debitage
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 22.9.01
Last night I went to the Woods Tea Co. concert, feeling fine tooth-wise, though I was very tired from only getting two hours of sleep the previous night. The concert was great. They really seemed to appreciate being able to play at Colgate -- we're one of their favorite audiences, and they really needed the boost after the last couple weeks. They played nearly all their best songs -- "Alberta Bound," "Jenny Glenn," "The Scotsman's Kilt," "Gin Ye Marry Me," "The Old Dun Cow," "Finnegan's Wake," etc. They took a vote about playing "There Were Roses," in light of the recent tragedy, and it was unanimous in favor. And for once I never felt distracted at all thinking about what other songs they ought to play. I could just focus on the music, and admire Howard's bass (it's an upright, but it's missing that big violin-shaped resonating chamber, so it's just a stick with strings and a microphone), and watch Amanda bopping excessively in front of me. Around intermission I could feel pain in my back right jaw. At the time, it felt like a cold sore, so I didn't think much of it.I sat through the whole show and 3 encores. They didn't play "Aaarrgh," the song they wrote especially for Colgate, but that's not such a big deal. "Aarrgh" isn't the same without Tom MacKenzie and his hammer dulcimer. By the end of the show, I had progressed to a full-blown toothache. At that point I wasn't in any mood to deal with it, as all I could think about was catching up on sleep before the football game today. But I discovered I couldn't sleep. It took me three or four trips down to the kitchen for ice before I finally fell asleep. Marty and Dave were worried, because I was so angry and tired that I ignored everyone I saw on my trips downstairs. A few hours later, I woke up for the game. By this morning the stabbing pain had changed to an ache in my entire right jaw. I went to practice and marched, but didn't play. I came home after practice and slept instead of eating lunch or going to tailgate. Then I went to the football game, where I managed to play about half the songs in the stands and all of the field show. It turned out that playing produced some sort of soothing vibration to counteract how much it ought to have hurt with my tooth like it was. After the game, I met up with my parents (who were up for Parents' Weekend) and went over to the hospital. They took an hour and a half to determine that I needed a dentist, which I would have to go to Utica to find. So we headed off to St. Luke's Hospital in Utica. Eventually their emergency room dentist showed up. I had an infection around one of my wisdom teeth that was filling my cheek with pus. So she cut it open and squeezed the pus out. By the time she was done, I was shivering from stress and not having eaten in 12 hours. So we went to Friendly's and I tried to eat soup and grilled cheese with gauze in my mouth. We made a wrong turn going to get back on 12B, but it landed us at a drugstore that was 10 minutes from closing (when we hadn't thought we'd ever find a pharmacy taht was still open. There were a number of lucky breaks in this whole process, most notably my parents being here, with the car, on just the right day. Maybe God wanted to make sure I'd be able to go to the deacons' ordination tomorrow morning at church. Of course, though Nan seems to think that the ordination is a huge deal, I look at it as just a formality. I didn't serve any differently this past month due to being not ordained yet. Anyway, I now have bottles of Ibuprofen and antibiotics on my desk, and I need to make an appointment to get my wisdom tooth out (in Utica again) in the next few weeks.
21.9.01
My hair is much too long right now. I keep meaning to get it cut, but I always have some sort of commitment or work that needs to get done that precludes me from walking downtown. At least we're now able to disprove Gulnar's hypothesis that if I let my hair get longer I would acquire a girlfriend. The idea made little sense, as my appearance is sub-par to begin with and certainly not improved by hair that's too long for the hairstyle that I have maintained for the past 10 years. And the fact that her husband sported a buzz cut casts some doubt on Gulnar's judgement in such matters. But we now have scientific proof. In the interest of making some use of my Quantitative Methods class, I can point out that this was a "single group interrupted time series" research design.
The photo is for Marty's article on the Nimda virus. He realised at 2 a.m. that the picture he had for the article was of a Mac, which isn't affected by Nimda. So I ran home and took a picture of my computer running McAffee. I could list off a lot of problems with the photo. If I had thought about how Marty was laying out the page, I would have taken the picture from the opposite angle, so that the monitor would face onto the page. If anyone in the house had been awake, I would have gotten them to sit at the computer, so that there would be a person in the photo instead of just a computer. I should have found a way to get set quicker so that I could snap the picture while the big McAffee startup screen was showing, so that you could tell what the computer was doing (as is it just looks like a bunch of windows open). But it's still a photo credit. Now the next step is to get a byline in Colgate Sports. Maybe the next time Fencing has a tournament... Of course, I've taken photos for the M-N before, in the process of doing Campus Notebook. But there's never any sort of byline on Notebook. We haven't run it the past two weeks, and I'm not especially sad about that.
