reserve this goal for rambling on whatever needs to be rambled upon at the moment, while bearing in mind that my ultimate goal is not to put the rest of 43T in a boredom-induced coma

Well, I’m not sure what’s prompting me to write this entry, or even why I’ve found my way back to this site…There are about a million things I SHOULD be doing right now, other than writing this…yet here I am.

So, what has happened since I last graced this portion of the interwebs with my shining presence? Lots, and at the same time, not much. Um…I had a spectacularly bad fall semester and achieved some pretty terrible grades. That was a bit of a blow. I believe the tumble, though, was likely triggered by some HUGE realizations that I stumbled upon early in the fall. More on that happy topic later.

The best thing that has happened is that I will (hopefully) be doing an internship at Yale this summer. One of my profs is there on sabbatical and we managed to secure funding from NSF for me to join the research team (plant molecular bio stuff). We’re trying to cajole my school into paying for my housing, as well…and so far the signs are good. I’m incredibly excited; this is an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

I guess that’s all for now. Perhaps there will be more to come soon.

I haven’t been on here for a while now, but there is a good explanation. In short, I have stopped using this site due to some personal isses that have arisen in recent weeks. I plan to continue to read my subscriptions, but I probably will not be posting much.

However, for those of you that burst into hysterical tears at the thought of my departure (surely there are some of you?), if you message me on 43P, I will send you a link to my (new) blog, so that you may continue to devour the juicy details of my life (ha). I warn you, though…I sound, for lack of a better word, STUPIDER on a blog than I do on here (well, I think I sound pretty dumb on here too, but comparatively speaking…). So, uh, be warned.

Yeah, that’s it. Good bye, 43T. You’ve been fun, but it’s time to move on. Bon soir.

Righto. In ramble mode…

John, a good friend of mine, died a couple weeks ago. I spent a fair bit of time up at the hospital, mostly to be with and support his partner. It turns out that a number of John’s family also felt supported by my being there. Apparently I had a bit of a calming influence whenever I was around. The fact that many of his family thanked me for my presence at the hospital – when I actually felt I should be thanking them for allowing my presence – really moved me. That one of John’s sisters bothered to tell me how much my presence calmed the family really means a lot to me.

So, why am I rambling about this now? Well, death often makes people reconsider their lives, and I suppose I’m no different. At the moment one of my goals is “make my living singing”. However for the 2 weeks prior to John’s death, singing meant so much less to me. And, when I think about it, just being there for John’s partner was so much more meaningful than performing a couple of roles in a couple of little operas. If I had to choose between the 2, I would choose to walk alongside my friend every time.

So I guess I’m wondering if “being an opera singer” is really “being me”. I’ve been told before that I’m too nice to be an opera singer. Not that opera singers are all nasty, just that (unless you’re extremely gifted) in order to ‘make it’, you have to be quite single minded and you must always look out for yourself first because no-one else will do it for you. To be perfectly honest, I don’t know that that is me.

As a facilitator recently said to a meeting I was in, “People spend so much time wanting to ‘be’ something or other, when all they really need to do is work out who they are and just be that.”

Wise words. I wonder who I am?

My philosophy presentation was a success. I got a lot of laughs. The story-illustration format definitely works. Joy.

I must hand it to the group that was talking about Descartes’ “proof” of the existence of God – the quote “This is where he [Descartes] s*@%s himself philosophically” will forever remain in my mind and will undoubtedly make me snicker at the most inappropriate moments. Ah, well.

My chem lab manual came today. w00t. Back to the things I actually like.

In class yesterday we did an exercise designed to see what we characteristics of personhood that we, as a group, value. Here’s the task:

Imagine that there is a large ship that is rapidly sinking at sea. There is an island with a small human city and a great deal of forest which can be reached by lifeboat. However, there is just one lifeboat left, and you must decide on which order you would place the following creatures on the lifeboat:

_1) an intelligent, healthy, morally virtuous human
2) an intelligent, healthy, morally corrupt human
3) a healthy moose (there is an indigenous moose population on the island)
4) a collie with a permanently lame leg
5) a severely mentally disabled human
6) ten chickens
7) a breeding pair of an endangered species of bird, once native to the island
8) a human in a coma who will almost certainly never come out
9) a breeding pair of commin, but beautiful, indigenous songbirds
10) two breeding pairs of a non-indigenous variety of rapidly breeding wild rabbits (with no known predators on the island, and an extensive food supply)_

My ranking went like this:
1) human in coma
2) disabled human
3) morally virtuous human
4) morally corrupt human
5) collie
6) moose
7) endangered birds
8) songbirds
9) chickens
10) rabbits

Now, would you believe that in a class of 13, I was the ONLY ONE who put the coma guy first? People, where is your COMPASSION? And they accuse me of being cold! One guy even had the nerve to suggest using the coma guy as a flotation device for the others! Argh!

