New digs for me, for me. Meaningless Musings has served intermittently and well for quite some time now, but I'm packing up and heading over to Monkey Song. Hopefully you will, too.

www.monkeysong.net

And finally it came to pass, after two years of resumes and interviews and watching employment websites and wondering what was wrong with me that I was so obviously unemployable, that I resumed a full-time work schedule. I'm two whole days in now and still don't know exactly what I'll be doing once I'm up-to-speed, but I have a cubicle and a computer and a phone. (And health insurance!) My co-workers seem cool and I'm being pretty much left alone to figure things out on my own, which is sort of nice but also somewhat boring. And I'm once again within scootering distance of John, at least during the days (do you still have that old scooter, John?).

Within the month the start-up church I play guitar for will probably go to Saturday and Sunday services, which will mean I'll have work commitments seven days a week. A weird shift from the almost-completely-open schedule of recent months, but I like it. If I ever get a clearer sense of what I'm actually doing at work (and if I haven't faded back into blolivion) I'll post more about it. But now I've got to get some sleep. Work tomorrow and all.

I feel like I should say something about the flood - that's certainly been the thing to post about of late (and those are just a few of the links from my fairly short blogroll (incidentally, why "blogroll"? What does that mean? Is it a reference to an old-style Rolodex, implying that you keep a list of blogs you frequent in some sort of spinny whatsit? Is it some combination of "blog" and the popular phrase "that's how I roll?" Does it somehow refer to delicious pastries, implying that one has assembled a tasty list of blogs to read? This is a term that merits updating, I think)). Not that I think I have anything to add, but as the ancient Mesopotamians said, "When the river floods, use your laptop to write a post about it."*

I live almost as far from the flooding in Iowa City as one can live and still be within the Iowa City/Coralville megalopolis. My house is in the northwest corner of Coralville, miles from the river and on some of the highest ground in town. Which means that it's disturbingly easy for me to forget the flood happened at all. Outside my house and for many blocks in any direction this week it's been a gorgeous late spring week - sunshiny and green. And yet just north of us in Cedar Rapids people are starting to be allowed back into their homes and seeing the complete devastation, and here in Iowa City many people are still forced to wonder.

It's been awesome to see the community turnout. I agree with Matt's and Jess's (the first two links up above) appreciation and admiration of the community spirit that gripped the area when we knew the waters were coming. I spent some time sandbagging and it was weird how much fun it was; how much people were enjoying the community the rising waters created. But now we're coming to the part that we often don't do so well with as people. Now comes the real work - cleaning up debris, repairing damage, and for many people rebuilding lives. It won't offer any cool areal pics that we can rally around and the work will be more complicated than just filling sandbags.

Not that I don't think we can do it. But as the waters recede the worst is yet to come.

*translation may be inexact.

Tonight I was talking to my brother on the phone and we got on the topic of our long-neglected blogs. There was much agreement about the value of the others' blog and much bewailing the difficulty of thinking of anything interesting or worthwhile to write about. Probably not interesting stuff, but the conversation led me to surf over to my Blogger home page and I figure since I'm this far I should throw a post up. At least one post for 2008 seems in order.

Whew. That wasn't so bad.

I've been thinking I should post again for a while now (although I do occasionally update the CST blog, if you're for some inexplicable reason feeling that a lack of my rambling is adversely affecting the Internet), and as I sit here trying not to pay attention to the weird horror movie my roommate and his sort-of-but-sort-of-not-it's-complicated-and-baffling girlfriend are watching it seems apropos to get my cliche on and do this Halloween quiz I was sent today (here's Jaq's take on the same one).

Memes R Us!

1. What is your favorite work of horror fiction?

Hard to say. I've read quite a bit of Stephen King and enjoyed 'Salem's Lot quite a bit, but I'd have to give the nod to Poe's "The Raven" as performed by the Simpsons:



2. Who is your favorite monster?

Smaug. I'm a sucker for dragons.

