Pope-ourri

[This entry has nothing to do with the pope]

I think it's silly when people think I'm attractive/cute/hot/etc. Not because I'm flattered by it and don't know how to handle it [though that is true when it happens], but because I seriously think they're wrong. I always thought that I was just-average looking and not a bit above. And still do, pretty much. Also, I'm always afraid that I'm gaining weight.

When I was in 8th grade I had to write a paper in response to talk radio or talk TV for Dr. Castefaro's Social Studies class. He specifically made me respond to Rush Limbaugh, although I think I encouraged him in that selection a bit. I remember listening to the show and taping it upstairs on the floor of my parents bedroom with our crappy old radio/tape player and hate-hate-hating Rush Limbaugh when I was finished with it. He was talking about Iraq and Saddam Hussein and probably WMDs at that point. I would love to see that paper, but I can't find it at the moment. More importantly, I would love to see Dr. Castefaro again, or have him be my teacher again. I can and probably should make the first one happen, though I don't know if I can swing the second.

I've been sleeping way more than usual lately and it makes me feel unproductive, but I just don't know what else to do after 11pm when I have to be in my house and can't make noise.

I'm really lucky that all my passions/desires are within the bounds of social acceptability. Nobody every calls me a freak or criminal because I play piano for hours every day or basically drool at any mention of number theory, roller hockey, or Krispy Kreme doughnuts. But some people aren't so lucky and they just so happen to be into disabled people or crossdressing or even just people of the same sex, and they have to spend their whole damn life feeling like an outcast because of it. It's not like they choose these things! I wish society didn't judge things like that.

I think there exists at least one person who does know or to whom I could comfortably tell every "secret" that I have. I think that's a good place to be. Although I wish I didn't have to have secrets.

I've worked on keeping my cool over the past while, and I think I've done a good job of it. I never really get angry, I'm becoming much more patient, and I never lose my temper. I typically feel good about all of that, but sometimes I wonder if it's really for the better. Maybe people should get pissed off.

The kid in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close always said that he pet his cat "to show him that he loved him." I used to think of it like that with my cats, too, although I hadn't for a while. I'm starting to again after reading said book.

My senior year of high school, I would always tell people: Every day you see me, I'm probably having the best day of my life. I don't know if that's true anymore and it makes me uncomfortable. I know that there's tons of potential for me to go back to a monotone increasing amount of awesomeness in my days, but I worry that somehow it just won't happen.

I'm slow to take up new technology. I never got an iPod, I never use .mp3 players, I never got a "smart phone," I never update my versions of AIM or Adobe, I hate finding my homework assignments online.

I don't know where I stand on the Will-You-Ever-Have-Kids issue currently. I still think that I would hate the first like 13 years or so of raising each kid, but after that I'd probably like them. Like, when they have their own personality and independent thoughts and actions and interests in stuff. It would be awesome to raise some kickass kids and feel like an awesome father and die proud of my incredible children. But what if I don't like the things I make? Scary.

But then again, I always regret the things I don't do more than the things I do.

When I found out somebody is really religious, I have a much harder time developing a friendship/good relationship with that person. There are exceptions of course - Rachel M is very religious and also a great friend of mine. But I still have that prejudice. It's definitely because of The End of Faith. I think I have been getting better about it recently - separating the religion from the rest of the person.

My brother mentioned my blog [HATE THAT WORD] in front of my parents the other day and I wanted to strangle him. Not to death, just to make it hurt. I don't want my parents to read this. I hate the fact that they know it exists. [Hey Mom and Dad! Hint: Never mention this ever]

The other day in Genuardi's, the cashier commented on my shirt. It was the middle-aged blonde woman, and I was wearing my "Wednesday is hump day" shirt, featuring a camel. She said it was very true. I don't think she realized the innuendo, but maybe she did. Viv's mom also commented on my "Friends don't let friends vote Republican" shirt tonight when I went to visit her.

I had a very exciting week, although it's to remember everything. Sunday I saw Keith's band called Hessian at Mojo 13, Monday I watched Dr. Strangelove with Chloe, Tuesday Chloe/Matt/I went to Dorney Park, Wednesday I walked w/ Kristin and saw Christie H, Thursday I looked for ladders, ran through corn, and saw DCI w/ Chloe, Friday I went to First Friday. Saturday I studied. Sunday I saw Viv.

I have still never taken a drink of alcohol or ingested any drug that was illegal for me to take. I don't think I want to - especially not after this summer. I might be interested in going to a frat party at some point just to see what it's like, but I imagine that I'll be extremely uncomfortable, and probably want to leave after a few minutes. On a mostly unrelated note, apparently plastic bags really aren't too terrible for the environment (but I still avoid them anyway). Furthermore, a solar tower is in operation in Lancaster, PA. Go sun!

I don't know what I want to do with my upcoming summer. Options include (a) Insurance internship, (b) NSA internship, (c) Academic program TA or RA, (d) Non-academic program TA or RA, (e) Drum corps, (f) Become a long-haul trucker.

I didn't even start texting until Gina basically made me, just by virtue of her texting so frequently. I remember I got a new phone right before I went to Brown and traded it in the first week I was there because it's T9 Word didn't learn new words. The battery also died within like 6 hours every time.

Loving people is definitely the best part of my life. It makes me happier than anything else I can think of - to know that there exist people who I think are that awesome. The only thing that comes close is writing a song that I know kicks ass. But nothing else.

There are a lot of layers between people now. There was a picture recently where five people in my family were sitting on the couch in front of the TV, and each person had a laptop in front of them. I count that as six layers inbetween the people and a conversation. Add in cell phones for an additional five (although they're not in constant use). Even right now, my brother and I are sitting across from each other at the same table, but we're both on our laptops, not talking, hardly even communicating at all. I wonder what would happen if I closed my laptop and just sat here.

I should write my Nana a letter. Soon. I was supposed to do it when she sent me money on my birthday last year - she hardly even has any money to send me - but it just kept getting pushed off. Partly because I don't really know what to say. But that shouldn't matter to me, dammit, she wouldn't care what the hell was in there, really, just that I sent something to her at all. I hate that I haven't done this yet.

Graveyards are like libaries, full of people and all their stories, but you can't check them out anymore. Imagine all the secrets that are taken to the grave. God damn. I wish that I were one of those people that could start a conversation with anyone with ease. I'd love to get to know/love more people. Everyone if I could. But I never feel like people want to be bothered, and I also fear that I have an angry default face that would make people not want to talk to me. Maybe I just use that as an excuse and I'm afraid they wouldn't like me. Not sure.

One of my friends attempted suicide recently. I couldn't understand it. They were smart, had loving family, a great home, a good school, good grades, a significant other, athletics, looks. They looked perfect on paper. I don't know what drove them to try it exactly, I don't think I could every really understand, but it's scary and makes me feel like no one is safe.

I worry a lot recently about my friends staying safe. I wish I could make sure everyone were safe all the time somehow.

Leroy showed me the paragraph in The Catcher in the Rye where Holden actually uses that exact phrase. I found it once, looking through a copy of the book in Trish's room at Brown. I never liked the book, but I really like that paragraph, and I relate to Holden in that sense.

I'm taking my actuary exam on Thursday morning at 8am. I'm pretty sure I'm already overprepared for it, which is a nice sentiment to have.

We were running low on all my favorite awful foods recently, but we got some Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Tastykake doughnuts now, so I'm set for a while. Except for I'm still afraid I'll get fat. Eh. I'm going to go have some cereal right now.

Peace out!

Streetcorner

I went to Philly to see First Friday. The whole group ended up being myself, Chloe, Vickie, Emily, Jaffe, and Scott, but at the beginning it was just myself, Chloe, and Vickie. A little after the three of us met, we decided to walk to a Wawa nearby to get some food. At one of the street crossings on the way, while we were waiting for the pedestrian light to turn, a man approached us from behind and said to me, "Hey-man-can-I-see-your-penis-I-mean, can I borrow a cigarette?"

It was really strange and I don't think I said anything at all in response. I put my hands over my pockets so he couldn't reach for anything from them, just in case. He was maybe in his thirties, with longish wavyish brownish hair, wearing a tan coat, and holding a paper cup is his hand. Then he asked Chloe if he could borrow $2 so he could get to Lancaster. Then he asked Vickie if she danced, specifically if it was salsa dance. I should point out that Vickie is part Puerto Rican and pretty dark-skinned. She called him racist as we were walking away, and I think some f-words were exchanged.

All in all, it was an incredibly weird experience. I might try that line as a pickup/introduction though.

Peace out.

100 points if you can decipher the lyrics

What I've been able to get so far, some of which I'm not sure about:

You washed your feet in the ocean and they became clean

The bits of sand on my hands, now watch it all leave [?]

The wrecking ball before you kissed me on the mouth

We rolled around in the sand, you better [ ?? ]

We lost a lot in the hurricane [?], till everything came back again

Floating in, floating in, floating in, floating in

Thanks if you are able to help?

Peace out!

Submarines

I wonder how many foreign submarines there are trolling along America's coasts. I'd like to see a map of it, I think it'd be pretty interesting.

Peace out.