Here was my logic:
If you were to dump everyone in the water at once, who would have absolutely no chance of survival? The coma guy. He goes in first. Second goes in the disabled person, by the same reasoning. The healthy humans go in next. The collie goes ahead of the moose because I happen to like collies, and though I’m no authority on the subject, I assume that dogs have a higher capacity to feel pain and suffering than do moose. The endangered birds go next; if I’m going to save something, it might as well be something that needs saving, no? The songbirds come before the chickens because they are already native to the island, and the chickens come before the rabbits because it is dangerous to introduce new species to an area, especially one that has no natural predators there.

I thought this was, for the most part, pretty sound logic. The rest of the class, I noticed, tended to think in purely utilitarian terms, i.e., the morally upright human is of the most value to society, so he goes in first, etc.

Anyway, I was shocked and horrified at some of the responses (one guy put the dog above the disabled human, which prompted much protest from the rest of the class), and I hope that I’m never in a situation where one of them is deciding my fate on a lifeboat.

You know it’s too hot when you’re trudging through a really dry (hah) passage of Marx and Communism suddenly sounds like a fantastically good idea. Damn the bourgeois! The relentless pursuit of capitalist interests (probably) has something to do with the weather. Let’s see…industrialism…more machines…using more oil…which pumps more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere…which makes it so friggin’ hot! Holy cow, I think I’ve got it. You can send that medal, Nobel committee, directly to my house, as I won’t be able to make it across the pond this year, owing to my strenuous book tour and newly-appointed position as President of the Universe.

Also, I’ve decided that if and when, in the extremely distant future, I need to buy a house, I am going to buy a house that is 100% green. Meaning, solar panels on the roof, energy-efficient appliances, completely organic landscaping (Is there such a thing? If not, I’ll have to invent it…), and what have you. No one is ever going to group me with that infernal (again, hah) bourgeoisie, the one that has made my present life so flipping sweaty and miserable.

We are also going to pretend that buying a house, especially a fancy-schmancy “green” house, does not require oodles of money that I will acquire only through patiently (again, self, enough with the bad puns) playing right into the capitalist system. To counter that potential criticism, I may just pull a Warren Buffet and donate my hard-won millions to Bill Gates and demand that he get a better haircut to save the orphans in Zimbabwe.

In conclusion, do not read Marxist philosophy, especially when the temperature is such that one can seriously claim that one’s brain has melted and is now dribbling in a lumpy ooze out of one’s ears. Nothing good ever came of listening to Marx, even when the weather was cool.

So…our entire county, and a whole lot of places all around us are completely flooded, due to the 6+ inches of rain we’ve had over the past three days. Thankfully our house is way on top of a hill and is nowhere near the river, but I do know a lot of people who live on the other end of town who have had to evacuate. It’s so bad that they’re closing one local hospital and transferring all the patients to other hospitals in the area.

I’m a bit worried about the people down in PA at my school…our campus is literally just a few yards away from the river and right now they’re saying the levees are holding up, but another rainstorm could cause some serious damage. It’s a bit scary, imagining the entire campus flooded. I’ll email Doc this weekend and get his scoop on what’s been happening.

Reasons why I believe I may honestly, truly, and definitely be going insane:
1) I listened to Savage Garden ALL DAY and didn’t feel like hurling.
2) My lunch consisted of seven chunks of pineapple on a bed of ice cubes.
3) I watched Mad TV reruns that I had already seen…yesterday.
4) I found myself yelling at Dr. Phil.
5) I had a riveting conversation with a bag of flaked coconut.
6) I almost referred to my mother as “Georgie” (a la George O’Malley from Grey’s).
7) I felt an intense need to watch Charlotte’s Web, but couldn’t pull myself off the couch to get it off the shelf.
8) I found car commercials suddenly appealing – the bigger the vehicle, the better.

