Let's get together, before we get much older...

Hey people! It's been quite a while!

There are some big changes coming to the Harrison household, but I'll let Pete make the official announcement about that. For now, in honor of this past weekend's journey down to the most perfect Mountain in all of Tennessee, and perhaps the world, here are a few of my favorite things.

The words that follow are Robert Frost's. The pictures are all mine.

Back out of all this now too much for us,

Back in a time made simple by the loss

Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off

Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,

There is a house that is no more a house

Upon a farm that is no more a farm

And in a town that is no more a town.

The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you

Who only has at heart your getting lost,

May seem as if it should have been a quarry--

Great monolithic knees the former town

Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.

And there's a story in a book about it:

Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels

The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest,

The chisel work of an enormous Glacier

That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.

You must not mind a certain coolness from him

Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.

Nor need you mind the serial ordeal

Of being watched from forty cellar holes

As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.

As for the woods' excitement over you

That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,

Charge that to upstart inexperience.

Where were they all not twenty years ago?

They think too much of having shaded out

A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.

Make yourself up a cheering song of how

Someone's road home from work this once was,

Who may be just ahead of you on foot

Or creaking with a buggy load of grain.

The height of the adventure is the height

Of country where two village cultures faded

Into each other. Both of them are lost.

And if you're lost enough to find yourself

By now, pull in your ladder road behind you

And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.

Then make yourself at home. The only field

Now left's no bigger than a harness gall.

First there's the children's house of make-believe,

some shattered dishes underneath a pine,

The playthings in the playhouse of the children.

Weep for what little things could make them glad.

Then for the house that is no more a house,

But only a belilaced cellar hole,

Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.

This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.

Your destination and your destiny's

A brook that was the water of the house

Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,

Too lofty and original to rage.

(We know the valley streams that when aroused

Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)

I have kept hidden in the instep arch

Of an old cedar at the waterside

A broken drinking goblet like the Grail

Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it,

So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't.

(I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse.)

Here are your waters and your watering place.

Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

Ecce Quam Bonum.

Visiting a Vice Chancellor

Last week, Kate and I were able to attend the D.C. Sewanee Alumni reception for the newly elected Vice Chancellor, John McCardell, Jr. and had a great time talking to him.  While there, we also met several people from a few years ahead of us.  Suffice it to say, there will be a Mario Kart reunion tour some time in the future.

In other news, Kate and I ran 5k on the Rock Creek Parkway trail, and after walking to and from the trail from our apartment, covered more than 6 miles.  We were understandably tired after that.  Since we hadn't eaten in the several hours that were involved in that, we were also quite famished.  As anyone who has spent time with us in D.C. knows, that means it is time for the Diner.

Satiated and weary from our delightful run in the park, we made our way home to some Crimson Tide football.  ROLL TIDE.That is all that needs to be said.

Silver Linings

For a couple living in gentile poverty with only one wage earner in a stalled economy, it can seem like there could be no way for happiness to thrive.  That is not so.  We seem to have found ourselves in the midst of friends, and friends can do a lot to make you happy.  Tonight, there is a Sewanee alumni gathering that we are going to attend.  We will join roughly 20 fellow young Sewanee alums as we hang out, catch up, and make connections--just like we did when school resumed. 

Then there is this Saturday, when we go to the Old Dominion Brewhouse to join 50 or so of our closest friends for the Alabama Crimson Tide Football game.  Thanks to the National Capital Chapter of the University of Alabama Alumni Association, the entire place is overrun with crimson jerseys and t-shirts.  This Saturday will be particularly fun since it will be the Alabama-Florida game. $5 says the commentary will be dominated by Tim Tebow's legacy.  Roll Tide!

Finally, a real bright spot of where we live is the fact that great stuff happens here.  We'll be there, and we hope you come too.

-Pete

Rip Van Winkle stirs

Well.  Looks like the site kind of stalled out there.  Last post was before I graduated.  So, where are we now that a full season has passed us by?  In one of the more terrifying points of a young couple's life: staring over the edge on the rain-slick precipice of darkness--the job hunt.  It has not been successful, and anyone who has ever shared the difficulty of having a spouse sacrifice to put your butt through school so you can get a good job knows, not being able to deliver that good job at the end of that schooling is a MAJOR disappointment.

