*Warning* Random "It's a Good Cause" Post Ahead

Every year I usually try and find some free charity or organization to support, usually around the holidays because that's when they are usually the most abundant.

This year's random organization was brought to me randomly by Facebook and it's right up my alley in terms of personal interest. I am a military fanatic, I support our troops immensely and try and show my support in many ways as possible-- even if it means buying shittier chewing gum because it donates money to various scattered veteran's organizations.

Well this one is completely free and takes less than a minute: It's sponsored by Xerox, which everyone recognizes (hopefully) with relation to copiers and copying and other office services.

Let'sSayThanks explains itself more on the website, but for anyone who needs more convincing it is described on the official Facebook Group as:

XEROX IS DOING SOMETHING COOL



If you go to this web site, www.LetsSayThanks.com you can pick out a thank you card and Xerox will print it and it will be sent to a soldier that is currently serving overseas. You can't pick out who gets it, but it will go to a member of the armed services.



How AMAZING it would be if we could get everyone we know to send one!!! It is FREE and it only takes a second.



Wouldn't it be wonderful if the soldiers received a bunch of these? Whether you are for or against the war, our soldiers over there need to know we are behind them.



This takes just 10 seconds and it's a wonderful way to say thank you. Please take the time and please take the time to pass it on for others to do. We can never say enough thank you's.



Thanks for taking to time to support our military!

Just in case anyone missed the site it's : http://www.letssaythanks.com/Home1280.html

For anyone who's a stickler for validity before doing anything here are some links that have investigated it to prove it's a real organization:

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_lets_say_thanks.htm
http://www.hoax-slayer.com/xerox-say-thanks.html
http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/letssaythanks.asp


Really, all it takes is a minute if you choose the cookie-cutter response option and maybe two minutes tops if you want to give your own reply to a serviceman or woman.

I've Been Good This Year...

If we redefine what "good" means...

I'm not the kind of person who tries to ask for a lot of superficial Christmas gifts, and honestly even when I try and convince my parents not to buy me things and just donate to charity in my name... they just do both.

This year my mom doesn't want me to fight with her over gifts, so I'm just making this now to say I was well behaved and did it.

1) LED Binary Watch



Courtesy of: ThinkGeek

This is my expensive gift of the year, and is also probably the least likely one I'll get. I still like to include something a little bit more expensive and geeky each year in hopes I'll get it. It took me 3 years to get a PSP, I figure I can break them in 2 with this.

2) Metalocalypse: Season One DVD

I know some people will have eye rolled at this, but really...it's a 14 dollar TV series on DVD, the episodes are barely 10 minutes a piece so blasting through two seasons can be done in less than a day, two days if you actually sleep. I think I'd ask for Season Two, too...just because after Christmas I get my surgery and I'll be bored a lot.

3) Killswitch Engage: Killswitch Engage (2009)

I'll probably just settle for the regular one disc album, but a guy can dream can't he? I love these guys and I lost a lot of their CDs through damage as a teen, loss on the move to college, and then out of general disrespect for the music industry I just download everything. Still from time to time I feel like buying a CD helps even the scales again.

4) Heavy Metal Shirt


Courtesy of: ThinkGeek

I think this is something really fitting for me, geeky, funny, accurate...it's the kind of shirt I could see chuckling at for days too and my mom has always said my shirts are a good topic of conversation and I'd like to keep up that tradition.

5) Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen DVD



As it has been established, I am a geek...I like geeky things, and this movie was an explosive geekgasm, and not even at a credit to Megan Fox but due to the sheer cheesy awesome of a cartoon being adapted into badass explosions and robot cars!




My mom will probably be disappointed that I haven't listed more so I'll have to get back to this, honestly...I spend my whole life never getting what I want and now they want to give me too much =P

The Call

Honor, Courage, Commitment.

If you have any prior knowledge of the military you'll know that those are the core values of the United States Marine Corps.

Semper Fidelis.

The Corps' latin motto that means "Always Faithful", which to my understanding usually means faithful to the Corps, faithful to your brothers and sisters in the Corps, and faithful to your country and defending them even if it means giving your life in the process.

I'd always believed in these values growing up, and I'm not even sure where I learned them, but these ideals have resonated me for as long as I can remember.

My mom jokes that I was born old, other people have joked that in a past life I must have served in the military because there's just something about me. No one has ever been able to place exactly what that something is, but there must be some indelible mark that I can't see.

Something about the Marines has always attracted me, and solely the Marines.

My grandfather was in the Army when he was only a little younger than I am now and I always thought it was a little too brutish and unskilled for me. The other branches of the military never attracted me, there was something missing whenever I'd see the troops visit out school for the Memorial Day celebration (it was fitting that I went to Memorial High School, probably part of the reason I have some military beliefs like someone who went to a Catholic school has religious beliefs.)

The Marine however always stood out, the way he stood, the way he presented himself, there was something about him that you could see from a mile away. Maybe this was the same something that everyone has been able to see in me, I'll never be sure, but all I know.

I remember telling my mom how I wanted to serve in the military instead of attend college. Needless to say she was less than enthused. The short version of what happened is that she said no, however the longer story is much more amusing, at least it would be if it weren't real life.

My mom is my greatest protector, and the biggest threat to someone who tries to hurt me. I feel bad for the recruiters that had to call my house, I can only imagine the things my mother said to them while I eavesdropped from the upstairs landing. She ripped up every packet that came addressed to "Mr. Edward J Paxton" from the various armed services around the country.

