Pitt Campus Celebrations after Backyard Brawl Win

©2007, Timothy J. Parenti. All rights reserved.This video is 6:19 in length.

Too important not to post.

Pitt's campus was filled with energy after the Panthers' upset victory of #2-ranked West Virginia in the 100th Backyard Brawl last night.

I stayed out until about midnight before heading to a friend's house, plus I had an inclination things would get too crazy for everyone's good. And as I hear, things did indeed get quite a bit more rowdy after I left, both on campus and in South Oakland. Still, this stuff's pretty exciting.

LET'S GO PITT!

I have a concert in an hour, so I can't write any more now, but I will!

A Few Grams Lighter...

...and much less wise. It's no big deal, though. I like to think it was mostly bad wisdom that they took out, anyway.

All that sleepy-making medicine wore off around 15:00 today, and I took some ibuprofen just after that... just before the numb-making medicine wore off.

Right now I've got this thing wrapped around my head which kind of reminds me of playing Caesar Rodney in 1776 back in 2004 (see left). The only main difference is that the one I'm wearing now has cold packs to make my mouth bleed less and to (very marginally) dull the pain.

I remember very little between about 09:00 and 12:00, but picked up little bits and pieces here and there. Good news came back regarding the health of one of the surgeon's family members, which was nice to hear because the original health issue took the surgeon away from his office in July and was the reason for my "tooth delay." I heard something about another appointment, just a check-up, which I've been told is going to be at 08:00 on Thursday 16 August, conveniently the day we were going to have me leave for college again.

But I don't feel like I should be going to college. I've determined that surgery makes you three. As in "three years old." So right now I'm a three-year-old with a blog, trapped in a 19-year-old's body. That sounds like it could be dangerous.

Daddy read some numbers from his "Drug Book" and told me how long the various drugs would last, and we think we figured out when everything happened pretty well, because pretty much everything has worn off by now. Actually, you'd think I'd be in heaps of pain right now (8 hours post-surgery), but I'm not. It's more like tiny anthills of pain.

Anyway, Daddy took good care of me, changing my gauze every so often and the like. Daddy also made me some chicken noodle soup and cooked zucchini bits that I could eat for lunch, even though it was 15:45 and it took me nearly an hour to finish my meal. Both Daddy and "big brother David" were helpful with getting me water, and they also went to the grocery store to buy some Tim-foods.

When Daddy was cooking my soup this afternoon, he was telling me about how the different parts of my mouth were reacting to "the trauma." And I said that, from a national perspective, it was like my mouth was the Cabinet and all my teeth were the Cabinet members, and some foreign entity just came in, picked a few, and "took 'em out." I must be pretty smart for a three-year-old.

Daddy also said that when I finish the second half of the noodle soup, I can have the alphabet soup he just bought. There's even Jell-O that's chilling in the refrigerator now! I'm so happy!

Switching gears a little bit, I had mounds of fun with the Cousin Club at the ninth annual Fun Week and at the family reunion. Seeing everyone was fun, but the point of this post is to tell all those people how I'm feeling since they all went home and can't just ask me. So there'll be more on that later.

They gave my teeth to Daddy in a little envelope/baggie thing, and I just weighed it on his little postal scale for weighing letters. The whole bag weighed just over three-eighths of an ounce, which, for you Metric-ators like me, is about 11 grams.

Now we just have to wait until my grades come in December to see how much wisdom I lost. ;)

Random tangent: My brother actually "laid low" most of the day without being asked. So that helped. He's playing video games now. That's about as random as I can get right now; I'm tired.

Photo credit: Daddy! Taken after our performance on Sunday 21 March 2004.

In Response to the Tragedy

Tragedy. That's about all you can call it.

We were just starting a "last day of CHEM lab" party at around 13:00 Monday when we heard the news, interestingly from our TA whom we were celebrating. We observed a moment of silence and said all that we could say at the time, knowing little then about what had transpired: We were glad we weren't there.

Quickly, though, the full magnitude of the events that occurred in Blacksburg, VA that day was realized, and our world got a little bit smaller as people came together to show their support and prayers for those grieving. Emulating Joseph Giordano, who just before operating on a wounded President Reagan reassuringly said that "today, we are all Republicans," the thought has spread through the wonders of the Internet that for this period of mourning, we are all Hokies. Banners looking just like the one shown here have popped up all over, pairing the black ribbon and the Virginia Tech logo with logos from countless colleges, as well as the phrase that, by shrinking our world, will help so many people through these tough times.

Pitt's Chancellor, Mark Nordenberg, sent a message Tuesday to members of Pitt's community. An excerpt:

Under any circumstances, ... a substantial loss of life would trigger feelings of disbelief and deep sorrow. [Monday's] events, though, have brought an even more intense form of pain to many of us, as they have to others. After all, most of those killed were young people actively engaged in the process of building the foundation for lives, ... and [these lives] were taken in the middle of a campus, a place that should reflect the best of human nature and not its worst.

Some have called it a massacre, and perhaps Monday's events are indeed deserving of that title. But the bottom line is that 32 innocent lives were taken that fateful morning, dozens of others injured without reason, and thousands or even millions have been affected in other ways. It's more of a tragedy than anything else, if you ask me.

A website has been set up in memoriam of Monday's tragedy. Please take the time to sign the online memorial, and reflect upon what others have written. During these next few weeks of healing, the families and friends of all the victims, as well as the entire Virginia Tech community need to especially be in our prayers.

More information about my own life coming soon, as finals week approaches...