Excitement!

Excitement!
(Also, this picture was in school a couple months ago and I absolutely lost my composure… so many memories)

It seems that everything I have done lately has resulted in breaking a previously made promise, whether it be to myself or to others. Maybe it’s the promise that I will go to work 5 minutes early, I will be nicer to my co-workers, I will study harder, I won’t let my students bother me so much, I won’t eat another choco-pie when I am sitting all alone in my apartment while watching a marathon of backlogged TV episodes of my favorite shows and no one is going to know but I’ll know and…, well, you get the point. This remarkable penchant for failing at self-imposed boundaries reveals a stunning weakness of spirit and will that I am slightly unsettled by. However, in this case, it has not resulted in disappointment and self-loathing, but in a most wondrous and exciting happenstance: this blog post. This is not in the aforementioned chronological-transcription of events that I said would happen for my blog posts since I have rediscovered time and energy (but never the talent!) necessary to resume a few weeks ago. Instead, I again break tradition to tell you of my recent joy in life.

You are as-of-yet unaware with my heightened stress levels that the last month has subjected to my life, but I assure you that, through many failings of my own, I have come to a point in my life where I need to de-stress. For a quick summary: tomorrow my walls will be stripped and re-papered to remove the copious amounts of black mold peppering it, work has gotten steadily more oppressive with it’s micro-managing, the semester is winding down and the new one begins on Monday in all of its glory, I’m trying to juggle three online courses (none of which are for credit, just personal enrichment. So, really, I’m just a nerd), I’m trying to keep abreast with TV shows and movies and friends and this blog, and I am trying to think about life after my contract. Plus, being separated from loved ones and your biggest support structure while constantly subjected to the brutal perspective that you are not worthy of respect or are not deserving of even a modicum of decency is a little stressful for me. Nevertheless, as the great Freddy Mercury said, “I consider it a challenge before all human race and I never lose!”

YAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!

Which brings me to the excitement with which I am currently imbued. As many in the fantasy realm are aware, a monumental chapter in history was closed with the release of A Memory of Light, also known as “that last F*&%ing book in the Wheel of Time Series.” I promised myself that I wouldn’t go all “nerd/geek/loser” over it, but now that it is sitting in front of me… GAH! THE CULMINATION IS HERE! THE 14TH BOOK! I CAN REEEAAAADDDDD!!!

*Achem* Excuse me. That’s been trapped in there a while. SOOOooooOOOoo, I’m going to go start that. I have 909 pages of sheer literary bliss to wander through in mind-reeling amazement. I don’t know if you can tell, but I am incredibly excited about this. This is my way of relieving stress. This is my way of righting my listing world. This is how I justify not sleeping at night. Now if only I can convince my bosses that I can give all my kids essays while I read in school…

Korean Christmas

I know that it’s a little late to be posting this, but I still wanted to share it with you. I spent my first Christmas away from long-time-friends and family this year (and Chanukah, too, but that was covered here) and was a little unsure how festive this season would be. Part of my apprehension about the season had to do with how few vacation days we had to celebrate. Now, I’m used to having at least two weeks for Christmas and New Year’s since that is how life worked in the American public school system: You generally had a week of play time between Christmas and New Year’s, sometimes 2 if they fell on Wednesdays. Then, in college, I had final exams in the first two weeks and was home until the first week of January (Hooray for J-Term classes!). Here, we had Christmas Day off (A Tuesday) and New Year’s Day off (Again, Tuesday). Couldn’t even take off the Monday… So, could we go anywhere? No. Make plans? Not really. What ever could we do?

First I decided to set up my Christmas decorations in my apartment:

This is how I prepare for Santa in Korea.

As my parents were kind enough to send over a package of gifts and festive items to make the spirits bright (no spirits in the package though, suitable spirits were acquired here), I displayed them under a fake tree and a coat hanger-turned-general-purpose-Christmas-pole. Preparations complete, I still had to find a way to celebrate.

“Hmmm…. I can help with that!”

Chris’s girlfriend, Angels, was kind enough to invite us to her apartment for a little party on Christmas Eve. So we went over and had some fun, drank some wine, watched some Aeon Flux (apparently it was an animated TV series on MTV?) ate tons of delicious food prepared by Angela and Chris, and enjoyed ourselves. I was made happiest by the lovely cookie I found:

The perfect Yin-Yang Cookie. It means that balance and harmony will dictate the life of whosoever consumes it.

