A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread and Thou

They're coming to take me away haha heehee

2008-10-07T20:16:00.000-04:00

There's a squirrel in my office and sometimes he has adventures.

I Pledge

2008-09-25T20:24:00.002-04:00

To serve as a City Year member to the very best of my ability,
To honor the rules and expectations of City Year,
To respect my colleagues and the people and communities we serve,
To provide excellent service,
To lead by example and be a role model to children,
To celebrate the diversity of the people, ideas, and cultures around me,
To serve with an open heart and an open mind,
To be quick to help and slow to judge,
To do my best to make a difference in the lives of others,
and
To build a stronger community, nation, and world for all of us.

--CY pledge

Insert Witty Quotation Here

2008-09-22T18:46:00.003-04:00

While I'm enthused about the work the City Heroes team performs at City Year, as I prepare to toil over my supplementary materials for my Curriculum Coordinator team role application, I can't help but feel that applying to a specific position on my team is not unlike entreating an authority to allow me to be beaten with a particularly pleasant-looking baseball bat.

There is just so much work to be done.

Perchance to dream

2008-09-16T17:25:00.005-04:00

For anyone that happens to be reading this that for whatever strange reason may not know, I am a creature of habit. When I say that, try to take it less by its commonly-known and figurative meaning and more at the literal end of the spectrum. Much as a Naiad is a creature of water, and a Dryad a creature of a tree, I am a creature of habit, powerfully attuned to certain behaviors.

When forced outside the clearly delineated boundaries of Habittowne, I am not unlike a mudskipper plucked from its tidal pool. While capable of surviving, the poor critter is clearly uncomfortable and notably awkward outside of its soothingly watery home.

It is therefore remarkable that at times I actively seek to change my habits. Occasionally, and even more perplexingly, in a fit of mad ambivalence I might cast aside those habits which I once held as dearly as an oxygen tank during a scuba dive and fearlessly jump into the murky waters of the unknown. The latter, and more bizarre, situation is not today's topic, but I thought it would be an interesting and educational digression.

On moving to Boston, I had established the habit of getting up at around 6:15 in the morning to shower, eat breakfast, prepare lunch, get dressed, and get to work. I had begun to feel a pinch for time, however, and decided (quite momentously, I assure you) to thereafter get up at 5:15. It meant going to bed a little earlier, but it could be managed. It has worked brilliantly for two mornings, but here I sit, on the afternoon after the successful second morning, intensely certain that this latest experiment in habit-change has been an unfortunate mistake.

I am drained, pooped, exhausted, tired, sleepy, devoid of energy, and otherwise synonymously described. Part of this is undoubtedly due to the recent habit of involuntarily waking up in the wee hours of the morning and slowly drifting back off to sleep again. Another factor is certainly that my breakfast this morning consisted of, at best, a baker's dozen flakes of Fruity Pebbles cereal. Regardless of the circumstances, I believe that from now on the wake-up alarm will be set to much more reasonable time of 5:45.

I'm sure we'll all be in awe of how dramatic the difference in my energy level is.

eh.

Whatever. I get to sleep in until 7:30 tomorrow anyway!

WOO!

LATE START!

Camping is In-Tents

2008-09-12T20:00:00.003-04:00

I just came back from my trip to the depths of western Mass and I had a pretty awesome time. Beckett is a really beautiful camp and I had a momentary twinge of regret in my heart that I wasn't assigned to to the Haley team, because they will be spending the next week at Beckett with a bunch of fifth graders from their school. Ah well. My only true regret is that I won't be returning to Beckett. I got to meet some awesome staff members from all over the world and it is a shame I won't get to hear their accents more often.

After the retreat, I can honestly say I'm looking forward to working with my team, if less to the sheer quantity of work we'll have to be doing.

In other news, my back still hurts (a ropes course and physical service at camp didn't ease my pains, shockingly) and I burned my tongue repeatedly with tea that was hotter than any tea has a right to be.

Tomorrow is a day of laundry, grocery shopping, and perhaps bathroom cleaning. I'm much more interested in just sleeping forever, though. I am just generally, all-around, up-and-down tired.

And Wilderness is Paradise enow!

