It's all coming together now

The Haunted Tunnel is tonight, Halloween. We're not yet finished with the decorating. We're getting together at 4:00 today. My job is to help out wherever I can. The teens got it down pretty well themselves.

I don't have a costume yet. Hopefully I can find one this afternoon...

At long last, I have had a student in my writing class- and another has promised to come next week. The young adults of the church laugh when I introduce myself to them, because they know who I am now. I need no introduction. And I'm getting all of their names down too, so that's good.

I'm not feeling very long-winded right now. I'll write back later.

neo and trinity

One of the Claretians noted that Michael looks like Keanu Reeves. He nodded fervently when I told him that I had some friends who call me Trinity. He went on to suggest that we get some black trenchcoats, rent a limosine, and go to the very first screening of the Matrix Revolutions. Just to see what would happen...

Now, my house is picking characters from the Matrix to dress up as for Halloween. Michael and I were originally planning to be Dream and Delirium from the Sandman comics, but now it turns out I"m going to be helping with a "Haunted Tunnel" at Holy Cross that night. Delirium can be pretty scary, granted, but not really in that "Haunted Tunnel" sort of way. So I don't know.

My days are getting busier at Holy Cross. I'm going to train next week for Project Hope (the STD thing), and my art class has decided to put a comic book together. (No competition, E, we're looking at probably two copies per person who contributes.) What that means for now is that I'm learning everything I can about comic art. We're probably going to be taking a field trip downtown to the main library to pick up some drawing books, graphic novels, and the like. I picked up five this morning, in addition to the four I checked out on Thursday. I've had a library card for over a month now, which means I can check out up to 30 books. And since I go there at least once a week, and I've been reading like mad since I got to Chicago, that means that I need to put a chart up on my wall with a list of all the books I have out and their due dates.

Also, things are starting to gear up for RCIA. We're putting together altars for Dia de los Muertos. I'm mentoring five kids (with the potential addition of one or two more). They're all painfully shy. I hope they start getting used to each other. And me.

Plus I changed the meeting night for the writing classes, so I will probably actually have a student or two this week. I know, I know. I keep saying that. But really. I just might, this time.

This also means that my schedule is starting to conflict from time to time. Need to get new pages printed for my schedule book.

Had a brilliant idea this morning to tie up that last loose end in my recently re-worked story. Need to work on that, too.

This is great though. I'm finally starting to get busy doing what I do. Love it.

I'm Motion Sensitive

Yup. You read that right. I'm Motion Sensitive. Or, more correctly, I'm apparently more Motion Sensitive than the rest of Chicago. It's a phrase I've coined in order to express a bizarre affliction I seem to have. I can find no reasonable explanation for this, so I've decided to pathologize myself, pigeon-hole myself if you will, with this new term.

Motion Sensitive.

The best way to define this term would be by example. I have two. Three if you really want to be picky.

*Example Number One:
Weeks ago, I began to notice that when I ride on the bus, I sway back and forth more than most people. The bus goes over some bad pavement and I'm bouncin' all over the place. The bus stops, I lean forward. The bus turns, I'm rocking with it. Especially, especially, in the the very back of the bus. I move as the bus moves. I"m loose. I'm flowing. I'm bumping and swaying and bouncing and all that.
But I'm the only one.

No, really. I'm the only one.

I look around, and everyone else is just sitting there upright like the bus is at a standstill. Oh sure, maybe, MAYBE they lean forward just a tiny bit when the bus comes to a sudden stop, but that's it! It's bizarre.

So I started paying attention to my own movement, and found that I really have to sit rigid in order to keep myself from moving around like that. It has to be a conscious effort. And I know that every person on every bus is not sitting there thinking only about not moving in their seats. There are just too many other things going on in people's life for that to be their only concern. I mean, even having noticed this fascinating phenomenon, it still took me weeks to remember to pay attention enough in order to start developing this theory. And I had a purpose!

*Example Number Two (or, the extention of Example Number One, if you are so inclined)
The train. Same thing. I don't ride the train as much as the bus, but I usually ride it at least one day a week, and it's the same thing. The train's rocking. I'm rocking. Everyone else is still. The train stops, I lean forward, and here, I'll admit, other people lean forward too. The train stops cause much more motion among other passengers than bus stops. But otherwise, everyone is just sitting or standing there.

