J.P.

Good Day.

Acura.
Driving Home From A Good Day At School.

Have you ever woke up and just had a feeling that the day was going to be a wonderful day? What a beautiful feeling; you wake up without needing the alarm clock, your eyes flutter a little bit, the glorious dreams of the night before linger like a warm hug and there’s no paw searching for a little tuna in your eye.

That’s how I woke up this morning.

Today was the last day of midterms. Professor Frightful didn’t get the midterm ready in time, so he decided to give us a “double quiz” covering the last two chapters. His teaching style is out there, but I’ve pretty much acclimated to it and gone into self-study mode, so I think I did well on my midterm turned quiz.

I feel confident with the paper I turned in for English. I wrote a dissertation on “My Antonia” by Willa Cather discussing all the gender confusion and homosexual tendencies in the novel.

Always trying to be the responsible student, I signed up for an extra Surveying lab to make up for the lab I’ll miss next week while Earl and I are in Ireland. Today’s lab was with the other Surveying professor and the class was considerably smaller; my normal class has 22, today’s class had 5, including myself. That made a big difference in many ways. Having a different professor gave me a new perspective on how to do things (he’s much more strict with procedure, which is a good thing) and being a small class gave me considerably more hands-on time with the equipment. I was nervous going into the class because I didn’t think I’d know anyone, but the guys were great and I felt comfortable with the “new” crew. I plan on signing up with this professor for my next Surveying course in January.

Lately I’ve been feeling like my professional destiny ended with asking “do you want fries with that?” for the rest of my life, today it was a great feeling to get back on track and start feeling the DOT thing again.

To end the day on a great note, Earl indulged my geek ways and sat down with me as we watched an episode of “The Secrets of Isis”, followed by the “Bewitched” movie with Nicole Kidman and Will Farrell. I hadn’t watched the movie in a couple of years and while still quite disappointing, we both enjoyed the experience. (Nicole Kidman should beg Sony to do ANOTHER Bewitched remake and this time make it more like the real thing.)

Today has been a good day. I feel confident in taking this vacation now.

19 October 2007 by College Kid. Ponderings and Musings 1

My Space.

You know, I can’t say that I get the MySpace thing. I mean, I know what it’s for and what you’re suppose to do on there but some of the profile pages make me go “gak”. There’s such a wild assortment of mismatched colors with lots of noise blaring out of speakers and flashing beacons that could induce epilepsy in a boulder. Quite frankly, I don’t really take the site seriously but there’s a lot of people (especially my fellow students at school) that do so I suppose I should pay some attention to it. At least it lets me feel hip.

So I have a profile on myspace. Is it myspace, MySpace or My Space? There’s not a lot of dirt on my profile, nor is it particularly juicy, but it’s there in the glorious default style under my online persona. At least having a profile gives me the ability to show Earl who the cute guy in the back of the classroom is (after I play “elimination” by watching the attendance sheet, he says batting his eyes innocently.)

18 October 2007 by Geek 2

Milestone.

I am just arriving home after taking my first final exam of the semester. Today’s foray into testing was for my “Health and Wellness” course. As a half-semester class, we get to squeeze a final into the flurry of midterms.

My initial reason for taking this course was to sidestep being the overweight father figure dressed in a pair of shiny workout shorts in a sea of buff, teenage male muscleheads and still make my physical education requirements. I figured the course would be like the health classes we all had to take in high school and in many ways it was just as I had imagined. The professor was the soccer coach, was usually dressed in coach attire (complete with a whistle around his neck) and somewhat resented the fact that he had a class of students that were trying to get out of physical exercise for their physical education requirements. On the whole I enjoyed his presentation style, preparedness for the class and the relatability of the topics to real life.

Surprisingly, this course turned out to be my favorite course of the semester. And I find this a little odd for several reasons. First of all, it has nothing to do with my major. Always looking for signs from the Universe, this aspect concerns me a little bit and leaves me to do some thinking about the path that lies ahead. Secondly, because I really enjoyed the class I managed to drag myself, on time, to this 8 a.m. course twice a week. I made it to every class and I think I might have been one of a very small number of students with perfect attendnace. Night owls usually don’t make it to 8 a.m. class.

