The fall semester has begun, and so I have leapt back into the frying pan once more. I netted two more As from my Summer II courses, though it has earned me little more than the satisfaction of kicking ass–I only had a week and a half of the summer to do anything. I used that time to visit my family, all spread out across Maryland and Virginia. It felt more like work than vacation, but I remain energized from the love that I gave and received. Read more…
Summer II is winding down (already!), and I shall have a couple weeks’ rest before the new semester begins. I should say a couple weeks’ rest from school–I have some travelin’ to do! My plan is to head up to MD to visit my sister’s house, where her boyfriend is keeping things tidy for her. I’ll spread the good word about beer while I’m there and teach Jim how to brew. That house, which is the original icehouse for Ellicott City, has a stone foundation that is perfect for fermenting. It keeps cool like a champ. After that I was hoping to see my cousin Kathy at her beach house in VA Beach. And then I want to go CAMPING! I haven’t been camping in…over a year. This must be fixed. Mount Mitchell is all booked up, but there are many excellent places nevertheless!
But first, I have a week of hell. All my other hot-potato loose ends are tied up–the peach pale ale I brewed up a couple weeks ago is bottled and carbonating, we just brewed 10 gallons of hefeweizen on the big rig, and the big hurdles of getting square with my duties as the treasurer of HCoop are behind me (or weeks in the future). Oh, and: INBOX ZERO!!!!!1!!!one!!
So now I have 6 days to write two papers and study for & nail an exam.
Chop chop!
The summer sessions have been jam-packed with work. I managed to go most of Summer I without writing a damned thing here. 
Well, it was intense, and I got an A, but I have no real idea how I pulled that off. I’ll take it, though. Summer II feels less stressful even though I’m in two courses, because of the fact that I’m not writing papers. Writing without meds, despite the glory of it, is an exercise in out-waiting my own distractibility. And with 14 weeks of instruction packed into 5, I can ill afford that kind of stress to get things written on deadline. But here we are. I’m doing it.
As a way of keeping the stress down, I have also been a brewing machine. I now have three stovetop all-grain batches under my belt: a deconstructed saison, an attempt at making hard root beer, and I just bottled a Russian Imperial Stout that I have dubbed Persephone. This last, made with pomegranate molasses and a complex variety of rich and tasty malts, is the one I’m taking to the NC state fair this year. It sat for 5 weeks in the fermenter just aging out to a delicious smoothness. I am entering it as a Foreign Extra Stout (tropical style) only because it lacks some of the bitterness described in the BJCP style guide for an RIS. Persephone compares favorably to one of the more intense commercial beers I have ever had: New Holland Dragon’s Milk. I bottled relatively little beer, though–two 22oz bombers, two swingtop pint jugs, and nine 12oz bottles–because I racked a full gallon of it onto a quarter ounce of bourbon-soaked oak cubes, where it will sit until at least October. I shall bottle that perhaps the first of November so that it will be ready to drink on the winter solstice. A more fitting tribute to the popularly-imagined end of days, I cannot say.
I hope to make some relaxing use of my summer, though. The Sidhe is traveling to gay Paris in a few days, and I’m wrapping up my summer courses, but after that we’ll have time before the fall semester to take a trip downyoshun, as they say in my former home of Baltimore. I have yet to visit the Carolina shore–high time, I think, we fixed that.
This is where I come back when I need to remotivate. This blog is an outlet to the world, and even though it’s full of whining, it’s still my outlet.
I am feeling rather defeated these last few months. From society gutting the rights of my fellow North Carolinians to marry in the eyes of the law for the sake of some bullshit religious tenet, to the simple fact that I can’t do all the things I have set out to do, I am bent. The maelstrom in my head eats it all. I am waking up these days at 8am, only to curl up until 11 or so because I am sick with stupid, pointless worry over all the ways I need to try to fix my life. So many projects in my head that I must do in order to live the life I want to live, and everything crumbles the moment I reach for them. This is not an unfamiliar place. I have been here before. My answer used to be to just give up on most of it, and let it fester in my brain as another failure of will, while shamefacedly finishing what little remained. Not anymore.
Responsibility is not something to be shirked. I must carry through, finish the job. Ray Bradbury died today. If I owe him anything at all (and I owe him a great deal, indeed), it is to get back to work.
And into another one! I kicked the spring semester’s ass (an A and an A-), but then I got elected treasurer of the HCoop. And since our last treasurer actually went AWOL last year some time, I must basically learn this stuff from notes left online. I have had a week’s break from schoolwork, but summer session I is coming up hard and fast, and it looks to be intense. I must drill down and focus so I can repeat my good performance this past semester.
I’m tempted to declare Wordpress bankruptcy. I have 5 drafts sitting in my queue, one of which has been there since December of 2010. Pro: I can move on, and actually maybe be productive. Con: I actually have things to say in those drafts, and deleting them will destroy any memory of the words already accumulated. So they sit and stink up the queue another week.
This won’t be an omnibus post, only because it’s going to be short. In fact, it’s over now.
Yep, screaming. I’m out of meds, and coffee is only marginally effective. I got my last project in on time for one class, but I am afraid I’m going to need to turn in the rest of my stuff for the other class as late. My task is to create several plans (behavioral, lesson, you name it) from whole cloth. Yippee!
Not giving up, though. I have several hours before class still.
