Maslow was right, as always

Current Mood: ramblin' man

I don't update my blog as much as I should. And when I write "should" I mean "as much as I feel like I should" or "as much as I would like to". And when I say "like to" I guess what I really mean is that it is not as high a priority as other things, which sometimes is a pathetic excuse, but in this case I really feel like it means I am out in the world doing things and learning and working and such. Yay for me?

Part of that also is that I really can't seem to condense my thoughts enough to post something with any brevity, so I procrastinate because I don't always have the gumption or energy to write out everything I'm thinking with the level of detail it deserves, so I end up stalling and stalling until I find a chunk of time, and then I write WAY too much for the casual blog that I have...which is probably what I'll end up doing right here. Fair warning.

My self imposed goal was 1 post a month and I missed last month, so I'm aiming to finish this post and then get another one in before March is over. FYI.

So why am I so busy all the time? I think when last we talked (where'd this conversational tone come from? boy I am in a weird mood today) I was all angsty and nervous about my new job, and I'm probably going to save that for the aforementioned later post... the super short version is I'm not repairing Marine helicopters but I am working very hard, learning new things, and I have my own set of projects to work on that I will describe later.

Moving on.

Life is pretty good right now, but there are some big things looming on the horizon. There are, as of this writing, 141 days until I get married. ! My role in things so far has been pretty low key - I have my tux stuff figured out and from here on out it's mostly just a matter of wrangling up the male half of the wedding party, spending time with them, and offering to help my fiancee with... well, whatever she may need. I'm trying really hard not to be one of *those guys* who sits on his ass and assumes the woman will take care of it all - I have seen up close and personal how expensive and time consuming and exhausting and detail laden this can be, and my woman isn't even close to what you could call a Bridezilla (thank god). Suffice to say the whole engagement process has been a little different than I guess I would have imagined it would be, but I'm not complaining and things seem more or less on track so far. Okay, so maybe we're a little behind and between us we have some wonderful things to work around, but I'm sure every couple has some of that.

Bleh, I bet you are all sick of reading about that, right? What else... my apartment lease ends 1 week before we get married and I have zero idea where I'm going to live after that. I'm probably retiring from the Ship of Fools improv troupe at the end of this semester and possibly joining the adult (read: professional non collegiate) troupe across the river, One Size Fits All. Which makes me feel like crap some days because I worry about the shape of the club for the next year. What few school friends I have in town from my earlier life as a Purdue Engineering student are getting ready to finish and spread into the wind, which is bittersweet. I still have two more years (and 6 more weeks of this current semester) of school, which is great but also sucks, honestly. Can I claim Senioritis at this point? Maybe some advanced mutation?

Probably the hardest thing to deal with, though, is that my fiancee is getting RIF'd (Reduction in Force - we're not firing you, but we don't have a spot for you anymore, as I understand it) at the end of this school year. And because of state budgets, tax dollars, union arguments - a sum of political and economic crap - she also does not have a chance to teach summer school, which was experience and money we were both looking forward to. Because of previously mentioned factors, it's going to be very difficult at best to find another job for her in the local area at all, much less one that is in education, that is in a good school, full time, with benefits, where she would have her own classroom, with a principal that she feels comfortable with, with co-workers that she would get along with and befriend and develop a meaningful career (not that all of those things are present at her current job, I'm just listing some things I would like for her to have).

It's looking like *if* she can find a teaching job, it may be somewhere else in the state. Forgetting for a moment how expensive it will be to try and find two places for us to live, I'm not exactly thrilled at the idea of spending our first year as a married couple (weird to write that, ack) hours (?) apart. I mean, I would absolutely do it if that's how it worked out - I need to be here to finish school for 2 more years, and she brings home the bacon - but I'm not one of those people who hates to come home to his significant other. Quite the opposite, in fact. I really enjoy coming home after a long day of class/lab/work and collapsing onto the couch to watch TV with my fiancee.

At the end of the day, I really just try to put my head down and power through, focusing on my next lab or project or exam and do what I need to do, which is get good grades and work hard so that some day my turn will come to look for a job and hopefully earn money to pay her and other people/institutions back for believing in my going to college. And I'm just optimistic enough to hope that one day, when I've got all this stuff figured out, I will be able to look back and go "oh, remember that time when everything was scary and we were so worried?". But in the meantime, it's enough to make me more than a little nervous.

One week until spring break and a little trip home.

Three weeks until my siblings (and their significant others) come to visit to see Spamalot.

