One Week Down . . .

That is to say I have completed my first week as a sufficiently-part-time-to-receive-financial-assistance-student. Of my two classes I've found them both at least satisfactory if not enjoyable.

Medical Terminology has felt ridiculously easy so far. There hasn't been much in the way of instructor or student interaction as yet in this course but I don't really perceive that as a negative. For one there's no classroom component to the section I'm enrolled in, it's wholly online. Additionally, the structure of the course is basically to work within a workbook that is very well structured to familiarize oneself with the subject matter and prepare for weekly quizzes. Finally, it's one credit. Only one credit. I don't feel like I'm being robbed if I end up not interacting with anybody very much for this class. For what it is it feels like it's well arranged.

Principles of Chemistry [first course in a 2 semester sequence] has been totally different. Also an online course, the interaction level has been pretty high at least between me, the professor and a fraction of other engaged students. The professor seems really good and the slide-show lectures he's made up using Power Point are very well made. So far the subject matter has been pretty basic and foundation, about half of it was a refresher on essential math and problem solving skills. There have been some good discussions on the class message board, and I feel a degree of pride in that I think I helped a fellow student gain a better understanding of the principles dictating significant figures in an equation. Next week I expect we will begin delving into chemistry in earnest and that should be cool. We also will start having labs, mine meets Tuesday evenings after I get off work, and I'm interested to see how that goes. If I'm being totally honest with myself I'm a little bit nervous too; it's been a looooooooong time since I've participated in a scientific lab experiment. I've already completed my reading, homework and quizzes for both courses for the week. I guess I'm pretty excited about the whole experience of being back in college and working towards a career as a veterinarian.

On a different topic relating to personal growth I have volunteered to put together the opening devotional for the next Nineteen Day Feast at the Baha'i Center of Minneapolis for the month of 'Izzat which means might. I intend to try and find five to seven might themed passages to be read at the beginning of feast. They could reference either the might of God, or the strength that one draws from one's faith. I had a somewhat silly idea to see if I couldn't find appropriate passages starting with the letters for Captain Marvel's magic word Shazam as sort of a hidden bonus that I don't expect anybody to pick up on. So I guess it would just be for my own amusement, but there's not necessarily anything wrong with that. I'm glad that I'm doing this, introvert that I am, I am very conscious that I am not necessarily super active in the Minneapolis Baha'i community and this is a way for me to make a contribution that feels safe to me. At the same time I feel a bit of extra weight in having volunteered for this because I feel like life is very busy for me and my family in the immediate moment and I know I basically volunteered myself for an extra-credit homework assignment that was never assigned. Those apprehensions aside I think this could be a really fun activity and I'm looking forward to the satisfaction of putting together something that I hope others will find spiritually engaging.

A Saturday Morning At School

This morning I attended a new student welcome session at MCTC. During the course of the morning and into the noon hour I identified the location of my Tuesday evening lab, patiently waited to have a student ID created for me and visited the student bookstore where I purchased a student bus pass allowing me unlimited rides on public transportation through the end of the year.

This comes hot on the heels of the first communications being issued from the instructor of one of my two courses, Principles of Chemistry I [of II]. I am impressed with my professor so far. The online lecture I've already viewed (put together using power point) was rather straight-forward and visually effective, and the audio presentation is synchronized well with the visuals. There are also lots of links through which one can watch experiments displayed in snap-shot form on the lectures as full videos. Very high caliber stuff. I'm looking forward to the semester which starts on (yikes!) Monday.

Later in the afternoon I paid a visit to Comic Book College. In addition to picking up 2 weeks worth of new comics (which now amounts to only 3 issues) I dropped off the copies of the six pages of content from my Spanish Civil War comic with Comic Book College Yearbook organizer/publisher Dave. It's somewhat exciting to me that some of my work will see publication again, even if it's only on a local level. Dave and I also talked about the possibility of doing a larger compilation for next year's CBC Yearbook where the same comic would be reprinted. I like the idea of that, not least of all because it may give me the opportunity to create additional content or to re-draw some of the panels and/or pages from the original work that I feel I could better illustrate now than when I initially produced it back in early 2003.

Magic & Science

Since I got it together to bring the textbook from Kristin's summer term Chemistry course in to work I've been making steady progress through it. At this point I'm reading about atomic modeling and structure, the same subject matter that was being addressed in the Physics of Superheroes when I set that aside for the time being. It's very cool to me anytime I can identify a direct link between scientific disciplines.

In the documentary The Mindscape of Alan Moore Mr. Moore, my favorite author who many know as the scribe of such groundbreaking comics work as Watchmen & V for Vendetta, suggests that magic is the original all-encompassing science. I am inclined to agree. While it is beneficial for the purpose of initial [a word that should be considered on a generational scale time-frame here] study and familiarization for people to gain a principal understanding of the building blocks and operational systems of the universe, ultimately these distinct threads of learning weave back into one another. The potential exists to eventually identify and verify these very real connections, reassembling what has been deconstructed into separate fields of study into a comprehensive, unified understanding of all existence. The magical understanding of reality of the mystics, shamans, prophets & magi lead human curiosity and inquiry to alchemy, astrology & philosophy which in turn begot the myriad modern disciplines of scientific inquiry; an evermore microscopic analysis of that which is. It seems to me inevitable and necessary that once these increasingly specific fragments of knowledge are sufficiently
explored and understood they will be reassembled into a genuine and accurate understanding of all that is and only one field of study will remain for the student, scholar or philosopher; the all encompassing science for which I as yet have no other word than magic.

