Monthly Archives: April 2003

The Trip Home, Candellas, Amateur Astronomy, Etc.

The trip home was alright, watch­ing Men In Black 2 (not a very good movie at all) and tak­ing under five and a half hours. I like the fact that I can pur­chase a bus tick­et at any time, and not have to wor­ry about book­ing and reser­va­tions. I’ve always liked the idea that I have the free­dom to pick up and go when­ev­er I please. Of course, this only works when I have a guar­an­teed place to stay at the des­ti­na­tion.

My Candela’s came in last week. They are quite nice, although they look rather cheap dur­ing the day­time when they’re off. They give off a decent ambi­ent light when oth­er (more pri­ma­ry) lights are on, but are good at set­ting a mood when they’re the only things illu­mi­nat­ing a room. It’s a has­sle to always let them burn out to pro­long bat­tery life, since that means that I’m usu­al­ly going to bed with them on, and for some­one who wakes up from the first slit of sun­light pierc­ing the room, it can be an annoy­ing thing.

I found a great astron­o­my book for Darren, cov­er­ing every­thing from the small­est detail in pur­chas­ing a tele­scope, to the pat­terns the plan­ets make in their orbits. Astronomy is some­thing that I’ve always found to be mys­te­ri­ous­ly inter­est­ing, a seduc­tive past-time I’d be afraid to be con­sumed by. A few peo­ple I’ve talked to have felt the same way, although some with an even more severe emo­tion. I would have tak­en up such a hob­by as soon as I had the means to, if the area I live in was­n’t so unbe­liev­ably light pol­lut­ed. It’s as if the may­or wants to keep the lights in the city bright enough to have a con­stant day­time. I’m fair­ly sure that I’ll buy a decent tele­scope even­tu­al­ly, once I’ve set­tled down in a con­do and have a career.

I can’t wait to get back to my plea­sure box and begin fool­ing around with Movable Type. I just hope that my host can pro­vide enough flex­i­bil­i­ty for it to work.

When I got home, a stack of red envelopes and wrapped box­es were wait­ing for me. My pre­ma­ture exit at Christmas left gifts unopened and mon­ey unclaimed, quite a wel­come sur­prise. I got anoth­er $50 gift cer­tifi­cate for Futureshop, which will most like­ly be going towards Vice City as soon as it comes out. I haven’t played a very absorb­ing game in a while, the last ones being GTA3 or Neverwinter Nights, but my favourite is still prob­a­bly Half-Life. And with Half-Life 2 slat­ed for a fall release, well, I find myself becom­ing unhealth­ily excit­ed.

I’ll be split­ting a box of Onslaught with Darren today.

Go

It’s dif­fi­cult for me to imag­ine being done school, that I can start liv­ing as a free per­son. I’ve been in school for so long that I begin to expect anoth­er term in the near future. Yet I’m done (as long as I did­n’t fail any­thing) and I have a great deal of options. But what would I real­ly want to do with my life? A uni­ver­si­ty diplo­ma will only help me get a tiny part of what I want to achieve.

Odd that I live so day-to-day, yet have a few goals planned for decades in advance. Even if I haven’t achieved a sin­gle goal by the time I die, I’ll feel decent­ly sat­is­fied. I enjoy being able to appre­ci­ate every­thing I do each day. A great deal of think­ing needs to be done before I keep going. And while the future seems uncer­tain, while the world seems to be turned upside down, I feel com­fort­ed.

It’s under­stand­ing and real­iza­tion that bind my world togeth­er, that bring mean­ing to any­thing I do.

Complacent With Complacency

I was walk­ing through the mall today, when I saw some­one who seemed to be alone. His face was ripe with Down Syndrome, and he moved with a air of emo­tion­al detach­ment, as if he had eas­i­ly accept­ed the cards he’d been dealt.

Of course, I make no assump­tions about his sit­u­a­tion. After all, I know noth­ing about his life, and my pseu­do-con­clu­sions (I almost nev­er make def­i­nite con­clu­sions) based on pure­ly obser­va­tion could be com­plete­ly wrong.

However, it made me real­ize how lucky I am to not only have a cer­tain amount of intel­li­gence, but to have lived the life I have lived. Although I agree that igno­rance is bliss, I have become quite con­tent with the lim­it­ed aware­ness that I pos­sess today. I’m grate­ful for the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have loved and…given up, and to have been loved in return, even if my giv­ing up of such things will mean that I may nev­er love again. I have lived a life of finan­cial secu­ri­ty. I am fair­ly (although not ful­ly) con­tent with the per­son I have been able to become.

What could I pos­si­bly have to com­plain about? Not much. Only about a few things unre­solved, from a past I’m still try­ing to under­stand.

Life, as it were, appears to be good. So why do I not feel as hap­py as I should? Perhaps a chem­i­cal imbal­ance of some sort, although I don’t want to be so arro­gant as to make such a claim with­out more sub­stan­tial symp­toms.

I believe the answer lies in the fact that the last few things in my life which need res­o­lu­tion are major enough to leave me only feel­ing com­pla­cent. The next step, past iden­ti­fy­ing such mat­ters, would be to resolve them.

But per­haps com­pla­cen­cy is the best one can do.