robglazebrook.com

As my comments have made so abundantly clear, it’s been a while since I’ve updated. :) However, if you wanted to harangue me for this, you should have done so last week, when break was actually in effect. Now I’m too busy to update. However, because I love you-all so much, I’ll entertain you with some random things regardless.

Random thing #1: Justin go bye-bye

In case I haven’t mentioned it previously, and I get the feeling I haven’t, my roommate Justin got a job in Seattle starting January 2nd or something. What this means is, once Christmas break starts in a couple of weeks (two and a half), I’m not going to have a roommate anymore. This is both a good and bad thing… mostly good for Justin and bad for Me. It’s a good-paying job, with a well-respected company, doing the sort of thing he wants to do for the rest of his life. Unfortunately, that leaves me in a slightly sticky situation. I’m going to have a two-bedroom apartment all to myself. While that might sound like a good development, it’s really not. First of all, I don’t think I wanna live alone just yet. I’m willing to bet it’d take me all of a week to go clinically insane if I didn’t have someone to talk to in my apartment every day. Second, this place is really freaking big. I don’t have an accurate square footage, but it’s somewhere between 900 and 1000 square feet. It has two bedrooms and two bathrooms. I do not need two bathrooms. Or, I suppose, two bedrooms. So I need to find someone who I think I could live with for five or six months in the next few weeks. Should be a good time. On the plus side, Justin said I could have his bed, which is the most comfortable piece of furniture yet invented by mankind, and he’s leaving me the couch. Go me. :)

Random thing #2: VEISHEA Alcohol Policy

Okay, I don’t really have a lot to say about this one. I just thought the picture to the right was absolutely hilarious. This was on the front page of KCCI Monday night. The story is a lot more boring, but that picture, with that title, is absolutely wonderful. Justin saw it while surfing, burst out laughing, and called me over. “Yep!” He said, “that’s our standard policy around here.” I found it worthy of reposting. I mean seriously… how could an editor not realize that combining the phrase “standard alcohol policy” with a photo of a riot in progress might be a Bad Match?

Random thing #3: I hate cars

I don’t hate all cars, but I really do hate mine. And sometimes Justin’s. Here’s why.

Kate and I were to play racquetball at 5pm yesterday evening. Around 4:40, I changed into shorts, grabbed my gear and car keys, and headed out the door. I got to my car, opened the door, got in, and closed it. My door wouldn’t close. This isn’t the first time it’s done this, but it’s the first time this year and I’d pretty much forgotten about it. So I sit in my car, shaking with the cold (I was wearing a hoodie and shorts) for about ten minutes, slamming the door, trying to pry things in the door into their proper locations, and so forth. Finally, frustrated as hell and a couple minutes late for my game, I get out of the car, go back into the apartment, throw my keys against the wall and ask Justin if I could borrow his car. After eyeing my keys suspiciously for a bit he decided to let me anyway, so I headed back down, still shaking with anger and cold. Probably mostly cold. I get to Justin’s car, and his doors won’t open. Any of them! They were frozen shut.

I was pretty pissed off, but I decided to grab the ice scraper out of my car to see if I could get his pried open. I go to my driver’s door and pull, and realize that it has finally decided to shut. I was pretty happy about that, so I got in, shut the door (it latched!), and reached for my keys. Which were in the apartment. I cursed at the steering wheel and tried to get out of my car. The driver’s side inside handle was broken. I must’ve broken it trying to get the door to shut. I exited through the passenger side and banged on Justin’s car for a while.

After seven or eight minutes, I finally got one of his back doors open. I crawled through to the front seat (a very uncomfortable maneuver in his car, especially with cold legs) and tried opening his driver’s side door from the inside. Still no doing. I tried unlocking it again using his remote unlocker thinger, and my fingers were so numb I accidentally opened his trunk. I cursed at his steering wheel, climbed out of the car through the back seat, closed the trunk, climbed back in, and banged on the door some more. I eventually gave up and started the car to leave, as I was at least 10 minutes late, only to realize I hadn’t scraped off his windshield. I climbed back through the back seat, exited through the rear door, scraped his windshield, crawled back through, and left. I got to the rec around 20 minutes late. Luckily, by that time the car had warmed up sufficiently that the driver’s side door had thawed, so I left the vehicle like a normal person.

—–

Me very sleepy and must get ready for a long, stressful day on campus.

You know, I never do these meme things, but I’m trying like mad to avoid my work at work, and since I’ve already got my iPod stuck in my ears, I might as well.