I used to get upset that she was preventing me from my destiny, preventing me from living a life of courage, honor, commitment; even preventing me from being faithful.

Now that I get to look back with older eyes and a greater maturity though, I think I should thank her. So here it goes mum, thank you for making the decisions that I was too young to intelligently make at that time myself.

I might not be a Marine, and I might never get a chance, but that doesn't change who I am.

I still have that something in me, I still believe strongly in living my life with honor, courage, and commitment, and I found a more applicable meaning for "Semper Fidelis".

Who knows, maybe someday I'll get a chance to serve my country, whatever country that is in the future, but life has found a way of finding me a purpose.

I used to regret going to college, but that was before I got there. I now realize that there's all things in our lives that we have to give up. I was told that a call to serve the military was like a call to serve God and that very few people could hear it, but for those that do it's like a bell tolling until the point it almost annoys you to ignore it.

This is true, there is some type of pull, some type of call to attention, call to order, and I can tell you that I've heard it, or at least I did.

As I get older I've realized that I have a higher calling and it's not to God, or country, or even myself...but it's when you realize you have a higher purpose with someone else rather than something.

I'm not sure what my future holds with this, maybe someday I'll get another change to prove myself and wear that uniform, but if I don't at least I know I made the right choice and I have no regrets.

Well maybe I have one regret, but there's always Halloween =P

Overdue Memes

Mmmm, Fridays...

I walked 2.5 miles today in 40 minutes, this was my way home today. Usually I take the bus home and it gets me there in five minutes but apparently on the day it drops below freezing I decide to show some motivation.

My roommate is watching Watchmen right now and all I can hear is moaning, so needless to say I'm trying to find something else to occupy my time to avoid the ummmmm...sex scenes...

So I'm doing one of those obligatory memes that I was tagged in a few months ago and somehow missed-- I'm honestly not even sure how I found it, but Rich tagged me months ago and I guess that is what finals do to my blog roll.

6 Facts, that's not so hard...I think I can manage 6 Facts about myself:

1) I watch Bob Ross almost every day, and I mean every day. There is not one day this past year (barring my vacation without internet) where I didn't watch Bob Ross. And yes, Bob Ross as in Happy Trees, Afro, and painting series. There are some days when I deliberately switch my IP address just so I can watch more Bob Ross videos without having to register for a Pro Account on MEGAVIDEO. I'm actually hoping to get some of the series on DVD this Christmas because I've probably played all the available episodes more than 50 times each.

(I just noticed I was listening to him paint right now too)

2) My feet are a physical nightmare-- I have had bunions since birth, I suffer from fallen arches, and flat feet (which are not exactly the same thing according to my doctor). I had my first Austin Bunionectomy on my left foot about a month after my 20th birthday (my surgery was on Canada Day 2009). My foot is mostly healed but I have a horrendous scar on my foot that looks something like this

(I found this on Flickr, I'm oddly jealous of how much nicer their scar looks than mine)

My scar is puffy and purple and is my new ironic cross to bear. Before my feet were barely functional, but fairly attractive as feet come. Now my foot is still only moderately functional (recovery is 6 months total) and I have a horrendous purple scar that will probably never fade in my lifetime. I have to have my second surgery on December 30th, 2009.

In regards to my arches, I have an illusion for an arch. I look like I have well defined arches, and then I take a step, and my foot is flat on the floor again like I'm some over grown baby foot. Because of my fallen arches I am also incredibly flat footed. My doctor likes to joke that my feet are that of my past life and that I got the body of a young man, but I got the feet of a WWII infantry man. I have to admit this does make me chuckle some.

3) I am the furthest thing from metrosexual/homosexual (yes, I know sexual stereotyping...sue me), but with this being said, I love shoes. If you've ever seen those guys on Cribs with box after box after box of shoes-- yeah, I'm that kind of guy. I'm at least responsible with my shoes-- I usually don't buy anything too expensive unless I really feel like I need it. There's a guy who goes by the moniker of Sole Junkie and he makes customized shoes-- needless to say if I was loaded I'd buy a pair of customized shoes from him.

The first time I saw these shoes, I realized that this would be my mark of success someday


4) From age 12-18 (or so) I used to wear a hat to bed, and I'm not even sure why. It wasn't necessarily even the same hat...over that span of 6 years it had been lots of different hats. I always found something comforting about having a hat on my head, especially while I was sleeping. I'm not sure why I stopped, I think living with a roommate changed a lot of my habits because you don't really want to seem weird. I think also because most of my hats have gotten pretty ratty I just stopped abusing them any more than they needed to be.

5) I'm commonly referred to as a Renaissance man, and not by any insisting of my own. I'm just interested in an insane amount of fields like writing, languages (especially foreign languages), psychology, mythology, science, history (largely history associated to wars and pre-WWII Europe and North America), theology, law, medicine, film, computers, meteorology, and anything that comes to my interest at any time. (and yes, I have pondered a career in every one of the previous)

6) I used to hate coffee, it used to make me violently ill and I never knew why. For the longest time I just assumed I couldn't tolerate coffee or I just really wasn't a fan of it...something logical like that. It was only over the past year or so that I learned it wasn't because I hated coffee, but because I learned I had become lactose intolerant sometime during my freshman year (I was not lactose intolerant until I got to college, which I thought was weird). Now that I've started taking my coffee black (admittedly with some sugar) I've started abusively drinking coffee-- I'm not sure I see this as a positive, but at least it gets me going in the morning minus the cringing regret and uncontrollable vomiting.

