Lastly

I am in love with Strange and Beautiful by Aqualung.

Also

You know in movies when you see people standing on the side of the road and they get splashed by the car driving through the huge puddle?  

Yeah.  That happened to me 4 times today.  

I road my bike out to Blackhawk and on the way back, it dumped rain and I managed to seek shelter in the Shopko garden tent, but as I road on and had to stop at intersections, the puddles that had formed were quickly run through by cars and disposed of onto my body.  4 times.

It was one of the most productive days I've seen in a long time.  And everything about it should have put me in a bad mood.  

But I'm doing well with it all. :)

Feeling Sick For the First Time in Months

Yup.  I feel sick for the first time in months.  Like that actual "Wow...I might be coming down with something" sick.  

Then again, it could just be the fact that I biked out to Blackhawk and back today and then played a full game of frisbee since we only had 3 girls again. By the end of the game, I was starting to see spots and really not feeling well.  The Brewers win took my mind off of it for a little while, but now, as I am lying in bed writing, I am feeling it more than ever and am sore on top of that.

Ok, I'm done complaining.  

Cornerstone was amazing.  77's and Over the Rhine on Friday night.  Shane Claiborne spoke and the 25th Anniversary Party Celebration featuring all sorts of goodies happened on Friday night.  Charlie Peacock and Lost Dogs on Saturday night.  There's nothing that takes me back more and has more memories wrapped in it than listening to those bands at Cornerstone.  Amazing...  There were a lot of great new bands in there too.  Not to mention some pretty exciting other things that went down that I'm too tired to actually divulge into right now.  

I had a lot of great thoughts that I will eventually get to working through while I was down there, but I'm too nauseated right now to think that hard.  I'll wait until I can actually address the thoughts with the depth that they deserve.  

Waiting

I figured that I would write a little bit while I'm waiting for Therese to show up.  She is over an hour late, which really isn't that out of the ordinary for her.  Although, I do wish I could get ahold of her to find out an approximate time of departure.  We're trying to make it to an 8:15pm concert and it's about a 5 hour drive down there.  

Oh yeah, we're headed down to Cornerstone.  Whoa, right?  Some of my favorite memories from middle school/high school are directly from the 1 week spent living in a tent, caked in dust and on absolutely no sleep, hanging out with Phil the Raging Homosexual Sea-monkey.  All we need is a van with a couch bolted into the back of it and a real doozie of a storm.  

I'm excited to be going back though.  It will be a different experience from anything that I ever knew before.  For one, I will be over the age of 18.  Also, I'm hopefully going to be having a couple of conversations about possibilities for some writing opportunities, or at least how to make those opportunities happen.  

I feel like my everyone I know is getting blindsided by life right now.  A year and a month out of college now and everyone is realizing that what they have been doing the last year is simply not adequate.  But it's not that they are looking for adequacy.  They are looking for something deeper than that.  The grittiness of life.  I'm not even sure.  Something.  

I had a conversation with Kari yesterday just getting to know one another a little better.  She and her family moved out here from California and have started to help out with CAM also.  It's weird to me that whenever I have a "get to know you" conversation with someone, it usually results much more in an opportunity for me to externally process more so than as opportunity for someone to get to know me better.  Although, I guess they go hand in hand.  It does feel a bit selfish on my part, though.  Anyway, she asked me what I went to school for and I told her: English and Religious Studies, which resulted in the inevitable "Well, that doesn't seem entirely applicable" look that I get from just about everyone.  

But she let me ramble for a minute and I realized something.  I am really glad that is what I went for.  I went for something that I was really interested in and that helped to develop me as a person and my my mind.  I spent my time in college investing in me...not a degree.  Because, let's face it, the average person probably switches careers 2-3 times in a lifetime, so to invest in a $40,000 education that will eventually be wasted doesn't seem so rational.  Maybe this is just a way for me to justify what I majored in, but it seems entirely possible that I made a really good decision in this matter.  

I can do anything with those degrees...even go back to school if I have to.  

Anyway, hour and a half late.  I wonder where she is. 

Hot Summer Nights

I got to experience The Modern Antiques live for the first time tonight.  I only got to hear a few songs, but it was a good start.  Great stuff! :)  A perfect way to start the weekend...

I feel like July is going to be good.

Nearly 24 years later...

I'll write more tomorrow, but for now, I just wanted to tell an interesting story:

I was talking to my friend Aaron tonight.  Granted, I don't know Aaron entirely well, but the times that I've talked to him, I've found that I've enjoyed the time, so we'll let that slide.

Anyhow, Aaron was telling me how he is doing an internship in Racine and I mentioned that I was from Burlington, which is very close.  He then mentioned how he has family in Burlington, and slowly, 2 and 2 started to come together.  His last name....Burlington...

So I asked if his grandpa was a doctor and sure enough, he was, but retired about a decade ago.  

As chance would have it, his grandfather was the man who delivered me into this world almost 24 years ago.  We are talking the first human touch that I ever felt was this guy's grandpa.

It's almost serendipitous, isn't it?

didn't even make it 3 days

My attempt to not think for a week has failed.  I guess I should have gone with a more realistic goal.  A week was just something that was not attainable.  I simply set myself up for failure.

I'm not going to lie.  I feel like crap.  It's just been a bad few days.  

And I've slept 2 hours out of the last 40, so that's just making things all the worse.  And it doesn't look like there's too much hope in sight for a whole lot more sleep tonight.  

This is one of those times when I'd really like to find a way for myself to escape myself.  

Hopefully this will all pass quickly.  

what.the.crap.

is it really only tuesday?  

i'm really hoping that this week takes a turn somewhere.  

the pesky mosquito in my room

there is currently a horribly pesky mosquito flying around my room.  i can't seem to kill it but it has bitten me about 6 times.

oh what a metaphor for life right now...

i suck at this.  what "this" is...well... yeah.