Back In Waco

Well, I made it back from Boston and am back in Waco. I just had my first day of class in about five months, so that was kind of strange. And this is the first time I’ve been back in Waco for an extended period since pretty much last November, so that is kind of strange too. But it is really nice, I’ve had so much fun seeing everyone and catching up. And it’s nice not to have to be doing the whole “see you in a few months/never goodbye.” It’s almost novel to me right now to say “See you tomorrow!” On a different note, I am kind of concerned about losing the habits I picked up in Boston, such as reading constantly and making lots of music. I haven’t cracked a book in days now, and my guitars are sitting in my room, very lonely and confused. I hope I can keep up those hobbies as the semester progresses!

A few other things: I am converting my bicycle to fixed gear. There was a time when I would say “Fixies are stupid and dangerous.” And now I have one. So I guess that means I am also stupid and dangerous. It’s a pretty big project turns out, lots of little mesaurements to make and such. Hopefully it will be up and running by the weekend!

In my first class today, the professor asked me if I prefer “Robert,” at which point Christy and Molly both turned around with big puppy dog eyes, and I caved, and said, “You can call me Bob.” So, as far as Dr. Hanks and the rest of my Children’s Lit class is concerned, my name is “Bob.”

I found out a few weeks ago that my grandfather has cancer. He’s been doing radiation for a few days now, and will start chemo pretty soon. I am really nervous about it, because chemo is so rough. Also, my old choir director, who I was pretty close with, just had a brain tumor removed today. They found out about it last week, and he had surgery today. It looks like everything went well so far. Thoughts and prayers are appreciated.

And finally: I don’t know what’s going to happen to the blog right now. I am so busy doing stuff, and don’t have enough time to be witty and finely-painted and well-crafted and all that. So, if I post, I post. If I don’t, I don’t. And on that ambiguous note…

YEAH WAY TO GO CAMBRIDGE [THIS IS ME BEING SARCASTIC IN ALL UPPER-CASE LETTERS]

It was such a lovely day/week. The weather has been great, I’m finally finished with almost all of my work, I bought a new pair of Toms, got some new music, I could go on. And then today happened and ruined the whole good-feelings-vibe I had. My bike got stolen today. Right outside my office. In broad daylight, on a busy street. I locked it up to the wooden stairway outside my office’s front door, and some jerkface ripped the banister off and jacked the bike. I was going to sell it today. The police are here. BRB.

OKAY. I am back. The cop told me they would keep an eye out and call me if anything shows up. He actually seemed slightly optimistic that they would find it. Too bad I am leaving in four days. And what is happening to my bike right now? It’s been kidnapped by some fiend, who doesn’t know its personality and quirks. They don’t know to be gentle when switching between third and fourth gear, and that the back brake is a little loose. I hope they crash. Well, not really. I should be forgiving, even though my trust was broken.

I keep having fantasies that I will see it on the street, and then I will borrow my coworker’s bike and chase him down, and then get into a brutal cycle-fight. Where I will then emerge victorious and triumphantly take my bicycle back. I put a note up on Craigslist, telling them if they see someone riding it to kick their ass for me.

Looking out my window right now I see a Budhist monk walking by. Coincidence?

Portland is a Sunny/Foggy Place

[Note: I wrote this a few weeks ago, and have been waiting to post until I got my photos back from Walgreen's so I could put them in. Apologies.]

I took this weekend off to take a trip up to Portland, Maine for some cycling, and it was great! For whatever reason, I seem to have some ingrained desire to always go as far north as possible (see: recent trip to Arctic Circle). I think it would be so cool to be a polar explorer. It must be that “seasonal-inferiority-complex” you get from living in a place like Texas, where we only have hot and hotter (okay, well maybe it’s not that simple).

