WAG - Smiling and Shrugging
On a Short Stop in Sullivan
Thus I start my second week of Christmas vacation and only now have I spent more than 48-hours in Sullivan. The 72-hour mark will have to wait until 2004, however, with my impending departure for the Independence Bowl.
We got back in the afternoon and I spent most of my evening trying to reorientate myself. I unpacked my Christmas trip bags. I did my best to rearrange my room, but a couple of six-foot high bookshelves have been moved into the middle of my room and extra mattresses crammed onto the top bunk of my bed. Who knew I’d be coming back to less room than the dorm cell I left behind?
Of course, it has oft been noted, that if I came home more often than my sister did, her room would be designated the storage room and not mine. Right now, I am trying to see if I can schedule a few more trips home over the next semester. Granted, since the previous record was one, it shouldn’t be too hard, so we’ll see.
Other than making piles of clothes to take and things to drop off in Columbia (where the start of a long bus ride awaits me), I spent a bit of time putting my computer together. After wrestling wires and connections, I found my mouse didn’t work. I spent over an hour trying to figure out what was wrong (and discovered how dependent I was on it [and how fuzzy I was with the keyboard HOT keys]) before it spontaneously started working again. I didn’t do anything new other than bump it and see the cursor move for the first time all day.
My hatred of modern technology, already sparked, ignited into a mini-inferno when I tried looking into my Tiger Mail MU account. I was quite chagrinned to see our system was being updated again. Gritting my teeth with a reluctance to begin, I typed in my name and password.
Then I repeated the process about 20 more times.
I hate to invoke cliches, even if they fit, because it can be indicative of a lack of imagination or the use of repetition in place of creation. Why use a tired phrase that has been over used (and over abused) when an extra moment of thought or at least the consultation of a thesaurus can come up with something better?
That being stated, I find myself making the same old Dibertian observation that the more the system is improved, the more inefficient it becomes. Somewhere around the 8th attempted log-in I noticed the disclaimer that read, “Users shouldn't experience any service interruption.” As in things shouldn’t go wrong, but if they do, you can’t say we didn’t warn you.
As both an English major and a human being, cop-out excuses like that really annoy me. The weasel-like nature of the wording, and the attitude behind that, bugged me about as much as the fact that the system was down.
Of course, when I gave up on the page, and started to type in another address, but accidentally hit Refresh, and the page finally loaded… that was when I felt both vindicated and that the wind had been taken out of my sails.
“YES! Oh…”
Technology. Without it, they’re be no prank phone calls, traffic jams, spam emails, or 24-hour Michael Jackson coverage. Imagine where you’d be.
Sorry. That last bit of venom came from reading the transcript of the interview Mr. Jackson gave to 60 Minutes. I will neither quote nor link to it, but for those of you interested in it, let me warn you are likely to experience one or more of the following symptoms: a) shaking your head in disbelief, b) indignant anger, c) sympathy for a man who is obviously disconnected, d)crawling of skin, e) flashbacks of his music prior to the first allegations, and/or f) the conclusion that even if this round of accusations aren’t true, this is one messed-up man.
One must be careful if they are going to do a late night news crunch after a long day of being tucked in a car, cramped in a room, and oppressed by the sadness in the world that sometimes feels innate.
I don’t know how much of this is post-holiday blues, the sentiment that Sullivan feels less like a “home” than it ever has before and that is unsettling, or that these are simply the tired rantings of a person not having much time to unwind before coiling back up again.
I don’t know for sure, but I’d wager the remnants of my Christmas money (that which wasn’t spent on books or DVDs) that it’s probably a twisted combination of the three.
What are the proportions? Well… I’ll have to get back to you about that.
And that follow-up may or may not be coming quickly. I’m not sure if I’ll be totally incommunicado during the Shreveport trip. I don’t want to get into details beforehand, for that might unnecessarily complicate things if they don’t come through, but I will do my best to squeeze some extra posts in (even if I must write them on paper and later transcribe them).
Regardless of what of what happens in the short run, rest assured I have many more things to write about. Tales of Christmas pageants and early arrivals and cringing cousins and the Zen of returns and the evils of “Historic Riverfronts” and other rants that I have mentally composed will all be told in due time. Whether they are recounted in posts, stories verbally swapped, or just secretly cherished, who knows?
I just want to wish all a continued Happy Holidays and just remind everyone that when facing unanswerable questions concerning your future, sometimes it is better to smile and shrug and say that “time will tell…”
'As_it_always_does'