So that’s a good Christmas Eve, but what about Christmas Day? Well, we were debating the available options – go to a bar and bring food, go to a Chili’s or Outback Steakhouse or some such restaurant, or go to a place and cook food – when our bosses surprised us by allowing the use of their apartment! We were incredibly thankful for the opportunity to cook a delicious Christmas meal, do some Secret Santa stuff, relax with friends, and enjoy a fully furnished apartment. Everyone brought a little something to cook up or drink down, a Secret Santa gift, and a joviality the likes of which had never been seen before in Korea. Me? Oh, the newest co-worker Lindsey was my Secret Santa so I got her some chocolates, wine, and a bottle of Soju. What food did I make? Traditional Jewish food of latkes. So I’ll just let the pictures do the talking for how well it turned out:

The view from our bosses’ apartment.

“….Lo, on the day of His birth, they feasted upon the latkes…”

Our delectable spread!

That’s a plateful.

The gang feasting.

Secret Santa!

Christmas success! Ah, I forgot to mention that we got another little gift from the universe. At 9:00 PM on Christmas Day, our newest teacher arrived from the United States. His name is Nolan and he is replacing Ryan down in LangCon. Here he is with us out at dinner a few nights later:

Nolan (L), Phil (C), Andrew (R) prepping some delicious Korean BBQ.

Here’s hoping for the best in his stay!

Finally, the last, best part of December. I got a facebook message from someone I hadn’t seen in three years: Paul Cross. His sister is apparently a teacher up in Seoul and he got some time off from work to come visit. So:

Paul (L) and HyeMee(R) out for a mid-afternoon jaunt through Seoul.

After this photo, I actually had to split for the airport because I was slightly more excited about a different event. Lindsay Van Brocklin had graciously agreed to take one month away from her job search and her family to come visit me for a month. She landed on Dec. 29th and brought with her a new energy and life to my depressing little apartment in the middle of snowy Korea. You’ll hear more about her once we get to January’s make-up posts, just suffice it to say that she arrived and made me the happiest I’d been the whole time I’ve been here. Ok, too much about the personal life! Next!

Recap: Christmas was all about – bosses’ apartment, great food prepared ourselves, successful Secret Santa, & new teacher.
Got to catch up with Paul, Lindz arrived.

What did January have in store? Read about it next!

Gamer!

Remember that part where I told you that I was becoming an amateur game developer? Yeah, I’m sure I mentioned it in my post about how I was starting these online courses, one of which is on Python Programming. In fact, if I recall correctly, I also promised that I would share some of the games that I developed with you all to prove that you can teach an old dog new programming languages (even ones who hate math and mix metaphors). I could try to make stuff up and tell you about about things I don’t know, but I do that enough that I’ll just let you read about Python on Wikipedia and you can do your own searches from there on (actually I just have no idea what it is). Suffice to say, I am learning basic functions and trying to create little games. It has only been two weeks for me, so I can’t really say that I’ve done anything exciting, but I have completed several assignments and felt that maybe I could share them with you if you want to waste a minute of time.

First, this course uses a version of Python that has been compiled by the professors of the course, which is located for free and open use at CodeSkulptor.org. If you feel so inclined, you can even just click through that (use the docs section) to find code and try and fit it all together. My “programs” (term used loosely here) only work in this Python host/website-thingy. Forgive my awkward stumblings as these new fangled technologies and computers are new to me. I’ll give you a brief run-down of how to interact with CodeSkulptor so you can actually run these programs without getting too frustrated. The left side, where you see all the text is where the codes go that will eventually make a program or game. The right side is where much of the code will print out (most of the time). You have to hit the play button in the upper left-hand side of the text box to actually run the code and the return arrow (last one in that row) will stop the code. Just worry about those two buttons, the code window, and the read-out window. Again: play button starts the program, the return arrow stops the program, look at the right side of the display to see what’s going on.

Ok, so I’ll lead with my first program: rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock. This plays a game of rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock like on Big Bang Theory (my professors are total NERDS!). You input your guess at the bottom where you see rpsls(“text”). Make sure you input your guess between the quotes and exactly as it appears at the top of the program. Right now I can only code games so that words have to exactly match. If you capitalize something incorrectly or add a space or misspell something, the game will stop and you’ll end up panicking. Great, now you think I’m an idiot because you messed up… Figures. So input a guess and see some words pop up in the read-out on the right. Just keep hitting that play button at the top of the left side and you start a new game. If you want to play multiple games at once, just copy and paste (or type in) rpsls() and put your guess in quotation marks between the parentheses. The read-out will run each game separately and print out your results! Awesome!!! Yay! You played a game I created!

