Category: Ian Adkins

Today is my brother Ian’s birthday! Happy birthday, Ian! Ian is no longer a teenager, and if he were predictable he’d probably stop stealing people’s lawn ornaments now. Ian is anything but predictable, though, so he may or may not continue stealing lawn ornaments. He’s a madman!

(I’d link you to his website there, but he currently has a beautifully written and really sweet piece about me on his front page and I’m too embarrassed. Remind me again another time. It’s a neat site, and has dinosaurs and spacemen.)

More ways in which the world is a wonderful place: Ken blew me a new fishbowl! Out of glass! Ken can do anything. The bowl is huge and perfect, and Idaho tends to get lost in it and do backflips. Were I to spontaneously develop gills, I think I’d move in next to him.

ALSO! As you may have noticed from the link above, Ken finally obeyed my command and got himself a LiveJournal or something. Hooray for you, Ken! Now make me a sandwich.

two guns, both arms
feelin’ like Fonzie

I was wrong, incidentally.

Scent memories still freak me out a little sometimes. I know it’s really because long-term storage is next to the nose’s part of the hypothalamus, or whatever, but in practice it just works out so that even weak smells bring back really vivid scenes.

As it rained all night (during Homecoming! bastard rain!), and as we were dolled up for the occasion, Caitlan and I were sent with the rest of the candidates to wait in the library. As the library was locked, we hung out in the rear lobby of the Industrial Arts building downstairs.

The doors there were locked, too, but on the other side of one of them was the original MCHS CAD lab, the site of the first programming class I ever took. I’d messed around in BASIC since I was a kid, but that room was where I learned about Pascal, and about having a weird knack for it. Six years later I’m about to graduate with a BS in Comp Sci. The room still smells the same.

I wasn’t expecting much of a real homecoming, and in fact I only saw two other people from the class of 1999, one of whom recognized me. Instead I got memories of the game two years ago, when my brother was on court. I watched him and his friends stride around like giants who were still learning to shave. I was so proud and awed I thought my heart would burst. I had a girl on my arm with the biggest smile in the world.

I thought about Erika for the first time in a while tonight, and it was sharper than I thought it’d be. I thought about my brother, and how he’s felt lately. I wish I’d really known how to shave myself, so I could have shown him.

Today is my sister’s birthday! Caitlan is eighteen! Happy birthday, Caitlan!

In other news, Sumana has frequently plugged Bookfinder, a kickin’ service that, well, finds books. It’s kind of like the “network of bookstores” that Amazon uses to find out-of-print books, only much, much better. I was reading some of her comments on the service and how cool it was, and I kept thinking “gee, I wish I had a rare or used book that I was looking for.”

A couple days later, I was surprised to remember that I WAS looking for such a book, and had been for three years–Orson Scott Card’s short story omnibus, Maps In A Mirror. Bookfinder turned up several copies, all of which were too expensive at the moment, of course, but most of which were still cheaper than the few an Amazon search turned up two years ago.

So I went away satisfied, but came back tonight when I remembered a book that this amazing girl had showed me at a convention. The book is Anthropology, and it’s one of those forced-restriction masterpieces: 101 stories, each 101 words long. What I got to read of it was fantastic, and I wanted my own copy, but I remembered she’d said it was out of print.

Which it is–but tonight I found it for just ten bucks with shipping, and bought it. Thanks to Bookfinder! Hooray, Bookfinder!

Where Am I Cam

The answer is, of course, that I be me on some Thanksgiving Break. This is one of those “breaks” that doesn’t actually involve me getting a break or anything–before and after stuffing myself with free-range turkey, I will be putting together Theatre History and Comp Sci presentations (sans all my resources) and writing comix like a demon. I hope. If Ian brings the magic home, it’s likely all out the window.

Speaking of my brother, he and some friends have finally managed to get together a Kentucky chapterof the SCL–of which, he informs me, he is suddenly president. Meanwhile, my sister has conquered the competition to complete the Adkins dynasty and become freaking president of the Kentucky JCL. My siblings rule.

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