WAG - The paperwork has been filed

It's official. I turned in the form today.

My application to graduate from the Univeristy of Missouri - Columbia this year has been completed, filed, and pending review.

Not only am I a senior looking to graduate but the university has offically been notified of that desire. Now they will keep closer tabs on my transcript and me (with a diploma waiting in the wings).

Each week it becomes a bit more clear, but it's slowly starting to sink in that I'm a senior.

If I give it a bit more time, it may hit me... but I'll have to slow down first.

I'll tentatively schedule impact for late December/early January depending on family obligations, person resonsibilities, and bowl game prospects.

'T_Minus_a_googol'

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WAG - Lost Post

Note from 2005: In combing through the old posts, some interesting unfinished posts were found. This is one of them -

Note: I will be out this weekend (Friday night through most of Saturday) on a canoeing/camping trip with my Royal Ranger church group. I tentatively agreed to help out a month ago, but in the rush, had forgotten about the commitment until Sunday. During the two weeks when I was out of the loop, some commanders who had originally promised to go opted out and more boys showed an interest in going. Considering those shifting integers and fractions, my attendance became even more important. Since I have become one of the point people on this trip, concerning details, at the time of this posting, I should be floating downriver.

To follow through on my promise of uninterrupted (or at least less frequently), here is a flashback posting I’ve been mulling over.

The contents of the trumpet man’s pockets

A quick explanation of the title before moving into the main feature:

I believe I have mentioned the subject before, but I have long been intrigued by the premise of the short story Contents of the Dead Man's Pockets by
Jack Finney , the author who also wrote “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and “The Love Letter.”

A gross oversimplification of his story, which I WOULD ENCOURAGE YOU TO READ (when you have the time, of course), a man finds faces death and morosely wonders what people will think of him should he die and the only clue to his demise be a crumpled piece of yellow paper filled with unintelligible scribblings.

It is curious to ponder what conjectures or judgments people might make on your life based on what items you were carrying at the moment of your death.

This thought has floated through my head recently since I’ve taken to carting my trumpet around campus in a duffel bag. With the combination of student staff responsibilities, classes, and Marching Mizzou (which is technically also a class, but it is more like a club in setup and time commitments), I have switched to an easier mode of transporting my instrument. It’s lighter than a regular trumpet case, I can cram more stuff into it, and it attracts less attention when I slip in from one world to the next . Having a trumpet case sit next to you at the copy desk or Residential Life meetings is sure to draw more attention than other methods.

Since I have been hitting certain functions or obligations back to back to back, more items have ended up in my makeshift instrument case. Adding in the seasonal increase of traffic around Mizzou (coming on the heals of the summer where the university lived up to its claim of being a pedestrian campus), I’ve more than once had a near hit crossing the street and wondered what people may have made of the items I was carting around.

Here is an incomplete list of items that I’ve toted around in my bag. Also realize not all the items were ever ALL in the bag at the same time. Make whatever assumptions you will:

One brass trumpet,
One metal mouthpiece,
One music lyre held together with rubber bands,
One rubber band ball
One flip folder,
Two bottles valve oil

Field chart

water cup
Dixie
3 copies of schedule
3 Fliers: "Drinking and Driving," "How can I reduce my risk of being carjacked?" and "Crime Prevention for people with physical disabilities"
caribineer
trumpet trigger
hard candy
legal pad
checkbook
candy wrappers
granola bars
One copy of the Marching Mizzou student handbook and syllabus,
One copy of the Marching Mizzou 2004 Tentative Performance Schedule,
One copy of the Cramer/Defoe Staff Training Manual 2004,
One copy of the Cramer and Defoe halls on-call schedule – Fall 2004,
One bottle with a “Fruit Dazzle – Strawberry” label filled with tap water,
One Sony Discman CD player,
One set of heavily worn earphones,
One burned CD titled “Southern Sojourns: Beating it to Border,”

One squished banana,
One umbrella cover,
One busted umbrella,
One copy of Working with Words: A Handbook for Media Writers and Editors
One copy of the Columbia Missourian Handbook of Local Style
One copy desk log

One Journalism and Mass Communication learning community notebook

(list remains incomplete, though you get the idea...)

