The Adventure, part 2

Sorry it has taken me a few days to update about the trip. The second night didn't provide a good opportunity for blogging, and since we got back Saturday night, my primary focus has been trying to do all the schoolwork I didn't do over break. Since, you know, I took a random roadtrip around four states in three days.

So the first night, we drove to Springfield, CO, the quaint little mainstreet town, and checked into the Starlight Motel, owned and operated by a sweet older couple. (The woman didn't know how to work the credit card machine, but otherwise it was a nice stay.)



We didn't do much that first night, just went to eat at a little steakhouse called Trail's End. For me, it was awesome because I had a thick steak, fresh from local Colorado cattle. For Willie the vegetarian, perhaps not so awesome, though she says her grilled cheese sandwich was tasty. (She had to tell them to hold the bacon. They've never heard of vegetarians out here.)

The next morning we walked around the town for a while and ate breakfast at a fifties-themed diner called Chubby's before hitting the road and driving back into the Oklahoma panhandle. Seeing that part of the state gives me a new perspective on The Grapes of Wrath. We passed fields that had turned to sand, which drifted across the road with the wind. We passed over several rivers that were nothing but dry beds. We made a game of counting the tumbleweeds that blew across the road in front of us. Between Springfield and Amarillo, our second day's destination, we counted seventy-six.


We were in the panhandle for only a short period before crossing into New Mexico, which according to the sign is the Land of Enchantment, but to me looks more like the Land of Defaced Signs. At first, New Mexico looked a lot like western Oklahoma. But then we saw two large mountains rising solitary on the horizon and knew we were in a differnt place.



At the foot of those mountains, which are called Rabbit Ear Mountain, we stopped in another quaint little mainstreet town, Clayton, NM, pop. 2,524. We walked around the town for a while, met some friendly folk, and took lots of pictures.

After leaving Clayton, we crossed into Texas and once more into the central time zone. We started out the day in mountain time, then back to central when we crossed into Oklahoma, then back to mountain in New Mexico, and finally back to central in Texas. Gaining and losing hours so frequently left me feeling jetlagged.

At first, Texas looked a lot like Oklahoma and New Mexico, flat, barren, dry. Within a few hours, however, it took on a distinctively Texan look with rolling hills of scrub vegetation sparsely scattered, and stone canyons etching the countryside. Soon we spied skyscrapers miles away in the distance. (It never fails to amaze me how far you can see out here -- we could see the skyscrapers for a good twenty or thirty minutes before we came anywhere close to them.) We reached our day's destination, Amarillo, TX, pop. 173,627, in the late afternoon. We checked into a seedy motel near the interstate (always a good choice) and then went out to eat at El Tejavan, the hands-down best Mexican restaurant I've ever patronized. (Except maybe the ones in Mexico, but I was a kid and don't remember. ) The one meal there has made me crave their food every day since then. (My guess: They lace their salsa with heroin.)



After our meal, we drove up to the old Route 66 part of town and walked around taking pictures. Unfortunately, it was 8:00 p.m. CDT, and most of the little shops were closed, but it was nice to walk along that historic route especially since (Spoiler Warning!) we would be visiting Route 66 a lot the following day.

And, since we were in Texas, Willie and I decided to Cowboy Up. She bought this charming hat.



While I opted for the shirt and belt buckle.

Now we just need a pair of boots and a horse, and between us we'd make a cowboy.

More later on Day 3.

The Adventure, part 1

Greetings from Springfield, CO, pop. 1,562. Time zone: Mountain. Meaning that I'm currently two hours behind all you East Coast losers.

Willie, Ixi, and I began our three-day adventure today. It's spring break, so we decided to get out of town for a few days. We don't have a lot of plans, but we decided to leave and go west, figure it out as we go. We started out driving west from Stillwater. We first drove through Enid, OK, where we saw a yard in front of a government building, full of black silhouettes of cattle and cowboys. Unfortunately, we were not quick enough to get a picture. We then passed through the town of Lahoma. That's right, Lahoma, Oklahoma. I hope their sister town in named Ok.