20.9.01
There was a letter in The Maroon-News last week from a kid who said he was ashamed to be a Colgate student because of how some of his classmates reacted to last Tuesday's tragedy. I'm one of the people he was railing against, as I believe it's important to understand the circumstances that led to terrorist action against the US rather than turning the situation into an ideological battle of good versus evil. But I could understand the feeling he was experiencing when I heard the first reports of violence against American Arabs, Muslims, and people (like Sikhs) who look to the uneducated eye like Arabs or Muslims. I had known this would happen, but I hadn't wanted to believe it. It made me ashamed to be an American. This is the problem with group identity. Your worth becomes dependent on the actions of others. But why should the hate felt by some people reflect on me just because we live on the same scrap of ground and pay our taxes to the same treasury? That's how bin Laden justified killing innocent people -- the actions of the American government reflected on all Americans. That's how racists justify hate crimes against innocent Arabs and Muslims -- bin Laden's actions reflect on all people whose ancestors come from the same region of the world or call God by the same name as he does. I've avoided expressing patriotism because I didn't want to be associated with the type of jingoism that has been coming from our leaders and the media. But now I realise there's a deeper issue with patriotism -- it lumps you in with a group identity. I am an American, because I live within the territory named "the United States of America." But I am neither proud to be an American nor ashamed to be an American or any combination of the two. I am only proud or ashamed of my own actions and thoughts.
19.9.01
I'm hoping that post will turn out to be more venting than journalism. It sounds cheesy to say it, but I care about Experimental Theatre more than I care about any other activity that I'm not involved in. Heck, I might put Theatre before the One O'Clock Jazz Band (now held at 4:10), since nobody ever comes to listen to Jazz Band (well, Dave actually does, but considering his dislike of jazz I think it's mostly for moral support of Timmy and me). Experimental Theatre's performance ranks up there with the ECAC tournament at Lake Placid and Woods Tea in terms of things I look forward to each semester. So it worries me to hear that the group is faltering. Of course, it seems like every semester preliminary reports suggest that it's not going to come together, that the group is totally unprepared to perform. But it always works out, as far as we unenlightened audience members can tell. So maybe I shouldn't worry. Or maybe I should just worry about the Maroon-News and Pep Band and let Theatre sort itself out. I felt like I had a lot more to say when I started writing this.
18.9.01
17.9.01
I need to get these things done. I'm a week behind the deadline I set myself. But I can't seem to put anything down that really means anything, that isn't unneccessarily vague or that doesn't descend into cliche. So I take too many breaks, to check email and look at blogs. Every day I tell myself I'm going to buckle down and stop wasting time like this, so that I can get my work done and have honest-to-goodness free time. But it just doesn't happen.
16.9.01
All day today, I was contemplating skipping fencing practice. I was so sore from yesterday that it hurt to walk down the stairs. But the whole time, I knew I would eventually go. And I did. I made it through wall sits, and footwork. Then we did the glove drill, wherein someone drops a glove and you have to lunge and grab it. In one of my first lunges, I landed crooked on my ankle and it began to hurt. Subsequent lunges became progressively more timid, as I avoided landing hard on my ankle. This, of course, led to failure at the drill, as the point of the drill is to get you to do fast all-out lunges. At the end of the drill, I decided that, between the pain and my inability to do the forms correctly due to the pain, practice would be rather useless. I still feel bad for skipping practice, since my "injury" didn't even require a visit to the health center. But then I wonder if that's just because I think I should be tough (even though my toughness won't impress anyone who comes to fencing, since they all know very well what a pathetic weakling I am). As I got my sweatshirt, I mentioned to Kate that I had hurt my ankle. She lifted the leg of her shorts a bit to show me the huge bruise on her thigh from the tournament yesterday, and said gleefully "we can be injured together!" Then I told her I was going home because of it. She grabbed me by the shoulders and said "You are a smart man."
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It seems like every time I think I'm going to get on track with getting work done, something happens to prevent it. First