Good Times, Bad Times, Forks in the Road, and Decisions

All of the above (in the title) must happen.  Every one of us is destined to face and navigate each - it cannot be avoided.  The journey of life is teeming with these things - and frankly, the journey would be quite boring without them.   Some say they prefer boring, including myself.  But if boring means the absence of the above, then I'd prefer the alternative.

What's happenin?  That's what the FedEx Ground driver at my seasonal job always greets us with.  A simple question that all too often has a complicated answer.  This entry's purpose is to answer that question.  Warning:  This entry is going to be brutally honest and frank.

The Spring Semester has been a pure disaster.  I've said it before and I'll probably say it many times more.  The thing I haven't said, however, is why.  Why has this semester been a disaster?  I was supposed to graduate in May, it was all supposed to go somewhat smoothly.  Sure, I was taking 19 credits, 6 of which were heavy research-intensive classes.  Just when you think you're on the last lap, though, old habits catch up to you.

As a result of poor health (a week with the flu and another with a cold), drinking problems, and otherwise general procrastination - I arrived to the week leading up to the withdrawal deadline with a decision.  I was facing either trying to recover all of my classes in seven weeks, or cutting my losses and moving on.  I, regrettably, opted to move on.  Honest to God, I did not want to.  I spent a long time thinking about it.  Should I go for it?  Would I be able to salvage grades in my classes?  What could consequences be for extending my academic career?  What would consequences be if I tried to get it done now and failed?  

Allow me to make a very long story short.  I have a considerable drinking problem.  Other bad habits contributed to the creation of this situation, but this particular bad habit bears the majority of the blame - blame which in turn falls on me.  This semester I have panicked about, hidden from, and in general avoided my large course load.  And now, I have paid a price for it.

I spent a lot of time in prayer, meditation, and counsel with my advisor and my mom.  I opted to take what some may call the easy road.  I withdrew from two courses, and now I have four.  With a reasonable amount of work, I will be able to complete these courses.  My advisor has been a Godsend in this matter.  He teaches one of these courses that I'm in.  I can only hope that my other professors will be as compassionate.  

So what's the plan now?  It's a rough sketch at this point, but here is the deal.  I will complete the four courses this semester, and remain in Harrisonburg this summer to work.  In the fall, I will need two courses to graduate in December.  During the fall semester, I will continue to work a considerable amount of hours.  The tuition and books for this newly necessary extra semester, I will pay myself.  My parents have been helping, but I will neither ask nor allow them to contribute to my tuition and books for this extra semester.  This is my fault and considering how much I've screwed up, this is the least I can do to own up to my mistakes.

I believe that the most important thing here is that I have faith in myself, meaning I have faith that I will follow through with what I'm saying, and get things done like they should be done.  Just about seven months late.

Perhaps when I'm an old man I'll look back at this and laugh.

Farewell for now, talk to you all soon.

No more Spring Break?

Yep, it's the truth and it sucks.  I don't like it but I can't do anything about it.  Spring break has been far, far less productive and profitable than I imagined.  First, my transmission was about to crap the bed.  So, today I took it to get serviced (having the filter changed and the fluid flushed and refilled).  It cost $150.  Then I realized I've got less than $100 for the rest of the semester, which isn't going to fly at all.  Thankfully I am getting a small paycheck from working this week, so I'll be able to pay another month's rent, almost.  Well anyway, enough about my financial woes.

Wednesday night was the last nice night weather-wise here.  I figured it was the last chance I had to do some fishing.  So, I went down to the James River near College Creek and threw out a line.  I caught two cats before Brian got down there.  He had just arrived and was setting up his stuff, while I was telling him that it had been slow - and a pretty nice sized catfish hooked up on my rig.  I pulled it in after a pretty decent fight.  He was about 18" long, 3.5 lbs.  The only fish I've had a better fight with is spadefish, and the 4lb 3oz largemouth I caught several years back.  

The last two days the weather has gotten suckier and colder.  Today it is raining and it's supposed to be doing that the rest of the weekend.  UGH.  I hate cold rainy weather.  Well, two more days and I go back to school to face the music - don't be surprised if I don't graduate this May is all I'm going to say.

Life as usual in Williamsburg - couldn't get better

Well, today (Monday) I spent the day in Williamsburg working.  It was great, to be honest!  But first let me recap the weekend.

Saturday, it was pretty daggone warm.  It was actually a touch on the hot side!  I was nearly compelled to get on the lawnmower and do some yardwork.  The clover patches in the yard are growing, and getting tall and thick.  The rest of the grass isn't doing much, but in some spots, it's definitely mowable.  Unfortunately, it's a bit too early still.  If I was down here a few weeks later, it would probably be time to mow, but not quite yet.  

So anyway, I spent Saturday hanging out with my mom and the dogs, and the neighbor's dog who has taken to running into our yard whenever she sees us and trying her best to get some love.  She's a sweet little dog, and I don't mind.  As long as she doesn't get in the way of the cars when me or my mom are trying to back out of the driveway she is fine.  Mom took the dogs for walks down the road and for one reason or another I ended up meeting her halfway through her walk.  The first time, I just wanted to go out to see the dogs and walk down the street with her.  The second time, I was inside watching the truck race when I heard the neighbor calling for his dog.  After a minute, I figured I'd better go out on the road and see if she was following my Mom.  Sure enough, she was, and so was a random Jack Russell terrier.  I ended up having to herd the Jack Russell back down the road towards the cottages, because it was distracting the neighbor's dog.  He was a nice little dog, but a bit on the hyper, and, err, horny side.

