The New Endeavor Begins!

Just days ago, I posted here about a great new story idea that I was thinking of starting to write. Those of you who know me well probably took that with the requisite grain of salt, thinking they wouldn't see this thing emerge for quite some time.

And yet, not so much. Today was my first set of office hours, but being the first day of class, I was not surprised to find that no students showed up. Which left me sitting in my dark, unhappy cube for an hour and a half with a choice: read my textbook (woo hoo) or write out the idea that was swimming through my head. I opted, as you are about to see, with number two.

I've got a pretty good idea about where I want the story to go, but I felt the best opening would be to start in media res, even if that means, as it does in this case, that not much is going on. I plan on having the story develop in two concurrent (but not perfectly parallel) storylines: from the conception of the trip to the episode below, and from the episode below to the end of the trip. In my mind, it makes sense.

For now, I give you the opening scene. Any thoughts or comments would be greatly appreciated!

------------------------

THE SKY HAD A PURPOSE, and I was insanely jealous. Looking upward from the ground there was so much to see and take in. Its brilliant cerulean hue reminded me of the vast sea, and how the sky held the ocean’s identity for those landlocked souls who would never smell the semi-putridity of waves as they crashed along the seaweed-drenched shore. It was a protector, too, trapping us to our mother planet despite aeronautics, clamoring like a grounded child against his bedroom door, constantly fighting to let us out. It was the curio of the heavens, holding the sun and the moon and the planets and the stars on display for us to see. And through that display we could see ourselves, as if the sky became a microscope, miniaturizing our world into the kind of infinitesimal cosmic significance that puts perfectly sane but overly analytical humans, like me, on their backs staring upward wondering why the hell they would even consider that their problems ever truly meant anything.

My skyward contemplation, like so many other well-meaning schemes I’d concocted over the past two months, failed wholly and completely. I had accumulated these failures like a rampant consumer of misery, hoping perhaps to justify them all by clinging to them until I could find one great success to wipe the whole slate clean. But their burden became too great, and when I found myself staring down a long, narrow highway, somewhere (I think) in Tennessee, the endlessness of the road and my incarceration in the driver’s seat suddenly turned into a paradox too incomprehensible to keep ignoring. I pulled over, killed the engine, and dragged myself to a flat piece of ground whereupon I rested and lay facing the sky. I’d hoped that, in staring down the throat of the truly infinite, it, and not my tortured psyche, would swallow me whole and I could emancipate myself from the need to have something, anything, go according to plan.

So much for that idea. As soon it became apparent to my limitless imagination that no one gave a cosmic crap about my problems, my environs reinvaded my senses again. I was, for all intents and purposes, lost on a highway whose name I couldn’t remember, in a state I couldn’t identify for sure. I had, in the great cinematic tradition of the overly melodramatic, laid to face the sky in contemplation, but I hadn’t even had the decency to find a long, flat stretch of hot desert road to rest upon, but rather some indiscriminate grassy plot in the thick of a nondescript deciduous forest. Cars growled as they raced past the spot where I’d parked, and again I knew I had it all wrong because in the movies, in this scene, you’re supposed to be the only car for miles. Wrong biome, wrong road, wrong motivation. It was all wrong again, and with that I gave up the game.

I sat myself up and looked at my dusty left forearm, upon which sat a tiny black ant scurrying towards my elbow. I looked at the industrious insect for nary a second before bringing my right thumb and forefinger together into an OK sign, setting it in brief approval next to the ant, and flicked my finger against the tiny creature, sending it careening off me and back into the grass. I sat momentarily with pride at regaining some kind of control over things, until the bravado of the fuck-you blow I’d dealt the arthropod began to feel like the shallow swagger of a fifth-grade bully pummeling a kindergartener. I felt awful, and suddenly had no more desire to be in this place, on the side of the wrong road, as susceptible to the whims of a growing psychosis as I was to the breeze left behind by the interminable stream of cars driving past — looking, no doubt, to see why some idiot kid was laying in the grass next to his car while a girl sat in the passenger seat crying into her shirt sleeve.