The Next 1000 Words

“shaking up up 630”; a cat laying in your lap at the computer, or laying on the computer so that you have to give her attention instead; the plane rides to and from Providence (one time I saw a cloud that was colored through by a rainbow); Genuardi’s doughnuts; the way Mr. Ricci’s kids climbed on him like he was a jungle gym; the time Mr. Ricci yelled at Alex for looking at the wrong side of the board on the first day of class; Alex’s “game show” hair circa 3rd grade; Dan Perrino is going to survive; people still post on Christine L’s MySpace to say that they’re thinking of her and they miss her; I wish more than almost anything in the world that somehow, anyway at all, you didn’t have to be sad about Dave anymore; giving ridiculous answers when Dana asks hypothetical questions; I learned how to play The Luckiest by Ben Folds for Dana M and sang it to her on my brother’s keyboard once in our basement and she loved it, I don’t think I’ve learned a song for a girl since then but I have written many

My brother and sister and I used to listen to To My Brother Whom I Slept With in Bed by Bill Cosby on cassette in a little circle around the player and laugh so hard we couldn’t hear what he was saying anymore, my dad brought it home and had it listen to us once and we’ve loved it ever since, I don’t think he expected that much of a response; I will never figure out what makes my brother and Connie happy together, I asked my dad if he knew what it was and he said, “Jeff, I don’t understand what makes any two people happy together” ; when we lived on Federal Farm Drive I used to go out of my bed at night to go lay with Jessica in her bed and talk, my bedtime was earlier than hers but I never remember her having the light on, we talked about it in front of Mom and Dad once and they said to stop; I used to daydream about taking my brother’s room and turning it into a water tank and having a Waverunner in it, I think it’s because there was blue carpet; there was a nice old guy named Mr. Fritz who lived beside Federal Farm Drive, his wife wasn’t as nice, but they had tons of cats and he always let us visit them, it’s been a long time since I’ve thought about him, and I’m sad to think that he is probably not okay

I don’t know if I should take my favorite blanket with me on Semester at Sea, I’d like it to go all around the world but I’m not sure it’s strong enough; the World War II memorial is amazingly pretty, the last time I was there two girls from Asia were sitting a bit down from me and we made eye contact and smiled but never talked, maybe it was the language barrier; I have played hockey in front of the White House; I went to Barnes and Noble my last days in DC to get a notepad to write down ideas and a girl about my age was looking in the journals section too and she was pretty in an offbeat way, I thought about saying hi and asking what her journaling was for but instead I rationalized the familiar

Google’s making an operating system; Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, This American Life, News & Notes, The World, On Point, On The Media, Radio Lab, All Things Considered, Marketplace, Fresh Air, Morning Edition, the background music of Shadow Traffic, “I’m Robert Segal” “And I’m Michelle Block” *picture of a seagull and a block*, what the hell would I be without NPR; the way Leiha breathed out between thoughts; once I threw up because I swam too hard the first day back in the pool, and once because I tried really hard on all the physical fitness tests, I’ve since learned not to make that mistake; the SomethingAwful forums; I used to be one of the cool guys on GameFAQs when I was like 13, I really appreciate what all those people added to my life, but I could never ever go back; Joel McHale and that tiny little dog from E!’s The Soup; you know what, popping pimples and picking my nose can feel good sometimes, okay, there, I said it; when my dad has something in his ear he puts his finger in it and shakes it so hard the whole room shakes, my sister picked up on that somehow, but no one else; my mom gave me her jawline and I’m thankful for that; my dad sneezes really loud, which was annoying when I was young and trying to sleep, when he thinks something is really funny his laugh is very loud and high pitched, I never thought much of it but my sister told me it always made her happy to hear it when she was falling asleep because she knew it meant Dad was happy

When people update their blogs; when there used to be appropriate words to use instead of blog; how well Jenny J and I were able to talk about our past, I never knew that both of us made an almost-conscious decision, I think it would have been fine even if it had only been one of us; the time Corky and I tried to explain the butterfly effect to her in her comment s section; god am I going to miss having Corky at PSU, I already missed having him down the hall so I could bother him every day, I don’t think I’ve ever known a guy my age that I got along so well with, the post it note to-do lists on his desk that said, “DON’T kill yourself,” “To my biggest fan”

Peace out.

Note to Self

1000 words isn't as long as you think it is.

Peace out.

The First 1000 Words

The time at Kevin D’s pool party when I pushed the lifeguard into the pool, he was the best swimmer in the high school, he might have been in the Olympics, I think kids played Spin the Bottle in the woods that day but this was middle school and I was definitely not okay with that game with those kids; I still call both of them kitten; we were talking about the alarm in our house and my dad said “it’s only for people. if someone breaks in and takes all the TVs, you know, that means nothing to me” ; I don’t know if I’ve ever cared so intensely about anything as I did the nights I wrote you that letter, and I wonder sometimes if I ever will again or if I ever could again, if it’s even possible for me to care in that way anymore, or for someone else, or maybe I’ve just ruined it, or maybe I’m too old; watching last night’s episode of The Daily Show at work, Brett came over to join me one day and we watched it together, we never did that again but I wish we had; I’m surprised that Matt liked all those stories as much as he did, I hope I can figure out a way to order The Moth, I don’t want to let him down; getting a text from Glenn - can you play tonight at 8? Love to! What time and color jersey? 8, white should do – and playing two games, planning on leaving at 9 and getting caught in conversation until eleven; kneeling down to be eye-to-eye with you, hugged you, I wanted to kiss you so badly right then and I can’t place exactly why but I was more alive for it

Sneaking to Kristin’s back porch on graduation night at 11pm, I think it was the first time I hugged her, her parents thought it was weird but it was definitely worth it; the first time we had circle time I had thought about saying “by the end of this year, everyone here will love everyone else here,” I didn’t say it because I thought it was too much, but it was almost true, I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud of anyone or anything in my life; her mom went upstairs, or outside, I forget which – “is your mom outside?” “no, she’s upstairs” [leaning over] “…may I help you?” “can I kiss you?” “Oh. …sure,” I’m sorry that I handled everything so poorly beginning with that exchange right there; the science of choice: keep asking questions, keep learning, keep being the best self I have ever been, or go to sleep because I have drumline tomorrow, fuck the law of declining marginal benefits, damnit; a broken neck would be an improvement to the condition I would find myself in if I ever did break your heart

Sneaking into the neighbor’s pool around 11th grade with Beth, I should have kissed her then; Bill Maher on the weekend, I can’t remember what nights it was on anymore, just we watched it together and she would always hold me, not the other way around; The Half-Hour News Hour, who the hell thought that was a good idea, well us, because it was another excuse, and it was on a Sunday; Perfect Timing by Orba Squara; the times when your parents didn’t think we were going out, your dad called me your fifth son (did that mean you were his fourth son?), god, he used to like me, what the hell went wrong; walking barefoot, going to all the stores barefoot, one time I went for a walk all the way around Fox Hill Farms with Kristin with no shoes on, I thought I could take it but the stones were pretty painful actually; the time my Aunt Jenn used the word sauce as the answer to every topic in Scattergories, and the time I used ham in every answer this year at the beach; running into the water in May when it’s freezing cold; talking until 3:00 in the morning except that the clock is 20 minutes fast and telling the kid at the gas station that I’m the guy from Fallout Boy; the night we had the bonfire, just the two of us, and Jack came to see us; I can’t believe that you were the one that took my hand, god, so wonderful

Everything in the world about Mr. Kerrigan – the bottles of Coke, the terrible puns and jokes, homework is homefun, the way he handled us all, the Brown kid, and we learned so damn much; XKCD; on the dock with Meg: “do you want to jump in? in our underwear. Right now.” You said we could do it later and we never got to it, and no, I’m not upset at all, but next time let’s jump in; For Good from the Wicked soundtrack; wordplay; I saw the movie Wordplay in theaters twice, both times in Pittsburgh, Jon Stewart was in it; I didn’t think I would like Libby S at first but it turns out she’s pretty awesome, and I was thankful for the surprise; Jenna’s kissy faces, the time she pretended to be a dog with her head out the window in the passenger seat of my car, and I was afraid she’d get me a ticket; the days when I wasn’t afraid of speeding tickets; my mom didn’t want me to leave for the summer because she wanted to watch The Daily Show with me at night, but said it wouldn’t be right to keep me here; my cats always climb in boxes and that’s adorable; my sister used to sit outside my dad’s door at night and listen for him breathing to make sure she was alive because she was constantly terrified that anything might go wrong with him; Mr. Longo knew even before I did, I guess he figured out from the handwriting

Peace out.

Stairway Waterfalls

I got a haircut last Thursday, the day before my last day of work, at a place called Bubbles on Connecticut Ave. It was the first day that it had rained in basically all of July, and it was coming down in intense bouts. It had rained very early in the day, around 6 or 7am, and then again a few times in the afternoon. My appointment was initially for 6pm, but the salon called later and asked if they could move it to 6:15, which I said was fine. I washed my hair in that time so I wouldn't have to pay for it there.

At 6, I figured it was time to start walking, except that another intense bout of rain had started coming down. I thought I might be able to wait it out, but realized that was probably a bad idea, and instead started looking for an umbrella. I found one right near the staircase, where I had looked earlier, but hadn't noticed. I was wearing my sandals because my shoes always get soaked anyway. I was also wearing pants rather than shorts like I always do. I don't know if I thought that was a good idea or something, I guess I just do it.

