Dear Blog,
Breathing is nice. It's one of the few things I can count on just now too. My phone died. My laptop died. My headlights died. Someone who had been a best friend kicked me out and we aren't speaking anymore. The only administration I have to depend on right now (other than Obama) is giving me eight separate middle fingers at once. Central State requires a variety of courses to graduate. I need four more math, two more education, and student teaching. Only two of the maths are being offered at feasible times. They are being offered in the same time slot. That time slot conflicts with the only offering of one of the education courses. These are the easy problems to deal with.
The other two courses are only being offered while I student teach, so the dean of Education (who is acting as my adviser until they hire a new chair and a math ed adviser) directed me to institutions which have an agreement with Central for instant and free transfer. One is Wright State, they offer the classes at the exact same times. One is Sinclair, it's a community college and doesn't offer the classes. The last is University of Dayton, they're actually not offering one of the classes until fall 2010. However, I have made progress with their department chair who is an expert in my field of interest with regards to one of the four math classes.
The two classes which conflict lead me to the head of the math department, Mr. Marcus. Rather than fix the problem, he identified several others and said he'd get back to me. Namely, the pre-requisites which I had been filling, are not necessary, the professor for one of the classes is teaching it wrong and needs to be consulted on content covered, and the engineering department, which is bigger, needs it moved to another semester anyway (differential equations).
My phone will either not transmit my voice or not send any data either way. My laptop won't accept AC power. My headlights won't turn on, which could be related to the toggle stick, which broke off a while back but still worked if you jiggled it right.
I did mad. I did desperate. Now all I can do is laugh.
breathing is nice,
-Ian Hogan.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Winter Breeze
Dear blog,
Reviewing my last entry, it is both too long ago and missing probably the biggest, or at least most far reaching, life changes that happened in the window of time covered. A) I lost forty pounds. I'm continuing to lose weight, though much more slowly and with lots of little back slides along the way. I can bench 225 and do a chin-up. I can feel my ribs. It's all very new to me. B) I want to have children. Fun little story there.
Family reunion on the fourth of July weekend 2008 (how could I have forgotten to mention this in the last entry, I do not know). My second cousin Sahara, she was seven then, and the cutest kid you can imagine. She wanted to see a bird's nest in a pine tree about six feet and some inches off the ground. I was conscripted as the one with the necessary strength to elevate her. I could have held her at arm's length for minutes at a time, she was so small.
“Say thank you,” reminded the mother.
“Thank you,” said Saraha.
“Shit, I want kids,” said my broken brain.
And if I was impressed with three weeks last summer, I'm about to hit three months with my current girlfriend. I could ramble all day on the subject, but I think I'll keep it to “we met at church as kids, we held hands on the second date and kissed on the third.” The rest, is history. Also worth mentioning that our families have friendship ties all over the place, so no meeting the parents situations have occurred.
School with a long distance relationship is new. School with any relationship is new, actually. I'm getting by alright, but weekends are my only real spurts of proper happiness. Even then, I've never been happy weekend after weekend for months at a time before. It's like my ribs.
I've kept up on my chain-mail weaving. I just finished a vest for my friend Lionell. People think we're strange. Hallie is next on the list, and then Vivian, and then someone else. Everyone wants armoured. I don't think I've ever given away something that I spent forty hours on before, that's new. But I was planning on it, so no surprises.
My car has outdone its ghettoeness. Before it was merely a piece of junk and an eyesore. The bumper was held on by duct-tape, the gas gauge read whatever you moved the arrow to, bits of plastic left and right were falling off and poking me in the legs. Now the radio is blown out by a jump situation and I have to disconnect the battery with a ten millimeter every time I turn the car off or else it slowly drains the battery.
I was commiserating with another Sephia owner and he related that almost all the same problems exist in his. The opposite window fell out of the track, the radio is blown out, most of the same bits of plastic are falling off/poking him in the leg and his bumper is held on by tape, but again on the opposite side.
“But it handles great in snow!”
Auf weidersehen,
-I
Reviewing my last entry, it is both too long ago and missing probably the biggest, or at least most far reaching, life changes that happened in the window of time covered. A) I lost forty pounds. I'm continuing to lose weight, though much more slowly and with lots of little back slides along the way. I can bench 225 and do a chin-up. I can feel my ribs. It's all very new to me. B) I want to have children. Fun little story there.
Family reunion on the fourth of July weekend 2008 (how could I have forgotten to mention this in the last entry, I do not know). My second cousin Sahara, she was seven then, and the cutest kid you can imagine. She wanted to see a bird's nest in a pine tree about six feet and some inches off the ground. I was conscripted as the one with the necessary strength to elevate her. I could have held her at arm's length for minutes at a time, she was so small.
