Contraceptives don't work. My philosophy professor's the product of contraceptive cream, and my friend Chaz's dad and three uncles are the product of the rhythm method. Bill Gates is rich and is going to build a cyberbody in which he will live forever, unless his cyberbody runs on a Windows OS, in which case he will die quickly and painfully. It's possible to recouch, bracket and refrain questions, three things that I never knew you could really do to questions in the first place. Oh, and "[if you use my phone], just know that if I get the bill, and if you've called your friends in Tennessee or something, there'll be a serious ass-whuppin' comin' down the pipe." (my professor) Good stuff. Goooood stuff.

(Warning... a lot of today's entry is just me ranting. You don't have to read it or anything, but it's mostly just so I can get my ideas out a bit and write about things. But, y'know, if you want to read it in the effort to understand my silly drives and stuff... then be my guest!)

Howdy my faithful chickens, and welcome to the second edition of my fun, fun journal. So let's start at this past Sunday, and work our way up to today. Domingo por la noche, I was sitting at home, relaxing after having walked to Popeye's Chicken with David, my summeroomate. I sat at home for a while, doodydoodydoo, and then headed off to mass, barefoot.

Barefooting. People've been doing it for a long time... even after the advent of the acclaimed "Shoe Age," humans the world over have been cavorting around bare and exposed, and loving it. There are certain pretty undeniable joys to walking on soft grass outside and feeling the soil against the skin of your feet, and there are some interesting songs with themes like that... check out Shakira's "Pies Descalzos" ("Bare feet"). Anyway, I love barefooting it, and do it a lot even though the less enlightened folks seem to make it their ultimate concern that I'll carelessly step on something sharp and die. Like a really big infected spike or something. I'm also a "health hazard" and a "hippie," but whatever you call me, I'm Kentuckian, happy, and have strong, calloused feet and that haven't gotten cut in several months. Barefoot power!

Okay, so enough of my militant barefooting rant. I walked to the 11:15 mass, and Father King gave it, and it was amazing. I don't know exactly what it was... probably the exactly right combination of stuff that'd been tearing me up inside for the past week and really powerful things that he was saying... after the homily I couldn't help it and I started crying. I just felt like... in the past week I've been so worried about random, little crappity things and beating up on myself when I should be happy with the awesome state everything's in and stop trying to push things beyond my own limits. And other stuff. But anyway, it was huge. A little bit like an epiphany... not exactly, but definitely a catharsis. Anyone else ever have something like this happen to them at church? It was my first time for anything like that.

Y'see, I'm only just now starting to go to church and really get things out of it... to really be interested in and feel religion. This started around winter-time, when I started going to mass with Brian and what I saw was very different from what I'd seen before... I started truly feeling the prayers and feeling power in the room... and I felt that in this environment I was a little more distanced from the hypocrisy that had driven me away from the church when I was younger. I was baptised Episcopalian, and went to church for a while when I was younger... but it never really appealed to me very much. But now I feel like Catholicism is really calling to me, and though I'm not technically Catholic (there's this big screening process or something... it's kinda silly), I feel like it's the right thing for me now at that time in my life. Some of my old friends from Lexington have been giving me crap about it, but it's not like I'm proselytizing... just saying that this is what feels right for me, right now in my life. It's helping me get by, y'know?

On Monday I went to my ethics class, and then onwards to work, where I experienced yet more of the biggest scandal I've been involved in all summer. Here at UIS we have to go out an fix internet connectivity problems all around campus residences, and this includes special summer students (many of which are high-schoolers in dorkyass programs) and their considerably lower-level problems. These are pretty dumb problems... like ethernet cards that never had the software that came with them installed... or computers that have their wireless cards selected as the primary internet adapters, instead of their ethernet cards. It's kind of equivalent to a plumber that shows up to fix someone's pipes and finds that they've been turning their faucet the wrong way. Anyway, scandal. In New South this summer, there are high schoolers in the Junior Statesmen of America (JSA) program, and because they're high schoolers and the program'll get in trouble if they have crazy monkey sex in their dorm rooms, the floors are separated by gender. Girls are allowed only on the second and fourth floors, and guys only on the first and third floors. But of course (not to be too sexist, but it's true), 90% of the problems we get from them are from the girls, but 100% of our summer employees at UIS are male, so this means that the evil sexpot MALES have to go onto the forbidden floor of the innocent females and fix their computers. So every time I set foot on the second floor, I hear gasps and exclamations "Boy on the floor! You're not allowed!" And I just laugh in their faces, 'cause... I mean, what're they going to do? There's police tape on all of the stairwells, saying things like "FORBIDDEN STAIRWELL! DO NOT ENTER ON PENALTY OF DEATH!" and crazy stuff like that so that the floors won't intermingle. I wonder what the guys there do to hang out with the girls... probably dress in drag or something. Meanwhile, I'm a rebel. That's the bigger stuff that's happened recently... but in little news snippets: Elliott's coming to visit tomorrow, Dori and J.K. are coming on Friday, I just got my first credit card and wrote my first philosophy paper, and I'm getting buffer, I think. Hmmhmm! Whaddaya think of that? Okay, time to be geeky and read some network stuff. I think I'll write my next entry in French. Or Spanish. Or something. Be prepared to be multilingual. Hasta la jirafa, baby!

Okay, so I did another entry a while back... but it never really worked out. So I'm calling this the first entry ever, which I suppose would make the last one... maybe... the negative first entry, I suppose. Or zeroeth. It really depends on how you set up your number lines. But I digress... which is something I plan on doing a lot in this journal, just so you know. Digression is my forte, which I learned actually comes from French and is supposed to be pronounced "fort," not "forté." Way to take away all my fun, linguists! ::shakes fist with ferocious anger::

So anyway, hello. I'm Nat, and I like a lot of stuff, but lately I've been finding myself undergoing a lot of change, so I'm adding new things that I like to do all the time, and consequently having a bit of a restructuring in how I spend my time. I've been spending less time recently doing things that I usually do (like studying languages and playing video games), but I don't think I've given these pursuits up at all; au contraire, mon frère. I've just set them aside to get myself together. I have a wonderful girlfriend, Dori, and she's coming in a week... I'm pretty stoked. I've been planning lots and lots of things for us to do together, and I've got many surprises, games, and presents lined up for her here. She's driving down with J.K., my best friend from Lexington, which was I'll admit a bit unforeseen, but he's a good roadtrip partner (as I myself will testify!) and a good friend, and I trust him. Anyway, those are the generalities of what's going on right now- more details, pormenores, and saime to be added later, interwoven in the telling of the tales that I have to tell.