Day 181

July 19th

Today was actually productive. Even though it was a weekend, the internet decided to work with me and I was able to work on my paper. The research is going slow, mostly because of slow internet also because finding facts is infuriating difficult. I hope to get through it all, and it might just take a few all nighters. Oh well, I can manage that. I found out that Emmett can't go with me on the roadtrip, which is kind of disappointing. It might still be a fun trip, but it will be a solo trip, which means I will cruise through it as fast as I can. After finding that out, I decided to go to the gym to work off some pressure and that helped me deal with the disappointment of the loss of my triumphant return to America. Oh well. Probably will have to take the car now. Oh well. That means I can go to Chicago more easily or visit Michigan or roadtrip to an away game or something.

Day 180

July 18th, 2008

Well its Friday, which means its the weekend. However, with Megan and Chris down in Luxor there really isn't that much to do around here. I thought about getting some work done, but the internet wasn't really cooperating with me. Oh well, I am in the middle of a rather interesting book, so I crashed on the couch and began tearing through Kite Runner. It was well written but I really just didn't like the protagonist in the story. I found his lack of well-power disturbing and infuriating. I might have had such a visceral reaction to the character, because sometimes I question my own moral backbone in tough questions. However, I hope in situations like this I wouldn't back down. It also took me awhile to realize that the author wasn't the main character. The way he set it up made me think this was an autobiography. However, by the end of it, with the different names and children, I wasn't sure. Anyways, a good book nonetheless. It was all I really did Friday. Good day.

Day 179

So my hopes of finally getting back into a sleep pattern failed again. I couldn't get to sleep until like 3 even though I went to bed at around one. But I slept well, except for the fact that I slept way to long and woke up much later than I was planning. This is a rather frustrating experience when it happens all the time, and I better get better because this half-ass nature to getting up and getting sleep in general isn't going to cut it at Notre Dame. Oh well, I guess necessity will force me to adapt at Notre Dame. Despite getting out a little later, today was normally productive. I got through a tedious part of my paper, where I am just listing agricultural and water resource statistics. This section took a long time and wasn't really all that interesting too me, but its important information in order to set up a scarcity argument. I ended right before getting to the section where I get to talk about the countries future plans to build dam's and irrigation systems. This means I will be able to look at websites other than the FAO. Finally. I understand that this probably doesn't seem like a big deal to most people, but for a security studies paper I have spent way too much time immersed in the the nuances of argricultural production.
I finished my book: Imperial Grunts, yesterday and today started working on my next one Kite Runner. It's fun to finish books that aren't assigned for class. Rory would be proud too.

Day 178

July 16th

Today was just kind of crappy day. I didn't get to sleep until late, didn't sleep well, and then ended up waking up much later than I wanted too. So I went down to work and found myself just getting frustrated by A. not finding the information that I needed. B. finding too much information and not being to understand it all. C, having difficulty putting all the information into a coherent paper. However, no one ever said that writing was easy. It was rather a frustrating day and I could never really get into a rhythm for writing. Not even coffee helped me. I think I was just in a bad mood from not getting enough sleep or whatever.
Anyways, I went home around 6 again and got it out of my system by working out a lot. And it helped, as I got all the bad feelings/thoughts out my head.
After refueling with food, I watched The Departed. I really enjoyed the writing of the movie, the dialog was quick and well-delivered. Plus dropping Notre Dame references always makes me like a movie.
I went to bed hoping to get a good night sleep.

Day 177

July 15th

I woke up today with the gameplan of spending a lot of time at the DDC. The project is starting to materialize, although the more it does, the more complex it gets, and now it is becoming a question of hours. So with this goal in mind and with no distractions at work, I tried to plow through some research. It turns out that Realclearpolitics is always a distraction, but even then, I spent less time on that than I do normally. However, my plans to stay late were cut short when I got an email from Robin inviting me and Megan over to the house to play wii games. I can't refuse wii games, especially guitar hero, the most friendly people you will ever meet, and a little slice of America. So at 5, I headed back to the penthouse and packed up some stuff to be sent back to America. After getting the boxes we got a taxi and hoped that we could find their apartment from the street. Normally we take the subway. I didn't know the address so we got dropped off somewhere marginally close, ended up going the wrong way, and then getting another taxi. Oh well, we made it there, which was all that mattered. Guitar Hero is a lot of fun, and go figure, practice makes you better.

Day 176

July 14^th

Today with Chris down south, I returned to my normal routine. I got up went to work, and got some actual good work done. If I continue at this pace, getting a good research paper done shouldn’t be a problem. I did however still leave room for improvement as I looked into graduate scholarships, mainly the Marshall Scholarship. I like the idea of studying in London for free, maybe at the London School of Economics. However, I believe the main driving force for me wanting to do this would be simply because I can, it would look sweet on a resume, and the fact that people I know would be like “wow, look at Glen, he’s a Marshall scholar.” I checked out the profiles of those who won this year, and although they were quite amazing and it looked like these kids had real ambition and talent. However, I don’t think my resume was all that different from theirs, once I add research on Solar Power and Resource Wars. Well that made me happy that I had decided to stay around this summer, even though it might look better than it really is. However, I thought about it on my drive home (as I had forgotten my book) and realized that it was a real piss poor reason to apply for these scholarships simply so people will be like “wow.” Personally I don’t really give a shit if people think I am doing amazing stuff. As long as I am challenged myself and doing the best that I possibly can, whether or not Joe Schmoe from back home gives a hoot, doesn’t concern me in the least. I know what I want to do and unless something changes in the next few months, I am going to do it. Forget about fame and fortune. I know what matters.

Day 175

July 13^th

Today started off with getting Chris a taxi so he could go see the pyramids of dashour and Sakkara. These are places I really didn’t want to see and I wanted some time to work on my research. Chris ended up paying a bit more than I would have settled for, but got a taxi driver who could speak English and knew the way around. So I felt that he would be safe. After seeing Chris off, I headed back to the gym as it had been a few days since I had seen it. It was a happy reunion.

After the gym and as I was waiting for the bus, I realized that Chris didn’t have any keys so he couldn’t get back in the apartment. This means I had to wait around to make sure he got in. Unfortunately, the internet wasn’t working in the apartment. Go figure, it never does, so I tried to do some Arabic. I quickly grew tired of this and resorted to simply reading. This turned into a nap, and I awoke a few hours later wondering where Chris had been. It was about 6 hours after he took off, so I started to wonder what he was up too. I went to the door to look out, and right at that time Chris came out of the elevator. Good timing.

We hung around a bit and got Pizza as I waited for Obama’s interview on CNN and Chris waited for the appropriate time to leave. He had to meet the agency at 8:30 for a ride over to the train station.

It turns out Barack’s interview wasn’t until about 10. Don’t really know why they said it was at 8, but whatever. The interview was very good, as Fareed didn’t care about any of the nit-picking that normal interviews do and simply wanted to understand his world view. He asked good questions and cut him off when he started to go to stump answers that avoided the topic. Obama did explain his “undivided capital of Israel” line as it meant not that Palestine couldn’t be in Jerusalem, but that there shouldn’t be a wall. I don’t know if he was bullshiting or not, as why would he say this to the AIPAC, but if this was the case it was some pretty smart political wording as the way it was originally interpreted came off as extremely pro-Israel, but it gave him the ability to back-track if it didn’t get the right response, which it didn’t Very savy.