This is creepy. I was right there in Keystone less than two weeks ago and now fires threaten Mt. Rushmore.

Personally, I just hope the Flinstones theme park (pictures coming...) emerges unscathed.

UPS tried to deliver my computer yesterday, so soooooon...

Wow. So today was the first day of orientation for the grad students in the CMU HCI program. I had more than my share of trepidation.

Highlights? Well, at various times through the afternoon, three of my classmates-to-be came up to me and said, "Kevin Fox, eh? I know all about you. I've been reading Fury." Scary. Or should I say, "umm. Hi!" Now I just need to get to know them

I was a little disappointed, as was another classmate I could (but won't (ahh, blesed privacy)) mention, that the interaction seemed so strongly one-way. I'm triply glad that I started the yahoo group three months ago, so we knew each other to a degree already, becuase other than a go-around-the-room introduction and a big group lunch, all the info has been them telling us, without consideration for the fact that we left pretty much everyone we knew, and it would be nice if we spent a little of our orientation week performing teambuilding exercises, or at least breaking off into groups for something so we could talk through something other than the perogies in our mouths...

It's all good though, and I'm sure it's going to be better. My friends that I have here have all been here between one and three months, and so have had plenty of time to crest the isolation wave, emerging on the other side as re-adjusted people.

I know I'll get there soon. 'Till then knowing I'm not far is hopefully good enough.

The other realization of the day is that I didn't leave Yahoo to get my masters in order to get a better job when I get out than I could otherwise have gotten, but to get a better next job after that, or after that. Basically, I expect that this is the last time I'll be in school, and once I know that I'll have the steady income-stream, unterrupted by educational dams, promising power and clean energy (oops, unstretch that metaphor, sir), anyhow, once financial constancy is assured, I can work towards the finer things in life, like a home, and maybe a family (though I, err... well, I'm not there yet. There's that whole girlfriend thing to deal with first, let alone wife thing).

Anyhow, getting my Masters should give me the rest of the educational cards I need for my deck, so I won't feel like I have to go back before moving up to a director role somewhere.

And, of course, I'm going to learn a hell of a lot.

And my apartment is shaping up nicely. My mom and I are the masters of IKEA assembly. We find mistakes in the manuals now.

Final note: How odd is it that my mom picked me up after my first day of (ahem, graduate) school? Well, I'm dropping her off at Greyhound tomorrow morning, so then it'll just be me and me...

...err, and you, of course.

The word of the day is: Assuage.

Specifically, 'Assuage guilt."

I just got back from Columbus, Ohio, from the Buckeye Invitational Chorus competition. Mom did fabulously, as did the other 63 members of the Verdugo Hills Chorus, taking the grand prize for entertainment, boards, and overall. I'm really goad I drove out to see them. They're a really great bunch. It doesn't hurt that it serves to assuage future self-inflicted guilt for not being a good son.

Right now I'm writing to assuage my other guilt, writing on the weblog. It's really frustrating that every minute is occupied with something, most things of which are directly related to making my existence on this distant not-quite-coast habitable, both physically and emotionally. At the same time, I need to post because I want to write the trip up, day by day, and post the pictures (which I know Ammy is waiting for (even though she has other things on her mind at the moment)).

My fear is that you guys, my bit of social live that's ultra-mobile, happy to jump online for the journey, will get bored and drift off. Don't do it! Give me a couple days and real content, real stories, and real insight and imagrey (the kind where I know I'm doing something right because Trisha calls me on a sentence and asks me if I knew that sentence was great when I wrote it). It's all in me, and the strain of it bursting to come out is just even with the strain of improving my physical surroundings, not to mention spending time with Mom, who's here (helping with the aforementioned physical surroundings tasks) until Tuesday morning.

So, I hope I've successfully assuaged my blog-guilt for another day or so, but I'll only know by your comments.

It's amasing how isolation fosters insecurity. Pathetic, huh?

Oh, and my cellphone's dead. No explanation, and so far no resolution, so if you know my Pitts phone, I'll try to remember to plug the phone in when I get offline, and if you want the # and should have it, email me.