And yes, of course I end it on a classy note...win!

Today is My Day Off...

Today was my favorite kind of day, mindless:

• Woke up to my roommate's alarm, a few minutes before my own
• Dropped my phone off the edge of the bed and grumbled while trying to silence the screaming of Howard Jones from KsE
• Recovered my computer from where it got dropped on the floor last night-- it has all the signs of damage now including a green line that waves about my monitor until I smack it
  
• Spent time with my adorably feverish fiancee, who as said was both adorable and feverish
• Lay in bed for another 20 minutes before deciding to go to the Financial Aid Office
• Financial Aid Office was actually a waste of time
• Checked the mail for my Jarhead DVD
• Got profiled at the market by some blonde girl, she apparently doesn't like metal music or military bomber garb
  
• Went back to the room and streamed Red Sands from Megavideo
• Made a steak sandwich
• Dripped BBQ sauce on my laptop and only realized later what I was licking it off of-- my laptop has a very distinct dust and BBQ sauce taste now
• Googled more shooter style games, I'm in need of a video game fix for sure

I also just learned that my eldest cousin is going back to school, which means both my eldest and middle cousins are officially in college-- both of them studying some type of medical profession. Essentially this means that both Alex and Shanna could wind up being nurses. I'm both amused and proud of this fact.

I'm not sure what the rest of tonight will hold, but I'm pretty content with how things have been lately. Life is good, and I don't want to trade it for anything.

I Get It Now...I Think

My tiny chickens have finally let up and I feel much better. I've used that phrase a lot this week and figure it takes some explaining.

Tiny chickens= Hank Green inspired Nerdfighter phrase that is synonymous with a head cold (aka, the pecking in the brain, and the general gooey disgusting facial appearance)

I'm however particularly restless right now after a night of drinking Butterbeer with my roommate. Yes, Butterbeer as in the fictitious treat enjoyed without the confines of the Harry Potter fandom. Google it, there's a recipe for it on Mugglenut and it's an instant jolt-- I had two mug fulls and I'm just....buzzzzzzzzzzz.

I just had another one of those "adult realization" moments-- once again inspired by my dad. It's strange how I'm learning more about the things he taught me as a kid now than I ever did when he first told me.

When I was a little kid my dad used to make me watch Stand By Me with him (Rob Reiner film, Stephen King short story) and I used to complain at being forced to watch it with him. I didn't understand what the point of it was for me to sit there and just watch my dad transfixed by this movie.

I know deep down it has to do with his mom, my nana. I'm not sure if it was her favorite film or something, but for some reason I think of this film and I think of my dad giving talks about my grandmother.

My nana died in June 1989, I was born in June 1989, there was a very small window in which I "knew" her. I have no memories of her so I have to kind of watch my father's reverence for her. I've never ask much about her, but over my life he's given me more about her and I kind of appreciate every bit of information I get about her. I've only realized now how well I've known her all along.

I remember whenever we'd watch this movie my dad would say "someday you'll appreciate this" and I think I mocked him much in the way a little kid calls their dad crazy.

Well dad, I get it now. You're still not any less crazy.

Sitting here watching this movie it's fallen into place in a weird way.

It's a chain of events, a tradition that I'm just meant to continue out of honor. I'm pretty sure my dad doesn't even like the movie, but that's not the point. My nana liked this movie and in turn it reminds my dad of her. My dad showed the movie to me because it links me indirectly to her and directly to him. Someday it'll be my turn to sit my kids down and link them to their grandfather and great-grandmother and wait 20 years for the realization.

But I honestly need to stop having these epiphanies at 5:44AM...

Choosing...

Short post today, partially because I'm tired of thinking about this topic and I want to do a quick brain dump and then forget about it for a while, and also because I'm suffering from an awful case of tiny chickens.

Some people know that I was recently invited to rush a fraternity, co-ed, service fraternity and has a lot of great prestige following it. I really wanted to do this and essentially after another rush meeting they are going to extend a bid (not usually how it works with social fraternities which is why I'm still being considered). I really want to do this, I have this fascination with brotherhood (and sisterhood, though they are also called brothers because woman's lib is funny like that).

However there's the other part of me that is a dedicated member of one of the largest clubs on the school campus-- we are affectionately called the Guild (essentially it's the geek club without me explaining too much). I love doing things with the Guild and a lot of my friends are in the Guild with me, I actually feel like I can be myself there.

These two clubs share a lot of the same events and in turn I'd probably have to choose going to the event to help represent APO or going as one of the Guildies.

At the moment it sounds like I'm being made to choose Greek over Geek, and I'm having a hard time reconciling this. I know that a lot of the APO members do two organizations, even 3 at once, so I guess it couldn't hurt to just ask them how they did it and how they balance brotherhood, education, social lives, and all that.

I have decided though that I am going to try and be both, do both-- and if it fails then I have the option to always de-pledge in the process. I just don't want to sacrifice who I am for who I want to be, and it's proving to be harder than it sounds.

Damn you Troy Bolton, you made this "be yourself" thing look so easy!

Bears, Beets, Battlestar Galactica

Today was a weird day.

Not weird as in "Socially Awkward Penguin" weird, but as in like everything seemed to work out...right, I suppose is how I would word it.