So now I’m well versed in a smattering of health related topics. And I feel good about it.

18 October 2007 by College Kid. Ponderings and Musings 1

Startling.

So today’s topic in Health Class was sexuality. Any word that contains “sex” somewhere in it always piques my interest, so I was curious to see how the class would progress today. Would the professor treat it like my high school health teachers did so many years ago – by running a well worn 16mm film on the Singer film projector, out of focus, so we couldn’t see the important parts?

I’m glad to say that he did not. Instead, he invited a speaker from the local Planned Parenthood to address the class.

The speaker blew me away with his frankness, personality and confidence he displayed while discussing a potentially taboo subject. If I’m to be honest, there are few subjects, when it comes to sex, that will make me blush and it was refreshing to hear a speaker address the class in much the same manner.

During the presentation he threw out several statistics that I found startling:

1. HIV infections are back on the rise.
2. 20,000,000 Americans per year are infected with a sexually transmitted infection and this does NOT include HIV infection.
3. Of those 20+ million, a good share of them are young adults aged 16-24.

Cluephone ringing for our conservative folks, the whole “let’s ignore it/abstinence” approach isn’t working.

Don’t be surprised if I hand you a condom sometime.

16 October 2007 by Ponderings and Musings 1

Make It Interesting.

It’s midterms week at my fine educational institution and as a student I am double blessed, for I am trying to get ahead on my schoolwork so Earl and I can go to Ireland next week without my worrying about homework that may have been left behind.

I’ve griped about school quite a bit this semester, and I believe much of my griping is justified. However, in order for me to stick with my studies and to obtain that golden nugget called a degree, I have decided that I need to just make the whole affair interesting for me.

I am currently writing a research paper on the novel I chose to read for my English Literature class, “My Antonia” by Willa Cather. I’ve decided to focus on Cather’s suspected lesbianism and the subsequent undertones of her sexuality in Jim, the lead male character of the novel.

If I can talk about sex, I’m totally there.

Today when we had a pop quiz in Surveying (which we were allowed to use our book), I heard the student behind me struggling with the quiz because she had neglected to bring her book to class and was trying to find answers to formulas that required referencing the book. Since I tend to fly through quizzes at hyperspeed, I finished my quiz early so I tossed the book in her direction and let her keep it through the end of class. Later in the day at our outdoor surveying lab, she thanked me profusely and said she appreciated the gesture. Helping her made me more interested in what was going on in school.

In our afternoon lab we had to simulate a construction site and plot out the land for a large building. Divided up into four man crews, I watched my three crewmates spin the plans around in several directions and look off into the distance as they tried to line up point A with point B. I decided to take the bull by the horns and piped up, walking them through the layout of the building and where we should be setting up our surveying equipment, just as the professor walked over. He simply said, “guys, listen to J.P.” I’m old enough to be the father of the guys, they should trust the old man.

I’m often remarking to Earl that I respect self assured people that are uninhibited. I guess it’s time for me to start expressing myself. It keeps life interesting.

15 October 2007 by College Kid. Deep. Ponderings and Musings 2

Rebuild.

I’ve spent the entire day doing homework and wiping out my beloved PowerBook and rebuilding all the software from scratch. I wish I had something more exciting to talk about, but that’s I’ve got, homework and geeking. Not much more.

It’s all good but I’m looking forward to the fact that tomorrow is another day.

14 October 2007 by Geek 0

Foley.

hockey

Earl and I spent the evening in the Capital city of Albany for the Albany River Rats hockey game. I’m not much of a hockey fan, but I always enjoy going to a game for several reasons, the least of which is the actual game itself. It’s not that I don’t enjoy watching the game, but I’m always so fascinated by the people at the game.

