neumatikos

I’m still not very good at regular updates. I can’t seem to keep from writing 3 pages if I write a word, and it takes so long to put out three well-composed pages, that I never want to start. Go figure.

A few quick points to finish up my graduation story, and then I’m on to better things:

They don’t tell you your final grades until well after you walk. So it’s always a big surprise to find out if you got any honorariums. Remember that I was worried right up to the last about whether I was going to graduate at all, my scores in “Modern American Drama” were so bad. Judge to my surprise when the dean of students announced “Kyle French. Cum Laude.” I have the proofs here from photograds.com, cute little 1×2 inch spots on the order form, and looking at these pictures, I would say I was pretty surprised. Either that, or I always look like a dorky idiot in a cap and gown, (plus a hoodie).

Since then, I’ve gotten my final grades from the school. My total GPA was somewhere around 3.51 or .52, I forget which. Every class I ever took was an A or a B, except one. Modern American Drama. That professor gave me my first and only C-. The way I figure it, the only reason I didn’t get a D is because a D in your major means that you have to take the class again to graduate. I don’t like that professor any more, so my assumption is that, since he’s the only one who teaches that class, he gave me a C- because that was the lowest possible grade he could give me and still guarantee that he would never see me again. Had he been a nice guy and had I been an idiot who was trying his best and just not getting it, I’d be much more willing to believe that my non-failing grade was a sympathy score. But I don’t like that professor, so I’m going to assume that I got the grade I did because he’s not just a jerk, but a lazy jerk. It may be an opinion, but it’s a unanimous opinion.

After my parents left, my sister stayed (remember, she flowed in, instead of driving). The plan was for her to come up and spend a week hanging out with me, and then fly back. And so she did. It was a pretty uneventful week. Somebody has been living it up, and managed to spend the entire week in a semi-coma. She would come up for meals and a single trip to the mountains. Here are the pictures she took in NC. There would probably have been more, but somebody had a digital camera, and through various foibles, had managed not to bring either a memory card, or a USB cord. She had a limit of 20 pictures, and no cheap solutions for getting them off the camera until she got back to Oklahoma. Alas.

My dad wanted her to take pictures of my done up apartment, including new bed. However, Ces opted instead to take pictures of her present for me. A fish. Actually, she got me a tank and a filter, and some rocks, and a goldfish. The breed of fish she got is called a “black moor” which translates roughly as “Black Muslim.” Pretty special. Not only does it have a race, it comes with it’s own religion. Apparently, I have a very angry little goldfish, determined to fight back against the man. I would like to make it clear to any Muslims in my readership that I intended no slight or socio-political commentary when I named my little fish “sushi,” which translates roughly into “light snack.”

On Monday, while Ces was sleeping till some ungodly hour (like noon—everyone knows that God frowns greatly on noon), I went down to Wal-mart and bought some accessories for my new fish tank. A lid, for instance. I had two options: one with an incandescent lamp for $18 and one with a fluorescent lamp for $30 something. After much deliberation, I decided that , over a period of 30 years, I would probably save money on the fluorescent lamp. I’m a sucker for long-term savings, so I bought the expensive lid. I also bought two plants, an algae eater, and another black moor. I can’t tell male or female by looking at a fish, but my hope was that, with any luck, I’d get a matched pair, and within a few years I’d have a bunch of discontented little er fish. As yet however there have been no further breeding developments.

However, within a few days, the did determine that the algae eater invasion of their holy land was not to be tolerated, and I had to have a small funeral. What I think actually happened was that I got a species of fish that wasn’t particularly hardy. Or it could have been just that I got the poor thing from Wal-Mart, which is roughly the equivalent of saying he came from the SARS ward of the local Hong Kong hospital. Poor feller didn’t have a chance. I have since bought all my fish supplies from PetsMart, which is closer anyway.