Anyways, on Friday I caught a ride up to Portland with my boss Mark, who was heading up there for business meeting. He dropped me off at the Elms, the bed and breakfast I was staying at. The B&B was in this really old, creepy house, it looked straight out of a cheap 60s horror movie. It was very elegant and mysterious, like the house in Clue. I was in the top room, called the Bear Cave, complete with a mini-library and writing desk. Just my type of place.

But I didn’t stick around long and hopped on my bike. I found a sweet route online that swings by all the major lighthouses in the area. So after stopping at a CVS to buy a disposable camera (my digital died on me back in Italy) and grabbing a quick bite to eat at a vegan café run by Seventh-day Adventists, I headed out. The tour was really neat. It took me by four lighthouse spread out over about thirty-five miles, along some really scenic roads through forest, beach, and marsh. The whole time I kept thinking how beautiful the area was. And not to mention the great weather, which was a strange combination between fog and sun.

I got back to my B&B exhausted and starving. After a much needed shower, I chatted with Scott, the inn’s proprietor, about the best place to get good seafood, and he promptly directed to me Jay’s Raw Bar. It turned out to be this little hole-in-the-wall joint in the old port area of the town next to a handful of real glitzy tourist traps. But it was the real deal, packed to the gills with locals speaking with accents so thick it sounded like another language. After waiting around for a few minutes I was able to grab a seat at the bar. Right as I was ordering a drink, Scott from my B&B sat down next to me! He had decided to take his own advice and come to Jay’s himself. So we ate dinner together, talking about Portland, and college, and travel, and whatnot. Really nice guy.

And of course, I had the lobster, and all ethical concerns aside about boiling your dinner alive, it was absolutely delicious. I’ve never had it before, so I couldn’t resist since I was in Maine and all. I’ve thought about cooking lobster myself (it’s pretty easy), but I just don’t think I could actually put the poor critter in the pot. I would feel so bad, looking at his sad face as I dropped him in the boiling water, and then hearing him tink tink tink on the side of the pot until he had finally, uhm, expired. But having someone else do it is an entirely different story.

After supper, I headed back to the inn for some sleep, but not before grabbing a cone of ice cream. The next morning, I woke up in time for breakfast downstairs in the dining room, which was some powerful good bacon and waffles. I haven’t had a proper breakfast like that since being in Boston, and I had forgotten just how nice it is. I got to chat with the other folks staying there, who were all really nice. I like talking to strangers I think. It’s scary at first, but once you get over that initial awkwardness, the conversation tends to get along pretty well by itself.

After breakfast, I packed my things, checked out, and biked into town. I really enjoyed riding my bicycle everywhere, it was neat and different way to tour a city. I tried to drop my bag off at the Amtrak station, only to find that they don’t have any left luggage services. So I had to go across the street and check my bag at the Greyhound station instead. Greyhound 1, Amtrak 0. I took out my trusty Rough Guide to New England and selected a few choice activities for the day, including the art museum, the Portland Observatory, and book shopping. The art museum was quite nice, and I was able to get in with a free tour of the place, which was a double-plus. The observatory was also very neat. It’s actually a signal tower built in the early 1800s, used to spot ships coming into port. There were lots of neat history and facts about the area. For instance, before the modern era of telecommunication, people would walk up and down the coast near Portland at night during the dead of winter to check for signs of shipwrecks, so that they could then send out lifesaving crews. Amazing! I also visited some antique bookstores, and was able to buy some sweet postcards from the early 1900s. The store had boxes of them, some with messages already on them and some without. I felt like such a voyeur, reading these dispatches sent to friends and family long ago, but I couldn’t help myself. I hope that some of my postcards find there way into a bookstore some day too.

But alas, my time in Portland had to come to an end. After spending a few final moments on the docks, I reluctantly pedaled to the train station to head back to Boston. I don’t particulary know why I liked Portland so much. I mean, it’s not like it exactly has much to offer in the way of tourism, but for whatever reason the place just resonated with me. To be honest, the town felt like a prosperous Waco. And that may be why I liked it so much, because it reminded me of home.