3. What horror movie gives you the most chills?

I haven't seen many at all - I don't particularly care for the being-frightened experience and I have a runaway imagination - so this answer comes from a small pool. That said, I saw The Blair Witch Project in the theater and barely slept the next two nights.

4. Freddy versus Jason?

Never seen a movie with either of them (see above), so I'll say Jason because I have a buddy named Jason but no buddies named Fred.

5. Ghosts or goblins?

Ghosts. Goblins are wussy little one hit-die monsters while ghosts can only be harmed by magical weapons and age you 1d4x10 years just by you looking at them. Obvious answer, this one.

6. What is your scariest encounter with the paranormal?

One of my years at Wartburg I lived in the "haunted" dorm. There was a student at Wartburg in the... 70's, I think... who was brutally murdered and she'd lived in the dorm (indeed, in the room) I lived in. There were lots of stories that year about weird things happening in the dorm. They even brought in the campus weirdo to do a seance. My roommates and I laughed it off, though. Until one evening I was sitting in our room with Matt and Mark and our door suddenly swung open. "Hey now, Lisa," said Matt (Lisa was the ghost's name), "that's not cool. You can't just listen to our conversations."

And the door slammed shut again. We laughed about it, but we also found a reason to leave the room pretty quickly after that.

7. Do you believe in ghosts?

Dunno, I guess. Mostly no, but I do believe in the afterlife and ghosts seem like a pretty easy jump to make from there.

8. Favorite Halloween costume?

When I was a tot in Texas my dad directed The Pirates of Penzance at the local college as the fall play. That Halloween I got to be a pirate and walked around singing Gilbert and Sullivan songs and being given candy by strangers. The American dream.

9. If you had an unlimited budget, what would your fantasy costume be for this Halloween?

Interesting. A giant chinchilla, I think. And I'd stuff the suit with millions of dollars in cash.

10. When was the last time you went trick or treating?

Halloween 1996. I used to have a picture on this blog, but I think it was lost in the Great Server Transfer of '07.

11. What's your favorite Halloween candy?

I couldn't possibly choose a favorite. Anything that's neither mint nor coconut.

12. Tell us about a scary nightmare you had.

Scary spooky? I had a recurring dream when I was a little kid of being chased by a bear. Got to the point where I didn't want to go to sleep; I think I spent almost a year fairly regularly having the dream. Ironically, every time I've been in actual bear country on backpacking trips I've slept just fine.

Scary really disturbing and horrifying? A couple of times in college I had super real-seeming dreams where I was lying in a hospital bed, dying, and my parents came into the room to cheer me up by singing songs.

13. What is your supernatural fear?

I don't have any, really, but sometimes when I've been hiking by myself on the trails at EWALU at night my mind has wandered a bit.

14. What is your creepy-crawlie fear?

Claustrophobic situations. Just the thought of not being able to move my arms and legs gives me the willies.

15. Would you ever stay in a real haunted house overnight?

Maybe... there'd have to be some pretty significant remuneration involved.

16. Are you a traditionalist (just a face) Jack O'Lantern carver, or do you get really creative with your pumpkins?

Neither. I am a man completely without artistic skill, so I try to avoid subjecting pumpkins of the world to my non-talent.

17. How much do you decorate your home for Halloween?

Well, my roommate has a black cat who likes to sit in the window...

18. Do you think Halloween is too commercial these days?

No. I think Christmas is too commercial. I'm not nearly as attached to the meaning Halloween's supposed to have.

Talk about a rough day for good news on the Internet.

Surfing through websites earlier tonight, I found a link to this story about Josh Hancock's father suing basically everyone involved with his son's death. Josh Hancock, for those of you who didn't follow the story, was a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals who was killed when he drove his SUV into a parked tow truck on a St. Louis freeway a few weeks ago. It was a horrible, tragic thing, but he was driving drunk (twice the legal limit for Missouri), talking on his cell phone, and some reports say he was high. Now his father is suing the restaurant that served him drinks and (this part boggled my mind when I read it) the tow-truck driver and the guy who was pulled over being assisted by the tow truck. The guys Josh drove into while drunk. The guys who are lucky to be alive.