I now have 2 goldfish, 3 plants, one window cleaner (a replacement for the algae eater), and a frog. I got the frog mostly because my mom couldn’t stop me. That and he was only like a dollar. He’s about an inch long, likes hiding in corners, and lets the fish eat all his food. It’s also really hard to tell if he’s alive because frogs don’t breathe underwater. They just sort of soak the O2 in through their skin. But when one of the fish mistakes him for the landscape and tries to nibble on him, you can tell he’s alive. Little water rocket, he is. And they don’t just taste like chicken, they are chicken. Anything and everything sends him hurtling into the hidey hole he’s made. Including food falling from the sky. On several occasions I’ve also seen at least two snails that I think were stowaways with the plants. But I haven’t seen them in over a week, so I don’t know what’s up with that.

Currently, however, my fish are sick. Some kind of fungus showed up (probably another result of buying your aquarium supplies at Wal-Mart) and put white flecks all over them, ate away at their fins and made them generally despondent. I gave them some really powerful medicine, and now I have happy fish with crew cuts and no white spots, and blue water.

Very slowly, I assure you, I am running out of news. Very soon I will be getting back to the really important things, like philosophy and poetry.

Thas all for today.
KB

Enter our hero (shocked and slightly embarrassed at the sight of Larry in a towel). I finished my magnum opus in a matter of eight days, proving that man is still better than machine, then I lay down my hammer and died. That was Wednesday. Then, looking up, I realized I had only two days before my parents showed up for my graduation. (Good thing I checked with the registrar to make sure I was actually graduating—I’d to have to re-take that class taught by Satan.) The trouble is, when I get stressed, my place gets trashed. For me, picking up after yourself is a function of a peaceful mind. A man on the edge of a breakdown doesn’t have time to do laundry. I called in my trusty friend and for two days straight we cleaned (this is incontrovertible proof that she loves me). I was lucky: after only 24 hours of digging, we hit carpet. By Thursday night, everything was finished except scrubbing the bathtub and the tile in the bathroom (it still need some scrubbing, if anybody wants to volunteer). Valerie went home around 10, and I stayed up to wait for mi parientes.

It’s officially a 16 hour drive from Tulsa to Charlotte, 17 with the time change. They had their own minor catastrophes on their end which had them leaving Tulsa at around 8 am instead of my mom’s preferred 5:00. (If anyone ever managed to live according to my mom’s planning, they would have conquered the world by the age of 24, all while managing to be healthy, well-rounded, and a parent—proving that Alexander the Great was nothing more than a sissy.) This meant that they should have gotten in sometime between two and three. A painful trip, but worse things have happened. Around 12 or 1 I went to bed and set an alarm for 2:00. I got up at 2 and called my mom’s cell. They were on Interstate 26 heading toward Asheville (away from Charlotte!). Apparently, lovely Mapquest had told them to go from I-26 to I-85. The actual preferred route from Asheville to Charlotte is to take I-26 to US 74 to I-85. I-26 meets I-85 in South Carolina, adding another 20-50 miles to the trip if you go that way. My parents knew they weren’t supposed to go to SC, so when they hit the border, they turned around. I gave them the proper directions and went back to bed, resetting my alarm for 4:00 in the morning. At 4:00 I called again. This time they were on I-85, having driven all the way through to the other side of town. Apparently sleep deprivation can do bad things to your ability to recognize your exit. I gave them new directions and decided to just stay up and wait for them. I was also informed that cell phones were dying. Somehow the car battery adapter got put in the wrong car. At 4:30 I called again. My dad’s phone was already gone. My mom’s phone said it should be. But they were finally on the right road to my apartment. They were also so tired that they were inadvertently driving at about 20 miles an hour. It was exactly 5:00 when they pulled into my parking lot. They were on the road for 20 hours. I love my parents.

Needless to say, they were out for a while. For me though: Graduation rehearsal, Baccalaureate, picking up sister from the airport (a job done by my lovely assistant)… I had fun trying to explain to some , whose parents weren’t religious enough to attend Baccalaureate, how there was no way that a service at a moderately liberal Christian university could possibly be “spiritually significant” enough to my zealous parents. True to form, we had the exact discussion afterward that I was anticipating. Let’s just say that a service that can be applicable to all faiths is pretty much useless to any particular set of beliefs. Ironically, that evening we went to MorningStar for their standard Friday night service, where we all promptly fell asleep. We left in embarrassment after the music. They were about to get downright Pentecostal on us and we figured it would make them feel bad if even a shouting service lulled us to sleep. Sometime during the MorningStar service, my cousin and her parents showed up from Virginia, and they came over after we came home and stayed and talked with us until I kicked them out around midnight.

