RyanHarne.com

Today signified the advent of spring, as we know it here in Lynchburg. The clouds thickened and tumultuous rumbles could be heard even inside my office. Late afternoon mild weather quickly digressed as the barometric pressure dropped steadily and the subsequent winds enlivened their pace.

Then BANG! Within moments all ambient noise was overwhelmed with the incessant pitter-patters of thick raindrops and those curious around the cubicles asked, “Is it raining?”

Minutes later, the needle was returned to the phonograph and all was normal. Normal except for the consummate soaking of everything not sheltered from gravitationally-accelerating water molecules. There was another bout of thundershowers tonight as well.

Spontaneous thundershowers mean Spring is here. They will continue through Summer and begin to dwindle off into vacuous space as Autumn arrives. No doubt, we’ll be seeing more of them next year as well.

I ardently enjoy these quasi-storms. They are provoking to the inquisitive mind and move effective nutrients around through the soils. Plus, they give you a reason to unplug all electronics and do something old-fashioned, like reading or manually cleaning the house.

Luckily for me, I have my iBook.

It’s not as if this is a first, but I’ve just had an encompassing craving for Bollo’s sweep over me. Usually, at this very time and day when I’m at VT, I am sitting down to a morning cappucino with some homework properly laid out before me as swarms of people rush in and out of the coffeehouse on their way to work/class.

The stir of movement is incredible. I attempt to focus on my task and assignments, but watching the eager eyes gaze longily into the espresso shots as they are pulled makes me falter in my erudition. And I smile at their adultery for coffee, because I see my eyes ogle in the same manner. Still the stimula of people and drink always allow me to accomplish more than I hoped to pass the time with.

It is a Thursday morning, and I wish I was at Tech. Oh, how I miss the people! Hello, Tech People! This is my message: I Miss You.

An illogical mind would find euphoria when reading Catch 22. To my supreme misfortune, I am not illogical and, frankly, prefer things that make only perfect sense. Thus, Catch 22 is the prime book for me, because making perfect sense is about the most illogical thing to occur, ever.

The flow of the book is tattered with setting jumps and time lapses that have an impeccable sense for creating surreal mental disorder in the reader’s head. I’ve covered nearly half of the text and am still confused about who is who. And this is fabulous! It is fabulous because I haven’t burnt so many brain cells out in attempts to understand a book in a significant amount of time. Generally, books use a very linear plot, often breaking into sub-plots with a few settings; this set-up is easy to follow and lets you glean the most from the literature. Catch 22 is not linear - it’s skewed, it’s crooked, it’s messed up.

Some people, upon reaching these levels of disorder and bewildering, literary distress would just faint and give up. Even though I admit to my struggles as well, I really like what Heller is doing. I won’t even assume that the novel “comes together” in the end because that is incredibly superficial and undermining of such a fantastically perturbed book.

Books are fun. And somewhat anti-social. But fun. Very fun.

In a thunderous blitz of fun tomfoolery, the JF prom came and went. I still find it hard to believe that I did go to the prom. “Went to the prom” seems like a strange deja vu that I shouldn’t have to deal with at this point in my life. Oh, but I deal with plenty in my life already, so why not?

Anyways, it was wonderful. It blew my other prom experiences out of the water, so to speak. The pictures were endless and the excitement was just as continuous. Speaking of pictures, I tried my best to fill a 512MB Compact Flash card, but only succeeded in gathering half of that volume - approximately 350 pictures. Had I taken my camera to afterprom, I am positive I would have gorged that memory card to capacity; I was actually more worried that the batteries wouldn’t last throughout the evening (that fear never surfaced beyond, luckily).

Ok, I’m doing a fabulous job of finding tangents. Back to the prom stuff. The dinner was marvelous - Milano’s in Boonsboro. Next on the list was the prom itself at the Holiday Inn downtown. Despite my lack of attendance at JF (well, I did graduate) and my lackluster list of acquaintances or friends in the current junior & senior classes, I was struck at how many of those same groups I recognized. Maybe I only recognized them as faces, but my memory of them a few years ago was apparently retained well enough. I was also very shocked at how sparse the faculty members were; my proms were overflowing with teachers and other administrators, but I could hardly count over two dozen that I recalled last night.

