I'm back from yesterday's mini-trip. Due to my own sheer laziness, it was 1 by the time I left Appleton yesterday instead of 10, which limited my time in Madison. I ended up spending an hour talking with the comm arts grad advisor before heading off to Milwaukee. I was a bit surprised and disappointed to hear the news that David Bordwell is retiring at the end of spring semester, which is a major blow to Madison and the loss of one of the biggest reasons why I wanted to go there. Molly and I ended up missing the opener, but I don't think either of us deemed it much of a loss. Belle and Sebastian were on the whole quite entertaining and worth the trip. The band - or, rather, Stuart for the most part - had a number of problems with several of the older songs, but it wasn't enough to ruin the performance. Hell, it was live music. It was 10:30 by the time we filed out the door, and it was 2 hours later when we got back to Molly's. I had considered driving back already last night if I had the energy, but the fact that I started dozing off on the way back to Milwaukee (oh, Molly was driving, not me) sort of answered that question. I got up at 7:30 this morning and drove on back. I'm not exactly looking forward to going back to work this afternoon, but really, who ever looks forward to work?

After wasting away a good month, I finally mailed off the packets to my grad school recommenders today. That finished, I guess the next step will be to start work on my statements of purpose. We have the second of three exams in my class tonight. Tomorrow I'm driving down to Madison to check out the campus, and then I'm meeting Molly in Milwaukee to go down to Chicago for the Belle & Sebastian show. My car ought to be plenty ready for an oil change by the time I get back home.

It can be interesting sometimes seeing all the places you can find your name plastered on the internet or seeing who has links to your site. One of the more interesting ones today comes in the form of a PDF. This PDF is the 2002 annual report for Youth Link, a program which helps out homeless teens in Minnesota. If you check out the "Community of Support" list, you'll find my name about half-way down. Huh, what?! I, uh, don't actually recall doing anything for this organization. Maybe I did and don't actually remember it, but I don't know.

The Yankees don't get it. Yankee's fans don't get it. The Yankees winning 2 of out every 5 AL pennants and 1 out of every 4 world series is not a good thing, it's not entertaining or intriguing, and it's not good for baseball. While one can't fault Steinbrenner for wanting to field a winning team every year, the fact that the Yankees year in and year out go out and buy themselves another championship just gets old. Sorry New Yorkers, but Aaron Boone's 11th inning home run in game 7 of the ALCS wasn't thrilling, but rather more of the same old thing we see every single year. I find myself only watching the World Series now in the hope that Florida will pull off the upset, but interest in that is even starting to wane. This editorial cartoon by Jim Borgman of The Cincinnati Enquirer is really spot-on. I know they say "there's always next year," but that also means another year for the Yankees to buy up all the free agents and buy another championship. Bah, football is here anyway, and basketball and hockey are starting up, so screw baseball.

I'm sort of being productive in a not-so-productive way today. My goal for today and tomorrow is to have all of my papers and letters for my recommenders prepared and mailed out. So far, about the only thing that I've actually done is confirmed that I can still access an unofficial transcript on the U's website. Otherwise, I've been fiddling around with Photoshop and Illustrator on the redesign of another of my websites. Nothing really exciting yet. I'll work on rectifying that issue.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I am back safely from the great state of California. I returned Saturday morning after a tiring flight back. I spent the last 2 days working, but now it's my weekend. I didn't get a whole lot of sleep last night because I was out until nearly 4 o'clock. I had only intended originally to be out until about 11, but Tony decided to go out and stay out late, so as long as people were still out, I figured I'd stay out also. Of course, the lack of sleep has me pretty worn and weary, but I'm thinking about staying up late and working on several projects I've been meaning to address anyway. With no World Series game tonight, we'll see what happens.

I have so much I want to write - that's what happens when one goes weeks without writing - but so little time in which to do it, so I won't write much of anything. I was just checking my email for directions and further news from Annemarie ahead of my departure for San Francisco tomorrow. I still need to pack yet tonight. I want to pack enough to last me for my couple of days, yet I don't want to pack too much so that it's a pain to haul around with me in the terminals and on BART if I arrive at a time when they can't pick me up. I should have been in bed hours ago, but you all know me - procrastination is my life.

The biggest problem with going a week between entries is that in some ways I have too much to write about and not enough ambition to write it all. On the other hand, maybe it cuts down on the useless entries and pointless babbling. In a word, I guess I'm saying I'll paraphrase this last week in as few words as possible.

I did drive down to Madison last Friday for All Girl Summer Fun Band. The band got caught in traffic in Chicago on their way from Ann Arbor, MI and didn't arrive at the venue until after 9:30. Their set wasn't all that long, but then again, neither are their songs. Even so, it was a lot of fun and definitely worth the drive. I also met the infamous Shane there. Back in Appleton later that night, I hooked up with Dave and Corey at Pete's for a beer, and then we went to GW.

Blah, blah, blah... skip a few days to Tuesday. I took the GRE Tuesday morning down in Oshkosh. I don't know my score on the analytical essays part, but I think I did okay. I did about as well on the quantitative part as should be expected from a guy who hasn't taken a math class in over 4 years, so I really can't complain about that. On the other hand, my verbal score was nothing short of embarrassing. I had no idea it was basically going to be a vocabulary test, and anyone who knows me or reads this site on a regular basis knows that I am rather lacking in the vocabulary department. I'm debating right now whether to retake the test, but I'm definitely leaning toward retaking it.

Wednesday night we had our first exam in my class. I think did well enough - probably at least a B+/A-, so I'm fine with that.

And, as they say, is that: my week in review. October is here, it's getting cold at night, and I'm busy as a bee with all of the things I need to do in the next several weeks.