Keep up at home

So I've had a bunch of different conversations with my friends recently about how I'm not really good at keep up with my family members, in particular my parents. I was talking to one of my friends from the econ department about how he calls home every day. And he calls his grandma every week. My professor even mentioned the other day how he uses his time walking to and from school to call family members. (This was in response to when I said don't have enough people to call to efficiently use that time. He then asked, "Don't you have like a bazillion family members?")

I've justified my lack of correspondence for a few reasons. My parents have a lot of kids already, and I think that the rest of them are pretty good at calling home. When I was still coming home for Sunday dinners, it seemed the phone was off the hook the whole time I was there with one of my siblings or another. So I didn't think my parents were feeling neglected.

I also justified it because very little happens in my life these days that is different from what happens any other day. I don't know what I would say to my parents even if I did call every day. Yesterday, I woke up, ate breakfast, went on campus, did homework [while watching football], and then went to a classmate's birthday party. I might have watched half-an-episode of Battlestar Gallactica when I got home before I fell asleep. And that was a pretty exciting day. If you subtract the birthday part, that is a pretty accurate description of 80% of my days.

I realized the other day that I had taken this to the extreme though. It was one of those rare days that I had actually called home and was talking to my mother. I needed to ask her a question, so I started, "Mom, remember how I'm going to Germany this summer?"

She responded, "You are going to Germany?"

Whoops! I guess I forgot to tell her that my choir is traveling to Germany in May. "Ah! Remember how I'm in this choir?"

"You are in a choir?"

Whoops again! I only really do three things: school, church, and choir. Somehow I have neglected to tell my mother about 1/3 of my life.

But now she knows, so I guess she is up to date. Sorry about that though Mom. I will try to do better. [Even though I didn't manage to call home today. It became unexpectedly busy from 5-11pm when I would normally (or not so normally) call.]

The dream that you wish...

I get really vivid dreams sometimes. Especially when I'm stressed out about something. It often takes me 5 minutes or so after I wake up for me to identify the parts of my life that are real and the parts that I just dreamed about. I think it is really likely that I'll go absolutely insane in the next 20 years because I stop being able to identify what is my dreams and what is real.

If my dreams were absolutely ridiculous or my life really normal, this would be simple. I remember one time though, I was coming back from a Theater Conference in high school and on the way back, my parents told me that one of our neighbors had hung himself from his basketball hoop. It was perhaps 2am and I was exhausted, so when I woke up the next day, I assumed that I had just dreamed it up. I didn't want to ask though because it could have been an awkward question if it had been just a dream. It wasn't until I got to church and they had a special combined youth meeting about it that I realized it was real.

Most of the time, things aren't quite so dramatic though. I'm starting school tomorrow, and I've been having really long, really boring, and only mildly crazy dreams lately. The most common problem is when I dream that I wake up late or something because then I panic when I actually wake up at 5am and have to exert a huge effort to not jump in the shower right then. I would claim that Inception (A+ by the way) just had a huge impact on me, but I had these sorts of problems long before wind of that move started churning.

Last night, I had a dream that we had a stick in the front yard of my building that would help us tell the weather. Like if it was wet, then it meant it was raining. The stick was named Sally and she was stuck in the ground and dressed in a red dress with white spots. We called her Sally the Stick.

For some reason though, we needed to replace her. We found instead a dark brown two-by-four, dressed him up in a tux, and named him Brock. That meant that we called him Black Block Brock. I remember being so frustrated and how hard it was to say his name that I practiced for a long time till I could say it right.

Then I woke up late for church.

Then I woke up for real 20 minutes before my alarm went off.

Frog in a Pot

I remember being told as a child that if you try to drop a frog in hot water, it will hop out before it dies; if you drop it in cold water and then heat the water up, it will just hang out in there until the water gets too hot and then frog will die. The point was supposed to be about how we don't make bad choice all of a sudden. For instance, if someone offered me a million dollars to kill someone, I wouldn't do it. If they offered me a thousand dollars to kill a rose bush, maybe I would. And then if they offered me 100,000 to kill a dog and then a million to kill a person, maybe that would work.

(Side note: I've always wanted to test this to see if it's true, but no one is ever willing to try it out with me. The frog one. Not the murder one.)

