Come Again?

I guess that I have an addition to make to my list of life things to do: Ultimate without speaking the language of the majority of players.

Also, last night just around when the power went out (bad storms, you know? And by "bad storms", I mean "it started drizzling a little bit, then suddenly all of our power went out, and about five or ten minutes later it rained a bit harder with some intermittent flashes of lightning; I was pretty happy at first, because it was cool, but then, of course, my router went down and I lost my connection and was sad. So then I walked around the house for a while trying to find a working flashlight (which ended up being a booklight), candles (which only worked, ish, because most of the wicks were already about gone), and matches, also using my music player as a source of light (briefly) and my laptop--with Notepad called up and maximized (white screen versus mostly black desktop glow).)

...Around when the power went out, I was actually messing with a few settings for this blog (which I had to re-mess today, of course) and preparing to blog a more or less interesting thought. So...I hung out with Petey for a little while Saturday night trying to swim at first, but that fell through, so we just sat around and chatted for...several hours. If there's anybody with whom it seems I just don't at all spend enough time anymore, unreasonably, it's probably him. Meh; we're both *really* busy very often (otherwise socially and academically/etc.), so I was glad for the opportunity. We still swim together sometimes (like today, for example; with Jeanette, too, which was definitely cool (she's one of the people whom I flat-out don't see unless there's some big social event happening)).

But I guess that over break he went and visited IU and Earlham. The former...well, not much to say there in either of our opinions, except that it's big (duh). But his father drove him, Phoebe, Kim, and Brad Robinson to the school last...Friday, I believe it was, for campus tour/interviews/sitting in on classes. Pete says that it's inarguably very cool on the extracurricular front--Ultimate, of course, and also several sorts of martial arts, an entire Japanese-themed house, indoor equestrian...stuff, and much more with similar variety; even an ice hockey (if I have my facts correct) team, Division III, which it almost lost a ways back for whatever reason but for which the student body rallied heavily enough to keep it--for the half-dozen or so kids who were actually interested. Cool.

Problem is...1200-1500 kids total. And, like, math department of approximately three. That is, the successor of the successor of the least element of the natural numbers. Ouch. No Chinese department--at all. Dag. Well, no swim team, either. Hmm...kind of sketchy.

But I guess that if those few specific things aren't that important to you, Earlham'd seem like a really darn cool place. I mean, Nathan Myers is there, and he's pretty cool, right? Erm...well, from another perspective, Staci Rising's had her heart set on going there for...uhh...since I first asked/heard about her college plans, anyways. I remember talking about the area with her a while ago when she even told me about how she'd Google Local'd the place and found a dollar store, a 24-hour convenience store, perhaps a Wal-Mart, and at least few other nifty little...convenience places; she's really into the place. And she got accepted there (probably easily); so yay for her. First choice? No problem! Yes!

Then, for whatever reason, my thoughts skipped back to reflect on the email chains which we exchanged. They're rather odd, actually; I met her (more than "Hey this is my friend Gus; Staci, Gus; Gus, my friend Staci. Oh, wait, movie starts soon we should leave see you later 'kaythanksbye.") winter (middle/endish of swim season) 2004-2005; she's the one who messed with my hair first, right? When Timmy also black'd his and Johnny turned red-head. Well, after that, since she was a gamer girl and I was more of a gaming guy back then (and...well, I'll put it in terms of indie rock (transpose to gaming), because it's probably easier to digest that way: when I walked into her house, she was playing the Kaiser Chiefs, and when I mentioned Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, she'd also been searching arduously for it for...forever), we hit it off and talked about all kinds of electronic entertainment stuff, how oldschool was more addictive than new junk (always), ranted about lost childhoods and high school-quashed dreams, etc.; the kinds of stuff with which I normally worry myself (more or less, although perhaps in different form). Then, as always, I fell mired down by work, swimming, life, and email in general and failed to respond adequately to one email and we basically lost touch for another year.

Then we went to a LotR convention last...November? December? Before last fall semester ended, anyways, and actually started, you know, emailing/talking again. And then hooked up and dated for a while, but it (not surprisingly) didn't work out (for a variety of reasons) in the end, so now we're on spread-dirty-rumor and daggers-in-the-back terms. And by that, all I mean is just slightly awkward (understandably, in any similar situation, but not, in my opinion, much more than just a little) friends, but she's still cool, I don't really get her (at least, as well as I understand most other people), but it's cool. (I hope that I don't sound clingly typing this.)

And the point of this entire post was actually just to point out how when...some time back in January, probably when we were still togethermostly, I went back and skimmed through a few of the first emails which we sent each other and realized how uncannily similar they were. Are. Whatever. That is, in all liklihood, I used the exact same wording in several instances regarding the same things. I guess...maybe some of me hasn't changed as much as I sometimes think. Yeah, I got "classier" and started using the shift key for more than just interjection/emphasis, code, and emoticons; similarly for good punctuation. Heh; actually, I even emailed her the exact same link some time over spring break while I was surfing (and she was tanning) because I happened to hit it again and thought that she'd appreciate it. I suppose that she did the first time, anyways.

Kind of reminiscent of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, eh? I'm just going to hope that she doesn't mind (for whatever reason) my posting this, but she called it "our movie" a few times, and it's just kind of ironic now.

I don't know. This entire post was really only build-up to those last two paragraphs (building up to those last two sentences), so I guess that I'm also still more verbose and unnecessarily detailed than I need to be. Sometimes that's a problem, but usually I just cry about it. Which always helps.

Heh. I almost went back and changed "Kaiser Chiefs" to "Decemberists", but really, too many people around here know about the Decemberists; the Kaiser Chiefs are big in England but less so here, just as "Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne", as I believe the game was titled, was huge (or something) in Japan before it got to be just another incredible solely-cult-praise-worthy game in the States. But if I did describe her as playing the Decemberists and ultimately (seemingly, anyways) wooing me, then it'd almost be like a...

HIPSTER TRAP!!!