2008-09-09T22:03:00.002-04:00

In the morning, I will begin a descent into the relatively tamed wilds of western Massachusetts and engage in a few days of team building in the Berkshires with my fellow City Heroes and the City Year Corps as a whole.

My back still hurts.

yay

ropes courses.

:-/

O brave new world that has such back pains in it

2008-09-07T22:22:00.004-04:00

Been a while since the last entry. I wish I could attribute it to some major event which I could then proceed to share here in fascinating and exacting detail, but I've just been bogged down by the endless minutiae of work and life and I've forgotten all about updating.

The latest occurrence in my life was Friday's revivification of a nearby cemetery. The place was a complete mess when we arrived, littered with trash and completed overgrown with weeds, poison ivy, and other unsightly and unpleasant things. By the time we finished, it looked less like a sad and ugly forest and more like a field. It was pretty amazing how quickly we worked through the projects assigned to us.

Since we finished so early, we had to go help the other team finish painting a huge chain-link fence green. Once I began the tedious work, I very rapidly came to appreciate that I had been assigned to the cemetery team. We eventually finished, and by finished I mean ran out of pain around the time that it looked good enough, and we left.

Ever since, my back has been complaining loudly of the various positions I contorted myself into and held while uprooting weeds. The hope is that the muscle in question will have shut its damn filthy mouth by the time work rolls around in the morning. Otherwise, I'm going to have fun being irritated by the ache while sitting through another series of workshops and lectures at training tomorrow.

‘Say, Ron, you look tired. Have you ever been tested for diseases?’

2008-09-01T01:14:00.002-04:00

Honeyed words and eyes ablaze with charismatic flames convinced my apartment to settle in the living room for a viewing of "Wizard People, Dear Reader" by Brad Neely. To all appearances, it went over well and its brilliance was duly appreciated.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I sat around listening to music

2008-08-31T19:54:00.002-04:00

It occurs to me that I could have chosen a more appropriate time to resuscitate this blog. Granted, my arrival in Boston seemed, at first glance, to be just such a time. Here I sit, however, astride a small pile of days that have been filled with little else but reading and listening to music.

I'll admit that re-reading the What-If scenario of a Napoleonic War whose course is determined largely by the aerial corps of dragons fielded by the various nations involved is an enjoyable pass-time, and Richard Cheese is very fine music, but one might have expected to do more in the city. I'll admit that my lack of activity is largely due to my own cheapness, which in turn is born of the intense awareness of what expenses I'll need to take care of before I even get my first tiny check. In time, I'm sure I'll be more willing to explore the depths of Boston.

One more day off, and then undoubtedly this site will be largely dominated by descriptions of whatever tomfoolery my training involves.

Stop the presses!

2008-08-28T23:00:00.001-04:00

quack quack

Of Bedknobs and Bostons

2008-08-27T15:19:00.005-04:00

So, I moved to Boston a few days ago. Barring disgusting traffic near the Cape Cod exit of the Masspike¹, getting lost repeatedly in the city itself because a neighborhood-sundering parade rendered our Google directions useless, and moving lots of boxes and furniture up a flight of stairs in oppressive heat, it was an uneventful and pleasant trip. As a side note, I find that one's life retrospectively becomes infinitely more pleasant if one merely precedes the unfortunate events with the word "barring". I recommend it highly.

Earlier, though not very much earlier, I returned from a pleasant trip through the streets of Boston. I had a paperwork-laden meeting at City Year headquarters which forced me to familiarize myself with the city's public transportation system and following that Max, Andrea, and myself, left by Aliza who was going to spend time with her mother, wandered around a bit. A lunch in the Prudential Center food court was followed by yet another split as Max went off on his own and we two, we happy two, we band of roommates stumbled into the sunlight and took a novel route back to the train station.

We found a rather impressive-seeming library and saw some more of Boston's beautiful streets, so overall I was pleased with the decision not to backtrack.

Regrettably, it was also discovered that my first check will not be deposited into my account until the seventeenth, which is almost certainly too little too late for a rent payment, so one imagines that one might have to mooch on one's parents unabashedly².

¹ Consequently, Cape Cod is stupid and I hope it falls and hurts itself in the shower.

² I am one, it is me.