Missing Teeth Paradigm

Often I will have dreams where my teeth get knocked out and I am trying to figure out what to do. This is most likely karma or guilt because I once knocked out my friend's teeth in high school. (Total accident involving a thrown baseball if you're curious)

Too bad all our wonderful myths like the tooth fairy disappear out of childhood. Adults don't believe in fairies. Instead we believe in dinosaurs and Chuck Norris.

Mom and Mike came up to visit this week, which was pretty neat. They took me shopping and I got some much-needed t-shirts. I ended the day on the couch with leftovers from Bob Evans, a glass of wine, and British hilarity. Thanks to Jeff for Spaced, even though the audio is ever-so-slightly out of sync on this version, they're still the most watchable DVD's we own.

Finals week is fast approaching, and all I can really think about is swimming. The lanes in the RPAC lap pool are wide enough to drive a car down, and yet I am always amazed to find people standing forlorn on the deck waiting for a section of pool to open that they can have all to themselves. I always offer to share my lane with these aquatic refuges, who oft look bewildered as they try to puzzle out the meaning of the word "share." I can't blame them for their confusion though; our culture understands less about sharing than we would care to admit.

That is the way of it.

Sleep Comes For None

Didn't sleep very well last night.

Photoshop seems to be a little buggy on the PC's in this lab. It crashed again in the middle of a drawing. Nothing fancy, just five layers and some blends-- but I guess it was enough to give the program a heart attack.

Today's drawing is about the feeling I get when I can't sleep at night. It's about being restless and irritated. And thoughts of the future pressing down. In the small hours of the morning I watch my shadow fill the ceiling in the glare of the alarm clock. I remember when we were kids; how we would use a flash light in the dark to make our silhouettes look like giants reaching down to crush the room.

Clever Blog Title

Today was my first day back to school after a juicy extended Memorial Day weekend. (God bless all our veterans!)

Rain threatened this morning, as I hiked across vast swaths of parking lot to my first class. To change up my morning routine, I stopped in to Cup o' Joe's and bought a coffee which, after five minutes of walking, had managed to spill all over my hand. It tasted awesome though, so no harm done. I usually tend to spill things when I walk anyway.

I got to Spanish a few minutes later and tried to recall what exactly we had been doing on Friday in class. Everyone else was equally lost. Thankfully, our teacher Aida eased us back into the land of 'hablon espanol' with a mother's care, and we were soon back on track.

An hour later I sat in math recitation trying to puzzle out the homework from over the weekend: simplfying and solving rational expressions-- long and difficult math problems that tend to fill up entire pages of my notebook with desperate chicken scratches and arrows. For problems that I don't understand how to do, I'll actually add boxes of text that explains my reasoning for why something should work. It tends to be helpful for when I'm going back through them later on.

Went swimming after class. Good to be back in a pool. I only wish my goggles didn't always fog up.

But Maybe I Should Sit Down First

Internet at home is working again.



Rarrrgh.



My Brain.

Rawr.
Maybe I should have a sit down and we'll try this again tomorrow.

And The Fridays Have It!

I chose to sit down and eat my lunch out on the college oval today, on my usual bench, and under my usual shade tree. By happenstance there was a dance class that was having its session outside since the weather was nice. After watching them hop and twirl around for 5 minutes I made up my mind that I absolutely had to sketch them.

'An artist without a sketchpad is a sorry sight indeed', I thought to myself as I flipped through my math notebook. With a clean sheet of college rule and mechanical pencil, I knocked out some rudimentary sketches of these dancers in motion. Their deliberate weight-shifting and movement was something that has always interested me, and here was as good an opportunity as any.

I talked to the dance instructor afterward to see if I could sit in on future classes to get a more dedicated drawing time in, and she was happy to assist. Maybe I'll be a medical anatomy illustrator, something that would combine art with biology and medicine.

Anyway, have a good Memorial Day weekend!

Scribbles to Feed Your Belly

I feel like someone threw a switch this week that made everyone in my Spanish class become good friends. Three of us realized we have all at one time or another in ancient history played Magic: The Gathering, which immediately bound us together like blood brothers.