I woke up a little later than expected today and sadly missed some cozy couple time, which is okay we'll make up for it later-- which is something I think we both need with the stress of school, or just the stress of generally being as awesome as being Paxmay entails.

I woke up at about 12:10 and just laid in bed for a while, thinking. Not about anything in particular but kind of that free thought dream extension where everything is still kind of mindless. I like that time, I guess you could say I do some of my best reflective thinking then even if I can't remember it hours later.

Today was another day with pancakes, of which I'm indifferent to pancakes in their actuality, but they do evoke some familiar sense of home. I've been using those Bisquick "Shake 'n' Pour" things, they come in a yellow container that resembles Tide-- just add water and you get delicious pancake batter. This is definitely something I recommend to parents, if you're the homemade breakfast kind this would be a worthwhile investment. I think it literally took me 5 minutes total to prepare everything and the clean up after was limited to my spatula and frying pan. I've never been so impressed by modernization of food before today.

I've learned a lot of handy cooking stuff as of late, even just this weekend I was always busy making something. Last night I made Filipino style spaghetti with little to no failure, which was impressive enough for me. I think more dinner foods should be as sweet as that. I also made bacon, onion, and cheese stuffed burgers on the stove tonight-- I'm learning my way around home grilling without a real grill, and let's say road bumps are expected. I only managed to set off the fire alarm 3 times this weekend, which is much better than the usual given how sensitive it is to steam and general humidity. Which means yes, if the weather patterns change to quickly our smoke detector goes off.

The real exciting part doesn't come until about 4PM when I received a call from the woman I met at the job fair this week. I know I was guaranteed a job because of work study, but it's still cool to join the ranks of the employed again after nearly 2 years without a steady job. I'll be doing the basic paper pusher, phone stuff, mixed with some specialty web design work and video editing. Basically if "Pax" could be labeled as a job versus a person, this job would be what we call Pax.

This brings me one step closer to my goal of being Jim Halpert, because even I'm too sane to be Dwight, also my conversation German could use some work.

Work starts Friday and I have every intention of blasting the Scrantones the whole way there-- you can bet on it.

Bloglovers? Inspiration! *hallelujah chorus*

So I'm sure that many people know by now that I'm an utter YouTube fanboy, and also that I have a familiar preoccupation with the vloglovers AKA Liam/Min who I've probably referenced in my blog more than once.

vloglovers is something that May and I watch together, because it's so utterly familiar down to even the weirdest idiosyncrasies, at least on my part.

Anyway, after watching Liam's video this week I have decided that as soon as I have time to sit down I'll probably be doing something oh, like...this.



I mean, I'm going to have to be weird and creative given my lack of a camera, but basically to appease my adorable ninja fiancee I'm going to be posting clips up on IMEEM of songs that sync up to answers similar to these. She's claimed I could do a "better job" because I'm the "music guru", which is clearly just her bias talking, because I think Liam did a hilariously bang up job especially with the Scatman John cover of Invisible Man.

and who knows, maybe after this I can convince her to do a bloglovers with me, eh, eh? [/ang cheesy]

Life of A Salesman

I have to apologize to a lot of people about why I've flown off the handle a few times today, I know I'm usually a firebrand as it is but today has hit a certain number of sensitivities that exist in very small doses.

8 years ago today I was 12 years old, sitting in my middle school Language Arts class, I can still remember what I was wearing all the way down to my shoes. I can remember walking down the hallway and hearing snippets of what was going on. It's funny how as a kid you take the words "plane crash" with a grain of salt as if it's something you're supposed to expect.

And then we got told the whole mess.

Let's not pretend for one second I was afraid for what was going to happen to me in the future-- I was scared for my dad.

My father is a traveling salesman-- not like in the Bible selling way, but he was the main distributor for parts to computer systems in a Corporate setting. I know it has to do with circuit boards and chips, and the occasional military technology that even at 20 I can't understand.

On September 10, 2001, I got screamed at by a certain traveling salesman for doing something I should have--I probably left my bike under his car, or lost my temper and kicked a wall, or it could have even been the constant skateboarding in my room dinging up the walls; I was a typical 12 year old boy.

On September 10th at 9PM when my dad came to talk to me after cooling down I told him I hope he died-- because I was a 12 year old boy and you never grasp the meaning of your words, just that they sound powerful.

On September 11th at 5:30AM my father woke me up for me to wish him off to the airport. I stoically huffed at him and didn't speak, my own sign of solidarity that I was going to talk to him-- he said "I love you, EJ" and he left.

On September 11th at 9:53AM we were switching classes, I was going from Math to Geography, and I remember in the hallway hearing Mr. Healy (Geography) say to Mr. Turgeon (Language Arts) about a plane crash. I felt like I knew something everyone didn't, and stupidly felt smug knowing something they were going to tell us--and I was just as stupidly wrong.

At 11:30 I was in the downstairs boy's bathroom, just outside the lunchroom, throwing up the majority of my dinosaur oatmeal while my friends were all just silent in the lunchroom, because no one knew what to say or do to the kids who didn't know if their parents were alright.

I was one of those kids who didn't know yet.

It's an unsettling feeling trying to remember all the details from my dad's boarding pass, after all I'd been there when he picked up his initial ticket. We lived right down the street from an airport after all.

