The Roulette Wheel

I really like orange slices. I don't know why. It's not like they taste like oranges, but they DO taste like roadtrip. I used to eat them on the road from Dallas to San Antonio all the time but obviously I don't make that trip much anymore. Brings back lots of memories. I love road trips. Especially lonely ones. So few people just outright enjoy my taste in music (but you are out there so please don't start!) and it's just a pain in the ass when people don't want to listen to a whole album. When I'm on the road alone I can just play whatever and listen to album after album. It's great and one of the only times I really feel a peace. I mean, I love my videogames and I love sitting around but there is just something about a single person roadtrip. You're simultabuously getting as much accomplished as possible per second AND you get to listen to music as loud as you want on a pretty damn nice sound system. What more could you want? :)

I'm a little weird. I know that might come as a shock to several of you but stay with me. I really like being weird. I like to think that I see the world, as a whole, significantly differently than a large population of the world. That makes me feel good about myself. I like that my friends have always been really high on my list of priorities. Not that I get every present to arrive on time but that when they have a big problem I can't stop worrying about them. I think that's only slightly unhealthy but is all around good. I try and impart good things like that to my students and my students really make me laugh sometimes. I think I genuinely love several of them. Not in a dirty way but in the way that their absence really leaves a hole. I think that's a good thing.

Let's continue with the weird: I think that there just aren't enough people that are willing to stick it out unflinchingly in relationships. By relationships I mean any relationships. Friends. Family. Significant Others. People just don't risk enough. But let's look at that: what are you REALLY risking? You let yourself love and open up to someone, anyone, and then they leave and you hurt. You've put into the equation and something happened and that person isn't here anymore. It hurts. What else? Just pain? That's it? Did your eyeball fall out so now your depth perception is all fucked? Are you suddenly incapable of ever loving again? Are you doomed to be miserable your whole life? Do you HAVE to eat everything in the fridge? No. Just pain. One of the worst pains in the world? To be sure. Will it eventually go away? To be sure. So why do we call it risk? Why are we so afraid of making emotional connections with people? If you've know, laughed with, and enjoyed the company of another person don't they deserve your emotional openness? Let's look at an analogy or two. The cheerleader. She'll live forever and heals all wounds. Is driving at 100 miles per hour a risk for her besides the pain? The pain goes away, the wounds go away. Is that still risk? Another one. You go to a casino where all chips are provided and taken away before you leave. you have a set amount of chips at the beginning of each game but when you are out of chips for that game you are out of that game. Is it a risk to play that game? Is it considered risk when the only negative you incurr are your own feelings of losing? I like to think there is no real risk in loving someone. It hurts, yeah, and sometimes it hurts for a long time. But when my life is over people might say I was weird, they might say I had a sick sense of humor or that I played too many games but there is one thing they would have to agree on: I had a lot of love. And they would feel that love in their hearts and carry it with them for their lives and it might inspire them to pass that on to others. My risk was nothing but my impact was great. Isn't that all that matters?

Damn IT....I think I just, in some way, agreeded with hippies. Fuck me.

Anyway. I went from orange slices to "love everybody" hope it all made sense. Oh and I hope everyone remembers that you have to love yourself before you can truly love anyone else...work on that.

And I'm not even going to get into to it with the people that regret an emotional connection after the fact, because that's just silly. That connection gave you good feelings for months and sometimes years, a short period of pain, no matter how bad, is no excuse for regret.

Anyway. Evidently I get paid to lie to kids. I'm off to get paid.

Tommy "mmmm orange slices" Schubert

This woman is going to have many of my babies...

Tommy "I wonder if there's an in hole in that suit?" Schubert

No not you Heather...that's not till Wednesday. I'm talking about the Wii!! It's one year old today. Awwwww...and I got mine exactly one year ago on the day of release as a matter of fact. I love me some Nintendo. oh! I have a funny comic! I'm a little random and dorky today! :)

Tommy "Vajjoos" Schubert

Ok. Just broke up with Jessica. Let's just rip that band-aid right off. I totally feel like a complete asshole though. Basically it's only the second time I've broken up with someone. Yes Karin, you were the first and until recently, the last. I feel the need to explain myself to the internets. Just because I'm really feeling like a dick.

Basically things were going great...as I'm sure you've read here already...then...well...something happened. I don't really know what but I hit a brick wall. All of the work I had from work and school were seriously piling up. I was up to my eyeballs. I was thinking about my future. Where would I move after my masters? I was thinking about how I'm probably not emotionally ready for a big-time relationship. It just hadn't been enough time. And then I just stopped feeling. I pretty sure my heart is still just broken. I wasn't sure so I kept trying to wait to see if it would start back up again. It didn't. Then even more got piled on to my plate. The time needed to treat a girl right just kept disappearing, that combined with not having a fully functional heart...well...that's just not right. It wasn't fair to either of us. Though I feel like a complete asshole, I feel like I did the right thing. Sigh. The right thing. Where has THAT ever gotten someone?

So the ball is in her court. Right now I need a friend in my life more than I need a girlfriend. I basically don't deserve a significant other right now it seems. In time. In time. I hope she decides to let me be a friend. Anyway...this has GOT to be one of my least articulate posts in a LONG time. I should get back to grading and get back to flogging myself for being a dick. Ugh.

Tommy "this is almost completely rhetorical so please don't feel the need to comment" Schubert

Ok. I just got a hell of a lot more busy. I'm going to be in a show now. I thought I could stay away from theater this year but I guess it can't. I'm going to be stepping into the roll of Bogart for "Play It Again, Sam". It's a stereotypical Woody Allen comedy and it's with the junior class but it's still something I aim to knock out of the park. We'll see if I can remember all those lines. It's a small part comparatively but I still worry. Especially considering that I haven't been on this side of the proscenium arch in quite a while and was never really that good at remembering lines to begin with. Man I hope I don't Fuck this up.

