Reassurance

As has been the pattern of my existence for the last month or so, I awoke today at 10 am, showered, ate breakfast, watched an olympic event, read, and now I'm doing my laundry while blogging, after which I'll play video games (today it'll probably be Guitar Hero and Burnout), read some more (I'm in the middle of Eragon), then finally watch an hour of Seinfeld while stuffing myself to the brim with food so that I don't get hungry before it's time for me to come home from work at 10 pm.

Tomorrow, there's a very high probability that I'll stick to almost the exact same routine, with a few minor adjustments here and there, like what video game I'll play, how much reading I'll do, or what I'll eat. (I need some variation in my life) I've recieved pitying comments from friends and family about how bored I must be, about how they'd have simply gone nuts had they been placed in my position. However emphatic and sincere those comments are, they're simply unjustified-- I'm content because I've always been one of those people who are perfectly capable of keeping themselves independently entertained. I'm absolutely thrilled to have been able to finish so many good books so far this season and I'm looking forward to reading the rest that have found their way onto my prestigous to-read list. The same goes for the video games I've been meaning to play for a long time. (I've been way behind on my media consumption, though now I have time to catch up!)

So despite the fact that almost everything I do now falls into a relatively strict routine, every night as I go to bed it's very reassuring to be able to think about the next day and basically know exactly what I'm going to be doing. I like adventure and variety, but in controlled doses. At the moment, surrounded by no one of exceptional importance, I embrace a patterned lifestyle. When my best friends return from their scattered locations, party on.

New favorite book of all-time: The Solace of Leaving Early, by Haven Kimmel.

End of an Era

Without the Twilight series filling the world with joyous tales about vampire romance, mythical creatures are going to to return their "geek" status, and me along with it. Crap.

But seriously, it's a shame that Stephenie Meyer had to write each of the four books in the series at such a rapid pace, because here I am done with them all, and not quite ready to say farewell to one of my favorite works of fiction of all-time.

Meyer excels at creating believable, yet entirely fantastical characters. It's hard not to find at least one character in her books that you don't connect with on some level. I don't know about you, my readers (all two of you), but I'm really going to miss Jake and his wise cracks, Alice and her infinite zeal toward modern fashion, and even Bella (though only in her most recent physical manifestation...hehe).

I admit I've become attached to characters in other books I've read, most notibly Harry Potter and company, but after reading those books for nearly a decade of my life, I felt ready to say goodbye and accept that the Harry Potter era is done, and the time for other talented authors to step forward has come. I just don't think that Stephenie Meyer's time should be over so soon. She certainly took a novel idea and capitalized on it, but I firmly believe that there still exists a mountain of untapped potential within that idea.

In some future, not as distant as we believe, someone else will be inspired as she was, and we'll once again find ourselves captivated by a timeless saga, leaving us to wonder how we were able to live happily without it. And I can't wait for that to happen.

To end the semester on a high note

The Wednesday before school officially ended for the summer was full of some rollicking fun. In order to fully take advantage of the day, I called my supervisor simply telling him that I couldn't make in to work that day, then Blaine and I picked up our two favorite females, Jessica and Olivia. After selling back our books for a hefty sum of money, we pulled onto the highway that would lead to Idaho Falls where we would spend our newly acquired money without a single rational thought to tempt us into a responsible state of mind. For Blaine and I it's a tradition to spend book money on things we've always wanted but haven't had the money to buy. Or, maybe we haven't had the money available, needing to use it for other purposes completely unrelated to fun in any way.

Once we had nearly arrived in IF (which is how eastern Idahoans refer to Idaho Falls) we took a wrong turn, which can't by any means be blamed on our noble driver, who honestly seemed to know his way, until the rest of us led him astray by our wildly uneducated comments about the region and street layout. Unfortunately, that wrong turn was I-15 and we ended up having to drive until the next exit which was about ten miles down. The best part about the wrong turn was these three giant soda cans sitting right on the side of the road next to an old closed-down convenience store, I suppose to advertise which liquid beverages it provided to thirsty passerbys. Once we debated and argued over what was actually inside the gargantuan cans, we settled on soda-flavored (and carbonated) propone. Interesting stuff in Idaho, eh?

We bought plenty of fun junk at the teton mall with which to end the semester on a high note, but the pinnacle of the activity wasn't, of course, material.

Best Roommates of All-time

Jeff Craig, Blaine Taylor, Robert Blomquist, Kirk Thompson. Good roommates really makes the college experience a good one, even an unforgettable one, which is what happened this summer with these four guys. Talking about any one of them hardly does them justice-- each one is extremely admirable and noble in their own way-- you'd just have to meet them to understand.