For those who want to play along at home: Take your music player of choice, alphabetize the songs and post the first song for every letter.

A: “A Horse Named Bill” -Jerry Garcia & David Grisham
B: “Ba Bump” -Black Eyed Peas
C: “California Love” -2Pac
D: “Damaged” -Goldfinger
E: “E.I.” -Nelly
F: “Failure by Design” -Brand New
G: “Gangsta Party” -2Pac
H: “Hallelujah” -Gregorian
I: “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” -My Chemical Romance
J: “Jubilate” -Gregorian
K: “Karma Police” -Radiohead
L: “Last Resort” -Papa Roach
M: “Machinehead” -Bush
N: “Never Know” -Jack Johnson
O: “Ocean Size” -Goldfinger
P: “Pain” -Jimmy Eat World
Q: “Que Onda Guero” -Beck
R: “Rat-tat-tat-tat” -Dr. Dre
S: “Salve Maria” -Gregorian
T: “Take on Me” -MXPX
U: “Uncomfortable” -Goldfinger
V: “Vermilion, Pt. 2″ -Slipknot
W: “Walk Away” -Goldfinger
X: “X & Y” -Coldplay
Y: “Yellow” -Coldplay
Z: “Zombie” -Cranberries

Jeez… several bands are seriously overrepresented by that list. The two 2Pac songs listed represent 100% of the 2Pac songs on my iPod. Goldfinger and Gregorian also have far too much representation, considering I have one CD of each loaded. Therefore, I offer the following list, taking the ~last~ letter for those who are too repetitive:

C: “Cum on Everybody” -Eminem
D: “Dum Diddly” -Black Eyed Peas
G: “Guilty Conscience” -Eminem
H: “Hysteria” -Muse
J: Umm… that’s my only J song. Hrm.
O: “Opus Magnus” -Gregorian (sigh…)
S: “Symphony” -I Am The Avalanche
U: “Up Jump Tha Boogie” -Snoop Doggy Dogg
W: “Without Me” -Eminem

There we go, that’s a more accurate representation. Now the list is pathetically Eminem-heavy, just like it is in real life. :)

I also feel I should point out I have nine songs which start with something other than a letter. They are: “‘94 Ho Draft,” “‘Till I Collapse,” “#1,” “#41,” “1, 2, 3, 4 (Sumpin’ New),” “1812 Overture,” “24,” “45,” and “99 Red Balloons.” I felt they deserved to be represented also.

I have less than a week until vacation. That’s what I have to keep telling myself every hour or two. In less than a week, I’ll be allowed to sleep in, watch movies all day, and ignore my academic tribulations (for a few days, at least). Without this mantra, I’m not sure I’d be willing to get out of bed for the next few days.

I spent the weekend working on a paper for my visual rhetoric class which was really due the Friday before, but I wasn’t feeling particularly eloquent last midweek. That’s the problem with grad school: there’s writing to be done, all the time, and a few days of ineloquence or good old-fashioned writer’s block can really screw up one’s (school and sleep) schedule.

Because I spent all of last weekend working on my visual rhetoric paper, I didn’t get a chance to work on my classical rhetoric paper until this afternoon. And that’s what I’ve been doing since 5:30 (after work and dinner). And the most annoying part? I haven’t written a word yet. I’ve spent the last four hours taking and organizing notes. After this update, I’ll get back to the taking and updating, also, meaning I won’t actually start writing the thing until tomorrow. And the best part is, it’s due Wednesday. And I don’t have time to work on it Wednesday. Luckily, only the narratio (the background information, in people words) of the paper is due, but that’s also generally the most difficult part for me to write. I prefer describing my own ideas to reorganizing what has already been said by others.

Now, I don’t want to give you-all, dear readers, the false impression that I’ve done nothing but study all weekend. Quite the contrary. :) I refuse to spend every waking moment in study this semester. I’ve done it before, and I’ll probably do it again at some point in my life, but right now, I need a balance of scholarly and social pursuits. To that end, I spent Friday night hanging out with Justin in the apartment, drinking of the beer and watching of the television. We spent too long trying to find something to do, and ended up not doing much of anything.

Saturday was more eventful. I got up around 9:30am, goofed around for a couple of hours until Justin got up, and then promptly left for the coffee shop to do homework (I’ve no idea why I couldn’t accomplish anything with my roommate asleep. Just couldn’t. Follow along). I was only in the coffee shop for a few minutes before I was joined, randomly, by oldFriend Natasha, and a few minutes after that by newFriend Molly. As such, I didn’t get much done. After about an hour and a half of somewhat productive scribing, my grandparents called to let me know they were in front of my apartment, should I want my desk, which had been in my grandfather’s shop for an upgrade. I should, and did, and now have a place to do homework at… well, home. Novel concept.