On a side note now I'm actually busy up to my eyeballs. I haven't really graded since the beginning of the year, I end up crashing out a lot instead of going to my internship (no worry about hours though) and I can't bring myself to actually get out and get back to eating right and working out. Grumblecakes. Don't get me wrong though, I'm still just as toned as I was this summer but it's from me pushing myself a little too hard with pushups and situps when I get time during the week. Considering I literally have 2 hours to myself every night we'll see if I make it out of this sane. Oh ...who am I kiddin? I always make it out of things sane. I wonder if I'm impervious to crazy infection? What an interesting idea. I'll have to pick that up again at a later date. Mental note reset my pearl's lexicon. "duck" always comes up when I'm trying to say "Fuck" and it's annoying....I never talk about ducks but I think I use fuck in almost every post. Oh well.

Ok...I guess I have to go. I should get back to teaching. I still have another hour before I have to leave and take my shower and go to bed. Sigh. I need more time.

Tommy "tomorrow's gonna suck" Schubert

Had one of those dreams again last night....it was long and reminded me why I did a lot of things. Reminded me why I was so happy for so long. Reminded me why I was actually right all those years. Sorry for being so cryptic. It's necessary. I wouldn't want to give away that I still think about it. Or that dreams like that still make me really happy but leave me very sad when I awake. I wonder when this is hoing to stop?

Tommy "regular programing will resume...eventually" Schubert

Does this photo turn anyone ELSE on?

Tommy "I don't do drugs but they can do me all night long!" Schubert

Ok...so I like David Bowie and I like Target. Now I can buy David Bowie clothes at target? My penis just physically exploded with excitement and I don't know who to have sex with using the bloody stump left over! Target or Bowie?? Decisions decisions. Oh! I got it! I'll wear Bowie clothes and fuck the brains out of the target logo! Brilliant!

Tommy "don't visualize that one...you might hurt yourself" Schubert

So I've been pretty busy for the last couple weeks. Like really pretty busy. I spent a week preping for my Halloween trip to New Orleans, then I spent a couple days worrying about the trip, then I spent about 2 hours starting at 9:30 pm and occupying all my conference periods making sub plans the night before I left. I immediately came home to pack and freak out untill I passed out on my couch.

We left fairly early on Halloween morning which happens to also be Jessica's birthday. The ride in was uneventful, which was nice, and we checked into our hotel quickly and started getting into costume. I was pretty tired, but my costume was pretty awesome. I was The Doctor from Doctor Who and Jessica was Madame de Pompadour. It was just about the most obscure costume I had ever done. We were a single episode from a relatively new series from Britain produced entirely for dorks. No one was ever going to guess who we were. But eventually someone did. We'll get to that later.

New Orleans on Halloween was a little different from Mardi Gras. There really weren't that many people on bourbon street, so I was really glad that I asked the concierge where the REAL party was before we left. The real party? It was about 6-8 blocks down river from the party on bourbon so we started walking from the hotel right off and skipped bourbon street for now to save time. It took about 45 minutes. By the time we got there we were already kind of tired...but it was still early and the party had only just begun.

We got dinner at this great residential Italian restaurant that would serve as not only the first meal I had in New Orleans but the best. From there we would wander back and forth from a party that was so awesome and packed that the non-teatotalers couldn't get a beverage to save their lives and the more commercial and significantly more tame party on bourbon where alcohol could be purchased in abundance. It was on one of these trips back to bourbon street when I almost shat my pants with glee.

There is a little back story you really need to know. I love Doctor Who. I'm not a freak about it but I really connect with the characters and I think the stories are brilliant. I think it probably helps that I look a lot like the current doctor :). So anyway, in preparation to become the Doctor I went on a wild goose chase the weekend before Halloween looking for a suit that would look right. Long story short, I now own a new $380 suit that looks just like The Doctor's. So I went into this fairly invested in my costume...eventhough I didn't think anyone would guess it.

I was standing outside some random bar on bourbon street waiting for Jessica and Goeff to get their drinks and come back out. Of course I wasn't just standing there, I was holding my best Doctor Who pose with pride. They finally came out. Facing away from the street looking like the spitting image of the Doctor Jessica walks up to me and from a guy that just happened to be standing directly infront of us we hear "hey! 'Lady in the Fireplace'!!" I was actually beside myself. He hadn't just guessed that I was the Doctor, he had named the SINGLE EPISODE we were recreating. It was the best moment of the entire week, possibly the whole month! I offered to buy him a drink through my thanks and my stammering but he wanted nothing else but to show us off to his wife, take a picture and tell us to have a good time. We did.

The next day we woke up "early" and headed out to see a tour of the cemetarys, drive around the 9th ward and check out the devastation and get some Cajun food. We also ate in a really expensive place that I had coincidentally been in before with Mike's family years and years ago. Basically the place itself was awesome but the food was a little more than lacking. And they evedently are idiots. Check this sign from the MEN'S restroom...oi...(below)

So that evening we went out again. Woke up "early" again and headed home. We stopped at a plantation to tour it then really busted ass for home. It wouldn't be until almost 2 that we would get home. But the plantation was worth it.

Anyway I've be typing this through the course of about two classes and I'm a little tired of this tiny screen right now, as I'm sure you understand, so this is me signing off. Expect to hear from me individually with my pictures here soon. Later!

Tommy "my thumbs hurt" Schubert