That was Friday. Then Saturday: Graduation, lunch with Yujiro’s (my former roommate’s) family, help Valerie move, and then came the cool stuff.

We have a slight genetic disorder in our family. It’s not something I’m particularly proud of. I call it a compulsive giving disorder. It’s bad. Really bad. For years now, the Christmas presents have never managed to fit under one tree. We won’t discuss birthdays. My mother has it, and her mother before her. My sister and I (very carefully) are trying to balance this against my dad’s side of the family, which has a compulsive saving disorder. Between the two sets, Ces and I hope to come up normal, well-rounded people. But you never know.

My family isn’t particularly well off by any standard (except for Yujiro’s, since he measures wealth in square footage. Japanese families typically live in 2 bedroom apartments). Nevertheless, for a combination of graduating, and my birthday coming up in a month or so, I was given a “new” car, a new bed, and an aquarium (which would be from my sister).

I was pretty blown away by all this.

Basically, my dad has a bunch of cars (like five or six) all sitting in his driveway that all work about 80%. They rotate. They get one fixed just in time for the next one to break. So my dad decides to give me a car. He picks the Ford Taurus station wagon, which needs a new transmission. He doesn’t have the money for a new transmission, which is why the car has been sitting there for a while. My dad calls up his dad, who gives him money to help with the transmission. They fix up the Taurus, and then my dad’s mechanic friend decides that they need to re-do all their work before it’s done right. So, the day before they leave, I get the Honda Accord that’s been working for a month or so now. (see how this rotation thing works?) This has several advantages for me: first, the Accord has a CD player in it. The Taurus has a CB radio. Don’t ask. Secondly, I just like accords, no matter what auction they were bought at.

Then for the bed. My parents had $200 in budget to come and find me a magical bed that only costs $200. I’ve spent months looking in ads and places, finding most complete bed sets in the minimum range of $400—500. This I want to see. Saturday afternoon, after further playing with the car and generally making me nervous, we went out to look for beds. We found ads in the newspaper (miraculously) that spoke of complete queen sets for only $169. We also found (not so miraculously) that nobody responded to our calls at the listed number. We also found several furniture stores that sold unpleasant looking beds for more than we could afford. And then we found one only moderately store that had banners proclaiming complete bedroom sets for only $260. We also found that most of Charlotte has not yet caught up with the idea that they live in the largest urban area between Atlanta and Washington DC, so they close at 6:00 on the week end. It was after 6 and shopping was over.

Sunday, directly after church we went to this store again, and discovered that, while they did have bedroom sets that sold for $160, the ones where you couldn’t feel the bedsprings cost between 2-3 times that much. They had $200. I had a check from my mom’s parents for the difference. We thought, maybe we’ll check the classifieds one more time.

And there it was. Sealy posturpedic mattress and box frame with maple frame. Originally bought for $1300. Now selling used for a mere $300. Free delivery. I called the lady up, she answered the phone, I agreed to come look at the bed at 7:30.

My parents wrote me a check for $200, told me to buy a nice bed, and left Sunday afternoon around 3:00. We are all very glad that they stopped over night in Tennessee on the way back. I am almost finished resting up from my parents visit.

Of course, I have more to relate, about my sister’s visit, and further foibles with the car, but I’m almost to the three page mark in MS Word. I’ll be shutting up now.

KB

Wow. I’m still not sure it’s over (can’t believe it’s really over).

I’ve graduated. No more school. No more assignments. No more homework. No more impending sense of doom. Well, the doom hasn’t left yet, but I suppose that’ll fade with time. Before I went back to school, I kept having these recurring nightmares. You know, the typical “public place with no clothes on” type scenario. Except with these, it was me, the last few days of school discovering “oh yeah, there’s a class you’ve been signed up for all semester that you forgot about. Now you need to take this final exam or never graduate.” Have that dream about three nights in a row and it’s going to get really kooky. Now that it’s all over, I’m having a similar problem. I keep dreaming that there’s some major assignment that I’ve missed and they’re going to take back my diploma.