We then reached our first destination, Glass Mountains, also known as Gloss Mountains, several ranges of selenite mesas in Northwestern Oklahoma.

One of the mesas, seen from the bottom.

From the top.

After climbing to the top.

We climbed to the top and wandered around the mesas for about two hours, taking lots of pictures and generally enjoying the view. (I'll upload more pictures to a different site and provide a link later.) Then we left, and drove through some more of the beautiful painted desert.

Then we reached the Oklahoma panhandle. I thought the rest of Oklahoma is flat and barren. But then I drove through the panhandle. For about the first hour, it was quaint to see nothing for miles on miles around you. Then for the other hours, you start counting tumbleweeds that blow across the highway (there are tumbleweeds!) and signs you see for cemeteries (they advertise those around here, and sadly they're some of the only signs you see; there seem to be more cemeteries than actual towns) or noticing whether the things connecting powerlines to their poles are white or green. Let me tell you, five hours of that. My god.

The Oklahoma panhandle. This is a metropolis compared to the rest of it.

Then we finally reached Boise City, one of the westernmost towns in the state, with quite a cute little downtown area. In a roundabout in the middle of the town, we turned north and headed toward Colorado. On our way out of town, we came across this sign:

What!? Brontosaurus crossing? What is this? Then we found the Bronto about to cross:


Suddenly, those five hours of nothing were worth it and behind us. And soon we made it to Colorful Colorado. (Which it turns out, is the same dull brown color as Oklahoma.)


We're now in the Starlight Motel in Springfield, which is also quite the quaint little mainstreet town. I'll have picture of it tomorrow, along with this lovely motel and its woodpaneled walls. Tomorrow we're going to make a quick jaunt through New Mexico before heading to Amarillo, TX, where we hope to see an armadillo and drink some amaretto. And possibly get in a saloon fight. Assuming the random motel we find ourselves in then has internet, I'll post more tomorrow night.

Reaganomics be ill, yo.

Recently, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele vowed to bring the conservative Republican agenda to "urban-suburban hip-hop settings" in an "off the hook" public relations offensive. Seriously.

This comes as little surprise considering the massive beat down the GOP suffered this past November. Oh, and what a coincidence, to an energetic black man who knew how to work the internet to attract the youth vote.

The problem? The GOP image does little to attract young voters, especially in those "hip-hop settings" Mr. Steele plans to court. It doesn't help matters when your party nominates two candidates who have become synonymous with the GOP image: a conservative rich old white man, and a sycophantic woman who agrees with anything he tells her to, regardless of whether or not she understands what she's nodding to with that confused look on her face. There's your image problem, Chairman Steele.

Pretty fly for an old, rich white guy.

The solution? PR makeover. Spin the GOP image to attract the young, urban, hip-hop voter. Use the internet and social networking to your full advantage to teach people that you're not a party of McCains and Bushes.

The problem with the solution? You are a party of McCains and Bushes.

Spin the image however you want, but it's going to be a difficult sell. After all, nothing says "that shit be dope" like "trickle-down economics." Nothing says "kegger" quite like severely restricted individual liberties.

While Obama received endorsements from Kanye West and the Arcade Fire, McCain had Rush Limbaugh and Hank Williams, Jr. And nothing says "my parents left for the weekend and we're going to party all night" like Rush and Bocephus.

You want to appeal to the youth? Pay attention to what the youth care about. Don't keep pushing the same tired conservative agenda that attracts their parents or their trust-fund friends who spend spring break on a private beach in a tropic paradise no one's ever heard of. You've got those people, no matter which trained monkey you nominate. If you want the youth vote, listen to what the youth want. My guess is it isn't privatized social security. My guess is it isn't outlawed abortions. My guess is it isn't an even longer, more drawn-out conflict in Iraq so even more of their friends can come home missing limbs or shell-shocked for reasons they don't understand. The people who those messages appeal to already voted for McCain. You need to target the people who either voted for Obama or didn't vote at all. Your image isn't the problem. It's your message. While your message continues to be out of touch with the youth voter, you're not going to win them over no matter how many tweets you get on Twitter.