“Say thank you,” reminded the mother.
“Thank you,” said Saraha.
“Shit, I want kids,” said my broken brain.
And if I was impressed with three weeks last summer, I'm about to hit three months with my current girlfriend. I could ramble all day on the subject, but I think I'll keep it to “we met at church as kids, we held hands on the second date and kissed on the third.” The rest, is history. Also worth mentioning that our families have friendship ties all over the place, so no meeting the parents situations have occurred.
School with a long distance relationship is new. School with any relationship is new, actually. I'm getting by alright, but weekends are my only real spurts of proper happiness. Even then, I've never been happy weekend after weekend for months at a time before. It's like my ribs.
I've kept up on my chain-mail weaving. I just finished a vest for my friend Lionell. People think we're strange. Hallie is next on the list, and then Vivian, and then someone else. Everyone wants armoured. I don't think I've ever given away something that I spent forty hours on before, that's new. But I was planning on it, so no surprises.
My car has outdone its ghettoeness. Before it was merely a piece of junk and an eyesore. The bumper was held on by duct-tape, the gas gauge read whatever you moved the arrow to, bits of plastic left and right were falling off and poking me in the legs. Now the radio is blown out by a jump situation and I have to disconnect the battery with a ten millimeter every time I turn the car off or else it slowly drains the battery.
I was commiserating with another Sephia owner and he related that almost all the same problems exist in his. The opposite window fell out of the track, the radio is blown out, most of the same bits of plastic are falling off/poking him in the leg and his bumper is held on by tape, but again on the opposite side.
“But it handles great in snow!”
Auf weidersehen,
-I
Monday, August 18, 2008
Summer Breeze
Dear blog,
As usual, my time spent in life altering affairs left me with little time and desire to actually write about them. My summer was so packed with fabulous events that it is only now, that life has returned to monotonous academia, that I feel compelled to plunger the depths of my soul for yet more floods of pointless, self-aggrandizing verbiage.
That being said, I hope that the bulk of sane readers have made hasty exit, for this may include some embarrassing material.
I ended the spring semester on May 1st with straight A's in Statistics II, Calculus I (honors), Foundations of Education, Special Education and Multicultural Education (honors) and a bad case of general malaise. Most of the semester had been wonderful. The tail end however, was not a fairy tale ending. I felt that I had no control over one of my grades and received negative comments on a final project, regardless of my top-of-the-class status. Finals had drained me; the whole semester had drained me. My first week upon returning I spent in general disarray before regaining a normal sense of self, with the help of some friends.
Shortly thereafter, my friend and two of her friends were in a bad car accident. The driver hit her head on the rear-view and lost a fair amount of blood. The guy in the back-seat hit his head on his own thigh, and my friend's leg received severe muscle damage.
The driver and rear passenger, part of a group of pot-heads; this had been the only car and driver's license between them, so I came to the rescue (awkward sentence!). Trips to the hospital and doctor's office earned me a fair number of brownie points with the heads and friend. Assistance cleaning my friend's legs in the shower got me a fair few more. I don't really feel much like talking about the subject, but I'm sure it deserves mention in the list o' things I did this summer.
Shortly thereafter an interesting social development: I won't go into the sordid details of the back-story, but overview. A girl, Katie, who I had engaged in befuddled high-school semi-dating messiness and abandoned as a person around age twenty made a re-entrance. A friend named Rheanna, once part of the social circle including myself, the befuddled mate, another befuddled person and a boyfriend and girlfriend or eight, tried desperately and for no discernible reason to get me to talk to Katie again.
I could get no insight into why from, Alex, the boyfriend, nor Sam, the injured observer, nor from my own prodigious mind. I resisted initially, before relenting and talking to Katie once more. I had my own delusions, that I was the kind of person who could remain detached, who could act out revenge, be cold and heartless, could engage in one-night-standery. These goofy thoughts roamed my head as I talked to Katie and slowly came to the realization that I was none of those things.
Meanwhile, I started a summer class, Calculus II, condensed to eight weeks from sixteen at Cuyahoga Community College. The last class I'll ever take there, as I have been taking classes since 2004 and actually have hit some kind of technical time maximum, as well as gained an associates degree. I started making chain-mail, a vest, and two pieces for others to be completed before summer's end.
These things I'm not entirely sure of the start dates, in my head they all blur together as things I started in May and June.
