This video says everything that I have felt for the last two weeks. Ten hours of researching tech information about Eastern Europe. Then I get to play around with a Wiki Space to get all of it up there. I'm now white and nerdy.

So apparently I Am Paranoid

My girlfriend told me so last night. But I am not the normal type of paranoid that comes with my line of work, no. I am paranoid about the weather.

Coming from Tennessee to Pennsylvania was a major shock. There actually is something referred to as Fall and it lasts more than two weeks during football season.

We get all the pretty color change stuff back home but we rarely get the cool evenings and semi warm days that PA seems to find common place.

Then, on or about, the third week in November, the bottom drops out in a crazy deluge of thunder snow and bitter temperatures.

The first time I saw more than an inch of snow, I almost shit my pants. I am use to a dusting at best. As a matter of fact, as I sit and write this, Nashville is expected to get snow today. It probably will not amount to much.

So when I do my morning news rundown yesterday, I was surprised to see that we had a winter storm watch issued for Erie. They predicted a couple inches of snow at best for tonight into tomorrow. Imagine my further surprise when I get to class today and see that it has been upgraded to a winter storm warning, just as I predicted.

I told my girlfriend, who happens to be from New York, that I thought it would get bad again before the weekend and she called me paranoid. I can't help it.

Well I think He's Gonna Go.

With all the talk about Kaka's supposed trip up to England to play, thank God he didn't, I think I saw maybe two stories that actually quote Kaka. The rest.. well... that's another story.

These players have agents for a reason, so it blows my mind when someone on the team they play on starts piping up about the players prospects. Chances are you know about as much about his future as you do your own.

And then to top it all off, you have veterans and statesmen in the world football community that share their thoughts on why it was a bad idea to not transfer. Ultimately the choice comes down to the player and there is nothing that Maradona or Pele can say that would change a players mind.

Graduate-itis

This was most of us in college.

Sprawled out on a blanket in the quad on a nice sunny day when you knew Spring was coming and so was graduation.

Wait, why is it so cold out? Oh that's right! You were skipping your team meeting and your only class of the day because you just did not feel like going.

I have long since moved past those days but it seems that some people have not.

So when did graduate students become so lazy?

I think it is the simple fact that while yeah, we have tons of work to do on top of looking for a job and trying to get to our current job on time, lets not forget that their is a thesis in there too somewhere, we carry our undergrad habits with us. Most of us break them in the first week or so when there is suddenly a stack of reading that comes to your knee.

Unlike undergrad, the professors will know when you are not doing the work. Well, if the professor is any good they will. The Socratic method becomes your worst enemy, especially if you are in law school. You never really seem to get your head above water.

Two classes a term my ass. You might as well be taking a seventeen hour schedule with Farsi or Chinese as your foreign language.

I am mostly doing this article because I have become burned out. Graduate school is just not kicking it anymore for me but with one term left, I'm not gonna bug out now. That's dumb. I would not have left with two terms left just to work at the Men's Warehouse and contemplate going back to school.

I don't sleep in past meetings just because it seems like the fun thing to do. I go to class and if I still had a job, I would go to work. I would come home and do my reading, fire off a handful of emails, make some dinner, do more reading, workout, shower, watch the new, and go to bed. I would get up and do it all over again the next day. I might invite my girlfriend over. You never know.

Graduate-itis is no better than senior-itis but to sit around and blow off stuff when you are this close is just lost on me. I do not understand that laziness that pervades the student culture these days.

Inauguration Day

As a political science major in undergrad and an intelligence studies major for my graduate work, the time when America gets a new CEO means a lot to me.

Barack Obama became the 44th POTUS today and even though I did not vote, I can say that I watched the speech and was generally pleased at the promises that will undoubtedly be altered in the coming years.

One thing that has really bugged me today is some of the blog coverage that I follow.

I read alot on a daily basis. I follow forty-five news feeds and other recreational feeds on any given day and the sentiment seemed so harsh out of those that took the time to make a post today.

Some were calling Obama the first affirmative action president ever elected. I think that is a cruel statement to make when you look at the PR campagin that his staff put on.

He done something that has been a key in warfare back to the times of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, he won the hearts and minds of America. He connected with first time voters in a way that no presidential candidate had ever dreamed of. John McCain's daughter, Meghan, had a blog that she contributed to but that no where skimmed the surface of the Obama campagin.

I had a teaching job over the summer and I am still friends on facebook with some of the kids I taught. These are high school kids who won't be able to vote until the next election in 2012 but you would have thought that US constitution had been rewritten to allow for the average sixteen year old to vote.

In short, it was a strategic if not an operational failure for all the other candidtates who stepped up to the plate this year. The Obama team struck at key points quickly and rounded up the support to win an election of historical precedence.

Good luck, sir and may God bless your administration and the United States.

Christmas and New Years Round Up

We are three days into 2009 and I am finally sitting down and talking about the holidays. I did not end up getting anything footy related this year for Christmas but that's fine. I did make out rather nicely though. I got a Tennessee jersey, The Dark Knight, a new wallet, and very nice pocket watch. I have not got my presents from my roommates or my girlfriend yet, so there is no telling what I am getting when I get back to Erie tomorrow.

I did go out and buy myself some stuff after Christmas. I got a new cardigan, and two new sweaters, and new tie.

I have also been giving my humidor a workout as of late. I have found a new favorite smoke in the form of the CAO LX2. It is a really smooth smoke that allows the smoke time to cool between puffs.

I also had a Partegas maduro a few weeks back. It was rather splendid as well.

I recommend, if you are a smoker, to go out and patronize these two cigar companies. They are both amazing brands and are worth some praise.