Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Noting Blogger's Blogs Of Note

Over at Blogger, it seems the ever-ubiquitous "they" are finally updating the "Blogs of Note" section, and on a daily basis, too. BON, Blogger's very own blogroll, lives, of course, in the lower left of the Blogger home page, and by definition all blogs listed come highly recommended by folks who should know.

Comment 1: After months of glancing over at the same old MBA admissions blog listing, it's about time.

Comment 2: If anyone has any suggestions as to how someone like little 'ol boyhowdy might end up on that 'roll, don't hold 'em back -- I ain't ashamed to have the extra hits. Think maybe over-linking to Blogger might help?

In Other Technology News...

Molly reports via email that some random guy in Vancouver was using my AIM handle (boyhowdy25) without even realizing it; she chatted him up a bit, but they seem to have figured out pretty quickly that it wasn't "me" even though, by AIM standards, it was "me." Seems I must have accidentally logged on to AIM without disabling the "remember this loging on this computer" and the "auto-login" functions while on an Internet Cafe workstation outside the Vancouver Westin Grand, and now whenever someone sits down at that computer and boots it up, they've logged on to my AIM account. How odd to think that somewhere in the universe at a public, well-utilized terminal a quarter of a world away, a series of random individuals are masquerading as me without even knowing it -- and there's nothing I can do about it if I want to keep the buddyname, 'cept wait and hope someone else makes the same mistake I did sometime soon, in the process deleting my settings permanently from said workstation.

The reason I logged on AIM, of course, was to see if anyone I knew was out there -- if you remember (c.f. about three entries down), I was pretty homesick by then, a weary world traveller. Interestingly enough, the one person I ended up chatting with at that time was Bitsy, who was in my Media Literacy class the term before I met Molly as a student in the same class. Small world.

Also in the techmeme I'm having today: I've decided to live with the practically-ancient PalmIIIx as an extension brain for at least this term, despite increasing decrepitude, as all I really want of my PDA is a calendar, a phone book, and a memo pad, and the Palm isn't so old it doesn't interface cleanly with Centrinity's First Class calendaring software; Zack has a new webcam, but I'm not going to give out the address yet so Molly and he can have some "privacy;" my new job responsibilities brought me to real sessions on over twelve different computers school-wide just today.

Pictures from recent vacation coming soon, I promise. It's just that, of those twelve computers, none was my own laptop, though I carted it around all day in the back seat of the big powder blue boat in hopes of beginning the pic-work.

Bugs

As before, there'd be a picture here if I wasn't on a 28.8 dialup -- ideally something like a close-up of a mosquito, its long needlenose sunk deep into a landscape of magnified skin. But alas, it is not to be, so back to the bugs.

The NMH network, for example, is full of 'em. I couldn't blog last night because the firewall was down with the virtual flu; computer bugs of all sorts clog our mailboxes and our wires, corrupting hard drives and stifling proper OS functioning. Public computers shut themselves off after fifteen minutes. Our servers groan and flicker. I guess that's what you get when 800 new computers suddenly plug into your network all-at-once to begin the incestuous gabfest that only a new school year can bring, but this year's been a thousand times worse than previous years, partially because the incidence of viruses running around the Internet right now is at a pretty steep peak -- it even made last week's Newsweek.

And then there's the fleas on the dog. We only noticed them yesterday, bathed 'em off quickly, but I still ended up with a bite or two somehow; the cat didn't seem to have any, but just thinking about fleas makes me itch with the phantoms of a thousand fevered fleadreams. And why is it every time we leave the dog with Virginia it gets fleas? So many theories on this one -- does she have fleas? Is she taking our dog to slum with the great unwashed of the canine kingdom? -- but perhaps we'll never know. (Sure, we could just ask, but where's the fun in that?)

Of course, the reason the house is full of bugs -- like that orange-beige moth currently shadowboxing over by the uglier of two black lamps -- is that the solution to the problem "how will the cat get out when we live on the third floor" has turned out to be a brick in the downstairs door, plus a slight ajar-ness to the apartment door at the top of the two wooden flights up; when the cat wants to come home, he just nudges the apartment door open, and all these flying critters -- moths, mosquitoes, more -- that have just been hanging out downstairs by the entryway light come seeping in like rain through a poorly plastered ceiling.

Oh wait, it wasn't a moth. It was a big-ass stick-like thing, body just a bit thicker than one of those huge female mosquotoes, or are those the males? I can never remember.

