Easter brunch and shifting papers

So you guys know when you go to a restaurant and you are kinda dressed up, maybe a nice shirt or a clean pair of jeans, and in walks some guy that looks like he could have just finished washing his car?  Yeah, that was me for Easter brunch on Sunday morning.  My mother called me to say she was in the parking lot and that we should go get brunch.  So I did what any self-respecting university student would do: NOT tell her to wait while I showered, but instead throw on clothes over my pj's and go to brunch.  Of course wearing a hunting-camo shirt might have been a little much in terms of tactlessness, but she woke me up!  So there!

And that brings us to today where I accomplished everything I wanted to do, and I'll be damned if I start tomorrow's "To-Do List" a day early!  If you put something off until the next day then why the hell start early?  You have already set time to do it tomorrow and starting today would just screw up tomorrow's schedule.

Speaking of screwing with schedules: professors that push assignments back.  On the one had it is amazing because you now have all this extra time to do the work, but now you also have all this extra time to procrastinate until the night before.  After having this happen to me twice within the past 3 days I am fed up.  As such, and I am saying it here, I will hand in one of my 3 research papers early!  Enough of this weekend before crap.  I am tired of not doing stuff and then letting it build to a fever pitch.  A little work every day will keep my productivity-self happy and I will probably do a better job than waiting until the weekend before.

I hope I don't end up eating that last paragraph.

It only falls apart when I try to make it work

What a cluster fuck of things going wrong and not working out!  So my brother came up to visit for the weekend and I had hoped to have him and The Brewmiester hangout, cause The Brewmiester is a fun person and he plays World of Warcraft which my brother used to play.  So there is potential to get along there.  Plus, even if there was nothing going on tonight party-wise, The Brewmiester can find a party anywhere, or can just make one.

But The Brewmieser went away for the weekend.

Not a problem there are other people I know that I can party with and show my brother a good time.

But it's Passover and Easter weekend, so that number is effectively halved.

That's ok, I did my research and some key people were still going to be here.  Then one by one they had other things going on, there were no parties, everyone was staying in, it's the height of thesis season, AND ITS FUCKING RAINING!!!

Yeah, clearly not the night of fun and debauchery I had planned for my little brother.  Luckily my wonderfully fantastic girlfriend, The Old Friend, keeps her ear to the ground like no other and was able to get us some entertainment in the form of a comedy show on campus and then I took my brother contra dancing.

All in all, the night was not a complete wash, but I could have been so so SO much better.  It is times like this that I really miss The Roommate and The Shrink; even if they call it quits early to go to bed, they were always game to hangout and find something to do that was social.  

Now, could I have done other things and searched out people and hung out with them on an almost individual basis?  Sure, but to have my brother tag along it would be weird for him since he wouldn't know these people, plus it would be weird to be all, "Hey!  I haven't hung out with you in a while, by the way this is my brother also."  I could have done it, but I would have wanted to run all over campus in the rain doing it and that wouldn't be fair to my brother.  

Another possibility would have been my brother coming up next weekend everything could possibly happen.  :-P Argh!  I'm just frustrated about what could have been.  This brings up something I think about every now and then: regret.

The idealist in me feels that one should live without regret.  There are countless quotes about "if you spend all your time looking back, you miss the present" and so on and so forth.  I really try not to let regret seep into my life, because, well, the quote is right.  Life has no rewind or pause button.  There is no spell check for the long text of life.  No save points.  Only the constant forward motion, the world keeps on turning, the pen never leaves the page.  If we have regrets, then we shouldn't have done something in the first place.  Regret ends up being that which prevents us from going forward.  Regret stops us, while life continues to move on without us; like suddenly stopping on a treadmill.  

Because of this I try to live life without regrets and without shame; live in the moment and not the moments that could have been.  This has led to some very fun and interesting experiences, most of which I am thankful for and have enjoyed immensely.  

However, ideals are called ideals because they are not actually how life is lived.  As such, I have come to the conclusion that everyone has regrets because, well, we are human and it is just a fact of life.  So, do I regret that the night not turning out the way I wanted it to?  Yes, but only because I'm human.  

A better day, with a positive outlook for the rest of the week, and a shout-out to sxephil

Today was grey, but not raining, which made things way better.  So here is a short list about the things that made today better than yesterday:

1. I didn't get coffee this morning.
2. I now know a different way to get the header file for my data to get the data to work AND I know how to upload it to the class server.
3. I still don't know how t find some stuff for my thesis, but I figured out who does and will contact them tomorrow.
4. Talked to my professor about having his house this summer (turns out it is faculty housing and I can't, but at least I tried).
5. Deciding to wake up at the normal time tomorrow (which by the time stamp on this post would be today).

Things are looking up!  I got my bs-ing out of the way today and yesterday and I am ready to get hard to work tomorrow afternoon on the things I have to get out of the way so that my little brother can come visit me and "experience college life" this weekend.  Oh he will experience it and it will be fun.

On a more serious note: I follow the video blogger sxephil on youtube.  He won't be posting this week because his father is in the hospital.  After having my father be in the hospital and passing away this summer I know the kind of stress this can put on a person.  As such I want to wish him and his family the best as his father recovers this week.  

The Blue Shag Carpet is wishing your dad a speedy recovery Phil!

Slow couple of days

So much to blog about that I am separating it into separate posts to make up for the lack of posts over the last few days.

First: my brother's wisdom teeth.  All 5 are out and he is doing just fine.  I think he was more worried about what was going to happen than things actually happening.  When the doctor came out to talk to us after the surgery was over (same doc who took out my wisdom teeth) he told us (my mother and I) that when he went in to start the nurses were all talking about how cute I was.  Apparently I won them all over.  It was a pleasant ego massage: middle aged women swoon over me.

When we brought him home he was out like a light and my mom and I had a nice pasta and meat sauce dinner.  Since then he has stopped wearing a scarf of ice and towels and is eating more and the swelling isn't that bad, but that is mostly due ( I think) to the fact that he is already a little chubby.  When I swelled up, you knew it because I am normally pretty slim.  Him on the other hand it isn't as noticeable.  This is all really a plus for him, since he will be able to look fine when he goes back to school next week.

Other than that, The Director and I went out to dinner last night with a teacher from high school and that was nice.  I hadn't seen either of them in a while and it was pleasant to see both of them again, even though I was still a bit sick (wait for second post).  And then The Old Friend called from the airport before leaving for the next 10 days, it was nice to hear from her since her phone had died the day before and I wanted to say goodbye (more related to this in third post) before she left.

Aside from all that it has been pretty quiet around here at home.  Oh, I got to visit a bunch of teachers from my high school.  That was nice to see them all again.  I was talking with them and just so surprised that I had graduated 3 years ago.  It seems like such a long time ago.  Oh how time flies.