An introduction

It's six days into the summer of 2010 (in terms of college, not astronomy), and I'm already feeling the need to write. Five days since the due date of my last final (a take home exam with one essay extolling the importance of Tinker v. Des Moines, Miranda v. Arizona, Brown v. Board of Education, Texas v. Johnson, Roper v. Simmons, and Romer v. Evans, one essay about a hypothetical Supreme Court case involving a free speech case similar to that of the Westboro Baptist Church, and one essay on a hypothetical Supreme Court regarding federal income taxes and same-sex marriage). So far, summer has meant finishing the second season of The West Wing and starting on the third seasons of The West Wing and The Wire, finishing Jennifer Burns's excellent biography of Ayn Rand from last year, and continuing with Nabokov's Lolita, which I found in the basement on my last trip home.

Unfortunately, my chance to go home for the beginning of summer vacation has been delayed due to the oft-excruciating process of apartment hunting. In between waiting to hear back from apartments and applying for new ones, I've got a bit of open space in my schedule that can't entirely be filled by going through every item in my Google Reader. I started this blog on a whim, to kill time while I'm stranded in my apartment, avoid getting out of writing practice between now and the fall semester, and as a chance to collect and express my thoughts on issues without the constraints of academic writing. It gives me the chance to practice writing for an audience (even if that audience is only imaginary at this point). It's tough to tell how long I'll contribute to this, but it's a start. As a Celtics fan with no cable out here, I certainly hope the apartment search ends as quickly as possible, but three and a half months of searching for a four bedroom apartment in the Pioneer Valley with two people currently outside of the United States and one person two towns over has not been encouraging so far.

We'll see how it goes. We're a long away from The Shining at this point. Here's a little something for your listening and viewing pleasure, courtersy of Prefab Sprout on The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1985: