this past weekend, my baby cousin left for MIT. despite all the issues i may have with some of his teenage choices, i will miss him terribly. i’d like to say that i will miss him for the next four years, but i know he will be going all the way for the phD, which means he’ll basically be in school for the majority of his young life. a baffling but admirable pursuit. i will definitely see him at various holidays and other family events, but i know he will not be “coming back home” like so many of my friends did after college. i am incredibly proud of the things he has accomplished so far and the things i know he will do in the coming years. i am also incredibly jealous of the experiences and opportunities that lie before him. i would love to be a freshman in college again.

but…at the same time, i also worry about him. i made some of the most dangerous, worst decisions of my life between the ages of 18 and 21. sometimes i marvel at the fact that i didn’t die or at least lose a limb or two while in college. i think sometimes that all the important things you learn in elementary school – the real basics – are completely lost the moment you step foot on a college campus. like, don’t stick objects, no matter how benign they may seem, into electrical outlets. or, in general, if you dont know where it has been, you probably shouldn’t put it in your mouth. also, plastic plates shouldn’t go in toaster ovens and power tools and cheap beer do not always mix well.

i know i could pass these bits of knowledge, along with some more serious lessons learned, on to tuck, but it would be wasted advice. just as all the advice that was offered to me my freshman year was quickly ignored. i also know that, as a young gay male, the potential that he could face even more difficult situations is high. i know he is entering college almost 10 years after my own entrance, and that things are much different now than they were then, and i am grateful for this, but things are not THAT different. i have seen some of my gay male friends have horrible things done to them and said about them that were simply malicious acts of hate by people who either did not understand or maybe understood just a little too well and felt the need to lash out because of it. i will never understand people who harbor this type of hatred, but i do fear the things they are capable of doing with it. i think of tuck as a little brother and i wish i could protect him; i wish that somehow explaining to him about my negative experiences might shield him from ones of his own. but they will not – they cannot. i can only hope that things go well for him and that he does the best he can with the things he has been given.

tucker – you will experience some of the most amazing times of your life in the next four (or six, or eight) years, and also some of the worst, but they will be your own unique experiences to take with you and learn from. they are experiences i can neither protect you from nor share with you. i wish you the very best and hope you find success in all your endeavors.

i don’t write much anymore. all of these motivations having dissolved into something else.

as a freshman in college, one of my first assignments was to read the book bird by bird, by anne lamott. its a book on writing. i read the first 4 chapters or so, and maybe one in the middle and one at the end, and called it a day. i liked her writing, but i had more important things to do than homework assignments. i never sold that book back though, something about it made me want to keep it. i read it all the way through a few years later, after i had graduated. and then i read it again last week. i find that it comforts me. not because i harbor a secret desire to write a novel and i’m looking for pointers (i don’t, i’m not), but because it reminds me that, while my teenage ego-centric self-important phase is…mostly…over, i do in fact have a story to tell.

everyone does.

...

...

hm. funny. i dont actually feel any happier. maybe it takes a few days…

anyway, i am celebrating my first official day as a 26 year old with a self-portrait. notice the jungle effect of the houseplant in my arm-pit.

the biking has been very educational. ive discovered i actually like biking in the city, even with the ridiculously bike-unfriendly streets, pot holes covering more square feet than my living room, and angry, spiteful drivers. you notice so many more things biking than you ever would driving and it forces you to discover different roads and areas that you normally would never visit. j even brought her bike over and biked with me to the fells point festival earlier this month to avoid the traffic and parking, which was really cool, (despite having to secure the bikes with three padlocks and a small, hungry monkey with an eye patch and a big stick).

i read somewhere this summer that baltimore would be getting a cyclovia for four sundays in october which they would be calling “Sunday Streets”. (I was going to link to what a cyclovia was here, but for some reason wordpress has decided not to close any tags. ) The idea of a cyclovia is to close off certain streets and areas for the majority of a day (usually sunday) and to encourage people to bike, walk, rollerblade, skateboard or anything else other than drive those streets. i thought it was a great idea and would probably be a great thing for vendors and shops (as people are more likely to shop when they are able to actually notice the places they drive by every day at 45mph and never even blink at), but i never heard anything more about it. i did a websearch earlier this week and saw that they were considering it for April, not October, so maybe it was delayed, but im kinda sad to see the delay. with gas prices as high as they were a lot of people went out this summer and bought a bike, and i think october would have been a perfect time to get out onto the streets before winter hit, but alas, it looks like i will have to wait for spring to see if anything comes of this.

1. I appreciate that Palin reverted back to calling herself a “hockey mom” instead of “Joe Sixpack”. Most likely this was because Bidens name is Joe, but either way, I couldnt stand Joe Sixpack.

2. If Palin played rolled derby, what do you think her roller derby name would be?

3. its NU-CLE-AR. there is no Q in this word. anywhere.

4. “...her reward will be in heaven.” WTF?

5. Biden did start to bore me when he was talking Senate crap. But I think boring is necessary in order to come off as intelligent.

6. im hoping for a SNL skit involving scenes from “Top Gun”.

7. Biden won, but Palin definitely did a lot better than I expected. She clearly had no idea what to say about certain things, but she did a good job of avoiding her nonsensical rambling and stuck to the script.

8. im a little sad that neither candidate said something horribly wrong. i was hoping for some better comedic value.

latest college fashion as seen this past week at the gym:

- for boys, white shin-high tube socks, sometimes worn all the way up, sometimes scrunched down around the ankle.

and

- for girls, oversized, off the shoulder shirts with bra and/or tank top strap of contrasting color showing.

i personally have begun to stock up on ripped jeans and flannel shirts for the return of grunge (which i am very excited about as that was the last time i was even remotely close to “stylish”).