Home for the Weekend

So I made the trek back home for the weekend. A few more hours in the car tomorrow - we're heading up to NJ to visit with my grandma. She's pretty ill, and my family has made a few trips up there to see her. I'm glad my schedule wasn't so crazy that I couldn't go this time.

Aside from a solid hour of bumper-to-bumper traffic on 81 (stupid construction), the drive up went quite smoothly. The extra hour of traffic basically just meant that I got an extra hour to listen to music.

And I did a lot of thinking. Any time spent truly alone is a time well-spent with introspection. It's rare that this kind of time occurs...we're usually in class, at study sessions, in apartments/dorms with roommates, what have you. Being alone is almost a commodity. I came to the conclusion that life wasn't as hard as it appeared on Wednesday when I had my semi-meltdown after biochem lab. At that point, everything was going wrong and I didn't know how to cope with it or express it.

I'm happier now after a few days. I don't know what it is. I don't know whether it's an emotional see-saw, or part of some larger healing/learning process. I always knew this would be the most difficult semester of my life. I just didn't know how hard it would really be.

I thought about some things that I had said and thought about the other day. How I was so burned out, I wasn't looking forward to class like I used to, how grad school seemed more like torture than what I want to do. And I don't know that I feel that way any more. I was thinking about the best letter of recommendation I ever got, from my high school calculus teacher. He provided me with a copy of it in case I needed another, or just wanted to read it. I remember bringing it home and reading it to my parents. My mom about cried.

I thought a lot about that letter while I was in the car. It meant a lot more to me than just a teacher helping me get into University Honors. It was a firm statement that someone (other than family) believed I should get the best in life, that I truly worked hard and deserved everything I earned, someone who believed in me when he didn't have to. That's powerful.

One phrase in particular sticks with me today. My teacher wrote, "His motivation is not anxiety-driven." A simple statement, to be sure, but powerful. It made me realize a key difference between myself then and now. I used to have fun learning. I took pride in working hard and getting answers, being successful. What has been motivating me lately? Fear. Fear of inadequacy. Fear of failure. Fear of being left behind. Fear of not getting into grad school next year. Fear of not being all I could be.

Whether this has been a conscious choice or not, I don't know. But at least now I know what I need to fix. I need to start having fun in school again. Yes, I'm a dork, I enjoy school. I always used to say I hated it, just as everyone else did, but there's no denying that I've always loved to learn. I need to get back to that. I don't want to be driven by a penetrating anxiety. That will only be self-destructive. It's true that there were a lot of other things going on this week that bothered me, but unfortunately an inadequate lab grade set me off. (I made some really stupid mistakes, that's undeniable.)

Here's to hoping introspection continues to heal.

I also decided to concentrate more on my music, like I used to. I'm going to try to write more, and I'm definitely going to make more time for playing guitar and recording. It's all-too-often pushed to the back burner in favor of more manic studying or homework. If I truly need to get something done, I'll attend to it, but if it's something I can push a bit, I'm pulling out the ol' 6-(or 12-)string and laying out some tunes like back in the day. God have I missed that.

Interesting Weekend...

I'm not sure how to start. I'm not quite sure how it came to this. I'm not entirely sure how I feel.

So I'll try to start somewhere.

Friday was a good night. Laura dragged my sorry butt down to Squires to shoot some pool with her, Joe, Dave, Kelly, and Kayla. After that, we all wound up going to The Cellar for dinner. Laura's sister and was heading into town with her boyfriend (Laura's "brother"), eliciting no small amount of excitment from my little. They met up with us just after we finished dinner, and I dropped them off for a swing dance class that I had absolultely no interest in. After that was over, they came to our apartment, where we hung out for a while. I jammed with Drew (Laura's "brother"), and let me tell you, the guy was awesome. We played a bunch of stuff, and despite my raging sore throat, I was able to pull out some vocals to DMB and Oasis. We started watching the Family Guy movie, but everyone was tired and we stopped it before it ended and called it a night. Good times.

I woke up sometime in the not-so-early afternoon feeling a bit better. I think the sore throat will be gone by tomorrow. I don't know if I'm coming down with a cold or what. Anyway, I had left it up in the air as to whether I was going to the big event of the evening, Ring Dance. Laura and I had been talking about the whole thing, neither of us really wanting to go, but we kind of talked each other into it in one of those "If you go, I'll go" kind of things. So we got a group together and went.

I now know the meaning of being the fifth wheel.

Despite everyone's best intentions, this night just was not meant to be mine. For all the fanfare and tradition, I just could not get into it. I've never felt more out of place in my entire life. This is no one's fault but mine, I should have known this would happen. For some reason, I keep putting myself in situations I know will only end up hurting. Why do I keep doing it?

I certainly hope that this beautiful, $500-dollar piece of jewelry currently adorning my right ring finger will not carry with it these bad memories forever. I hope it will be a token of my entire undergraduate experience, full of good memories. But yet, somehow, it will always remind me of one of the most awkward nights of my life.

This is no one's fault but mine.

But I can't say as it would have been any better if I had stayed home, alone with my guitar and my demons. I don't know whether tonight was salvation in disguise. I don't know if I'll ever figure it out. I knew tonight would be difficult, no matter what I did. I hope I made the right choice.

The rollercoaster of life continues, I just hope I have enough momentum to get over the next hill...

Spring Break Has Begun

I have got to stop using titles that should otherwise be the first line of my blog entries. So as the title would suggest, I'm home. Do I wish I was in some sunny locale - Florida, California, the Caribbean? Partly yes, partly no. I'd love to be off somewhere having fun with my friends. But I also love being home, having quiet, catching up on sleep (13.5 hours last night - oh yea).