It was pretty windy too and the umbrella got blown around. I saw that there was one in my car when I walked by it, but I didn't bother to go put the other one back and grab my own. I still got wet, and my jeans got dirty/muddy, and I threw some extra water on them later to try to make sure the dirt didn't stain itself into the fabric. I probably looked like a crazy person doing that.

When I was walking on the right side of the road, after I had crossed the street, there were a few houses that had staircases outside. Just built of stone or cement, something like that. The rain was so intense that it was streaming down the streets and the sidewalks, and streaming down these staircases too. The water would always go to whichever side was less elevated, of course, and then it would fall down the set of five or six stairs, making a waterfall on every level. It was really nice to look at. I thought about taking a picture, or a video, but felt pressed for time, and was afraid of my camera getting wet.

I thought I'd walk on a little bit futher and see if any more staircases came up after I saw that first one. There was one more, and the same waterfall sequence was happening, but I was still afraid for time, and water. I told myself if I see one more, I'll take a picture/video of it.

I kept walking, but there weren't anymore. I thought, if it's still raining on the way back, I'll take a picture or video.

I was pretty soaked when I got to the salon. The receptionist, a younger black woman, asked me if I needed anything, if I was thirsty, if I needed water. I wondered if it looked like I needed water. I laughed (not at her) in my head, but just said "No, I'm good" in the real world.

They took my name down as Jesse rather than Jeff. Even when my sister isn't around, I can't get away from having my name mistaken for hers.

There were no waterfalls happening when I got back. I will probably think of them during ever intense rainstorm for a while. Maybe I'll see another one sometime.

It's raining very hard right now. My cat was outside. I let her in, and she's still crying a little bit.

Peace out.

Surprisingly Refreshing Quote from Work

In a paper about wellness programs at work and how to design one correctly:

"Not all choices leading to illness are counted alike. Those that are targeted tend to be sins - sloth, gluttony, lust, to use their old-fashioned names - or to be behavior, such as drug addiction, of the marginalized."

//

I am filming today for my summer documentary. I'm filming this right now.

//

Last night I began my journey to track down the poem Real Men that I heard in a WORD practice sometime in the fall of 2007 when I was at Brown. I wrote on my left hand:

REAL
MEN

ASKTO
NIGHT

and outlined it with four lines of red as well. It was strangely effective motivation, even compared to other things that I've written in such a manner on my hand. Janine H, who was either a Minority Peer Counselor or Women's Peer Counselor, already wrote back to me. She said that she remembers the poem that I'm talking about, but doesn't know the man's name, and suggested I talk to Phil K or Laura B. I'll try them tonight, I think. I think I'll retrace the letters on my hand, too, actually, even though they might end up in my hockey glove if I go play after work.

//

My capital-letter handwriting is in Arial.

Peace out!

More Reasons I Hate the Business Whirled

One of the projects that I'm working on right now is to help the company develop age curves and gender curves. Basically what that means is we want to take a male at birth and a female and birth and see how much they cost to insure for each year of their life. We decided to do this by looking at the premiums that different sexed age groups would have to pay in 6 * 2 * 3 * 3 types of plans. And there were 27 age groups. And I needed to find the cost for different parts of the plan, as well. And initially, I had to do it individually, setting up a plan type, and then going through each of the 27 age groups. So altogether I would be filling out 6 * 2 * 3 * 3 * 27 * 2 cells, which is 5832 cells total. That's a long time. I mean, even if you could do six every minute (which you couldn't), that's still 100 hours roughly. Which would cost them $2100 in labor costs to me alone.

So I wrote a program to do it for me, and it basically reduced the number of cells that I had to work on to 120. Because I'm awesome. Which meant that I could do it in approximately 2% of the time that they had initially planned to set aside for me. One fiftieth. And of course, I finished it way ahead of time, with way less hours than expected.

So I got to the meeting on Wednesday or whatever, which had been severely pushed back, and I bring out the age curves I'd found. All 5832 cells were filled out, which was a pretty impressive feat in and of itself.

Didn't mention it. Instead they look at one of the headings that my team leader had come up with. "Poor plan vs. Rich plan? No no, I think... no, you mean lean plan rather than rich plan, right? Like, one with reduced benefits and such? Yeah, typically it's rich vs. lean in a situation like that." As if it meant anything at all what we called the plans. We could have called them a happyface plan and a sadface plan. Or X plan and Y plan. Or squiggly plan and squirrely plan. It didn't make any difference at all. It's not even like we were showing this to a client who would have to understand precisely what we were talking about.

And then she asked about the standard plan. "Why isn't the plan definition on this page?"

"Hm?"

"Why isn't the plan definition printed out here?"

"What? I mean, I... on everyone else's I'm sure I wrote it in on the bottom - it should be written in on yours, too. It is, isn't it? [I look; it is written in] Yeah, okay. I mean, that was just how it printed. I mean, it just could not fit one more line on the printer, so I wrote it in."

"Yeah well, you should have come to me to see how to print it."

No, I shouldn't have. She never has time for anything, first of all, and she wouldn't have time for this. Not to mention that it doesn't make a bit of difference, since the plan definition was there for her to see.

Not one mention of the fact that I completed everything in 1/50th the time they expected.

Just formatting issues.

Later we were talking about filling in the gaps between the years. Of course we knew how much it cost to insure someone exactly at the boundry of the age group - we had some data points - but what about inbetween those data points? She suggested doing linear interpolation. I couldn't believe what I just heard. Quietly,

"Linear interpolation?"

She looked at me. "We could do cubic splines, whatever."

"Why stop there? You could get a 10th degree polynomial..." She had already moved on.

So she really really cared about getting lean plan correct instead of poor plan, and making sure it was printed on the page rather than written in, but once it came to actual math - you know, getting something perfectly accurate to the 10th derivative rather than, oh, maybe getting the 1st derivative right - no no, don't worry about being exact. It's no big. Not like that's actually going to make any difference, or make our work less accurate, or potentially cost our clients hundreds or thousands of dollars. Just draw a straight line, like a four-year-old. It's not even like polynomial interpolation is hard.

//

"So do you know what you're doing next summer, err... you think you'll be coming back here?"

No.

"I don't know, I was thinking about maybe trying plain old insurance..."

//

Peace out.

Recent Daze

I had to send a letter on my way back from Glen Mills to DC. I had to put it into a public mailbox because I couldn't let my parents know I was sending it. I mean, I probably could have, but I didn't feel like it. I went to see Bobby and Stefan and Raj and the older Rotter kid (I forget, Sean?) play volleyball at Kid's Dream first, and asked them where a mailbox was on the way. Raj said there was a post office near the Arby's on 202 South on the left, so I went for that.

I turned left and went into the post office. I saw a FedEx box, but no, that's not what I'm looking for. I saw two large blue things right next to each other in the way back, all the way past all the parking. Are those mailboxes? I don't know. They may well have been dumpsters. Although they did have the USPS logo on them. Maybe it was just what they did to protect their property, I don't know. So I drove to them, and they were mailboxes, and I parked my car. I still had some final touches to make to the letter, so I parked my car in front of the mailboxes, which seemed totally cool since it was 5 on a Sunday, the place was TOTALLY deserted, and who would ever get mad at me for that anyway?

Well, the old guy that got mad at me would, that's who. He drove up in a smaller two or four door car, I think reddish/brownish in color. He looked sort of funny, like Milton from Office Space, but thinner. He seemed really introverted, and bitter. He had funny tufts of curly hair, and I think big glasses. He seemed angry at me for being there, and as he got out of his car to drop his letter in the box he said, "There's an entire parking lot over there you know" without any punctuation, halfway to me and halfway to his feet.

I wasn't in any mood to be accosted by an old strange man in a car for probably a not-so-good reason, especially when he didn't know the circumstances of what was happening, and probably would have left me alone if he had known. So I said "Yup" without any punctuation or tone, and he said, "That's what I expected you to say" without any punctuation or tone, and I said, "Yup" in the same way as he was getting into his car, and he drove off.

I was a little upset he would do what he did, but it made me think. A lot of times I get angry at people right away without thinking what their circumstances are. I bet they get pissed at me. So I'm going to add that to my list of things that I think about in regard to my relationships with people and try to get better at it from now on.

//

I was driving to hockey on Monday around 7 or 8 at night. I forget exactly the situation, but I was still on Wisconsin Ave, right near the house. Someone had stopped in front of me, or was cutting into my lane hard right in front of me, and I had to slow down. Somebody in a black jeep/SUV honked their horn at me and held it down because I had stopped. What the hell was I supposed to do? Hit the guy in front of me? Whatever. I didn't know. So I held up the finger in my rear view for a few seconds to return his favor, and he threw his hands up in the air as if to ask "What the hell, man?"

That made for a very awkward side-to-side glance when he ended up beside me at the next light. He was older, maybe 40, and possibly hispanic, although his skin was light. He looked very angry at me, and I just shrugged and made a "Meh, oh well!" facial expression, and looked away. He turned left.

I didn't understand why he was honking at me. I shouldn't have gotten pissed with him. I should have just chilled. Mistake #1. I'm working on it. I've been making a conscious effort to be even more relaxed in traffic than I usually am since that incident.

//

Beth's sort-of-boyfriend, Connor, was visiting from Minnesota recently. On their last night together, they were in Beth's bed and kissing. Rena and Jenna sleep in the same room. Apparently they got really really upset about it, and couldn't sleep. They had both done similar things in the past. Reportedly to a further degree, but I digress.

