This Side of Lost

Most people I know complain of never having enough time. I am sometimes tempted to do so myself, but I know it would be untrue. Because I misspend a lot of mine. So I apologize to those of you who have been neglected by me recently. I'll try and be better.

To my credit, I did add another 16 hours of responsibility to my week. The threatened fourth job has finally come to pass. This is mostly a good thing, because I am finally feeling secure about my finances. (This has also been assisted by the fact that my loans also came through last week -- yay money!) The job is nothing to really write home about -- I'm basically a glorified mail opener for the main library. The wage is commensurate for the job (read: pretty crappy). But it's good, mindless work, and I get to see almost every new book that comes in. I got the job because part of the job is opening the Slavic shipments -- the books are printed in the Cyrillic alphabet that most Slavic languages are in, but the invoices are transliterated into Latin alphabet. So my three semesters of Russian from St. Olaf come in handy.

So, for those of you who are counting:

1. Research Assistant for Gary Wiggins. 4-8 hours a week.
2. Instruction Assistant for the libraries. Sporadic and infrequent.
3. Lab consultant for SLIS. 8 hours a week.
4. Monograph Receiving. 16 hours a week.

It almost adds up to a full four days (the number of days I don't have class).

Classes continue to plunk along. Cataloguing is cool. I'm learning a valuable librarian skill -- I can't really complain. It hasn't gotten hard or too much work yet. The web course is still all project planning, which is getting very boring. Can't wait until the nerdy stuff comes. But I'll have to wait two weeks -- Elijah's off at a conference next week, so no class. Whee.

We've managed to be pretty social almost every weekend so far. Last weekend was the busiest. Friday was Mari's SLIS potluck, which went swimmingly, expect for when Samantha tried to cut her right index finger off with a broken wine glass. Ouch! One trip to the ER and eight stitches later, she is doing fine.

Saturday we saw The Corpse Bride. I liked it a lot, Samantha not so much. I think I'm easier to please at the movies. Also, we saw the first opera of the year -- Cosi Fan Tutte. Very impressive, as usual. I must say, Mozart is becoming a favorite opera composer for me -- though I am in the infancy of my opera fandom. Sunday we went to an orchestra concert, though mostly that's the program was very familiar to me. They played Brahm's Symphony No. 1 and Rimsky-Korsakov's Russian Easter Overture, which are both pieces I played in my high school orchestra. So it was orchestral nostalgia day for me.

And yesterday, we went to Whitney Buccicone's place for a small-but-raucous SLIS gathering. There were a couple new slizzards, three of whom either are from or went to college in Minnesota. Crazy. A Johnnie-Bennie couple (who are totally stereotypical for each school) and a Carleton grad. I wonder what it is about this program that attracts Minnesotans.

Other items of note:

• Storyhill launched their new website sometime last week. Looks pretty snappy. They've got t-shirts now -- too bad, since I've already got an awesome one. They also have a new album coming out in February. All this accomplishes is making me want to work on my lyric database more. Like I have time to do that.
• I got a bike. Well, I didn't get one as much as I fixed up the one that I found on the property of the house I used to live in. *shrug* That's about all I can say. It gets me from Point A to Point B faster than walking, so that's cool.
• Fall has finally arrived. Aaahh. I don't immediately start sweating when I walk outside anymore. This is a good thing.
• The most interesting meal we've made recently was a recipe for nutty rice burgers taken from our favorite vegetarian cookbook. They are mainly bulgur (our new favorite grain!) and brown rice, with some grated carrots, zucchini and onions, and some whole wheat flour and Egg Beaters to hold it all together. Fry them in a skillet for ten minutes. We were a little skeptical, but they were surprisingly good. Mmmmmmmm.

That is all. We are off to watch Clue (the movie), which was recently purchased at Best Buy for the paltry sum of six dollars. I've paid late fees worse than that. Peace, all.

I found a Minnesota music wiki.

I bet you can guess what I spent the last two hours doing.

Barrelling across the screen in 1970 was Franklin Schaffner's biography of World War II general George Patton, played by George C. Scott. There were other people in the film, but no one bothers about them.

