I graduated from Virginia Tech with my BSc in Animal and Poultry Sciences. They gave me this neat little (ok, it's pretty large) piece of paper with fancy letters and a bunch of unnecessary words. I guess I'm pretty excited about that. I should scan it and put a copy online or something, but I don't have a scanner that large handy.

What with being graduated, I couldn't keep working at the college. My job was funded by federal work study money, and they don't give that to graduates. I am currently in the employ of a major retail chain (no, I won't tell you which one) until I can find something that is at least remotely related to my training. Ideally I'd get a vet tech job and they would help me get more training or maybe get into vet school. For now I'm just worried about paying bills.

There is someone new in my life. I'm not going to say much about that right now. We'll see where things go before I say too much more. Yes, he's cute (or at least I think so). No, I'm not going to answer any other questions right now. Perhaps I'll take the example of a fellow blogger (Hi Scott!) and refer to him here by a nickname.

My cancer is still in remission. There's not much to say there, I guess. No news is good news. I'll see my oncologist again in January, unless something else comes up before then.

I've moved into my new apartment, where I'll be living for the next year at least. I've moved in with friends of mine, a couple, one of whom cooks and insists that I at least provide notice if I will not be home for dinner. This situation is quite acceptable to me, as it results in my diet being much healthier and less expensive than it might otherwise be.

For now, life is smooth sailing. One day I'll want more than this, but for now I am content.

Not all of the songs with memories are that precise, and not all of them correspond exactly with the time that I was listening to them. Kiss from a Rose reminds me of watching Interview with a Vampire and several episodes of Angelic Layer with Jeff on his laptop in a tent at Tracy's house. If You Could Only See reminds me of a very close friend I had, the first girl I kissed, and the extreme confusion I experienced regarding how I felt about her, how she might have felt about me, and all these sort of awkward teenager things. It's more than a recollection though. I actually feel that way. For this reason, I don't listen to that song very often.

The point of relating this experience is to ask a question. Does anyone else experience any of this? For a while I assumed that everyone had it to a greater or lesser degree, but I come to find out that "lesser" is much more common. Do you have any sensory triggers that automatically remind you of certain situations?

I started my second semester at Virginia Tech in January. I was still in awe about finally being at my dream school. I still am. Something about it just feels right. It's like finding where I always wanted to be.

My first challenge of the year came in early April when I broke up with my partner of four and a half years. I put on a happy face about it, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't hard on me as I'm sure it was hard on him. We're still friends, though we don't see much of each other. We just had dinner at a little Italian place at home last week and caught up. It's still a little strange for me, but I guess things work out in time.

I'm not sure how to start talking about April 16. How do you preface something like that? The first thing I did was call my mother. I was on campus, so my roommate picked me up and we watched events unfold on TV. It's not even real on TV though. You can turn the TV off or go into the next room. In Blacksburg we were inundated with police, media, spiritual and psychological support, just more people than the town was meant to handle. I hunkered down with friends for the week and waited for things to blow over as best I could. I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but for at least a day or two after the shootings I wanted to be left alone by all those helpful people. I still get people who ask about it now and then when they find out I was there. I try to dismiss it. I'm not capable of explaining what the experience felt like.

In June I found out that a lingering bump on my elbow was stage 1 lymphoma, of a particularly rare type. I've always taken my health for granted. Luckily my mother, who is a nurse, is a hypochondriac for me. My summer was spent in and out of doctor visits. One surgery and three weeks of daily radiation later, not to mention countless diagnostics, I appear to be good as new. Here's hoping I stay that way.

While I was home over the summer I made a number of close friends. It was good to have someone to hang around with when I was going through all my health issues. It's sad in a way, since I don't get to see them often when I'm away at school. I'll always come back to see them when I'm home.

August marked the beginning of the hardest semester I've ever had, and hopefully the hardest I ever will. My favorite material was in the hardest classes. You'd think that would help, but if it did help I shudder to think what would've happened if I didn't like it.

In the family, one cousin is engaged and another had a baby. My brothers haven't managed to drive my mother crazy yet. The holidays were relatively painless and the food was good. I think as far as families go, I made out pretty good.

