Sometimes it seems that the hardest thing is seeing how reality interacts and impacts my world. Even harder is showing shades of gray to one convinced reality is not in grayscale.
So I figured that since I am around books a lot, and books will likely be in a lot of my pictures that go out, I might as well start to get a picture of some sort of each book I have to read. Should be a good time. This is the first one of this series, Understanding Terror Networks. A riveting read if you are into a) terrorism b) terror networks c) network theory d) rational choice theory, or d) some sort of government policy in regards to terror networks.
In other news, Shiner, TX's local brewery (although I think it is owned by some bigger one), actually has some pretty good beers! They are frequently a good study companion.
When B found out that I drink coffee she started to make it for me everyday. It is a little bit funny because I don't think she normally gets up quite that early and she sets her alarm each day to get up on time. I tell her all of the time that she does not need to change what she normally does just because I am there, but I think she actually likes doing it.
When she first started to make coffee, she would always say things like, "your coffee is perking on the stove," or "I let you coffee perk for you." At first I thought this was something that people used to say when they made coffee and just thought it was an amusing quirk, but then I figured it out. She has this super old percolator to make coffee with. Set it on the stove and when the water boils it does basically the same thing as a drip maker, but just recycles the water. Coffee 'perks' because she uses a percolator.
I was a little disappointed that it took me a few days to figure that out.
The last few days I have been missing St. Louis, and that is one thing I am not sure I thought I would ever say. It is odd to me that you can arrive at a place, or see a thing, or meet a person and at first they are so deeply foreign to us, but after a bit, whether consciously or not, we take them in and some kind of mutual socialization happens. That is, a part or piece of them creates and makes a piece of us, and same with the other way around. The creation and dynamics of 'community' is a crazy thing. One of my favorite (and least favorite at the same time for different reasons) things about the world today is that we are able to have and maintain some sort of community even when the 'place' is no longer necessarily also the 'here.' The alien feeling of St. Louis seems all the less alien to me now being in the country of Texas. I wonder if St. Louis feels a little more alienated now without us in town? ha - not likely.
I miss you, Kaldi's. I miss you, Forest Park. I miss you, old apartment. I miss you, old neighborhood. I miss you, friends we made while there. I miss you, sidewalk cafes and restaurants. I miss you, free things to do. I miss you, old commute.
Now with all of the commuting, here is one of my new pet p's (is it p's or peeves?). Left lane squatters. They cause traffic jams on the wide-open highway. They enforce the speed limit at whatever speed they decide to go. They are obviously oblivious to the world around them, and as a result are likely to be very dangerous on road.
Look here buddy - just because you think 50 is a good speed in light rain on a 70 mph highway does not mean it actually is OR that we all agree with you!
(note to all concerned with the safety of this pic: neither myself or any other person was put in harms way to take this picture and I was not at any time obviously oblivious to the world around me)
It just stopped raining a bit ago. It has been raining hard since sometime on Friday. I had no idea that TX did that, and it was kind of nice, actually. Our little (failing) pot-garden on the balcony sure enjoyed it.
It was a good time to read, or try to anyways. I am terrible at studying and really need to get this thing figured out soon or it could be bad news! Anyways, I just thought I would take yet another break and put up a pic....
Weekends are always nice, but they are even more nice now that it is when Sara and I get to hang out again. The down side is that I still have a lot of stuff to do over the weekend usually. So far it still works out though because Sara has important stuff to do over the weekend still, too, like sleep (and I imagine at some point work, and maybe a bit of studying also).
So I got to thinking about this whole trying put up more pictures and it may not always be too overly interesting as far as content goes, ha. I will try to get some away from books and notebooks from time to time though.
Here at school they provide each of us grad students in the department with our own desk, a computer, drawer space, shelving for books, AND my 'office' (drawback: they are cubicles) has windows! Anyways, it is really good for people like me who really struggle with productivity. It is a good place for me to do work, and I try really hard to only do work here so I can keep it as a habit and compartmentalize things that I need to do in life. I will let you know how that goes!
We went down a little south of here to go bouldering today - while Sara labored away. It was awesome. Seriously. I think this park may have, in one day, changed much of my perspective of TX. There were trees. There were hills. There was green. There was rocks. There were other people outside, doing outside things. There were over a hundred bouldering routes. Seriously - it was really good to get out there today.
A few things:
I have no strength in my hands (ok, ok, it is more of a wide-spread problem than that).
Limestone can be fun to climb on.
Limestone can be sharp.
My hand hurt.
But just a few hours today will go a long way in building calluses!
It has been pretty much since sara left me alone for like a year that I have posed some pictures just for the sake of posting a picture. I kind of miss it, actually, so I thought I would try and post some pics up on a quasi-regular basis. We shall see how that goes - especially because I don't have the computer processing program at school.
Anyways, this weekend's reading has been consumed by Marx and stuff on religious economies. I thought about trying to work up something profound to go with this picture, but sometimes it is better to play it on the safe side and not fake profundity when it really isn't there. But, here is to a 3 day weekend (for some of us)!