That was what we did. On weekends my dad would take me to the airport and pay the five dollars to park in the carport and we'd run up and down the moving walkways and watch the planes take off from the observation bay. Then we'd get McDonald's and he'd narrate the moving walkway for me as I continued to run up and down it doing whatever stupid thing came to mind.

I know that my dad's original plan was not to depart from home this time though, he was going to depart from Logan International Airport in Boston and continue his business in Miami Florida and be home by that Friday so we could go out for pizza at Papa Gino's.

Logan International Airport is now more commonly known as the airport that American Airlines Flight 11 flew out of before hitting the North tower that killed 1,392 people in total.

Imagine being 12 years old and only knowing that a plane from Logan Airport had crashed and killed everyone on board-- they gave no other specifics at that time, just where it flew out of and where it crashed.

I think I fought back tears all day, waiting for the best and worst when I got home.

When I got home on the bus, my best friend, Elijah (who now goes more by Ace), walked me home and said if I needed I could come over his house afterward. I'm pretty sure I just nodded and then proceeded to throw up in my mouth.

I still remember the atmosphere of my house when I walked in-- the TV on and muted and replaying the crash over and over again. The sunny weather almost seemed to contrast it all and it made me feel disconcerted and sick. If you've never experienced that feeling like you've been under water and tried to listen to speaking, you won't understand the overwhelming sense of pressure in my house.

It was about 2:23 when I got home that day, my mom was still a stay at home mom at that time, but even then she would usually be showered and ready by 10AM. When she came downstairs she still wasn't quite finished, like she had just stopped in the middle of it all and forgotten.

The only thing I remember her saying was that she hadn't heard from him, but that it wasn't his flight and that she had been calling the school all day, first my middle school and then my sister's elementary school only to be met with a busy signal. However she hadn't heard from him and to what she knew they were still in the process of grounding all the planes.

On September 11th, 9:58PM our house phone rang, I was sitting in my bedroom reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets with the door just ajar. My mom was downstairs watching TV, if I had to guess she was watching Friends. I remember hiding in the stairwell listening to her talk and finally having that comforting reality that my dad was safe-- he had been grounded in Graceland hours earlier and his cell phone couldn't get service in Tennessee.

On September 14th, 6:42PM my father arrived home in his rental car with a less than shaven face and he tossed me a Louisville Slugger and he said "Kentucky says hello, Sport". He'd promised me that he'd come home with a souvenir from Florida, and he was at least true to his word.

I found out years later that he stopped at the official Louisville store because the radio had been warning of highway robbers and looters and he wanted to be prepared and have a suitable gift for his 12 year old son.

The rest is a blur, I remember lots of crying and and remember lots of joking around to try and lessen the mood-- and I know for a fact that night my father checked on my bedroom no less than 15 times, for reasons that are beyond my understanding even still.

8 years later my father and I share an awkward truce, a lot has happened and I'm not 12 any more. I might not like him, but I always love him and I'd be lying if I said I hadn't cried at least once today.

My mom said he'll always see me as I was at 12, and I think I'm not exactly opposed to that image.

Welcome Home, Outcasts!

Oh hai!

It's been a while since I've just blogged for the sake of a jovial mood and updating people and I'm feeling jovial and in an update mood-- so this is what this is, an honest to goodness bloggy-blog.

I've been back at uni for a little over week now and I have to say it's a good change of pace while returning to an ever familiar routine of mine. It's scary to think that I'm in my third year, a Junior for anyone who's counting on their fingers right now.

I can still remember what I got accepted to U of H, it was sometime in December 2006, it makes me honestly feel so much older than the little boy who danced around to MC Lars on his kitchen table when he got an early acceptance letter.

Classes have been the usual, I'm really interested in what I'm taking this year-- so far my schedule stands as:

Monday

World Cinema— 1:30-5:00

Programming Foundations— 7:20-10:00

Tuesday

Industrialization in Asia— 3:30-4:45

Adult Journey: Search for Meaning—5:00-7:20

Wednesday

Orientalism in Cinema—1:30-5:00

Thursday

Industrialization in Asia— 3:30-4:45

So far with the way the school year has been scheduled I haven't had my Monday courses yet-- and it just so happens those were the two I was looking forward to most. the World Cinema class is taught by one of my favorite film professors, Isabelle Freda who is just, well she's a character and reminds me of much more approachable version of my high school photography teacher. I'm indifferent towards my Programming course for right now, but I am excited to spend some time working in MS-VB 2008, even if I only understand on the most basic level what that means.

My other courses so far are just, well kind of perfect so far, even if a little intense. my film courses are always my favorites, especially now that I'm well established in the school-- I kind of know the teachers and the topics well by now that I find myself really feeling like I know what I'm doing. My Industrialization in Asia course scares the shit out of me, but I know I'm going to learn a whole lot of stuff and I mean a looooooot. My Adult Journey course is basically like applied Psychology 101, it's a highly autobiographical "All University" course (this basically means I'm required to take this class, or one of a similar discipline to get electives credit, so I might as well enjoy it). It's a lot of theories, but then we discuss the general awesomeness of what those theories mean to us-- I also really like the professor because she's letting us call her Roz-- I'm a bit of a Disney/Pixar fanboy and it makes me chuckle.

However the most exciting thing yet is not the courses, it's my living situation.

Most people who know me know that I've spent the past two years living in a school dorm on campus that is like a more lame version of Hogwarts. Dorms mean lots of things I hate about school including: one bathroom, meal plans, no personal space and the general hazards of that many guys living in one small space.