So there I was, making chain-mail while deciding what to make of my new relationship with this old face and learning the tedious facets of algebraic nonsense on top of calculaic theory, when yet another social avenue opened up to me. A girl named Gretta, who I barely knew in my early days of college (while I was still flunking out/going to Community College full time) -- I remember only one clear experience that involved her actually. Her whispering to someone else in the room, though not quietly enough, that I was creeping her out. (I used to sit and stare a lot.) -- came part of the package with Katie, as best friend. She liked the more confident and talkative version of me, and made blatant advances within days of dumping her guy, Dan.
My primary fear of moving in too quickly after a break-up was mitigated by the fact that she was dead sexy, and on June 26 I officially asked her out, around nine in the morning, after a long, long, extraordinarily fun night. I fell in love with her that same hour. She with me three days later. (We're both quick on that draw at least.)
Together, we shattered my old relationship record of four days, by two weeks and three days and possibly a half, depending where one draws the end-line, which isn't quite as clear as the start. (For those less adept at adding, we were together for three weeks.) A very fine three weeks, for the most part. There were some nastier incidents, all on her end unfortunately, and all even more unfortunately outside my small realm of influence. She was kicked out of her mother's place, and then out of our friend's parent's attic, readmitted and kicked out again. These events aside, we had a great time.
The end was messy though. There was some sex, I was not involved, Brandon was, and friend loyalty lines were drawn which lead to Gretta ultimately making up with her mother and moving back home.
I passed Calculus II with a B, had since completed a piece of chain-mail for my sister and then completed my vest. The last piece I made this summer was a strip, about forty inches long with improvised metal hooks on one end and an actual ring (like, for fingers) woven into it, an effective belt. The ring has special significance, I have in the past, worn it whenever in love. The belt I gave to Gretta as a birthday present, as I had promised to do before we dated. I had to give it well in advance of her birthday, not for seven days yet, as I was leaving for school (the essential reason for the breakup). She seems to like it, which makes me glad.
And here I am, skimming the draft and wondering what else I should probably throw in. Fudge it. I don't feel like writing any more.
Obediently,
Ian Hogan.
As usual, my time spent in life altering affairs left me with little time and desire to actually write about them. My summer was so packed with fabulous events that it is only now, that life has returned to monotonous academia, that I feel compelled to plunger the depths of my soul for yet more floods of pointless, self-aggrandizing verbiage.
That being said, I hope that the bulk of sane readers have made hasty exit, for this may include some embarrassing material.
I ended the spring semester on May 1st with straight A's in Statistics II, Calculus I (honors), Foundations of Education, Special Education and Multicultural Education (honors) and a bad case of general malaise. Most of the semester had been wonderful. The tail end however, was not a fairy tale ending. I felt that I had no control over one of my grades and received negative comments on a final project, regardless of my top-of-the-class status. Finals had drained me; the whole semester had drained me. My first week upon returning I spent in general disarray before regaining a normal sense of self, with the help of some friends.
Shortly thereafter, my friend and two of her friends were in a bad car accident. The driver hit her head on the rear-view and lost a fair amount of blood. The guy in the back-seat hit his head on his own thigh, and my friend's leg received severe muscle damage.
The driver and rear passenger, part of a group of pot-heads; this had been the only car and driver's license between them, so I came to the rescue (awkward sentence!). Trips to the hospital and doctor's office earned me a fair number of brownie points with the heads and friend. Assistance cleaning my friend's legs in the shower got me a fair few more. I don't really feel much like talking about the subject, but I'm sure it deserves mention in the list o' things I did this summer.
Shortly thereafter an interesting social development: I won't go into the sordid details of the back-story, but overview. A girl, Katie, who I had engaged in befuddled high-school semi-dating messiness and abandoned as a person around age twenty made a re-entrance. A friend named Rheanna, once part of the social circle including myself, the befuddled mate, another befuddled person and a boyfriend and girlfriend or eight, tried desperately and for no discernible reason to get me to talk to Katie again.
I could get no insight into why from, Alex, the boyfriend, nor Sam, the injured observer, nor from my own prodigious mind. I resisted initially, before relenting and talking to Katie once more. I had my own delusions, that I was the kind of person who could remain detached, who could act out revenge, be cold and heartless, could engage in one-night-standery. These goofy thoughts roamed my head as I talked to Katie and slowly came to the realization that I was none of those things.
Meanwhile, I started a summer class, Calculus II, condensed to eight weeks from sixteen at Cuyahoga Community College. The last class I'll ever take there, as I have been taking classes since 2004 and actually have hit some kind of technical time maximum, as well as gained an associates degree. I started making chain-mail, a vest, and two pieces for others to be completed before summer's end.
