Nerdosity

Perhaps this summer I have aged backwards and become, once again, a twelve year-old boy. When I was a twelve year-old boy I was a huge nerd, and I am reaching impressive new levels of nerdiness. Ladies and gentlemen, the facts:

• My friend from college has got me getting back into Magic: The Gathering. Gabe dug up my old cards for me, and I have been building decks and realizing how hopelessly outclassed my cards from the mid-nineties are compared to the new stuff. My creatures stand no chance! As much as I love the game, what I really want to do is buy a booster pack, rip into the foil and smell that vacuum-sealed fresh-ink scent all new Magic cards used to have. It is the smell of my young nerdhood.
• I have been babysitting Kaylee at Gabe and Amanda's house, which seems to have a never-ending supply of DiGiornio pizza. DiGiornio pizza is my weakness--once I bake one, it is hard for me not to eat the entire thing. I love it, and I have been eating it almost every day for lunch. Turns out when you eat pizza almost every day, you get really greasy. Greasy hair, greasy skin, lots of zits... and yet I can't help myself. DiGiornio truly is the food of the gods. Soon I will be stuffing it into my head--which will be attached to my ginormous blob of a body by a neck the circumference of a five gallon bucket--while I drink Mountain Dew and play World of Warcraft.
• I'm not at WoW yet (nor will I ever be), but I am enjoying the hell out of Assassin's Creed 2, which, believe it or not, is better than the first one (Holtmeier take note). I play it on Gabe's PS3 when the young ward is sleeping or willing to entertain herself. There's even more great stabby action, and I'm learning a ton about renaissance Italy. It's pretty cool when I can play a video game and nerd out over architecture, art, medieval politics, etc.
• That same friend who got me back into Magic is exposing me to a bunch of really solid electronica (cheers, Lindsey). I highly recommend Discovery, Jonsi, Passion Pit, and especially Miike Snow. I know electronica isn't really nerdy--it's rather hip at the moment, as far as I can tell--but I can't shake my old techno and electronica stereotypes: ravers, comp-sci students, weird skinny guys who do modtracking and never leave their rooms. Well, the music is damn good anyway.
• Up until this morning, I have had no car for a while, which means most of my social interactions have been through texting, gchat, and Facebook. Ugh.
• I am reading a book about John Romero and John Carmack, the two guys who designed and programmed Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake. It's a fascinating book full of lots of cool details about how video game development worked in the nineties.

Well, that's about it. There are other, non-nerdy ways I'm spending my time, too: taking Kaylee on walks, playing catch with dogs, listening to the Avett Brothers (awesome, Kate!), other stuff. More updates soon!

Kaylee, Reading, Writing, Bellingham

I've taken to referring to my niece Kaylee, in my own brain at least, as "my young ward." My young ward is very cranky today. Shh! My young ward is sleeping! It's funny how quickly my day has come to revolve around Kaylee--when she sleeps, when she needs to eat, when she can play around in the dining room while I write or check my e-mail--but it feels less like a job and more like I'm just hanging out with my niece. Except for that really bad teething day--THAT felt like work.

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I'm reading a ton. For the last two weeks I've been keeping a running draft of my comments on books I've read in the month of May (I told you I'd keep doing it). Because I'm on vacation now, and because I've spent most of my free time reading and thinking about what I've read, that blog post is going to be huge. Start getting ready now.

In related news, I failed at my goal to take two weeks off of writing about four days ago. I made it about a week and a half before I revised some short stories (cheers, Josh!) and sent a bunch of material out. Already got a rejection back on my lone sci-fi short story, and I'm looking for more places to send it.

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I am off to Bellingham this weekend, and lifting my spending freeze long enough to buy some delicious B'ham food. I'm thinking Casa Que Pasa, some Boundary Bay beer, and a cyser at Honeymoon. If I can sneak sushi in there (lunch at the public market?) I will be even happier.

Home

There's this thing that I kind of forgot about. It's called "free time." Since I got home late last night, I've slept, unpacked, and that's about it. I've been lounging around, catching up on the blogs I read, meeting Dad's two new beehives (new project), working my way through Dan Simmons' sci-fi epic Hyperion--cheers, Kingston; it's awesome!--and biding time before I get to meet my new nephew, Maxwell Holiday Hunter, tonight.

What I am not doing is writing. I am taking a break for a few weeks, I think. Josh, I got the e-mail with your notes, and I'm opting not to look at them until I decompress for a bit. Thank you, and send The Story Thief when you're done with your polishing!

Think I'll work some Smarthinking shifts this weekend to try and get some money, but mostly I plan on reading and relaxing. I'll update again when I actually have something to talk about. For now, it's good to be home.

Hell Wednesday

On Wednesday I showed up at work and found out that a network error had wiped out our computers. Apparently McAfee sent an update to its corporate antivirus clients that identified one of Windows XP's key system files as a virus, quarantined it, and shut down the computer. We had no way to fix it. Most of UNH's network shut down.

But I needed the money, so I didn't go home. I sat there without the internet, without any work to do, for five hours. I learned a couple of things from this.

1. I spend a disturbing number of my waking hours in front of a computer. I work thirty hours a week at two jobs, and both of them require that I sit in front of a computer. At the OCM I'm sometimes at loose ends, and kill time by reading blogs, checking up on Facebook, and reading music/movie/video game reviews and commentary. When I'm logged on to work for Smarthinking, I'll sometimes take a break between student essays to check up on a couple of my sites. When I'm not working, at school, sleeping, or reading, I'm in front of the computer, either writing or responding to my classmates' writing. I'm a little terrified to take a guess at how many hours a week I spend in front of a screen. It's way too many.
2. DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG FIVE HOURS IS? Five hours without the internet!? My God! The boredom caused by #2 is what made me realize #1. I was itching to check my e-mail, or get on Facebook. Shit, I practically had the shakes. I'm an addict. Instead of writhing around on the ground and sweating it out, I had a nice conversation with my coworkers, who were, of course, in the same situation.

So my goal for the summer is to try to spend less time in front of a screen. I'm not sure how well this is going to work out, since I'm going to try to bust out as much of my thesis as I can (goal for the summer is three-hundred pages of crappy first draft), and I have to work at least twelve hours a week for Smarthinking, but hey, it will be the summer. I'm going to go on runs, go on hikes, get outside, lounge in the sun and read a book--I also have an extensive reading list for the summer, which I plan to supplement with trips to used bookstores. We'll see how it goes.