Take it easy. It's Sunday!

Teach me to read before I blog...

I want to extend deepest sympathies to Ammy and Rick for their loss of Tigger. Tigger was such a sweet cat, and I've known her for the eight years that I've known Ammy. I'm really sad to see her go, rememberong how she'd always hop on to my bed in the guest bedroom and purr up a storm when I'd stay over.

She's had a hard journey (err, both of them), and there's a part of me that's glad for the solace of peace, while still harboring the sorrow of her passing. A light rain is falling in Pittsburgh today. It seems only fitting.

Hot off driving 3500 miles, driving another 190 to see my mom's chorus perform in Columbus, Ohio doesn't seem so bad. I'm taking her back with me tomorrow afternoon, to show her around town, and she's promised to help me put together the rest of the IKEA furniture.

I feel bad though: now that I have a thermometer and hygrometer in my wall, I know that it's the 78% humidity in the mornings along with the 78 degree temps that make this place so uncomfortable. Window fans aren't going to arrive until Monday, and my job this morning before going to Columbus is to get a futon for my living room.

Still, the current discomfort is only temporary: Next month the average high dips from 82 degrees to 74, and on to 64 in October, until January when the average daily high just inches over freezing at 34 degrees. I'm sure I'll long for days like today soon enough.

Only two days to orientation. I could use some orientation...

Ammy posted some more trip details.

I'm still settling in to my apartment, but will be writing on Friday or Saturday, as well as organizing photo galleries.

Video editing will commence when my desktop (firewire-equipped) computer arrives via UPS. Definitely sometime next week.

Fun for today:

Sitting here, vegging on the computer, twiddling my virtual thumbs while doing a little bit of cleanup waiting for the nice young men in their clean white coats who are coming to take me my furniture.

I'm eagerly anticipating, both with vim and a little trepidation, the moment when, lugging up my queen-size mattress, my delivery-folk (god I hope and pray it's 'folk' and not 'person' (is 'folk' always plural? (is folks merely a hypercorrection, trying to pluralize a plural? (but I digress (even more) ) ) (wait for it...) ) turn the corner and realize that the stairway up to my attic-apartment (which shall henceforth be known as 'the loft' because I like the way it sounds, and because 'loft' is the last four digits of the phone number here) resembles the typical home-type staircase nowhere near so much as it does the skinny, steep stairs that grace the deep centers of medieval cathedrals towers; stairways intended to help the devout ascend, and little else.

Certainly not queen-sized mattresses and assorted other furnitures (speaking of hypercorrecting plurals into plurals).

The $69 delivery sounded like only a marginal benefit over renting my own truck to get these things home until I found out that it includes delivery to my apartment, not simply to the front door.

Word of wisdom for the day: The glory of IKEA is not that you assemble it yourself, but that you can, as the need arises, disassemble it as well. I seem to have this habit of living places where full-sized furniture has trouble getting through...

The thing that's keeping me sane right now is looking at the bare wallsand floors of my apartment, and remembering that it was just 10 days agothat my Telegraph apartment looked the same way. Remembering how alienand sterile *that* looked is making me feel better, giving meinspiration to make *this* space into a home, and realizing that theempty room I'm sitting in right now isn't my home, but just a canvas.

Luckily, IKEA is delivering the paint some time between noon and 4pmtoday which means, among other things, that I'll have a real bed tosleep on tonight, instead of a mattress formed of pillows and blankets,which has been my three-day fare 'till now.

I just drove to Cleveland (130 miles) and back, dropping Ammy off at the airport for her flight home. Now I'm back in my apartment, with all my West Coast friends on, or heading back to, their coast, and my few local friends out of town. This is the part where, if I'm going to panic, I'll panic.

Meanwhile, it's 85 degrees out with about 70% humidity, and there are these bugs outside that like to scream.

Gonna take a little decompress break, the first in about two weeks, before regrouping and writing. (By 'break' I mean a few hours, not days or weeks.)

Talk to you soon...

Okay, pity my lack of posting, but revel in Ammy's.