Spring Break, I can feel it

February 19th, 2009 • chatter

I had my last class on Monday for the last time in three weeks, going to be a nice break to have. Our midterm in Anthropology of Religion is the day we get back from Spring Break but that’s how scheduling goes. At least I’ve gotten my paper turned in and I feel confident about it. It won’t be a stellar grade but I feel like it was a good paper. Next week is the last Music History and Appreciation class and I can’t wait. I’m growing very beleaguered by the lower classmen. I keep trying to think if I was ever that bad when I was one but I really don’t think I was. I finally talked to Professor Joella about the overabundant side conversations that go on throughout class without his intervention. It’s very distracting for me and other students, I’m sure.

In bike-related news, I finally ordered my new Skid Lid helmet today along with some new NGK Iridium IX spark plugs and new Kuryakyn Wide levers. The levers should be a welcome addition to the less than comfortable stock brake and clutch lever and hopefully the plugs will even out some of the rough idle I’ve been having lately. My girlfriend is taking her MSF Beginner Rider Course in late March and I’m very excited for her. Maybe she’ll enjoy it enough to want a bike of her own and I can get a 750! Oh, how fun that would be.

As it’s almost 2am, I’m going to go to bed.

Like winter panties

February 11th, 2009 • chatter

One week it’s freezing — literally! The next it’s in the 80s. Can’t God make up his mind on when I get to enjoy some warm weather? It’s been so up and down temperature-wise the last month or so, I was really worried that our little tomato plant was killed, but alas it has survived! And survived well. Two of the six tomatoes are now ripening and are a kind of burnt orange color. Similar in hue to mixing ketchup and mustard together. Yeah, something like that. Hopefully, they’ll ripen quickly and let the others do the same so we can transplant it to a bigger pot and hopefully, a bigger bounty. Then, it’ll be on to trying to grow some bell peppers. I hope.

This has been a much better week for riding than last week. I can actually enjoy the ride instead of riding, hunched over to keep air out of my jacket and my helmet, hoping my hands don’t freeze and fall off. While I can’t be sure, I think the cold has passed and it’ll start getting much warmer, much faster. I’ll need to get a new mesh jacket and a new helmet for summer. I’m not spending this year baking in my jacket like I did last year. Taking my jacket off at my MSF class and literally being drenched in sweat in November is not something I find appealing at all. I want a Vanson leather jacket but I know it’ll be too hot, even though all the “cool” old guys will be wearing leather for their pride, I want to stay alive and without heat exhaustion.

Tonight I’m enjoying a new beer: Great Divide Oak-aged Yeti Imperial Stout. I’ve had the regular Yeti stout and it was very good, nice mouthfeel. However, this stuff is like a whole different ball game. Since it’s oak aged, the tannins from the oak wood have really fused with the brew to give it a hard liquor twinge on the front palate. But once you get mid-mouth and to the back palate, it’s a full bodied stout with a lot of flavour. And tonight, I needed something like this after another boring class. At least I didn’t have freshmen yapping in my ear for two hours about their status on Facebook. Or double douchebags futzing on an iPhone, giggling like little girls about penises or something. I have to hand it to Joella though. Even though he’s teaching to brain dead kids who aren’t even paying attention, he trudges on like we were hanging on his every word — until he asks a question and no one answers.

Akbar’s class is decent, I suppose. It is easier than his last two classes for sure and the larger class size certainly doesn’t hurt that. Previously, he’d easily get off topic and create a new discussion from that but with 40+ people, he’s got to stay on topic and keep it at least, second-to-lowest common denominator. Luckily, most people in the class have a brain and will use it from time to time.

Hmm, nothing much to really report now. I’m actually about to go take apart the speedometer on my bike so I can see what kind of LED lights I need to order. This thing is DIM at night. My bike’s 20 years old and Honda still has not fixed this issue. What’s the deal, jackasses?

Why does it have to be cold?!