They went outside to our porch, in the front of the house, Rena and Jenna, and chalked the word "f**k" (with all letters present) into the stone of the porch more than a hundred times, in a somewhat passive-aggressive slight toward Beth and Connor kissing in their room. I thought that was pretty mean. Not to mention extremely inappropriate. Bridget, the girl Beth babysits, couldn't come to the house... because she can read, you see...

Another housemate had written "Erase the f**ks" on the chalkboard near the door. No one did anything to clean it up. I wrote "Seriously" underneath it. Still no one did anything, even though they had no where else to be and nothing else to do for the most part. I took buckets of water and put them all over the porch to get rid of some of it, but not all of it, to maybe make it easier when they would clean it up. I wrote "Or I'll clean it with your pillow cases" or something to that effect. Leiha suggested that I also tell them that the water I put was also just a head start, not the whole thing, so I wrote that too.

Jenna went out later and said that "Someone put suds on it!" and that it was bubbling when she sprayed it with water. This was certainly not the case at all, but I couldn't say anything about it, except for that I doubted it. I think she may have ended up cleaning it off, but I'm not sure, I haven't looked yet.

I probably should have been more grown-up about the whole thing. I talked to both sides of the story, so I think I understood what was going on, but still.

//

I am so excited to leave my job next Friday.

//

I think the calendar date Saturday, July 11th, 2009, might have been my perfect day, like the one I would describe when people ask you late at night what your perfect day would be like. I mean, I didn't play hockey or eat Krispy Kreme doughnuts all day, but it was so close, it might as well have been. I'm extremely glad that I got to see all the people I did get to see, although there were a bunch of others that I wish could have been there as well, and that I still miss, and missed that day.

Peace out.

Bred Winner

Today when I went to get the bread and peanut butter to make myself lunch at work, I reached down into the cabinet where I store the bread, pulled out the loaf, and realized that the bread-tie was still on there. Not a twisty tie, but one of those thin, rectangular shapes made entirely of plastic except for a little hole at one end with two prongs to hold something inside the hole. I think you know what I mean.

I thought to myself, "Hm? Didn't I open this bread yesterday? I guess not." And I took it off. The bag inside the bag (for extra freshness? I don't know) was already opened, and the loaf end (with all the crust) was already gone, so I knew I must have opened it yesterday to do those things. Which meant I also must have put the bread-tie back on...! I never do that! I was pretty amazed with myself. For a few seconds, I definitely felt some measure of pride because I put the bread-tie back on, rather than doing what every other male in the world does: spin the bag a lot and then put the cord of breadbag underneath the loaf, and tuck it away. Which is also what I do 99% of the time.

I mean, this whole thing is ridiculous, but I just thought I'd share those two seconds with you.

Peace out.

Too-Weak's Notice

I put in my two-weeks notice at works today. It's not that I couldn't take it; it's that I wasn't taken. I had been waiting and waiting for Margaret, whom I thought was the HR head, to return from vacation, but she'd been away since July 2nd and kept taking days off or working from home. Finally I just told Connie, who's basically the manager of the office. I got a little nervous when I was walking to her office for some reason and stopped to consider it. Control. I walked up to her door - doors are always open in our office - and just said, "Hey, I just wanted to let you know that the 24th was going to be my last day, so whatever we need to do to make sure all of that goes over okay, just let me know."

She's fine with it. She asked me if I knew when Matt (the other intern) was staying until, and I told her that I was pretty sure it was August 14th, right before school starts. I didn't know when the other intern from Carolina was leaving, though. I asked her if I should tell other people - my "team leaders" or work assigners, basically - and she said yeah, I should probably let them know. I told her I just wasn't sure if she would do that or if it was typically up to the person who was leaving. We went and told David, who said he thought I was leaving at the end of the month. She said, "The 24th isn't the end of the month..." but didn't seem too upset about it, and he didn't seem upset about it either. It makes sense. I'm just an intern, it's not like the company is going to fold without me. I haven't told Tony or Karen yet, I think they both think I'm leaving August 1st.

More about this later, possibly.

Peace out!

Relius

"Computer, I'd like you to make this file American."

Peace out.

How to Frisk a Wheel Well

Jessica (my sister) and her boyfriend (Sam) and a couple they're friends with (Paul & Becky) were sitting out on the dock at our beach house. They were just talking, sitting, it was a nice night, but at some point my sister heard something rustling around the house to the east of us, where it appeared that no one was home, and no one was awake. So she continued staring for a little bit, and saw two teenaged kids possibly sneaking around the house. She thought that they might be playing Capture the Flag, or something like that, and didn't really worry about it.

A few minutes later, she saw them out in front of our house, looking into a trunk of a white car, which she thought might be one of ours, and she said that put up some red flags in her mind, so she got up and went to go investigate.

//

I pull up in my car. It's late, nighttime, pretty much no one is on the streets back on our part of the island right now. I look in the driveway and I see two kids about my dad's car. I think one is wearing a black shirt and has black hair and one is wearing a green shirt with blonde hair. I think they're both guys from a distance, but I'm not sure - I knew that Paul and Becky would be coming to the house tonight, but I had no idea what they looked like, or if they brought another boy, and if maybe this was Paul and someone else.

So I roll up perpendicular to the driveway. One of the kids had put his hands underneath my dad's car's wheel well, like he's looking for something (keys?), though I can't really figure it out. I stop the car in the middle of the street, roll down the window, and just stare at them as if to ask "What the hell do you think you're doing?" I see my sister walk around the corner of the house and start talking to them.

//

My sister asked them what they were doing (I couldn't hear, my car's engine blocked the sound). Apparently the one that she asked was completely dumbfounded and just managed, "Uh... um.... we're......" but the other one picked up with some story along the lines of: We were at a party in Stone Harbor but then our friend got in a fight and he left and then people were mad at us so we left, and we're trying to hide, but we have to go back later to try to find our friend and make sure he's alright.

None of it really made any sense, but my sister is a teacher, and she always wants to believe kids are good, so she half-way believed this.

Paul, Becky, and Sam walked up from the other side of the house.

//

I pulled my car around and parked right in front of the driveway, where I always park. I had no idea what had gone on between them and my sister, but I got out of my car and walked up to them and said, "What's going on here?" Paul and Becky didn't know who I was, but Sam and Jess did. Paul was afraid he would have to beat me up at first.

At some point, I made a comment about how the kid on the driver's side of the car was frisking the wheel well. At that point, my sister's attitude seemed to change. They didn't have a response for it. My sister asked him what that was about, and the black shirt kid said, "We weren't doing anything! Come on, just don't call the cops. We're not trying to make trouble. Just don't call the police." Then someone accused him of stealing, at which point he said, "Oh, come on! I go to private school, I don't steal, I've never stolen anything in my life!"

The theft didn't bother Sam, but the private school comment did, and he shot out, "Yeeaaah, yeah. Get outta here, you douchebags." And we all walked away and they left.

This was about 1:30AM.

Peace out.

Tehrants

When MJ, Farrah Fawcett, Billy Mays, and Ed McMahon died, so did the media's coverage of events in Tehran.

Then came Mark Sanford's affair, and Sarah Palin's word-vomit resignation speech, and North Korea shot toypedos into the ocean.

Maybe it's naive to assume that media coverage was helping to fuel the protests, but I do honestly think that it helped and it gave it a voice, and it's pretty tragic to see it smothered by this hand.

Peace out.

RADAR Enforced Speed Deception II

It was a strange and specific form of depression and disappointment when I had to pay my speeding ticket - which I was assigned by a camera - through this:

Peace out.

A Tree Falls in Connecticut

I was driving home today from DC to Philadelphia, and the first semi-major road I get on is Connecticut Avenue, or MD-185. It's three lanes per side, but the speed limit is 30.

There were storms predicted today. Severe thunderstorm watch for the district and the surrounding areas, and it was starting to look stormy when I drove out. About half an hour later, I was a ways up 185, and it started to get really stormy. It started off slow, but quickly I could hardly see out of my windsheild, I could see the wind sweeping the water everywhere, and bits of tree were dropping left and right. I felt a little scared. I think I actually may have thought about a tree falling.

Visibility was extremely, extremely low.

After about a minute it let up, and visibility returned a bit. There was a light very very shortly in front of me. It was green, but almost no one was moving, and I had no idea why. After I inched up a little bit more, and the visibility came back, I could see that there was a tree blocking five of the six lanes on the other side of the intersection. People were merging all the way to the rightmost lane on my side of the road to get past. I called the local NPR station, WAMU, and told them there was a tree down that was blocking the southbound side of 185 right at East West Highway intersection.

As I drove past, I looked to the left. There were people out of their cars. I saw what looked like a family almost fleaing the scene, and I remember one person lifting a very small boy up to a larger man for him to carry, from one family member to another, I thought. I think they were not-white but I couldn't really tell, and can't really remember.

I looked a little bit more. I saw a white man moving sort of hurriedly and urgently to one end of the tree. It was a big tree. The report says that it was two or three feet in diameter, but I would put three feet at the lower bound of that estimate. I realized that at least one car was crushed underneath the tree. I didn't feel anything, which I think is okay, because the other option was to panic. I didn't know exactly what to do. I kept driving on, slowly.

