in the yard. Stare, and they burn a hole in your retina. A common flower, a weed that no one see, yes. But for us, a noble thing, the dandelion." - Ray Bradbury

(picture from econetwork.net)

now...what am i doing again?

It's been a loooooong day.

It started with an 8:05 class in which I almost dozed off from studying the night before for a quiz I don't actually have. Then, due to a scheduling misunderstanding, I missed my University Experience class. It was an experience, I suppose. Then I went with a friend to pick up some textbooks downtown, and stood in a line that actually made an entire circle around the small-ish bookstore (that was after circling the building 3 times to find a parking spot.)

Just as I was puffing up the hill to my dorm after parking my car 3 miles away (well, maybe not 3 miles), a guy riding his bike down the sidewalk looked straight at me, smiled, and said, "Hi." I have no idea who he was but that was probably the best part of the day (aside from e-mails from most of you. :)

(Can you tell I like parenthesis?)

Otherwise, my anthropology has been interesting - I have my second class tomorrow. I've actually been looking forward to it. Until then, here's an interesting quote from one of Wendell Berry's books. His newest book, Given Poems is a nice, reflective set of poems about life and the countryside.

"Well, life is a miracle, and therefore infinitely of interest everywhere." - Wendell Berry

anthropology 204

Not bad for a first university class.

In Introduction to Cultural Anthropology we will be learning about how cultures interact with each other, find out how anthropolgy applies to our everyday lives, and doing a world culture simulation. Each of our discussion groups will create a culture, and figure out its economics, politics and even religion. When we get that all figured out (by the end of the semester) we'll have a giant interaction with all the other discussion groups.

Oh yeah, and we're going to "see the world as we have never seen it before."

On a side note, we're using a neat search tool called Diigo. If you're not familiar with it, it allows you to add "sticky notes" to any website to keep track of information you think might be interesting or useful. Using it, you can also highlight a passage, right click, and find music or news related to it, or blog about it. Pretty sweet.

sorta kinda settling in

I am glad to say I am posting from my dorm.

For a campus of 23,000 students, things were kind of dead tonight. My friend and I walked around looking for the buildings we'll be taking classes in. They all look pretty similar, but I bet we'll be navigating the streets like pros in no time.

Life in the residence halls hasn't been too strange yet, aside from some little things here and there (water seeping out from beneath the bathroom door across the hall, people running up and down the halls yelling "does anybody have a fork?!").

But for now it's quiet, and cool. I have my computer set up, my stuff moved in, and I'm surrounded by my books and icons. I could get used to this.

jazz house

It's a little house I walk past on the way to work every day. I call it that because in the summer when I would walk by, somebody was practicing a trumpet inside, and they weren't half bad. It looks so cozy with the brightly painted flowerpots and porch swing with a flowerd quilt draped over it. I realized I'm going to miss it, as well as some other things around here. Like:

Having my own room. I'll get used to that eventually, though.

Small-town driving. It's going to be a bit of a challenge going from our little one-stoplight town to a place where I'll be sharing the road with 26,000 other motorists daily. Oh, the joy.

Toast. Okay, so they'll probably have toast in one of the dining halls there, but I'll still miss my EarthGrains Wheat Berry toast. Students can bring poisonous snakes and spiders to stay in their dorms, but not toasters. Strange. The last time I heard of someone hospitalized due to a toaster-bite was...never, actually.

I'm sure after I've gotten used to the dorms I won't think about missing these things so much. It's a new adventure, and I think I might finally be ready. :)

Vibrant Silence: An Explanation

Who would have thought it would be so hard to come up with a name and address for a blog?

After thinking about a zillion different possibilities, I came up with the vibrant silence idea.
It's always been one of my favorite scriptures (1 Kings 19:11-12):

"Come out," he called, "and stand on the mountain before Yahweh." And lo, Yahweh passed by. There was a great and mighty wind, splitting mountains and shattering rocks by the power of Yaweh; but Yahweh was not in the wind. After the wind - an earthquake; but Yahweh was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake - fire; but Yahweh was not in the fire. And after the fire - a vibrant silence."

It just seems fitting that this is a quiet place to post thoughts, somewhere to get away from all the noise - a place to listen to the still small voice in my head. And as E.M. forster put it, "How do I know what I think until I see what I say?"

Well, enough of the waxing poetic...time to go to bed!

'Night, all. :)

this just in

College packing has completely obliterated any sense of order in my bedroom. Actually, the President has declared it an offical, national disaster area. (I will be accepting donations to help those displaced by this unfortunate circumstance. :)

Anyway, here's a pretty tree, just for kicks.

Now, if I can just figure out how to edit my links...

How's this for a first post

Invitation

If you are a dreamer, come in
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A Hope-er, a Pray-er, a Magic Bean buyer,
If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin
Come in!
Come in!
- Shel Silverstein