So, I "lost" my "job" today...

I'm gonna quote the hell out of this one. For clarity's sake.

I say "lost" because I kinda quit and kinda was told to quit. And also because, assuming I'm losing it, I'm getting a different one, one that I like more. I say "job" because it was a summer research position, which hardly counts as a real job.

I'd been "working" for about a week now. Our research group holds weekly meetings. At last week's meeting, I was given a job to do for the summer. It was basically "build this one thing". It wasn't complicated necessarily, but it wasn't exactly straightforward. And that was all the explanation I was given. For anything, really. There was no "Hey, I want you working these hours" or "When you're working, you have to be working in the lab". Just a vague description of a project.

So, I spent the last week looking online at ways to start my project, as well as reading research papers about the project our group was working on. I did this for probably four hours every weekday, generally at home and occasionally in the physics building computer lab.

Today after our meeting, my advisor asks me to talk to him. He says he expected me to be working in his lab that whole week. I'm not entirely sure why I needed to be there, even now, but apparently it's what he expected. And he goes on to ask me about my future plans. And for the first time in a while, I was completely honest with someone in the department. I told him I was probably just going to get a masters and leave it at that. He says when he offered me the position, it was with the intention that this summer would probably lead to me working with him on my Ph.D. thesis project. He says it's not really fair to him to fund me for a summer that involves training me on the project when I'm not going to be committed to it for a long time. I halfheartedly agree.

We eventually come to the agreement that I should take a summer TA position. At this point, I'd rather be doing that anyway, even though I'll get paid less for it.

On the one hand, I'm a little bitter about the lack of guidance that I got. On the other hand, I know I'm far from blameless. I wasn't trying to shirk my obligations, but I was fairly aware that he was probably expecting more from me. The main thing was just that I needed a break and he left the door open for me to kinda take one.

In any case, now I have a job for 8 weeks of the summer. I think it should give me some more free time than I was expecting.

And I think I have tomorrow off.

Jerry Falwell dies; I shrug.

And other things that happened today...

-I had my last final today. It's weird...I did well in the class I always expected to do poorly in, and did poorly in the class I once thought I'd do well in. Today was the latter. I'm pretty sure I failed the final today. Which is ok, all things considered, because failure doesn't really matter. I'd expect a BC or C in the class, which isn't particularly good, but it only really matters if I stick around for the Ph.D. But in any case, more than anything else, I'm just happy to be done with it.

-I went to see the Hold Steady in Milwaukee tonight. I've heard people say that they don't understand why people would want to live there. Aside from the hellish freeways, I didn't think it was too bad. It seemed like sort of a mixture of the most average parts of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Not good, per se, but not really bad either. It had its charms.

-I was unaware of this going in, but The Heartless Bastards opened. They were good. I'd heard 3 or 4 songs before but never really went out of my way to listen to them. They seemed to fall somewhere between the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Rainer Maria. I don't know that I liked them as much as either , but maybe with a little more time to grow on me. I ended up buying their latest album.

-The Hold Steady were good. The crowd was more into them than any crowd I've seen in recent memory. Part of that may have been that it was an all ages show, part of it may have been that there were a lot of Minneapolitans who drove out to the show, but whatever it was, it was a good crowd.

I wore my Twins jersey to the show. It was more of a conversation starter than I ever could've imagined. A lot of people asked me if I was going to the game this weekend. Which is an inherently odd question, as there are three games this weekend. But yes, I am going to one. Aside from that, it prompted a lot of people to ask me where I was from and that type of thing.

The show was good. One of the best I've been to in a while. They're always fun (if a little odd) to see, because they seem like the most socially awkward band that makes an attempt to not be socially awkward on stage. Like there are a lot of bands that make a point of just sticking to music because they know their efforts to say something between songs or interact with the crowd will fail. Not The Hold steady. They're willing to try, even if they know they'll probably fail. And that's fun.

The show ended with about half the crowd joining them on stage. I was among that group. It was fun. On some level, it seems like the kind of thing that you should grow out of in time; that going on stage with a band should seem less significant as you get older. If that's the case, I'm not as old as I think I am.

-On the drive back, as I passed Miller Park, I saw that the sign said something about Jerry Falwell dying today. This was the first I had heard of it, and it struck me as odd that a baseball stadium would be a new source for things like that. But that's how it happened.

In any case, as I read the sign, my first reaction was something along the lines of a shrug. I felt like I should care, and maybe I do, just not in a fundamentally positive or negative way. I think it's more of a "Well, that happened. Ok. I suppose that's noteworthy." kind of thing. That's a weird kind of caring.

Now he's opening the cabinet...

As a study break of sorts tonight, I started watching R. Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet" series. And I must say, it's brilliant. I'm not sure how it's brilliant, I just know that I enjoyed the vast majority of it. I'd definitely recommend checking it out if you have the time to commit to it. You can always watch it one chapter at a time, which means it's about 12 3-minute chunks. With more to come over the summer, apparently.

I'm living vicariously through Chuck Klosterman

The wonders of the internet rarely cease to amaze me.

I was just reading a little Chuck Klosterman earlier. I read the section in IV on VH1 Classic. He mentioned a Van Halen video, so I went to YouTube and found it. It was awesome, by the way.

But then, I was struck by my newfound abilities. Not only could I watch that video...I could watch any video (or a close approximation thereof). And so, it strikes me that, if in the mood, I could basically replicate what he saw when he was writing that article. And that amazes me. There's something awesome about having that kind of power.

On a vastly different note, also involving the wonders of YouTube, I remember recently having a conversation about movies that had made us cry. I didn't really have a good answer at the time. I undoubtedly have one now. This scene from Crash gets me every time. On the whole, the movie was very hit or miss for me, but this part was definitely one of the hits.