These things I'm not entirely sure of the start dates, in my head they all blur together as things I started in May and June.
So there I was, making chain-mail while deciding what to make of my new relationship with this old face and learning the tedious facets of algebraic nonsense on top of calculaic theory, when yet another social avenue opened up to me. A girl named Gretta, who I barely knew in my early days of college (while I was still flunking out/going to Community College full time) -- I remember only one clear experience that involved her actually. Her whispering to someone else in the room, though not quietly enough, that I was creeping her out. (I used to sit and stare a lot.) -- came part of the package with Katie, as best friend. She liked the more confident and talkative version of me, and made blatant advances within days of dumping her guy, Dan.
My primary fear of moving in too quickly after a break-up was mitigated by the fact that she was dead sexy, and on June 26 I officially asked her out, around nine in the morning, after a long, long, extraordinarily fun night. I fell in love with her that same hour. She with me three days later. (We're both quick on that draw at least.)
Together, we shattered my old relationship record of four days, by two weeks and three days and possibly a half, depending where one draws the end-line, which isn't quite as clear as the start. (For those less adept at adding, we were together for three weeks.) A very fine three weeks, for the most part. There were some nastier incidents, all on her end unfortunately, and all even more unfortunately outside my small realm of influence. She was kicked out of her mother's place, and then out of our friend's parent's attic, readmitted and kicked out again. These events aside, we had a great time.
The end was messy though. There was some sex, I was not involved, Brandon was, and friend loyalty lines were drawn which lead to Gretta ultimately making up with her mother and moving back home.
I passed Calculus II with a B, had since completed a piece of chain-mail for my sister and then completed my vest. The last piece I made this summer was a strip, about forty inches long with improvised metal hooks on one end and an actual ring (like, for fingers) woven into it, an effective belt. The ring has special significance, I have in the past, worn it whenever in love. The belt I gave to Gretta as a birthday present, as I had promised to do before we dated. I had to give it well in advance of her birthday, not for seven days yet, as I was leaving for school (the essential reason for the breakup). She seems to like it, which makes me glad.
And here I am, skimming the draft and wondering what else I should probably throw in. Fudge it. I don't feel like writing any more.
Obediently,
Ian Hogan.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Tears
Dear blog,
I cried tonight like I haven't cried in many years.
I walked in on my mother and sister watching Titanic on our ridiculously large television. This put me in mind of one of my favorite scenes. I looked it up on youtube just to listen to the string arrangement of Nearer, My God, To Thee, which I haven't found anywhere else. It can be found here.
I couldn't pin down exactly what did it. There are, in my opinion, a number of tear worthy things to that video. It recalls the horror of people resigned to die or fighting to survive and failing. The music is beautiful. The juxtaposition is heart wrenching. Maybe it was just a trigger for something that has been waiting for years to come out.
As I type, I'm listening again, and still crying. Almost sobbing.
It's just so sad.
-Ian Hogan.
I cried tonight like I haven't cried in many years.
I walked in on my mother and sister watching Titanic on our ridiculously large television. This put me in mind of one of my favorite scenes. I looked it up on youtube just to listen to the string arrangement of Nearer, My God, To Thee, which I haven't found anywhere else. It can be found here.
I couldn't pin down exactly what did it. There are, in my opinion, a number of tear worthy things to that video. It recalls the horror of people resigned to die or fighting to survive and failing. The music is beautiful. The juxtaposition is heart wrenching. Maybe it was just a trigger for something that has been waiting for years to come out.
As I type, I'm listening again, and still crying. Almost sobbing.
It's just so sad.
-Ian Hogan.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Leben ist nicht Änderung
Dear blog,
Life is not change. I'm still chubby, still bearded, and still too busy to devote significant time to the development of this blog.
However, today is my birthday; I'm now twenty-two.
-Ian Hogan.
Life is not change. I'm still chubby, still bearded, and still too busy to devote significant time to the development of this blog.
However, today is my birthday; I'm now twenty-two.
-Ian Hogan.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Ach du liebur!
Dear blog,
I'm becoming a writer. Prior to last Wednesday the longest thing I had ever written was 2300 words; an early teenage attempt at a novel. I got to chapter four before giving up on it entirely. Prior to last Wednesday I had finished a single short story. It was just under 2200 words and was dominated by a sex scene - so, you know, the climax was handed to me. I have started and not completed about five or six sci-fi short stories. Rarely making it beyond a page of text.