For a moment I thought that I should just go on. I thought too about calling 911, but figured someone else would do it. Then I remebered the concept of diffusion of responsibility from psychology class in junior year, and knowing there were more than three people around, I called 911. An automated machine said someone would be with me shortly, an agent from Montgomery County. I was afraid I was calling the wrong 911, but it was correct. In about a minute I got a guy on the phone, and he asked what the emergency was.

"I don't know if you've heard this yet, but a tree fell on top of one or two cars at the intersection of 185 and East West Highway."

"Okay, let me put you with Fire and Ambulance. Hold on, they're very busy."

"Okay, staying."

And then I was on wait for about 20 seconds. The operator picked up.

"Firetruck or ambulance?"

"Ambulance."

"What's the situation?"

"A tree fell on top of one or two cars at the intersection of 185 and East West Highway."

"Okay, so there's a tree down, definitely vehicles trapped underneath it, and a power line?"

"I can't spe-- I don't know about the power line, all I know for sure is that there's at least one car under the tree."

"Okay. We're on our way."

My phone stayed in Emergency Mode for about five minutes. I don't know what the purpose of it is. WAMU reported the tree down a little bit later and said that fire, police, and ambulance were all on the scene.

I found out when I got home that there was definitely at least one car underneath the tree, a minivan with eight people in it. A woman and a girl were killed, and a boy was injured to a life-threatening point.

Motherfucker.

I'm glad that I called 911, but I wonder if - and think that, yes, - I should have stayed to help. I don't know if there is really anything more I could have done than what I did, or if it would have been safe for me to help. But the point is that I might have had a chance to save someone's life, and I didn't take it. I made a mistake, I'm not going to kill myself over it, but I'm going to try not to make the same mistake twice.

//

This story reports that the time was just after 8pm, but I am pretty sure that it was closer to 7:40pm. My phone didn't record what time the call to 911 was, though.

This top right picture is what I saw when I drove by.

Peace out.

My posts are getting longer than I intend them to be increasingly often. I wanted that last one to be about two paragraphs, and that's how it turned out. Sorry.

Peace out.

Hockey Pants II

I decided that I wanted to go play hockey after work on Thursday, so I brought my hockey pants and a pair of socks in the car with me on the way to work and found a new route to the hockey rink right from Cheiron. It took me about 45 minutes, but I got there. So I got changed. There was some kid from the middle school at the rink (which is right next to it) playing soccer in the rink, and I had to take my pants off (not boxers) to get changed, which felt a little awkward, but I did it anyway. I didn't bring an extra shirt, so I just took my work shirt off. I dropped my work khakis on the ground and they got super dirty, and now I have to wash them.

I played hockey for about an hour, and really tired myself out. I didn't have anything to drink, either, so the Gatorade that I got at the gas station afterwards was about the most quenched I have ever felt in my entire life. When I got tired when I was playing, I would go sit in the car and listen to NPR with the air conditioning on. I tried to pull my car up to the rink and play NPR real loud so I could hear when I was playing, but it didn't really work, so I turned that off. Good thing, because two other kids came a little closer to six.

Anyway, when I was done, I didn't feel like changing all the way, especially not into my dirty, dirty pants. So I left on my hockey pants and put back on my work shoes, and my work shirt when I was in the car.

In case you don't know, hockey pants are pretty ridiculous looking. Take a look at these. Those are essentially what I was wearing.

So when I got back to the house, I was looking for a place for parking. It's a residential city block set-up, so you just have to parallel park on the east side of the street. There are some white parts blocked out where parking is legal. It's 2-hour limit between 7:30AM and 7:30PM, unless you have a permit saying that you live there. I don't have one of those licenses, but it was past 5:30, so I could get past the two hour limit legally and still park there.

So I pulled up to the parking spot I wanted, which was nice and open, which is always a nice break. It was right in front of this house that has a garden with an Eco-Friendly Garden sign sticking out of it, and I always sort of thought it smelled funny, it a bad way. Not that it's growing pot or something, just that it seriously smells pretty bad. The woman of the house was outside watering her garden, or picking at it, or something. I scraped my wheel a little bit when I was parking, and since I'm afraid of being an Axel Murderer, I was compelled to kick my hubcap back into place when I got out of the car.

So I got out of the car, got some of my stuff (backpack, clothes), and went over to kick my wheel in.

The woman stared at me. Like, stared at me. I was on the same side of the car as her, right up near her property, and god, she was trying to burn me with her eyes. I could easily see that she was, and it was making me uneasy. She had a strange and mean feel about her. I looked right at her for a second, and sort of said softly, "What?"

She shook her head and went back to working at her garden. I opened the door to get some stuff when I was done kicking in the wheel, and I looked over when I was done getting my other stuff out, and she was staring at me. Again. She might as well have been wearing a robe and wielding a gavel. But what was she even concerned about? So I asked her a bit more meanly, "What." She shook her head and walked away and turned on the water to her garden.

It was the strangest thing. Was it the hockey pants? I don't know. Maybe I'll talk to her sometime, but probably not, she seemed mean.

Peace out.

Business Sighed of Things

I was walking out of my boss's office today, making small talk with her, and she said, "You're gonna be a businessman, definitely, I can tell." She meant it as a compliment, but it made me feel empty (I think that's the best word to describe it). I feel like all I do right now is just go into a building, push a bunch of papers around my desk for 7.5 hours, and then leave the building. I told her I was considering being a teacher. "Why?" "Because it's pure math-ier than business." She told me I could be a teacher in a business, too, like our CEO teaches people here, or a guy named Ken teaches clients. She means well, and I'm sure she thinks it's what I'd like to do, but I don't think I believe it.

Peace out.

Mist Connection

I was driving to work on the beltway today as usual, but a little bit later than normal, it was probably 9:00AM or so right around when I was getting on. This was before the big straight hill that lets me know when it's almost time to exit on my way home.

Well anyway, traffic appeared to be moving really fast and everyone was going 55-65 miles an hour, which is what you do on a 55mph limit highway when there's essentially no traffic. But then, basically out of nowhere, the traffic came to an almost standstill for a little bit after about a mile. It even caught me by surprise, and I had to put the brakes on fairly quickly to make sure I stayed a safe distance from the car in front of me.

I'm not sure exactly what I noticed was happening first. There was a blue BMW on the leftmost lane (I was in the 2nd-to-leftmost lane) about two or three car lengths in front of me. I think what I noticed first was that it was pulling to the left, to the shoulder of the road. I didn't really understand why. Then, over my left shoulder came a speeding truck. It wasn't just a pick-up, but it wasn't an 18-wheeler - it was one of those short-haul trucks that could maybe carry backhoe or two on its bed. But it was seriously barreling through the lane right at this car, and I put together why she was moving out of the lane. It was all happening really, really quickly though and I wasn't sure the car would make it out of the way on time.

As the truck got closer - probably going something like 40 or 50 mph - the car just veered left and pulled forward to get out of the way of the truck, and at almost the last second, the truck veered right, into my lane. Right in front of me. Somehow it actually managed to kill a lot of its speed in that swing into my lane, and slowed down in maybe a second or so after it was in my lane. The blue BMW pulled back into its lane. I'm sure the driver's heart was beating a mile a minute. I suppose I didn't say this explicity, but if that truck had barreled into her car, it would have done really serious damage. Probably it wouldn't have been fatal, since it was from the rear, but it's still not something anyone would ever want to experience.

I realized later that if I had been side-by-side with that blue BMW, the truck probably would have plowed right into me, for lack of anywhere else to go, in an attempt to avoid a definite hit of the other car. When I was thinking about that possibility in my head, I couldn't help but think that I would enjoy that it would get me off from work for a day.

I pulled up to the blue BMW later, side-by-side, to see how the driver was doing. It was a pretty attractive 40-something woman with black hair and large sunglasses, and it seemed like she was doing fine. I don't know how she knew that truck was coming though. I didn't hear it, I don't think it's horn was blowing or anything; I definitely never would have known.

Peace out.

RADAR Enforced Speed Deception

Two weekends ago, I came home for a night to go to Emily U's birthday party, and to sleep over Chloe's house. I actually had an incredibly wonderful time at the party, I met a lot of really cool people and connected with other people who were a lot cooler than I remembered, and loved talking to Chloe until something like three in the morning. It was definitely one of the best nights I'd had in a long time. I didn't tell my mom and dad that I was coming, though, because I thought they'd be upset with me leaving Washington, DC, all the time.

So I got a call today when I was out seeing friends, from my mom, asking me where I was, and saying (very quietly) that I had gotten a speeding ticket from somewhere in Maryland. I don't know why she was talking so quietly - she always does that, on the phone, in the car, on the couch, whatever. In either case, she said I needed to be careful about having points on my license, and that it was $40. Apparently I had gone 41 in a 30 zone. I don't know how I feel about that.

But I wasn't really worried about the whole thing. I was worried that it would give away where I had been on that Saturday that I drove back to PA. I spent the day avoiding home so that I could get home after my mom went to bed, so I could see where and when the ticket was from. If it was from southern Maryland on that day, I could write it off and just say I was around DC, or think of some excuse. If it was from the border with Delaware, I would just be enjoying my last night of freedom.

I got home around midnight. My mom was still up. I was worried that she had figured something out. The ticket was on the table, a picture of my car, one the body, one the license plate. The date said the sixth, which was the day I had driven to Emily's.

