Patrick’s Weblog

I feel like throwing up and I can’t sleep because everytime I lay down my stomach hurts mega-bad and convulses.

It is -2 degrees outside.

Gnarly!

From Half.com I purchased…

Total cost? Just under $17.50 including shipping. $2.50 cheaper than iTunes, and I get to actually own the CDs! Whee.

I finally got to see it. (Thanks, John.) It was a wonderful movie! Ivana Baquero, who played Ofelia, was excellent for young actress.

The movie was just so… otherworldly. The director did a really good job transitioning between the dream-sequence-like moments of fantasy and the harsh reality of, well, reality.

I see, now, why this movie is so critically acclaimed. Watch it at your earliest convenience!

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.
Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let’s buy it.

Daylight, full of small dancing particles
and the one great turning, our souls
are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?

All day and night, music,
a quiet, bright
reedsong. If it
fades, we fade.

My classes this semester are…

• British Literature from 1798 to Present
• Cultural Anthropology
• Early American Literature
• Ideas and Visual Arts
• Information Resources
• Orientation for Major

Only 15 credit hours this time around. We’ll see how it goes.

For the approximately four of you who read about my life here, I’m going to go ahead and paste what I wrote to someone else who doesn’t read this.

Colorado was delicious and cold and everything was fresh and wonderful. Getting there, however, was a fiasco. When we left on the 29th, the plan was to stay in Hays, KS for a night to break the drive up into two days, because my mother’s back can’t handle that many hours in a car. The evening we arrived in Hays, I-70 and all of the other surrounding highways closed down because of the extreme ice, and extreme snow further west along I-70. On the 30th, we were completely iced into this small town in Kansas. Finally on the 31st, one of the highways north of our city opened up, so we drove for three hours along highways caked in ice, heavily blowing snow and downed power lines up until I-70 opened back up that evening, and then we drove straight through to the house in Colorado.

We arrived at the house at 12:00 a.m., New Years Day.

The week was really great. We got three-day lift passes and skied Keystone and Breckenridge. The house was fantastic, and we used the outdoor hot tub a lot, because it’s really cool being outside in a hot tub when it’s snowing. I managed to read two Harry Potter books and “Running with Scissors” by Augusten Burroughs. I’d have liked to read more, but I didn’t have room for all the books I wanted to bring along. I also became addicted to hand-held Yahtzee.

Skiing on Tuesday and Wednesday was alright. On Tuesday at Keystone, I basically spent the day getting used to skiing again. On Wednesday, we went over to Breckenridge (while my mom went snowmobiling, since she can’t ski because of her back) and I had never been there before, so that was a lot of fun. On Thursday, we took a break and slept in because we were all dreadfully sore and then on Friday we skied at Keystone with a bunch of fresh snow. I’d never skied fresh powder before, and it was a great experience.

We made it back to Kansas without a hitch, although we were almost crushed by an avalanche the morning we left Colorado. We were about 90 seconds ahead of an avalanche that buried seven cars under up to thirty feet of snow and closed the highway again in both directions.

And so passed the 2006-2007 Wilson Family Vacation.

ENGL 2050 - Creative Writing - A
ENGL 2205 - American Lit. 1865 to Present - B
ENGL 2210 - British Literature to 1798 - B
ENGL 2220 - World Masterpieces - B
ENGL 4710 - Modern American Fiction - B
POLS 1510 - American Government - B

If anything, this is proof that not working enables me to focus on my studies. Unfortunately, my parents don’t care.

Thanks for this, Jenny Lewis.

In steep cliffs,
With rocks all piled up,
Mysteries of your passing luck.
Ages past,
Shells and bits of foam
Forming new limestone
To give things their turn.

There are no better words for the coast today.

You never knew why you felt so good
In the strangest of places.
Like in waiting rooms,
And long lines that made you late
And mall parking lots on holidays.

There are no better words for the coast today
When we hold our breath until nothing’s left
It all starts to fade.

We can see the stars
From where the birds make their homes
Staring back at us.
Indifferent,
But distanced perfectly,
Projected endlessly,
It’s so f—ing beautiful.

There are no better words for the coast today.
Then you ask what’s a palisade,
and if we’re too late for happiness?

Over winter break, I WILL want to learn how to prepare crab of some sort. It’s 2:06, my head hurts from writing this mind-numbing paper about how Gulliver’s Travels relates to modern society and I have Food Network muted next to me while I listen to Sufjan Stevens’ “Songs of Christmas.” I made some ramen noodles on a whim, and they’re really not appealing to me right now, now that I’ve made them. Maybe it’s because I’m washing it down with hot chocolate.

The title of my paper: “Connections Between the Fanciful World of Gulliver’s Travels and the Real World, But Not ‘Real World’ in the MTV Context, Because ‘Real World’ Does Not Represent Its Namesake”

I have them.

From Weather Underground:

Active Advisory - Heavy Snow Warning.

Today - Snow…light freezing rain…light sleet in the morning…then snow and light freezing rain in the afternoon. Colder. Snow and sleet accumulation of 1 to 3 inches. Ice accumulation of less than one quarter of an inch. Highs in the upper 20s. North winds 15 to 20 mph. Chance of precipitation near 100 percent.

Tonight - Snow. Snow may be heavy at times. Total snow accumulation of 12 to 16 inches. Lows around 16. North winds 10 to 20 mph. Chance of precipitation near 100 percent.