Summer Stasis

This summer has been flying by so quickly, it's not even funny. Every once in a while, I've gotten the itch to write something here, but my attention has too often been diverted elsewhere. (Which, to be honest, has often been a good thing.)

The main highlight, activity-wise, was another week of counseling at Music Camp this year. Before I knew it, earlier this week, I was packing up my belongings at my apartment in Pittsburgh and heading back home to Girard.

At home, right now, things are a bit off, to say the least. Mom's been overworked lately, and Dad's been overstressed as a result. David, preparing for college, is caught in the middle. And I'm trying to get acclimated to our normal family structure as I'm used to doing, except such structure doesn't really exist right now.

It would be unfair to say things are bad, since there are so many families which deal with much worse for much longer periods of time... but it's definitely "a bit off," which is at least somewhat unsettling.

So for now, I'm in a bit of a stasis. Yes, there are things going on in my life, but right now, I'm marking time until things are a bit more settled in the lives of those around me. Nothing right now is so urgent it's bursting at the seams. Which is actually quite refreshing when I think about it.

I've been doing some introspection during this quiet time. The sort of thoughts that help you figure out exactly where you are, what you are, who you are... so that you can have any hope of knowing where you're going, what you're doing, who you're becoming. And while I may not have the most ostensible pieces quite nailed down, spending time alone with my thoughts has definitely paid some rich dividends.

I'm working on the rest. As my friend and I have said to each other, "one of these days, we'll figure it all out."

Quinquennial

Has it really been five whole years since I started this humble blog?

The short answer is yes. Yes, it has.

A lot has happened in the last quinquennium... more than I can ever hope to have written about. And so, as I've done so faithfully in the past, I whipped up another Bloggy cake in celebration of this achievement.

That said, it wasn't that easy. It's getting harder and harder to find good clip art birthday cakes. Yes, I do have certain standards when it comes to selecting clip art cakes, the biggest being that it has to be workable with the black background of this blog (which, much like the title, I've been meaning to change for a long while, but I haven't yet found the motivation to come up with anything better).

And it has to be somewhat professional-looking. I mean, clip art is vectorized by definition. For some reason, people think that the things they draw with the "pencil" tool in Microsoft Paint qualify as "clip art." (Hint: They don't.) As far as I'm concerned, they're just drawings. And while some of them are very nice, many aren't... and in any case, they're not what I'm looking for.

Still, is it so much to ask that new and halfway decent clip art images of birthday cakes be uploaded to the web and make their way to the first 20 or so pages of Google's results at a minimum rate of one per year?

The short answer is yes. Apparently, it is.

Maybe in future, I'll actually use 14 May as an excuse to bake a real cake. But for now, this digital cake is my sincere thank you to the 1160 visitors this blog received during its fifth year. Yes, that's down 53%, but it's completely understandable as I've written 66% fewer posts with 71% fewer words[1]. In my defense, for much of the past twelve months, I've been a senior at university who has neither been traveling abroad nor attempting to blog every day (and even being way too busy to write every other day, let alone more than once in April).

But "I'm not dead yet... I'm getting better...," er, something like that.

Anyway, in addition to the admittedly contrived and self-centered celebration of five years of admittedly poor blogging, tonight I'll be celebrating my friend's 22nd birthday (which was yesterday), and on Sunday my home church will be celebrating its 175th anniversary... both are significant achievements, if you ask me.

Here's hoping I'll see you again soon... whether in person or in the blogosphere!

* * *
[1] I should note that these figures were somewhat hastily calculated/estimated (and obviously do not include this post). As such, they might be a tad off. But they're certainly close enough and I don't particularly care to go back and figure it out exactly.

BE(E)DA

So, I've decided on a compromise. I totally don't have time to actually do BEDA this year. After taking a look at my schedule of exams, presentations, and performances for the next few weeks, I've noticed that many of my roughest days are going to be the odd-numbered ones. So I've decided to be clever and try to blog every even-numbered day. Hence, this year, I'm attempting BE(E)DA... Blog Every (Even) Day in April. (It'll even be pronounced the same.)

"But, Tim," you say, "what's this about posting on even days when you're posting on an odd day?" Like last year, I'm going to consider it to be the same day right up until I go to bed. After all, half of the time I'm not even home by midnight. Ah, the life of a college student!

Of course, April being what it always is, there is the inevitable case that something more important may will come up, so much like last year, I reserve all rights to amend my BE(E)DA goals, skip days, or just call it quits at any time. I think I did pretty well in 2009, considering that I got 14 days through daily blogging before, as I put it then, I had "bigger fish to fry."

Speaking of which (and I swear, I did not plan this transition), I really was looking forward to going to a fish fry tonight. Being in college, I've been in Pittsburgh for pretty much the entirety of Lent every year for the last four years. (Although I have spent a few Fridays therein traveling to basketball tournaments.)

Anyway, it's not that Pittsburgh doesn't have fish fries (they do). It's just that for the longest time, I've not known where they were. Or at least, didn't care so much to look... until earlier this year, I realized it had literally been four years since I'd been to one. So then I got this thing called a craving.

Of course, Lent came, and I forgot all about it until the last possible week (this week). So I looked up a list of local fish fries and was dismayed to find that most of the ones anywhere near me wouldn't be serving on Good Friday. But I found one in the South Hills, scoped it out, and invited Dylan to come along.

Unfortunately, life got in the way. Two reports due by midday, rent due in the afternoon, and not much sleep had drained my energy. And apparently, at the time he'd considered coming along, Dylan wasn't remembering that his parents would be in town.

Not being able to find another friend to go with me, I lacked the motivation to make such a long trip just for dinner. So I stayed home, got some stuff done, and made "Charlie shells" for dinner (don't ask). Oh, well. Better luck next year. Or maybe I'll just get fish at a restaurant some day soon.

Anyway, happy Easter to all! We'll see where the rest of April shall take us soon enough.

March-ing On...

I hate missing a month on this blog. To be fair, I'm not terribly fond of missing a week, but life happens, and you've got to go with what you've got.

Speaking of life, it's been incredibly busy lately and is showing few signs of slowing down. I mean, I'm a little over a month from donning the cap-and-gown (and yes, if you're from Girard, "cap-and-gown" is one word). And that's scary. But there's all sorts of things to wade through on the way.

April is going to be really busy. As such, I'm sitting on the fence about attempting BEDA again this year. Either the posts are going to be really short (like this one), or they're simply not going to happen every day. Perhaps shooting for every other day would be more reasonable? But alas, "BEODA" just doesn't have the same ring to it. We'll see.

In any case, I'll be March-ing on through April to see what the future May hold for me... hopefully it'll be great!