The grand’rents took me for a frighteningly filling meal at Long John Silvers (has anyone else noticed that the people working there tend to look like pirates? Or at least oddly shaped and unkempt nonPirates? Is this intentional?) and headed home. I headed inside to do some homework on my new, old desk. I got about an hour of it done when my mom text messaged me a one-word imperative: “DUCK!” I took this to mean there was a big storm coming, and did the obvious: headed out to my roof to get a good view. Justin and I were treated to a pretty good lightening show (for mid-November especially!) before the wind picked up and the temperature dropped fifteen degrees. The weird thing about the wind, though, was that it was rushing into the storm, against the movement of the front. I started looking for funnel clouds, and spotted this one over west Ames. It, or one of its buddies (we saw a couple more) eventually took out a house in northwest Ames. When a tornado takes out just one house in a town of 60,000, you really have to wonder what those people did to offend those in charge of such things. :) I heard tell there were between 8 and 9 tornadoes in Iowa Saturday night. As such, the Cyclones won.

After the storm blew over, Justin and I listened to the game for a bit and I headed to Kate’s to do some pre-drinking drinking. She was being all gloaty, because the tornado had been across the street from her place and she had a great view from her apartment. I was suitably jealous. Krystal joined us, and we got our collective drinks on, and then headed to Mabbot’s (that being Matt Abbot’s, I’m not sure why, but I like it) for regular-type drinking. He had really good beers in keg form (Boulevard and some amber thats name I’ve forgotten), so the party rocked mostly hard. I’ll try to remember to post pictures of it later, as one involves me in a cowboy hat. I think Ari may have one of me in even more embarrassing attire. After a while, Krystal, Kate, Lisa, Joe, and I headed to Cy’s Roost for post-drinking drinking, and were joined by Justin.

Sunday I studied and wrote. That’s really about it. I guess I also made bratwurst for dinner, to celebrate the (presumably) last pseudo-summery day of the year. I soaked them in beer for several hours, then charred them on the grill, then doused them in mustard, relish, and sauerkraut, and served them with baked beans and barbeque chips. Nummy.

Today, oldFriend Natasha called me at work to ask to borrow my car, as she just got a cool job in Minnesota and needs to start moving her non-essential stuff to a storage area. I said sure, and that my keys were in the regular place in my bedroom (obviously, this has come up before). She called back about half an hour later to say, “I found your keys, but… umm… where’s your car?”

For about fifteen seconds, I had absolutely no idea where in Ames my car could possibly be. I realized that I’d driven it somewhere during the weekend, then just sorta wandered off and left it. Finally, I remembered I had parked it at Kate’s, but had ridden in Krystal’s car to the party and bar, and had driven Justin’s car home. So then Natasha had to take a bus back across town (she lives pretty close to Kate) to pick up my car. Fun times. :)

Well, I seem to have no problem writing at the moment. Perhaps I should start outlining my narratio while the outlining is good.

For those that have missed it until now (largely my RSS subscribers, I’d suspect), my Flickr feed dost lie not: I have, after an extended hiatus, rejoined the ranks of the short-hairs. The picture above and/or to your right further attests to this fact, if you’re still too lazy too check out my feed.

Some people have responded to my haircut by asking, “why?” Others have responded by asking, “why?!” I’ll try to answer them both fairly briefly and fairly honestly (both being difficult for me).

First and most importantly, I was ready for a change. According to my personal image archives (my only real memory of self), I’d had long hair in one version or another for going on three years now. I don’t often maintain the same appearance for longer than a year or two. Without change, I get antsy. This perennial desire for change is the reason I have a tongue ring, earrings, nipple piercings, and a tattoo. On the positive side of things, it was also a driving force behind my decision to lose weight four or so years ago, and the reason for me taking up racquetball, and probably also one of the reasons I seem to have a really difficult time getting addicted to things for more than a couple of weeks at a time. It also effects smaller changes: my new glasses frames a couple years back, my return to contacts after a long time without, my switch from khakis and polos to jeans and tees, and so forth and so on. I seem to mentally equate staticity (I think I’m making that word up) with stagnation and a type of spiritual death and decay. This will undoubtedly cause me myriad problems in the future. :)

