The Myth & The Majesty

My brain is full. Okay, maybe not full. Maybe not even mostly occupied. Anyway, there's a lot of "stuff" taking up unnecessary space, and things are operating rather slowly. Pray for my granddad. He's going in for bypass surgery tomorrow, and I'm worried. Naturally. I really, really want to talk to a couple of you (one in particular), but that won't happen as long as I'm here. Need to go back to RC first, but I'm lacking motivation to do that, too. Feeling stupid right now. No comment on that one. I thought learning to play the bagpipes was hard, until I realized I was just strangling an ostrich. --Craig Stacey

It's amazing how much fodder one can find for a blog when one is watching TV (especially when one is only watching TV in the first place to avoid one's homework). Hmm. Now one can remember why one prefers to write in first person. First, there was a Walgreen's commercial -- one of their "If Life Were Perfect" commercial. This particular ad featured a child's perfect birthday party. When they go to their "Life Isn't Perfect; Go To Walgreen's" bit, zooming out across products sold in the store, I found my irony. They start with batteries, then zoom past nicotine patches and aspirin. Yup. There's a kid's birthday party in short. Or how about the Charmin commercials with the bears? I'm just a little unnerved about cartoon animals using toilet paper in general. Then, there's the Campbell's Soup commercials. They're talking about the "five great recipes" they've added to the backs of labels -- but in all their

www.homestarrunner.com -- Go now and take a look at "Pizzaz," the new SB email! You know, I had the urge to blog, but now I don't remember what I wanted to say. I HATE when that happens! Anyway, I'm back out at Storm (again), hard at work ... Well, I was hard at work (except for that 4-wheeling stint we had this afternoon). Now us hard workers (Dyan, Kellie, and I) are hanging out in the office. I use that term loosely -- mostly Dyan and I are making fun of Kellie and her online "math" course. Yup. She goes to BH. Wait, now she's signing up for ... an online dating service? What the heck?! Things are going well, on the surface. Dig down deeper and things are confusing and troubling, but who really digs down that far these days anyway? Just in case you were curious, I'll expose that deep down stuff for a moment; I currently have a new situation in my life that's kind of confusing me, a scary situation that I really don'

Hum dee dum. Well, I had an amazing weekend. Went back out to Storm for some fun and quality kitchen time ... Yup. Yay for good stuff. The only suggestion I got then was to talk about pie. I'm not sure why exactly. I suppose I could examine the intricacies that come with selecting the best blueberries when making an apple pie (no, that's not supposed to make sense), but I'm not sure where else to go with this. I, for one, don't particularly care for most pie. I'm a fan of chocolate french silk pie, and most kinds with meringue (especially banana cream ... yum), and I love pumpkin pie. But beyond that ... Well, Mom's apple pie is awesome. I guess pie is one of those comfort foods that I never really got into. I enjoy baking it (I enjoy baking most things) but eating it? No thanks. Ummm ... Yeah. That's about everything on that particular subject. Wit fails me. (Funny what homework and meetings can do to a Techie's imagination.) Still

Under normal conditions, I don't get particularly personal on this thing. Today's an exception. Today I'm feeling vulnerable, and this seems like a good place to get things off my back. I have two major fears in life: the fear of disappointing and the fear of being boring. No, not disappointment. I'm not worried about being disappointed with my life. I am, however, worried about disappointing other people. I can screw up like crazy and it won't get to me if it only affects me ... but the second someone else says, "Shame, Ashley," it hurts like crazy. Right now, I feel like I'm letting a lot of people down, and that's one of those things I can't deal with very well. As for the fear of being boring ... I spent a rather large chunk of my life invisible. I made great wallpaper. Then, I come to school, where I don't have to be like that anymore -- so I make it a point not to be. I try almost too hard to avoid it, but I don'

Things are getting started, and it's been an interesting week. In the land of classes, I'd rather not talk about it. I'm taking thermodynamics, heat transfer, technical communications, physics, and analytical chemistry. Eighteen credits of pressure and stress. The swelling in my face is finally going down, but not until after I went to the doctor out here and he re-cut ... blechh. I had a bad infection in my cheek, not even near the spots that formerly held teeth. Not fun when you confuse your doctor. At this exact moment, there's a storm outside my window with a heck of a lot of lightning and wind. It's pretty spectacular, and I'm rather tempted to go for a run in the rain if it ever really kicks in (mostly just lightning and wind right now). Right now it's spectacular enough to watch the neighboring dorms light up from the outside in. Bet it's wreaking havoc on the dance in the quad, though. InterVarsity stuff is kicking up, and it&#