Aberham Lincoln

Received this in my email today. Not so sure what it means for this semester. Definitely not pleased.

So I'm with my family now. My father who has agreed that we were meeting on the same day actually meant that they were leaving on the day I was arriving and they were getting in the same time the next day. My cousin was kind enough to point this out and then I realized that they didn't know what was going on till about 1:40 Monday. Which makes me feel a lot better about their intelligence. I haven't had internet till today because the apartment we're renting didn't have the fob for the router. Thanks be to God.

alone, lost in rome
fucking stupid directions
I want to go home

So I'm in Rome. Woooooooooo! I woke up late Sunday morning, could be that I was really tired, and that I took 4 IB profin before I went to sleep, or something like that. My flight left at 8:50 which would say need to be at the Berlin airport at 6:50ish. I woke up at 9:30. Not the greatest statement for watch alarms. Anyway I was needless to say pissed. My flight landed at 12:40 the perfect time to meet my family as they came in from the US, because their flight landed at 12:40 as well. Needless to say that was fucked. So i got to the airport as soon as possible, say 10:00. I found out that I couldn't exchange my ticket but if i wanted to pay 600 euros i could get another. No one would believe that I bought my original ticket for 130 euros. And wi-fi wasn't avaliable. (so far my laptop has been useless on this trip). Finally I found a free public terminal for internet. I get 10 minuets and find the exact same ticket from air one at 130 euros. So after a lot of explination the lady at the desk finds it in her system and agrees that while it is cheap it is there and I can buy it. So i get scheduled to fly at 1:30 and get into Rome at 5:30. This seems fine to me because I have the address of where my parents are staying. I go to the KLM desk and try to ask them to tell my parents what has happened as they get off the plane, to which the lady at the desk says no. She says it isn't effective most of the time, to which I say "What else am I supposed to do?" She has no answer to this but refuses to help any more. So i figure to just meet them at the apartment.

Lets pause right now to talk about a similarly related building problem. I walked a lot in Berlin. which can cause my knees to hurt a lot. Normally I take an ibproufin and I'm fine. if it's worse i stay off them and they get fine. My knees started hurting Friday night, Saturday I had to move all my stuff out of Halleys place to a hostle on the other side of Berlin, this was no fun with hurting knees, When I got there I walked up four flights of stairs, deposited my stuff, and decided that they didn't hurt so much, so i went down into Berlin. probably not smart, but i didn't want to waste my last day in Germany. So I wake up late and shlep my stuff to the airport, knees still in agony. And when i get to Rome they're no better. So by this point in our story I am limping around Rome with a huge backpack trying to find my family.

As we pick up our story I am in the Rome airport. Using the directions and map that my father gave me i make my way to the metro, I ride to the station near our apartment. Right now I will say that my father has 2 places written on the same set of directions. I am following the first complete set to the place I can get because the other place is just a name with no directions. I follow the map to the dot my father has scrawled on it. There is nothing near it that looks right. I limp up and down the street looking for this place. Nothing. I finally limp back to the metro station and see an internet cafe. I check the directions, His dot is nowhere near the actual place. I leave that place hoping that I will soon be with the family. I limp past his original dot and go up a winding street a quarter of a mile and find the place. I've got no apartment number, and there are 18 of them. So I just start hitting buttons. of 18 places, 3 people respond, none in English. I stand around and curse. I limp back to the internet cafe. I think about trying to find the other place. So i try googling it. No results with all the words he's given. or anything close. He did write down the nearest metro station, but even adding that to the mix doesn't help. I try every iteration I can think of with similar results. Since we're staying in a rented apartment it's not like there's going to be a sign on the outside, or even a first floor entrance with a sign. So I decide against just heading to the metro station that it's near and trying to find it, one because I'm in a massive amount of pain from walking, I'm tired, it's midnight, and it sounds dumb. So I find a hostle maybe 20 yards from where I'm on the internet, and I hobble over and get a room. Right now that's where I sit at 2:19 local time.

As of yet my family has not responded to any of my emails making me think they are clueless as to how we're going to meet up. I have no phone number to call, no address to go to, no meeting place to meet at. I've got nothing but a laptop and the internet. How else on gods green earth do they expect to find me? I feel like this would be my first course of action. Oh! no solid communication sources, the internet should do that, lets send him an email, or check ours to read his.

I am angry, I am sad, I am in Pain, and so far I hate my vacation. If they haven't tried to find me by Wednesday I'm going to the airport and I'm going to see if I can exchange my ticket and come home early. Fuck being in another country alone for a week. I can't go see shit because if they ever think to get online I want to be there to respond and head towards them. This has been shitty, and is all my fault because I overslept and missed my flight.

So I figured I'd try posting again and see what merry Christmas joy that I can spread. It's one of my least favorite times of the year, not because I hate baby Jesus or angels or even smelly mangers. I really hate crowds in places that do not normally have them. The mall, target, the grocery store. I get completely stressed out just because I've planned and been ready but now my sudden desire for a quart of ice cream has turned into a trek to fight back the stupidity of the masses. People with 60 objects in the fast checkout lines, husband and wife taking 5 objects each and checking out at 2 self checkouts rather than one. It goes on and on. Needless to say if you know me you know what happens when I get stressed out, and It normally starts with me acting like douche. So I know that come the holiday season I have little peace in public. There is one shining ray of light that I look forward to though. What might this be you ask? My one little joy every year is that my favorite treat will again becomes available for 30 days. What treat could possibly be this awesome? Christmas Tree Cakes.



