Vaio

"We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right."

-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

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This is my first post from the new laptop. It is nice. I like it a lot.

And one time, I got on a plane and we went really fast and then took off but then we landed. So it was really exciting when I spent all that money to do it, and then once I got it, it was still exciting, but then when it had already happened it started to lose its luster.

But this time, it's not a plane ticket. It's a laptop, and it is seriously really nice. Fired right up and all that. It boots in thirty seconds--what?

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Took a short (20 min.) walk around the pond in Eden Park this morning before rehearsal. A short walk to start a long day. But it was peaceful and gray and wet, like mornings when we went camping and my dad would wake me up early because the fish were starting to bite. I used to think that it was Mother Nature's way of waking up the woods, pulling the insects to the still surface of the water, boiling the hungry fish to the top, their gaping maws and startled, crazy eyes testament to the earth's mystery: The appalled swimmers splashing, sounding, feeding.

And it brought us and our poles and our lines, inadvertent Thoreaus, casting out and low, but thinking in and high.

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I talked to my dad for a long time tonight, probably over an hour. He tells me that my family's plans to visit Cincinnati (and their son, who lives there) are in danger of being canceled, not because of finances, not because of cataclysm, but because of high school sports.

My little sister is a whiz at sports. As a freshman, she has made it onto both the varsity volleyball and soccer teams. Which is fantastic. I support all her endeavors, not just because she is my little sister, but because she is good at what she does.

However.

The varsity soccer regional competition will take place during the weekend my mom, dad, sisters and dog were going to come to Cinci. Not only are the games scheduled for that inconvenient weekend, but it is also Easter weekend; and beyond that, it is the high school's spring break. Those seem like three great reasons not to play at regionals, which seems to contradict my earlier claim to support my sister's sports-related endeavors.

My family, naturally, still wants to make the trip. I do, too, though I understand the conflict. But my dad is more vehement about things. He tells me that high school sports have changed, that when he was a teenager, the priority was not the team or the game, but first your family, then your schoolwork. Then, and only then, did activities and sports begin to matter.

If my dad had needed to skip a tournament to go on a family trip, there would have been no opposition. But my sister has already dealt with stickler coaches: In the fall, the varsity volleyball coach refused to let her play in the state soccer tournament because it conflicted with a regular-season v-ball game; trouble is, while her soccer teammates were suffering at state without her, my sister watched the other players from the bench and never even got so much as the chance to serve.

(On a side note, when I was in high school, my JROTC instructor kicked me off the drill team because I decided not to march one weekend during the season because I wanted to judge a novice forensics tournament. It was one competition, and I was cut for missing it, even though I gave two weeks' notice so they could get someone else to march. I dropped JROTC the next semester.)

I wonder why high-school activities matter so much now. It seems a lot of commitment to ask of people who are not yet five years out of puberty.

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I finally succumbed and got a Skype account, too. And I posted a resume on USAJobs.gov.

And did I mention I have this brand-new laptop?

(Okay, time to stop being obnoxious to the Internet and go to sleep. Another long day of rehearsals tomorrow.)