I spent the majority of my second week of summer working to finish up a project for the Brazen Dropouts, which entailed sitting at my desk, writing code for most of the week. But it is summer, and summer entails open windows, which brings a nice breeze, or the sound of cars driving over wet roads, or the thumping of obnoxious cars playing bad music louder than necessary (although I did hear a couple great songs blasting from the intersection below: selections from Aerosmith, Third Eye Blind, and classic Green Day being the most notable). Summer brings baseball, too, and I watched baseball, talked baseball, held a baseball, and in two days I'll once again be playing baseball. I rode my bike as much as I'd like, and my Farmer's Tan is looking quite nice.

I've been reading Great Expectations again, and I've been noting my favorite passages. Here's one of them.

I walked away at a good pace, thinking it was easier to go than I had supposed it would be, and reflecting that it would never have done to have an old shoe thrown after the coach, in sight of all the High-street. I whistled and made nothing of going. But the village was very peaceful and quiet, and the light mists were solemnly rising, as if to show me the world, and I had been so innocent and little there, and all beyond was so unknown and great, that in a moment with a strong heave and sob I broke into tears. It was by the finger-post at the end of the village, and I laid my hand upon it, and said 'Good-bye, O my dear, dear friend!'

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are the rain upon the blinding dust of the earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before—more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle. If I had cried before, I should have had Joe with me then.

One truth in Wisconsin is that when the pleasant weather and stiff lake breezes of late Spring roll into town, so too do numerous contingents of construction companies, urban planners, and lawn care companies to inconvenience an entire city for a grueling four months.

The downtown area is in shambles, and is seemingly covered in dust and sand. Take a drive from the Capitol building down Gorham and onto University and you'll see road construction limiting four lanes to two, apartment complexes rising beside state-of-the-art laboratory facilities, and utility work down Randall and Charter, all in the span of less than five miles. An observatory and the drive on which it sits are both under heavy construction until August, and I wouldn't be surprised if, one day, I were to happen upon some maniac with a jackhammer defiling the streets and sidewalks on a whim.

Although, when I was twelve(ish), construction on a main county highway adjacent to our street made for great entertainment over the summer. The intersection of the highway and our street closed, and since our street is the first connecting street between this highway and another main county highway—and despite several signs indicating road closure ahead—it caused all sorts of problems for drivers attempting to cross over. One day my sister and I witnessed a school bus driving up one side of the street, and after a minute or so, saw the bus driver casually pilot the vehicle in reverse back down the hill to find another route. I could tell the same story for countless other drivers, as well. I wonder if they missed the signs…

And as the summer wore on, travelers became accustomed to finding other roads to get between these two highways, and this made it possible, for the only time in our lives, to play in streets with virtually no consequences. This made for some incredible wiffle ball games, as well as street-long matches of Capture the Flag, Hide And Go Seek, and all sorts of invented games that took advantage of the utter lack of cars on the road.

So, to some, at a certain age, construction is a blessing. To me, faced with a harrowing commute to work tomorrow, it is—well, I do not enjoy it at all.

A couple quick bits for the road. I need a break between working and studying.

---

For no particular reason, I remembered last night something I used to do fairly often when I was a kid. I owned a lot of stuffed animals—enough, at least, for me to think that by piling them up under my sheets and curling myself around them, I could lie undetected, disguised against the blob of stuffed animals. I'm laughing to myself now, because there is absolutely no way I fooled anyone, and I have to give my parents credit for humoring me and pretending to not know where I was.

---

My friend Bess sent me a link to a This American Life episode, which at the very end features Tobias Wolff reading the aforementioned Bullet in the Brain. It's worth the thirteen-minutes it runs, despite minor censorship of a few unfavorable words. One of my favorite parts of my Creative Writing course was hearing other students read their own work, because there always seemed to be interesting discrepancies in how it sounded in my head versus how they read it out loud.

Yesterday started out ordinarily enough. Up early for work, a shower, some oatmeal, a good—no, great—deal of coffee, then off to my beloved basement. Even so, a handful of emails, a nice lunch meeting with a friend just back from a semester in Italy, a great phone call, and a brief respite from studying by way of the annual Housing bowling event made the day quite special, and reminded me just how damn good I have it.