But the address was a basically a mile outside of DC. What a relief.

//

Chloe writes wonderful letters.

//

I brought home the lyrics sheet to a song I'd like to record. My parents came home today, so I didn't have the house empty tonight so that I could record it. I'm not sure what I'm going to do now. I feel strangely self-conscious about the pseudo-screaming I do at the end of this song.

Peace out.

Steam of Consciousness

I am a little bit happier with work recently. On Wednesday, my boss discovered (even though she should have known from my resume) that I am a bit of a computer programmer, and then brought me to Matthew (the senior programmer at Cheiron) and basically told us to make computer programming babies.

Matthew is about 30 years old. He has a very impressive history. He worked at Freddie Mac after college, and while he was there, he created a program that could create a legal contract concerning the buying/selling of mortgages or bundles of mortgages within about three minutes. People had been working on the project in huge teams for years before he came up, and he showed up and completed the entire project totally on his own in a few months. It processed something like $14,000,000,000 worth of transactions in the first six months after it was rolled out.

Anyway. So like I said, I might be doing some computer programming. I'm in the process of reteaching myself some of the JAVA language, which is what he uses.

I think that I like work better now because it's more useless, which is sort of the same reason I like art, and math, and life in general. Somebody actually has to do those stupid AVR things for those pension plans, but they could get by fine without our elegant programming. And furthermore, our programming doesn't really accomplish anything. It might, at best, allow other people to accomplish the same things they already did a little bit faster. But I don't care about that, I'm hardly even concerned with that. I don't care if they would use it or not. The whole point is just the challenge - can I design this method or can I not? - and I hope the answer is that I can, but beyond that, I don't care. The point is just to think.

Peace out.

A Note from Iran

I found this on Huffington Post, and I like it enough to keep it here.

"

I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I'm listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! There are a few great movie scenes that I also have to see. I should drop by the library, too. It's worth to read the poems of Forough and Shamloo again. All family pictures have to be reviewed, too. I have to call my friends as well to say goodbye. All I have are two bookshelves which I told my family who should receive them. I'm two units away from getting my bachelors degree but who cares about that. My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow's children...

"

Peace out.

Made Up

Make up makes young girls look old and old girls look young.

Peace out.

Axle Murderer

The summer after 10th grade, my mom made me take driving lessons with Mr. Wenner. He was sort of mean to me, and usually seemed a lot nicer to whomever else was in the car, especially if it was a girl. One day I remember parallel parking and I hit the curb with the wheel. I wasn't going to fast of course - 1mph? - but when I was done, he told me to stop and park the car, so I did, and he got out and kicked the hubcap on the tire.

I forget if I asked him why he did that or not, but he explained. He said that hitting a hubcap against a curb or something like that could make it pop off later when you weren't expecting it. I remember him saying something along the lines of "a sustained speed of 45 miles per hour" as an example of when it would happen, and I think he mentioned being on I-95 as well.

Since then, but getting progressively worse with time, I've been afraid of my hubcaps popping off while at a sustained speed of 45 miles per hour or higher. Sometimes I hit the toll booth curbs and for the rest of the drive I'm terrified that my hubcap is going to pop off. I know, shut up, I'm bad at toll booths. I have to parallel park all the time now though, and every time I hit the curb, I'm afraid one of my right tires is going to explode the next time I drive to work. I end a lot of my car rides with a good bout of kicking.

I'm also afraid that I messed up the axles between the wheels on my car. The first thing I did that I think screwed this up was driving off a curb in Avalon while looking for parking at 31st street which I thought was an exit, but was not, but I didn't feel like backing out and looking for another way out. Yesterday, I think, I was turning while backing my car out of a driveway and my wheel slammed down onto the road again and I was convinced I split my axle. I probably was tricking myself, but the drive felt different too. Things went okay driving today, though.

But yeah, with all those drives to and from DC recently, I spend a lot of time wondering if my car is shaking because the wheels are about to fall off, the axles are about to break, or if it's just what cars do. I also get scared when the car shakes when I use the brakes.

Apparently some guy in Europe recently used the wrong lug nuts on his hubcaps and all four of his wheels popped off simultaneously while he was on the highway, and he is suing someone (the nut manufacturer?) because of it. That's a little reassuring, sort of.

//

In case you haven't noticed, I've been making a concerted effort to make my post titles wittier recently. Enjoy it. Yeah.

Peace out.

Brightening Bug

I saw the first lightning bug of the summer today as I was walking back to my car from the 7-11 at the bottom of the hill on my street.  I had my black reusable grocery bag on my right arm, and he lit up in front of me in the middle of the sidewalk, a few feet off the ground.  I stopped and decided to catch him.  He went onto my hand fairly easily, but stayed on the back of my left hand for a little bit, only later going to my palm so that I could cup him well.  After a little crawling around, he lit up once, and then flew off to the small grassy hill just beside us and lit again.

Peace out.

Barbequeer

Tonight I went to an indoor barbeque with some people from work.  It was hosted by Johnathan, who is referred to as JJ by his girlfriend Christa.  Both of them are really cool people.  She sang a capella in college and was in a movie and appreciated my love of cats, and he played string bass in an orchestra and was into politics and discussing health care financing.  Tony, Krishna, and one of their friends stopped by for a little bit.  Matt was there, as were Chuck and his wife Carla, and a friend of Christa's named Brad was there too.

Mostly we played Apples to Apples, but we talked about plenty of things other than the game.  I shared some math jokes with Chuck, who was sort of interested, but not in particular.  I touched JJ's string bass and he told me very nicely that I should touch higher on the string or the oil on my finger would mess up the string.  I felt dumb because I'm a musician too and I know how much I hate it when people touch my instruments incorrectly.

Anyway, mostly I'm writing this because I realized I didn't take any pictures at all and now I feel stupid about that too.  I'm sorry to bore you with this entry, I realize it was pretty weak.

Peace out.

WHYYnot?

Today - if all went right with the credit card - I became a member of WHYY.

Today, I became a man.

Hopefully the first notice my parents will get is an "I heard it on NPR" mug in the mail with my name on it.  I thought about putting their names and phone numbers in the comments section to have WHYY call them and beg them for money, like Ira Glass does sometimes on This American Life, but decided against it for some reason.

Peace out.

What's your body worth?

Peace out.

Headfauxnes

Headphones are not allowed at work.

I can listen to the radio and whatnot without headphones, but it's sort of just not the same.

I was excited to get my paycheck and my PNC banking card yesterday because I wanted to donate to WHYY because I feel guilty about never having done so thus far. Apparently the PIN I was supposed to use to register my account came in the mail in 2005, so I couldn't sign up. I was really upset. Hopefully Thursday everything will be in order.

Peace out.

Wire Snap

Today when I was playing piano (I was playing Turbulent a.k.a. Clouds), I thought I heard something happen inside the back of the box.  It was very unfamiliar.  I was convinced right away for some reason that a wire had snapped.  After looking around for a few seconds, I saw that there was, as I expected, a wire from one of the keys laying on the floor.  I tested out all the notes on the piano and they sounded fine, but I could tell from looking that it belonged to one of the As in the bass clef.

I should say that I've been afraid of this happening for a while.  Piano strings snap, it just happens, and with enough bad luck you end up blind in an eye or both eyes.  Lucky for me, I had the front of the piano's mechanisms covered with the music stand, so the cord went out the back.  With a little less luck, though, I would be out of work for another good while.

Peace out.

Mistakes on the Wall

Probably everyone reading this knows that I always cover my walls with things I make myself. The year-poster, the nine pictures of songs, all of my friends' pictures, etc.

When I was listening to Mr. Perlswig's speech today at Baccalaureate, I had an idea for next year that I might try out. I might just take a big white piece of posterboard and get something printed on it - like I always do - and then write down all the things in my life that I feel like were mistakes or things that I've done wrong. Not all at once, but as they come to me. Not mistakes like "I wasted my time trying to be friends with John Smith" or whatever that are just ways to blame other people, but things that were seriously my fault, or I seriously feel regret about. Things that it would be good to see every day.

I suppose the thinking behind this is something along these lines: There's nothing wrong or even stupid about making mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. What starts to become wrong/stupid/annoying is when you keep making the same mistake over and over and over again and never learn anything from it. I don't know how often I do that, but I figure this can't hurt, and it'll help me learn how often I do. At the absolute best, I will stop making a given mistake more than once. At the absolute worst, I will be more honest with the people who come into my room.

Peace out.

Codeine

When I was in 8th grade, I had an operation done to break the growth plates in my right knee so that my legs would end up being equal length. I can write more about that whole part of my life some other time. In either case, the operation caused me some pretty extreme pain. I remember waking up the first night after the surgery and begging the nurse to let the morphine drip in a little bit faster because I was in such agony. I never thought that I would actually ask for morphine - certainly not when I was in 8th grade - but there I was! It actually did help a lot, too. I went to sleep again that night.

I stayed in the hospital for two or three days. On the last day that I was there, they let me try to stand up and walk around a little bit, and they wanted to get me into physical therapy so I could bend my knee properly and whatnot. They took me off of morphine, which is super tightly controlled, and gave me a tablet of codeine instead. I remember taking just one tiny pill of it - maybe even half a pill - a light orange color, very small, with some water, while sitting on my hospital bed.