First of all, hockey stands out in my head because it’s the only team sport I can think of that encourages unsportsmanlike behavior. (That cringing you hear is my sister’s boyfriend, a professional hockey player. They call him The Instigator.) The crowd goes wild when two or more hockey players start throwing down their equipment and beat the hell out of each other. What’s up with that?

One of my favorite activities at a game is to make as many odd noises as possible. The Jumbotron and the announcer both encourage everyone to get loud, so I go through a whole selection of loud noises, including the traditional sportsfan chants, bear-like ‘woofs’, Xena war cries and blood curling screams. If the encouragement for noise continues through this selection, I then resort to yelling “kitty” as if I was beckoning the cat from 50 acres away.

The neighboring fans just love me.

When our team makes a goal, I like to hold my popcorn and jump up in the air so that I send a shower of popcorn to celebrate. I feel it’s a fan thing to do.

Tonight’s game was a bit of a bummer, in that we had to go through various overtime exercises before finally losing the game, but what I found more disturbing was the rendition of “God Bless America” and our National Anthem. A bunch of elementary school kids were herded out onto the ice (on carpet pieces), where the music teacher grabbed the mic and croaked out some weird verse of the former that I had never heard of. To keep it interesting, she consistently ignored the key and avoided any sort of tempo. Her students then joined in behind her. Since she was playing random with the pitch, the students had no hope of keeping up with her and it was, in my opinion, probably the worst rendition of “God Bless America” I have heard in my 39 years on this planet.

But they had spirit.

This was quickly followed up with a junior high chorus, also herded out on the ice, who promptly sang our National Anthem, again in random keys that changed throughout the song. Deciding enough was enough, I joined a drunk man several rows back by singing the National Anthem as strongly as I could and I chose to remain in the key that the group was in when I decided to join them. If I’m going to be proud of this country, I’m going to do it out loud.

Now you’re probably thinking I’m throwing some cheap shots out and let’s see me do any better. Tell you what, I’ve sang the National Anthem in sports arenas on several occasions (solo and a cappella) so I feel like I can be a bit of a critique on the subject. I’m just saying. I would welcome the chance to do it again.

All in all it was a fun night.

13 October 2007 by Fun and Games Dept 1

Trying.

Last year the world was introduced to the television show “Heroes”, and it was good. Through creative writing and acceptable special effects, we were taken through the twists and turns of ordinary people with extraordinary powers who came together to try to save the world.

And it was good.

It is now season 2. And I really hate to say this, but “Heroes” ain’t doin’ it for me. I’m not enjoying the Mexican story arc, I’m not liking the Peter in Ireland story arc and now we have Niki back on the screen whining and crying. The week’s episode, the third of the season, didn’t make it to the TiVo in it’s complete form due to a wild thunderstorm during the original airing. Luckily, the screen stayed stable enough to reveal Uhura in New Orleans. Other than that, it was a mosh posh of dancing pixelated images that abbreviated the episode to 30 minutes. Normally I’d be freaked out about the interruption and trying to download the episode in it’s entirety, but I’m finding that I just don’t give a damn.

Oddly enough, I’m interested in only two shows thus far: “Las Vegas”, because it’s like television Cheese in a Can and it knows it, and “Private Practice”, because it has a good ensemble cast and what seems to be good writing, plus it has my babe Amy Brenneman on it. I am interested in “Pushing Daisies” and will be adding that to the TiVo as well.

I must be getting old, because I’m also contemplating adding the new “Price Is Right” onto our viewing schedule. For the first time in the 35 year history of the show, they rerecorded the theme song in stereo.

12 October 2007 by Everyone's A Critic. 2

Weekend Prep.

In late 1999 I found this import CD in a record store in Albany. I was program director of Wow FM, “The Beat of Central New York” at the time and it somehow ended up in a fairly heavy rotation on the playlist (ooh, the powers I had with the title of Program Director.) The track was never released in the United States and it predates “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” by two years.

Here’s Kylie Minogue with “Spinning Around.” Kudos to those that can name the sample in the track.

12 October 2007 by DJ 0

About J.P.

Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.

Weird? Eccentric!

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