I can’t believe this is happening to me now!

Of all the days to have a minor foot injury! Today is the last Friday of July, which means only one thing: Critical Mass. I have blogged about the Critical Mass before, because it was the most amazing thing ever. And so today, as I am riding my bike home from work, thinking about how much fun it will be to go ride in the Critical Mass in less than an hour, guess what happens (don’t guess—I’m about to tell you). I am doing a sweet track stand at a stop light a few blocks from my apartment when my foot slips and I fall over. It shouldn’t have been a big deal, but I somehow landed funny on my foot and crunched it up bad enough that I can barely walk right now, much less pedal.

I have been looking forward to Critical Mass like Christmas, and unfortunately since I leave Boston before the August edition, today was my last chance this summer. I like to think that God has my back here and actually saved me from getting decked by a road-raging driver, but I have a suspicion that he doesn’t work like that.

Oh well, this will give me the chance to update the blog. Like I am doing right now. Let’s see what else have I been doing/thinking/reading recently? I went to Florida last week for family vacation, which was splendid. I was reaching that point in the summer where I really needed a change of scenery. You know that feeling, where you’ve been doing the same thing at the same place for weeks and weeks and weeks, and it just kinda starts to wear on you a bit. It’s also probably because this last month and a half has been the most sedentary I’ve been since at least November (see here, here, and here for more info). So, my trip to Florida came at just the right time. And now I am back in Boston, refreshed, tanned (sunburned), and ready to face the world, or at least the giant hole developing in my bathroom’s ceiling.

While in Florida, I saw The Dark Knight which pretty much blew my mind. Heath Ledger was amazing. There will be a few wannabe-amateur-critics well-intentioned folks out there who are going to hate on him, because they are the type of person who feels that nothing can ever actually live up to its hype, and well, let’s face it, Heath as the Joker has got to be the most anticipated and hyped performance in years. But let me tell you, his performance not only lives up to the hype, but is even better. He is captivating, in every sense of that expression. The Joker dominates the screen, forcing the audience to hang on his every word and gesture. And Heath also completely embodies the role—I never once thought there was anyone behind that makeup besides the Joker.

Time to get really “Holla-Scholla” now: I also really like both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight because they are lively dissertations on morality and philosophy.  It’s all very Nietzschean, probing the meaning and relevance of morality in the modern age. See, Nietzsche felt that we must move “beyond good and evil,” and create our own system of values and judgments—much in the same way that Ra’s al Ghul and his League of Shadows believe that destroying Gotham is not only morally acceptable, but demanded in order to restore “justice” to the world. Bruce Wayne, however, believes in a morality, that good and evil are separate and distinct entities. The movies explore the validity of that claim, by exploring what the good man must become to overcome evil. In Batman Begins, the hero handily defeats the villian, and restores faith in the idea that good is good and evil is evil. The sequel, however, is much more ambiguous and very unclear about whether Batman’s actions to save Gotham are justified. Is good always good? Must we accept some evil in order to preserve some good? I hope that the third part of the series will answer these questions in a way that affirms our morality, because without a clear good and evil, what separates us from the beasts?

Enough of that however. I am currently reading Paradise Lost, which is fantastic (although I disagree with pretty much everything Milton says). I’ve been thinking about the border between awareness and action, that fine line between talking about changing the world and then actually changing the world. I think that the important thing to remember is that Jesus gave everything, so if I claim to follow him then I should look into doing that as well. Hopefully I’ll put together a post about that sometime soon. On a similar note, I found this post over at Indexed quite true. I’m firmly convinced that Boston is incapable of making a top-notch hamburger. I’ve tried three or four places now that everyone up here swears by, only to find them mediocre at best. I am thinking about buying a digital camera. I am also thinking about buying an amp for my electric guitar, who I miss very much because it is Texas and I am here. How about this for an album title: We Have Questions. I like how epic it sounds—I just need to make sure the music lives up to it.