Our Dumb Blog

Got into an “argument” with Nathan today about money and the future. Michele
was talking to us Bama types along with Jefiner about college, careers, etc.
I was over at the computer typing a letter to my grandfather when Nathan
said nice and loudly, “At least major in something practical, not something
useless like political science.” Everyone laughed. “Hey,” I answered, “I’m
not going to school to get a career. My goal in life is not to make money.”
He seemed pretty surprised by this. “You mean that you’re more interested
in enjoying your job than in making money?” he asked. “Exactly!” “Joanna,
you can’t tell me that you’re going to be perfectly happy living on 10,000 a
year!” “I’d like to be able to live on as little as possible,” I answered.
“Oh, yeah right. You’re going to need money for a computer, modem, phone
line WHICH YOU CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT. In 15 years I’m going to say, ‘I told you
so!'” he yelled. I asked him what he was going to say that about, but Steph
and Jef were yelling at us to stop arguing. I finally got him to answer
when he came over to fix the printer. “In 15 years you’re going to be
concerned about how much money you make.” “In 15 years I may very well have
a different attitude,” I answered.

I don’t understand how people can’t see that. Do they honestly believe that
he who dies with the most toys or bank accounts or credit cards or the
biggest house wins? Maybe I don’t make that great a capitalist after all.

This keyboard is one of those that makes noise when I type. That’s annoying,
because I try to be as unobtrusive as possible when on the computer. Maybe
because I get yelled at for being on it at home. Or have been. Now that I
mainly just get on at night or when mom’s not home, it’s not a problem. But
I still wish it wouldn’t make as much noise.

Come to think of it, I don’t understand why people think a lot of things.
Maybe I’m just an arrogant idealist anyhow.

No one’s inside, so I think I’ll play the piano now.

Eh.. I hate Windows. Well, I mean, I can maneuver around within it okay.
Like, compared to DOS. But it’s not a Mac. And I really don’t like this
version of AOL. I don’t really like the one we have on our Mac either, but
it’s better than nothing.

I would rather have a pencil and paper than all the power in the universe.
That’s because I could actually use the pencil. I wouldn’t know what to do
with raw power. Shock people, maybe.

Dzzzt.

It’s.. I guess almost 12 if not that already. Mountain time. We got up at
ten till 7 central time, left the motel we were staying at in Vernon, TX, and
drove here. I dozed some in the back seat, curled up between the door and
the ice chest. I knew I was asleep because Steph and Nathan were listening
to stories on tape from James Harriot (a vet in England). I’d hear a part of
the story and have absolutely no idea what was going on, which meant I’d been
asleep. Nathan and Steph drove most of the way. We ate supper in Wichita
Falls at a Mexican place, then they let me drive the rest of the way to
Vernon, about 40 miles. Whoopie. I did it in about 30 minutes, since I was
going 80. That’s the first I’ve ever driven Nathan’s car. He wouldn’t let
me before. He let Eli take it to a senior banquet tonight though, which I
thought was really nice of him.

I also drove from just outside the Colorado border to the Bremers. The
Saturn is a nice car to drive. I can see why Nathan likes it so much.

We left my house about 7:20 on Friday morning. I had to get up an hour early
to vaccuum my room and change my sheets and stuff. There was a wreck or
something somewhere either in Louisiana or Mississippi, and traffic was
backed up a long ways. Steph and I had to pee like heck, so we pulled off at
the next exit. I suggested we eat at Shoneys since we’d have to wait anyway
for traffic to clear up. A lot later, we passed through Longview. It was
about 3:10. I hunkered down in my seat so Nathan wouldn’t see me staring
wistfully out the window in his rear view mirror. It turned out that we hit
Dallas right at 5, so we got caught in rush hour traffic. It would have made
sense (to me, if anyone) to stop in Longview for an hour or so, considering
that we got into Vernon at about 9 something that night. I could have driven
a lot later than that. But I didn’t have directions anyhow. I couldn’t get
on AOL the night before or that morning. Quite annoying.

I just read all my new mail (or at least all the new mail it said I had)
online, because with this thing, it won’t let me read it off. Took about 10
minutes, and that was skimming.

We went to a dance class at the Academy tonight with the guys. Even Nathan
went. It was great. I learned to tango, foxtrot, some kind of waltz, and
jitterbug. Mostly I was with Spirit, who has lousy time, but that was okay
since I was a beginner at most of the stuff. We came back to the house,
cleared all the furniture and rug out of the living area, and did some
country stuff. Then moved out on the deck and danced beneath the stars.
There were three guys and four then five girls, so we weren’t too
outnumbered. It really is fun to dance with a guy who knows what he’s doing.

