As I sit here on a rocking wicker chair on a brown-stained wooden deck, listening to Dave Matthews, I realize how much I'm an outsider to this world. Traveling about 2 hours and 120 miles south puts me into a world that is incredibly far beyond my norms. You see it in the year-round inhabitants down here. My large European station wagon is a rarity amongst pickups and SUVs. My speakers pound out a aurally diverse spectrum from the most mellow of alt-rock to the most aggressive of hip-hop and trance. Their speakers tinge the air golden with the country-infused god-rock.

And, more and more, I find myself to be a stranger in strange lands. Going shopping at the hardware store was a little surreal, seeing my station wagon sitting between Ford F250's and old beater American sedans just seemed strange. I sit on the porch of my beach place with a $2000 laptop, realizing that the fact that I'm a Mac user must make me even more foreign for this area. Sure, it's a little thing, but it seems pretty important to me.

I guess I just would have to really adapt to live down here. I'm still firmly entrenched in the north, geographically at least, but somehow, I feel as if I've found myself in a lazy Louisiana afternoon, as I sit here on this chair, rocking back and forth, sunlight dappling my screen and keys, and listening babble of the fountain in the pond next to me.

For the next 4 days I will call this home. I'll update when I can, WiFi is spotty out here, folks.

I suppose that sometimes it takes a significant event to break you out of an old habit. I started dating my lovely girlfriend, and suddenly, the outpouring that I did almost nightly to my blog just disappeared - the friendly ears of all of you readers were suddenly displaced by the loving, caring attention of one. And yet, a smaller, but significantly less happy occasion has brought me back to you all here.

Monday, a girl who graduated from high school with me, passed away. A completely unremarkable event. I'm sure that there are countless 19 year olds dying every day out in the world. But, this little one touched me.

"Gravedigger, when you dig my grave, can you make it shallow, so that I can feel the rain?"

( Continue for the depressing details... )

That's about all I can write for tonight folks. I'm back, yes, but I'm not the same. Several months of happiness, several moments of sadness, and countless minutes, hours, and days of time have changed me, hopefully for the better, for the wiser, for the stronger.

Love, peace, happiness, and best wishes to you and yours. And say an extra "I love you" to those you care about, if nothing else, for people like me who care.

Hello there!  Last night my love asked me to introduce myself to his reading audience, so here I am.  It's been a pretty quiet morning in our little corner of academia.  Currently finishing my breakfast of a peanut butter chocolate chip granola bar and pink lemonade.  (Yes, I know.  Seeing it in print makes me cringe too.)  I've spent the morning discussing life with my coworker, fixing my timesheet, eating, and then getting to scan in new equipment with the fun fun scanner.  (I'm totally serious about this, by the way.  The prospect of scanning in equipment makes me clap my hands with joy.  I believe I even squealed a little.)  I work with computers and my coworkers and I keep our campus well taken care of when it comes to the technology realm.  Basically, we fix things, install things, answer things, manage things, and hold people's hands if they're afraid to press the big scary button. 

Tonight I'm off to one of my summer courses.  This summer I decided to take not one, not two, not three, but four.  This is a slight improvement over my early ambitions for six.  For some misguided reason, I was under the impression that summer courses would be relaxing.  I was so very, very wrong.  It was perhaps an indication of things to come when my advisor looked at me and said something to the effect of "You'll be going crazy."  It was perhaps even more of an indicator when people would ask "What are you doing this summer?" and then respond to my eagar pronouncement of six courses with wide eyes and variations on "You're insane."  Most reasonable people would have been deterred.  Not I.  This second set of classes is easier than the first, which fit a normal fifteen week semester into three weeks.  You can imagine all the hair pulling that ensued. 

So, as I said, tonight is my class about public speaking.  (I major in a field that focuses largely on the verbal and written.)  Our next assignment is a demonstration speech and yours truly decided to use the old fall-back of origami.  Mind you, I know absolutely nothing about origami.  My experience with it is limited to the quick google search of "easy origami" I did after learning what the assigment required.  I was thinking of doing knitting, but decided that my knitting needles looked too much like weaponry after my professor emphasized anything looking dangerous was a no no. 

So, as the office is getting busy, I will say my goodbyes to all of you and send hugs and kisses to my honey.   

You fill in the rest, folks.

See, I had basically dropped off the face of the earth for a while, at least as far as this blog is aware. I got a life, got a job, quit a job (a story in and of itself), continued to keep my lovely lovely girlfriend as pleased as can be, and ended up buying a new car (again, a story to itself).