This really stinks. Technically, the diploma is no big deal to me. I didn’t get palpitations of the heart when we got in line. I didn’t think “now I’m really something.” Because I got a piece of paper. But they made me really work for that thing, and for some reason, when it comes to education, it’s embarrassing to say I had to work. It felt like work, but I know so many other people who actually work for their grades. Work for them looks like a piece of well-oiled machinery. Work for me just means I managed to make myself sit down and put out content. I can’t help feeling that, next to some people, my work ethic is just a bit flighty. Nevertheless, what was intended not to be work has turned out to be a great labor. I’m so glad it’s over.

Let me see if I can give a quick synopsis of recent events and where I stand today: Everything was backed up all semester. First, I had an incredibly awful semester last fall. It was so bad that I had two (count ‘em, two) papers that I didn’t turn in until about mid-to-late February. Basically my “ethics” class kicked my butt, and I worked on it so hard that I ignored the classes that I knew I could handle relatively easily. (It had to do with differing with the faculty on what issues were actually ethical dilemmas.) I got done with the semester and spent the entire Christmas break staring at a computer screen not actually doing any writing. I got both English papers about 98% done and decided to finish them up the first week back at school.

Enter “The Problems…”

I’m sure I’ve related all this stuff before. Nevertheless, for the sake of context (and a really really long blog), I’m going to rehash most of it: Instead of flying back as my ticked designated, my parents decided to drive me back, because I was going to be moving into an apartment approximately three months ahead of schedule. Blame that on a bad economy and a few choice words my mother would like to have with the governor of the state of North Carolina. The NC budget went bad, so they went out cutting corners, and they came up with a really nifty loophole: they decided that college campuses are no longer actually part of the state. I had been receiving about $5000 per semester in state grants, which required me to be an in-state resident. No problem. I’ve been living here for six years. But the North Carolina budget boys decided that “on campus” cannot count as a permanent address. It’s just a temporary address. So, if you are living on campus, obviously your real address is where your parents live. For me that would be Oklahoma. I had no idea I lived in Oklahoma. My driver’s license says NC. So do all my taxes. But as far as North Carolina is concerned, I live in Oklahoma. I’m pretty sure the great state of Oklahoma would be willing to debate that, since they won’t give me any grant money to go to school in NC either. So apparently I’m living in limbo land.

It’s nice here in limbo land. Temperature’s always a pleasant 72 degrees… No place to sleep though. Or to put your books. My solution was to move off campus and cut all my classes to the bare 9 hours I had left to graduate. Suddenly I’m a part time student, reducing my cost by… $5000. What a coincidence. Suddenly I also have no furniture, no food, and no car. So we drove up and brought all my old stuff and threw it in the apartment. It was hectic. Anything that involves both parents driving over 1000 miles and staying just for the weekend is always hectic.

So, I spent all my spare time last semester acquiring things like lamps and a desk and a dresser and all that stuff, and walking three miles to school (up-hill both ways…)

Anyway, all of this would have been fine. Two out of three classes this semester were not only a breeze, they were really kind of fun. I loved my literary theory class. Wish I could have taken it before all my other lit classes. But this one class was coo-coo. I won’t go into details because this is too long a blog in the first place, but he kept insulting the students, he graded more on grammar than on content, and he was terrible about communicating the proper criteria for getting a good grade in the class. It put me in the exact same position as the previous semester of focusing all my energy on the crappy class and ignoring the ones I liked. I was seriously in danger of getting a D in that class—a failing grade when it’s part of your major.

I had no final exams this semester (amazingly), So I spent the entire last week of school locked in my apartment working on a single 12 page paper. I turned it in exactly 8 days late. Fortunately, that professor had heard about problems with the other guy and said he wouldn’t take off for being late.

OK. I’m going to stop here. I”ve got more to say, but I’ll say it separately. Graduation was a whirlwind, to say the least…

KB