I like dullness, sir. It expects nothing of me.

Since, even as I type this, I'm not really sure what I'm going to post about, it is going to be a bit scattered.

First, I'm going to talk about Mika, who made a cameo in my last entry. Mika is the prettiest kitty on the whole block (by which I mean that she is much prettier than Diva Pussy [actual name of cat], a cat of the same breed who lives downstairs). She likes to cuddle, too. She sleeps on my bed most of the time, now, I think because my bed is soft and because I keep more cat-like hours. Here is a breakdown of Mika's likes and dislikes.

Likes: water from the sink (infinitely superior to water in a bowl, apparently), playing with fake mice (especially the ones that are still in the box), licking the faces of those she loves (I have gotten kitten tongue burn on more than one occasion), laying on paper (I... don't know why), and laptops (becuase they are warm and sound like her).

Dislikes: when you leave, Diva Pussy (again, real name of the cat downstairs), laptops (because they take your attention away from her).

Actually, a day after I got my laptop back, finally, with its new hard drive, Mika stretched her paw across my keyboard, and when I tried to pry it off, she took the "B" key with her. It took me a long time to get it back on. If it hadn't worked, despite all her cuteness, I might never have forgiven her. I need that key for recapping! I recap a show called Bones with characters named Booth and Brennan! She works with bones and writes books! Sometimes there is blood, and I say, "Blech!" You get it.

Also, when Mika is feeling particularly affectionate, she will pet you. She strokes your arm or whatever with her paw. Because, you know, she likes it, so why shouldn't we? It is the sweetest thing.

Other than Mika, I am completely overwhelmed. It's taking me forever to find my balance and figure out my schedule, etc. Grad school is hard. I keep asking myself whether I really belong here, and the answer I keep coming up with is, "It had better be." So, I'm going to just have to keep plugging away.

I got to go home over the weekend, which was nice. I got to see my family, eat cake, and not work for a while. It was lovely. Now I'm back, and it's time to plunge back in. I'm working on it. And I'm talking to other people who are telling me to chill out. So... we'll see.

In other news, The Clone Wars series starts on Friday, and I'm looking forward to it in a strange, silly way.

All's well that ends well, unless you ask my door, I suppose.

It should be noted that both nathan and I posted in such a way that they appear before Ike: part III, and the Tribunal of Justice should acknowledge those posts accordingly.

All's well that ends well, unless you ask my door, I suppose.

Vampires have risen from the dead, the grave, and the crypt, but have never managed it from the cat.

So, I have my practice kitty now. Her name is Mika and she is delightful.

The night she arrived was an exciting night, not just because of the cat, but because as I was sitting, watching TV in the living room, something flew into the room and started flying around and around in circles.

First, I thought, "AAAH! A BIRD!" And then, ".... The cockamouse?" And then, "Oh, shit. Is that a bat?" So, I ducked out of the room, saying, "Oh, holy shit!" At which Arley inquired, "What?" "There's a... bird, or a... bat flying in circles around the room?" She came to the doorway and determined that it was, indeed, a bat. So we retreated into her bedroom to figure out what to do.

Ultimately, we decided to take the course of action of calling Arley's mom. Her mom advised us to put on hats and shoes and shoo the bat out the door with a broom. I had to make do with putting a plastic bag, and then a handkerchief, over my head. But by the time we left Arley's room, the bat had shoved itself up in the corner over the frame of the apartment door. We realized that, no matter what we did, the bat had nowhere to fly but at us. Still, we got the broom out of the closet and I poked at the bat. Once. Quickly. It got angry and hissed, but it didn't move.

We reconvened in Arley's room to formulate a new plan. This plan: call some boys. So we called some male friends of Arley's, who shortly came over and decided to modify our original plan. They tried poking the bat with the broom. They then tried sweeping the bat out of the corner into the dustpan. Then they tried to sweep the bat into a box. And then they tried attaching the box (the box my hairdryer came in, may it rest in peace) to the handle of the Swiffer mop, and the dustpam to the handle of the broom, and I don't even know what they were doing at that point because I had shut myself in Arley's room with the cat. I decided to redirect my efforts toward looking up the phone number of Animal Control.

We tried to call our landladies about five times to no avail, so finally we did get a guy from Wild Animal Control to come out. It took probably over an hour for him to come, so during the wait Arley and I hung out in her room and worried about how long the bat had been there and whether we had rabies now. Because I never actually saw the bat come in, and in the confusion I'm not even sure whether it came in through the attic door or the window.

Finally, the Wild Animal Control guy came, put on a glove, and grabbed the bat out of the corner. He then put it in a box and sent it off to be tested for rabies, which it did not have. Of course, I had to call Animal Control to find that out. Apparently the usual policy is that if they don't call within two days it's fine, but the guy encouraged us to make sure.

So, in conclusion, I am not a vampire, and you do not need to organize the Compendium of Stupidity Erin Chandler Memorial Celebrity Pro-Am Fun Run Race for the Cure.

One post down, one to go.

All's well that ends well, unless you ask my door, I suppose.

