RyanHarne.com

Finishing a test gives a feeling. Finising a test and thinking you performed well gives a happy feeling. Finishing a test for a subject you believe you are a near-failure in gives an apprehensive feeling. Finishing a test first in the class provides strange nuances to the finishing-the-test feeling.

Being the first one in your class to finish a test that you felt you performed well on, in a topic that you believe you have inferior understanding of - this is such an unusual mixture of feeling, both favorable and antagonistic. So is this introduction.

One band that puts on a grande show is Of Montreal. If you are brave enough to endure the un-syncopated, un-rhythmic, un-interesting sounds of Doofgoblin, you have more than a hardy spirit ready to jump up and down and sway your head to Of Montreal. Their performance was stellar. Doofgoblin also needs a Mac and Logic Pro because his Dell was smitten with a BSOD halfway through a track.

Despite a certain frenetic feeling that has carried through this week, everything seems rather positive. Apparently, my university ranking continues to climb forward since I received an invitation to some generic honor society that told me I was in a percentage that this year’s still un-posted class rank must declare. This is intriguing and hopeful.

Also, this week will be finished with some coffeecake that is stellar. A week of stellar - Of Montreal and coffeecake. Perfect.

It’s not an uncommon thing for me to do/go/enjoy something new, particularly something most people never even attempt though the opportunity presents itself. Like that time I walked for 100 minutes, the time I tried to eat an entire jar of Nutella in a week, or when I wrote to Kellogg’s telling them their Rice Krispies advertising had gone down the toilet (and had a reply back saying sorry).

So, I am taking Ze’s advice and will begin my bust-that-cycle experience. There are clearly other cycles I need to break (one I will not mention is that I am utterly addicted to the baked goods at Bollo’s) and those will be promptly tackled at other times. But right now, at this hour of the night, I am going to aim for a stride to get this list of tasks done. I can feel that I am somewhat tired, but 100 years ago, factory working conditions included 16 hour days and rock-bottom health standards. But today, I’ve been rather healthy and really only worked for about 10 of my day’s hours. So, there is only myself to blame if I don’t try to push myself to match those turn-of-the-century labor figures.

Let’s turn back the clock. Imagine it’s 6pm. And get rolling on this homework and design. I’ll let you sleep soundly in the other room.

Dr. Torgersen posed a question in our 8am lecture that caught me off guard. At first he wanted individual responses along with explanations. I am usually one of the first people to speak up after he questions us - I rarely have a difficulty finding some facet of the lecture to probe or comment about. But I was speechless. He then posed the question as a multiple choice question and had a class vote by raising of hands.

His question?

“How much money do you want to be making in 30-35 years? (ignoring inflationary adjustments)

I had no idea how to respond to that. Was I supposed to plan my life out in that moment of pausing? Marriage? Kids? Career? Do I care for job security? Will I drive a car?

Will I have already left to forever migrate and wander through “the wild”? In that case, I need to make no money to keep going.

Do I think there will be humans left in 30 years? What about the enormous potential for more world wars with incoming crises of oil, electricity, and water?

How could I plan my life out in that singular moment? I was one of three people in the class who chose Torgersen’s lowest income tier - $50,000 to $75,000.

I assume that even though I will be roaming the earth on foot by that time, my autobiography sales will still bring in trickles of revenue I will have willed to friends and family.

I don’t watch television, but I will occasionally watch television programming on DVD. The commercialization of regular t.v. is enough for me to have a total distaste for sitting down in front of the tube. Thus, the DVD approach is a bit more reasonable, when I have the time. Curb Your Enthusiasm is one of my favorites but several people had recommended, due to my Curb love, that I check out Arrested Development which no longer airs. In the past week, I have sat through the first 6 episodes of that series and it is amazing. It flows more like a film than a t.v. show; this is partially why it was cancelled - new viewers were unable to catch the humor since it alluded so heavily on past events. The pace of the show is ample and the camera angles give you a personal perspective - eye-level shots and often things get in the way of your view. And many more reasons to love it, of course.

There is a significant chance I will finish the entire three seasons worth of episodes before the semester is out. That’s a lot of not-so-television for me.

Then, then, then there was Pandora which was recommended to me by two very different people over a course of two days. Wow. This is internet radio at its finest, or near finest. KCRW Music is great because you hear the deejays voices on occasion, but the automation of Pandora is brilliant. Currently, I am listening to tunes that have similar “modal arrangements”. Fascinating!

With a stomach full of spinach, thanks to my fellow staff in this residence hall, I will take an easy afternoon with minimal homework to concern myself over. Lazy Sunday.

With a pile of paperwork constantly staring at me from that other portion of my desk, with schoolwork piling up and becoming less elementary, with the dynamics of friends and acquaintances becoming steadily more dynamic - with all and each of these things, I am faced with more pressure. Pressure is not necessarily stress, since that metamorphosis only occurs when I allow items to roast on the burner while I could simply address or resolve the discomfort. Right now, it is pressure. Lots. Like 3 atm, like 44.08 psi, like 3.04 bars.

I decided to fill the walls of Bollo’s with art. The current display has been up since around June, and many have expressed disinterest in its appearance. Or rather, have expressed interest in its disappearance. This weekend - in my downtime, which means in my parallel universe - I will go about photographing everything my lens gets a hold of. What’s done is done.

Tonight, after I closed, I was walking through a parking lot as a quick shortcut and heard a car engine start. I instinctively turned and saw that the car looked rather inclined - the right rear tire was blown out. Before the driver made it out of the lot, I ran to catch up, waved him down, and told him my your-right-rear-tire-is-flat story. And because of the car noise, I made sure to carefully enunciate each syllable to not allow him a reasonable chance to ask for me to repeat. He said that he really appreciated my flagging him down and then drove away.

I was expecting him to stop at the next nearby lot to check and/or fix his tire, but he kept driving.

The skies have become cumulonimbused. The winds begin to quicken their pace. Those infernal VT hoodies are appearing on bodies all around. And, today, some of us vtmug people braved the chilled air to stand in the crossroads of the drillfield to hand out vtmug flyers and talk about Macs. I hopped from work to begin some flyer-distributing rounds, then leapt to class for a bit, then launched back to enjoy the company of friends once again.

All said and done, we passed out several hundred flyers about vtmug and spoke to many people, if only briefly. There are plans to repeat this mission, but in the future we will hand out cider. Other events will follow. Many of these events will match or surpass the joyous fun we experienced today.

That was one byte of my day. The rest has been great, too.