27 Flies

Of course there are disadvantages to living on a farm. Flies is one of them. There are 27 flies on the outside (thankfully) of my window screen right now somewhat obscuring my view of the corn harvest. I have a headache and I have to go to work in 15 minutes and I just noticed its raining.

Now that we've got all the bad stuff out of the way I'm actually having a fairly good day. Got a new video game yesterday to play at bradens house (star ocean in case you follow these things) and I'm finally making some good progress in Knights of the Old Republic. (I've already played longer than everyone I know... I can't help it if I'm a video game retard). My boss already has my schedual for the next month posted up so I can actually make long term plans for the first time in quite a while. I'm trying to throw together a camping trip on the 16th and 17th of october with some hiking involved. We'll see if I can get it thrown together in 10 days or so and if anyone can even come. Most people still have jobs where they have to work all or part of the weekend. Got some apple picking/pie baking lined up for this weekend and sometime in the near future I'm going to get off my lazy butt and go visit my brother. No longer am I busy for the sake of it but genuinely busy and its about damn time I say.

My landlord situation has improved somewhat in the last day or so. I mean the lady is still off her rocker but I've managed not to screw up any of her rules yet today so I've avoided any head bowing lectures. Definately a plus. It occurs to me as I watch them harvest the corn that modern day farm equiptment dosn't make farming that much less labor intensive. Even this relitively small field of corn is going to take them a better part of a day to slice and dice at their current rate. Things are all in a hustle and bustle over next door where the actual farm work happens because I think that its supposed to frost tonight and they are probably trying to get the rest of the produce in before they lose it to mother nature. I have a feeling its gonna be a long day for them. All their fancy equiptment still requires at least some manpower to opporate. Guys to drive the trucks and tractors and guys to watch the livestock. While the machines might have saved effort if the farms had stayed the same size over the years they certianly make minimal difference now since farms have grown along with the ease of labor.

Went to the doctor at Umass Med yesterday to see about getting my spiffy little doctors note that will get me off the hook with the Peace corps people. I should be free and clear now its just a matter of waiting for the doctors office to mail me the form that I can fax to the peace corps people. (*sigh* will this never end... probably not) I'm glad that I went with the post that had the delayed departure time because I never would have made it if I had to leave in June. They don't seem to care about things like that though. If this dosn't work out I'm going to start job hunting asap cause I only have a place to live aranged here till January. I'm only worried at this point that the doctors office is going to fail to send me the forms or something. I'm waiting two weeks from today and then I'll probaby just drive into the office to pick them up. Safer. Got to see Leo's pad. Awesome! He needs a dresser though so he can get his room finised off. I'm defiantely gonnna have to go down and hang out there more. Cut him in on some of my upcoming hiking plans as long as he promises to cut me in on his.

Alright.. Out of time and this isn't very coherent anyway.. Off to work

Happy Birthday Leo

So yesterday Cathy and I carpooled to Weston so she could be home for her brothers birthday on Sunday and to hang out with her friend Ali on Saturday night and so I could drive a little further down the highway to go play a couple of crazy games of lazer tag with some of the most awesome friends on the planet. The occation for all this of course is Leo's birthday, which is coming up on wednesday I believe but which we celebrated this weekend. (for those that don't know Leo was my college roomate and one of my best friends ever). Let me also just say, and not to rub it in but just because I rather suprised myself, I kicked some serious lazer tag butt. I placed 2nd of 32 in the first game and 5th in the second game. Only that low becaue I ran into a pack of little kids at the end and was so mad about getting shot by a little kid that I neglected to run away in time to escape all his little kid friends. *shrug*

Seeing the whole in crowd of Umass fencing again was great. I missed all of them, though I still saw most of them from time to time I never had the kind of exposure I would have liked thanks for the most part to my injury abriviated fencing career. Ahh well, I'll get back into it someday. I'll probably just wait till Leo gets his olympic metal and retires and then call in some old favors and get some coaching from him so I can be the old man that goes to the unrated tournaments and crushes the dreams of all the begining high school and college fencers ;-).

