"Without Faith" by ThouShaltNot

I love This song. (If the link dies, comment and I'll renew it.)

( With your doubt all is comfort, we are all as we appear... )

She can't see this.

The fact of the matter is, yeah, I don't like him. That he doesn't like me, even having never met me, gives me less reason to like him. He thinks I treated you badly, and that may well be a fair assessment, though I might argue that it looks to him very much like how he was treated, and so he's imposing his own biases. I think he treats you badly. I think he's selfish, insecure, jealous of your friends and family. He doesn't understand some of the fundamentals of a relationship. He misses the fact that you consulting your friends and family when you're confronted with a dilemma is not only acceptable, but the reasonable first move. He threatens you with 'freedom' -- say what you will about his tone or what he means, that's a passive-aggressive way of saying "be careful, or we might break up."

"But Andrew," you say, "you admit your own bias. You don't like him, so of course you would say such things." Everyone's biased. I don't believe anyone is ever impartial. But I've also seen this all before. It's a bad thing when he threatens you with 'freedom'; at the least it implies that your relationship is a form of bondage, and I'm sorry but that infuriates me. It's a bad thing when he throws at you that he's never said anything bad about you -- what's that supposed to mean? That your grievances are less valid because he finds no flaw in you? There's no logic in that. And it implies that he has you on a pedestal, an unerring figure of truth and purity, and no one is that. It's not fair for him to pretend you are, as flattering as you may think it is. You can't know or love a figure held aloft like that. And the higher the pedestal, the further the fall when it proves false.

I've told you why I don't like him, and I've told you why I think he's wrong for you. If he's like I expect, like how all us boys were once, he expects that you will complete him, make him whole, and that's a false, unkind, unfair assumption to have, both for himself and for you. He's jealous, he comes off as selfish, he expects you to be as you are not, he seems passive-aggressive. I wrote you a whole email which you have yet to refute. This is why I'm so hard on your relationship, because I think it's a poor one, and I've not been given proof to the contrary.

Internship News

I think I got it.
I think I got it, I think I got it, I think I got it.

OK, so, I've been pretty sure I had it for a while, now. And, strictly speaking, I don't *know* I have it now any more than I knew, say, twenty minutes ago. But I got an email to the effect of:

Stuart in our Norfolk Branch wants to hire you for temporary employment. I will need additional information from you:
- resume
- your official undergraduate transcript, including GPA :
(if you have an unofficial copy you can email to me, but I'll need your official undergrad transcripts)
- confirmation from NPS that you are currently enrolled - pls have the NPS office fill out the attached form.
- your transcript to date from NPS (unofficial is OK)

Pls call me if you have questions. To confirm, Stuart says your start date can be as early as 10 July? and how long will you be working with Stuart? Also to confirm with you we do not pay for any housing or flying expenses from Monterey to Norfolk.

So... I think I got it!
I'm trying to not get over-excited about it, 'cause I hate the fall of disappointment, but as far as the eye can see there's really nothing else I want more right now.

Update: I just got an email reminding me that I haven't gotten an 'official' offer yet. Which I knew, but... grr, I wish they'd just give me a straight answer. Never mind that significant bits of my life rest in their hands, and they're dragging their feet... Bureaucratic BS... i'm getting sick of the yo-yoing.

Often in pears.

Two Names You Go By:
Andrew
Andy

Two Parts of Your Heritage:
Irish
Italian

Two Things You Are Wearing Right Now:
My favorite dress shirt -- it's blue.
An undershirt

Two Things You Would Want in a Relationship:
Honesty
Affection

Two of Your Favorite Hobbies:
Writing
Reading

Two Things You Want Really Badly At The Moment:
A better idea of where I'll be and what I'll be doing in the next three weeks.
Ice cream.

Two pets you had/have:
Casey, my parents' dog.
Html, Laurel's fish I've been watching.

Two people who will fill this out:
My brother Tim.
Maybe, uhm... Alison?

Two things you did last night:
Had Baskin Robbin's ice cream for the fist time in a dozen years.
Found new music on Napster.

Two Favorite Places to eat:
The Crown and Anchor, a bar/pub thing here in town.
The Orleans Steakhouse in Rosalyn, Virginia, where my dad took me to dinner a few times.

Two People that live in your house:
Steve
Html?

Two things you ate today:
An undercooked hamburger.
I was about to cook myself some eggs...

Two people you Last Talked To:
Laurel
An Army guy in my Crypto course.

Two Things You're doing tomorrow:
Working on my Thesis Proposal.
Going to Class.

Two longest car rides:
Virginia Beach, VA, to Cincinatti, OH, from my sister's birthday to my cousin's confirmation.
Washington, DC, to Cincinatti, OH, via Canada when I got lost (OK, not Canada really, but...)

Don't even have pictures...

For all those who can't see Leslie's post, here's an old picture of she and I from 2001.

( Image Under Here )

I was going to post a more recent picture of she and I (and Tish, I think it was, but maybe Melissa) from when we took our trip back in March, but it seems I don't have it. I'm sure (at least) one of the four of us has it laying around, so maybe they could produce it for us. And thanks to Tish, we have Comparison:

( Another Picture )

I miss Amber

Amber: Why can't I be even remotely attracted to you?
Me: Wow. I, uhm, don't know how to take that.

Amber and I just laughed about this.

"A woman has a close male friend. This means that he is probably interested in her, which is why he hangs around so much. She sees him strictly as a friend. This always starts out with, you're a great guy, but I don't like you in that way. This is roughly the equivalent for the guy of going to a job interview and the company saying, You have a great resume, you have all the qualifications we are looking for, but we're not going to hire you. We will, however, use your resume as the basis for comparison for all other applicants. But, we're going to hire somebody who is far less qualified and is probably an alcoholic. And if he doesn't work out, we'll hire somebody else, but still not you. In fact, we will never hire you. But we will call you from time to time to complain about the person that we hired."

Little Pleasures

Rachel just called me. This is always a good thing.