So I went downstairs with my dad after that to try to get some early physical therapy in. I think he wheeled me downstairs in a chair, and then when I got down there, we basically just tried to have me walk with some crutches and stuff like that. I had a soft cast on for a while, so there was basically no way I could do much more... hardly even could bend my knee.

After a little bit of being down there, I started to feel sick. Very, very nauseas. At some point I just knew that I wouldn't be able to hold it back anymore, and I made my dad rush me to the nearest bathroom. I remember making it to the bathroom, and just throwing up more violently that I ever had in my entire life, and probably more intensely than I ever have since. It felt like somebody was punching me in the stomach so hard that everything in my torso was coming right out of me, or like someone was reaching their fist down my throat and seriously tearing my insides right out of my mouth. I made a total mess, and I remember that I got it all over the floor, the toilet, the sink, and even all over myself. We decided no more codeine after that.

I think it may have given me a really messed up dream while I was in the hospital too, but that may have just been a story my dad told me about codeine. I can't remember.

//

I just got my wisdom teeth out on Friday morning. I was pretty afraid of the pain that I would be in, but I knew that I would get prescribed some way-cool drugs that day, and I was itching to take them so I wouldn't feel the holes in my jaw bone closing up, or whatever the hell it is that causes the pain exactly. My mom suggested maybe taking Tylenol first - so did the surgeon - but I insisted on just taking Percocet. So as the novacaine was wearing off, I took a half-tablet of Percocet. About a half hour later, after we agreed that it was doing okay with my stomach, I took another half-tablet of it because I felt like my jaw was starting to hurt a little bit.

I did pretty okay with the pain that day, and I remember at one point sort of feeling a hit of relief in my jaw and thinking, "Wow, Percocet. Okay, cool." Throughout the rest of the evening, I took another whole pill - another half pill four hours after my first, and another half pill four hours after that. The pain wasn't too bad so we decided not to push it.

Viv was supposed to come over that night, but ended up backing out because family had come over. Dana had considered coming to see me as well, but didn't believe me when I said I was doing perfectly fine, and had other reasons to see me the next day anyway.

At about 11:30, I was still laying on the couch in the family room. I had felt a little funny in my stomach earlier, so I asked for something to eat. I had my mom or dad get me pancakes, because I knew they were very light and easy in your mouth but they would fill up in your stomach. For some reason, I felt like the strange feeling was because I had had nothing to eat all day, and all the medicine in there without any food was going to be too harsh. So I thought eating would fix it.

So I ate most of a pancake. But even after that, I felt pretty funny. I'm actually not sure I finished the whole thing. Then I told my parents I felt like I was going to throw up. "Well then get to the bathroom!" they shouted at me. I asked them for a bucket but they said no, get the hell into a bathroom. So I got up and went to the bathroom, which yeah, was probably the right idea.

I leaned over the toilet and I started to cough pretty forcefully, and my mom said to chill out because it might mess up the stitches in my mouth, and we definitely didn't want to deal with that. My dad told me to do what I could to hold it back because this would be a terrible time to throw up, and to just take long deep breaths and try to keep it in. I kept coughing more forcefully though, and I just knew that I had to throw up to get it out of me. I was starting to sweat a whole lot, so I took my shirt off. I hit my hand on the sink as I was taking it off.

So yeah, I proceeded to violently throw up probably four or five times very shortly after I had taken my shirt off. I'm pretty sure that everything I had put in me the entire day came right back up. It was a very calorie-negative day, and it left me feeling very hungry for a long time afterwards. It reminded me very strongly of the time that I had thrown up in the physical therapy place with my dad, though. And right after I was done, I stopped sweating, my stomach felt fine, and I didn't feel nauseas at all anymore.

I found out later - because I am an idiot - that Percocet is just artificially synthesized codeine. If I had known that, I probably would have stayed away from it at pretty much all costs.

In either case, I think I will make sure that I never take anything that is essentially codeine ever again.

Peace out.

Marcus Hook Train Station

Coming back from Avalon was tougher to figure out that I had anticipated.  Initially the plan was that we would drive back very late on Sunday - like leave Avalon around midnight - and then Dana would have her sister pick her up when we arrived, and Deb/Emily/Vicki would just crash at my place and Deb's parents would get her the next day, and I'd take Emily and Vicki to the train.

However, my parents turned out not to be so okay with that.  One option was for me to just go alone, let all the girls stay at the beach house, and then my parents would drive them home the next day, but I don't think anyone liked that.  It eventually came down to driving home fairly early on Sunday night (a little sad, I'd have liked to have hung out with everyone longer) so that Deb and Dana could be picked up right away and I could drop off Emily and Vicki at the train in Marcus Hook if I got there in time, or Emily's dad would pick them up as late as 10PM.

We ended up leaving sometime around 7:30, figuring that would give us enough time to at least get to the Marcus Hook train station (hardly off of I-95) in time for the last train at 9:37 that night.  When we got off of Route 55, it seemed like we would definitely have enough time to get to the station safely, so Emily talked to her dad and told him that.  Deb also told her parents that they could probably pick her up around 9:30.  When we got a little closer, Emily called her dad again to confirm that he shouldn't come and that they'd make the train.  Deb asked how much longer out of the way that'd be, and I'd said maybe seven minutes or something like that.

Well, turns out we got stuck behind a very slow-moving Acme truck on 322 before we even got to the big Wawa on the corner.  And it stayed with us in the part where 322 jogs.  It stayed with us all the way past King Philip Regional HS, right on up to the part where 322 actually becomes a two-lane highway, at which point I finally passed it because it was making me nervous that I wouldn't make it in time.  I think my car clock said something like 9:20 at that point, when we hit the 2-lane part of 322.  Keep in mind that my car clock is 4 minutes fast for some reason.

So I pay the toll and we go over the Commodore Barry bridge and things look good.  I thought for half a second that I missed the exit (was I supposed to take Chichester Ave?) but then I saw the sign for Market Street, 1/4 mile, so I knew I was fine.  I took that exit and made a right turn, because that was how I got there when I was coming up from DC on Friday night to pick them up from the train station.  I saw a sign for 452, so I was pretty sure I was on the right road.

After a little bit on that road, I started to think that I was going the wrong direction.  There were a lot of stop lights, and a lot of shopping centers that didn't look familiar, and it seemed like it was taking way longer than before, and the bridges seemed unfamiliar.  Dana was sitting in the front seat and I said to her softly, "Um, I think I'm going the wrong direction."  She turned a little bit, and I said softly, "S***," because I didn't want Emily and Vicki to get stressed out for something they didn't do and couldn't fix of control.  I kept driving for a little bit longer, and then I got to a huge intersection with a Walgreens that I swore was right near CN Skate Palace, and I knew for sure then that I was going the wrong direction.  I told them then, and I made a right-on-red at the five point intersection to try to turn around.  I tried to turn around in a small drive in the wedge to get back on Market St., but it was a no-outlet.  So I just did a U-Turn in the middle of the road and pulled back up to the light.

It took a while for my light to come up, but finally we got the left arrow and got back onto Market street.  I think that my clock said something like 9:34 then, adding some tension, even though that meant we still had seven minutes.  I still wasn't sure we'd make it on time.

I started driving fast, and almost even aggressively.  I was fuel inefficient.  We got a string of green lights, and then I pulled under a yellow light, and sighed, glad that I had made it.  After that, a truck pulled in front of me somehow - maybe merging right onto the road - and caused me to hit a red light.  I remember shouting "MOTHERF***ER!" at the situation.  I wasn't really angry, or upset, I was just excitable for some reason.

We drove on, we passed signs for 322, so I knew we were getting closer.  When my clock read something like 9:37, we finally passed I-95.  Four minutes.

I could see the flame from the refinery burning above the train station, so I knew we were getting close.

We came to another stop at a red light, and I saw a "Dairy King" store across the road.  God damnit.  I remembered it extremely clearly from picking them up the other night, and I should have known right away that I was going in the wrong direction when I didn't see it from turning off of 95 this time around.  I remember thinking it was a stupid play on Diary Queen and I was mad at them almost for making me relate it to Diary Queen.  I can't explain why, I just was.

We kept going.  All we needed to do was get over the bridge and then turn right, right again, and then we're at the train, right where we need to be.  Vicki kept asking if I needed to cross the tracks, or if she needed to cross the tracks.  I said that I had to, that's why I was crossing the bridge.

We kept hitting red lights.  9:38.  9:39.  More red lights.  I shouted curse words again.  We shouted for green lights.  Finally we got to the bridge over the tracks.  My clock read 9:41.

"Oh man, I hope we don't see the train pulling out of the station - how much would that suck?"

Vicki saw it - "Yyyyup, there's the train."  It was sitting at the station, not yet moving.  Vicki said that she would have to cross the tracks and there was no way she'd make it, but I assured her no, only I had to cross the tracks, and going over the bridge was all we needed.  At literally any second, the train could leave.  We were all just waiting for it to pull out before we got there.

There was a white SUV in front of me going maybe 30MPH over the 30MPH bridge.  I honked at it, hoping it would speed up.  But it didn't.  I just had to follow it, and the second I could, I swerved right to get to the station.  I considered going the wrong way on a one-way residential street to get them there a few moments earlier, afraid the train was pulling out as I drove past the houses, unable to see clearly what was happening.