My second game didn’t work out so well (failed miserably, that one did), so I’m going to skip straight to the one I created today: The Stopwatch Game. This game is so much more advanced than the rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock game. The first thing you’ll notice is a pop-up with a big black box and three buttons on the left. This is a graphic user interface and I created it (Oooooooh boooooyyy!) Not too flashy, but I don’t need to be to impress you, you already are impressed. Ha! This game you don’t need to see the right-side read-out window next to the code. All you need to see is the pretty display with the buttons and the black canvas with pretty white letters. This game is fairly simple: try and stop the stopwatch on the exact second (1.0, 2.0, 59.0, whatever.0 since you can run this forever, in theory). Hit the ‘Start’ button to start the game and then hit the ‘Stop’ button when you are confident enough that you’ll hit the second on the what-for (mixing metaphors again?)! Each time you hit ‘Stop’ it’ll record a try and you’ll notice the right-hand number in the top left count up by one. If you land on an exact second, you’ll see both numbers increase since it is a try and a win! Congrats! You can’t cheat and land on a second and then keep spamming the ‘Stop’ button to rack up more ‘wins’ since I coded against that (nyah nyah nyah). After you’ve hit stop, you can keep going by just hitting ‘Start’ again. This won’t reset your wins or tries. Or, if you are feeling a little put out and want to start over, just hit ‘Reset’ and that’ll reset all the things.

So those are the games that I’ve made so far. I hope you enjoy sharing my little successes. Pretty soon I’ll be creating the next Morrowind…

Creatings the firsts!

These past two days have been amazing firsts! It all started yesterday when I got my first care package from home. My family was kind enough to send me my absentee ballot, one of my favorite cups (Ole Miss!), garlic salt, and some Twizzlers and Skittles (surprises, both of those candies, but much appreciated). First package!

Today was even more of a great day for firsts! Firstly (Ha!) I used that garlic salt on my eggs this morning and it was more delicious than anything before! Also, I paid my first bill as a resident here in Korea. Now, all I know is that it was a utility bill for 35,750 won (or thereabouts). I’m not sure if it was a water, electricity, or gas bill. Hell, I don’t even know how many utility bills I’ll have, I just know that I have to pay them if I want to enjoy a civilized life. Sorry, no pictures were taken to cast that moment in immortality, so you’ll just have to imagine me as a beaming lad excited by the fact that I’m actually supporting myself (except I’m standing at a Korean bank machine paying a bill I don’t understand a word of instead of sending a check in the mail)! I needed some help with this transaction, which Jesse was so kind to provide: walking me down to the bank (it being on the 1st floor of the same building) and telling me what buttons to press on the machine. I got a receipt saying that my balance was lower after the transaction than before, so I can only assume that I paid the bill. If I disappear in a few weeks and my family starts receiving letters for ransom, then you’ll know that I’m doing this all wrong. In fact, I may be sending money to the wrong people entirely (on the plus side, such consistent and sizable contributions may make me the Korean equivalent of a Don by the time my visa expires).

The other two firsts are actually intertwined. Today, I sent my first letter back to the United States! Phil had to show me where the post office is and we went before school started today. I’d say it was an excellent use of prep time. Having seen the cost of sending a package from the U.S. to Korea, I was expecting something exorbitant. I found out it was roughly 1,250. Won, that is. So roughly $1.13. Now, the item that was so important it necessitated me accidently swiping that on my credit card (yeah, they didn’t tell me the price before I gave them the card) was my absentee ballot! First time voting for President! I don’t know if it’ll get there in time, but I’ve done my civic duty and tried everything I can to make sure that my vote counts (as much as it can in our political system, haha). Yay!

With all of these firsts happening in the past two days, I feel like an actual, human being here in Korea. Now, all I need is my first full paycheck and my first trip around Korea and I’ll have covered all my bases, I think. So this wasn’t much of a post, but it was important to me. Hooray for firsts!

