post the eightieth

The title is not a typo. Post the seventy-ninth does not exist.

I had a request to show Run Lola Run for Indie Movie Night tomorrow, so I needed to get up to the Orem Public Library to get it (as that's the one place around here that I know carries it). For those of you not familiar with the Provo-Orem area, it's about ten minutes from my apartment by car. However, I am currently without car, as my sister uses it to get to and from work. My place of employment is close enough that I can walk without too much trouble at all. Generally I wait until my sister gets home from work to run errands like this, but today I was feeling adventurous. Robert Poste just moved out and left his bike with me for the summer. I thought it might be fun to take a bike ride up to the library. The weather was nice, and the library wasn't that far away.

As it turns out, I made a huge mistake.

When I was in Japan, I rode my bike all the time. It got to the point where I could ride for long distances without much of a problem at all. I foolishly assumed that I could still do that. Clearly, such was not true. Not only was that two years ago, but it was also in a place that had an elevation of maybe a hundred feet above sea level or so. Biking up a huge hill in a town that is right at the foothills of mountains is an entirely different experience, and I found that out in a hurry. I was breathing pretty heavily within a few blocks, and that was before I even got to the giant hill. I kept focused on the top, telling myself that it was only a little further. Not much further. You can do it. Just a little bit more, that's all. As long as I kept moving, I was in fine shape.

The problem came right at the top of the hill - right when I thought I'd made it through the worst of the ride. There was a stoplight right at the top, and I had the misfortune of hitting it at a red light. I stopped and took what felt a like a welcome break. No sooner had I stopped than my head got really light. A purplish film fell over my eyes, and everything got really faint and hard to see. I've only felt like that once before, and that was when I fainted just after getting a flu shot. (That's a story for a different day.) I knew something nasty was going to happen if I didn't sit down, and soon. As soon as I got off my bike to sit down, however, the light turned green. I got across the street as quickly as I could so I could throw the bike to the ground and collapse for a bit. This created a conflict for me. Exhaustion and light-headedness were telling me to lay down; however, a swiftly growing sense of nausea was telling me to get up quick so I could throw up. The light head, I decided, could wait a bit, as I scrambled to my knees so I could deal with the nausea first.

After throwing up, briefly, I sat on my knees and looked up for a moment, taking in my surroundings. I had chosen the intersection of two of the largest streets in the area to vomit, and, what's more, I had done so right in front of a mall. On my right, there was a young girl, maybe six years old, looking at me with a look of curiosity and horror from the window of an SUV. While I felt a little bad for her, I felt much better for having dealt with that nausea. Wow.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, really. I made it to the library perfectly fine, if not a little sweaty and out of breath. Master Fob was there to help me choose some books to read over the next few weeks. The movie I wanted was there. The most amazing part was the ride home. While getting to the library took me nearly an hour, the ride home was a paltry twenty minutes. My guess is that there was some sort of rift in the space-time continuum that made the ride to the library miles and miles longer somehow. Orem is a funny place.

So there you have it. Come and see Run Lola Run tomorrow at my place. 9:15. Email me if you need directions. And Katya, you'd better appreciate this movie, or else this whole trip will have been in vain.

post the seventy-eighth

Yes, it's extremely early in the morning. I've already stayed up far later than I wanted to, so I don't feel bad about spending a little more time awake to post on my blog. (No, it doesn't make any sense. No, I don't care what you think about that.) I was having a really good day today, but came home to find that a deadline for my class was a full week earlier than I'd anticipated. I spent the next hour and a half working frantically to catch up to it. I'll spend a fair amount of tomorrow working on it as well. Ick. I really wish I'd looked ahead at the calendar, but some of the blame has to be placed on the course administrators for not keeping me up to date. They changed some other deadlines on me, which really made things confusing for the rest of the term. Honestly. I'm so glad this class is almost over.

The real reason I decided to post this late, however, was that I checked my Yahoo! mail in an effort to find something to distract me from the insanity of this deadline I was working against. I'm a committed Gmail user (as all sane people with email accounts should be), and thus only check my Yahoo! mail once every week or two. I have my half.com account wired through there, so I check periodically to see if I've sold any books or anything. (I hadn't.) What I saw when I opened the account surprised me.

Wow. I didn't even bother checking to see what sort of spam I'd managed to collect in the week or so since I last checked it. I only rarely get any sort of spam with Gmail, and what little I get is immediately destroyed by my Gmail filters. It's a wonderful thing. I still have over 40 invites if anyone wants them.

I'm pleased that I managed to get that image cropped so nicely, and even more pleased that I managed to edit out my first name in the "Welcome!" message. I would have been going out of my mind with excitement had I been able to switch my first name with "Optimistic," but, alas, it was not to be (at least, not at three in the morning).

post the seventy-seventh

From 1 Samuel 8:10-13, with my emphasis:

10 And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the people that asked of him a king.

11 And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots.

12 And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots.

13 And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.

Give me a king.

post the seventy-sixth

I have a lot of thoughts milling about in my head, but none of them are quite detailed enough to merit an entire blog post. I'm just going to go ahead and spill them all out in a big, non-linear mass. Enjoy.

I'm pretty sure the girl at work still hates me, but that's quite irrelevant now, because we don't work together anymore. Also, it seems like she hates other people just as much as me. She yelled at a guy during break for trying to read a headline of her newspaper over her shoulder. I was really pleased that I was able to snag a Dr. Pepper from her earlier that day, though. I don't even like Dr. Pepper - it just made me happy that I got it rather than her. No, that's not her picture in the previous post. I just found it off some psychology site defining anger.

Russian's turning out to be a lot harder than I'd thought, and as such, I'm finding myself losing a bit of motivation to learn it. I just have so many other things I want to do with my time. I'm trying, though. I appreciate everyone who's trying to keep me motivated. Katya, if you're reading this, rest assured that I'm still in. I've just been busy.

I just read Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut. It started off really strange, but I really liked it by the end. It's a very clever book. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. Just give it some time. I know the beginning is weird. I'm now in the middle of Catch-22, and I think I'm going to read the new Simon Schama book next. I just need to have those done by the time Petra gets back into town so I can give her the Schama book back. Looks like I'm going to be a little busy.

Also, my garbage disposal finally got fixed. That's a good thing. I can now make actual food and not have to worry about where I can wash out the dishes. I'm excited.

Not least of all, I miss Petra, but I won't bore anyone else by writing a whole post about it. Also, she'd think I was out of my mind for writing so much about her.