She was still crying, as she had been for miles before I’d finally stopped. I had first pulled over because I thought maybe she needed air, but when the car came to a halt, she instead buried her head in her hands and bawled, sniffled, said not a word. Each fresh tear weighed upon my head until the atmosphere in the car became so heavy, so stifling, that I needed to escape. I left the car, probably faster than I should have, communicating not the urgency I’d intended but rather impatience bordering on anger. That was why she was still crying, because I’d left mad (so she perceived) and hadn’t returned to comfort or reassure her. I spent far too long figuring out how I should return to the car — too slowly, I thought, and she’d think I really didn’t care; too quickly, and she would be so confused by my actions that she would be inconsolable from the moment the engine turned over.

I settled on what I thought was a reasonable gait, but it wasn’t until my hand was on the door that I realized that I had no clue what to do next. The situation was far too volatile to reenter cold, but rather than think my way through how to make the next stretch of highway tolerable, I’d stared into the cosmos, killed an ant, and felt viciously guilty about the whole episode. I didn’t have the time to stand there and contemplate my next move — inaction suggests uncertainty, uncertainty breeds confusion, confusion creates chaos, round and round we go — so I opened the door, sat down, buckled my seat belt, and stared straight ahead as if down the barrel of a pistol.

Staring quickly became unsettling, and worse yet proved to be a horrible way to assess the situation. Gathering my courage, and with the most tender look my aching eyes could must, I turned my head to face her. She’d been staring at me the whole time, her eyes red and moist, two parallel rivulets descending southward to the precipice of her chin. No new tears had traveled the trail for at least a short time, and I could sense in her stare not only sadness but desperation. I returned her gaze, actively trying to soften my look, hoping to become less threatening, but I feared I was making no progress. In frustration, I sighed deeply and gulped down the saliva gathering in my mouth, felt it line my throat and relinquish the grip of dryness.

It was the most I could manage but it felt like enough. She sniffled once and blinked quickly, and I saw no new tears drip from her blurry, hazel eyes. Her face barely changed, but the subtle change in her look registered to me as a strange new contortion that at best pled for resolution and at least offered a plaintive stalemate.

I could meet those terms for now. I bit the insides of my top and bottom lips with my teeth, pursing my mouth slightly before turning back to the road. There was still a great, unsettled weight in the car, but some of it would be left, like it or not, at the side of the highway, never to be returned to again.

It was in that finality that I found enough solace to will my left foot to depress the clutch, and with a fluidity of motion that felt completely incompatible with the awkward acrobatics going on in my head, I started the car and slipped it into gear. I revved the engine loudly, amateurishly, anything to avoid a stall-out, and with an empty road ahead and a cinematically clear rear view mirror, released the clutch and raced forward. Violently I worked my way through the gears, each shift sending the car into a brief, spasmodic shudder, until the spot where I’d stopped was little more than a speck of dust in the side mirror. I left behind the stink of burnt rubber, a blast of wind and combustion vapors, and more than one victim of my murderous, guilty conscience, and to pay the penance for my sins, I resolved to drive until I saw a highway sign that told me for certain where I was at, or until the road swallowed the car whole — whichever came first.

Systematic Progress

For the first time in a long time, we had a relatively slow-paced weekend -- which consisted mostly of sleeping, copiously, and a day-long adventure to the greater Altoona area. While this particular location may not scream "day-trip destination" to the savvy tourist, even one from the State College area, a mere 45 minutes north, to the coaster enthusiast such as myself it means partaking in a little piece of history.

The draw to Lakemont Park -- wherein sits the oldest operating roller coaster in the world, the Leap-the-Dips -- is the same that beckons the diehard baseball fan to Wrigley Field: partially, knowing that it's an important element to the history of your passion; but also because there's this distinct sense that, in a world increasingly overridden with the forced synergy of corporate consumerism, they just don't make 'em like they used to anymore.

