Penultimate Day

New music from Wilco. I like what I've heard so far, especially Bull Black Nova.

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I have enjoyed reading a long comment thread provoked by our senior class picture from 1992. We were on our beach trip. I look like an idiot, of course--but that's not what I care about so much. It's been fun to read people's memories of that trip. Typically for me, there were some things I just did not catch while I was on that trip. For instance: there was skinny dipping! Granted, it was girls-only, but still! I'm always somewhere else, or oblivious, when good stuff goes down. My most vivid memory is of being slugged in the jaw by a person with whom I had a "stormy" relationship. Ah, high school.

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Speaking of high school, and all the attendant travails, GSH ends tomorrow; They have been a good group, thoughtful and hardworking. I'll admit, having a sum total of 12 students in two classes definitely makes the summer term a bit easier. Still, I prefer a room that's a bit more full. I ought to give a shout out to the Intrepid Four in my survey class; we're having a good time, and they're all on the ball (hey! that rhymes!)

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A few notes about the Big Brother: yesterday, I asked him what he wants to be when he grows up (I'd been tipped off by our neighbor WP to ask him). His response:
"A pharmacy."
You want to be a pharmacist?
"Yes."

We went to the dentist yesterday; it was his first visit. He was nervous, but didn't want to be asked about it, didn't want to sit with either parent, didn't want to go first or second, didn't want to watch us get ours worked on, didn't want to help the hygienist (who was quite nice). What he did want to do: make sure we all knew that he wasn't going to get a shot. He repeated, "I'm not getting a shot!" about two dozen times, often with increasing volume & shrillness as his nervousness increased. When it came time, he did fine--and got a cherry slush from Sonic for the ride home.

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More determined than ever to mind my own business, and only my own business.

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The Blossom LITTLE think'st thou, poor flower, Whom I've watch'd six or seven days, And seen thy birth, and seen what every hour Gave to thy growth, thee to this height to raise, And now dost laugh and triumph on this bough, Little think'st thou, That it will freeze anon, and that I shall To-morrow find thee fallen, or not at all. Little think'st thou, poor heart, That labourest yet to nestle thee, And think'st by hovering here to get a part In a forbidden or forbidding tree, And hopest her stiffness by long siege to bow, Little think'st thou That thou to-morrow, ere the sun doth wake, Must with the sun and me a journey take. But thou, which lovest to be Subtle to plague thyself, wilt say, Alas ! if you must go, what's that to me? Here lies my business, and here I will stay You go to friends, whose love and means present Various content To your eyes, ears, and taste, and every part ; If then your body go, what need your heart? Well then, stay here ; but know, When thou hast stay'd and done thy most, A naked thinking heart, that makes no show, Is to a woman but a kind of ghost. How shall she know my heart ; or having none, Know thee for one? Practice may make her know some other part ; But take my word, she doth not know a heart. Meet me in London, then, Twenty days hence, and thou shalt see Me fresher and more fat, by being with men, Than if I had stay'd still with her and thee. For God's sake, if you can, be you so too ; I will give you There to another friend, whom we shall find As glad to have my body as my mind.

--Donne (1633)

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I think, if I'm honest, that I probably inhabit the 3rd or 4th celestial sphere--in the same cosmos, yes, but pretty far from The Centric Thing Itself.