But, in the meantime, I did have an awesome, awesome idea. Just... wait until tomorrow. And don't shake the boxes or Santa won't leave you any!

Peace, love, and bad bad jokes to all. 

If I go
Before I'm old,
Oh, brother of mine,
Please don't forget me if I go.

Bartender, please,
Fill my glass for me,
With the wine you gave Jesus that set him free
After three days in the ground.

Hello out there. Look who's back! I can't even remember the last time I posted here. This firefly's been off living his life, seeing the wonder that is this big beautiful world. But, I have returned, mostly in one piece, not too much worse for wear, with a few new outlooks, and a new love. But, hey, I'll get to that soon enough. There's so much to talk about, and so little space. I hope you all are willing to indulge me waxing a little poetic here, I am listening to Dave Matthews, so I guess it's a little excusable.

So, readers, where should I start? I've found that something I thought would always be a necessary evil has become a new passion of mine. I've gone from thinking that still photography is just a medium I'm not cut out for, to thinking that it's something that I'll be missing out on if I don't participate in. I've always been a moving pictures kinda guy, but somehow, having a nice big still camera in my hands just feels so damn right, and people certainly seem to love my pictures (I even scored a few jobs!). So, I guess that's a new facet of this firefly.

I've been driving around a lot, just taking the time to see the world. I needed that so, so, so badly. It's hard to live in such a small place, with such a small amount of people, with the same patterns every day, the same routines, everything. You forget how amazing the world really is. I know I certainly did. The world seemed like it sucked for a while. But, now, for some reason it just doesn't. The world's a hell of a lot prettier today than it was 6 months ago. The countryside around here is beautiful. It's borderline midwest, and I kinda like that. It's all plains, all flat, farmland, big houses, everything. I'm starting to think that maybe a small suburban town really could be the place for me, somewhere where I can feel safe, feel at home, know my neighbors, and be only a little drive away from either piece and quiet or a city where I can feel all the excitement of living it up.

I want to keep this post pretty short, wanna get people back into the habit of reading this before I shock them all with tons of writing, so I'll jump over all the other stuff in my head to the big important news right now. Ready? I'd certainly hope so.

This firefly has found a love.

( And this firefly's love is... )
So, for tonight, I think that's all I've got in me, writing-wise. A good return? I think so. Now back to writing one of the several papers due in the next few days. Oh well, at least I've got someone to distract me now.

Hey everybody. Since people seemed to get a kick out of my last venture into intellectual goodness, via my post "A little rant...", I've decided that it's time tonight to venture into that lovely place again. If you're into such a pursuit, ( read on. )

Sometimes I feel
Like I dont have a partner
Sometimes I feel
Like my only friend
Is the city I live in
The City of Angels
Lonely as I am
Together we cry

I drive on her streets
cause shes my companion
I walk through her hills
cause she knows who I am
She sees my good deeds
And she kisses me windy
I never worry
Now that is a lie

Hey everybody. It's a fine Thursday evening, I'm finally done with classes for the week, now just work tomorrow, and I'm set. I've got a lot I could write about, but nothing that I really think I should in the grand scheme of things. So, for tonight, I leave you with Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the wish that all of you have a happy and wonderful Thursday/Friday, wherever you are.

Hey everybody. It's been 2 weeks, I've been overworked, underpaid, underslept, over-crazied, and a whole bunch of other prepositional phrases. For a moment, as I was walking downstairs to the lounge where I always seem to do my writings a couple of nights ago, I thought for a moment - "Maybe I've lost the voice". Firefly's a very specific part of my personality, and it's not a part I entertain as much as I'd like outside of this blog. So, I was a little worried about that old adage - "If you don't use it, you lose it", though perhaps not in the way that most people use it, if you get my drift.

But, here I am, I'm back, and best of all, the Firefly is back. Now, I'm a little rusty, since it has been a while since I've written, but I'm sure you'll all bare with me. I mean, you all kinda are a captive audience, since I can just keep making references out in real life to things I've written on here. (I've realized that I know everyone who reads this blog - kinda a good realization, a little disappointing though, I still dream of internet notoriety!)

In unrelated news, I'm officially 19 today! Yes! Legal to drink in Canada! I mean... uh... damn, there's no other things to be excited about being 19 for. Oh well, today shall be filled with loud music, driving about, good company, and a few good meals. And, tonight I'm planning on getting a little crazy with a few of my friends. Now, I'm not going to be heading across the border, but I still will be having some fun.