Lakemont felt very much like this, not only for the presence of the Leap-the-Dips, but actually in comparison to a park like DelGrosso's Amusement Park, which we also visited on the way back from Altoona. DelGrosso's was a fine little park, consisting mostly of "permanentized" mobile amusement rides not unlike Lakemont, but its location was not nearly as charming as Lakemont's. Both sit just off Interstate 99, at a distance just far enough for you to remember it's there but not so close that it overwhelms either park's personality. DelGrosso's, though, has so much going on in its general vicinity that you get this sense that, if the park ever failed to maintain profitability, it could be overrun, replaced with some other business, and few would miss it. On the other hand, Lakemont sits on one side of an otherwise residential road. Sure, it's situated next to a brand-new public skating ice rink and the home stadium of the minor league Altoona Curve (hell, the Skyliner has gone from being the wooden coaster spotlight at the park's north end to a fixture that, at first glance, is alarmingly close to the right-center field fence), but there's no feeling that this was little more than a traveling carnival that found a nice spot of land and decided not to pull up their hitching posts.

And it's not the terrain that does this, either. Beech Bend Park, in Bowling Green, KY, was a surprise highlight of last year's Mid-Southern Comfort coaster tour, and with the exception of its new Kentucky Rumbler wooden coaster, the whole park is made up of portable rides that are just not moved anymore. It, like DelGrosso's, sits on a very flat piece of land, at the end of a road that is far from being flat and uneventful -- but unlike DelGrosso's, it also has this unmistakable charm, this intangible feel of being the little guy fighting the big bad rest of the world. It's refreshing, it's charming, it's damn fun.

None of this is to say that DelGrosso's wasn't fun -- on the contrary, we had a blast there: I spent much of the time trying to remember the last time I'd ridden a Flying Bobs that intense -- but Lakemont was really special. It's like it was the only thing meant to be right there, and that, like the unmistakable environs surrounding Wrigley, only added to the experience and to the historical significance.

Leap-the-Dips ascends to a height of roughly 30-40 feet, and features no tall drops, but rather a gentle, meandering course. Its speed tops out somewhere around a whopping 6 mph. The car must be pushed by the operator from the loading area to the lift hill, as there is no chain or tire mechanism connecting the two. There are no blocks: only one four-seat car is ever on the track at once. And sometimes the car doesn't make it to the end of the track, so the operator has to come out and push it the rest of the way into the station.

They just don't make 'em like that anymore, folks. And it's a goddamn shame, too, because these were not only the thrills of an older generation, but it was their entertainment. Their fun. And it's still fun, a whole lot of fun.

Not only was it fun, but it was inspiring. Because, while I've got quite a few ideas for stories and books percolating in my head right now -- including one that, yes, I have started, at long last -- my experience at Lakemont gave me an idea for a book that might lovingly rip a little bit off of my latest novelistic conquest, Dave Egger's You Shall Know Our Velocity! I'm not about to presume I'm going to out-Eggers Eggers, but I feel like there are a lot of facets possible in a story about two (or maybe more) people who tour small amusement parks in order to get back in touch with the simple pleasures that used to be the only worries in their lives, but eventually become the most elusive things in those very same lives. So if you see that novel before I write it, just remember: you heard it here first.

Later that Sunday, I was inspired again by a big force that I'd completely forgotten about and rediscovered by sheer accident. As I parked the car to pick up Chinese take-out on College Ave, I heard a vehicle across the street playing "Soldier Side" by System of a Down. System has always been a band that I've admired and advocated: they've never settled for complacency, they've always challenged themselves to do new, inventive things, whether they succeeded or failed, and they're just incredible musicians and composers.

There are some that will take that claim with a grain of salt, and for good reason. After all, this is a band that constructed most of a song around three words: banana terracotta pie. (Don't believe me? Listen to "Vicinity of Obscenity" and know that I do not lie.) And while many of the tracks from their 2005 double discs Mezmerize and Hypnotize contain repetitive verses and choruses, some tracks contain an unprecedented raw power that is unmatched in other music. "Question!" from Mezmerize, damn near coaxes goosebumps out of the simple question the title promises: Do we, do we know, when we fly, / When we, when we go, do we die? Or consider arguably their most powerful track, "Holy Mountains," in which they rage against those responsible for the Armenian genocide, but when they try to explain why it happened, they can only propose: Someone's blank stare deemed it warfare.

