Garrett M. Vonk

So, Wednesday was my birthday, good times… I came back to Athens from working in Norcross early and spent the rest of the week up here. I brought a little bit of work with me, but since I’m nearly done with all of it anyway, it’s not a big deal.

A lot of people seem to care about this whole Harry Potter thing. I don’t. Not really, anyway. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I’m jealous of people who still pleasure-read. I don’t. I wish I still did. Now that I am out of school, I feel like I might. Books were always my choice of entertainment, but now I spend a lot of time on the internet and watching tv. In a way, it makes me feel like a slob or like much less of an intellectual person than I was before.

I know I steal lots of stuff from Neal Boortz, and with good reason. This quote sums up the difference between how I feel about income redistribution and how many others feel.

“How can there possibly be liberty and justice for all, when, in the name of justice, people claim rights to income, food, housing, education, health care, transportation, ad infinitum? We can’t. Positive rights to receive such things, absent an obligation to earn them, must violate others’ liberty, by taking some of their income without their consent. They are really just wishes, convertible into benefits for some only by employing the government to violate others’ rights not to have what is theirs taken.”

If anyone can make a point that any of these things is actually a right, and not just a wish, in any context, please reply and we’ll discuss it. I’m going to get back to work right now.

EDIT: whoops, forgot attribution: the quote is from Professor Gary Galles of Pepperdine University

Summertime in Athens is fun stuff. The first phrase that comes to mind describing summer in Athens is “vast stretches of sweltering, empty asphalt.” That’s more UGA than Athens, though. Big empty parking lots with the sun beating down on them all day.

The rest of Athens is great during the summer. Good music downtown, never a traffic jam, never a line to get into the bars, and parking, the bane of our collective existence during the year, is not a problem whatsoever.

I’ve just been chilling up here waiting for my money to run out while I frantically try to get a job. It’s frustrating but I am working on it every day. Last weekend, Heather and I spent some time in Norcross on Saturday playing tennis with her parents and in Newnan Sunday for her dad’s family reunion. Mmmm, deviled egs…

I am kind of excited that Heather’s taking Spanish this summer. Maybe someday we will use it as a secret code so others can’t understand us. My parents used to do that in the car on road trips so that they could mention getting food or stopping for a rest without exciting everyone in the car. Then I learned Spanish…