This year I'm living in an on campus apartment just across the lawn from where I used to live, but you'd think it was a completely other world.


That's not my exact apartment, but I have one of the front facing ones like that-- my door is a bright green though as all the Quads are color coordinated to make them easier to find (Res Life says it's for their own usage for maps, but I personally think it's to help the drunk people get home to some degree of accuracy).

I still don't have my own room, I'm living with my friend Kal this year, but it's still a better trade off. Even if I know there are some thing he and I clash over-- everything is at a steady truce right now.

My apartment is fairly good sized considering it's my first apartment-- 2 floors, 2 full baths (one upstairs, one downstairs), 3 bedrooms (there's 5 of us total, 2 doubles and 1 single), a full kitchen, and a living room/dining room area. It's not huge but everything is fairly comfortable, it's a good size for a small home-- let alone an apartment.

Living with Kal is a bit of a challenge because he's been living alone for a long time now-- I believe he's had a single since he was a Sophomore and now during his Senior year he has to learn to share space-- sort of. He's basically claimed most of the free space in the room-- which is fine, I don't take up a lot of space, but we are in very much an Oscar and Felix situation.

I'm not exactly a neat freak about being clean, at home I'm probably the messiest person ever-- but over the past 2 years I've learned how to share space and that even a little mess makes a room seem 40 times smaller.

the three other guys are okay I guess, never really see them. Our closest neighbor is named Shane, I don't know much about him other than he's a Senior and not a douche-- sounds like a friend in my book.

The other two guys, well-- let's just say that we might have some problems when I get my eskrima sticks. I'm not sure their names, I think my rooming paper said Makai and Kevin, for the sake of not calling them obscure names that make no sense we'll stick with this. I have never seen Kevin-- if he walked into our house I'd assume he was probably lost or drunk. Makai from here on out will be disaffectionaly called douchemate. I could complain about him for hours with all the stupid shit he's done-- but you're going to hear enough about my flatmonster over the next few months so I might as well save the good stuff for later.

Let's just say I'm glad to have some time to myself right now. I'm doing the pensive writer thing and looking out over the pond watching the geese, still enjoying the last few days where it feels moderately like a New England summer. It's the kind of scene that prefaces a movie where you learn a lesson-- the scenery makes me feel more profound than I am.

It's kind of a good feeling.

so now I've set my mobile up for blogging via SMS--I can now officially be annoying on loads of levels and many places at whatever time I feel!

The Wide World Exotic

that was a phrase my Cinema professor used this week, "the Wide World Exotic"-- he has a penchant for using language in a way that I can never grasp on my own.

Did I mention that my professor was gay?

I think his flair for words is definitely related, at least in his case.

We were discussing what the American abroad means in movies, because it's a very common theme in a class that functions largely outside the realm of American movies, or at least movies that involve largely American motifs.

Sitting there in that class, awkwardly shifting in my chair made me realize how uncomfortable I am in myself as an American. This attitude is nothing new, but I sadly have no Patriotism to this country. I'm not sure if I've ever known what it means to be an American-- because I'm not sure there is really such a thing. In most countries, there's not as much ethnic diversity as in the US-- whereas the US is a wonderful mix of mutts. We don't really have a place to belong and the label of American more satisfies location rather than mindset-- and for some reason whenever I say this I offend lots of people.

Sorry, I guess it's one American thing I might actually subscribe to.

Stranger in a strange land, that's what we're supposed to take away from the "Yankee" traveling around in places that are generally not his home, hence the "wide world exotic" as Professor Lang phrased it.

I was then sat in class thinking about myself in that role, the American abroad trying to discover this strange lore and these queer traditions of an age old culture. It was only then that I realized I couldn't, I couldn't envision myself as this courageous adventure.

I've always wondered if Professor Lang feels this same way, having grown up in South Africa to British born parents trying to hash out a place in America. He's seen a world that I've only seen in story books, and I wonder if maybe once upon a time he sat in a desk like mine, at an age not too far from mine, wondering if maybe he didn't fit where he was any more.

Maybe some day I'll get up the courage to ask him what home means to him, but for now I'm nearly alone with this internal battle for self.

This is not my home.
I am a stranger in my homeland, I can feel the gaps growing every day from the person I'm growing up to be as compared to where I grew up.
My "home" stands in another day-- nearly 10,000 miles away from me.
My obsession is almost Napoleonic, like the way he longed for Egypt-- I long for a place where I fit.

I'm not sure if this thought terrifies me or excites me-- but I'm sure if you provided me with a scimitar I might vote for the "excites me" angle.

For Lack of a Better Title, We'll Call This "Un-"

Life's funny how it works out-- that's really the long and short about it. I could go on for hours, but really everything I'd ever need to say is summarized right there in that 7 word sentence (it's not 6, the grammar nerds will tell you why that is)

There are lots of things I'd like to say, and lots of things I'd like to say to her, but she's heard them before and by now there's no new ways I can tell her what's on my mind.

I suppose all I can say is this:

6 months ago I made a decision, a big decision-- it's the decision from which every other decision since has stemmed from. 6 months ago today my life changed for the better, hell it was kind of the start of my life-- the adult concept of it, not just the sentient being kind.

6 months later she still doesn't have a ring, we don't have an announcement in any paper, we don't have the same openness that other couples do, but through it all, she's still my fiancee-- and as I've told her a million times now, that will always be enough for me.

