Yon Cassius hath a lean and hungry look.

I hope everyone had a splendid Thanksgiving! We did. In true Ricker fashion, we all worked outside landscaping half the day, but we did have a delicious turkey dinner with Mom’s earth-shattering pumpkin pie, and we watched Wall-E and To Kill a Mockingbird in the evening. An odd combination, I realize. Wall-E was cute and all, but boy, they don’t make movies like To Kill a Mockingbird anymore. Makes me want to reread the book now, which was even more exceptional. Atticus Finch is almost painfully magnificent.

So much is always going on that trying to catch up on it here always feels a little silly. Instead, have some links!

If I don’t already know the person who did this, we need to become acquainted.
Let this be a lesson to you: always check the filter.
Vote responsibly – vote Lando Calrissian.
This is challenging some long-standing beliefs I have about the universe.
Muffins.
The best ventriloquist you will ever see, guaranteed.
Roomba cat.
I love commercials for EDS: this one just about convinces me to take up a new career. Also check out their Running with Squirrels and EDS Airplane.
Soon We’ll Be Found.

I am constantly assailed by a sense of unreality concerning my life lately. Perhaps I’m dissatisfied with reality? Or just dissatisfied. Or altogether too satisfied, and perhaps that’s the real problem. I am feeling entirely too comfortable with my life, and simultaneously terribly uneasy. I think one of the essential attributes of being a senior is bouts with existentialism. This is what happens when one reads too much Nietzsche! But then again, I’m not nearly nihilistic enough to be existentialist, or even to have existential angst, so I just have pseudo-existential, somewhat fluffy semi-angst, tempered by an exorbitant dose of optimism. I want something, quite a lot actually, out of this life. I feel rather demanding about that, maybe a little bit selfish that I want to take things out of life, though I do want to put things into it as well. What exactly I’m not sure; I’m always yearning for something not quite definable, and it’s all because of this blasted future thing that is looming in my face as the end of my college experience approaches. And yet, simultaneously, it is not without its intrinsic beauty, this feeling (this would be the exorbitant dose of optimism right here…tastes like a bowl of cherries). It’s all terribly exciting. It’s not that moment at the top of the rollercoaster, right before you plummet, but more like mid-to-late plummet, where your stomach is settling at the same time that you begin to feel the first quaverings of anxiousness about whether or not this rollercoaster car is actually going to pull up in time before you hit the ground and splat everywhere, but you know there’s a crazy loopdeloop after this, so surely you’re expected to survive this part or they wouldn’t have bothered constructing the loopdeloop. Right?

That was really weird, I admit.

Today I went to the bank to cash my check after work, and as I was walking out a very little girl walked in. She handed me a long rolled up piece of paper, said “It’s a concert,” and walked on. Somewhat confused, I unrolled the piece of paper, and it was a crayon drawing of a stick person with a musical note next to them. I called, “Thank you so much!” and I’ve been smiling on the inside ever since.