Bloomington, day 2

College towns always seem to have that walkable mainstreety section lined with businesses catering to the college cliche. A coffee shop here. A head shop there. A gym on the corner. A good date spot tucked away somewhere. And a restaurant with a "famous" dish that weighs more than your head. These areas tend to be peopled by that new breed of pseudo-hippie that thrives in the collegiate environment. They aren't really hippies in the sense that they share ideals or goals similar to those of the infamous movement. But they do seem to enjoy wearing natural colors and growing beards and smoking clove cigarettes and. . . I think you get the picture.

And the picture is the point. Now take that picture and put it on a motorcycle, not a Harley, one of those just-barely-bigger-than-a-moped bikes. Then put a colorful, shoot-me-out-of-a-cannon helmet over its head. Then surround it with a dozen or so similar pictures, one of which has clearly taken on the role of leader trying to guide the squad out of a treacherous parking lot. That's how my day started.

On my way to Best Buy, where I did Not Buy a new laptop battery ("Um, you can't buy those in stores. You have to go online and order one."), I saw this gaggle of ludicrousity coming out of a parking lot at me. I laughed. . . out loud. . . actually.

On that note, Indiana seems to have more motorcyclers than Michigan. Indiana also seems to have no helmet laws. It seems that one of those facts should negate the other. . .

Okay, so on the job search front: no ideal job yet. Not in the paper. Not at the paper. Not anywhere else I went and asked. No ideal jobs anyway. Plenty of job jobs. But I think I may prefer to go someplace else to get a job job. Bloomington, which is nice, is a bit too much like places in Michigan, which are also nice, for me to move away from all of my Michigan ties just to take a job job. . . I need to see more places. I may be back. But for now, on to the next city.

I'm grateful for a cheaper hotel room (20).

On the road

Today, I embarked upon the Great Procrastinator Roadtrip of '08. In an attempt to circumvent the awfulness of long-distance, job-search rejection/indifference, I've taken to the road with hopes of either lucking into the perfect opportunity when I happen to be in the right place at the right time for a sweetsweet job or finding the awesomist place in the country where I wouldn't care if my job is crap because the locale is staggeringly bliss-inducing.

So where would a procrastinator go for the first stop on such a mission? Bloomington, Indiana of course. Why Bloomington? Because I can relate to those fiery cutters. Actually, it's because I looked into the city a few years back when I was considering going to college here, and it sounded like a neat place. . . blahblahblah. . . sorry. . . not interesting. . .

The day was driving. A six-hour drive swollen beyond that by road work and construction and road work and construction and. . . Driving is like exercise. If you get a bit of it, you feel refreshed and invigorated and your mind clears out that irrelevant nonsense you've been stuffing in it on a daily basis. But if you get too much of it, your legs and arms get all wobbly and you start talking to yourself.

On the path to Bloomington is Indianapolis. I've never been comfortable driving around cities of that size, and when I realized that I would be passing around the city that pays Peyton Manning during rush hour I was worried. But it wasn't bad. Five to six lanes and plenty of room to maneuver. No madmadmad New England drivers in sight. Quite pleasant, actually.

When I finally got to Bloomington, I couldn't find a hotel. I drove this way and back. I went straight. I turned. I found a place attached to a bar that had a big chicken on a sign boasting that tonight is the hot body contest. I drove some more. I finally found a clump of hotels. No rooms here. No rooms next door. No room there. "What's going on this weekend?" "Some drum corps. thing." The DCI finals are in town this weekend. I wish I had known. Not that I could afford a ticket right now, but I would've called ahead anyway. But I finally found a room.

So tonight I sleep, tomorrow I explore the city in search of jobs and cheaper hotel rooms.

I'm grateful for lucky sticks (20).

Lights, camera. . . no wait. . .

So tonight marks the second time that the paper has trusted me out in the world with one of its cameras. The first time was when I was sent to cover a tribute dinner hosted by the Elks at the Eagles lodge. . . or was it hosted by the Eagles at the American Legion. . . or was it. . . (I had to go to a couple of places before I got the right one). But anyway, one of those organizations that tend to have fish fries and BBQ nights was having a dinner to honor a nearby volleyball team that won the state finals. So my boss thought that it would be a good opportunity for me to get my feet wet with the camera because people sitting around tables are a lot easier to photograph than are people participating in any sort of athletic endeavour. But yeah, my pictures were crap, nothing was published.