I'm looking forward to one more semester at Tech. I'll graduate in May, and then who knows what? I'm thinking West. I'll be applying to some graduate programs in animal science, but my goal is that wherever life takes me, it's toward the setting sun. I've played with the idea of staying in Blacksburg, but I have things to do. I need to see the world. There are too many things I haven't done, and if I sit still now I may never do them. I'm probably late to the game as it is, but I need to do all those things that I will later exaggerate to my nieces and nephews, maybe children? Maybe someday. 2007 was a year of challenges. 2008 is the year of adventures.

I'd be lying if I said that the holidays are my favorite time of year. I don't know when they stopped being, and I'd probably rather not remember right now. Despite that, I can't manage to be bitter about Christmas on Christmas Eve. I guess some part of me is still 8 years old, giddy with anticipation, the dawn pregnant with possibility. Even knowing what my "big gift" is well in advance and most of the rest, I still find myself a bit restless. It's just infectious.

I'm with many people I'd like to see tomorrow, and far, far from others. No matter where you find yourself, talk to the people who are important in your life. Tell someone that they're important to you.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, regardless of what you do tomorrow, I hope it makes your life a little bit better than it was yesterday.

I won't be entering vet school in the fall of 2008. I haven't decided what I will be doing yet. I feel burnt out. I'm not sure what I need to do next, but I know that vet school would be a waste of time and money right now. I feel like a year of doing something different would refresh me, and I could use it to strengthen my application.

I also feel kind of lost and hopeless. How the hell did I end up where I am in life? Why? I remember thinking when I was in high school, "If I can just make it to Virginia Tech, I'll study hard, go to vet school, everything will be awesome." Where the hell did I get that idea? Virginia Tech? Don't get me wrong, it is pretty amazing here, but where did it come from? Why vet school? I could've gone for computer science and had a useful degree in four years. What do you even do with an animal science degree? Plenty of things, I'm sure. I'll be looking for animal lab or management jobs. Maybe I'll do something with breeding. I could get along with a little field experience. Hell, I could just live in Blacksburg for a year or two. Even if my only animal work was volunteer, it doesn't take much to live comfortably in Blacksburg.

My other major plan, if not vet school, was grad school. It's different from what I'm doing, but probably not different enough. For now, I'm preparing for but not anticipating going that route. Time will tell.

• I don't have much in the way of furniture outside my bedroom.
• The carpets could probably stand a cleaning.
• I don't have to wear clothes at home anymore
• It's going to be really quiet.
• My puppy is gone

I need to sleep a little more.

Not much was open in Christiansburg. Walgreen's was open, so we stopped there on Alex's suggestion. At Walgreen's we decided that cereal was a good idea, but buying cereal at a drugstore is silly. We went over to Wal*Mart next door and bought cereal, and I got milk, and two bowls and some spoons. On the way home I ate a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch (while I was driving). It was delicious. This all occurred between 3:30 and 4:30 in the morning.

The moral of the story? It's hard to drink milk out of a cereal bowl while you're driving.

I consider myself extremely fortunate that neither I nor anyone I know was involved. I spent the morning trying to touch base with as many people as possible until the phone network here became absolutely saturated. I hope that I was at least able to set up a cascade so that people wouldn't have to be worried about my safety. That being said, it's extremely difficult to place my reaction. Obviously I am not as heavily affected as those whose loved ones have been injured or killed. At the same time though, this is very jarring for everyone involved. I don't think I'll really know how I feel for a while yet. They don't tell you how to react to this sort of thing.

UPDATE 17 Apr 2007 11:21p: I have been mostly disgusted by the media coverage of this event. I think that larger and more distant news outlets get things the most wrong, and locals do the best job. CNN's article is as sensationalizing as the rest, but if you scroll down towards the bottom, Gov. Tim Kaine's remarks perfectly echo my sentiment. "People who want to take this within 24 hours of the event and make it their political hobby horse to ride, I've got nothing but loathing for them." I don't deny that there are questions that need to be asked, but there are more important things to deal with right now.

On the other side of the coin, I am deeply touched by the outpouring of support from universities and individual students across the country and abroad. There has been a huge "We are all Hokies" movement, with students wearing maroon and orange to show support. That is probably the best response that I've heard about. I'm glad that the younger generation have a grip on what's important. We're going to need it going forward.