How Can I Be Anything But Second Best to You?

Warning, this blogpost may contain nostalgia, profundity, and references to obscure pop culture references-- you have been warned.

So I just recently finished Paper Towns, comparisons aside for now, John Green is now not only one of my favorite YouTubers, but he now tops the list of favorite authors.

I recommend you go buy it if you have the means to. I bought the one with sad Margo-- it's less disconcerting I think.

I suppose you can consider this my sort-of book report, but at the same time I plan to tell you nothing about the book. It's like two girls, one cup-- you get to see my reaction but never understand what I saw in it.

Sorry, I know someone probably just ewwww-ed at that.

I can't say the book was anything exceptional, not to offend it, but what I mean is that it's a book very much about real life and real people for once-- no boy wizards, sparkly vampires, or unfortunate orphans can be found amongst these pages.

and unlike most books I've read in the past 5 years, it really made me think.

High school is a weird place, anyone who has been can tell you that it was the worst time of their life, or for some-- they very few I have in my life they live with this self aggrandized glory of who they were in high school.

In the end, it was just a place where we learned, and met people: good and bad, and somewhere along the line we became young adults and left it in a very unfamiliar state than when we entered. I have very few fond memories of high school, and even fewer friends leftover after the great schism that was college...but through it all it did shape who I am and what I wanted to be.

I suppose this is where the the belated learning comes in, how a book about high school can teach me more about high school than ever being in high school ever did.

I once heard a quote that went something like: the race is long, and in the end it's only with yourself...

I suppose nothing I'm going to say from here on out is fact, just something that from my own experience has been proven to be true: results may vary, if there are even any results at all worth sharing.

I'll never accept when people say life is short now that I think about it, how can life be short, it's the longest thing you'll ever do? No rather I've found that we instead spend most of our time not living our lives preoccupied with some intangible worry about something that will probably never befall us anyway.

Don't be afraid to live your life, and I mean really live it-- do not become a spectator, because in the end of it all you want your story to be one worth telling. Strive to become a legend, even if it's only in your mind, because in the end all that matters is what you thought of you.

They did hit on a point in Paper Towns, leaving is the hardest thing you'll ever do, until you do it and then you realize that unlike ripping off a bandage you are without the same feeling of regret and remorse, but rather waiting until you can do it again.

I've left home many times now, and find that Heraclitus wasn't exactly right and neither was Thomas Wolfe-- whether it's a river or a home, you'll find that sometimes if you're lucky, you'll find that going home to a place you once knew is the only way to preserve the person you once were.

College has given me a lot of perspective, much more than I ever had bumming around Manchester, New Hampshire with my best friends-- not that college is what changed me, but rather just seeing the world from a different place has altered my concept of reality.

I've learned that you have to learn to walk out your front door, even if it scares you, because to me there is nothing scarier than finding someone who was so afraid of being afraid that they lived their lives in pathetic familiarity. Do not fear the unknown, because by doing so you are merely prolonging the inevitable. To presume we live in a world of familiarity is to truly be a man on an island.

Do what you love, even if you're bad at it, even if it kills you-- because in the end that's what life is going to do. No matter who you are or what you do, we are all going to die--no one is exempt from our impending mortality, in the end we all have the same destination. The journey is what defines who you are, because you'll find that in the very end of it, our stories are all connected in the same boring place, hell who knows-- that place might even wind up being a paper town so you might as well make your mark on the map while you're still holding on the pushpins.

That's How You'll Know My Love is Still Strong

Warning, this is a sentimental blogpost so if you want to skip some of the mushy, I'd understand.

Normally these entries are open ended and directed to almost anyone, but this time not so much-- there's one person I have on my mind right now.

I know when she reads this she'll have that face on, the one that's hard to say with words, it's somewhere between laughing and crying because I know exactly how she is.

The title comes from a Plain White T's song and happens to be the exact same title I used on a Livejournal/Multiply entry right when we were just starting out-- a time that feels like a million years ago if you really think about how much we have been through during all this time.

Lately however we had fallen into some type of weird rut, nothing out of the ordinary for any couple who has been together long enough, but it's still a weird feeling. We weren't doing badly, we were doing the same old, same old that we were used to-- and that was really what became the problem.

I remember when we were just starting, everything was so new and waking up every day was exciting because there was so much we were still learning about each other, and every time I told her that I loved her it was like a spark going off-- anyone who has fallen in love heavily for the first time knows exactly those crazy lovey-dovey feelings and how much of an Oxytocin overload the whole thing is.

We've been together now nearing a year and half, and she has been my best friend for even longer, so some of the initial love feelings have faded, I wasn't surprised by this-- but it started to get to an extreme level of unsurprised behavior. She might not have noticed it, I guess because I didn't until recently.

I got too comfortable with her, and I don't mean in that understanding sense, but as in I started pushing aside things, and stopped doing things altogether. I used to be a romantic guy, and I'm not saying that stopped it just became something completely different. We used to celebrate every Tuesday, it happens to be the day we got together-- it was a Tuesday and I had a class to go to, and I'll never know what we learned that day. I'm not saying that we should do that now, it's a little crazy to celebrate every week now, but the idea is still there.

Even just this month I found myself pushing aside special days, and not for any reason that I can think of that is logical. Each month we celebrate the 4th and the 29th-- just because we do have that sentimental streak. I however started putting less and less stock in those days because I started to get busy with my own things. Once again, none of this seems like a huge deal-- but the small things that come from it are what change it.