Seemed like crap to me. Obviously I don't think Josh acted maliciously, but from my position as an armchair lawyer a state away it seems pretty obvious that he was at fault and that he was lucky to not have his bad choices end anyone else's life. But then I was reading through my blogroll and came across another story that puts me in a more empathetic frame of mind. Maybe Josh's dad is just being a dad and trying to do everything he can other than accept that his son is gone.

Jaq and his wife lost another child today. Only a year and a half after their son Quinn passed away at age one their daughter Fiona died on the day she was born. I have no words; I'd be surprised if anyone does. I don't have children and I still can't get my head around what it must be like to have to go on after one's gone.

Tomorrow I leave for camp and I've no doubt it will be wonderful and energizing and uplifting and healing like summers at camp have always been for me. Right now I feel almost guilty about looking forward to it, though.

Peace, Jaq (and Mrs. Jaq.). Peace, Mr. Hancock.

One of my roommates has a cat. She's not particularly obsessed with getting outside, but she does like to sit at the back window and watch the birds and she has the feline resistance to the idea that someone else should get to decide that she's restricted to being inside, so this morning when I got up and found our front door was wide open I assumed the worst.

So I closed the door and spent the next 20 minutes searching for her. Looking in all her favorite napping places, checking under furniture, looking outside through windows for her, and in the back of my mind dreading the possibility that I'd have to call my roommate and tell him I couldn't find her. Or that something horrible had happened out on the busy street in front of our house. By the halfway point of searching fun, I even started calling her, which is of course a pointless way to try to affect a cat's location.

Then, on circuit 14 or so through the main floor, there she was sitting on the kitchen table, which I've never seen her do before. Looking at me with (pardon me if I anthropomorphize too much here, but I know what I saw) a ha-ha smirk on her face, as if to say, "Have a nice walk around the place, moron? Now feed me."

It seems absurd to think she saw the open door, contemplated a stroll around in the great outdoors, but decided it would be more fun to mess with me instead, and yet there she was. Apparently cats love their triumphant moments.

The definitive performance of this Christmas classic. It grates on me a little that the performers are out of order, but that's a result of how many spins the CD gets every year at my parents' house. And the addition of the "Fozzie can't remember his line" bit more than makes up for it. This must've been quite the interesting challenge for the Muppet performers crew.

Not really a March post, but I just found this and I'm unwilling to wait 9 months for it to become seasonal. Enjoy!

Let's see if posts full of links are actually as much as other blogs make them seem.

• Apparently the wait is almost over - the new Indiana Jones movie is officially on the way to the screen! Granted, still in the very early "we've got a script now, hooray!" phase, but on its way nonetheless. This is vastly exciting news.


• Next week Scrubs will be a musical. A few of you have told me you find Scrubs generally unfunny (which is baffling to me), but from the early clips I've seen this episode is going to be possibly the coolest thing ever on TV.


• Here's an interesting blend of interests of various members of my family. Way to play some real music, boys!


• A new link from the blog list to the right - Welcome, Byzantium's Shores. Written by "Jaquandor," a Wartburg classmate of mine, the blog bounces effortlessly between political commentary, fiction review, Buffalo area culture, and a dandy medley of other topics. It's a really good read and he updates almost eerily often.

Hmmm.... not sure it was an Everything I'd Ever Hoped And More sort of experience, but it makes for a lot of underlined words, at least. Hard to underestimate that.

And so winds down 2006. Heck of a year, as far I was concerned. Finished working at the hospital (hopefully forever), went back to camp for another summer, moved to a new house, got a new roommate, did NaMoBloPo for three whole days.

And, if I'm counting right, as of this post successfully met my post-a-month goal! Woo! Cue music and dancing girls.

Blessed Christmas to you. Pax Christi Vobiscum and suchforth.