I think Steele gets part of this, or at least he plans to target certain demographics the GOP failed to carry. For instance: “we need to uptick our image with everyone, including one-armed midgets.” Well, that's a start, I guess. Pretty gangsta. Keep it reele, Chairman Steele.

This guy voted for Bob Barr.

My first tornado warning

So this afternoon I met Willie (the girl I'm sort of seeing) at the library, and we were both working on homework, had our laptops out, the usual grad student nerd date. It had started to rain on my walk over at about 3:00 p.m. CST, and had started to seriously storm soon after. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Sometime around 4:00 p.m. CST, a library employee came by our table and said, "Tornado sirens are going off. Get in the basement." We looked through the cafe beside us and out the windows on the other side, and everything outside was this weird glowly green color. I'd heard that sometimes before tornadoes hit, the sky turns green, but never knew what that meant. It wasn't just the sky -- everything looked like a great green light was falling on it. Spooky. About that time a voice came over the intercom telling people that tornadoes had been reported in the area and to get in the basement immediately.

Being good lemmings, we gathered our belongings and moved to the center stairwell where every single person in the library was trying to descend into the basement at the same time. We were surprised by how many people were there because the library didn't seem that crowded on the first floor. So we got to stand around the basement, full of large heavy bookshelves, with hundreds of other people waiting to see what would happen.

We never got a tornado, but we did get lots of rain and thunder and lightning. The streets around campus flooded because of all the water, so that made walking to my car, after we spent a few more hours in the library doing work, an adventure unto itself.

Apparently, several tornadoes did hit around Oklahoma City and Edmond, but that's about an hour to the south. My initiation to Oklahoma tornadoes is now over, and I have lots to look forward to over the next four years. Tornado season doesn't officially start for more than a month. Yay!

Six days, nineteen hours, twenty-five minutes

I've been a slacker when it comes to updates, I know. Please forgive. This semester has been every bit as hellish as I imagined. My Intro to Grad Studies class, for instance. In addition to the five major papers we have due over the course of the semester (including the one we had due the first day of week two) we have ten "sleuthing reports" that we have to write. Essentially, we have a list of questions (such as "What reference works would help a scholar locate and provide the most reliable information on the location of -- and the importance to literary study of -- the corrected proofs of most of Dickens's novels?") that we have to research the answer to, find five sources that would provide the best answers, and then evaluate them as sources (without providing the answer to the question) in a one-page paper. Basically, it's a role-playing exercise: if you were researching this question for real-real (not for play-play) where would you start looking for this information. Each one takes many hours in the library finding and flipping through reference books, and then several hours trying to condense all of this information into one page without screwing with margins or font-size, a whole lot of stress, and then each one is worth 1% of our final grade. Awesome.

But the real thing weighing on me is the first-year Ph.D. exam which I will take a week from today. Oh. My. God. One week. I was feeling good about it, but the panic is starting to set in now. I think I'll do fine, but so much is riding on my performance in this exam -- namely, whether I get to stay in the program -- that I don't think I'll ever feel prepared enough.

I can't wait until it's over, because then I'll have this great weight lifted off my shoulders. It will free up some of my time to work on Intro assignments (that, and write fiction, you know, the whole reason I'm here) but really it will free up only a few hours each day. The main reason I want to get it over with is to get rid of this sense of impending doom hanging over me and most of my friends, this heavy stressor that is killing my appetite and my ability to sleep at night. It's funny -- most of the time, I don't feel that stressed about it, but I know I am because of how my body manifests stress. I feel it without feeling it.

I'm sure once it's over I will feel relieved. For about a day. Because then, two weeks after the exam, our Survey of Scholarship, the biggest paper we have for Intro to Grad Studies, is due. For this one, we have to choose one author or work (I've chosen Lolita, natch) and survey a large portion of the scholarship on the work to see how it has changed over time. We have to limit our search as much as possible, by assigning a time span or theme to explore, but we have to find at least thirty-five sources to use. His instructions say the papers should be as long as they need to be to cover the scholarship. Talking to students who have done this before, it sounds like most are in the forty-page range, though I've heard that some overachievers have written as much as seventy-five pages for this assignment. That's damn near a thesis. So that's what I have to look forward to starting the day after the exam.