This movie is Scott's picture, through and through. The iconic opening scene, with him dressed to the nines, ivory-handled six shooters and all, in front of a huge American flag, sets the tone for the whole film. Scott portrays a man who is not complex, but in that simplicity is fascinating. Like Wolverine, he is the best there is at what he does -- and that's wage war. He is uncertain and out of place anywhere but leading troops into battle. But when that's where he is -- wow.

Thankfully, the movie focuses mostly on that. It takes us from Patton's arrival in North Africa to push Rommel back, to the end of his maniac tirade through Europe with the 3rd Army destroying the German defense -- the time in Patton's life that he considers to be the pinnacle of his existence. Which is not to say it doesn't shy away from the more uncomfortable moments in Patton's life -- it illuminates several of the scandals that added to his reputation as brilliant but slightly unhinged.

The movie is a true war epic -- almost three hours long, sweeping across the geographic theater of WWII, with a rousing orchestral score and fantastic cinemotography. This alone would make it a great film -- and one that I would just sort of enjoy. But it's Scott's performance that puts it on this list and made it a fun watch. This is acting.

(See this post if you're confused why I'm reviewing movies.)

Love is in the air. Congrats go out to my friend Mike Mensink who got engaged to Rachel Conger last weekend. What a great pair of people. The word on the street is that Samantha's friend Andrew Bowers is talking wedding plans with his girlfriend. And this weekend, Samantha and I are making the marathon trip to MN to watch Andrew Ellingsen and Eric Hopkins make a public ceremony of the commitment to each other -- not that they need it, because it's already so clear in the way they live their lives. I'm looking forward to this -- they as well are wonderful people and I'm sure it will be beautiful. We'll be pulling into town just in time for the whole shindig and leaving almost as quickly, so don't plan to see us (unless we're, like, sleeping at your place, or you're my mom).

Yes, love is in the air. And that's not it -- don't forget Kelsay and Dave's wedding in December, and Rob and Krysti's next July. Wow. I turn 25 and suddenly my unhitched friends are in the minority.

It's strange to be in this place in my life. I've been doing very "grown-up" things for the past three years or so... living on my own, having a real job, managing tight budgets, hauling my life to Indiana for graduate school, living with Samantha... but it doesn't really feel terribly grown up. It just feels like my life. But watching my friends commit their lives to one another? That's something different. Don't get me wrong, now -- it's not "different bad", and not even necessarily "different scary". It's different, but also really cool.

Love is in the air...

And tomorrow is my one-year anniversary with Samantha...

Crazy things could happen...

It's been interesting to see how the grapevine works these days, in this society of ever-increasing virtual social connections. The exciting things that happen in our lives get transmitted by, of all things, websites like Facebook. Seems kind of trite and impersonal sometimes, but then again, for those of us with different levels of involvement, that works just fine.

So (with weddings still on the brain), Andrew and Eric's ceremony went wonderfully. It was awesome to sing in a fantastic little pick-up choir that was essentially what Jeremy so aptly described as "the Twin Cities all-stars." Along with Samantha, of course, who is distantly related to our particular incestuous choral tradition by way of her college choir director, who was a Luther College grad. The driving for 11 hours both ways is never fun, but it was great to have Samantha along to pass the time. We were, however, getting fairly punchy by the last two hours. I think we've had our fill of long car trips for a while.

Things continue on their merry way here in Indiana. I seem like I work a lot, but given that I only have class one day a week, that's the least I can do. I actually have some assignments due in the coming weeks (really, assignments? I'd almost forgotten what they were), so maybe I'll get off my lazy butt and get some work done. Samantha got a neat little gig through her connections at the Lilly Library where she'll be analyzing the websites of other rare books and special collections libraries. We both are starting work on the applications for our internships, as registration for next semester is just around the corner.

