Today walking home I heard some frat boys chanting, "One... Two... Three... Four... Five... Six... Seven... Eight... Nine... Ten... Eleven... Twelve... Thirteen... Fourteen... Fifteen!"

Their mothers must be proud they can count so high.

I crashed my bike. On those damn old railroad tracks that are completely dismantled except for the portion that crosses First street. There are just rails crossing the street in the middle of randomness, and my front tire went into the groove, which carried me into the curb, which threw me off the bike.

On the plus side, I got to work on my mean baseball swing yesterday; center field bleachers, watch out! Or maybe not so much "center field bleachers" as "little kids playing on the playground beyond the field". And by field, I mean a tiny backstop at a tiny park 4 blocks from my house. And they should watch out for the tennis ball that I'm smacking around with my surprisingly well-constructed wiffle ball bat. I never managed to get it to the playground (that woulda been a deep drive to the power alley in left), but I hit the sled hill (a home run to the short porch in right) and my brother hit three cars (watch out for foul balls). For all those who are familiar with the greater west side of Elmhurst area, the park was Ben Allison. The park that spans about one suburban block when it's feeling mighty. But yay for tennis ball batting practice.

The rest of today will consist of packing the rest of my schtuff to go back to college. Will be glad to be away from "home" and back to a place that really feels like home.

Finallly got my knee surgery scheduled, December 20th. Which means that if the typical four-months-before-running thing holds for me (and I assume it will), River to River will be four days too early. Damn.

Turned over the left ankle playing frisbee. Does it never end?

At least the wrists are better. As long as I don't type too much. Doctor says I have a ganglian cyst, and I'll have it removed after I'm back walking after the knee surgerey, in the forseeable but not immediate future.

At least the shoulders and elbows are working.

Well the ankle is swelling up, so it must be time to take an advil and go to bed.

So driving to a laundromat there was a store going out of business and for some reason the sign was apocalyptic. It looked like it was an Evangelical Christian bookstore advertising the end-times as the real reason that they'd soon be out of business. Can't remember the wording of the black-on-yellow signs, or it'd be repeated here.

And then on each of the the quadruple-load commercial washers was a panel labeled, "More buttons". Except that it was actually "Mode buttons". D looks like R.

The Who do a lot of plagal cadences, yup.

Work has been exceptionally boring.

All I do is go on /.

On the rare occasions that my "hey, is there anything for me to do?" questions are *responded* to, I do something that takes me 15 minutes.

Then I send of another e-mail requesting work.

Then I'm back on /.

I am your tax dollars at work, damnit.

And if I could only waste them at home where I can at least be productive to myself... (well I suppose that's what I'll be doing once school starts up again, so... yeah...)

Playing today was really good... I think I'm starting to get it together in terms of stringing phrases together with continuity.

I've been working on the second movement of the Mozart Concerto (it's in nice easy keys; I want to get my fingers back under me before doing "hard" stuff). The middle of that movement is just fucking beautiful, and there's so much you can do with it.

Other than that, life is ok. Work has been OK, running has been OK, frisbee has been OK. When I see Jessica I've been happy. I wish our situation this summer was such that we could be together for more of the other things we enjoy, since we don't exactly *do* a lot of the same things. We do somewhat similar things, and we do them in similar ways. Once we get back to school and our time together isn't at such a premium, I think it'll be a lot easier.

My mom got a letter in the mail today "from John Kerry". Among other things it mentioned his "grass-roots" campaign... which just cracks me up. If, say, Howard Dean called his campaign grass-roots, I'd maybe almost buy that a little bit. If Dennis Kucinich called his campaign grass-roots I'd say, "what campaign?" (Kucinich is one of my favorite politicians, and I'm glad he's in Congress, but I don't think he'd make a great president, and apparently everyone voting in the primaries agrees). But John Kerry is an establishment candidate in an establishment party who gets his money from big corporations and big labor, appears to have gained power by appealing to the party elite (rather than directly to the people), and gets his publicity through all the traditional means. He believes in his party. I read the big Time Magazine story on "WTF is this John Kerry anyway?", and he seems from that to have some qualities that I appreciate in my leaders. He supposedly is intense and studies things independently. But he hasn't seemed to do that very much recently in the Senate. He goes by the party line and was elected in the primaries for his electability. He could be many things, but not "grass-roots".

allright, time to get crackin' on the LFS system.

  - 41

I practiced th'ol'clarinet today... for the first time all summer. Feels pretty good.

Music can be very rewarding, of course, only after practicing for long enough to play well.

Tone was allright, technique is kinda off (but better than I expected), and my endurance is shot, no surprises there.

Had a couple hours of frisbee earlier. I think we're going towards a stable equilibrium as far as rules go.

Apparently, based on frisbee experiences today, I seem to hold much authority in those rare occasions when I raise my voice. Maybe it's a supply/demand thing. They all want my brilliant wisdom, I don't let much of it out, so it's overvalued.

OK, I'm done.

boring boring day of work.

argh.

i keep getting teh e-mail.

and it's repeatedly something like "some people just had a baby". or "increase in virus-infected e-mail". or "eat spaghettios!"

needed something to do, so i'm writing something. la dee dah.