The valiant return of Jesse Ormsby.
To get you up to speed: Finished finals. I had four 3-5 hour finals, one every other day. My constitutional law final was five hours long, and I typed 12 singe spaced pages according to the counter on my exam software. After finals, I slept for a day, but found that I was still in finals mode. My last exam was on a Friday, by Monday at 12, I had run every errand that I could think of and was at a complete loss for what to do with myself.
In this mode of super-productivity, I, in anticipation of my free time, took on three new hobbies. It started with my guitar. During finals, I found myself picking up my acoustic guitar for 15 min or so every few hours. Turns out, it was a complete re-energizer. Playing the guitar worked a completely different part of my brain than what I was using to study for exams. So, I got to rest that side AND entertain the other side. Perfect. I’ve had an electric guitar sitting in my closet since the 10th grade, so I decided that as hobby number one, I’d teach myself electric guitar stylings. Two technique/theory books and an amplifier (thank you, ill advised economic stimulus package) later, I was good to go.
Some of you may or may not know that a popular way of altering how a guitar sounds is through an effects peddle. It’s basically a box you plug your guitar into on its way to the amplifier. They make boxes that do all sorts of cool things. I happen to be partial to cool things, but they tend to be a little pricy. However, there are several sites dedicated to helping you build boutique quality effects peddles from radioshack parts (thank you information superhighway). I ordered a “do it yourself” kit from one of these sights that had a printed circuit board and the capacitors and resistors etc that you would need. This introduces hobby number two: audio circuitry. Two hobby soldering irons and a few melted lead and tin messes later, I have taught myself how to solder and am learning what does what and why. Oh that I had my digital camera, because the circuit board looks really cool with all of it’s little bits in place.
The kit also comes with a plain aluminum box. Of course, cool sounding effects boxes need to look equally cool. Hobby number three: I’ve been teaching myself how to screen-print. This also has root systems that spread into How-to-properly-paint-metal (including heat sealing it like they do car paint!) and elemental graphic design (using a copy of Adobe Illustrator pirated from my roommate). This has been, by far, the least successful. Preparing a screen involves this weird photosensitive green ooze that I have not been able to get to dry or react to sunlight correctly, in spite of the green mess I’ve made in our bathroom (because it’s dark) and the light bulb I accidentally broke (making it dark).
In other news, after a fun trip to Austin I found myself with the worst sunburn that I’ve had since a fateful day when I was nineteen. In 2002, I lent my car to my little brother to visit a girl (with explicit instructions that he was not to be gone longer than an hour). He was visiting a girl, which means that 7 hours later he still wasn’t home. I needed my car back because I had to wash it (a pre-date ritual at the time, along with listing to The Vandals’ “I have a date” at full volume). His tardiness, which cost him lending privileges for a long time, meant that I had to wash my car directly before my date. This is always a dangerous practice. Waxing could take too long, maybe the armorall won’t have dried completely so your date will get a greasy, chemical smelling smear on her hand if she touches the dashboard… or the window button… or the parking break, and worst of all you may be rushed into an inferior work product. And, you might get sun burnt.
This made affectionate fingers moving along my back very, very painful. Worse, two days later I went to a Reverent Horton Heat concert. At that point, the skin was still sun burnt, but it was also starting to peel. Itchy AND painful at the same time, with me sandwiched at the very front of a steamy, moving crowd. I remember hoping that the crowd would surge and push forward because the searing contact made me forget the itch. I was so mad at my brother.
This time, I simply fell asleep in the sun. We went to McKinney Falls and, after an hour of hide-stinging rain, the sun came out. So, I kept my shirt off and lay out in the sun. Mistake. Luckily, this time I discovered spray on lidocane. (thank you, CVS brand).
The last point of interest: I have become my father. In a twenty four hour period, I transformed from Jesse, law student, still clinging to colligately shaggy and his favorite concert t-shirt, to Peter Ormsby, attorney at law. I do everything that I rem
ember my dad doing. I work downtown. The twenty-eighth floor! of a depression era monolith. I wear a shirt and tie to work every day. My hair is short and business-like. I park in a parking garage! A parking garage! I have an RFID card to get into the reserved spots and have to wait in line for the elevator back to my car at the end of the day. At lunch, I'm at the same not-open-for-dinner diggs with the other working professionals, giggeling because they don't kn ow that I'm a spy from their old life. I actually work with an attorney who has worked with my father before. It’s like I’m in Big. Woke up one morning as an adult. I actually used to be told that I looked a lot like Tom Hanks in Big. What do you think?
