Lawryde gets excited about life, death, and work.

A lone gunman killed 33 people at Virginia Tech. So it goes.

“Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.”

After Vonnegut died, I read Slaughterhouse Five over the weekend. I’d read Man Without a Country, and enjoyed his writing style, but I’m just generally not much of a reader unless I really like the author, like Hunter S. Thompson or Chuck Palahniuk.

In Slaughterhouse Five, time is presented in the tenseless way. I’ve talked about this before, but it basically means that all time and events are already laid out like a mountain range. You’re always living all moments of your life from birth to death. We only think there is a past, present, and future because of the human condition. Einstein believed time was this way.

The more I think about it, the better that makes me feel about life and death. Not having Free Will doesn’t bother me. I’m far more comforted to think that I’ll be repeatedly living my life forever, not being able to change anything. You just focus on the good parts and try to understand them, and try to understand the universe.

Anyway, I’ll be switching positions within Opposite of Dog on July 1. I get to go out to the testing facility, which is basically a big sandbox with heavy equipment in it. I’ll be doing hydraulics testing, which should be both challenging and interesting. I’m excited. I need to go buy a bunch of jeans, polo shirts, and those long sleeve shirts that wick sweat away to hide my ink in the 95° Illinois summers. I’d like to hope that eventually I’d be able to go short sleeved in that kind of environment (not an office), but I’m not holding my breath.