On another note, it was a fairly photo crazy birthday. He got several pictures of him with various fencers and I gave him some "first edition" prints that he liked from my collection matted and framed so he can hang them up in his room. I'm going to his house after work on tuesday becuase he lives a lot closer to the doctor that I have to go see on wednesday morning to see if I can get my hip issue cleared up enough for the peace corps to let me get on with it. (So frustrating let me tell you!) I'm going to sign them and number the prints then on the off chance I actually go and try to sell some copies or somehow someday I become famous (yeah... whatever) he'll have the special ones that he can then sell for food on the street.

All in all it was an amazing time and I hope that he had a great birthday. I owe him a drink sometime when I'm more flush. I was running late yesterday and so I didn't have any time to stop and get money and so I ended up spending what little I had, plus most of the money Cathy gave me (I have 15 cents left of 15 dollars) and then some of Jess's money went towards dinner for me so I'm going to have to track her down and pay her back sometime. S'ok though because I want to check out her new appartment anyway. She was telling me yesterday that as soon as she moved out her parents moved all remnants of her existance at thier house and made her room into a closet/guestroom. I think thats kinda sad but also kinda refreshing. I'm not sure which is worse. Her mother getting rid of her room or my mother giving me a room in a house I've never lived in half a world away in Israel.

Anyway... Its off to sam's club and to pick up the cake for Cathy's brothers birthday party. Yay for birthdays!

P.S. The redsox kicked the Yankee's ass last night. I just wanted that to be a matter of public record.

My landlord is a nutcase

So I have come to the conclusion that my landlord, or I guess if you were being picky, my landlords wife is totally off her rocker. I'm renting a room in an old and somewhat delapadated farmhouse in an absolutly beautiful location in South Deerfield right on the connecticut River from which I can hike, explore and otherwise enjoy my outdoor ambitions. Everything would be perfect if I wasn't havning to deal with a woman that has more rules than an over-protective father on prom night. While I look out my window on the corn fields and rusting out farm equiptment in the side yard of the house she's downstairs trying to find a jar so I don't have to dump the grease from my one piece of bacon a day out in the garden. She's been worried about the grease all morning. I took the girl home around 12:30 this afternoon and she asked me where I was putting it. She seemed ok when I told her I was putting it in the garden for the time being but when I came home an hour later she started to talk to me about it again. *sigh* What can you do. It just goes into the long list of other rules to remember. Highlights of which include only using the back two burners of the stove, not keeping dishes in my room for more than 20 minutes at a time (a rule which I contiue to break on a fairly regular baisis I might add) and you have to be within 20 feet of the washing machine whenever you do laundry. A rule which pretty much constrains me to the confines of the laundry room itself if she's home because otherwise I'll hear about overloading the washing machine every 5 minutes. I already know that she comes into my room while I'm not here and I'm not real sure how I feel about that except to say that I've really got nothing to hide. She also cleans my food out of the fridge at the first sign of it spoiling, which has caused me grief on a couple of occations. Anyway, enough about the landlord. I'm in a good mood and its not really bothering me at the moment. I'm here for a few months pending my upcoming peace corps deployment to the Carrabian. (providing of course I can finally clear all the medical hurdles) I was of course going to live with some friends in an appartment but that didn't work out quite as I expected so what can I say. ( thats a whole different story for a different time) I do like it here and I like having my own space so I can tollerate a little craziness from time to time.

Slept in today till about 11 after having a in depth conversation with the girl till about 2 am. It was good cause we worked out some issues. The redsox gave me another heart attack last night but as far as I'm concerned Cabrerra has now earned his position adding some spectacualr pop to the bat at just the right moment to save me from having to drive to boston and personally strangling the whole team. Now if we can just win tonights game without the last minute theatrics I'll be a happy camper. I'm worried about the upcoming series with the Yankee's cause its entirely possible that the ALCS will look very similar and we need to be able to beat NY. Besides the yankee's fans at work would never let me live it down and its tough not having any ammo to fire back.

Been going to Braden's a lot after work to watch him play FABLE on the Xbox. Seems like a fun game to play and I know that I enjoy watchin' it. I need to get the kid some money cause I keep eating his snack food. Wings and the game last night were good till all the Target gang peetered out about 10:30 to head to bed and I drove home. Having better luck finding things to do with my time. Getting used to the lack of homework and losing myself here, in books, in games, and in the outdoors when the situation calls for it. The weather of course is beautiful now on days when I have to work in the afternoon. A couple of hours and I'll be standing around Target dreaming about sitting out by the river or hiking up one of the numerous but tiny mountians of the Holyoke Range.