Ok, this is the second post in a row that doesn't say terribly much. I think it's fun. I'm even adding a category for it!

How did Amby spend her day? Like this:

My friend Katie lives about an hour from me, near Rochester. She went on and on to me about this club she liked there called Muther's when we were at school. She told me about drag shows that she's been to there. I told her that I'd go at some point, but I was in no rush. I knew Steve didn't really like clubs, so I wasn't going to press the matter with him.

About 3 weeks ago I got a call from Amber. She asked me if I wanted to go to a drag show with her. Now I had never been to one, but I had been meaning to for some time. I told Steve, and while he wasn't thrilled, he agreed. I had glee. Next, Amber tells me that it's at Muther's, the club that Katie kept harassing me about. I asked if we'd see Katie there. As it turned out, Katie was making her drag debut!

We arrived early, so there was nobody there. I got the marker hand, along with one of Amber's friends, while Amber and Steve got the alcoholic wristbands. Amber's not of age, but she looks remarkably like her older sister when she smiles, so she got by. Around 11, the first performers came out. The first couple acts were drag kings (it's like drag queens, only reversed) and I was pretty much unimpressed. No offense ladies (or gentlemen, if you prefer) but I've seen manlier women around campus. The queens were much better performers - pun intended - but I was mostly not into the music. Then Katie came out. She was actually one of the best acts out there, no lie. I don't like her well enough to lie about something like that. I was surprised. Of course, I'm still not a fan of the music, but she did it well, and with her friend Eric, it was perfect.

The second act was much better for kings and queens alike. I think the crowd was a lot more responsive, or at least a lot more drunk. The music didn't improve by much, but there were a couple classics thrown in, including Cake's cover or the classic "I Will Survive". Amber was drinking slowly but steadily, and by the end of the night we had one rather spirited dance before we called it a night. I drove home.

I think fun was had by all, even though Steve was getting a little tired by the second show. On the way back, Amber and I decided that we should occasionally go back. Hell, neither of us have Friday classes next semester.

I've been hanging out with Tracy (who incidentally hasn't touched her site in ages) quite a bit lately. We spend much time contemplating how little there is to do in the Finger Lakes for people who are Broke As Hell™. These are some of the few times that I regret being unemployed. The other times are when I am on my computer and want it to be faster, or when I want to buy something, or when I'm low on gas, or when I'm hungry, or in other situations where it would do well to have money. In retrospect, there are more than a few times that I regret being unemployed. I do not regret it, however, between the hours of 6 and 11 in the morning, when I am sleeping.

I digress. I came today to talk about bloodwork. If your doctor sends you in for routine bloodwork, and casually asks if you'd like to be tested for HIV, tell him no. If you have a female doctor, tell her no. The number of things that have been going through my head, the what ifs, is terrible. Even though I'm sure it will come back negative, my imagination really seems to love contemplating the possibilities. Because I needed to take my mind off it, and because I knew she'd be a helpful person to talk to about it, I called on Tracy.

We sat around on the dock for a while and dangled feet in the water and talked about school, friends, life, and everything else. Hunger set in, and on a reminiscent kick we decided to go to Luigi's, a little pizza place in Naples. There we ate chicken wing pizza and reminisced more. More so than doing it, talking about reminiscing makes one feel old. After pizza I did not feel like going home, so we got in the car and I drove in the opposite direction. That was not much more exciting than the route home, until I decided that getting lost would be a good idea. We took a side road, about a lane and a half wide, dirt, with trees on either side. There was this house that appeared to be abandoned. The windows were all boarded, with no trespassing signs, but the lawn was mowed out front. That, along with darkness and lack of flashlights kept us out. The oddest thing about the house was not its lawn, but its address. It had a five digit number! This was before we were thouroughly lost, so I do intend to explore eventually.

A few twists and turns later, we found ourselves on top of one of those big hills. If you're from the Finger Lakes you know what I'm talking about. It's one of those hills you always see in the distance but can never figure out how to get on top of. We went out and sat on top of the car for a while and popped some straws we liberated from Luigi's (remember Luigi's?). The ones from Wendy's worked better.