I remember reading an interview back around the release of Toxicity, in which Daron Malakian explained that his style of song-writing wasn't the sprawling, epic track that many bands aim for, but rather to contain that depth and degree of emotion in a short time-frame. A kind of short-burst epic, consisting of many rapid-fire, effective riffs, that seems perfectly matched to today's deficient attention spans. I feel System did just that, skewering the popular consciousness by adhering to the very standards imposed upon it by the world's increasing commercialization. It was far more than clever, effective satire: it was, and still is, art of the highest order.

Having heard and reheard all the System I have at my disposal -- and, thanks to iPod and iTunes, it's almost their entire studio-recorded discography -- I feel as renewed as I did at Lakemont on Sunday. Today was a day where the sort of creative dreams I had over the weekend had no room: it was my first day of English 015, and I was far more busy trying to hide my nervousness by reminding myself that my students' was far greater. That moment, though, came and went, and as each new moment in the classroom comes and goes, I will be spending hours in seminar and even more hours in reflection, working towards making sure that each individual moment generates a lesson that I will remember and carry with me to the next class, and to each new endeavor in my evolving career as a scholar of English.

And I'm hoping that the lessons of my Sunday of System and the Lakemont Leap-the-Dips continue to inspire me in the creative direction as well, as that direction is the one in which I have felt most lost as of late. I'd love the drought to end, and in the words of the ever-prophetic Rage Against the Machine: What better place than here? What better time than now?

On the Simple Pleasures of Customer Service

Let's face it: having to call customer service in this day and age blows goats.  I am particularly certain of this apparent truism by virtue of the fact that my job this summer involved calling customer service lines for insurance companies, which might just be the most eye-gouging-inspiring task known to man.  (A brief aside: what might be the worst is thinking that the 55 minutes you spent on hold -- for one patient -- is bad, until the verifier across the office calmly replies that she holds the one-patient record at 87 minutes.)

As one who spent a little time in retail in my day (and hopes never to have to again, God willing and the creek don't rise), I never quite understood why good, honest, polite customer service ever went the way of the dodo.  Trader Joe's, especially, was always big on making sure the customer was happy, but that was something that was just always ingrained in my head.  So the execution they were looking for was never an issue for me, and was routinely the highest score I'd receive on my quarterly reviews.

There's so little of that nowadays that it saddens me to the core.  But fortunately, in the deep wilds of central Pennsylvania, I have found a bastion for the kind of service one used to experience and, sadly, no longer expects as the standard.  Granted, it came from a chain store, and one of the experiences came over the phone at a customer service call center, but you'll quickly see why I'm so psyched here.

See, as an English major and a bibliophile in general, I find myself purchasing a lot of books, so it made sense for Danielle to, at Christmas last year, indoctrinate me into the ranks of the few, the proud, the Barnes & Noble Membership card holders.  For $20 a year it seemed like a no-brainer: 10% off everything I bought, so $200 in purchases over a year and it pays for itself.  As any good English major knows, one can rock a $200+ purchase in just a few minutes, several times a semester, when one must acquire the necessary texts for upcoming classes.

This time around, even with a mere three seminars to buy for, I needed to purchase thirty-five required texts.  And the campus bookstore had precisely one of them.  Displeased with this, I did what any true bibliophile would do: sought out the nearest Barnes & Nobles -- a mere five miles from campus -- and decided to seek out the correct editions myself.  A task that, one would correctly imagine, is rather daunting and not for the faint of heart.

After running once through the list to little avail, I found myself at the customer service desk, trying the seemingly endless patience of a young woman who had no qualms whatsoever about looking up about 20 books for me, just to see if they were in stock.  She was polite, friendly, and never once complained -- which always seemed to be the right way to go about in my book, since I'd find it hard to complain about doing one's job when one is being compensated for said job-going, but I digress and take credit away from this poor girl.  She cheerfully helped as much as she could and sent me off on my merry way with good wishes for my impending online searches.

