My Heart's an Autoclave. Thursday, February 7, 2008

Current personal issue: Being too addicted to caffeine -- I'm at a two cup a day habit and the less sleep I get, the worse it gets...

SO. SDC this weekend was very good, albeit weird at times. The conference was designed for youth and adults, but this time it was opened up to young adults, which is how I ended up there. There were other people there who more strongly identified with the young adult community than the youth community, but they were all still 20. There were also young adults who were sponsors (over 25) who more strongly identified with the adult community than the young adults. I was in neither of these groups; I am firmly situated between these two communities. I turned 22 on Sunday, which made the age gap feel even more stark. Most of the people there were under the age of 16 or over the age of 35. The worst thing about being in that gap is that I spent most of the weekend worrying how I should act. I wasn't in a position of leadership so I didn't technically need to be setting a good example... but I was definitely a good 5 years older than all of the youth there, so I really couldn't have full camaraderie with them.

Whatever. The conference itself was fantastic. I didn't find it as intense as I feel a lot of the youth did, but I got a lot of great tools for leading worships, to the extent that I feel like I could be a worship coordinator at some con in the future and rock at it.

My birthday on Sunday was really positive, but kind of lame/boring. Saturday night they surprised me with cake and glowsticks and everyone gave me birthday hugs. Sunday I was just in the car all day. Listening to Dr. Demento. The entire way. Have I mentioned that I absolutely hate hate hate novelty music? I'm not going to make a blanket statement and say that I hate ALL of it, because I certainly do love me some Flight of the Conchords and Tenacious D... but for the most part, I can't stand the majority of parody/novelty music I hear. But I wasn't driving, so I really didn't have any say in the music. I got free stuff from Subway and Burgerville by telling them it was my birthday, and I spent the whole day with Dad and Rob, so I'd say it wasn't a bad day overall.

As far as getting back on top of my shit, I've done it. Everything that had to be turned in yesterday got finished: the complex problem set, the reading and two problems for voting theory, the two assignments for grading, and the CS lab (writing a program that could solve a quadratic equation). My reading for German is almost done, only 12 more pages left to go. Now that I'm caught up again, I still have more homework due Friday, but it's nothing I'm crapping my pants about. A couple of problems for complex and some reading for voting theory? Pff.

Last night Rob, Devon and I went to Sushi Takahashi for a birthday dinner. Rob got stuck in traffic, so when me and Devon got there we walked down to Jackpot records to buy a ticket to the Portland Monday night Mountain Goats show. They closed at 7 and we got there at 7:10... sad face... At sushi we told them it was my birthday (shh it was Sunday that's close enough) and they gave me free mochi! Then we went to Spartacus and bought hairdye. I'm going to dye my hair atomic pink once I get a free couple hours, (maybe while I'm grading tonight? Or more likely, tomorrow afternoon).

Speaking of Mountain Goats, an undisclosed source found me a leaked copy of the Mountain Goats new album Heretic Pride (it's not set to come out until the 19th... oops) and it's absolutely fantastic! It's funny, because they've finally officially added a drummer to their line up (for the last several albums it's just been guitar or piano, and bass). The drum really adds to the fullness, but also very drastically changes that "goatey" sound. And not in a bad way, either. I think it's a change for the better.

Con planning is going well... not a whole lot has been going on. We should have online reg up by the end of the weekend. We don't have a workshop coordinator, but I'm not sure we need one...? Facebook says that 28 people are planning on coming, and 68 more are considering coming. Wow. We're probably going to have to cut off registration at a certain point. I mean, it doesn't really matter right now, we don't have more than 5 people officially registered. Once online reg goes up, that's going to change very quickly, I have a feeling.

Campus UU group is going well, as... well... Me and Liz have split up the duties so she's doing programming and I'm sending out the emails and bringing tea. We had our first meeting on Tuesday night 4 other people besides me and Liz showed up. That's not so bad, right? It was at an awkward time, but hopefully next week when it's a half hour earlier we'll have better attendance.

Okay. I have about half an hour left of my shift so I'm going to drink some water, read the rest of my assigned reading in Saga of the Volsungs, and then go to class.




Also: I'M 22. HOLY EFFING CRAP. That kind of makes me an adult. Sort of.