College

I was looking back at my last post, and saw that it was 2 weeks before school started. It has been over a month since then, which is too long between posts for me to recall everything. I would like to include more day to day thoughts, but instead I will jot down the highlights to the best of my memory. The biggest change has been living on my sailboat. It started out with my 3 day outing with my friends Jeremy and Aaron, and I came to realize how comfortable and relaxing it was. Aside from a few more trips and traveling, I have made it my home since. After us three stayed on the boat for a few days, we made a roadtrip north to Minneapolis. I had never been there before, so I was excited to check it out. We stayed with a rad dude, had a good time visiting Minneapolis’ finest, and I found a giant trunk near a dumpster which occupied the entire backseat for the remainder of the trip. From there, we headed to Fargo, North Dakota. I have always had a fascination with Fargo; partially from the movie, partially because North Dakota is one of the last states I have yet to visit, and also due to my fascination with the isolated, and the eerie small town feel that I imagined. I would have to say it was the highlight of the trip, but it would be difficult for me to explain why while making sense to most. After Fargo we made a stop in Omaha, where we visited the zoo, and Ally Q, and played Keno too. I returned home on a Friday and left the same day towards Arkansas for some rock climbing at a place called ‘Horseshoe Canyone’. Austin had been working with a guy on a documentary film about rock climbing, and since they were headed out there to do some filming, I jumped on the chance to camp and rock climb a bit before school started on Monday. We got home late Sunday night, and school began the next day. It was a pretty usual first week of school….it was nice seeing some of my peers but slightly sad reminding myself that I live a semi-normal life with deadlines and time frames in place. Even though it is hard to believe, I really have a love for being in school and expanding my knowledge in that area. It already seems like the end of my college career is coming close….but I wouldn’t mind staying longer. During the school year I am amongst kids my own age, and I still manage to do more traveling than most, and enjoy my days…and also the 3 or 4 months out of the year that I don’t have school I wear myself out with every possibility I can imagine. All of this seems fairly dull in comparison to my excitement for moving onto my sailboat. It is the best beginning and end to any day I could have. I love the eerie feeling of walking down the dock at night, slowly rowing a dinghy across the smooth water, stepping aboard and lighting my candles and lantern, and opening up the hatch and watching stars, or watching a movie while being rocked to sleep. On other nights, I pull my sailboat up to the dock where I can use electricity, and listen to my record player. It is really something special to me, and it makes me happy even when I am discouraged by other things around me. I plan on staying on it until the end of November, when I have to take it out of the water until next season. On another note, I have been playing a lot of bicycle polo on Sunday and Wednesday nights which has been a lot of fun, and a good source of exercise. I have also made a couple trips to Columbia since school has started, including this weekend which was the first “Hustle Dance Party” which Austin has been working on putting together at a coffee shop/venue in downtown Columbia. I have been helping him with it a bit and manned the door on Friday night. It wasn’t as great of a turnout as we were hoping, but it was still a fun time and we hope to have one again. We also threw another, slightly tamer, boat party at Lotawana with a generator running Austin’s DJ equipment. We woke the neighbors, did some night swimming, and kept the boat barely afloat so it was an all around good time. Up and coming events include throwing another theme party sometime in the hangar, another “Hustle dance party” in a couple weeks, my white coat ceremony for pharmacy this Friday, plans to go to New Orleans in October, and my 24^th birthday October 1^st with Girl Talk playing in Lawrence or Passion Pit in KC. More frequent updates I promise.