Tonight? Um. . . I took the first picture. Then when I looked at the display to see if I had gotten a good shot, over the preview picture was the text "No (something something) Card." Damnit! I had a camera but no memory card. And driving twenty minutes through the gusty snow to get the card and then driving another twenty minutes to get back to the game was not an option. However, even though none of the pictures were going to be saved, the camera still displayed a preview of the most recent shot taken. So I did get some practice in.

I wanted to make this a long, entertaining post. But I've grown tired before making it long or entertaining. But it is a post. So one out of three. That's a good batting average.

I'm grateful for "To Kill a Mockingbird" (20).

Here I am

Rock you like a hurrican. . . Yeah. I know. I know. But let's just pretend like I didn't totally punk out for the past couple of months and get down to business.

I'm still working part time, writing sports stories for the local paper. I have been getting more hours lately, and they finally gave me a key. But the hours are still nowhere near enough to live off of, and they didn't give me the password to the security system so I can really only use the key when there are people there. But you know, it's progress.

For the most part, the events I'm sent to are the ones that the boss doesn't want to go to. So I'm usually writing stories about blowouts or about competitive cheer meets (I may write about cheerleading at a later date). Occassionally, I'll get lucky, and two bad teams will face off, and I'll get to see a close game. But most of the time I consider any game that ends with fewer than twenty points between the teams to be a closely contested battle. But still, I'm enjoying it. I'm learning a bit more each time out, and I like everyone I've worked with both at the paper and at the schools we cover. I've actually started to get to the point where people in the local sports circle are recognizing me. Of course, half of them think I'm a talent scout. But you know, baby steps. . .

Speaking of baby steps. . . I'm pretty sure that's what this is. Instead of a bigass post filling in the past two monthes, I'm going to give you guys a bunch of melt-in-your-mouth-not-in-your-hand-sized chunks. If you chouldn't tell, this was the first chunk. . .

I'm glad to be back (20).

cheater

I looked around the Internet to find something to blog about tonight because the things I'm doing are not especially interesting to read or write. In my search for the magic post maker, I found a site called Word Beads on Sentence Strings. Basically, the site challenges visitors to string together five given words and any other words to form sentences, paragraphs, limericks, homilies, manifestos, etc., etc. etc. I figured that sounded like a fun way to manufacture a post, so here we are. And here it goes:

I'm playing this game in which I'm supposed to write something using the words stratospheric, empirical, grief, see, and uncommitted.

That wasn't as difficult as I had expected.

I'm grateful for the Mythbusters, who just concluded that it's plausible that elephants are at least somewhat uncomfortable around mice if not scared of them (20).

I did stuff!!!

Okay, not much. But I did do stuff. I finally got in touch with the school and was able to fill out the re-admission application. I think I got things right. But I'm not positive. The form wanted me to pick a major. But I'm not really going to have a major. I'm just going to be working toward a couple of certificates. So I picked the major that matched one of the certificates. I figure that once I get admitted I can then worry about changing things with an advisor.

I wrote a bunch today. . . I guess that's all I have to say about that.

I looked up possible summer jobs/internships because I doubt the paper will have much for me to do during the summer because most of the area sports aren't especially active during that time.

I'm grateful for Whose Line Is It Anyway?, even if they are all reruns now (20).

Spooky

Okay. This is weird. I'm missed a call tonight and didn't recognize the number. So I called it to see who it was and what they wanted. The person I spoke with guessed that maybe it was a wrong number because nobody there had tried to call me. But here's the weird thing. I recognized the last name the woman gave me. It was the same last name as one of the coaches I was unable to get in touch with for work last week. It turns out the person I was talking to was his cousin, who assured me that he did not try to contact me from that number.

I feel the need to spout some platitude about our tiny little planet or interconnectivity or even probablity, but I think we'll all be better off if I just leave it at 'That's weird.'

I'm grateful for our tiny little planet (20).