Seriously, anyone want to put me out of my misery?

But on a brighter note: I forgot how utterly, mind-blowingly amazing Arcade Fire's Funeral is until I bought it on vinyl. Wow.

And on an even brighter note: I had a date last night, and it went really well. So I think I'm sort of seeing someone. I wanted to wait until after the exam before even thinking about anything like this, but it happened on its own as relationships always seems to do. I'm happy. Kind of cheesy how happy I am today, but there you go.

New Music

This is a video from The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, my favorite new album of 2009 so far. Not my favorite song on the album, but still good. Hope you like.

Snow Day and Found Time

Around 11:00 a.m. yesterday we were hit with a major ice storm. It started on the sidewalks, people sliding and skating and slipping and falling to the ground. Then the roads followed and soon cars were sliding and slipping. The University, in their infinite wisdom, decided to close at 2:00 p.m., which was the right decision, but it sent everyone onto the roads at the same time. Not so wise.

Of course the ice kept falling all day and night and then a little snow got in on the action. So the University, in their infinite wisdom, closed for the day.

Snow day, bitches!

After waking at 7:00 a.m. this morning and checking the website (since posting that the school would be closed last night would have been just too convenient) I got to go back to bed and sleep in. Then I got up, walked the dog (who loves the snow and ice, let me tell you), drank a cup of tea and ate a few clementines. Marvelous. I love snow days.

But here's my dilemma: When I lived in Charlotte, my roommate, Robert, had this theory, a philosophy of life really, that he called "found time." In essence, found time occurs whenever you have some obligation scheduled that is then, unexpectedly, canceled. (e.g., snow days.) Robert's philosophy, in its infinite wisdom, held that one should never do work or anything else productive with found time. You wouldn't have had that time to do work in the first place since you would have been in class or at work or wherever. Instead, found time should be put to more enjoyable uses since you won't lose any time for work. Instead, you've gained time for play.

Great philosophy, right? Good way to live one's life. But here's my dilemma: I love found time. It doesn't happen as often as it once did, and so when it does occur, I feel I should take full advantage of it. But I have this First Year Exam coming up in 2.5 weeks, so I should use this found time to prepare for that. However, that violates the very principle of found time. What to do?

Mix 2008

Since Frances and Stephanie both posted the tracklists for their 2008 Mixes, I thought I would do the same.

1. Portishead - Silence
2. The Dodos - Red and Purple
3. Sun Kil Moon - Unlit Hallway
4. The Hold Steady - Slapped Actress
5. MGMT - Kids
6. Kanye West - Love Lockdown
7. Frightened Rabbit - Good Arms vs. Bad Arms
8. The Mountain Goats - Sax Rohmer #1
9. The Walkmen - Four Provinces
10. Fleet Foxes - Your Protector
11. Sigur Ros - Gobbledigook
12. Deerhoof - The Tears and Music of Love
13. Bon Iver - Skinny Love
14. Tilly & the Wall - Blood Flower
15. My Morning Jacket - Touch Me I'm Going to Scream, pt. 2

A lot of it is heavily percussive and driving, so it's not exactly a chill by the fire type of CD, but then again, 2008 wasn't exactly a chill by the fire type of year for me. Lots of syncopation. Lots of hand claps. Lots of acoustic guitars. Overall, I think it's a good mix. I would be happy to make you a copy if you want one; just let me know your address.

Inveigled

School starts tomorrow, and I don't feel ready. We had half a week of training and orientation, but it's not the same as going to classes. Things I worry about:

I have my first-year exam on February 14. (Because that's how I want to spend my least favorite holiday: taking a five-hour exam.) Basically, I have to write three essays in five hours, and though I have the list of thirty possible questions (out of which I'll have six to choose from to write my three essays) and should be able to prepare for it, I just can't seem to make myself do the work. It's hanging over me, some great trepidation, but I haven't felt the urgency to do anything about it. So right now, it's just a stressor.

