This month marks the 25th anniversary of the beginning of volcanic activity at Mount St. Helens. Yesterday, March 27th, marked the beginning of a series of explosions on the mountain that led up to the May 18th eruption and devastation of the landscape in that area. The USGS has an interesting timeline of events (the link points to the timeline of events for March 22-28, 1980).

It is strangely appropriate that Mount St. Helens is active again today, marking her own 25th anniversary with another round of rebuilding eruptions.

The local NBC affiliate, KING 5, has an article on this as well.

Once again this year, the cast of Whose Line is it Anyway? comes to Olympia, and once again, Amanda and me have tickets to see the show. It’s on June 3rd at the Washington Center for the Performing Arts (entitled “A Night of Improv“). They have already added a second show time at 9:30PM because of the popularity of this event, but we’re attending the 7:00 showing.

It should be just as fun as last year.

We have returned to Olympia for the start of Spring Quarter. Tomorrow afternoon, we have matinee tickets to see Hedwig and the Angry Inch, then the day after that, classes begin. I’ll be going on campus to get my student card validated, though I may have to wait to register, as I don’t have the appropriate information to do so yet. Oh, well.

Mount St. Helens is apparently acting up again — another eruption was reported at around 5:30PM Pacific time. On a hunch, I checked the VolcanoCam image archives for the last two hours — it did indeed pick this eruption up, but as noted by the Seattle Times, it’s obscured by cloud cover. It’s highlighted in the modified VolcanoCam image below — look at the red circle.

I thought, for purposes of comparison, that I would post the last three months of EnergyTracker history for my apartment. The first image was displayed in the first blog entry I wrote on the subject, with the second and third energy usage tracking for January and February 2005, respectively.

I’ve done some combining of categories, since the former "Philosophy" and "Politics" categories for my posts seemed fairly related (and there were only 6 entries in the "Philosophy" category). So, ironically, these sections are now resident in the new "Philosophy and Politics" category. Big shock there.

Also, to reflect the nature of some of my random entries, I’ve renamed the "Unrelated Junk" category to the slightly more whimsical (and less insulting) "Desk Clutter".

Enjoy.

A new desktop screenshot for the enjoyment of the masses.

Mmm. Black Prius.

Mmm. Salsa Pearl Prius.

Mmm. Any Prius at all.

So in the last week, I’ve been struggling to keep up with reading in class while meeting obligations for the Enrollment Growth DTF. Since Sunday (and after going home for the weekend), I’ve had to give a presentation on American artist John Singer Sargent, write a paper, post fliers for the upcoming student focus group for the DTF, read 42 proposals for the DTF meeting on Wednesday, and read through the first thirteen chapters of Portrait of a Lady by Henry James.

The paper hasn’t been written and I’m only two or three chapters into James. All the flyers are up after some running around, but I’ve only read the first 11 proposals or so. Thus, to put it succinctly, I’m behind in every major endeavor I’m embarking upon this quarter. Thankfully, the minor ones don’t really count. naturalaxis is basically at a standstill until further notice (or until I get an actual client request, whichever comes first), and I’m only working in the Writing Center three hours a week, but I’m still getting slammed. As I said in a previous post, I asked for it, but I seem to have misjudged (and continue to badly misjudge) the amount of time needed for each segment of my work. I don’t think this is an issue of taking on too much (at least, not intentionally) — I was on the DTF long before I knew I was taking this class, and long before I knew how hard this class would be.

I desperately need to refine my tactics for time management if I am to survive the rest of the quarter with sanity intact.

So what’s left for the rest of the week? Tomorrow I have class from 10-12:30, a meeting to plan the student focus group from 1-2 (location indeterminate), a Grammar Rodeo workshop to attend from 2-3 as part of my brush-up on grammar for my tutoring work, and a DTF meeting from 3-5. To top all that off, I then get to come home, write a paper which is woefully late, catch up on reading I’m woefullly behind on (or try to), then collapse in a useless, top-heavy, brainless stupor while attempting to get some sleep so I can get up Thursday and go to class.

Ironically, I’m writing all this because I can’t sleep after a very full and overwhelming day. Yet, despite all this, I love my life, and I can write that with complete certainty and honesty.

Let’s ignore for now the possibility that I will eat those last words later.

I meant to mention this the day it was posted, but the New York Times has a touching letter from Steve Martin to Johnny Carson in its op/ed pages for January 25.

My generation either barely knew Johnny Carson or didn’t know him at all. I’ve seen at least one of his Tonight Show appearances (somewhere…), and it’s obvious to me that we’ve lost a great comedian and an honorable man.

Play to the stars, Johnny.