What will I think of next? Established July 31, 2003.

Well I've just been bumming around. Seeing lots of friends. Getting wisdom teeth pulled (and popping mild narcotics as a result). Your typical lazy June. The new car is quite a treat - allowing me to jet around even if my errands for various items turn out futile. The big plan right now is to head out on a cross-country roadtrip - solo - in a couple days. I'm both apprehenisve and excited about the prospects of such a crazy trek. There's lots of people I want to see in a few concentrated areas, and unfortunately large gaps of empty plains and Rockies in between. All in all I'm sure this plan will work out. Hope the 4th turns out good. Work starts a month from today.

June 16, 2004 - Hingham, Massachusetts

Clearly this has been down for awhile. When I was in Mexico I screwed everything up with a virus from a Mexican computer, and didn't bother fixing everything since. Well now my personal weblog is back. I'm in Hingham again and I'll report something when there is something worth reporting.

August 20, 2003 - Mexico City D.F. Mexico

Well here I am in Mexico City. So far I have received the harsh lesson of what happens when you stop speaking a language for a year - or worse, you learn another, similiar language. I find myself constantly throwing Italian into conversations, and the people look at me like I have two heads because I act totally serious but its like I am speaking some sort of crazy talk because they do not know the words. Notice how I never use contractions in this entry. That is because of these damn Mexican keyboards - I can not figure out how to do the punctuation!

August 18, 2003 - Hingham, MA

Yes, there was craziness. Don't ever ask about it. Off to Mexico.

August 17, 2003 - Cambridge, MA

Its good to be back in Boston, even though I head back to NYC tomorrow, and then MEXICO! There may be some craziness tonight.

August 14, 2003 - Jersey City, NJ - Craziness in the City

For those of you lying safely away from the greater Metro Detroit-New York-Toronto Area (who knew that even existed?!?!) today was QUITE A day of craziness in the city. It took me three hours to get home, and I'm pretty sure I had it easy. You try joining one million other people who all try to go from Manhattan to Jersey, by boat, at exactly the same time. Yah. Power is up in Jersey, but out the window Long Island, Staten Island, and Manhattan are clearly still in the dark.

August 11, 2003 - Manhattan, NY

Last week of work, wow. Where did that time go (note the recurring theme). Is anyone else excited about the Bell Tower? Yes of course you are. Its become the number one conversation topic yet again and now the financial discussions have begun - ug. Also who hasn't joined Friendster yet, the crazy new web tool that links people together in an ever growing network (and now fake people are showing up left and right)? Go sign up, its actually very interesting; you could use it to organize a crazy riot or something.

Finally in other news, Isabel and I will be seeing flying wizards soon.

August 9, 2003 - Hingham, MA

Okay first of all I've added music to the wesbite, a key feature of all my old websites. I plan to rotate through the songs I play most on MP3, and of course that means starting with Layla, the song that's just about on all my play lists (not really).

So thoughts for the day (and for the past few years). Its weird growing apart from people - I guess this is really the first period in my life where there's been an opportunity for that. You have some people that you spend years becoming friends with, and then those friendships sort of drift away over time and distance. Its definitely strange, because you can't quite reason why its happening, but it makes you question what the friendships were based on originally. Its weird how people change and it makes me wonder how I've changed, if at all. There is a sad aspect to it all because you have all these memories but few prospects going forward to make new memories with the same people. Am I on the verge of my quarter-life crisis...? Definitely getting there.

August 5, 2003 - Manhattan, NY

Lila's profile has introduced me to a new word, conflama: a mix of both conflict and drama. Certain periods of my life were filled with conflama. For those who remember first hand, think back on summer 1997, summer 2000, or spring semester 2003 as periods liberally sprinkled with conflama. Here's to a conflama free senior year!

August 3, 2003 - Hingham, MA

As August roles on, and time is rolling into my senior year of college (SENIOR YEAR! How did that happen?), I continue to think about the fact that life keeps moving on whether we want it to or not, and a window back to the past can be stirring at times. For instance, Kids Cabaret. I watched Kendall, Sean, Matt and Jenn turn Kids Cab over to its new leadership last night in an almost sequel to how we did it 2 years ago for them. Now that they are gone, I just feel older and older.

I e-mailed Liz Olson about it and commented "somtimes I wish I could just go back and be 17 year old Mike Hines again buzzing around town in the Jeep". That got me this response:

"The passage of time is so emotional, and those moments when you can almost feel the seasons changing are usually filled with these puzzling thoughts like "how can I keep things as they are?" or "i'm not really looking forward to what will come after this".

But there is something about Kids Cab that makes me ache inside with emotion sometimes. I guess it always seems to reaffirm my belief that our childhoods in Hingham were right out of a Mark Twain novel. But more so than that, I'm just so proud to be a part of it - something that is so pure and unassuming and good. Its not for show, its not something that mothers force their kids to do for the country club status of it all, its not a money machine, etc. It is what it is, and its lasted 15 years already and overcome almost every door being shut to it. There is no logical explanation for its success, other than it's contagious goodness. Well...I better get back to this project that I'm working on, but thanks for the play-by-play update. You know I love to hear about every minute of things like this, and I only wish that I were there so that we could go somewhere after the show and dissect every aspect of the show, and then speculate about next year."

August 2, 2003 - Hingham, MA

Where is this summer going? It's going by fast. Tonight was the second night of Kid's Cabaret performing Pirates of Penzance. Very good. Its strange to watch the little kids you started with 5 or 6 years ago (I'm thinking back to The King and I and Annie) who have come a long way, are practically adults, and have become really talented. It also always reminds me how old I'm getting. Katie Gassert might be the last person still in Kids' Cab who ever had a speaking part the same time I did in a show (The Boyfriend). Oh well.

July 31, 2003 - Jersey City

Okay to get a start on this, its only fair to direct you to my role-models webpages, Kristel's Digital Abandon and Randy's XU DI/Our Ex You, The People's Corporation.

Then rather than taking my own pictures (being digital cameraless - but working on fixing that) - I will direct you not to my own pictuers, but rather, fun pictures on friends' websites.

Pictures of the day:

Here's a nice pic of Dave, Hill, Myself, Isabel, and Emily, America's favorite overeducated 2am Krispy Kreme eaters. Note however that in this pic, Emily is eating a Penis cake. From the summer "Homme Party". The Picture courtesy of Isabel.
Noteable quoteable care of Dave Stein: "That's what I call excess; I can't do that Chael but you can pull it off."