encoded notions

One year ago, the Boyer family had a Thanksgiving dinner. Everything was wonderful, my sister and her boyfriend were setting up a fire in the fireplace, we were in the kitchen watching or participating in carving the turkey, food was already on the table in the living room. Everything was fine.

Except, in all of the hustle, the flue was never opened. For those of you not familiar with fireplace design, the flue provides an escape route for heat, ash, and smoke; it also provides for an updraft that feeds the fire a bit. Soon there was smoke filling the living room, the smoke detector was going crazy, someone had to reach into the fireplace with the fire still rolling (with gloves on, of course) and open the flue. We had windows and doors open, smoke billowing out into the clear, cold air. There was a fan running all during dinner and the most delightful smell resembling a log cabin in the air.

We all assumed that this would never in a million years happen again. We joked about that this year: “Who gets to take the picture of the smoke this year?” We made it all the way to the end of preparation with no accidents. All the food was on the table, the only thing left was for the marshmallows to be toasted on top of the candied sweet potatoes under the broiler. Thirty seconds to a minute tops in the oven and they’d be ready to go.

Hustle and bustle created a distracting moment and my mother was called away to the other room for something. Soon after, my sister’s boyfriend remarked, “It sure does smell a lot like marshmallows in there.”

“Oh, sh*t!” exclaimed my mother as she dashed to the kitchen, only to open the stove and have a plume of smoke pour out. Those marshmallows sure were toasted.

She peeled off the black char layer to discover that only the top halves of the marshmallows were burned, whereas the other sides had melted into the syrup. Not wanting to ruin the texture of the dish, my mom added a new layer of white sugary cylindars to the surface and baked for thirty seconds. Twice the sugary goodness, and only a small puff of smoke.

Ultimately a winning combination in my mind.

Everything is in a state of bidirectional flux.

In one direction, I see that the quarter is winding down, classes are now finished, COREs are over. Thanksgiving break is almost here—but not until after finals week. On the other hand, the GRE subject tests are tomorrow. This is the head end of a very large Graduate School beast to contend with. Deadlines, essays, applications, fees, visits, test scores, transcripts, hoping, acceptances, rejections, pondering.

It begs the question, “why does it have to be so difficult?” Does it really matter where I go for further schooling? I would most certainly think so, but the more I consider the directions to go from here, I see that I can’t find any good arguments to go to one school over another because it is “better”. I thought the same thing about undergraduate schooling when I was applying to colleges in high school. I thought that it really mattered where I went, when in actuality there was a large pool of decent schools to go to (and a list of no-no colleges). In the end, going to RIT turned out pretty well in the end. I think its best for my peace of mind if I just surrender to the ebb and flow of probability and let the world decide where I should go.

The school doesn’t make the person, the person makes the school. Without students, the universities would be meaningless. Wherever I go, the path is still the same. The field might not necessarily be conservative, but the destination is the same. After that, I’m free to decide what to do (that is of course after paying off my loans, of course).

Fresh on the horizon: another 4-6 years of delaying the universal question from childhood: “What do you want to do when you grow up?”

Walking from the parking lot to my 9am class today, I commented to the guys that I thought it had started to snow.

By “snow” of course I meant little frosty sky dandruff. Barely noticeable. Trace amounts. Negligible. Trivial.

I hung around the College of Science until around 7:30pm, and then left to head over to HOGS and what to my wondering eyes should appear, but approximately an inch of snow and chilly temperatures outside.

What
the
frell?

Thanksgiving hasn’t even thought about arriving yet and The Whitening has begun.