Why should something as dumb as a snack cake decorated like a tree make me happy. There are many reasons, for one as research for my thesis has taught me scarcity augments utility. They're only available for maybe 2 months, maybe, so I either get them while there here or I don't. I normally buy 4 boxes or so at the end of the season to hold me over for a little while (the days after christmas is probably the last day they're available).




Second The shape in my opinion makes the cake taste better. Just look at it. There's an obvious start point, the top. I've never seen somebody start from the side or the bottom, because it's pretty obvious that the top is where it's at. You can see from this handy Target(not an advert) that the joy from eating the cake decreases as you pass from zone to zone due to the larger number of bites required, and the less angled the cake gets. This does make me wonder whether or not a Star of David Hanukkah cakes would be more awesome. It also made me wonder what a pie made of christmas tree cakes would look like.



Mostly like either a swirling portal to a cake filled land, but if I reflect it in half like this I get something a little more suggestive.



Perhaps Little Debbie is trying to tell me in a very subtle way that she likes having her christmas tree cake pie eaten? Perhaps Little Debbie isn't that little anymore?



...Merry Christmas?


(BTW this is what I think of when I should be working on my thesis)

Ok so have you ever gotten too friendly with your parents? I mean where they say stuff that you might say to your friends, but when they say it to you it's creepy. last night while watching TV my mother made the reference "Well that's why I use Kegels" And it was creepy

Second, Have you ever eaten so much that you feel really stuffed and maybe 10 minuets after you finish your body makes you take a massive duce just to make room for the new food? It always makes my stomach feel better since I was stuffed. This may also be a moment akin to the first situation to some of you.

So I was thinking about why I keep my journal account active when I never really post on it at all. I determined that it's mostly because every year on my Birthday they email me and say

According to our records (if you filled in the stuff correctly) you have been alive for yet another year! Just think of all the pain and suffering your mother went through to birth you on this very day! I hope it was all worth it for her! :)

It normally makes my day worthwhile right from the start

Sydney and Edward on how I can keep my mustache and still be in Chris's wedding

Edward: Just paint your face and camouflage it
Sydney: Just hide it behind something bigger...Like a bigger mustache!

You know you're really friends when somebody calls you more than 22 times at 8 in the morning when you were trying to sleep.

So I bought my plane tickets and made my Hotel reservations. I'm going to New York. No traveling buddy, just me and my camera, and maybe a laptop if it comes in soon enough. I'll be going to the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, which should be one of the most awesome things ever. Hopefully I won't go crazy.

The First of May

Today I lost my health insurance. w000000000000!!!!!!

So, I feel a little better this morning. Not a lot, but a little. While I am probably not quitting grad school, I have decided that I'm tired of not knowing what will happen when I graduate. So I plan to meet with a few professors this week and discuss where I'm headed, and what I can do to help that along. Also I have a possible temporary job in the end of summer/early fall, teaching Alpha-CAM classes at AWPL, which would be a good start towards something.

God Dam it! That is it! I am So pissed off that I can't see straight. This is my fucking idea! I had it 3 months ago! Why didn't I build it the next day and slap it on the internet. Why Am I stuck in this craphole of a school that keeps me from doing what I want, from being in the world. Why do I have to focus on parking lots and papers, and everything but what I really want to do? WHY?






http://www.musicalfurnishings.com/

"Male brains are 9% larger than female even after correcting for body size."
-The Female Brain
L. Brizdendine

The only difference between a man and a stone going downhill is that the man has the illusion he chose to do so.

Dapper: \ˈda-pər\
Function: adjective
Date: 15th century

1 a: neat and trim in appearance b: very spruce and stylish
2: alert and lively in movement and manners

“…God through this general law gives us precisely all those perceptions we would give ourselves a) if we had an exact knowledge, not only of what takes place in our brain and in our eyes, but also of the situation and movement of our bodies, b) in addition we knew optics and geometry perfectly, and c) if we could, on the basis of this actual knowledge…instantaneously product an infinity of precise inferences…”
The Islamic scholar Alhazen, Volume 2 of “Optics”

Mother Fucker!
I designed this shit a few years ago, Mae can attest to it. Why don't I just quit school and make crap I'll never know.

Multiple things

1. I didn't say this last night in my testimony, but there was a time in my life when I felt like I had no friends. When I was a freshman in college I didn't really have friends for the first 3-4 months or so. I had people I would see every day, and we might eat meals together, but they weren't real friends. At this point it's been so long I can't remember if I was really trying. What I do remember is sitting in my dorm room alone on friday nights. Watching anime. While my list of anime's watched went up, my self esteem went waaaaaaaayyyyy down. I think If I ever wanted to make myself cry, all I'd have to do is remember what it was like to sit in my room alone on a weekend. At some point, for some reason I decided to go to WCF. I tried once, and nobody was there cause of a soccer game. I waited a few weeks, and then tried again. From that day on I was blessed with more friends than I could count. I have friends my age, friends not my age, nerds, girls, athletes, etc. It was a calm before the storm. And I thank god for it.

2. My plush Appa should be coming in the mail soon. And if you want to know unreasonable joy, this is it. I am excited for an object. I fully expect it to make me smile and be momentarily happy. While I know putting such high expectations in an object is ridiculous, seriously look at the thing. It's so cute. And you can fly around with it and say things like "Yip yip Appa!"