The woman at the register was just as polite, and even more sociable than the first.  We had a delightful (albeit brief) chat about the books I was purchasing, the life of the graduate student, and other topics both relevant and inane, which was quite the relief since little-old-jaded-me was about to write off my service desk compadre as a fluke.  I was delighted to find that I was wrong, and was as cheerful as I'd been all week as I left the store and bounded into the sixth consecutive day of State College rain.

But alas, all would not be perfectly right in my bibliophilic world.  For no sooner did I return to the apartment and successfully order my books -- well, about 36 hours later, but who's really counting? -- than did I receive a Member-related e-mail from my BN.com friends, informing me of a fantastic offer on a free messenger bag with the purchase of $100 in books.

My heart sank.  Had I known about this just a couple of days ago, I would have been eligible!  Cursed impatience!  I even tried e-mailing the B&N online customer service folks, but by the time they got back to me, my books were already here -- a fact that, I believe, should not go without due lauding, since they arrived less than 72 hours after I placed the order: bravo, folks.  And when they did finally return my e-mail, the somewhat curt response informed me that, alas, there was nothing they could do to add it to my order.  (Like I wasn't aware of that by then, as I stared at the giant box of 15 books on my coffee table.)

I was about to mutter a "Thanks, dipshit," when I thought that perhaps a well-planned phone call might be able to convince them to send me the bag.  I mean, it was only a day or so before the offer began, and I'd have edited the order if I could.  And if someone had gotten back to me sooner...

Well, you see where I'm going.  The way I figured, there was enough questionable leeway that maybe, just maybe, I could weasel my way into this one.

So, this morning, I called.  And spoke to yet another delightful woman -- yes, on a Saturday, too -- to whom I related my sad and unfortunate plight.  After hearing me out, she put me on a lengthy hold to speak to her supervisor, a move that I was sure spelled disaster for my scheme.  As awful muzak fluttered violently in my ears, I began scheming to a stronger degree: You know, I could return this whole order and just reorder it again, and that just seems like a waste for both of us, so maybe you should just think about reconsidering and--

"Hi, David?  Sorry to keep you waiting.  I really didn't think my manager would approve this, but he said it's fine to send you the messenger bag!  Would you like it sent to the billing address or the shipping address?"

Flabbergasted isn't the word.  I definitely never thought that would work, but it did, and I really believe it's a testament to good customer service principles at work.  Granted, not everyone will agree with my philosophy on customer-retailer relations, but I'm a firm believer in the Infallible Customer.  Sure, the IC can be a card-carrying member of Douchebags Unanonymous, but the fact of the matter is there's no retailer that can ever make said douchebag spend his money any place.  That's a trust and a privilege that the retailer must earn each time a transaction is made.

Barnes & Noble recognized, this morning, that this is the case.  While I certainly wouldn't stop patronizing them entirely -- after all, I am a member -- the unnecessary inconvenience that not helping me would have caused could have seriously forced me to reconsider future memberships, or perhaps to make my purchases at another retailer whenever reasonably possible.  Despite the logic of corporate America that dictates that each customer should be squeezed for as much profit as possible without the customer realizing the squeeze, my friendly representative's manager realized that, while maybe I didn't perfectly qualify for the offer, swallowing the cost of the messenger bag was worth it to keep my business.

And just for that, he did.  And got himself a little praise and free advertising on a blog that no one reads -- which I'm sure has Barnes & Noble thrilled to pieces.

I guess the only thing that confuses me now is: why can't more businesses treat their customers like this?  Why should good service be a rare and notable event?  Why can't those simple pleasures be more like regular occurrences?  Why must we feel so jaded that moments like these actually do feel special?

...what, you were expecting an answer?

Please hold.

How You Know You've Made It

The musically savvy amongst you know that the title of this blog was lovingly ripped-off from a lyric in "Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt," the closing track of The Mars Volta's first full-length album, De-Loused in the Comatorium. (/plug)

For reasons that elude me to this very moment (and it's been only about five minutes, so that's sad), I decided to Google that very phrase. And I'll be damned! The Mars Volta's creative genius is not the first item represented on the search list.