I’m very tired. Exhausted even. And I have to get up in the morning at some
ungodly hour to be at school at seven so I can pick up a bunch of people who
may or may not be there so they can all pile in my van so I can take them to
Jackson, Mississippi so we can visit an exhibition of Russian royalty
artifacts. The guy who has the information on it hasn’t called me back, so I
don’t know where I’m going, nor do I have the money to get there.

But if I don’t hear from him, I suppose we’ll wing it.

Other than that, today has been a great day. I’m still kind of on a high
from accepting an internship offer yesterday for the summer in
Charlottesville, Virginia. On top of that last night, I had to finish my
Greek translations for the week. Then I got a call about eight from a one of
the theater people in my Shakespeare class. They were doing some scenes from
the pen of the bard instead of writing a paper, and one of them got sick. So
in addition to Greek, I was going over a scene from Much Ado About Nothing in
preparation for reading it in the performance.

With that backdrop, I woke up today in Greek class when my other classmate
bounced in the room shouting, “Good morning!” It was actually pretty amusing
to see him bounce in, since he probably weighs 300 plus pounds. “Shut up,” I
muttered. He laughed uproarously. I guess he got me back for doing the same
thing to him on Wednesday. I’d meant to annoy him, but he said it actually
lifted his spirits. Some people are just weird.

Friday is quiz day in Greek, and I hadn’t gotten a high score of 5 yet this
semester. But for once, I’d finished my translation and studied in the car
on the way to class. The quiz was actually pretty easy. I remembered all
the words and yelled “Yes!” after we checked them.

Later, met the theater people in the auditorium where we were to meet. A
bunch of Dr. Allum’s freshmen, to whom he had promised extra credit if they
showed up, came in and sat down. I went up for the final scene and read my
part… almost flawlessly. I mean, I did good.

The only thing I can figure out is that, for some reason, I put my Zippo
lighter in my right pocket this morning and my keys in my left. I always put
them in the other pocket than they were in today. But my whole day was
great, so maybe I should start keeping them that way.

Right now I’m sort of bouncing off the walls. I’m terribly excited.

Ken Myers from Mars Hill tapes called me today while I was still at school
playing on the net in the computer lab with Bishop, who’d come by UM to drop
off an application for the summer honors program. I came home to find a note
on the board saying he’d call back.

The phone kept ringing all evening, a whole lot more than usual. As we were
eating, it rang yet again. “Just answer, ‘WHAT?'” Denise suggested to
whoever was answering the phone. “Yeah,” I agreed, then thought, “Then
again, it might be for me.”

It was. “Hi,” I said into the receiver as it was handed to me. “Hi, how are
you?” Ken Myers asked. “Doing great.” “Did you get the package I sent?”
“Yeah,” I said, “and I read everything in it except for the book.” “Well,
what do you think?” he asked, “Is this your sort of thing?” “I was reading
the essay you sent yesterday as I was sitting out on our back deck,” I
answered, “the one about the decline of Western culture, and I was thinking,
this is where I need to be.” “Great. Why don’t you come up here for the
summer then?” “Okay!” “I still haven’t found a place for you to stay. We
can’t offer you much, but we’ll pay you the same amount we’ll pay the
seminary student coming in, a token amount of $150 a week plus lodging.”
“Cool!” “You’ll be doing mainly administrative work,” he said, “But you’ll
be exposed to many ideas and meet lots of interesting people.”

He went on to ask when I would come. I told him that finals ended on May
first, but that some members of my household were contemplating a trip to
Colorado after school. He responded that he wouldn’t want to keep me from
the opportunity to visit Colorado by any means. He said that, if I came the
week of the 20th or the 27, that would work. We agreed to get back in touch
with each other soon.

I hung up the phone and let out a whoop.

Dad was reading Ken Myers’ book tonight and loving it. He read parts of it
outloud to us. My brother Ben is reading it right now.

In other news, I got a desperate phone call from my friend Melissa who asked,
“Could I ask you a really big favor?” “I’d do anything for you,” I answered.
She said that one of the theater people from our Shakespeare class was sick.
They are putting on several scenes from the pen of the bard tomorrow in lieu
of a paper and needed someone to read the sick girl’s part from a scene in
Much Ado About Nothing. I, of course, agreed. Which means I’ll have to skip
my much beloved psychology class.

