(I)Pre-game impressions : The party is always funnest right before the police arrive

This summer was a blast. My jobs didn't leave me a burnt out shell at the end of the day, and what's more : I got to choose my hours. This let me hang out with many awesome people : old friends and acquaintances from school, highschool friends freshly graduated from university, and new, fun people that crawled out of the corvallis woodwork during the summer. This summer was especially filled with energy. Everyone I knew was on their way to adventure. They were applying to grad schools and jobs, moving to the middle of nowhere and to highrise apartments in manhattan. With this in mind, you could see why I quickly became despondent as my trips increased in frequency near the end of summer, eventually landing me in Russia.

My first reaction to my changing circumstances was that I was putting my life on hold. I had spent time with all these awesome people over the summer, and they'll continue to be awesome and do awesome things while I'm gone. All of a sudden, the barbeques and inane discussions over which is the best microbrew of the collection were going to be a fifth of the world away. Almost as many miles as there are feet in a mile away. If I could hear people in Oregon shout my name, it would only be 7 hours and fifteen minutes after they shouted that the sound would reach my ears.

For a while this rain cloud hung over my head (they call me Joe Bfstplk). But then though I knew I would miss my friends (I do), I realized that this outlook would imply some sort of constancy that doesn't exist. My friends change, my home cities change, and (in an egotistic way) most importantly I change. I love how we're supposed to become less egocentric as we age, but really I'm becoming more so. It's not so important where I am, or what I'm doing. Any experiences I have is, by definition, my life. Just as there is no rewind button, there ain't no time to get up for more popcorn either.

So here I am fresh out of summer. I worked, I partied, I left. I got to see family wedded, wasted, wetted, and wizened. Here's to life and to whatever it brings!