10:01 in the P M

It's Day Before Dead Day. Tomorrow will be the 'busiest' Dead Day I've had in my three-and-a-half years at Mines. I've run up against myself and the overused feeling termed "senioritis". Despite my waning enthusiasm about due dates, assignments, and action items, I'm glad to still feel interested in the material. Dr. Moore (schoolmate of Robert Plant), told me and the class several times: "thermod'namics is dry, very very dry. It w's dry when I w'nt to sch'l oh so many y'rs ago." Well, his opinions certainly haven't motivated my mind to finish crunching the numbers on his homeworks, so that portion of my grade looks grim.

Grades, grades, grades. So much of my academic career has been focused on a string of 5 letters (no minuses or pluses for the most part) denoting my intelligence and self-discipline to other people. I've had two schools of thought presented to me over the years. 1) Don't focus on the grade, learning the material is the most important part, your future will follow as it should. 2) Get an A or you'll not be welcomed to this and that honors program, college, (secret) society, or the dinner table. Both 1) and 2) have been raging around in my brain since the middle of high school. Because of my habitual ability to deceive myself quite contentedly, I have thought the war between these two ideologies to be decided one way or the other times beyond count. No, I'm terrible at being honest (maybe this blog will fix all my problems--no, no, I just like seeing my fallacies written out in HTML code I don't have to code [or if that's even the write term for the code]).

Where was I...?

Ah yes, grades. I received my online 'degree audit' today per the Registrar's office. I've done damn well for myself here at Mines, so my mental setup leans towards 1) more now. It's nice to see that I've grown inward and outward in mind and soul and body to the point where I feel proud about accomplishments first and dismiss mistakes second (NOT without examining them and storing the lesson(s) away in the misty reaches of my unreliable memory). 1) has been the best choice. On nights like these, when I ponder my procrastination (thank you 'blog' for allowing me to further my lack of work), it's difficult not to slip back into the panicky mindset of 2).

I'm reading for pleasure before the semester is over. For me, this is academic sacrilege (I like the way that word sounds in my head--it tastes wonderful on my tongue too). Compared to some of my friends, I read rather slowly--getting distracted continuously with other thought-streams, daydreams, schedules, and feelings--and I back-track quite often. Thus, I'll spend hours on 40 pages of intense reading in my current page-bound written wonderment, and get nothing else done at all. REBELLION! I'm still working on being proud of everything I do, so excuse me while I feel shameful about the last four sentences and one statement.

When I started this entry I had just put the mark on the 300th-odd page of a mesmerizing piece of fiction: "To Sail Beyond the Sunset", a memoir of a most extraordinary woman by the name Maureen Johnson (Time Line 3 et. al.). The author, Robert Heinlein, has reached, in my view, the level of 'unbelievably-astounding-can-I-shake-the-hands-of-your-parents' coolness that only a few other writers have attained (I can't recall the complete list, but J. R. R. Tolkein, Isaac Asimov, Mark Twain, Stephen King, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn jump into my waking thoughts to start). Heinlein tells stories masterfully, answering my little and big questions about characters, plots, philosophy, and science--questions that I don't even know I want to ask until he addresses them. Beautiful, wonderfully beautiful. I'm recommending him for "Bad-Ass" status (see the final sentence of my first post for a short bit on my definition of the term) to whatever entity or person or foundation or animal or scenery or friend or foe that I happen to remember this topic around (I ended a sentence with a preposition, point this out, and I'll probably ignore your complaint). ANYway, Heinlein astounds me with each chapter and I look forward to reading more and more (and eventually all) of his opera*.

While I'm not on the subject, I don't space twice after sentences anymore. All throughout the history of me typing words into computers, "space twice after each sentence-ending punctuation" was creed and habit. After a few months of working in journalism at Mines, I haven't added that extra nothing since (willingly). This portion really has no significance other than that it marks the first time I've ever written anything about this facet of myself. I love wandering around this blog, what a wonderful rambling experience.

I suppose it's time to go back to actual, real, and productive work. I would like some decent letters on my report card next week. Still working on mustering more self-worth. Now for the traditional (it will be) mind-dump ending to my post.

My faith in the MLA style has been smashed into bits (maybe quantum bits, they're too small to see properly). I'm still teaching myself to play the guitar and my pinky finger is a callus-forming slacker (thus, G-chords are hard to hold for longer than 12 measures or so). I interchange written-out numbers with their digital selves (i.e. four and 4) with no real pattern and my immediate gut-instinct ruling. Never edit more than one paragraph backwards! Coffee is a wonderful drink and its energy-boosting effects are wearing off sooner and sooner these days.

It's 10:54, not quite the 11:01 symbolism I wanted for the title of my post, but life's better when as unpatterned, unpredictable, and unsymmetrical as possible (yes, I know the first un- isn't a real word and the last is awkward).

Wander Wherever Whimsies Will Wind



*'opera' is the plural of 'opus', Latin for 'work'. Oooooooo, Latin, ooooooooo. ...ooo.