I stopped doing so much because somewhere along the way my comfort level with her turned into general expectation. What did it matter if I wasn't spontaneously saying I love you like I used too, she still knows right? Maybe I wasn't making as big a deal of a anniversaries, she must still know how important those days are, right? If I don't compliment something, she has to still understand that I care, right?

It's true that all these are a yes, but it doesn't mean that I shouldn't remind her every day how important she is to me. Of all the things that can get tiresome, telling her all these lovey-dovey romantic things are not on of them. I could tell her that I loved her every 10 minutes and it would never lack value each time. But the fact is that I should remember to tell her these things because just assuming she knows things is different than taking the time to make sure she knows these things.

Last night was our turning point again, whatever it was, and I'm not sure helped really bring those feelings back like how it used to be when we were getting together, just with more familiarity. I was listening to our songs again, and we have a lot. I was remembering all those times pre-coupledom where I was doing idiotic things around her, just because I was falling that hard. Out of my least suave moments we'll both cite the time she gave me her phone number and I got so excited that I closed our chat window long before I learned the joys of auto-log-- needless to say I spent the next hour pressing ctrl+z after she went to bed in hopes that by some weird chance of fate it would work.

It didn't.

12 hours later she comes to me with a thinly veiled sadness asking why I didn't text her awake, and I had to put my tail between my legs and admit my stupidity. She made fun of me, but not in that mean way-- in that teasing way that was a little too friendly for siblings, but that's what we were hiding behind-- the brother-sister relationship that's ironic.

It's the moments like that I can't forget, no matter how redundant they get-- I don't want to lose the awkwardness of 18 year old Pax who was in love with his best friend to 20 year old Pax whose fiancee is his best friend.

So in the most long winded way I can say to people is this-- if you have someone you love, make sure to tell them that, really it will make all the difference in the world. And to the gorgeous who might just have tears welling in her eyes by now-- did you know I love you so so so soooooooooo much? because if you didn't, just know that I do-- so so sooooooooo much and more than words can say.

Life is What Happens To You While You're Busy Making Other Plans

I've been thinking a lot lately, and we all know what this means when I start thinking-- it's either going to be insane, or actually be profound and we'll all be shocked that I've said it.

It's odd how seeing a Disney/Pixar film can still have this effect on me even at my newly acquired 20 years of age.

Life is a funny thing, partially because it's the only thing we really all have in common, we will live our lives and then we'll become part of the history we all struggle to remember as soon as it passes us.

I don't intend to spoil the movie I saw today, but I'd like to reiterate to message in my own words, and in my own interpretations, just because I can-- and that's the wonderful power of free speech.

When we're young, we all have preconceived notions about what we want to be when we grow up, the types of lives we want to live, even if in the smallest fraction of full picture. The question has been asked to almost any child of speaking age-- "what do you want to be when you grow up?". The answers are as honest as you can get, nothing is tainted by the outside world yet.

When I was only 18, and a new (not to mention terrified) college freshman, I worked as an inner city tutor in a school where, for the first time in a long time, I was the minority. I found myself asking these same questions to these kids "what do you want to be when you grow up?" as if these children who could barely tie their shoes really knew. It was only then why I realized that adults even ask that question at all, call it a moment of maturity creeping into my life. We don't necessarily ask to find out the answers, which sounds like ignorance, but it's not but rather is something much more profound.

We ask these questions because it's the reaction that makes it all worth it, seeing the pure unadulterated look of joy from a child who thinks they know what they want. They have grand dreams of who and what the want to be-- even if the answer is completely generic through the ages. Some kids want to be firefighters, ballerinas, even just something as simple as parents-- I had never met a child who wanted to be an accountant or work at the mall for minimum wage.

I'm not sure how along the way we've let these dreams die-- or at least for some of us, I myself am very lucky. To digress for a moment, I am proud to say that I am growing up to be just what I always was-- I get to spend the whole rest of my life telling stories about my imaginary friends, but you might just call me a writer.

No matter who we become, we can all recall back to a time when we were still becoming ourselves, dressing up and playing pretend-- even if it meant defying logic sometimes, deep down it mirrored a real desire. To still a coin termed from Up I suppose we all have our own "My Adventure Books", even if they are metaphorical.

In this life we fight so hard to complete these adventures, no matter how big or small they may be, even if we never accomplish them it's part of keeping that dream alive. It's ironic how as children we're told to "shoot for the stars" and then as soon as we get old enough we're told "not to get our hopes up", and so as time goes on we slowly place these dreams into more productive avenues even if it means sacrificing happiness along the way in some cases.

What I've realized though is that it's not about accomplishing your dreams, or even achieving all your goals, but instead it's about not forgetting the type of ambition you once had and using it to fuel your future passions. It's not about the type of journey you take, it's about the people you meet along the way. You might never explore the deep jungles of South America, you will probably never land on the moon, and you will certainly not live forever-- but that doesn't mean you can't live every day like it is just that exciting. It's not about the things you've never done, or the things you could have done only if variables X,Y, and Z worked impossibly in your favor-- rather it's about finding that path in life that brings you the same childlike joy you once felt and never looking back with bitterness about what could have been.

Now all I'm wondering is:

has all this introspective thinking earned me my "Self-Realization" Wilderness Explorer badge.