Second and still rather important to me, I’m hoping for a favorable response to the change amongst the fairer sex. Those of you closest to me know that, despite all rumors to the contrary, I’ve been in a bit of a dry spell relationship-wise for the last year and a half or so. Now, personally, I happen to think I look pretty decent with long hair, at least once you get to know me and my personality. However, a lot of women are initially turned off by the idea of a guy with long hair. And negative first impressions can be a royal pain in the ass to move past, and people are rarely even given that opportunity. I know a lot of you are thinking that this is a horrible reason to decide to alter my appearance. Shouldn’t I change my appearance singly and specifically to make me personally happy? Absolutely! And you know what would make me really happy right now? Someone of the opposite sex to cuddle with and confide in. Besides, I’ve always looked at things this way: I only have to observe my outside appearance when I look in a mirror or glance at a photo, which amounts to what? Five minutes out of a typical day? (Okay, okay, maybe ten *grin*). Everybody else around me is stuck looking at me for a much larger percentage of the time. Is it really so bad if I decide to try to make their experience a pleasant one?

Thirdly and of least importance to me, I’m probably going to have to start interviewing for legitimate jobs starting this February, and the process would probably be helped along by my having short hair. It couldn’t hurt to get a sneak preview of what I look like with short hair before I’m forced to shear myself for a career.

So… what does everyone think? I only realized the degree of the change this morning when I walked through my bathroom on my way to the kitchen and started at the strange face in the mirror. :) One important thing to remember is the change might always be an impermanent one… my hair grows pretty fast, and my mom/hairdresser assures me I’ll have my hair for many years to come.

About a month and a half ago, my old MP3 player and I parted ways. I don’t know whether I lost it, or it was stolen, or (more likely) some combination of the two—as in, I left it somewhere and somebody else made it their own before I thought to look for it in that particular location. Whatever the case, it’s been MIA for six or more weeks. In fact, I’m not sure if I had it when this semester started. Maybe it was lost in the move. Long story short: Robby’s music go bye-bye.

Yesterday afternoon, I was finally fed up with not having an MP3 player. Having one comes in handy more than you’d think. A player allows me to tune out Justin’s television shows while I’m doing homework in the next room, provides an additional level of white noise in a crowded café, and helps me ignore the crazies on the bus who like to talk to their imaginary friends about the people around them. It also gives me an opportunity and excuse to listen to music. That may sound obvious, but when I don’t have portable music, I rarely have the chance to listen to music at all. And a life without music is sad.

I just now realized I was on a tangent again. :)

So I decided I needed a new MP3 player. I wanted one that would be really small, seeing as how my pockets are already decently full, considering I carry a digital camera, a cellphone, a flash drive, a pen, a pencil, a highlighter, and whatever change I happen to acculumlate, all on a daily basis. Since Justin and Quinn both have iPod Shuffles and are very fond of them, I decided I’d get a Shuffle too. So I headed to Durham Hall during my lunch hour to buy one.

I walked in, walked right up to the first sales representative I saw, and told him I wanted an iPod Shuffle, 1GB, please and thank you much. He reached to the shelf behind him to grab me one, and I heard myself say, “while I’m here, do you have an iPod nano I could play with? I’ve never seen one in person.” So the guy hands me a Shuffle and a nano at the same time. Shuffle in my left hand, nano in my right.

Sigh.

I ended up buying myself a 2GB white iPod nano. It was about $60 more than the Shuffle would have been, but it also holds twice as many songs, has a color screen, and lets me have more than one playlist (think one for the bus, one for exercising, and one for studying), so it’s sort of a trade-off. I didn’t let myself buy the 4GB version because it was $50 more, but I almost wish I had now… I was amazed to discover last night that I have nearly 10GB in music on my home computer. Who knew?

I do love it so far. Apple designers are some of the best on the planet, still. I’d never used an iPod before yesterday, and nobody has a user interface quite like Apple’s (seeing as how it’s copyrighted and all), but I’m already comfortable with it. When I don’t know how to do something on the screen, I try something, and I usually get it right on the first try. That doesn’t mean I’m a genius or anything… that means Apple did a fantastic job making an intuitive interface.

One of the smartest things Apple did, though, was ship the nano with a charged battery. I hate it when I excitedly open a new piece of electronics only to read the words “Please charge the battery 12 hours before turning the product on!” I pulled the nano out of the (wonderfully designed) box, turned it on, and was playing around within five seconds. They harnessed my excitement about a new toy and turned it into positive feelings for the product. I want to work for a company this smart someday.