To get you up to speed: Finished finals. I had four 3-5 hour finals, one every other day. My constitutional law final was five hours long, and I typed 12 singe spaced pages according to the counter on my exam software. After finals, I slept for a day, but found that I was still in finals mode. My last exam was on a Friday, by Monday at 12, I had run every errand that I could think of and was at a complete loss for what to do with myself.
In this mode of super-productivity, I, in anticipation of my free time, took on three new hobbies. It started with my guitar. During finals, I found myself picking up my acoustic guitar for 15 min or so every few hours. Turns out, it was a complete re-energizer. Playing the guitar worked a completely different part of my brain than what I was using to study for exams. So, I got to rest that side AND entertain the other side. Perfect. I’ve had an electric guitar sitting in my closet since the 10th grade, so I decided that as hobby number one, I’d teach myself electric guitar stylings. Two technique/theory books and an amplifier (thank you, ill advised economic stimulus package) later, I was good to go.
Some of you may or may not know that a popular way of altering how a guitar sounds is through an effects peddle. It’s basically a box you plug your guitar into on its way to the amplifier. They make boxes that do all sorts of cool things. I happen to be partial to cool things, but they tend to be a little pricy. However, there are several sites dedicated to helping you build boutique quality effects peddles from radioshack parts (thank you information superhighway). I ordered a “do it yourself” kit from one of these sights that had a printed circuit board and the capacitors and resistors etc that you would need. This introduces hobby number two: audio circuitry. Two hobby soldering irons and a few melted lead and tin messes later, I have taught myself how to solder and am learning what does what and why. Oh that I had my digital camera, because the circuit board looks really cool with all of it’s little bits in place.
The kit also comes with a plain aluminum box. Of course, cool sounding effects boxes need to look equally cool. Hobby number three: I’ve been teaching myself how to screen-print. This also has root systems that spread into How-to-properly-paint-metal (including heat sealing it like they do car paint!) and elemental graphic design (using a copy of Adobe Illustrator pirated from my roommate). This has been, by far, the least successful. Preparing a screen involves this weird photosensitive green ooze that I have not been able to get to dry or react to sunlight correctly, in spite of the green mess I’ve made in our bathroom (because it’s dark) and the light bulb I accidentally broke (making it dark).
In other news, after a fun trip to Austin I found myself with the worst sunburn that I’ve had since a fateful day when I was nineteen. In 2002, I lent my car to my little brother to visit a girl (with explicit instructions that he was not to be gone longer than an hour). He was visiting a girl, which means that 7 hours later he still wasn’t home. I needed my car back because I had to wash it (a pre-date ritual at the time, along with listing to The Vandals’ “I have a date” at full volume). His tardiness, which cost him lending privileges for a long time, meant that I had to wash my car directly before my date. This is always a dangerous practice. Waxing could take too long, maybe the armorall won’t have dried completely so your date will get a greasy, chemical smelling smear on her hand if she touches the dashboard… or the window button… or the parking break, and worst of all you may be rushed into an inferior work product. And, you might get sun burnt.
This made affectionate fingers moving along my back very, very painful. Worse, two days later I went to a Reverent Horton Heat concert. At that point, the skin was still sun burnt, but it was also starting to peel. Itchy AND painful at the same time, with me sandwiched at the very front of a steamy, moving crowd. I remember hoping that the crowd would surge and push forward because the searing contact made me forget the itch. I was so mad at my brother.
This time, I simply fell asleep in the sun. We went to McKinney Falls and, after an hour of hide-stinging rain, the sun came out. So, I kept my shirt off and lay out in the sun. Mistake. Luckily, this time I discovered spray on lidocane. (thank you, CVS brand).
The last point of interest: I have become my father. In a twenty four hour period, I transformed from Jesse, law student, still clinging to colligately shaggy and his favorite concert t-shirt, to Peter Ormsby, attorney at law. I do everything that I rem
ember my dad doing. I work downtown. The twenty-eighth floor! of a depression era monolith. I wear a shirt and tie to work every day. My hair is short and business-like. I park in a parking garage! A parking garage! I have an RFID card to get into the reserved spots and have to wait in line for the elevator back to my car at the end of the day. At lunch, I'm at the same not-open-for-dinner diggs with the other working professionals, giggeling because they don't kn ow that I'm a spy from their old life. I actually work with an attorney who has worked with my father before. It’s like I’m in Big. Woke up one morning as an adult. I actually used to be told that I looked a lot like Tom Hanks in Big. What do you think? 
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