Couple that with the Intro to Graduate Studies course I have to take this semester, and it's going to be hell. The amount of work that will go into this class is mind-numbing, and I'll be lucky to make a B in it.

The bright spot for my course load is my fiction workshop with Jon Billman, which I'm sure will be a great experience. But I'm even stressed about that because I seem to be at a point in which I cannot write. I sit down to do it, and I have great ideas, but the words just don't come. I'll write a paragraph or two, hate it, and get stuck. Then I'll delete what I just wrote and stare at the screen some more. I don't believe in writer's block, but I sure feel blocked up.

Then I'm teaching a class that I've never taught before using books I've never used before. I'm not looking forward to reading twenty twelve-page research papers at the end of the semester.

And then I've started my new job as the Assistant Director of the Writing Center. Jeni, the other A.D., and I worked out the tutors' schedules yesterday afternoon, which wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. But we emailed the tentative schedule to the tutors, of course several of them had problems with when we'd scheduled them, even though we worked from the schedules they created which told us when they would be available. Overall, I think this new job will be a great experience, and I'm looking forward to it, but I've realized just how much work it is going to be.

So, yeah, I'm a bit stressed. A bit freaked out. Not ready for it to start up again.

But on the bright side. There may be new developments, but they haven't developed. I'll keep you posted when there's something to post.

For auld lang syne, my jo, / For auld lang syne

Last night I went to Oklahoma City with Brad and Amanda to ring in the New Year in Bricktown, an old warehouse district that has been converted into a neighborhood of bars, restaurants, and shops. We walked around for a little while before settling in Tapwerks Ale House, a pub with hundreds of beer choices. When we first walked in, after paying the $10 cover (very cheap compared to what most other bars were charging), we tried to find a table, but there was nothing open on the first or second floors. Luckily, we stood around for a few moments and then a booth opened. We had several good beers and good conversation for a couple hours, just the three of us in a six-person booth.

Then a guy, ironically named Billy, came up to us and explained that his wife was pregnant and they couldn't find anywhere to sit, and he asked if they and another married couple could join us. We obliged. The two couples were a lot of fun, and Billy bought us a few rounds of shots. Between the shots and the several 7-9% beers I drank, I was feeling pretty good by the time we had the champagne toast at midnight. There was just one problem: I was the only single guy in a group of three couples, which is how my life seems to be going the past few months. Everyone decided that at midnight I should have someone to kiss, but as my luck would have it, there was no random stranger available.

Shortly after midnight, Brad and I decided to go upstairs to look around and have a cigarette -- the first floor was completely non-smoking, but the upstairs, which was full of pool tables and dart boards, allowed it. As we left the table, Amanda told Brad, "make sure Josh finds someone to make out with."

I've never been one to make out with random drunk girls in bars, but last night I was willing to give it a try. We walked up to the second floor and stood near the stairs watching people come up and down. After a few minutes, a line of girls came by us to go downstairs. One of them, toward the end of the line, made eye contact with me and smiled. She was ridiculously cute and just my type: thin, shoulder-length straight brown hair, freckles, beautiful eyes behind eurotrash glasses.

When she approached me, I leaned in and said, "Happy New Year."

"Happy New Year," she said.

"Are you having a good time?"

"I'm having an amazing time."

"I'm having an amazing time too."

She smiled again. I reached my hand out and said, "I'm Joshua."

She shook my hand. "Ashley." Then she got the attention of the girl in front of her. When her friend turned around, Ashley gestured toward me and asked her friend, "Well?"

Her friend looked at me, shook her head, and said, "I don't think so."

And without a word, Ashley, the beautiful random stranger, walked down the stairs. Brad looked at me and asked, "What happened? I thought that was a sure thing." I told him what her friend said, and he laughed and told me I'd just been cock-blocked. I've never been cock-blocked by a girl before. But I've also never tried to make out with random strangers on New Year's Eve in a bar in Oklahoma City. I guess there really is a first time for everything.