My Apartment

All of you have been bugging me about how my apartment looks. “Oh, Jon!” You ask ever so innocently, “What is your apartment like? Do you have all the space in Korea? Can you swim in your bathtub? Can you see Russia from your house?” Ok, I honestly don’t know how many of you asked even one those questions, but I know a couple of you have thought it (in between fantasizing about strolling through San Diego wackin it and wondering if that thing on your toe is a mole or a bot fly larvae). Any way you cut it, my life is apparently the gravitational center of yours (thank you) and you are dying to know. I figure that I can then approach this two ways: 1) get you on skype right now and give you a tour of my place or 2) tell you to stuff it and come visit me where I can give you a literal tour of the place. Since I do not have internet to do 1) and you don’t have time or money do to 2), then we must invariably compromise. As I am more generous than our Federal Government when it comes to compromise, I will do the following: post some freakin pictures so that you will get off my back. If you do not like this compromise, come up with a better idea. No? Don’t have one Mr/s. Smart McAleck-pants?! Didn’t think so. (Miserable jackals…)

The Hall.

This is my hallway. Bask in its straightness and its cluttered accouterment. I have a stove (kind of), room to walk (kind of) and room to wok (ha! PUNNY!). That’s a glorious fridge you see on your right behind the stove (which is that thing next to the sink hidden by kind-of-clean dishes), and trash on your left (next to that shelf-space for my ramen. And bread). As you will notice, I was very careful to take this picture from outside my apartment. This required much hardship on my part as I was forced to scan the landing for several minutes, making sure that no one was coming to find some weird white dude only partly wearing his shoes and taking a picture of an apartment. So, several furtive fakes and aborted attempts later (I juked the hell out of that defense), I give you this shot. If you do not stop right now and look at it again, I won’t really know, but I’ll know. So appreciate it! The reason I went through such mental agony was for that little section you see at the bottom. There is a small well where you see a mat and a lot of dirt. This section is where every person who ever entered, enters, or will enter the apartment removes their soiled excuses of outer footwear so as the unclean demons don’t jump all over my apartment. Yes, I know they must be small and stupid since so short a well clearly defeats them and they don’t think to utilize blades of grass nor other accumulated filth to scale the difference (good thing they can’t read computers either, right… right?), but who am I to refuse to join in a little bonding ritual like communal/cultural torture?

Now raise your eyes and imagine you are walking down the hall. No, you made it to the door already, trying to sneak a peek at the goodies in that white closet. You are so naughty! They are not for your prying eyes, sir/madam. First notice the doorjamb on your left. Behind said border is the bathroom, which looks like:

Le’ Bath!

Aha! Oh… it looks normal. Well shoot. Um. Hm. For those of you clever enough to notice that this photo is blurry, congrats, you have good eyesight. I did that to soften the harshness of seeing a bathroom. That and I don’t want you to read all of my toiletries and judge me (but if you can tell by shape and color, then you need a new hobby and probably shouldn’t call yourself “Buffalo Bill 2.” That’s creepy). Really, the only part of this that is worth seeing is that coiled silver snake that runs from the faucet to someplace hidden from view by the door. That snake is not my bathroom Transforming (creepy, but cool. I call it Cooreepy, cuz Creepool sounds creepier than creepy. And it sounds like creeople which is used to describe creepy people, leading to mass homophone confusion). That is my showerhead. Yeah, my shower comes from my sink and yeah, my whole bathroom is my shower. Oh, and yeah, that mirror is directly where I shower. “Good morning!” “Um, never mind, you are way to gross (I slept with that??? I need to stop drinking and get my life in order…).” Needless to say, I have to work on my smile, lest my mirror-world-me Psycho’s me in the perfect crime. The only real danger I have (because I have a killer smile, thank you) is that I don’t spray my toilet paper with the shower. Haven’t done that yet, which has done wonders for my confidence.

Now if you leave the bathroom and walk straight ahead (that would be the right side of the hallway, good job with lefts and rights) you see this lovely room:

My-ke Lau-ndry.

That is my laundry room! Notice the exquisite décor, the beautiful sash, the dusty everything, and my sad little washing machine. Poor guy needed a bath when I showed up cuz it was black. Notice the color now? Not black, you say? Well then, thank you, I clean up nice (I know it is grammatically correct to say ‘well’ and not ‘nice’ because I teach English, but no). “But, Jon!” you exclaim as you perch on the edge of your seat for a closer look, “Your dryer seems to have leapt from the window in response to all that oppressive dust, for you do not have one!” How astute! You really are my smartest friend/family member/former professor! As I smile devilishly, I will inform you in a very conspiratorial manner that: I do not have one 😉 (that’s a sly wink). Indeed I use various racks and other 12th century technology to achieve approximate dryness for my clothes. Unfortunately, this has led to a general stretching of clothes since I cannot put them in the dryer and I may have to stoop to the level of that percipient Weezer line and start workin out at the gym to fit my underwear (you just sang that to yourself in your head didn’t you. Go on, go back and try to read it without singing, and all you do is end up William Shatner-ing it into broken syllables. 2/2?). But enough about my curious cleaning closet! If you simply pull your head out of this closet and turn towards your left (top of the hall) you will see this picture:

The Arena.

