Good song:

Go on do what you've got to do
You've got your dreams, i've got mine to
Be strong get off at the next stop, dont worry about a thing
Keep taking it easy
This time its not personal
The universe will help you now to find a place you can breathe and do what you've got to do
Keep taking it easy
Keep taking it easy

Come on ill let you borrow my four leaf clover
Come on take it with you you can pass it on
Come on you know im not the kind to say that its over
We'll be rubbing shoulders once again in the sun

Come on take your dreams where nobody can find them
Come on you know i wont be happy til you've won
So come on, come on over, borrow my clover
Is there anything left that you havent done?

Go on do what you've got to do
You've got your dreams, i've got mine to
Be strong get off at the next stop, dont worry about a thing
Keep taking it easy
This time its not personal
The universe will help you now to find a place you can breathe and do what you've got to do
Keep taking it easy
Keep taking it easy

~ Badly Drawn Boy, "Four Leaf Clover"

Hey, I am now living on Cape Cod with 26 other destitute college grads, and life on the Cape is beyond awesome thus far. I'm one of 13 other 20-somethings living in an old ex-doctor's house in Pocasset, MA. The other 13 Corps members live about 40 miles northeast in Wellfleet. One of our first house purchases was a karaoke machine at a nearby thrift store last week, and this past weekend we threw an amazing karaoke party. I performed numerous selections, but my most impressive performance (after reviewing the tape) was probably Bad Bad Leroy Brown by Jim Croce. Yesterday a few of us spent the day harvesting oysters that the local Shellfish Department farms using wire-net bags in Cape Cod Bay. After pulling the bags and seeding the oysters along the marsh bank, we dug for quahogs and caught around 40 monstrous clams, which with the help of one of my housemates, Cath, we turned into some "wicked sweet" clam chowder last night. I will be teaching CC ecology in the local schools and most likely working on aquaculture projects with the Cape Cod National Seashore come October. Miss all of you. Write me and I'll write you. No expectations though. Good luck with everything.

Zach's mamma is the singular source of my limitations...

School is well underway at this point. I had decided not to attempt to finish this ridiculous program in two years and resigned myself to taking one more semester next fall... but then i realized there's a summer semester, so maybe i can graduate a year from now. We'll see. I am no longer teaching the mediocre urban planners of tomorrow here at the University of Illinois. A professor who i pretty much told off at the end of last semester hired me to do research for him. The project is this giant computer program called Landuse Evaluation and Assesment Model (LEAM) which is designed to predict landuse outcomes in the future based on certain choices. It is used by government policymakers to help make complex landuse decisions. My part is to research "the value of ecological systems" so that we can inject this into the model. I'm trying to answer questions like how much is a standing old-growth forest worth in terms of the services it provides to the economy free of charge? I hate this research it in that: 1. i hate computers, especially computers who can purportedly making decisions for human beings. 2. i hate pretending that nature can be stripped down to the economic value it provides to people. I love this research because 1. right now, the official value used for decisionmaking of a standing old growth forest is currently zero, and we're trying to change that. 2. policymakers in Chicago, St. Louis, and Peoria already use LEAM. If we add this stuff into it, they will probably still use LEAM. So... what i do will actually make a difference in the world. Fuck yeah.

Rachel, welcome to the single world. Embrace the freedom and feel the possibilities. You are now the singular source of your limitations.