So what is?

You're reading it.

Don't believe me? Go try it. It's true, I swear. Or at least it was at 9:09pm on August 20, 2007.

Not that anyone ever reads this blog, really, but I have to believe that when your title is #1 on a Google search, you have the right to be feeling lucky.

A Minor Variation (Thus Far)

After yesterday's triumphant return to my tiny little blogomarble, -- come on, there's no freaking way I'm actually part of the blogosphere -- in which I commented with little fanfare and even less plot development about the new digs and the new grad student lifestyle, there's no way I could let today, the official first day of my tenure as a Penn State graduate assistant, go without further comment.

As I sat on my self-constructed Wal-Mart futon (three words I never thought I'd be using in reference to myself, mind you) to type this, my darling dearest, with no provocation from me, uttered some of the most beautiful words a man could ever hope to hear: "Would you like a glass of scotch or something else to drink?"

Let's go back over that: without provocation. I didn't even suggest that I wanted anything to drink tonight, and she asked if she could pour me a glass. Now, when confronted with courtesy and manners like that, it'd just be rude to say no. So now, rather than merely blogging about my day, I can blog about my day and enjoy a generous pour of Cragganmore 12 whilst doing so.

Which reminds me: time to take a sip. Hold, please.

...

Ahh. A strong, peppery taste, with a smooth, warming finish down the gullet. Makes you feel alive.

I was about to thank her for the scotch, but she had already taken off for the kitchen to make my lunch for tomorrow. No, seriously. It's in the fridge now. She just told me, and I just got up to check.

In short, I could totally get used to this.

And after only my first day of true graduate work -- if by "true graduate work," you mean "sitting in an orientation room for six hours" -- I'm pretty sure I could get used to the grad student lifestyle as well. Of course, at the start of the day, I had not the same level of confidence, for a number of reasons. Mostly, it was because of the growing butterflies, butterflies that awakened themselves mere seconds after I myself awoke this morning, to the eternally-annoying strains of my alarm clock's incessant beeping. I panicked not only about my punctuality, but also about what to wear: should I dress to impress, gel myself superbly, and risk being over-coifed; or should I clothe myself more casually and expose a bit more of my personality, at the risk of being underdressed?

The answer, apparently, was "let my girlfriend pick my shirt," since the gray-on-khaki combination I'd settled on by myself made me look, in her words, "like a prison inmate." And never one to take potential buttfucktitude lightly, I swapped out the gray for a more colorful green/yellow/white ditty, and opted to go with the "mussed-up" look that my hair does when it's as short as it is now.

Cragganmore break.

...

Mmm...so warm. Back to our regularly scheduled blog.

The orientation, by and large, was not so eventful that it's worth detailing extensively here. Suffice to say that the speeches were, in turn, frightening (to the tune of, "This stuff is gonna be really hard, and you're all gonna fuck a lot of this up before you're done, capisce?"), then encouraging (to the point where we were all made to feel mighty smart and capable and in amazing hands, which I have no doubt is true in its entirety), then merely explanatory (i.e. far, far, far too much administrative stuff to be worth retyping) -- which was pretty much what I was expecting from the first day.

Which was rather comforting, since I was decidedly uncomfortable for much of the morning. After a few hours, and with the revelation that our break would be coming in "just a few short minutes" (read much longer than my gastrointestinal tract was willing to let me hold out), my tummy started becoming alarmingly turbulent.

See, our apartment has one outstanding issue, and that's the toilet. It lacks sufficient flushability, for some inexplicable reason, which instills just a little bit of fear when certain activities become necessary. Which means that, sometimes, it requires waiting until a morning break during orientation.

A word of warning to those who do as I have done: when selecting a stall in which you alleviate this concern, do ensure that you select a stall that is equipped with, you know, toilet paper. And make sure you learn this before before you embark on your quest for relief.

So you understand why, after the day started in this manner, why I would be a bit nervous about my new graduate school endeavor. But fortunately, it doesn't look like graduate study is going to -- yeah, I'm gonna go there, fucking deal -- catch me with my pants around my ankles.