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WAg - Quietly, and with little fanfare,
the soapbox is once again mounted…

Wonder who will still be around to listen…?

I am on the tail end of one of the most chaotic, twisting, challenging, psychotic, frustrating, rewarding, emotion packed periods I’ve ever experienced.

Note: I very easily could have inserted many more adjectives into the previous sentence

Over the last five weeks, I’ve run five different gauntlets. I had a week of personal anguish due to a serious misunderstanding with my girlfriend’s mother, I had a franticly paced last week at the Missourian (including covering an election), I then worked to get through student staff training and preparing the halls for incoming residents, juggled opening week activities and band camp, and am beginning to sling through the start of my classes.

It has been maddening at times, but at least the scenery keeps changing.

Also included in this period, though not directly related to the above topics, I turned 22, moved twice, purchased hundreds of dollars in books, and never resorted to substance abuse despite numerous jokes about binging on alcohol, glue sticks, or marker fumes.

I have learned a lot about myself; both deriving some important pieces of self-knowledge and recognizing some new questions to be ask.

Lately, my life has been one long haul, and as far as I know, it’s not close to being over yet. After weathering the last few weeks, I feel better prepared and more confident about moving on. I still have no idea what the next destination will be, but that isn’t stopping me from continuing to press forward. A long time ago, I learned the alternative – stopping – not only isn’t a serious option, but that it is boring as well.

Along with moving onward, I hope to start updating regularly again. At this time, I am making no signal that my site producing new updates because I want to be sure I am back in the grove before doing so.

Only time will tell (as well as I) if this long running quasi-experiment is to continue (and can recover from a month’s unannounced sabbatical).

Here’s to time.

Salud.

'I_said_I_would_return'

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WAG - What to add to the toolbox?

Here is my conundrum brought on by the continuation of a Cramer-Defoe staff tradition started during training week:

At the end of every night, we would vote to recognize a person. The nominations could be for being optimistic, slinging through a lot of crud, being a good leader, being a good servant, etc. The winner would receive a toolbox. It was filled with items added by previous winners and they were to add something (and tell a story about its meaning or symbolism) before passing it on.

On the last night of training, before the vote our hall coordinator, our boss, said the person to receive it would decide whether or not to continue the tradition. After a brief discussion where pretty much everyone said we should keep it going, we started taking nominations. After a few speeches, we had one person go through every member of the staff and tout their strengths and contributions before nominating the hall coordinator for bringing us all together.

It should be no surprise that after a feel good speech like that, we gave the award to our boss for having to put up with all of us.

Anyway, after over a week’s absence, the toolbox reappeared at last night’s meeting.

I ended up winning the award for juggling opening week activities (Dinners, scavenger hunts, Tiger Walk, and more) with band camp responsibilities along with general peppiness.

I now have a week to think of what to add to the toolbox.

Here’s a list of the current items in the toolbox:

A shiny Bluesband harmonica,

A battered gray carabineer,

A box of party snaps (those Chinese gunpowder and paper noisemakers),

A blue knitted pad,

A package of maple and brown sugar oatmeal,

A container of instant Krazy Glue,

A pin with Stewie from Family Guy on it,

A handheld battery powered fan,

An earthen shot glass from Spain with a bull on it,

A red ribbon that reads TEAM PLAYER from 1999,

And a group picture of this year’s staff

Note: I'd list the significance of the items if it weren't for the fact that some of them are pretty personal and not something to be thoughtlessly posted in cyberspace. You are free to make your own conjunctions, but will receive no confirmations from me other than the meaning I will attach to my own addition.

With such an eclectic collection, I wonder what I should put in?

I’ll let you know in a week what I added to the mix.

'care_to_make_a_contribution'

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WAG - Finally

We were allowed to talk again!

All is now right in the world...

'Life_moves_on'

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