Missin my friends from school. Leo and Jess especially.

Off to read or some such thing

An old, bad, picture of me :-)  

The river (very high) Might go diving in it if it recedes a bit before it freezes over this winter 

View down the road 

My House. My room is the window you see in the upper left. 

Busy for the sake of it

So, in the last few days I've worked, played, hiked, shot some photos, hung out with some cool people, and celebrated the 21st birthday of one of my greatest friends. (Happy birthday Kel!) Yet somehow despite all this I still feel somewhat unsatisified. You all know the feeling I'm sure when your day just feels somewhat incomplete no matter how you do. C'est la vie. Nothing I can do except stay busy for the sake of it. Better than bored and without a clue. Life, if not fantastically fufilling or exciting, is going well for me at the moment. Started a new job at Target a couple of weeks ago so I can stick around central mass a bit longer and stay connected with my wonderful girlfriend Cathy and many of my crazy UMass and college related friends. At least those that havn't spread to the 4 corners of the earth. (cough... Dan... cough). Now the crazy correspondence dance begins where one must find time to write or call or visit everyone who deserves it for being the awesome freinds that they are while still managing to not forget yourself. I've tried this dance many times in the past and no matter how determined I always manage to let some of the most outstanding slip through. Don't worry though guys... I love you all and I'm doing better already than I ever have in the past... And for those that havn't heard from me in a while please accept my humble appologies and note that my e-mail and aim name are all listed in my profile. I'll tolerate the junk mail and the fan mail from my thousands of adoring fans just for you! (and for those that don't know me well yet I am a big fan of sarcastic humor. Its hard to communicate it in writing but if you all just pretend I'm reading this to you you shouldn't have to hard a time inserting the right tones in the right places. If you can't then it should provide boundless amusment anyway)

I suppose that I should talk a bit about me, though I must appologize to the select few that know me better than I know myself. For everyone else I'm 22 years old, which when I type it out makes me feel much older, and I just grauated with a BS in Biology and a certificate in Ornithology (the study of birds) from the University of Massachusets in Amherst Mass. Eventually I'll include a picture and so will spare you any attention to physical details here. Nor will I talk much about where I've been, except in other, more important, contexts. This journal is set in the here and now and time travel within its confines will be for the most part reserved for musings on the future and its infinate (or so I'm told) possiblities. As for things to define me, I love to learn, to travel, to win, and to be selectivly social. At first it might seem very difficult to narrow one's life into such a diminuitive number of catagories, or even to define one's life in a catagorical fasion at all. However, when you're trying to describe yourself they catagories are almost impossible to avoid and so I compensate by making them as broad as possible. To break it down a bit further I'll list and explain a few of the contributing pieces.

My desire to learn is, like the other catagories, integral in making me me and can, as a consequece be found in every part of my life. I love to read and have ever since my mother used to read me the boxcar children book series and I was to impatient with the one chapter a night routine. I used to read till all hours of the night using any available light source and still do usually read myself to sleep. I try to live life by the philosophy that as long as you can learn something from an experiance then it is always worthwhile regardless of the outcome. (Sometimes my attempts fail, usually due to the soon to be discussed desire to win... but I do try) Even my recent forray into the world of the minimum wage laboror, besides an easily atainable job to pay rent and buy food for a few months was a unique and rewarding experiance. (from which I learned mainly that working in the middle of the night hauling boxes around really wasn't the job for me and stripped me of any qualms I might have had about using my qualifications to better my circumstances, modesty be damned.) As terrible as it was to sit down in the office of Targets own "special" version of an HR manager and be told that basically I could take my degree and all my previous work experiance and use it as toilet paper because I had no experiance in retail so I was getting the minimum wage anyway, I still managed to make awsome friends, learned that I had what it took to work over night, and gained the retail experiance that I will hopefully never have to use again.

(Time for bed... my eyes are sleepy... I'll finish this later)

Waiting....

What to do with my time is a problem I never thought I would have... I havn't figured out quick ways of spending free time so I end up spending a lot of time waiting around. For instance I spent 4 hours doing laundry today (don't ask) and during that time I read a few pages while sitting in the laundry room. This strikes me as somewhat unproductive. Now I'm waiting again, for Cathy to come home. This journal is my first step in creating something to do with time thats not just sitting around or *gasp* watching TV.