In which school hits its stride and impedes blogging

What can I say nearly into October? My school year so far has been on the stressful side. The biggest problem is my Junior I.S. class, which is supposed to be all about preparing me to write my Junior I.S. paper, but we spend so much time doing other stuff for that class I hardly have time to work on said paper. It's kind of ridiculous. I have to have four spec pages of I.S. due on Friday, and I don't know what my texts are. I thought I had two of the five, but when I e-mailed Prof. Bourne to ask for ideas on other texts he raised some good objections to one of the two I'd already decided on. So I need to hit the library tomorrow night and then write, and I have so many other things to do, because the second, third, and fourth biggest problems are... my other classes. Because as much as I feel privileged to read everything the Bronte Sisters ever wrote, it turns out that that takes a lot of time, and then the newspaper still exists, as does Common Grounds.
I guess the point is I'm even busier than even I'm accustomed to being. And the complication for this is that the application for the Pulliam Fellowship, which is an insanely awesome paid internship with the Indianapolis Star, is due in one month. And I'm so stressed about it, not because I don't like my chances (they're pretty good) but because it's such an amazing opportunity that if I don't get it I'll hate myself. Oh, and I have to learn to drive by this summer to get the fellowship. So that's the short version of why I haven't blogged. There's a second part of the reason, too, but I'll have to blog that later.

All's well that ends well, unless you ask my door, I suppose.

She was a PERSON, not a bundle of experience points!

I keep thinking about posting and I keep not doing it. Once I was going to post about philosophy, which has gotten a bit amusing. I'll try and remember the things I was going to say about that. It mostly had to do with Wittgenstein's Tractatus, which has a bunch of fun things to say. One of my favorites is premise 3.25: There is one and only one complete analysis of a sentence. It's hilarious, makes me think of Phillipy, and is pretty much a big "Screw you" to literary analysts everywhere. Turns out language is just like math and a sentence can only mean one thing. Other gems include 4. A sentence that makes sense is a thought, 2.72 A picture cannot depict its form of representation; it can only show it, and 3.032 It is as impossible to say something that contradicts logic as is is to draw a figure that contradicts the laws of space or to specify the coordinates of a non-existant point. Escher, of course, does the first one all the time.
Something that's been simultaneously bothering and amusing me about philosophy lately is that it has a tendency to disprove the exceedingly obvious, like the possibility of movement, of change, or of communication. It seems like you have to figure out how normal things are possible before you can think about bigger things. I have to prove that I exist before I can prove that the conception of my imaginary dungeons and dragons world can have any meaning. I really want to bring that up in my understanding language class at some point, because one problem we can't get away from is deriving significant meaning or truth from sentences about fictional objects. This is what role-playing is pretty much all about, an entirely shared fictional world. I might make a more in-depth post about this on untitled, if I can work out exactly what I'm trying to say. Either way, I'm falling asleep in class less often.

All's well that ends well, unless you ask my door, I suppose.

In which Nathan is in charge of way too many things

So what it comes to is, I am not a fan of responsibility. This seems to be the semester for being in way over my head. At production meetings for Flea, I usually just sit their staring blankly at the wall and mutter something vague and non-committal when asked for a progress report. Or so it seems to me. Apparently I seemed quite put together to the Stage Mangagers, but they might just have been saying that to make me feel better. Either way, I'm way behind where I need to be on props, and I'm really worried that I'm not going to get them done and no one will ever want to give me responsibility again.

The Dance concert is actually better, because as Stage Manager I have a lot less to actually do - I just have to keep other people organized. I don't really know what I'm doing at all, but apparently that's kind of to be expected in the fall dance concert. It's a training ground for just about everyone involved.

The TAing job is similar. I lead my first discussion on Tuesday - I never knew silence to be so nerve-wracking. Not only did my questions go out of my head, my ability to read went with them, denying me access to0 the questions I had written out. And my students new I was completely striking out. Eventually, I managed to start a discussion, but it was a terrifying couple of minutes until I did.

The Scene shop is interesting. My new boss thinks very highly of me, and seems to be giving me a fair amount of responsibility and autonomy. This is good, but also bad, because I don't always 100% know what I'm doing. But I'm certainly learning faster than I would be playing it safe, and I think maybe I needed that. Also, I got to weld, which was fun. Gotta love heating pieces of metal until they melt and resolidify as one piece. And you get to wear a cool mask and sparks fly everywhere. So, in short, welding is awesome.

All's well that ends well, unless you ask my door, I suppose.

The reverse Bel-Air only works once, so make it something unforgettable.

I think my favorite quote from the silliness that's going on in the next room is "I HATE THWOMPS!" closely followed by "I always lose the P-wings before I get this far." Other gems concern how you can jump on anything with boots and how many one-ups there are in the average level. I'm worried about myself, because I think I might actually be growing out of video games. I don't can't even play any incarnation of super smash brothers for more than an hour or so, sometimes even less. It's probably a good thing. I just find more interesting yet equally dorky things to do.
I've got a new campaign in mind, and I'm really enjoying creating characters for my players to interact with. I'm not so great with the world building, but I imagine it will sort of come together. There's a girl in the group who is completely new to D&D and is very excited about that, and it makes me really excited by proxy.
I wore a corset today. I am afraid to admit that I actually kind of enjoyed it. I was ridiculous, and felt invited to be even more ridiculous because I was a guy in a corset, and therefore allowed. It didn't hurt that much, and after I took it off, I felt all wobbly. I should probably mention that it was for a sight gag in the play, which is a French farce.
I broke up with Gen last night. I'm not going to talk about that any further, because I don't really want to. Most of you knew already, anyway.
Those last two points are in no way connected. Really.

All's well that ends well, unless you ask my door, I suppose.