My family is getting together for more festivities this Memorial Day weekend. We may opt out though, since the drive down eats up a large portion of the day and leaves us exhausted by the time we get back to the city. Esther's hitting the road for her cousin's wedding in a couple of weeks anyway, so I reckon she deserves at least one weekend off from taking a trip.

Last night's bible study was entirely dedicated to our friend Holly giving a presentation about her proposed mission trip to parts of Asia. It was an informative evening but I was a bit disappointed that we didn't get down to having any real theological discussions. I need to know more about this Jesus fellow: What's he want with us? What's his plan? Why does the mere mention of his name evoke so much negative emotion from some people while others drive around with "WWJD?" bumper stickers on their cars? Do my friends, family, and colleagues think I'm lame for reading the Bible? Does Jesus think I'm lame for playing Warhammer 40k? Does he have a blog?

Here is Jesus.

Here is Christ.

Here is Sam.

Disruptor Beam

My back and appendages are thanking me this week because I stopped wearing my backpack around campus. I noticed immediate improvements to my health: I had a lot more energy once I got home yesterday and my muscles weren't in agony. Huzzah!

The trade-off is that I can't work on my homework between classes. Thank God for khaki shorts though: I've got six big pockets on these things and each one is filled with wallet, water bottle, mechanical pencil, car keys, cell phone, pop-tarts, and all the other classroom debris that tends to accumulate in my backpack. I also carry a notebook around just in case an instructor says something noteworthy.

After math recitation today I'm going home to hit the books. Math homework tends to bury me if I don't keep at it. I'm doing pretty slick in that class though. Color me surprised, but I got a 100% on last week's midterm. I probably haven't received a perfect score on a math test in over 15 years, so this is cause for me to dance in celebration.

On a side note, last night was grand: we got food from one of our favorite restaurants, Tai Thai, which is only two blocks down, and then vedged out on the couch for a nostalgic evening watching Star Trek. Evenings like that remind me that we don't need much to be content in our lives; good food and good company are always welcome.

Too Nice a Day to Blog

I've wrestled control of the system away from the evil spirits long enough to make a final blog post for the week. Frankly, I'm keeping it short because it's too nice outside and I don't want to miss a minute of this weather. As you may well have assumed, the Eater is powered by photons. (yay, Biology!)

Right now I am incredibly content with life. I love my friends, my family, my wife. You guys are awesome. I only wish we had more time to hang out.

Have a great weekend. Get yourself some photons.

qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm

Someone is on the way to fix the errors.

Someone is in the. way to fax the errors.

Someone esta en la way to faq .el errors.

Sumwon izon thewai tu phix la errors.

Somon is .on de ve to vex ve erros.

Someone is on the way to fix the errors.

Someone is in the way to fax .the errors.

Someone esta en la way to faq el errors.

Sumwon izon thewai tu. phix la errors.

Somon is on de ve to vex ve erros.

System Failure Imminent

It is now quite clear to me that the Eater Blog has fallen under the power of some kind of malevolence force, possibly a wandering techno-spirit bent on reaping revenge on me. This started with the vanishing blog titles. Today was even worse: photoshop had the electronic equivalent of a heart attack while I was in the middle of banging out today's drawing.

I managed to hit the 'print screen' button in the middle of the program crash, and as you can see from the image that I managed to capture proof of the supernatural forces that have declared war on this blog.

I may have to contact a few experts to see who will defeat this evil menace. You can help out by posting a comment to let me know who you think would be best suited to expel this evil: Applicant A, Applicant B, Applicant C, or Applicant L.

Choose wisely. The future of the Eater Blog depends on you!

Where Have All My Titles Gone?

Yes, exciting question-title today. For some reason, blogspot has decided to eat some of my more recent blog titles. This is problematic for me, a person who takes pride in his zany title wordplay. What has caused these mysterious disappearances? Who is to blame? (and so forth with the questions...)