In other news:

• My car is sick. :( Apparently it has a hole in the gas tank. Which would explain why it smells like gas all the time. No, I didn't drive it to Minnesota -- we got a rental. We're working on a fix, but it's actually less a bother than you would think, considering most of the places I go on a daily or weekly basis are reachable by bike. Maybe I'll get in better shape now...
• My friend Jen has started a blog! Welcome to the nerdy world of narcissistic websites, my friend! :)
• We went bowling last Thursday. It's nice to see that my bowling skills have maintained the same level of mediocrity as they had when I left them a couple years ago. We need to do that more often. The badly-rendered versions of Gretchen Wilson and Sarah McLachlan I could do without, though.
• Baseball playoffs are fun, but not as much fun without the Twins. :(

That's all I got for now. Be well, do good work, etc. etc. Peace!

Yesterday was laundry day for us. We pushed about four loads through the broken-down washers and dryers in the basement of our building. But the guy next door had his own dirty laundry to air.

Our bedroom window looks towards the south, where another house continues the line of residential buildings on the east side of High Street. It's not surprising to hear the occupants out on their front lawn every once in a while, but we were pulled from our clothes folding yesterday afternoon by an inordinate amount of yelling. We went to the window to witness a man saying very loudly to someone (his ladyfriend, we assumed), "Bring me the generator!"

He must have received a negative response, because he yelled the same sentiment again, this time with language I don't feel necessary to repeat. Suddenly he broke into a tirade about how the woman never did a bleeping thing for him, blah blah blah. He then gets into his late-model Cadillac, tears off of the lawn where he parked and north on High Street.

Samantha and I looked at each other, slighly uncomfortable at having witnessed this, and made a few comments about the quality of this particular Bloomington citizen. Five minutes later, again we heard yelling, and found the dude back again, all up in his woman's face, saying something about "you think you're so holy!" He said the word 'holy' several more times in a mocking tone, then mimicked his previous exit, only with more lawn being torn up and driving off in the opposite direction from the first time.

Samantha and I kept coming back to this whacko several times throughout our evening, and each time, it became more ludicrous and more laughable. Admittedly we don't know what the situation was that led up to this confrontation, but clearly this guy was off his rocker, as the woman was not yelling back, and three kids that were also milling around did not vocally react. And he's doing this on his front lawn, on one of the busier thoroughfares in residential Bloomington.

We are still laughing at "Bring me the generator!" Seriously. What a jerk.

I have waited what seems to be a decent amount of time for news to make its own winding way around the circuits, so hopefully it has reached the people who would feel offended at not being told in person. If you are one of those people and learning this for the first time right now, my apologies. Give me a call and we'll pretend I called you. :)

On October 12, 2005, Samantha and I exchanged vows and rings and became husband and wife, in the presence of the clerk of Brown Country, Indiana, some passersby, and God, in front of a courthouse on a beautiful autumn day. And we are so happy.

This was planned and done intentionally on our one-year anniversary of becoming a couple. Samantha wore a red dress and no shoes, like she always wanted to. It was simple, fast and absolutely perfect.

For those of you who are surprised by the unconventional nature -- well, I was, too. :) This isn't exactly how I picture my wedding would go, but you know what? It went better than I ever thought it would. We basically did it all that day -- got the paperwork done, did the deed, called our immediate family and friends, had a wonderful dinner at Restaurant Tallent and got back to our busy lives the next day. It was great.

For those of you who are surprised by the suddenness -- if you've been paying attention to the way I've been speaking about Samantha, about us as a couple and just the way I've generally been living my life for the past year or so, you shouldn't be.

For those of you expecting a "nice Lutheran wedding" -- were you really expecting that? Samantha is not Lutheran and it would not have been right. For all that we are alike, we come from very different backgrounds and family situations, and we are merging them as we see best. This was the best for all parties involved. We will be having a ceremony that will enable us to be more flexible than a traditional wedding would have allowed.

For those of you disappointed that you weren't invited -- no one was. And everyone will be. We will be having the ceremony (for immediate family and close friends only) as well as a reception (for the standard wedding party kind of people) and a party (for everyone!) on June 10, 2006, here in Bloomington, Indiana. Mark your calendars now.

I cannot tell you how excited I am, Samantha is, we both are, about this. For the first time in too long, the path my life will take beyond the next year or so has a sense of direction again. I feel like God has worked to bring this wonderful thing about in my life and I am so excited to see what the future holds for the two of us.

There are a few pictures here, if you're interested.