So, it's been a long time since I wrote. The truth is, nothing particularly exciting has happened in my life lately. I found out that my dad doesn't have to have radiation, and he's done with his chemo. Also, my uncle, who's been hospitalized with a brain tumor for 103 days, went home to stay on Tuesday. It's a miracle, actually. I guess things are looking up for once. Now I'm just sitting here waiting for the sky to cave in, for the next big bad that I havve to deal with to come crashing down on top of me. I think I've become something of a pessamist in the last few years. I can't stop to feel good about the way things are. I can't even admit to myself that they might be good, because if they're good things can and will get worse. I don't think I like when everything's ok. Then there's nothing for me to brood about, except of course the deterioration of the world outside of my protected little sphere, and that's just too big for me to comprehend. I think of it as the "time travel feeling." Whenever I try to wrap my head around that concept, so widely used in sci-fi shows and movies, I get so confused I know I have to stop or it will drive me out of my mind. It's that brain hurt feeling, and I don't like to experience that. So, back to other things. I had a college moment today. One that paralleled so perfectly the idea of college I'd nurtured in order to get through high school. I haven't often felt that college lives up to my expectations. Well, i'd been wanting to read Slaughterhouse 5 for some time now. I got my first paycheck this week, and I thought I deserved a treat. I walked to Prairie Lights after eating a fairly pathetic lunch of lukewarm pizza and half melted ice cream (Healthy, I know) at Burge. I found the book immediately, but lingered awhile over the new arrivals and the rows and rows of fiction. I wandered to the second floor to salivate over the travel books and moleskin journals. Tearing myself away, I paid and left. I chose a patch of thick grass shaded from the afternoon sun by a towering Ginko tree in front of MacBride. I discarded my pink flip-flops and proped my head up on my book-laden backpack. The book was funnny and smart, everything I'd hoped to get from college literature (instead I got Friday Night Lights, the only book I've been assigned this semester and a far cry from those criteria). The lawn filled up with other students, all studying or taking quick naps between lectures. For a moment I thought maybe I do belong here. That was certainly not a masterpiece. However, I'll leave you with this from Kurt Vonnegut, who is tremendously more entertaining than I: "There is no such planet as Tralfamadore. Where did you get a crazy name like Tralfamadore?" "That's what the creatures who live there call it." -Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5 "