Be assured that the Eater of Small Things will get to the bottom of this mystery. Until then, I'd just like to profess that I had an amazing weekend visiting my family. We had an awesome time with my dad, saw the new Star Trek movie, and ate many country-style breakfasts, and drank a lot of chocolate milk.

Went to my mom house for a Mother's Day cookout. Very relaxing day. Got to see my new nephew, got to eat many hot dogs. My brother Matt seems happier than I've ever seen him, and I thank his wife Bridget for that fact. All in all, a very good weekend.

Today, Today, Today

Today is better than yesterday by default. Yesterday featured a math homework marathon that ran about ten hours. Why so long? I'm relearning the basics, and unfortunately it takes quite a bit of time for me to figure things out. Though I must admit that math is pretty cool.

It's just too bad the special "OSU" edition of the Intermediate College Algebra is next to worthless. I've borrowed the standard college text that it was derived from, and I was surprised to see how much better it explained the different problems encountered in every section. So now I hop between the two texts as if deciphering some dead language with my own personal Rosetta Stone.

Tonight we are flying the coop for dearer pastures. I wasn't able to escape as far as the beach, but this is the next best thing: visiting my family. Should be fun, I just hope I can get everything done before we leave. I may try to do homework on the ride down, but even the thought of staring at equations on a bumpy road makes my head hurt.

Yesterday, Yesterday

Today: I am angry, frustrated, exhausted.

Stick a fork in me I am done. Or I'd like to be done.

I will never be done.

God I'm so tired.

I want to go to the beach.

I want a cigarette.

Or discernible purpose.

Tomorrow, Tomorrow.

Another Wednesday has cropped up on me unexpectedly and I realize I've been neglecting the Eater Blog this week due to various distractions.

Our friends invited us to hang out with them last weekend to drink some beers and play Wii Fit, an amazing application that makes exercise fun and social (waah! impossible!). How'd I do? Not good. The Wii accessed my body's (fake) age at around 37 and that I'd need to eat a banana to make up for my lack of physical activity.

Most of the exercise activities the Wii Fit offers are pretty neat, and we had a lot of fun trying them out. I seem to perform poorly at everything except for dodging soccer balls, though that may be a case of beginner's luck. I look forward to the next time we play (because I've got some records to destroy).

Our friend Clayton was recovering from jaw surgery yesterday so we trekked out to Patalaska to shower him with Frosties and love. And since it was Cinco De Mayo, we celebrated by getting some Taco Bell. Sometime later in the evening Clay, Brandi, and I formed a cheese pact that would keep us bound to follow Esther out of the room when the day comes that we no longer want to see obscene things on television. (last night it was determined that Esther has some internal survival mechanism that protects her from bearing witness to some of the more horrific aspects of reality. I have labeled this newly discovered genetic trait the "accidentally prudent" gene.) She is now our designated canary in the coal mine.

Dimensional Rambler

Today's title is a play off of the Dimensional Shambler from H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, a being that walks between worlds and eats people. A web search for Dimensional Shambler reveals some pretty interesting information.

In life nothing is really constant. Things change, seemingly for the worst in today's case. My favorite college dive, Larry's, has closed down. Honestly, I hadn't been through the doors in a couple of years, but it was something familiar that I walked by every day to class. I had a lot of good memories in there. It was the 'art kids' bar, a place that secreted some kind of special aura that kept away some of the more obnoxious bar-goers.

Me and the other grad students in the Painting Dept. would all go over to Larry's to lick our wounds after those long, painful critiques. Drink ourselves into oblivion and take turns buying the rounds. I also have fond memories of losing games of pool, content to hit the cue ball as long as someone was willing to go break dollars to feed the table. Good memories, carefully retired to a shelf where I could remember them.

What broke my heart today was seeing them take down the neon "Larry's" sign this morning. I sighed in resignation when I saw the sign they were putting up in its place: The Sloppy Donkey Salon--- Surely, an idiot's bar based on that name. I fear there's going to be no genuine character left in this place. Who names these places? Why such stupid names? Is there some new handbook that dictates that you can only name new establishments based on adjective + animal + salon? We're being taken over by Madlibs.