For as much doom and gloom prophecy I emanate, I’ve decided that I really am
an optimist after all. I expect so much more of myself than I probably
should, and I actually have the audacity to think I can accomplish what I’ve
optimistically set out to do.

Take this research paper I wrote for Public Administration. I didn’t
actually get started on it until around 1:30 the night before it was due.
Oh, I’d checked out lots of books from the library and downloaded a bunch of
pages off the web. I’d even started reading one of the books. But I didn’t
start writing till then, when I read through the stuff I downloaded, skimmed
through the books using the indexes (I forget the Latin plural), and put down
a couple of quotes and added their originators to my list of works cited. By
almost five, I had between 2 and 3 pages. I needed 7. I went to bed, slept
for an hour, got up, fixed myself a cup of tea, and optimistically told
myself that the amount of time I had till 9:30, the absolute latest time I
could finish and still make it to class on time, was plenty to figure out
what I was saying and add four more pages.

It turns out it was more like 6 pages, but that’s the beauty of manipulatable
line divisions. Suddenly, I had an instant extra page, which was good
because it was 9:30. I rearranged the works cited list, printed the whole
thing out, and drove to school through the rain to get there about ten
minutes late. But it takes that long for this particular class to get going
anyhow.

I remembered later on that I was supposed to talk about what the agency I was
writing about does, but I kind of forgot. I guess I’ll find out what happens
when I get the paper back.

After trying to stay awake through psychology, I laughed at every joke I
heard, through a combination of lack of sleep and relief at having the paper
completed, on the way back to my car. But first I had to stop by Dr.
Schaefer’s office and pick up a packet on taking the LSAT. He asked if there
was anything else he could do for me. I asked to use his phone. “You have
to dial nine to get out,” he answered. I called mom and agreed to meet her
at my favorite health food restaurant at one. That left me several minutes
to spend in the computer lab on the Internet. I walked out to my car, stuck
my key in the ignition, and was greeted by a weak dinging noise and the awful
clicking sound of a near dead battery. I’d left my lights on.

Saying a couple of words I probably shouldn’t have, I walked back to the
office, meeting Schaefer along the way. “Do you need something else?” he
asked. I told him about my battery. “I don’t have time to help you,” he
said, turning around and going back inside, “I have a meeting downtown in 15
minutes. But I’ll call someone who can.” He walked up to a phone on a
secretary’s desk and punched a button. “You have to be really polite to
them,” he divulged, “and they’ll come in about an hour. Hello? Who do I
talk to about a dead car battery?”

A few minutes later I was sitting on the trunk of my car, that had its hood
up, dangling jumper cables forlornly from my helpless hands. A young man
with a few days worth of stubble dressed in a denim shirt and jeans, both
covered in grease, emerged from one of the offices and started toward his
truck. I knew it was his vehicle because I’d seen him arrive. I smiled
plaintively. He raised his eyebrows, “Need a jump?”

“Yeah!” He mumbled something in reply and completed the distance to his
automobile, a big, black, ancient truck with “Cajun Bob-Sled” spray painted
in red along the side facing me. The tail gate bore perhaps a wishful
prophecy in the same crimson lettering, “Built for speed.” Then the truck
swung around toward my hood. He slowed down as he got close and asked me
something through the windshield that I assumed meant he wanted to know if he
was close enough. I nodded in agreement to whatever it was. He stopped the
engine while I stared at the flexible tongue sticking out of the truck’s
grill. “I gotta get a log or something to keep it from rolling,” he said,
running off behind one of the offices and into the woods. He came back with
a charred chunk of wood he jammed under his let front tire. Handing one end
of the cables to him, I attached the other end to my battery. He started up
his engine again. I stuck my key back in the ignition. The open door made a
cheerful “bing,” but the starter simply clicked, perhaps a bit more
energetically this time. The young man fiddled with the cable clamps; I
tried it again. He hit his accelerator. He tried knocking the corrosion off
the contact points. He unscrewed knobs, wiggled wires, and did whatever else
people do under car hoods while I watched from inside my car, my foot on the
button in the door to keep the light and dinging off. I figured if this guy
could get that black piece of junk to run, I could trust him completely with
my car’s engine.

My engine began making overtures at turning over after a while before finally
roaring to life. I smiled triumphantly at the guy as he handed me my jumper
cables. “Thanks,” I said. He climbed into his truck and waved goodbye.

By then it was getting too late to do anything on the Internet, and besides,
I couldn’t let my car stop. I went ahead and drove to the restaurant and
waited till Mom came. I told her the story over my veggie salad and vegan
lasagna. She laughed and declared, “Your Cajun angel!”