Ah, yes. My master bedroom/activity room/living room/office/computer room/dining space/meditation room/gym/entertainment room. That is my bed you see in the right corner and a closet you see straight ahead of you. Now for the rest of the room:

The Gateway to The Arena. And the Vomitorium of the Arena (a.k.a. The Window).

The Palatial Cloud-Pallet of His Holy Highness (Protector of the Realm and Righteous Defender of the Downtrodden). With quaint music box for sweet night-notes and luminary device for mitternacht musings.

Admire. Praise. Wonder at it all. Ah, tis beautiful, I know. A bit on the bland side, even for a minimalist like myself, but it does have such lovely charms (you made it to 1218 again! Woohoo word count!). For example, that bed you see on the floor is a combination box spring and mattress without a frame since that apparently broke under the last occupant. That bookshelf has many tomes of vaulted learning from which I have begun to sample – Sedaris’s Naked, Hesse’s Steppenwolf, some Coelho, Kafka, Korean for Dummies, Tolstoi’s Sebastopol, and so forth – that would surely have made me the pre-eminent intellectual if I were to start college right now in some place like UVM (get it? A place where I could smoke weed and be, like, way deep man on philosophy). Truly, though, I am enjoying the selection that the previous occupants have left and hope that my own contributions of Epic Fantasy and Terry Pratchett don’t make me the intellectual runt of the litter. Always good to keep reading! But enough about books: that window you see above my bed looks into the beautiful alleyway/driveway next to my apartment building and. Perhaps you have noticed that there is a sheet hanging over that window. That’s because it is bright in the morning and there are no blinds. That delightful piece of pea and olive cloth is ripped from the sheets. So I sleep on that stuff (Oh. The. Horror.). Not that that hanging tatter actually does anything – I still wake at 6 from the magnesium display that charges through – but it is a good measure until I do something about it. At least I have my music with me!

In all truth: I think this is a great apartment. I am in Korea, living in a pretty much free apartment where I only have to pay for utilities, I have everything I need (or soon will), and I can walk to work in 2 minutes. Hot soup! I’ll decorate my room a bit with my Bonnaroo tapestries and it’ll be a step up from college. Now writing all of this has exhausted me, so I am going to sleep on that floor-mattress.

Strange Thoughts on a Wednesday Night.

Have you ever had the distinct feeling that absolutely no one was watching you? I imagine the religious and the paranoid don’t, but some of us are lucky enough to maybe someday experience such a feeling. And I don’t mean just that no person can see you – going up on top of a mountain or deep into the woods still allows for the remote possibility of a small rodent or bird to still spy you in the brush. I mean the state where you suddenly realize that there is no one looking at you. It is cliché now to say “It felt like someone was watching me, a small itch between my shoulder blades and the raised hair on my neck telling me to be careful,” or some such sentiment. But I cannot think of a time where someone told me that they knew that no living thing was near them or looking at them.

I got to ruminating upon this subject the other day while I was sitting in my apartment, lying on my bed underneath the window (dreading the moment when I finally lifted myself from my warm covers to start the day). There is no conceivable way that any living thing could have seen me where I was since I was underneath the windows and my door was locked and no one has a key except me. For as long as I lay in this place, not a single entity could physically see me until I moved (or they busted in the door in fear of my rotting corpse lowering the resale value of the apartment). Yet I didn’t feel different before I started thinking about it.