That night I decided I wanted to go fishing.  There was still a few hours of daylight left, so I figured I'd get ready right around then.  I went upstairs to my room to hopefully find some shorts I could wear.  Unfortunately I don't have a lot of clothes at my mom's house.  So, I tried on my old swimming trunks for a few years ago - and believe it or not, they laughed at me.  Literally.  I've gained 60 lbs in the last 2 years, and boy, those swimming trunks were not wanting to go anywhere past my thighs.  I can't blame them.   So I ran down to wal-mart and picked up a new pair of regular shorts, since I only have one pair that fit anymore anyways.  When I got back, I got my rod and my tackle box ready, and went down to the end of the road to cast my line into the Chesapeake.  I didn't end up catching anything, but I stayed down there for a few hours and had a good time.  

Sunday, pretty much all I did was watch the Cup race on TV, and I did a few outward maintenance chores on my car, like cleaning the tires and Rain-X on the windshield.  After that, I had to go on and pack up my things, and head down to Williamsburg to stay with Brian and his folks.  When I got there, they all pretty much went to bed shortly afterwards.

Today, I worked at the bookstore.  Right now we're working on returning textbooks to publishers for a refund, because we didn't sell them.  I packed and moved a few thousand pounds of books, I imagine.  That kind of stuff can get hard on your back.  Right now, my back isn't bothering me, but I'm sure it's coming.  I got to shoot the shit with the delivery drivers, and that is always fun, as usual.  After work, I headed to Brian's house, and we decided since the weather was so unusually nice we'd go down to the banks of the James River to do a little catfishing.  

Neither of us figured we would catch anything but as it turns out, we did.  Each of us caught a blue catfish about a foot long.  I drank two beers down there, and Brian drove my car back since he wasn't drinking.  Now, I'm back at the house - and admittedly, it is rather late.  I will be getting my rear into bed soon.  It's nice to be spending time here at Brian's house again.  Man I sure loved staying with them over the summer.  Well, that's all for now, folks - until next time!

Opening Post

When I lived in Williamsburg, and was goofing around and getting an associates degree while working semi-full-time, I had a livejournal account. Back then, a lot of my friends frequently professed that they deeply enjoyed reading it. It has been a few years since then. Sometimes I read posts that I made a few years back and wonder at how much things have changed since then. Don't get me wrong, I wanted things to change. Any change was for the better, at least that's what I thought back then. To an extent, I think that most changes since then have been for the better, but there are some things that I just plain miss - but they are gone, and I can't get them back, so I won't try.

With any luck, my friends will still be interested in my ramblings. Given the preceding, I have, on a whim, decided to start this thing.

Let me start with the basics.

I'm Kenneth Douglas, Bruton High School Class of 2004, Thomas Nelson Community College Class of 2007, and God willing, James Madison University Class of 2009. I am 23 years old. I am a native of Williamsburg, Virginia. Thanks to the good graces of my best friend's parents, I still have the opportunity to live in Williamsburg sometimes.

My mom lives in/on Gwynn's Island, VA. It's an awesome place and I can't think of any place in the world where I'd rather relax and waste time.

My dad lives in Providence Forge, VA. It's a very dull place and there is nothing there besides houses in the woods.

I live in Harrisonburg, VA, because I go to JMU. It's a filthy, wretched slum. I cannot wait until I don't live there.

There, you have the basics. Now, it's been several months since I've done any blogging. I'm not going to recap anything, I'm going to start from what is going on currently, so, without further adieu -


I am home for spring break. Home is a very relative term for me. In general when I say "home" I am referring to my mother's house. And as it turns out, that is where I am right now. I love this place. My cat lives here right now, and there is a big flat lawn that I get to mow. What could be better? My lawnmower even has a cupholder for beer cans, and racing decals on it. It's also a little on the fast side, which is good for me, because I race it once a year. This is a pretty neat place. My mom has lived here for about 14 or 15 years. I grew up here partially. I have many fond memories of riding bikes around, sneaking around at night, and fishing off the shore here. Last summer, I spent a pretty good amount of time here, most of which was consumed by yardwork. The rest of which was taken up by a rivalry between myself and a very bold raccoon. I spent the entire summer trying to kill it, and was unsuccessful. It may be because I'm not a very good shot with a revolver, who knows. The raccoon was pretty speedy and agile. Anyway, this is the kind of place where you can do very little and still look back on time you spent here and be able to recite more memories and stories than you ever thought possible.

In any case, I am here now. Tomorrow the forecast is wondrous. I believe it is supposed to be in the upper 70s. I intend to go fishing. I have the weekend off from work! Why not? Sunday, I'll spend most of the day soaking up the NASCAR action, and then I am heading down to Williamsburg/Lightfoot to stay with Brian and his parents for a few days. They are awesome. His parents are great, they let me stay at their place when I'm working at the William & Mary Bookstore. It has been so wonderful, because work is actually rather hard to get right now, and the bookstore pays me rather well considering I'm hourly. I was about to say that maybe being there for five years helps but then I realized - Dear Lord, I have been there for six years. Yikes. Frankly, I have little faith that I will find anything better, at least during the summer. The job market is crap right now, especially for a person that wants to work in the history field.

This semester has been rough, but not in the usual way. It's been a very personal and very difficult struggle. It's my last semester, and I am overloading to graduate on time. Without rambling too much - I have been an absolutely horrid student. It is going to take a great deal from me to make sure that I graduate in May. I'm positive I'll do it, but I'm also positive the journey is going to be awful. I'll be glad when it's over!

I will leave it at that for now, however, I am looking forward to keeping up with this as my journey continues. That being said, YOU should check this every few days. You'll be glad you did.