Not Much To Report

I haven't been making much noise recently. Since I submitted my financial aid award request paperwork it has felt like there isn't anything much to do. Reading lists won't be posted until next Monday for my classes so I can't even really sweat what textbooks I need.

Now as I write this I am realizing all these things that I could be doing. That I perhaps should be doing. Kristin is done with her Summer semester and her chemistry class freeing up her textbook to be reviewed by me to refresh myself on the subject matter before I take the higher level course this Fall. I have already gotten back into that some (8 chapters down!) but I still have a ways to go.

I've been so focused on school that I've really neglected other things that I could be doing with an eye towards my long term goals. I still need to initiate contact with the professor from the University of Minnesota's College of Veterinary Medicine who specializes in small ruminants. Thinking about it I believe it would be good to try to set up an informational/occupational interview with her in addition to trying to arrange to log some hands on experience working with the goats on her farm. Investigating other opportunities, volunteer or otherwise, for working with animals might be wise as well.

Then there is the Comic Book College Yearbook. I'm still at war with myself over my submission to it. I've got my six-page brief history of La Guerra Civil (is my Spanish correct there?) ready to go from my original printing back in 2003. I like the text and the presentation structure, but there are some panels that I'm not entirely satisfied with and would like to redraw. I used cross hatching exclusively to ink the comic and in some instances I feel it's pretty hideous looking. There are other things I wouldn't mind changing either, particularly my renderings of Ernest Hemmingway and the representatives of the International Brigades. I just feel I could do better work, but then there's inertia and the requirements of everyday life. On the other hand there are panels that I am very proud of including what I feel is a very well illustrated cartoon reproduction of Pablo Picaso's Guernica. I'm trying to figure out a way, technologically, that I could re-draft just the individual panels I wish to replace without having to re-make the stuff that I like. I could conceivably draw the panels and try to paste them in over what they are replacing on the page, then photocopy a new master, but I don't know how clean that would look. I'm concerned that may generate shadows and/or lead to a degraded appearance for the older panels. Maybe I can make a test run with bare panels to see what I have to look forward to. Yeah, that's probably a good idea.

Class Visit

I used a vacation day from work today to attend my Wife's chemistry lecture over at MCTC as a guest. It was pretty cool. The instructor discussed buffer solutions, aqueous solutions composed of a weak acid and its conjugate base that is resistant to changes in pH when relatively small amounts of a stronger acid or base are introduced to the mixture. She also showed the class how to calculate a mixture's rating on the pH scale based on the molarity of dissolved hydronium ions (H₃O⁺) contained therein. I have some catching up to do in reviewing the textbook for the class to bridge this concept to those I have already read about, but I think I understood the basics. I was able to surmise the appropriate means of solving most of the problems on the worksheet that was handed out based on what I've read from the textbook, the day's lecture and what I've retained from taking Pre-Calculus last Spring (I'm extra glad I took pre-calc now); that was pretty cool. Right now, I am super excited for Principles of Chemistry [I] this Fall.

Before I attended the lecture this morning I got up early enough to make some breakfast (I lied it in spite of the portion I burned) and took advantage of the available time to visit the bench dedicated to Abdu’l-Bahá in Loring Park again where I practiced some solitary prayer and meditation. After the lecture I picked up a copy of Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour which Kristin and I successively read with enough enthusiasm that we were both finished within a couple of hours. I felt it was pretty intense as a concluding volume for the six-book series, and very fast paced. Good closure, and I'm still looking forward to the movie.

I am very proudly a geek/nerd.

"Adventure"! That Could Have Sounded Cool.

Having purchased a subscription to Visual Thesaurus for my sister last year as a birthday gift I for some reason receive word of the day emails. Last Wednesday the word of the day was adventure and it presented the following:

"adventureThere is so little semantic association nowadays between advent and adventure that we lose sight of their connection. They were, however, once as closely associated as, say, depart and departure or mix and mixture. Back in the day, adventure meant whatever happens to us -- in essence, whatever came (advent being from Latin for "arrival"). From this developed, by baby steps, the current sense of a wild or exciting undertaking."

Look at that! Essentially, at its origin, that word adventure is a single word for the entire mission statement of this blog: to chronicle whatever I encounter as I journey through my life. If I had known this three months ago I might not have gone with Walking an Invisible Road and may have honored my beloved team of super-hero freaks, the Doom Patrol, by naming this blog My Greatest Adventure. Of course that may have caused problems. For example, if I ever were to submit anything I write in here for, for-profit publication I could run into trouble with DC Comics. Also, apparently there's this guy. And this guy.