February 6th, 2009 • chatter
Tags: cold, motorcycle

It’s been cold all week, comparatively. Sunday was nice, sunny, and in the 80s. On Monday, it plunged down to the mid 40s. Very annoying when I have to ride home from class at 10PM and the wind blow straight through my gloves. Needless to say, it hasn’t been a fun week to ride the motorcycle. I wanted to go down to Keys this weekend for some camping and fishing but that’s going to be a terrible idea. The one time I could really use the sleeping bag I bought for my birthday and returned because I got too hot in it. Now if we went, I’d freeze. This probably means no fishing this weekend as well. I moved down here to avoid the cold and now it’s the coldest winter I can remember since I moved down almost six years ago.

Fishing was probably out of the question anyway as I have a 5 page paper to write and I’ve been majorly procrastinating on it. The essay question is pretty ambitious from Professor Keshodkar given that it’s more fitting for a final paper rather than a first paper. It’s not that big of a deal but I have a feeling that many people won’t be getting the grades they’re expecting, based on how they were sweating bibliographies and citations. I’m surprised that he used such a general yet deep question for this paper. It should be interesting how I’m going to pull resources for “Is there a universal religion?”.

Overall, school’s going fine but my Music Appreciation class is a huge waste of time so far. The professor tries to make the class very interesting and interactive but since most of the students are freshmen, they’re more interested in looking cool and talking amongst themselves or screwing off on Facebook. When I was a freshman, I don’t remember doing that at all, even though it was nearly 10 years ago. If this was high school, I could understand this level of disrespect but these kids are paying a good bit of money to come to class and ultimately do nothing. Kind of like the kid who comes in, plugs in his laptop, pops on his iPod, and plays on his laptop the entire time. For all I know, he’s playing an MMO or something. I know he’s never heard anything Professor Joella has said so I don’t know what he expects to get from the class. It’s going to be hilarious when these kids get to 4000 level classes and much of their grade is based on participation and they fail. Or they have to cram for everything because they never listened or came to class and end up on academic probation. Ah well, their loss, not mine.

It’s about 2AM and I need to get to bed. Thankfully, it’s FRIDAY.

So yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday

February 2nd, 2009 • chatter

And it was fairly uneventful. School’s been keeping me busy as all get out but this semester is a light load like I wanted. The classes aren’t very difficult, nor is there a ton of reading that must be done. In an effort to get out more, we finally put together our small ocean fishing tackle box and have been fishing twice. While I haven’t caught anything, my girlfriend did manage to snag a Silver Porgy yesterday at the Deerfield pier. Admittedly, I’m a little jealous, I want to catch some fish too! What I’m not jealous of is the amount of sun we got and the sunburn my girlfriend has.

There should be a camping trip in the near future now that all of the gear has arrived in the mail. All that’s left is to do is clean, reseal, and waterproof an old tent in case some buddies want to join us. I need to get it all packed up and we’re ready for adventure! Hopefully, the kingfish at Bahia Honda state park are biting so we can have some fun fishing down in the keys. I just hope this Tectron water repellent spray works and keeps the old tent at least somewhat water resistant, I’d hate for my buddies to wake up soaking wet. I don’t want them coming to cuddle up in my tent, that’s for sure!

Now that school is in full swing and I’m adjusted to the workloads, I’ll hopefully start getting my huge backlog of RSS feeds read. There’s probably a solid month’s worth of stuff there that I haven’t read because I just haven’t been in the mood for it. But with that should bring more blog posts and I’ll get to plowing through some books I’ve been wanting to read, especially Born to Kvetch.

My girlfriend found a card from the GM for Manatee Coffee the other day in Circuit City. Aside from the fruity names of their coffee, I like the cause they’re behind. Since I’m almost completely out of my Gorilla coffee, looks like Manatee will be getting some business from me. I might buy some coffee from Coffee Fool as well, it’s been about a year since I purchased anything from them. I really do miss some of those delicious flavours they have, and those yummy oily beans they have. Their Velvet Hammer has got to be some of the best coffee I’ve ever had.

I’m trying so very hard to avoid work today. Not only is there almost no work to even be done, it’s just boring as can be today. I suppose I’ll go fire up my 360 and play Left4Dead or another game.