Speaking of birthdays, this year is a welcome change. Everyone knows it's my birthday, which is perfect, since I'm not really the type to tell people, unless it comes up in conversation. And, I'm able to go out, do things, have fun, and not just sit around. Also, no school, which is awesome. Last year kinda sucked. Nobody knew it was my birthday, I didn't really wanna tell anyone, and on that day my dad's health problems started, so I spent the night alone. It kinda sucked. Kinda really sucked. But, this year is good. Gonna have fun, gonna actually recognize that I'm 19, gonna just relax.

That's all for now. I might write more later, since I do have some boy drama, but I'll hold off until later for that. For now, it's back to grooving out to absolutely delicious music.

Good evening everybody. It's super bowl Sunday today, a day marked with drunken shouting, crushed hopes, irrational happiness, expensive commercials, and free pizza. I'm currently being a dork and holding up in my dorm's computer lab (1 of 3 people here - much nicer than usual), trying to come up with something witty to end tonight's post with. Gimmie a half an hour or so, and I should be good. Though I guess you'll be able to see pretty easily how well I pull it off.

I think I'm actually going to keep this post a little on the short side, since I should be going and like... checking my laundry, and checking on my computer (currently 2 hours into a 4 hour video encode session - not much fun at all), and checking on a few of my friends who have seemed pretty depressed today, and all that fun business.

Actually, come to think of it, my laundry may be nearing completion, so I should probably go check on it. I'll write some more tonight if I can.

Until then, peace, love, and pine trees buried in snow so deep that you only can see the top foot or so.

(See, I guess I did pull it off!)

Hey everybody. It's a lovely, quiet, Thursday night here in the Firefly's Domain. It's been snowing an unsettling amount lately, and digging out my car every time I've had to go somewhere hasn't been fun. Plus, in the process of going to a coffee place yesterday for breakfast (thanks to a cancelled class), I'd say that I was in control of my car for about 40% of the time. The rest of the time, either I was sliding, I was getting tire slippage, or my ABS was activated. It was decidedly not fun. But, at least the coffee was good. (Hey, I've got my priorities)

"What we are is the sum of a thousand lies,
What we know is almost nothing at all.
What we are, what we are, 'till the day we die,
or 'till we don't have the strength to go on,
the strength to go on."

Life's been interesting lately. Watching some of the drama in the dorms escalate (people leaving, people fighting, people getting kicked out, people starting problems), it's all been kinda interesting. I've been doing my best to un-become my school's drama queen though, so I've just been out of it as much as I possibly can be. And, I've been pretty glad I've been out of it for some of the bigger stuff, since I just am not willing to take the chance of getting myself in trouble just because some other people can't seem to keep themselves out of trouble.

"Say, my love, I came to you
With best intentions
You laid down and gave to me just what
Im seeking
Love, you drive me to distraction..."

So, I'm gonna go back and re-talk some more about Wednesday. Though I guess that's Yesterday. Or maybe two days ago by the time I get this post finished. Friggin' days, never seem to line up where I want them to. Why does it have to be Friday in an hour? Can't it just be Friday when I wake up, and Thursday when I go to sleep? But, I digress.

I mentioned above going out for breakfast. Both me and my friend Rachel (yes, you're finally getting the interblag shout-out that I think you do deserve) showed up to our Scriptwriting class at lovely 9:25 in the morning, and upon hearing it was cancelled, I came up with the bright idea of running off to the lovely chain coffee shop everybody loves up here, and we drove off through the terrible, terrible snow, to have ourselves some breakfast. And, happily enough, we ended up spending an hour or so just having our breakfast and talking about our history, and talking about class, and dorm life, and all the wonderful things that there are to talk about.

Overall, a good morning.

"Would you not like to be...
Sitting on top of the world with
Your legs hanging free?"

... Apparently I'm really bad at writing in any single stretch of time. All 3 of those sections were written at different times during the night, and then this section is being written now, which is Friday night. So, like, don't pay any attention to the dates. They won't make any sense.

So, until next time, I'm off to.... oooohhh... pretty pretty snow... *gets completely distracted again*


P.S. - If you can name at least 2 of the 3 songs via comment, you win something. Something that has yet to be determined. Good luck guessing. And only use google if it's absolutely necessary people.