And believe me, I am not full of shit.

Yeah, I know. Another cheap one. Tough noogie. I don't have any more time to be clever or witty.

It's Cragganmore time.

...

Yeah, I could totally get used to this.

Yet Another New Beginning

Part of me truly regrets the fact that most of these posts end up beginning with an apology of sorts for not posting more frequently. I'm beginning to think it's a reflection of my own guilt, that here I have this nifty blog thing that I was once so adamant about updating frequently and it often languishes untouched like a long-forgotten toy on Christmas morning. I swear my intentions are still good, it's just that sometimes life gets in the way.

That having been said, summer is often the best time to take hiatuses because so few things that are planned ever reach perfect fruition. Consider not only my plan to blog about graduation (which I didn't do, despite the very pleasant surprise of a cum laude distinction) but also the summer reading list I'd penned at the start of the summer. No sooner did I get home from school than did work and other grad school-related nonsense start occupying my time. A few of the intended reads -- such as Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut and the inescapable Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling -- were easy enough to strike from the list, while others (like You Shall Know Our Velocity! by Dave Eggers) have proven to be more formidable foes. I think the built-in languor of the summer is to blame: good intentions turn into half-realized accomplishments as easily as one would be inclined to jump into a pool on a hot afternoon.

Summer then is a fine time to take a breather, so I make no excuses for my absence. But now, as I emerge from my summerly cocoon, I find a whole new world waiting to take the place of the old, and lots to update as my life takes a new and drastic turn from what I once knew.

The first thing to note is that, with Princeton (sadly, mournfully, regretfully) come and gone, I am no longer a college student but a college graduate. The next obvious step if one is not inclined to enter the working world or wishes to enter said working world at a position which requires further qualification than can be provided by a paltry bachelor's degree is to enter the ranks of the few, the proud, the sketchy -- the graduate student.

For now, I have no clue what this new experience will bring because I've yet to take any classes or attend any meetings thus far. At the moment, all I know for sure is that they're going to pay me -- not handsomely, mind you, but hell, I'm still getting paid to go to school, right? -- and that almost all of my classes are seminars. I'll also have a whole class of freshmen to torture when I begin teaching freshman rhetoric (cue maniacal cackle) instead of working my ass off for the minimal satisfaction I received from teaching in the New Jersey public school system.

Unrelated Digression -- Hey, State of New Jersey, I've got a bone to pick with you. Is there any reason I have to call you in order to make sure you received my PRAXIS scores. Because, last time I checked, this was the kind of thing that was done, oh, automatically, because ETS sent them directly to you. And, silly me, thinking that even though I added your code to the list of organizations to whom my scores should be sent -- you know, just to be safe, because I know how Trenton is -- you wouldn't need me to call you and tell you to make my scores available to the Department of Education for them to be, you know, made available to the Department of Education. Please kindly remove your heads from your collective assholes as soon as possible, kthxbye.

Whew. Much better.

What does make the whole college-to-grad school transition much easier, of course, is having someone out here to join me. And while the decision may not have been approved of completely by certain relevant parties throughout the process, now that I have moved into the new apartment with Danielle, I'm pleased that things are already looking like they're going well. Move-in is always hectic (there's really no way around that) but things went about as smoothly as expected, and so far, the whole cohabitation thing -- though a mere 24 hours old -- has been relaxing and minimally stressful.

Factor all that smoothness in with an evening spent watching Food Network on our futon whilst she and I sipped port wine and scotch, respectively -- thank you, Messrs. Lange and Pence, for showing me the sophistication and distinction that could be realized through appreciating the smooth sherry textures and rich aftertaste of a glass of well-opened Macallan, aged 12 years, served neat -- and I believe this is something I could get used to.

And as I adjust to this new endeavor, be confident in the fact that I will once more find myself at the keyboard (of my new MacBook, it should be noted) to record the ever-evolving adventure as it develops. That, and a few more surprises, are likely to be in store for me, and I'm looking very much forward to them all.