It was a great time of day to be way up in the air. The stars were just coming out. We sat for a while trying to discern where the sounds of traffic originated, so far out in the sticks. It turned out to be I-390. We had fun looking at the sky and contemplating the really important things in life, like what the fuck was a broadcast antenna doing on top of this hill and what did it broadcast?

On the way home we got Really Fucking Lost™. I'm trademarking a lot of things tonight. Anywho, we were down near Cohocton and Wayland, and by astral navigation and Tracy's Spidey Sense, we managed to find 21 and get our Really Fucking Lost Broke as Hell asses out of there. I should mention that Spidey Sense is probably trademarked to Marvel, or Stan Lee, or something like that. It would be pretty dickish of them to come after me for something like this though.

Back at the Casa de Tracy, we did more lakeside-sitting, though this time we kept our piggies out of it. The temperature had dropped a healthy number of degrees, and there was a stiff breeze. More stargazing was accomplished at this point. I'm losing wind here. Can you tell? Oh yeah, and before we arrived back at Tracy's, we stopped at the graveyard and did the first major stargazing and talking about stars thing.

I'm done.

I tend to have this sort of feeling whenever something ends. I suppose a psychiatrist could use that to tell me something about myself. Personally, I'm content to accept it as part of me. I don't let it hold me down. As my first year of college is winding down, I've gotten very reflective and introspective about the year. I've made some of the closest friends I'll ever have. I've had some really great (and some really bad) professors, who have taught me a number of valuable lessons. I've learned that the most important thing you learn from a class may not be the material. I've found that the most important part of my experience here this year hasn't been what I've taken away, but what I've given.

I have a little twinge of sadness that this year is over, but now it's time to move on. I can't move forward if I keep looking back.

There's only us; only tonight.
We must let go to know what's right.
No other course, no other way.
No day but todayRent - "Another Day"

On Friday last I had the misfortune to suffer a sponatneous muscle strain in my upper right thigh. By spontaneous, I mean it came right the fuck out of nowhere. I was walking to Prentice with Bubbey and Amby when my leg started feeling stiff. I figured I'd just walk it off, no big deal. Well, when I tried to walk it off there was a little bit of pain. Then there was a lot of pain. Next was me hopping on one foot trying to get to my damn food. No luck, as before I ever reached the stairs I gave up, and decided to go to the Wellness Center. I sent Amber ahead to get me some crutches. That was a mistake.

Amber came back in about 5 minutes with the news that they sent SMRT. Yes, the fact that they misspelled smart is a bad sign. It was decided that I needed to ride in an ambulance to the emergency room. Brilliant. Lights, sirens, oxygen, stretcher, the works. When I got there they wheeled me in, the whole "1, 2, 3, lift" thing you see when they move people from stretcher to bed, and then not too much for a while. I tried to explain what happened to a number of nurses, but none of them had anything useful to offer.

Probably the most useful part of my visit was that I got a couple x-rays done on my hip to make sure there wasn't bone or joint damage. It was probably one of the more painful parts of the visit too, because I had to bend my hip to angles that are barely comfortable when I'm healthy. Better to have them done than not though.

After my x-rays were done, Bubbey and Amber came in to see me. Apparently they had been waiting there since I arrived. Had I known, I would have had them brought in earlier! We sat around for an hour and made jokes about stiff legs, and fun was had by all. Eventually they had to leave, because apparently someone had to go get Steve, and it wasn't going to be me.

After some hours of lying in the ER, a doctor finally decides to grace me with his presence. He sat around for half of an explaination, and ran off again. 45 minutes later he returns, tells me that he has no idea why this would happen, and proceeds to tell me to do exactly what I had intended to do initially: use crutches, don't put weight on the leg, and take ibuprofen regularly. If they had just given Amber a pair of crutches to bring to me, I would've saved everyone a lot of trouble.

All weekend long Steve was a total dear to me. I was definitely not as nice to him as I should've been. I can say that I was grouchy because of my injury, but that doesn't fully account for it. He was nothing but helpful to me. I love my Steve so much, he's so brave and strong. He stood up to face a terribly fire-breathing me and survived. My Steve is the greatest.

Oh, and puppies.