Finally I found a street - maybe the third street - that was one-way in the direction I wanted to go, so I swerved right.  The speed limit sign said 15, but I sped up as much as I could, and slammed on the brakes at the stop sign at the end.  All I had to do was cross that street in front of me and I was at the parking lot.  But at any second, that train could leave.

So I slammed on the pedal and bolted into the parking lot.  The train still hadn't left.  I thought I saw some people getting on but it looked like they were the last ones, and maybe the train would leave right then.  I pounded down on the brakes, forced the car into park, turned it off, took out my keys, and ran into the train.  I almost did one of those sliding screeching parallel park deals, like in the movies.  Vicki and Emily got out to get their bags.  I ran to the people getting on the train, for some reason thinking they could do something, and shouted, "Wait!  Don't let the train leave yet!"  As if it would do any good...

Vicki and Emily were shouting at me, "JEFF.  THE TRUNK.  OPEN THE TRUNK!"  So I jumped off the stairs on the train car and opened the trunk from as far away as I could to let them get their bags out, then immediately back onto the train.  It looked like more people were getting on, but again, I wasn't sure.  I saw a person who clearly worked for SEPTA so I figured I'd plead my case to him.

"Hey, I have two friends getting on in a second, don't let the train leave."

Like a jerk, he responded "Well they better get on now, because the train's leaving."  What a douche!

When I turned around, Vicki and Emily were at the steps of the train.  Holy crap, they had made it.  We hugged each other for a half second each and said goodbye, and they stepped onto the train, and it pulled away.

If we had done anything at any point on that whole trip to delay us by 10 seconds, they wouldn't have made the train.  The whole experience felt a little like a movie.

Peace out.

Battle of Chicken Coop

One day in 11th grade in Mrs. Rock's AP US class, we had to have a debate where we broke into groups decided by which battle we thought was the most important in the US Civil War, and then had to argue and try to win people to our side.  Mrs. Rock had told us in the past that someone - maybe Justin S? - had once defended the Battle of Cowpen to the bitter end as the most important battle, but most kids would always take Gettsburg or Antietam.

Finding inspiration in the Battle of Cowpen, Steve Baruti, myself, and one other student whom I forget (maybe Kyle W?) decided that we were going to make up a battle and defend it.  So we created the Battle of Chicken Coop on the spot.  I forget exactly how the story goes, but I remember that we wanted it to have lighting involved, and bears, and overall the story was something like this...

There was an ammunition store being held somewhere in the South, before the other larger battles of the war.  As it turned out, the North discovered that this huge ammunition store was actually being kept in a chicken coop on a southern farm.  So the North decided to go after the ammo, and stormed into the farm one stormy night to try to take control of it.  After having some initial success in the siege, lightning struck right on top of the chicken coop and detonated a bunch of the ammo, and in the confusion, the South regained a winning position.  However, by the grace of god, a pack of angry bears came out from the woods nearby and attacked the Confederate soldiers, allowing the North to win the Battle of Chicken Coop in a landslide, thus transferring a large amount of firepower to the Union.

I remember we wrote down the story of it on a piece of lined notebook paper.  We started the debate, and everyone introduced what happened in their battle and why they thought it was the most important.  I think most of the kids in the glass knew that we were making ours up, or they figured it out pretty quickly.  Steve and I were definitely having a good time, and so were some of the other kids, but I think I remember some kids just getting upset about it.

Mrs. Rock seemed a little suspicious about this "Battle of Chicken Coop" that Steve and I seemed to know about but she didn't, but we assured her that it was real, and we kept it going for most of the class.  Somewhere about 50 minutes into the class, she started to get more suspicious - I think maybe the bears were getting to her - and she started to look for mentions of it on the Internet.  By the end of the class, after Googling and Wikipediaing herself out, she concluded:  "I think the Battle of Chicken Coop is bullsh*t."  Steve and I probably laughed, but continued to assure her that it was real.  I think we walked out of the door still insiting it was real.

The next day she referred to us making up the Battle of Chicken Coop, and I think we finally acknowledged that we did make it up.  In either case, we took the piece of lined notebook paper that we wrote it out on and stapled it to the corkboard on the wall by her door, closest to the window.  I don't know if it's still there or not, but I'd love to see it if it was.

Peace out.

Voice of the Pope

"An agency will filter all radio ads to make sure they are in keeping with the high moral standards of the Catholic Church," reports the BBC.

...and all violating ads will be promptly relocated to a new media market, where they can sort of pretend all those violations never happened.

Apologies to my Catholic buds.

Peace out.

Beltway South

I meant to get on the Capital Beltway (I-495) North today after work, but accidentally got on South and didn't notice for at least five miles of pretty terrible traffic.  My ride home, which is supposed to take 24 minutes in no traffic and as little as 36 with traffic, took 1h46m.  

I was endlessly frustrated, and started to sweat - I could feel it on my shirt and on the seat - but NPR helped keep me sane.

Peace out.

Dispatch from the Internship

Today was pretty boring.  As expected, I am an Excel monkey.  Probably I will have to do that just about all summer.

My right eye is very bloodshot between my nose and my iris.  I suspect that it's either from looking too closely at computer(s) for eight hours, or frustration.

Tony and Chuck took me out to lunch and we went to the Cheesecake Factory, where I had a hamburger full of stuff, and took it all off, except I couldn't really get the mayo off, and it nearly ruined the whole thing.  I ate terribly today.  I sort of just eat terribly here.  Hopefully that'll change starting tomorrow.

The drive to work took 40 minutes, which I suspect I can shorten considerably/easily.  The drive back took 60 minutes, which is unacceptable.  If I can't shorten that, I'll take the bus and read.

Peace out.

Heaven Forbid

I think that my attempts at getting a time-lapse photograph of the sun setting outside my house have burned a dark spot somewhere onto my camera's optics, which now shows up in a number of pictures and videos.  It's the outline of a circle, shaded a bit darker than the rest of the image, at the top of the picture, and slightly off-center toward the right.  The bad news is that I'll probably have to buy Canon PowerShot #3 soon.  The good news is that they're only about $100, which isn't a huge deal since my internship should pay pretty well.

Oh, speaking of which, I am taking an internship in DC with a company called Cheiron.  A guy named Mr. Bucci, who is a PSU graduate, interviewed me and said I seemed pretty strong, but they typically don't like to take sophomores since they rarely come back full-time.  I got a call the next day saying I was hired, and then took a few days to figure out housing.  Beth was in MN, so it was difficult, but I will be living with her and a number of her friends this summer.

Furthermore, I finished a song a few minutes ago.  I started it and finished it between 12:40AM and now.  It's pretty intense compared to most of my songs.  This should be song #3 that can be finished tomorrow.  I can't quite seem to finish most of the songs that I have the music for, but no lyrics... which is sad because there are a lot of them.

But yeah, there's no creative outlet quite like a piano in an empty house after midnight.

Peace out.

Finger to the Moon

I remember one night I was in the backseat of my dad's car, the Lexus that he has right now, and I wondered what would happen if I tried to put the automatic window up when my finger was in the way.  It was after a hockey game at CN Skate; I don't remember who else was on my team then or if we won or lost, but probably we won because I was in a fine mood.  I forget if I was sitting on the passenger side or not, as well.  But I put the window down an inch or so, put my finger right on top of the window's edge, and pushed the button to have the window go up.  A moment later I remember a strike of pain coursing through my entire body, starting in my stomach as much as in my finger, and I immediately put the window down and pulled my pulsing finger out.  I don't think I said anything to anyone about it, but I was afraid maybe I had really hurt something.  This was in sixth grade, which I remember because I had to keep a journal of the phases of the moon for Mr. Smeins's science class, and I looked at the moon afterward to see what it looked like that night.

Peace out.

Speaking of chemicalroad

Alzheimer's Disease is the second most feared disease in America; the first is cancer.

Peace out.

Time Lapse Photography

I was looking outside my house today sometime around dinner and I thought that it might be nice to try to get a time-lapse shot of the sun going down outside my front windows.  My camera has a time lapse mode, and it would basically turn 15 minutes of time into a 30 second video, which is a little longer than I would like, but I could always speed it up.  So I took a sample sometime around 5:30, and it turned out okay, but the sun was up really high the entire time and the picture didn't change much.  I think I will keep it just in case though.

Anyway, I set my camera up again sometime around 6:45 when my family decided to go to Rita's for ice cream and stuff.  Sunset was at 8:06 according to weather.com so I figured I might be able to get some nice stuff.  I set my camera outside on our welcome mat and let it go, and then we left for Rita's.  Part of me was worried that I would come back at 7:30 and my camera would be gone, along with the 4GB memory card I just bought for it.  That would really suck.

Well anyway, I got back at 7:30 and my camera was still there.  I actually felt a pang of relief when I saw it sitting there on our front patio.  I went to the bathroom and then came outside and checked it, and realized that the lense had pulled in, and the green power light was off.  I reached town and hit the power button, thinking I had just left it sitting idle, but when it started up it said to change the battery pack.  So I went in and charged the battery pack and used my mom's battery to see if it caught anything, but I don't think it did.

My camera is still charging.  The sunset right now is a beautiful mix of pink and purple and orange and I'm sort of sad that I didn't get to record it.  I will definitely try again, though, but you can never tell in advance when the sunset will be as pretty as this one.

Peace out!