Leave the gun; take the cannoli.

Spring break's just begun, and the cliche home adjustment is getting progressively more pronounced. I'm bored, cooped up by the weather. I just want to run, but my mom's cooking is making my running hard to accommodate. Spring breaks seem especially scattered this year, and lots of my friends have already had their breaks. Just about everything in Redding is the same, except that everyone seems way more concerned with the economy, which is understandable since Shasta County unemployment just surpassed 16%. People are panicky (some are downright kooky; people at my parents' church have planted a communal vegetable garden), and all the shut businesses and foreclosed houses have dispelled any airs of affluence the region might have had during the housing boom. It's just like we've been re-rendered the Okie enclave we should always have known we were. But times are just hard, and I still enjoy being home. No künstlerroman-izing from me.

I know that returning to Berkeley next week will be like entering a great time suck, with OCS preparation taking on a coequal role to school work. For the first time in my life I feel like I need more hours in the day, and, since I've never really been all that into sleeping in, I'm intent on waking up before 7 AM daily for the rest of the semester to get a jump on proceedings. And I mean a real jump- I need to be all wire when I hit Quantico. So with the days lining up to be both physically taxing and full, it looks like things will only slow down when I (God-willingly) resurface from OCS in August. I'm trying to figure out how to spend those few pre-school, post-OCS weeks, and, if there's no logging for me, I'm thinking about a little desert trek on the Pac Crest Trail. Anyone down? (No?)




A propos nothing, whenever I'm at home spending an afternoon on the couch, it seems like The Godfather is always on. And the thing is, there're certain movies that I have to stop everything and watch in their entirety if they come on. They are: The Godfather, The Godfather II, Pulp Fiction, Trainspotting, and Giant. So I watched it, and I saw one of my favorite scenes ever:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxPoqw5cD-Q

I love Sonny. He doesn't posture. He bites, he throws sticks and shoes. He has no sense of the justice people might think he's serving. There's just something going on in him he can't manage, which I find strangely respectable.