Wow, look at the time. How did it get to be April 12th? Ah, I remember now–I have been nose-deep in grad school work for the last two weeks nearly non-stop. Some of it was catching up on work long-overdue, but the majority of it I spent writing a materials critique. I am pleased to say I turned it in on time, but my mind continues to revisit it and ping me on ways I might have done better. Several areas are probably too inspecific, but my greatest fear is that I completely bailed on the overall personal evaluation section, writing vague, trite garbage rather than concrete assessment replete with specific examples. I shall hear back soon enough. To quell these doubts I repeat my mantra, given to me by the Sidhe: “Done is better than good.”
Already we’re caroming toward final exams. I have been squeezing what I can from the last handful of doses left in my med stash, and then I’ll be in free-fall until I can afford to go back to a psychiatrist to get a prescription. Last year I tried to go without meds, and it got me not much. This year I employed them strategically, and it has made all the difference in the world in my academic performance. But the comet I spoke of last semester is not nearly as strong, its mass sapped by the sun’s heat. It’s still there, but I’m not screaming right now. I’ll take it.
My personal goals have slipped somewhat in pursuit of success in my graduate work. I’m still reading Pride and Prejudice, though my friend Fox was kind enough to send me another book to read once I’ve finished it (Freud’s Couch, Scott’s Buttock’s, Brontë’s Grave, by Simon Goldhill). I have written only two letter since my last post. But I did manage to knock out another beer today That write-up must wait as well, for I have work that needs doing for my last project of the semester. I took pictures to accompany it, though!
I have been up to a bunch of things. I owe you a beer post or two, as I have brewed up both a hefeweizen and a dunkelweizen, and then there are all the little things that have made life fun. I tried to write about stuff, but I never finished any of the posts. They just sit there, crustifying away in the drafts queue. They’ll make it out eventually.
I filled out a bracket for the NCAA tournament, and then actually managed to get excited about the games themselves despite myself. My NC State Wolfpack did well, but not well enough–Kansas bounced us out of the Sweet Sixteen after an exhilarating upset victory against Georgetown. That game was made especially sweet because in 2008, my alma mater UMBC made it for the first and only time to the Big Dance, and Georgetown took them out in the first round. I consider myself avenged! And surprisingly, my bracket did not fall completely. I correctly predicted 11 of the Sweet 16, 5 of the Elite 8, 3 of the Final 4, and both teams in the championship match. Update: And I picked Kentucky to beat Kansas. Winner, winner, chicken dinner! All told, I had a 77% success rate. Not too shabby. Now if only Michigan State hadn’t choked…
Grad work has been like pulling teeth. I have been loathe to medicate, but it’s coming down to brass tacks, so I am finally back on board for one final push. In addition to the inevitable work I must catch up on (yes, I have fallen behind), I have two papers to write before the end of the semester, and two monster exams. But I can do this. Here comes the comet again…
My motivation for the next week is a visit north to Maryland. I am helping my sister with a stream cleaning project in her neighbourhood, mostly by being the guy who makes the power breakfast before and the victory beer after. I’ll be bringing up a case and a half of springtime treats–an IPA, a blood orange hefeweizen, and a dunkelweizen, all made with love. If I can finish all the work that is due by Weds. night, I can head up to MD with zero nagging doubts and no work to try to bring with me. If you want to spend the day before Easter in lovely Ellicott City with a bunch of fuzzy hippies cleaning a stream, let me know and I’ll get you details.
I want this blog to be more than just my doings–I want to write about things that matter. I have so much to say that just doesn’t make it to paper. I will try harder.
The Sidhe has quite a familiarity with Edgar Rice Burroughs’ work, and she was the one who turned my head toward the trailers that started showing about this Disney film. I have not yet read anything related to Barsoom, though that will very soon change–but the imagery in the trailer alone was enough to drop my jaw despite the jaded approach I take toward movies these days. I respect good animation even if a story is off, but throw the idea of Mars in there and I’m sold. What can I say? I’m a nerd. So I familiarized myself to a very limited extent with Burroughs’ general ouvre, mostly through discussions with the Sidhe. And then we watched a terrible SyFy-quality direct-to-landfill adaptation, which would have been abominable if it weren’t awful. My (somewhat long) review of the far superior Disney production follows. Read more…
March 4th is a nerdy day if you’re a classicist. Even if you’re not, there’s a cute pun in today that gives one a reason to step out courageously, for it’s homophonous with March Forth. But those in the know–and soon you will be one of them–will enjoy the day in deeper measure. For students of Greek literature will remember an ancient author by the name of Xenophon, and his relation of a hair-raising tale of how he and a host of Greek mercenaries got the heck out of Dodge. The Anabasis stands among my favorite books in part because of its fish-story quality. But the reason why it is relevant to us today is because Xenophon, writing in the Greek, repeatedly writes that he set forth on his journey. Happily, the phrase he uses pairs well with a particle that makes the whole phrase sound like “Exelauno Day!”
You have just witnessed the death of a joke by its explanation. But it still tickles me and many other silly people, so that’s all that matters. 
So, set forth bravely today, remembering that Xenophon did as much, even when faced with certain death at the hands of a king with literally hundreds of thousands of warriors at his disposal. Take heart: you, too can make it out alive with a whopper of a tale! And I just sneezed, so it must be true.
Exelauno Day!
