sometimes I feel like we get stuck in this.

There in the dark, her memory was refreshed, and she succumbed to her earlier dreams. Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion. In equating physical beauty with virtue, she stripped her mind, bound it, and collected self-contempt by the heap. She forgot lust and simple caring for. She regarded love as possessive mating, and romance as the goal of the spirit. It would be for her a well-spring from which she would draw the most destructive emotions, deceiving the lover and seeking to imprison the beloved, curtailing freedom in every way.

She was never able, after her education in the movies, to look at a face and not assign it some category in the scale of absolute beauty...

--Toni Morrison in The Bluest Eye 

(btw, why won't Blogger let you underline? It's a book.)

I think that the world is slightly unfair to people who don't get married immediately after college (or during college).

I signed the lease on my new apartment yesterday and I'll be beginning to move in in mid-July. This one has no furniture in it so I just kind of realized that I need to be working on picking out things now because if I don't I'll end up there at the beginning of August sleeping on a bed with no sheets, in a shower with no curtain, and with my desktop computer on the floor beside me. Now, my kitchen's pretty well set because I enjoy cooking and have had my own kitchen where I've lived for the past few years, but I need almost everything else new. It's amazing how what you pick out when you're 18 and going to college looks really juvenile when you're 22 (and how much four years of college use ruins things in general).

It seems that the kinds of things I'm buying are the things that girls getting married put on their gift registry: serving spoons, a new comforter, some nice towels, new drinking glasses because most of mine are broken, some wall art, bath mats, a shower curtain. Not that I want to be getting married right now, but I'm just saying, other people could be buying this for me, haha. When I do get married, I don't even know what I'll ask for. Wedding china, I suppose.  I'm sure I'll find other things to ask for by then.

I'm pretty happy with where I'll be living. I'm very happy to at least have it settled and not have to think about it any more. We leave for Alaska on Monday, return the following Tuesday, and then a week later I can begin moving in if I want. Things are going to be fairly busy between now and the beginning of August, even though it seems like forever away. 

Enough for now. Might write more later.

There is no attribute more comforting to His children than that of God's Sovereignty. Under the most adverse circumstances, in the most severe trials, they believe that Sovereignty has ordained their afflictions, that Sovereignty overrules them, and that Sovereignty will sanctify them all. There is nothing for which the children ought more earnestly to contend than the doctrine of their Master over all creation--the Kingship of God over all the works of his own hands--the Throne of God and his right to sit upon that Throne.

C.H. Spurgeon in his sermon on Matthew 20:15 (via my church bulletin this morning)

Over a month into summer and I haven't accomplished much, but that's okay. It's not like there are impending deadlines right now, which is nice, for the first time in four years or so.

Mostly I just sit around and do nothing at home. I go to the Y almost every day and work out. I've been playing some in Second Life, learning Linden Script and how it works in general, since I'll have to figure all that out in the fall anyhow. I was kind of ambitious and downloaded about 10 scientific papers that I was going to read and make notes on, hoping to prepare for the fall too, but so far I've gotten halfway through one, hit the term "emotional octopus", and not started reading again. Typically over the summer I devour books, but this summer a stack sits at my bed and I mostly just stare at them apathetically, occasionally flipping through a few pages and then deciding shortly after that it's probably not worth the effort.

I just feel apathetic. It's not really that I don't care about things, but that it seems like there's not a point in caring. This summer feels like waiting for something to happen while completely lacking the power to actually make anything happen. Waiting for an apartment to work out for next semester, waiting to figure out all the things I need to buy to live there, waiting for school to begin so that they'll pay me the money that I need to buy these things. Waiting until my family vacations to Alaska. Waiting to see if distance is going to work out between Patrick and me. Waiting for friends to call back, or for opportunity to do anything, really. Most of the time I would tell myself to get over it and do something about all this myself, but I think this past academic year kind of wore me out and I don't feel like making the effort for anything at the moment.

At least I have the Y. Though I'm a little lazy and it's a battle to get there some days, I do enjoy what I do there because I can measure myself making progress--reps and sets complete, calories burned, weight lifted, miles run. It's nice to see numerical progress. Maybe I can trick myself into doing something progressive by counting pages read, books completed, or lines of code written. I don't know; we'll see. I'm just saying, I can't sit here and do nothing from now until August.

Besides the apathy, though, things are good. I am enjoying the time off and am glad that I can spend my time catching up with friends and family and overall just taking care of myself. Lots of heavy decisions and transitions are coming, but for now it's mostly smooth sailing.

All right, enough writing. Maybe I'll straighten up my room and finally delve into one of these books for real.