Last week, I went up to Brockport to visit A. I had a great time with him. He's so thoughtful and fun to be around. Anyway, we walked around town, went to a really nice Greek restaurant for dinner, and spent some time watching movies together. One of the places he took me to was a little park with a waterfall near a converted old mill. Here are a couple of pictures of it:






A great book that I read recently was Sherman Alexie's Reservation Blues . It has a heartbreaking ending- but it really is a funny novel. It starts off with the premise that the blues singer Robert Johnson faked his own death; and that he comes to a Spokane Indian reservation to seek refugee from the devil. His guitar falls in the hands of a local rock band and makes them famous. While it's a novel about music, it's also about religion, relationships, and what its like for people who live on reservations.

I don't know why that it shocks people that Bush commuted Scooter Libby's sentence.

I also don't understand why people would start campaigns to impeach Bush (well, I understand why they would...). Look who would take over if Bush had to leave office. Would you rather replace him for Cheney?

Lately, I've really been getting into podcasts for my i-pod shuffle. I like to listen to some of the programs from NPR-such as Democracy Now and Science Friday. Actually, a really cool NPR program that is podcasted on I-tunes is called "All Songs Considered". All Songs Considered features a few select artists each week. Sometimes they are indie or unknown artists; other times they are established mainstream performers. It introduced me to some new bands/artists that I like- "Ok Gogol" (Ukranian rock lounge band), Elizabeth Cook (country singer), the National, and Hypernova (Iranian Stroke-esque rock group).

They Might Be Giants, Hem, and Wilco both have their own feeds. It's interesting to have performers discuss their songwriting process while they play their own songs.

What programs do you listen to?

I took some photos of Lake Erie on my way home last week (I spent some time visiting some friends in Buffalo).

T. and I aren't together anymore. I guess we haven't been for awhile now. It wasn't a formal kind of break up where you sit down and say hey, "I'm breaking up with you". We were never fully together. Sometimes he would say that we were during the year and a half; and then other times it would be like we weren't. I guess the way that I saw it was that I knew he had been through a lot. Maybe if I had been through some of what he had, I would have reacted the same way.

He had used the "love" word and the "relationship" word at different points and then backed down from it. So I allowed myself to hold onto a lot of false hope. I held on thinking that because he had said all those kinds of things before; that maybe he would again. I guess you can say I was a naive person. It is a difficult situation when one person is in love with someone, and the other isn't. It was hard on me, but I imagine it also was hard on him... because it put a lot of pressure on him for not wanting/feeling the same things back. I have felt bad and guilty about putting that pressure on him.

He's a wonderful person in a lot of ways. I want him to be happy. I honestly want him to have someone in his life that he truly does love. Right now, it's weird figuring out how much I should care or not care, how much I should call him, etc. Hopefully, it will feel normal again sometime soon.