Perhaps my ideas of privacy and anonymity are heightened by my current situation. By that, I mean that for the first time in my life I am not living with someone in any way shape or form. True, there was fall semester junior year when I lived in a single in Colonnades B 308 (still remember that, huh), but I don’t think I spent enough time there to call that my own place. Here in Cheongju, Korea I have an apartment, but no one knows the address or the PIN to enter the building (which is so far advanced that it should make America ashamed) other than the other residents. The administration of the school doesn’t even have another copy of the key. I am the only one with access (in theory) to my apartment. Also, people have no reason to call on me at my place of residence: no girlfriend, no roommates, no friends (not as in I have no friends, but if we all meet up, it is at an establishment), and no family. If I eventually run into anyone who lives in the 7 other units in this building, they are all Korean and we have a vast linguistic and cultural divide that cannot be completely crossed in the time it takes to walk down a flight of stairs. This is not entirely isolation since I see people every day at work or for weekend activities, but it is a strange place I cannot say that I have been to before (and I want to share that with you). Maybe you have been t/here and can more easily relate to what I mean, but I am struck by the newness of it all and want to show it off like a toad I caught on the lawn.

In addition, my room doesn’t have Internet and I have no phone. So, in essence, I am off the grid and my apartment is truly a sanctuary or enclave (or vacuole, if you are biologically minded) to provide a counterpoint to the entire outside world. The novelty! A first for Jon Ordog! What do I do with this? As you may know, I am a bit of a clean freak, but is that for me to be clean or for me to look presentable. If A, then I won’t have any problems staying clean. If B, then whenever you show up you can take pictures documenting the depths I will have fallen to.

I know that a lot of people talk about the freedom to just walk around their houses/apartments/rooms naked. Can’t say that I have ever had that or would want to, but I am now starting to understand it. I have probably achieved the highest level of privacy that I have ever known and it only took me a new job on another continent roughly 6,500 miles from home to achieve that. Yet I am also slowly becoming cognizant of the fact that with privacy comes independence (If you haven’t heard me talk about my ideas on self-reliance and independent strength, then we clearly need to stop this monologue and you can skip to some point later on, but in a nut shell: Hooray self-reliance! Boo weak communalists – unless it is really bad, in which case share because help is a good thing to seek!)

This independence isn’t just self-reliance on washing and cleaning and maintaining your life’s order (eat, shower, vacuum, laundry, do your work, etc.), but also independence of thought and freedom. Control over all aspects of life. Frightening. Very scary. As you know, I barely trust myself to make a decision over where to go for dinner or what movie we should watch, but now I need to take control of everything? I am supposed to budget my time around what I want? I am not at all suited for this! I like being the experienced support structure where I can be there or not, depending on your desire to have an awesome time (“Snoo, a Follower” I hear someone sneer with contempt and a shaken head. “Whatever, egotistical jackass” I reply with apathetic scorn). So to have full responsibility on me, it makes me reel a bit. I want to do so many things!: learn Korean, martial arts or maybe just run (either way, get in shape cuz I look like a slug or a slug Voldemort), see Korea, learn 12 other languages (Spanish, Arabic (MSA, Levantine, Gulf, & Egyptian), Hebrew, Russian, Polish, Ladino, Esperanto, Hungarian, German, & I’m sure there are more that I can’t think of), write about what I’ve seen and done in my travels, write and read fantasy, be the best damn English teacher there is, study politics, create the perfect world order, make new friends here, keep in touch with friends back home, catch up on all the latest pop culture references (I’m caught up to speakeasies and calling attractive women “dolls” now, so I only have a little left to go!) and the list goes on and on and on and on. Oh, and travel the world. So much to do and I need so much sleep!

I guess I should bring this back to where I think this is all headed so that you aren’t as bored anymore. I am becoming aware that I was broadsided by this crazy little thing called privacy/independence that I want to label freedom. Much like a coma patient waking in the hospital bed, but without as many comforting faces looking over telling me that everything will be ok. I know you care, else you wouldn’t have read the 1218 words so far (Word keeps track at the bottom so you know while you type! Whoa!) so don’t you worry yourself on that account. It just so happens that this freedom I am feeling is a very curious beast that I am feeling for the first time. The pretty coat of desire and envy, the warm fur that seduces your embrace, the promise of strength stored in taught muscles of boundless possibility (I envision freedom as a Husky, ok?). All of this I want to share with you because I want you to know that I am thinking about you and have brought you along (I’m not Quick Ben, but I have magic of my own. Not doll-based either, so I’m nowhere near as creepy). Plus, I did ask for this. So, beggars who get their wishes can’t be revisionist (not as good as that other “beggar” line. I’d say mine *ahem* beggars in comparison). I’m sure I left some thoughts out, but hey, we’ll have more time to talk and I want to know: how’re you doing? What’re you thinking? How’s life?