We're plucky, determined and eager to have an answer to "what's next?" Uncertainty of this level makes life hard to live, as we must settle for mere existence until that change comes.  As I said to a friend that was cheering me up on a particularly frustrating day of career searching, "It's a tough road and the only way to get off is to keep walking down the trail."  It doesn't change the fact of the matter that the search is hard, all the harder after the worst recession since the Great Depression.  And just because the times are hard does not mean that I have to like it.  But these are the "interesting times" in which we live.  That old Chinese curse is collecting its bitter due.

To keep myself from going mad, I have started another blog, The Inner Napoleon. This one is is more about my journey as a gamer--with a smattering of actual shop-talk on strategy.  Drop by, and if you have some words of wisdom you've gained from playing games, send them to me and I'll put you in a s a guest columnist.

I keep trying, trudging one foot in front of the other down this rugged, hostile path, thinking that each time the dust tears up my eyes in disappointment that this time, this time the mirage is real.  Every day, I keep expecting to be like George Clooney in "O' Brother, Where Art Thou?"  I will find my treasure, but it will not be the one I expected.

See you down the road, fellow travelers.

Eve of the Storm

Hello again,
Finals start for me on the 6th, followed by one on the 8th, and the last on the 10th. Then I have a paper due on the 13th... even though the Registrar's policy says papers are due on the 3rd. I don't want to be there when this pillar of the faculty comes down on the Registrar with his decision to have the paper due on the 13th. Beside the point. I finished the paper as though it were to be due tomorrow, so when the professor moved it back 10 days so students could come have meetings with him, I felt about three steps ahead of everyone else.

I've been duking it out with a pesky head cold, with its perfect timing for finals. I've virtually killed the beast now, just have to push those painfully slow final symptoms out of the body to be back to "normal."

There is no news on the job front. My efforts have been put on hold for finals, but rest assured that with 13 days until graduation from my last exam, I will have nothing else to do but search. Lets hope I get something soon.

Back to the mines.
-Pete

Tax week, gadgets and spring

Well folks,
This week has the dreaded "tax day." April 15th is Thursday. Have you finished your income taxes? We have and we are pleased to announce that we overpaid Uncles Sam and George and are due a refund.

In other news, unless you hid in the center of the Earth, you've heard that the iPad is out now--sort of. There are scads of articles out now, detailing the pros and cons of the device. There are further still that predict its success or failure. Given my technological needs, I will not be getting one at this time, and given some of its cons, I will like not get one at all unless I can't beat its price. I do find myself looking forward to the HP slate coming out soon, and I really have the curiosity bug over the Microsoft Courier and the Dell Mini 5. The summer should be interesting on the tablet front.

The other thing that techies and gadget geeks have been looking out for are the new versions of the iPhone and Android systems coming out this summer. As a consumer, I love watching titans of consumer electronics batter each other in mortal combat--I get the best deals that way. Sadly, because of the current job market, I will not satisfy my gadget lust until I get a job.

This week marks the end of the Washington, DC Cherry Blossom Festival. It was fun, but the crowds were mind-boggling. John and Susie Q. Public from generic Mid-Western city can really clog and bloat this already transportation-choked town. Poor Kate missed the fireworks because the crowds paralyzed the Metro, preventing her from getting out to see it. That was terrible, but it did let us check out the Capital Hill neighborhood. Its really interesting, and we'll take a look at it if I get employment up here.

Well, time for class before resuming my paperwork and job hunt. Wish us luck

-Pete

Tax man commeth

whoo hoo! the IRS is hiring again. I'm applying to every position they have for which I qualify. So far, that's all but one. Wish me luck!

I have also finished my class project, so now my attention shifts to the Final Exam (dun dun DUN!) on Saturday. After that, I move on to the take home exam that is due on the 30th. Then I have 15 days to write a paper, and fill out our taxes (ewwww.). After all that, things calm down for a week, then I have another paper to write, and three exams to be preparing for. Its just like work, only, sadly, education doesn't come with a wage.

In other awesome news: I'm volunteering for food prep duties this Thursday at the DC Central Food Kitchen. I think it will be a blast, and I'm looking forward to it. Did you know that soup kitchens are booked on volunteers for weeks in advance? Maybe that's just up here, but its crazy.

Finally, I've been working on the Couch to 5K running program. I'm in the middle of week 4, and my mean time is 24 minutes for two miles. I don't see an NFL contract in my future, but when the zombie apocalypse comes, I'll be zombie food rank two. I'll be safe from small children, the elderly, and fat zombies, but not if they have rascals.

Here's to rank 3.

-Pete