Shine on, bright light – photo of the day #1

October 30th, 2009 • 1 comment photography
Tags: d90, drinking, guinness, nikon, nikon d90, photo of the day, photography, the tip

The Tipperary Pub, Deerfield Beach, FL. The best dive bar in Deerfield, hands down. Anything can happen here, take my word for it.

I need a reason to have a party tonight!

October 23rd, 2009 • 3 comments chatter

Now that my girlfriend is off to see her family for the weekend, I’m looking to invent a reason to have a party, if for no other reason than to simply do something. I could, of course, work on my research paper prospectus but then I’d just be wasting key party time on something responsible and I don’t want to be responsible.

This week wasn’t so bad, the paper was a lot easier to write than the previous one was. I found Braude’s Radical Spirits to not actually suck like Juster’s book did. There was some interesting information in it as it pertains to Spiritualism but I did have trouble finding any correlation between this research and the “groundbreaking” results that historians have said Braude came up with. Sure, a lot of Spiritualists were women’s rights activists and vice versa, but was Spiritualism the springboard for getting those reform ideas from the background into the forefront? It’s hard to say, her book’s conclusion seems kind of thin on that aspect of her thesis. However, I think her proposition of Spiritualism as a serious religion is entirely forgettable as it seems no one had a real consensus of exactly what Spiritualism consisted of, beliefs-wise. Sure, a lot of women believed in communication with spirits but others believed it was a religious framework for personal, autonomous freedom, and others weren’t even sure at all. Ah well, I weighed in as best I could.

Should be some great games on TV this weekend although I will probably miss the UCLA game as it’s not televised here. Alabama and Florida will have tough match-ups again this week but they should be able to get through. If both teams can make it through this week and next, they’ll have no problems sailing through to the SEC championship to play. UNC gave up the ghost last night and somehow managed to utterly handle their 24-6 win over to FSU by not even playing the 2nd half of the game. FSU came back to win by three but only because UNC literally didn’t try to make any plays and once it was down to the wire, they started calling desperation plays that had no way of working in their favor. Way to piss away a conference win that you had clenched, Tarheels!

I’ve been commanded to go out and take pictures with my new Nikon D90 this weekend so I might do a picture-a-day thing soon. I just hope I can get some decent shots but I don’t know where to go. Maybe I’ll drive up 441 and take some of the polo clubs or something.

I *hate* being sick

October 12th, 2009 • chatter

I’ve spent the last two weeks up, down, and all around with the flu. I hate getting sick with a passion, it just makes everything suck. I finally showed symptoms when we were on our way to NYC last weekend for Zanetoberfest. My girlfriend had been sick the whole week beforehand and I was determined not to get sick or let getting sick ruin my weekend. Unfortunately, it did ruin our dinner party that Friday but then I went back to the hotel in Jersey City and kicked its ass, hardcore. Woke up the next day, feeling like a mostly new man except for the lingering symptoms which have just now gone away.

School’s still school. I’ve missed more classes than I care to admit recently, some due to the flu. We got our first book review in AMH4930-001 out of the way so now I’ve got to read Ann Braude’s Radical Spirits for the second one. I woefully dread historiographical books but since this is the only book the library had in stock, I don’t have a choice — and I’m certainly not going to buy the other one just for the review. I’ve barely cracked it but so far, it’s dry and rather boring, I do hope that Braude picks up the pace through the book. Like I told my teacher, I hate reading the history of history. Sometimes these books, while absolutely necessary to help develop and further new ideas, feel propped up by the (over)use of other authors’ materials. Apparently the last book I read by Susan Juster was aimed at and written for other historians not undergrad students. Our professor played quite a trick on us!

I’ve got to get back to work for now but here are some pictures from Zanetoberfest: Zanetoberfest 2009. I wish I had copies of all the pictures we were in!

PS – We’re “Spatens” in the vein of Roman soldiers to play on the sponsor, brewery Spaten.