Since last Wednesday I have been working on another novel. I have twenty one chapters and eight thousand words as of tonight. About two thousand are old essays and poems that I am incorporating into the plot and about one thousand are character sketches, chapter titles and *'s that I have been using to mark divisions within chapters. Considering that, it is still almost three times as long as anything I've ever written in my life, and there are no signs of slowing down.
Chapter four is complete, if subject to minor revision at a later date. For your reading pleasure:
I'm becoming a writer. Prior to last Wednesday the longest thing I had ever written was 2300 words; an early teenage attempt at a novel. I got to chapter four before giving up on it entirely. Prior to last Wednesday I had finished a single short story. It was just under 2200 words and was dominated by a sex scene - so, you know, the climax was handed to me. I have started and not completed about five or six sci-fi short stories. Rarely making it beyond a page of text.
Since last Wednesday I have been working on another novel. I have twenty one chapters and eight thousand words as of tonight. About two thousand are old essays and poems that I am incorporating into the plot and about one thousand are character sketches, chapter titles and *'s that I have been using to mark divisions within chapters. Considering that, it is still almost three times as long as anything I've ever written in my life, and there are no signs of slowing down.
Chapter four is complete, if subject to minor revision at a later date. For your reading pleasure:
The Dream
Towering serpentine body rising out of the sea, preparing to plow downward to the deck. I could only gape up at it, immobilized by fear.
(optics)
“No!” someone screamed. The snake was gone. “Fire arrows just in case! Volley on my mark! FIRE!” I grabbed my bow, wondering where the draw-cord was. Aha! I thought. This is a boomerang not a bow. Drawing it back across my body I prepared to fling with all the force I could muster.
(humour)
Seeing it sail through the air I felt satisfied. A hand clasped on my shoulder as it finally splashed in the distance. “You idiot,” he said. “Those were the drugs.” I nodded and smiled, still satisfied. They threw me overboard.
* * *
Our band of mighty warrior-sailors were back in the game, traveling through a cave. Here, stone like chocolate pudding, dark brown and smooth ripples, morphing easily into the floor. Deeper in! I knew not what we sought, deeper though I went. Brown puddings turned to ice, blue glass, rippling until it shattered; jagged edges, array of knives.
(marmalade)
Great, tall oak doors with brass handles all across my field of vision. Through! On deeper in, past the gate, I knew not where to. Into a hall, towering high, Dutch architecture. Who are the Dutch? I wondered.
“Be quiet, they are the Dutch,” he said, and I accepted.
Through the hall, my warrior-band long gone and forgotten. A smaller gate, the back way. Through! Onward and downward, I knew not where. Stairs down, red cloth and a reflecting pool at sunset. A reflecting pool outside the hall of the Mountain?
“It had been an opera hall you know. The stage was the favorite place for men of the evening (Aye, men, not ladies) to laze about their business. They never made much money.”
(haze)
Silence. I pleaded, please silence, turn down that glare, I beg you. I’m sleeping you know. Sleeping and dreaming, I know; Should this be? I should sleep – I must be awake.
* * *
Friday, February 1, 2008
What have I done?
Dear blog,
At the behest (thinly veiled command) of my professors I just enrolled in the honors program in my college and have forms ready to apply for honors credit in two of my courses, calculus and multicultural education. Between those two, if I succeed, I will get seven credits at the honors level.
The program requires that I take two two-credit "colloquiums" and a three credit thesis course (fourteen credits once I do those) and that I earn at least twenty credits at the honors level (do the math people, just two more three credit courses to complete). If I succeed in everything, I will graduate with honors, get one of those stupid tassels to go with my "gown" like the prigs in high-school had, and an indication on my degree.
This isn't cool. I'm not an honors student. I work my ass off in all my classes and this is how I'm repaid!? I'm outraged.
Ian Hogan.
At the behest (thinly veiled command) of my professors I just enrolled in the honors program in my college and have forms ready to apply for honors credit in two of my courses, calculus and multicultural education. Between those two, if I succeed, I will get seven credits at the honors level.
The program requires that I take two two-credit "colloquiums" and a three credit thesis course (fourteen credits once I do those) and that I earn at least twenty credits at the honors level (do the math people, just two more three credit courses to complete). If I succeed in everything, I will graduate with honors, get one of those stupid tassels to go with my "gown" like the prigs in high-school had, and an indication on my degree.
This isn't cool. I'm not an honors student. I work my ass off in all my classes and this is how I'm repaid!? I'm outraged.
Ian Hogan.
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