And, most alarmingly:
9) I thought about taking up bonsai tree cultivation as a hobby, even knowing that plants die when I so much as think about them.

I wonder if our insurance covers psychiatric evaluation.

An interesting night. I had to take my sister to her school for a concert this evening and it was really odd being back in that same auditorium, seeing the same people, etc. I ran into some of my classmates who I haven’t seen for nearly a year, and we seemed to have things to talk about, which was a relief.

I paid the most attention to the Orchestra, and I learned a few things. One is that I have apparently lost the ability to watch high school violinists without cringing. The other is that orchestral pieces can go on forever, which is something you don’t notice so much when you’re actually up there playing. I mean, when the song says “Adagio” in the title, it MEANS adagio. And maybe I’ve lost my ear, but agadio seems a lot slower than I remembered.

Oh, my poor conductor, standing there wearing a black jacket and BLUE pants (my now-art student stand partner had the insight to point this out to me at a very inappropriate moment; it was all I could do to keep from snorting like a crack addict). And then Our Fearless Leader actually got choked up talking about the graduating seniors. I was horrified. It still doesn’t make sense. OFL, crying? ON STAGE? WTF? He didn’t cry when I graduated! Okay sure, I gave him ulcers and possibly a brain tumor from all the stress I inflicted, but still! I know why he was so upset, though. The Virtuoso (formerly known as God) is graduating and he won’t have anyone to use as an example of the type of human/diety we should all stive to imitate.

Anyway, afterwards I went backstage and caught him before he took off (he does that – just leaves right after performances without a word), and he seemed pleased to see me. It was going well until he told me I looked “older,” which can mean any number of things coming from this guy (and most of them are not good, given that he used to compare my playing to “mashed potatoes” and routinely told me to sit down and shut up, if not with those exact words). I look old? For heaven’s sake, I know I look fatter, but that doesn’t make me old, does it? And how old is old? 30s? 40s? 70s? Do I need, like, Botox old or should I go for liposuction and a facelift old?

Then again, this is the guy who wears a windbreaker straight out of the 80s and whose socks have been known to sport shades of electric pink.

Maybe “older” is a weak metaphor for “wiser.” I certainly feel wiser. I know exactly what NOT to do when living with stupid people, and the best way to break bones, and how to use a microcentrifuge. All important skils.

Oh! And then he asked my stand partner her GPA and whether or not she had a boyfriend, and neglected to ask me the latter bit! I’m sure he didn’t even notice, but wouldn’t he have been shocked if I had made something up? “Oh yeah….I found a guy…he’s a Calvin Klein model and is going to be a NASA physicist.” Well hopefully I won’t have to make up stories like that someday. I’ll just tote Mr. Sex God Science Dude around like a new purse and bask in my belated glory.

All right, rambling session over. It was just a strange night.

Argh. People over 70 should be required to take another driving test, just to prove that they can still do it without killing anyone.

I had to take my sister to a doctor’s appt. this afternoon, and after a little bit of searching, we found a parking spot. As I was pulling in, the guy on my left (in a ginormous minivan, no less) starts pulling out. I doubt he was even able to see my little car behind his monster van. Anyway, I’m 80% in when he decides to just GO. Uh…not so smart, since the angles of our back ends are not conducive to effective reverse driving.

Luckily the guy was going slowly and I was watching like a hawk, but I totally muttered, “He’s gonna hit me,” less than a second before he did. Bastard. I blast my horn and he looks around, confused. As our cars are currently touching and someone has to do something, I pull forward the rest of the way into the spot and he manages to back out without hurting anyone else.

Thankfully there’s no damage to my car, or I’d have some serious explaining to do. But the moral of the story, at least in my mind, is that unless you’re hauling hay and possibly farm animals on a daily basis, what the hell do you need such a huge car for? All it does it make MY driving difficult and dangerous. If I get into a fight with an SUV, who’s going to win? Let’s not even get into the waste of gasoline and the tons of chemicals they pour into the air.

Second moral (for my future reference): when driving around a hospital parking lot, beware the olds, because they probably won’t be aware of me.