Busy-ish

It's been a pretty busy weekend I suppose. I think it would have felt significantly less so if the major interstate linking the core of Minneapolis to the core of St. Paul hadn't been closed requiring me to take four trips from one to the other on local streets. It got to be pretty frustrating. The brutal heat/humidity and near tornado thunderstorm didn't really help either. Can I have some cheese to go with this whine?

Saturday morning I got up relatively early and went to the gym. I went straight to the Baha'i Center afterwards to attend a reflection meeting, my first ever. A reflection meeting is basically a gathering of members of the community to discuss successes and challenges in community building and sharing about the faith and to try to brainstorm personal or group plans for teaching activities during intensive programs of growth [essentially periods of making a conscious effort to proliferate awareness of the Baha'i faith to those who may be ignorant of it, or to educate those who already have an interest]. It was a neat experience and it left me determined to study Anna's Presentation thoroughly until I have a comprehensive knowledge of its format. I believe that this will give me an excellent framework to work from in discussing my faith with friends [or anybody else I encounter] who has questions about what the Baha'i faith is all about.

Following the reflection meeting I went to my local comic book store to reserve a copy of Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour; the final volume of the six volume series of comics from which the upcoming movie Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World was adapted. While there I learned about the Comic Book College Yearbook. Apparently last year the guys at the shop I buy comics from put a zine comic together out of short features by patrons of the store. I mentioned the zine comic I made and sold locally during college, a basic history of the Spanish Civil War, and I was enthusiastically offered the opportunity to have it reprinted in this year's Comic Book College Yearbook. I think I may want to redraw some of the pages, but it's exciting to me that I have this opportunity. Following this I drove for nearly an hour to complete a trip that usually clocks in at ten to fifteen minutes, then spent another 3 hours or so doing laundry at my parents' house before making the slightly less gruelling return drive with detour to pick up dinner.

Saturday evening was pretty laid back. I read a lot and Kristin and I watched an episode of the X-Files and the movie TiMER through our streaming Netflix. It was a really great movie. Probably the best thing I've seen since How To Train Your Dragon (and Kristin and I saw that four times in the theater). I very strongly recommend tracking it down and watching it in whatever format is available.

Sunday was another crazy day. After sleeping in way too late I scrambled to lunch with Kristin then we went to a gathering of friends (including my in-laws) for hanging out and a group photo staging Leonardo DaVinci's The Last Supper (I was positioned as the Apostle/Saint Andrew). This was followed by another very long drive after which Kristin and I ate Sunday dinner with my parents and sister and then headed home. After another too long drive I arrived home to discover that somebody was finally making a serious offer on my desk through Craigslist. I managed to make arrangements for them to pick it up that very same evening. Then I stayed up too late watching more X-Files episodes.

There! It only took me a full day to complete this entry about how busy I was for the last few days. Maybe I'll get to the entry that I actually wanted to make this weekend tomorrow.

What Happened to All Those Comics?

I used to buy comics pretty heavily. I cut back some shortly before I met my wife, and I cut back a great deal more when a recent series of very expensive automotive repairs (exactly expensive enough to be difficult to face, but not expensive enough to make buying a new vehicle a better investment) pretty much eliminated my savings account. I'm now committed to buying the final issues of five or six limited series and 4 or 5 monthly books that I wish to support because I enjoy the content, they're less well known publications and I admire the work of those involved. Even if further financial stress relating to my pursuit of further education and a career in veterinary medicine forced me to leave off the other titles I don't think I will ever stop buying Usagi Yojimbo. I have not missed an issue of Stan Sakai's great series since I was thirteen years old, meaning I have now been consistently reading the series for more than half of my life. I can write in greater detail about my love of that particular series another time. For the moment I wish to focus on my experience with comics in a broader sense.

Throughout my life there have been extended periods where comic books, particularly of the superhero genre, were a major focus for me. The zenith of this passion for the art form probably occurred when I was in college the first time around, after I left ROTC and was somewhat lacking in a sense of direction, when I decided that I ought to be a comic book writer. Now in hindsight I perceive this as a bit of a distraction and something that was possibly to my detriment, but at the time I think it was too often all I had to hold onto for a real sense of identity and direction. My efforts to pursue this were, admittedly, half-assed. I have written some comic scripts, and plotted out some stories, some using creative properties owned by other [usually corporate] entities. I never really applied myself to it though. I never made every effort possible to see through pursuit of a career in writing nor was I really willing to make sacrifices for it, socially, financially, or in any other regard. I did plenty of comics focused academic work in college as a Cultural Studies major, but I didn't want to go into academia so that was ultimately not something that was of any long term benefit to me.

I wouldn't mind seeing some of my concepts published some day, but I no longer feel a need to build my career or focus my self-image around comics. I think it may have started earlier, that the seeds had already been sewn, but I do attribute a lot of my movement away from that to my decision to pursue a career as a veterinarian and the reestablishment of my focus on that. It has probably made it easier to let go of reading comics in the volume I had, and saved me a lot of increasingly-less-disposable income. I still do like comics though, and I hope that my love of superheroes and and sequential art in any and all genres persists in contributing to the overall make-up of my character. I don't want an association with comics to be my single defining characteristic, but I am proud for it to be a part of who I am.