Had there been a better DJ playing the music, I think the night would have been even better. I’ll give a recommendation for Flux in the future. The only song set that was viable for true dancing was when Gwen Stefani’s “Rich Girl” was played followed by the original song by someone I’m not totally aware of. Everything else was rap, heavy hip/hop, and country. I specifically talked to the DJ to request Jamiroquai’s “Canned Heat”, and I even got a thumbs up of from DJ Flow himself, but the song was never played. COME ON! I understand you only want to play top-40 rap, but requesting Jamiroquai is not like I am asking for true electronic music (which would be far from your playlist, or knowledge spectrum). That was upsetting, but I was still dancing and dancing and dancing.

If the night could have been spent only dancing, I would have been fully quenched even overlooking the rap music. However, the wonderful parents of the students always put on a fantastic afterprom and that’s where we ended up next. If you’ve never had a blast on large inflatable obstacle courses or velcro walls or mechanical bulls, then you are truly missing out. The Great Finger-Crushing Bull of Wrath was very fun, although in the act of holding on you were destined to accidentally have your weight thrust on the hand that was fervently grasping the rope, thereby smashing ligaments and flesh to pulp. But it was still fun. I could likely have just stood on the balcony watching people ride the mechanical bull and adamantly thrusting themselves up into a wall of velcro all night - very entertaining.

All in all, I had a great time. And a great date. I am very thankful to Allison for inviting me. The whole group of people we teamed up with was fantastic as well, dinner conversation couldn’t have been better.

I can count this experience up on my list of Good Times.

In preparation for the JF Prom (to which I was invited), I watched Napoleon Dynamite in order to regain my sense of disenchantment about high school. I felt that it was vital enough to re-view the film now that many younger audiences have latched onto it in a near-cult fashion - I expect to hear myriad references to it tonight, including “Idiot!”, “Uuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhh”, and perhaps “Do you dare me to go talk to her?”

This morning, though, was spent moving a bass player. Tom, of the BRCC bands, has been closing on a new house and began the big move today. Today, specifically, was set aside for moving studio equipment and books and miscellaneous, as the boxes declared them. About a dozen people showed up and we cleaned out almost two full floors of items that we pre-packed and waiting for a U-Haul. With all of the sound equipment, it seemed much more like we were packing up for a gig. Anyways. It was a beautiful morning for a move.

I have feeling that it will be a beautiful night for some fun.

The coffee people were at work today. The coffee people are those wonderful people that supply our office area with pre-ground coffee and all of our coffee accessories. They occasionally leave a box of Swiss Miss hot cocoa just for kicks. Without these coffee people, you can be sure that our office (likely as well as other offices around here) would be no better than a parading GrumpFest.

To our communal delight, they left a new box today. Not of Swiss Miss hot cocoa, but of Swiss Miss “Premiere Cappucino”. “Premiere” you say? while, I’ll try one out. It is Thursday, after all.

I’ve generally been hesitant about just-add-water drinks because the image of the freeze-dried military/space exploration meals come to mind. And when those come to mind, I lose my appetite; I can remember sampling one of those freeze-dried meals in elementary school and the grievous struggle involved to swallow it without shedding tears.

However, I heated up some water and tossed in that spackled mix of sugars and out came this heavenly cappucino! Oh, I wish. While entirely missing the bite of espresso and not fully finding comparison with hot cocoa (this was a “Mocha Cappucino” by the way), this drink was truly out of place. It was strikingly similar to my experiment with Maxwell House and Swiss Miss Hot Cocoa. I shudder at that memory.

The only gratifying aspect of the drink was the packaging which seemed to imply the drink would be stellar and worth the preparation time. I can hardly complain, though, because this “cappucino” certainly was a step ahead of the hot chocolate here at work and also gets you out of the regular, drip coffee-routine.

What? “Work” and “routine” used in the same sentence?! Naw!

On another front, I am now the master of my espresso maker. Thanks for all of the tips.