Four weeks until Opening Day.

in moderation

Current Mood: anxious

I am going to try and stay away from repeating last year's football mania, where every week I wrote up a summary of the action in both NCAAF and NFL of all my favorite teams, their rivals, my hated teams, and division and conference foes, plus can't miss highlights. I say this for a number of reasons - most people bored of it quickly, it became something of an obsession, and it took a ton of time, and towards the end I felt compelled to do it for completeness, as part of the status quo, rather than for fun. It felt like a chore, and if it comes to that I should probably either put that writing on another site (a sports page) and/or try to get paid for it. There are plenty of people who get paid to do that sort of thing and I'm not going to try and compete.

That said...

I am way stoked for football to come back. Purdue's coach Joe Tiller is retiring this year, and our QB Curtis Painter has a ton of experience and should put up great numbers. Jenny and I are tripping to Green Bay for a preseason game (on ESPN for Monday Night Football - you all should watch), I have a new jersey to wear, and let's not forget fantasy football.

More people are gonna play FF this year, my roommates are way more into football than last year (which isn't saying much...I'm pretty sure John couldn't name more than 2 NFL players - and that's okay, I'm just trying to give some perspective). Roommates have cable TV with DVR and get ESPN plus I have a bunch of bar-age friends to go watch games with at fun sports bars.

My, how times have changed. I like to play Madden now, fer chrissake.

Some hopes:

*Purdue finishes with at least a winning season for Tiller, and Painter gets drafted by the NFL (joining Drew Brees and Kyle Orton) to a cool team. While I'm at it, let's pretend I get to go see Purdue beat OSU @ Columbus.

*This Favre/Rodgers deal gets situated soon, and Jenny is happy, and the Packers community escapes with dignity intact and the least amount of feelings hurt. Favre wins all of football and then retires for real, having had the best season in the history of ever with a super bowl win, then Aaron Rodgers steps up and does great things.

*Tony Romo doesn't fuck up in the playoffs...again.

*Carson Palmer finds targets downfield and the Cincinnati D becomes an unstoppable wall of menacing talent. Chad Johnson settles down and makes Randy Moss look like a CFL player. Nobody on the team stabs, robs, rapes, burgles, or frightens anybody else for one whole calendar year.

*The New Orleans Saints win their division, having been carried there by the stunningly brilliant Good Brees and Good Saints.

*The Patriots and Colts hate each other so much that neither of them bother playing anybody else, and the result is that some other teams get to play in December.


I'll leave the nasty stuff about the Bears, and the Steelers, and the Browns, and Tom Brady, and IU and Notre Dame and Michigan and the Yankees for some other time.

crazy sevens

Current Mood: funky

I think NaNoWriMo completely burned me out on writing, seriously. I haven't updated my NNWM story since a few days before the end of November (and I feel kinda bad, because quite a few people bothered to read it, and I'm guessing they're sick of checking for non-existent updates).

Worse, things on my writing front aren't going to improve anytime soon. About the only thing I write about in *this* blog with any regularity is football, and fantasy football ends this week, college bowls by the first week of January, and this is the penultimate week of regular season football. I am sad for that.

I'm leaving to go home in a few hours, and I'll be back to Purdue probably around the end of the year. I'm not addicted to the internet like Current Roommates Alex and John, so I won't take my computer home (that's a pain in the ass anyway, though I really do need to break down the 'ol compy and dust 'er off). Basically, I won't be updating much for a while at home.

On top of all that, this upcoming semester (starting January 7th) is probably one of the most important of my collegiate career. I need to seriously buckle down and overcome some academic roadblocks I've been struggling with for quite some time.

My rough attempt at a plan involves not working (already quit my job), scaling back my role at the improv club (read: less worrying over details/let new guys step up), and take out more student loans to worry less about money. The last one is almost paradoxical, but from last semester I think it is worth a try. There are some other things, but I don't want to list them here.

Also, on the proactive side of life, I need to start finding something to do this summer. I can easily go back to my old job as a summer conference assistant, but that's a step backwards and I'm getting sick of it. I want to do something engineering, something I am proud to put on my resume...but that's easier said than done with my gpa.

I tell myself to cut some slack because I'm stretching myself academically like whoa, but still...nobody to blame but yours truly. Get it together, Ryan.


Space is limited
In a haiku, so it's hard
To finish what you

-T.M

much improved

Current Mood: pessimistic

I've done away with the "Current Music" line on my posts for now because I'm trying to get into Last.fm as part of my big music project. To the right you should see a new widget that displays some info about what I'm rocking out to day and night.

Also, I've added back most of my links from the last big template overhaul, including pruning some dead sites.

Let me know what you think!

football nomenclature

Current Mood: hungry
Current Music: "Love Of My Life" by Scorpions (Queen cover)

Don't mind me. Just tinkerin' with some template stuff.

I'm excited to be trying fantasy football for the first time, set up by Bradley. Our draft is in 21 days.