*Example Number Three (aka, Example Number Two)
I was walking around the Loop (downtown Chicago) the other day when my theory was finalized. I didn't have my short hair pulled up or pinned down like I normally do, and it was blowing in the wind. A lot. Everywhere. The wind rushes around the skyscrapers, and it's like mini-tornadoes-- the wind was blowing in all different directions, and so was my hair.
No one else's hair was moving.

I rest my case.

Well here

As it turns out, winter has not yet come. That stint of bad weather- that was just a warning... or maybe a test to see who was going to turn tail and run back to the south. Or maybe, summertime was getting tired and decided to make it an early day, and then realized it still had some things to do, so came back in. Regardless, the weather has been so beautiful this past week- you wouldn't believe it.

This weekend, Michael and I started going out to see the city. We went to the Museum of Science and Industry. It was pretty cool. There were fun things to play with- digitizing yourself and whatnot. We went into a "real" coal mine. I have to put that in parentheses because, despite what they kept telling us, it was not real. We also learned a lot from a display about AIDS. I was depressed when we left it, Michael was enlightened. He spent time learning about how researchers are trying to fight it. I spent time learning about its history.

We also went to a service at a Hindu temple. It was really interesting. Just over an hour of... a swami, I guess?... reading from one of the holy books, and explanations scattered throughout and within. There were the obvious differences from Christianity's teachings. But then also things like the teaching that our soul is always with God. Not that God is here on Earth with us, but that our soul is sitting up with God, and our minds and bodies are doing the work down here.

Saturday night, I drank wine and ate an ice cream cone while saying hello to the full moon, and missing my prayer circle back home.

Then I drank a lot more wine with my housemates (minus Daena- her family was in town for the marathon) and we watched the Royal Tennenbaums, one of my favorite movies.

Things are also picking up on the job front. I've gotten more students for art class, and am hopeful that I will actually have students for my writing class this week. I've also gotten a lot of interest for the Open Mic at the Sunrise Cafe. I'm a firm believer that teens need to have stuff like that they can go to in order to express themselves. I don't know yet when I will get my training for Project Hope, but RCIA is picking up. I have a group of five teens. Fr. Bruce is realling pushing them to use us as mentors, so I"m excited about that. My group will probably grow next week because we had only about half of the teens here this week. I talked to them about making an altar for Dia de los Muertos. They seemed interested, although none of them had ever made one before. I told them my job was to get the things they needed to make it, and their job was to teach me how. Tutoring has picked up, in the sense that now, I have tutored.

I've been reading and writing a lot. I've written three new songs since I've been in Chicago. I've written 15 chapters of my book, but I"m ending the first draft early for the next re-write, because I didn't like where it was going. Already, it is greatly improved. All in all, things are well here.

sugar headache

Daena, Fabian, Michael, and I ventured outside of Chicago today. We spent an hour driving to an apple orchard, and then spent the first beautiful afternoon here in awhile picking apples.

I ate so many apples today.

I'm making apple cobbler tonight. I'm hoping it will work as well as that peach cobbler did. We have so many apples. You would not believe how many apples we have. I took ten out of the bag to set aside for the cobbler- the bag was still full.

I think it's slightly funny that after spending my life in Tennessee, the first time I ever picked apples in an orchard was when I moved to Chicago.

It was a nice day.

This week was a good week, too. I had 6 students on Monday (up from 3 the previous Friday). But then I had no more the rest of the week. But then, on Friday, I had a teen come to me and explain his troubles in school (translation: will you tutor me?) So, hopefully, I'll be spending less and less of my tutoring hours alone. I also had a meeting with Yesica about Project HOpe, and will hopefully be training soon, so my days will be taken as well. And, Sr. Angie suggested having a writing contest to raise interest in my writing class. When I passed out flyers to the teens in RCIA yesterday, the interest was definitely raised.

And then Israel had to go and bomb Syria, and foul my mood up. Has everyone who's reading this gone and researched Project for a New American Century yet? Go do it- now. If you wait, you'll start to think that this was something that people fabricated after the fact.

Man, we have got to fix this world somehow.