Occasional forays into thought

This is really funny, since I am named after Lincoln.

Ah me oh my.
I should be reading Shakespeare,
but instead here I try
to write a rhymed line
and not make it sound like a pelican
strangled about to die.

I think I failed. Oh well. I'm just sitting up here on the fourth floor of Wallenburg Hall (the nice, new tech-equipped building), trying to get myself to study. Although it seems futile, I refuse to give up. Anyway, Wallenburg is really nice. This floor has restricted access, but because of my digital humanities class I was able to get authorized for access. Now I can up here whenever I want, 24/7. They have all kinds of cool toys up here - stuff like 42" plasma screens, a working model of the kind of lens polisher Galileo used, little "boxcar" study rooms to have group meetings in, with walls that are made of whiteboard so you can write anywhere. Just stuff like that. Tres chic. For a geek anyway.
They also have great wireless reception. That's a nice bonus. I'm so glad I finally have wireless. The card sometimes acts funny, but I got it for free (online rebate thingy), so it's all good.
Anyway, not writing much right now, just wanted to poke my head in to this digital room and say "Hi!"
Now I must leave.
*insert nose into grindstone and turn*

Just some random funniness.


Which File Extension are You?

Wow, this week has blown by. I wanted to get something down in here before I forgot about it though. Anyway, had been sick/fighting being sick for just over two weeks. On Sunday at church, when everyone went up for prayer (they had a special speaker - someone named Ray Mesas - kind of like an old-time revival preacher), I went up too. I usually just stay in my seat, though in this church pretty much everyone always goes up, but today I went up also. While I was standing there, I was feeling - I don't know - just tired I guess. Tired of being sick, and weary in general. Anyway, I just prayed that God would heal me, just take away the lingering congestion that was way down in my lungs. I could feel it just descending deeper over the past few days, and I knew from my past history of illness that it was probably going to turn into bronchitis, or possible even pneumonia (which I've had 14 times), and when I went in to see the doctor at the health clinic, she didn't know my history or understand when I tried to explain it to her (it was her second day there, probably just getting to the part of her training where she was starting to see patients). She couldn't see past the fact that I had a viral infection at the moment (which antibiotics won't help - they only work on bacterial infections), and so wouldn't give me any antibiotics (which I was needing to help prevent myself from getting a bacterial infection). Mom had a few pills I could take, but I didn't feel comfortable just taking a half dose, since you need to do a full dose to make sure to kill everything and not just weaken it with antibiotics. So I was kind of stuck. Every breath when I breathed it out was just really gravely at the end. It was making me really tired, my heart rate was continually elevated, as well as my blood pressure (my resting rate is usually about 60 with 120/60, and I was about 85 with 145/90). Well, you get the picture. Plus, there was a spiritual side to the prayer also. I;ve seen God so a lot of amazing things, but I hadn't seen Him do anything physical in a long time, and it's easy to forget, in a way. I needed something from Him. Actually, I felt like a wife whose husband hadn't said "I love you" since they got married. I needed something from God, and I guess He knew that. I prayed, and I felt like God said that I would be better before I left that place. So I started to breathe, coughing a little as I did so. I breathed deep, and suddenly and miraculously the churning gravel sound at the bottom of my lungs started to go away. It went down most of the way, maybe 70%, and then seemed to kind of hold on there. But as I was continuing to pray, standing there with my eyes closed, I felt someone come up behind me and place his hand on my shoulder. It was David, one of the pastor's sons. He just started praying for me, and very shortly the rest of it disappeared. Actually, from start to finish I think it completely disappeared in about five minutes. Very cool. Thank you God and I praise your name.
So, anyway, I just wanted to get that down. Actually, I've decided that anytime God does something in my life, when I have the eyes to see it, I'm going to record it here. I don't know how frequent those kind of posts will be, but when stuff happens, I'll put it in here.

I'm really trying to make my life more like I want it to be.

I realized today how fortunate and blessed I am to get to spend two and a half years on one of the most campuses of the world, surrounded by some of the most intellectual people. I really have not been enjoying, not to mention taking advantage of, this simple fact. I'm trying to change that now. I guess these last coouple of years have been fairly formative for me, and trying in many ways. I think I'm coming out from the dark tunnel now though, and the day ahead looks bright and beautiful.
Did something today that I've been thinking about and wanting to do for quite a while now. I've long felt my education in the classics was rather weak, since there is so much that I've never read. taking a cue from Andrew, today i went and ransacked the IHUM shelves at the bookstore for classics that I would like to read. Picked up Homer's "Odyssey," Virgil's "Aeneid," Plato's "Republic," Milton's "Paradise Lost," Voltaire's "Candide," Maciavelli's "The Prince," Barnard's translation of "Sappho," and Joyce's "Dubliners." Add those to the books I'd already gotten (Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina," Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom," Marlowe's "Docotr Faustus," Cervantes' "Don Quixote," Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," a book of Milton;s poems, Gleick's "Chaos," Sandberg's "Abraham Lincoln," Howard's "The Invention of Peace," and a 1000+ page book on the entire history of poetry called "Live sof the Poets" by Michael Schmidt, and I have a nice little reading list set out for myself. Now the question is just how long before I get through them all. Stacked as they are right now on my little end table, they reach a solid 18 inches. .A bit intimidating, but figured better to pick them up now at a discount than latter for more money. It was a bit of an outlay (about 70 bucks), but I figure that I am more likely to follow-through and actually read these things if I invest in them. Oftentimes we more easily are able to see value in something and invest ourselves in it if it doesn't come cheap (monetarily). Doesn't mean there isn't value in free things, or that expensive things are inherently valuable, only that things tend to lean in those directions. now we get so see if I follow the plan I have for my self education. At a $40,000+ a year school, and I'm reverting to homeschooling. Doesn;t really matter though, as long as I get the education I desire. And that education, I would say, is an education in life. I guess that isn't something that can really be taught anyway, only learned.
Well, I need to eat my lunch now. chili is getting cold, sandwich is looking really good, my Clearly Canadian remains unopened, and I have poetry to read before my next class in an hour.
Ciao

Well, I'm home now, waiting for my tortilla soup to get hot, and I have a headache worthy of a titan. Somebody tell Atlas to drop the world on my head and put me out of my misery.

Oy vey. What have I been doing for the last four days? Well, for about two at least, sweating my brains out. Friday night I came down with something, got a sore throat that lowered my voice about three octaves, and then got a fever. I ended up not really getting any of the work I went home to do done, and I actually stayed an extra day and missed class on Monday because I wan't up to driving back yet. I'm sitting in building 250 right now, waiting for my next class that I don't have my course reader for (because the bookstore didn't make enough and sold out), and looking up and comparing Petrarch's 156th sonnet, and Adrienne Rich's and John Donne's two poems bearing the title "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning." And I have a headache, apparently brought on by my horribly congested sinuses (guess the decongestant is wearing off). Have that funny taste in my mouth brought on by taking too many pills and sucking on too many cough drops. C'est la vie.
Well, at least I'm not going in to work today. My boss doesn't want to see me till I get better. Bad for the pocket, good for the body wearing the pocket. After this class I think I'm going to go home and make myself some canned tortilla soup, fix my bike neck (needs replaced - the teeth are all stripped and the handlebars are too far forward), and sleep while my rugs get washed.
Ja, mata

NR