Okay...

Been down with some kind of flu/cold/nasty virus for the past five days.

Most of that time was spent sleeping, being depressed about health care reform (funny how when most of your brain is gone what's left tends to latch on to one particular thought), reading a webcomic of sorts (thanks John!), and generally being surly about the fact that this was the second time in four months that I had been bed-bound. Unusual for me...no idea if this was swine flu or just a seasonal bug, but it was still no fun. Of course, it also had to come along at a point where I had very little leave time saved up...which made its arrival over a paid holiday either fortuitous or doubly annoying, depending on your point of view.

On the upside(?), I got better at Lumines than any human has any right to be, and unlocked three new skins!. And discovered that it's just about the perfect game to play while stoned out on NyQuil, right before the sleep-crash.

No, I'm not quite 100% yet. But. I've spent enough time in bed, and I'm going to salvage what's left of the week at work, leftover sinus ick be damned.

Wish me luck getting through the day, everyone.

Okay...

Been down with some kind of flu/cold/nasty virus for the past five days.

Most of that time was spent sleeping, being depressed about health care reform (funny how when most of your brain is gone what's left tends to latch on to one particular thought), reading a webcomic of sorts (thanks John!), and generally being surly about the fact that this was the second time in four months that I had been bed-bound. Unusual for me...no idea if this was swine flu or just a seasonal bug, but it was still no fun. Of course, it also had to come along at a point where I had very little leave time saved up...which made its arrival over a paid holiday either fortuitous or doubly annoying, depending on your point of view.

On the upside(?), I got better at Lumines than any human has any right to be, and unlocked three new skins!. And discovered that it's just about the perfect game to play while stoned out on NyQuil, right before the sleep-crash.

No, I'm not quite 100% yet. But. I've spent enough time in bed, and I'm going to salvage what's left of the week at work, leftover sinus ick be damned.

Wish me luck getting through the day, everyone.

This one's especially for sigma7

What do you get when you cross pro football with the Oregon Trail?

Dysentery, of course!

This one's especially for sigma7

What do you get when you cross pro football with the Oregon Trail?

Dysentery, of course!

White Houses (...amazingly enough, not a political post)

I was playing with the iTunes Signature Maker just now, and it brought up a clip from White Houses, probably because it was on my favorites list for a while some months ago.

I don't really remember it from when it first came out; I don't think I was listening to the radio much at that point, anyway. It struck me mostly in retrospect, when I put Harmonium in my listening rotation a year or so ago. I looked up the lyrics (about the singer's first experiences with the world in general), and in that rare way that happens with music on occasion, it all clicked - the bittersweet chord progression, the almost childlike piano hook, and the dizzying suddenly-overwhelming instrumentation. It's a song that encapsulates, nearly perfectly (for me), the intoxicating rush of being on your own for the first time.

I don't know how well I can explain the feeling, especially since it seems to be one of those marvelously subjective things - depending on one's experiences, it may be stronger or weaker or never really happen at all. But I can't be the only one who's felt that delirious joy of having left the relative safety of home and plunged headfirst into this strange new world of heady freedom, where all sorts of new experiences await and all kinds of pitfalls make themselves known in short succession, but it's all okay because you're not waiting to live your life anymore, you're not wondering what your life will be like anymore, you're out there living it for yourself - who cares if you just got caught in a downpour in a white shirt and no bra, what does it matter if you just overdrew your checking account by $100, why bother worrying about the messy relationship tangles you're creating? You're creating them - you have the power to create your own life as you see fit, and when you inevitably fuck it up, it's still amazing because you created the fuckups, and you can get yourself out of them as well.

It's giddy, and overwhelming, and dizzying, and mad, and sweet and nostalgic all at once because you know that it can't last, and really you don't want it to. But while it's happening, it's an amazing ride, and when it's all over and you're (slightly) older and wiser, when you have a better idea of who this "you" person is...you know that it's a time you'll always look back on with fondness, for your massive failures even more than your successes. In retrospect, I wonder if that process of self-identification isn't the time in our lives when we're most free - without (most) parental restrictions, without many solid notions of who we are, without much in the way of better sense to guide us, and if we're lucky, with a family with enough forbearance to help cushion the worst of the blows when we inevitably get ourselves into trouble, and enough love to refuse to fix our problems for us entirely.

Does anyone else have the slightest clue what I'm talking about? And if so, is there a song that encapsulates your experience?

White Houses (...amazingly enough, not a political post)

I was playing with the iTunes Signature Maker just now, and it brought up a clip from White Houses, probably because it was on my favorites list for a while some months ago.

I don't really remember it from when it first came out; I don't think I was listening to the radio much at that point, anyway. It struck me mostly in retrospect, when I put Harmonium in my listening rotation a year or so ago. I looked up the lyrics (about the singer's first experiences with the world in general), and in that rare way that happens with music on occasion, it all clicked - the bittersweet chord progression, the almost childlike piano hook, and the dizzying suddenly-overwhelming instrumentation. It's a song that encapsulates, nearly perfectly (for me), the intoxicating rush of being on your own for the first time.

I don't know how well I can explain the feeling, especially since it seems to be one of those marvelously subjective things - depending on one's experiences, it may be stronger or weaker or never really happen at all. But I can't be the only one who's felt that delirious joy of having left the relative safety of home and plunged headfirst into this strange new world of heady freedom, where all sorts of new experiences await and all kinds of pitfalls make themselves known in short succession, but it's all okay because you're not waiting to live your life anymore, you're not wondering what your life will be like anymore, you're out there living it for yourself - who cares if you just got caught in a downpour in a white shirt and no bra, what does it matter if you just overdrew your checking account by $100, why bother worrying about the messy relationship tangles you're creating? You're creating them - you have the power to create your own life as you see fit, and when you inevitably fuck it up, it's still amazing because you created the fuckups, and you can get yourself out of them as well.

It's giddy, and overwhelming, and dizzying, and mad, and sweet and nostalgic all at once because you know that it can't last, and really you don't want it to. But while it's happening, it's an amazing ride, and when it's all over and you're (slightly) older and wiser, when you have a better idea of who this "you" person is...you know that it's a time you'll always look back on with fondness, for your massive failures even more than your successes. In retrospect, I wonder if that process of self-identification isn't the time in our lives when we're most free - without (most) parental restrictions, without many solid notions of who we are, without much in the way of better sense to guide us, and if we're lucky, with a family with enough forbearance to help cushion the worst of the blows when we inevitably get ourselves into trouble, and enough love to refuse to fix our problems for us entirely.

Does anyone else have the slightest clue what I'm talking about? And if so, is there a song that encapsulates your experience?