today i went to the firing range.  they were having an open house (family fun fest) and my friend invited me. 
he plans to join the navy, which explains his interest.

i fired a 9mm, a 45 caliber, a shotgun, and a compound bow.  The 9mm jumps lightly -- an almost organic hop.  The 45 caliber gives more of a swing, spitting yellow casing.  The shotgun ( Read more... )

I'm home sick, steaming my eyeballs on a plate of boiling oatmeal.  So, appropriately, it is raining outside with a force full and somber.  Or, it was.  The thermometer is right at freezing.  In mid-flight, the drops rounded into contact lenses, then watch faces.  The noise rose is volume.  The drops hit each other.  Then shifted direction again, ( Read more... )

when brooding, i will mechanically continue a task until completion.  Like picking the raisins out of my cereal box.  By the end, I don't even want raisins.  But I'm unhappy and brooding and punishing myself with raisins while giving my hands something to do.  I have a streak of.. madly wanting the dire consequences ( Read more... )

i need to reach a critical mass of panic in order to do things.  i'm hopeless until my head hits that rock-bottom pavement.  i will regret today tomorrow ( Read more... )

i fell down the stairs twice on friday. i should stop looking so far forward, getting ahead of myself ( Read more... )

i'm picking graduate schools based on architecture:
janelia farm
salk institute 

joe the plumber is gay! omg!
why hasn't this country been taken over by the first stiff breeze?  america really seems mentally enfeebled. 

I'm pawing around with a particularly benign strain of insomnia.  Just enough hours are shaved off to leave me breathless.  Not enough is missing to put me in a low orbit around my day. 

i got a chance to climb at the gunks this weekend.  which led to many long moments thinking about death and grievous harm.  i was at a point, right after my father died, when i didn't fear death even in the most visceral sense.  i would be miles above my last gear and still philosophically poised to do the next move.
i've forgotten these convictions ( Read more... )

Twice a year, 2000 Russians gather in the woods of PA.  They sing, they drink, they play the guitar and cook pelmeni.  My mother wanted to go -- it was her birthday -- but she is terrified of sleeping on the ground, of sticking those long thin springy poles into a nylon sac to make a tent.  So I pulled out my gear reserves, called in an air ( Read more... )