Plus I get to hear all the incriminating stories about my friends which I will not be a part of. All the fun, none of the repercussions. Haha!

I haven't done much in my 30 or so hours at home, as would be expected. I have eaten well, slept a lot, and watched two movies so far. And I hope that continues through the rest of the week. I have some work to do - Biochem and Drug Chem reading, and the usual grading load. Not too much, but it will keep me busy for a while. I intend on doing some significant Biochem outlining so I might actually start learning something in that class. Ever since Dr. Gregory's lectures ended, I have gotten about zilch out of BCHM 4116. Managed to BS my way through a quiz though...that was pretty impressive.

Something else everyone should be aware of. The link originated in Dave's profile, but I'm going to endorse it here:

The Other Side of 9-11

It's an interesting take on what happened that day. It suggests a government conspiracy. Now, I'm not one for conspiracies, and I honestly thought I'd find the thing riddled with holes and false assumptions, but that proved to not be the case. The guy makes a damn good case on the whole, and it certainly opened my eyes to something that seemed so definite, so absolute.

I recommend watching it if you find yourself with a free hour and 22 minutes. Then come back and read my counter-argument to some of it. He raises some interesting issues for which I have no rebuttal, but here are some things that I found problematic:

Regarding the Pentagon. I have heard all number of things about how it was really a missile that hit the Pentagon. I've seen all sorts of videos and proposals about how it couldn't possibly have been a plane. The images shown in the documentary, however, seem inconsistent with the original images broadcast on all news stations shortly after 9-11. I honestly think they were doctored by the documentary maker. I distinctly remember seeing the nose of the plane in the first image in the series, which was absent in the filmmaker's presentation.

Second, my father personally knows someone who was driving on I-395 when the attack happened. She saw a plane in her rearview mirror as she drove past the Pentagon. I know there were conflicting reports about what it was, but then again, remember the mass hysteria and how people claimed all sorts of things that day. This woman saw a plane flying low over the highway. I trust my father's friends.

My dad was an engineer in the U.S. Air Force. He knows a lot about planes - how they work, what they can do, and what they're made of. Here are his thoughts about the "inconsistencies" in the damage to the Pentagon. (They've become mine as well, he's got me convinced).

1 - No wing damage? No problem. Aircraft wings are made of tempered aluminum. For all those who don't know what that is, (I didn't until he told me) that means they are extremely brittle, and if heated, melt down into tiny beads of liquid aluminum. Hence no significant wing damage, no wing wreckage.

2 - No evidence of other engine wreckage? The documentary maker bases his entire case on four photographs he shows. That does not provide absolute evidence that there were no engines lying around, or other pertinent wreckage. He could simply be choosing what he elects to show us. Or it could just be a matter of there not being photographs of everything.

3 - Mysterious box being hauled away? If they had shot the Pentagon with a missile, there wouldn't be anything left. This giant box is obviously plane wreckage, and does not support the filmmaker's case. (This point was my own)

Next, on to the World Trade Center. The biggest flaw in the logic employed in the documentary is the Law of Falling Objects. It does not apply. Period. The principle of that Law is that an object can fall only a certain distance per unit time if in freefall. In other words,

D = 0.608 x t(s)^2

where D is distance and t(s) is time in seconds. The inconsistency lies in the fact that the World Trade Center is not a single object when falling, and the amount that falls is actually gaining mass (and thus momentum) as it proceeds downward. No, I'm not inventing matter, but check out this logic.

The plane hit the second tower between the 78th and 82nd floors. That much is true. That left about 30 floors above the impact. The building buckled at the point of impact, and the top descended upon all floors below the 78th. The momentum of this impact drove down the subsequent floors, which drove down lower floors, on and on until the bottom. Thus, the section of the tower in downward motion was increasing in momentum. That's why it fell so fast. It was not a single body of constant mass in freefall, it was an ever-growing collection of objects compiling upon themselves to increase in downward momentum.

And no, I'm not a physics major. That's just common sense.

Next, to address his claim that 2000 F heat melted the steel in the WTC. He cites a statement from a civil engineer who worked on the towers when they were built. He was quoted as saying that the heat of the burning jet fuel weakened the steel in the towers, leading to the collapse. OK. The filmmaker then cites an underwriter in the company who approved the steel as saying this engineer claimed the steel melted.

Whoa - get the quote right.

The melting point of steel is indeed 3000 F. That's the point where it liquifies, not where it weakens. That's what the engineer claims. It was weakened; he never said "melted." I mean, hell, you can heat steel to about 500 F and bend it by hand. Doesn't take jet fuel, genius. Then consider the fact that you just had a 100-ton aircraft slam damn near perpendicular into the side of the building. The impact, torque (since it hit at almost the top of the building), and vibrational damage done to the steel (from the explosion) had to have had some effect on the structural integrity of the tower.

It's physics again. I apologize.

He also claims there were secondary explosions that brought down the tower as it went down, and he points out around half a dozen "explosions" that occurred as the towers collapsed. Did he consider the fact that girders were snapping under the weight of the collapsing tower? I'm pretty sure that could account for some ejection of rubble from the tower.

The stuff that doesn't add up is compelling, especially regarding inconsistencies in Flight 93 (that crashed in Pennsylvania) and the collapse of World Trade Center 7. So I'm not saying that there's not some weird shit out there, but this guy's argument isn't as solid as it first appeared. I know I was pretty worked up after I first watched it, but I also never claimed to fully believe it, either.

Wow, all this physics has tired me out.