Tonight, my first night of post-dorm-residence dorm duty was even infested. Sure enough, the new boys seem like a calm and focused group this year, but, as is generally the case, over half are new; how should they know that propping all the outside doors open with wooden wedges and ping-pong paddles lets in summer's leftover mosquitoes, bred in the nearby pond, looking for a slightly warmer night and a hearty bedtime snack?

But man, was it good, almost centering, to drive away and come home at the end of a verylong day. I never realized, I guess, how living so close to the kids kept me just a little bit buggy without even realizing it. It sure is good to be me right now, no matter how fleabitten or ragged.

Brick Wall At The End Of The Tunnel

The extended vacation -- see previous blogentries for context if you're just joining in -- allowed me to miss much of the slow build that is the typical beginning of the prep school year. By the time I arrived here Saturday afternoon, just in time to meet a few new and nervous advisee's parents and scarf a few chewy oatmeal cookies in the dorm lounge with my dorm faculty peers, the first faculty meeting had long passed, my dorm's staff had planned out several orientation events in anticipation of the days ahead, and my department had met twice without me.

Students, too, our charges and vocation, had begun to arrive, buzzing and eager, in the days before my own arrival. Student Leaders, Peer Educators, and International Student Ambassadors were the first to come, that they might be trained in their respective peer-duties; then, with their guidance, new students, including an entire new class of freshman, began to settle into their dorms and social groups. By Saturday, too, early sports camp students had already spent days out on the field recovering their old skills and, for many of them, testing new summer-matured bodies. By the time I arrived, the vast majority of students were already here.

Missing the slow build means that, subjectively speaking, this year's fall semester here at Northfield Mount Hermon School has begun with the shock of jumping into frigid water. Though classes don't start until Wednesday, today returning students, the last to arrive every year, registered and began to settle in. Now the gang's all here; now the fun really begins. Suddenly the place is raucous, the plans others have made for me vague and hard to find, and I am needed everywhere.

Where less than 48 hours ago I was in summer mode full-tilt, listing the things I did for work since I awoke this morning to an early alarm would take an entire page and bore the heck out of my entire readership; I didn't get home until a few moment until eleven, after a long, dull discussion in the dorm about rules and expectations for the year.

The whole darn juggling act should settle down soon, I suppose, but, man, right now I really need a vacation.

To top it all off, the baby got badly cat-scratched at a friend's apartment today, and screamed for hours tonight when we tried retraining her to sleep in the crib after two weeks in bed with us aboard ship.

On the bright side...it's raining outside, and the road below is cool and shiny in the quiet light of the single streetlamp. It's so nice to be out of the dorm, far away from the students, to come home from work and leave work so far behind; I think I could get used to this.

Home

Storybook fingernail moon, larger than life over an orange horizon at dusk. Blackened hills; the electric hum of a thousand crickets and tinyfrogs; the smell of mown hay in otherwise-clean air. Murmurs in the darkness. Fluttering wings on porchlights.

Silent stairs. Darkened hallways, familiar slanted eaves-walls. Tinydog hiding in the crook at the back of her bent knees on the futon couch. Bare feet against rough carpet. Softlit corners.

The past receding, fading into that same horizon like the setting sun. The future shelved, hidden from the self. The present soft and gentle, yet heavy, a thick down comforter. It no longer matters how I got here -- this blog is no travelogue, and shouldn't be. What matters is that I'm here.

God – if you’re here, too, despite the skepticism of those (like me) who grasp desperately at logic all their lives – I know I don’t thank you enough, or think of you much when I am not in need; don’t keep your commandments; don’t praise your name:

I cursed you this morning when the car battery was dead after three weeks in my parent’s driveway;

I called for you too late when my daughter fell off the top of the luggage cart;

I cried for you in despair driving away from the dorm, looking ahead into the days before me, trying to figure out how to be in three places at once for the next nine months, and none of them in my own apartment, on the carpet with my daughter, at the table with my wife.

But here, in the peace of this home, my daughter and wife, my dog and cat, my silence, I remember you, perhaps not quite too late: Thanks, God, for this fleeting moment, and for those other moments; thank you for those moments you will bring. It is more than I deserve; It will have to be enough; It is enough: Thank you, O God, for these blessings before me; it is the home, the peace, I have always wanted…but did not know how to build on my own.