I sometimes get this story mixed up with the one about crabs in a pan. If you put one crab in a pan and start heating it up, the crab runs away; if you put several crabs in a pan, if one tries to run away, the others grab it and pull it back it. As opposed to the other story, this one is supposed to be about fellowshipping I think. Put a bunch of crabs together and they all support eachother getting killed in a pan. Maybe these stories were written by Americans who don't eat frogs but do eat crabs.

I was reminded of these stories because I work in this office which is like the frog pot. When I get there in the morning, it is usually about 80 degrees, so I turn on the AC. After about 30 minutes, I start getting a little cold because it blows right at me, so I turn it off. I usually don't think to turn it on again until someone stops by at 4 or so and points out to me that it is 87 degrees in my office.

I should be getting an office mate any day now, but I don't know that it will help. What if they are a crab and not a frog?

My Home

So I've been promising people for weeks that I would post pictures of my new space. I have this really great single-room studio apartment right off the Charles River. I love it to death.

The first thing that a person might notice walking into my building are the great common areas. This one is right inside the front door. It has a pool table and large screen TV.

Other common areas have really beautiful views of the city.
The next thing you would notice is that the door to the residences are very colorful. My door is green.
Thanks to a lot of help from Bob and Brittany, my apartment is now fully stocked. Here is what it looks like on the inside.

Here is the kitchen:
And the bathroom:
And the bedroom/whatever-it-needs-to-be-since-I-have-only-one-room:

Please note my amazing bed/desk. It's a bed on top and a desk underneath. I think that it is the perfect furniture for the space I have.

So there you have it: the grand tour.

The Last Day

I've been watching episodes from this TV show called "Bones" recently. It's about an FBI team where one guy is the classic FBI tough guy and his partner is a female forensic anthropologist. They solve murders. In order to solve these murders, they do lots of science and often try to piece together the last few days of a person's life.

So of course, I've been a little paranoid as I walk around late at night about being slaughtered on the streets of Cambridge. As I was walking home today, however, I was thinking about how easy it would be to track my last 24 hours if I were murdered on the way home because so much of the stuff I do is time stamped.

24 hours ago, I was just finished a game of Settlers with my brother and sister-in-law. You could ask them and find out.

I went to bed at around 12:32. I know this because I got an email right as I was climbing into bed and it reminded me to turn of the sound on my phone so I could sleep.

My alarm went off at 8:30 and I got to work before 10:14 when I sent an email off to someone to help me with network problems I've been having.

I worked until around 2pm when I went and bought a double cheeseburger from Flat Patties at 2:13pm. I know this from my receipt.

I then went back to work and stayed there until 5:25, when I sent a text to my sister-in-law telling her I was on my way over.

I left their place at 6:40 and called my friend at 6:43 while I walked to FHE.

I caught a train back to Harvard at 10:13, right after hanging up with my HT companion.

I arrived at Littauer (the Harvard Econ building) a little after 10:20 after hanging up with my HT companion again.

I finished up work at 11:20pm and walked home after sending an email to my boss.

Not that anyone reading this is interested in the play-by-play of my life, but I thought that it was interesting that I can account for almost every minute if I had to.

This got me thinking about how we should live every day as if it were the last day of our life. Of course, clearly some philosophies aren't for all people, but I was thinking that it would be a cool tradition if at a person's funeral, someone recounted that person's last 24 hours or so in as much detail as possible. Maybe that's morbid, but I think that I would have really meaningful days if I knew that is what was going to happen.

Just a few funny things

I haven't said anything in a while, but I see little things all the time that make me laugh so I thought I would do a short post about them.

A few weeks ago, I saw a sign in the FOB that said "One in three people need blood during their lifetime." How cool would that be to be one of the two thirds who don't need blood? And how does one find out that they don't need their blood? I'm pretty sure we are all born with it.

Crolace was talking to me the other day about how she heard on the radio that this year half of the United States will become Hispanic. It would've been convenient to have been in the half that changed since I've been applying to graduate schools recently and all of them ask about that.

I saw a banner about a regional Singles Christmas Fireside that said that only those 8 years and older are invited. I'm trying to think of why a 9 year-old would go. They must just be planning way in advance.

I asked my mother today if being nicer to people was a good goal. She told me that it wasn't since I couldn't attain it. It's good to have a mother who believes in me. (In her defense, I think that she meant that it's not a good goal since it is something that is not measurable.)