Sam

My dog was put down yesterday. I still don't know what happened as my parents didn't write me about it or anything... I'm supposing that they are having a difficult time with it. She was just about the coolest dog to ever roam the earth.

I'm told that she regularly would go running into my room, her favorite toy in her mouth (the remains of a stuffed dog she stole off my bed when she was only a couple months old) and look around every corner expectantly.

I wasn't there.

While I can console myself that I see my family on skype and facebook, I feel absolutely horrid for not being there when she looked for me. Sam always came when I called, even if I needed her to get up from a nap she would do it without so much as a sniff. Here I am, thousands of miles away, unable answer her.

I feel so selfish. I'm not ready to go home yet. But my enjoyment of the things I am learning and the chances I am getting... do those outweigh the experiences I am missing with my family (dogs and cats and horses included)?

I just don't know right now...

Fueling Up

Needed a little something to get my brain going.  What better than to write emo poetry in Anglo Saxon?

Ic limgesið gierman gehwilc andhangne niht þu þaccian ingemynde

þu éages léoht neoðane

þu liðe héafodwóð ábifian giefend

Ic áswerian, galdorcwide

ac gelegered nú gén

þu æsceda ætgeændung gamen

The grammar is horrid as it has been a few years and I don't have my notebook so I'm going off my rubbish memory and translating from a terrible source anyway (my own crappy writing).  Somehow, writing it like this makes me feel less like a teenage Hot Topic loving loser.... in reality, this is probably much much worse...

Right... Catch Up

Well, nothing happened, nothing happened, nothing happened, I got internet and here I am. Okay it was a little more complicated than that, but I mostly feel like recapping my everyday's activities is a completely masturbatory practice. Not far behind that is recording my thoughts on various things in my life but, as I think I have stated before, my use of the word 'masturbatory' illudes to the fact that it is somewhat pleasurable (if only to me), so I will do it anyway. Besides, it is something I can do to keep my brain functioning long enough to watch that last 24 minutes of 'House' that Megavideo cuts you off of when you watch more than one episode.

Lately, I have been questioning my education. Not the general merits of it, but more my own investment in it. This isn't the first time I have wondered why I have always been so bent to have pretty upper-case letters follow my name. Usually, I am the one to call people out on this sort of thing and I have recently discovered that I hate hypocrisy beyond all else (including cockroaches, anything with limbs in multiples of 8, and the way Jello feels going down your esophagus), so... uh... self? What are we trying to prove?

I meet people every day who just decided to travel the world, something I have always wanted to do and something I had grown convinced was only possible if I achieved a good education. I meet people my own age, hell, people younger than me who have seen so much, who have made real mistakes and still recovered. I feel like I took the safe route... I went to uni, studied things that made me happy but will ultimately do me little to no good in the 'work place' and got to travel with the safety blanket of a masters program... built in friends, built in lifestyle, built in loan that I will never be able to pay back...

Now I am caught. Wanting to see the world, knowing that while Sallie Mae can find me anywhere, I can't pay Her back without a steady income and possibly *gasp* a grown-up job. I am twenty five with a masters degree and no real idea of what to do next except panic because the bills are about to start rolling in and I'm still struggling to pay off our council tax.

Maybe I never would have gotten here without my education. I might have been one of the many who never left Scappoose; preferring the familiar comfort of my small town to the possible failures of the outside world. So, the real merit of a university education for a creature of habit like me is to knock you on your ass a few times until you figure out how to cauterize your own wounds (while still having paramedics at hand so you aren't so afraid).

So I'm a slow learner. Now to play catch up...

Treading the Water...

Seriously, you would think I would learn.

How many times do I have to jump into the middle of an artistic ocean without a lifejacket before I realize just how terrible of an idea this is?

Then again, I read somewhere that sharks are more likely to attack a person floating with a life jacket than those wildly flailing about on their own...

meh.

sleep is for the weak.

Exactly

English Men

Actually, the fact that I am wanting to write about the damn things says it all.

Aw

This is my first full day home in Oregon. I visited Wal-Mart to purchase the new South Park set and while driving home some redneck in a truck passed me with its passenger doing the licking vag motion. I flipped him off. My little brother suggested that I follow him until he stops somewhere, get out and say 'so you would like to suck my pussy?' and kick him in the junk.

They grow up so fast.