The pain...

Sometimes, you just know you're going to feel it in the morning. I just got out of jeet kun do, which is a fun class, but absolutely devastating on the physique. It doesn't help that I am an utter newb, and the class has a pretty big skill dichotomy even in the first year class. I'm doing stuff slow, to learn form, and this guy with probably twice my mass is blocking all of my jabs and hitting me in the face, over and over. It sucks. Don't even ask me about what happens when I have to get in close. My combined height and low weight make me easy enough to totally destroy.

On a less painful note, I have decided to apply for a position at the student IT help desk on campus, just for a little extra spending money. It's (hopefully) a fairly low-stress job, fills the hours, and kind of plugs me into the system here, so I can set my double-secret plans into motion. We'll see how thing develop on that front.

Looks like Kerry is up in the polls across the nation, especially in Oregon. Too bad. He wouldn't be a terrible president (better than Gore, at any rate). He has a massive advantage coming into the race in that he's garnering a large amount of votes from people who just don't want to see Bush in office any more. Let's see if he can avoid the fate George McClellan suffered in 1864 running against Abraham Lincoln (another extremely unpopular president, at the time).

Curiouser and curiouser

As much as I appreciate the fact that my boss is willing to keep be on for at least a few hours while I'm at school, I wish he'd leave me some stuff to do. Even the minute bit of website editing he had me doing (you can see my work at www.hi-schoolpharmacy.com) only took about an hour. So I'm alone in the office at 6:00 in the evening, with absolutely nothing to do. It is in this circumstance that I finished the A Game of Thrones. It's one of the best books I've ever read. You can read any rant I'd spew forth at Amazon.com, so I'll spare you except to say this: read it. Read it now.

I'm trying to get back into a swing of reading loads of webcomics. I had a bunch when I was a senior in high school, but one by one they've fallen by the wayside and most of them are no longer worth reading. I've recently discovered Mac Hall, and it is good, but if you have any more suggestions please share them.

I almost lost control of my truck today, driving home. At one point, I have to over cross I-405 right after I take the exit toward PSU. It's a pretty sharp turn, and the terrain on the bridge is a little different from the surrounding road. As soon as I started the maneuver, I felt myself start to hydroplane, so I let up on the gas and started to turn away from the bridge rail. Usually that's the end of it, but this time the whining of my tires got almost harmonic and my truck started to shudder, and I started heading left, toward the center of the road (it's a one-way street). I'm not sure what I was thinking, but I let go of the gas and just held the wheel straight, and the shudders stopped with the tires finally getting traction. Not a huge deal, but enough to get my adrenaline flowing, and praise God it didn't get any worse than that.

Addendum: it may be only a "spiritual successor," but I'm excited about it nonetheless. And none of you are going to spoil it for me.